The ever present puppeteer

Lets face it, it's here to stay, you just can't live without it, well almost. I bank with it, I shop with it, I connect with other human beings with it. I see my grandchildren with it, my son out west, my extended family with it. I look up phone numbers, tell people where I am going to meet them, get my news and books from it. I express my every mood, get inspiration, feel joy, anger, awe, laughter, resentment, pride, fascination and grief with and from it. I hear my music with it, watch all my favorite shows and movies, I got a degree through it, I found and lost romantic relationships because of it.

And herein lies the fucking problem. Is it real? This is a question I have been asking myself lately. Is my life truly real anymore when it is managed and controlled and highlighted and reflected through the fucking internet? When I come home and I greet my sweet pax and he wants a hug and I give him one and I feed him and I talk to him....this is real. Me interacting with my dog.  But then. I realize I am alone, no other humans live here with me and I am alone. So I seek to escape that. I think I do that out of habit now.  See I never had to live alone, I went from my parents home to my husbands. Our home always filled with people, always. Now I am alone. And it is uncomfortable and foreign. So I seek to escape it. I reach for a computer, (I have three devices that connect me to the internet) and sometimes all three are open. I might be messengering someone on my phone, looking up sites on the laptop, opening up my music playlists on my tablet, reading mail from one, answering it on another. dings and rings going off making me feel like I am wanted and not alone, like I am alive in the world and connected to it. It's a blip of a rush to look and see oh maybe here is something to investigate, then the let down and sense of acknowledging the truth when you see that once again it's an ad or a company wanting your money. It's a person you don't know liking something else from someone you may or may not know. It's sitting there waiting for you as the ever present go to, the repetitive phone check, to see who else hypothetically wants me instead of who is sitting in front of me. It's the ultimate ego builder this false sense that you are loved and wanted. HAH! But I keep looking, I keep hoping, for what I don't know, I keep the connection open just in case. It is bizarre, it is sad, it is not good, it is wrong, I no longer want it. It is bad for me, like the alcohol is for the alcoholic, yet so hard to let go. But I must, it is time.

I have lately noticed that I am happiest when I am not online, when I am not plugged in, when I am reading a book or dancing to music or baking or talking face to face or even over the phone with a human being-  fuck doing anything except being online.  When I am not partaking in this massive fake false sense of connection, this false ego-building bullshit- this artificial lie I have believed.

I have forgotten how to talk to people now because of this. I have become shy and unable to partake in small talk to strangers, yet I can spill my guts and deepest thoughts in a blog online because it's anonymous--- or that is the lie I told myself. Of course it is not, and it has ramifications, some I have not even considered or thought of yet.  So does online dating, just as treacherous and dangerous as looking for mr goodbar.  My youngest was right, online dating is doomed to failure, you don't have the looking across the room and catching the eye connection, the slow build to get to know a person face to face, voice to voice, heart to heart. Instead your guts get spilled through the wires way too fucking soon, on the dirty road - and man those ropes of intestines covered in shit laid bare there on the dirty road is some nasty. Doomed. And you can't put them back in, those spilled guts.
I have learned hard lessons there. Shitty hard lessons, but hey knowledge is power. Go from there.

And then there is the whole photography thing, in the day people did it  printed it put it on walls in galleries and others saw and bought it. Not today. You take a picture and post it on your page or in instagram- for what? To see how many like you get? To be sad about how many you don't get? What am I doing that for? Do people really like my post, my picture? Really? Or is the thumb automatically drawn to the like button from habit or a sense of obligation before scrolling, do they even see it, would they come to a gallery to view it, would they buy it? Even for cheap? Most likely no. And why do I want that anyway, my pictures need to be for me not for a false like. They are not, until they are I need to stop. Stop fooling myself because it just makes all this falseness so easy to keep hiding behind a screen and try to make myself feel good or needed or admired or wanted. It's not working only I can make myself feel good. Full stop. I have become one of the ones who just don't know the difference anymore- from what is a real human connection and what isn't. Like some of the young ones out there who don't know the world before the internet. They don't know the effort it took to make a connection, to keep it, to build that friendship, that love you worked for, that realness. I want that back.

So I have decided I am going offline. Off the crack fb the fuck pof and other dating sites. I will post a picture through onecrowphotography on instagram if I think it has purpose for an audience. I will continue to write here if I think I have something meaningful to say. Maybe when I go offline and find myself - find who I am without it- I might find that I have nothing to say, I might find I have something to say. We will see. Right now I don't. I have nothing to show, nothing to say. I have to talk to myself now for awhile. I want to be my own puppeteer now.