That Moment

I never wanted a cell phone, a computer, or the internet. I never even wanted cable TV. I remember when my ex bought our first vcr. Didn't want that either. I remember every step along the way the same way I remember the compromises I made about food...I wanted to be vegan. No one else did. So I gave in, made the deal to keep the peace.

What I should have done was pack my shit and my kids and go find like-minded people in the woods, but then I probably would have become a dangerous conspiracy theorist with lots of guns. 

Oops.

So now it's the plant based revolution online, and Brittany Kaiser's book Targeted, and the Center for Humane Technology...and still this tiny computer in my hand (and an iPad so handy for painting off of, and a MacBook to write museum articles, and the cloud to store my photos.)

Is it too late to throw my phone in the river? Too late to go back to paper and pens?

Probably. There has to be a middle ground in which I'm not feeding the data machine, and the data machine isn't controlling me.

How did we get here? 9/11? Patriot act, hand over any stitch of privacy we ever thought we had...and we nearly landed ourselves in the same fascist setting that killed millions of Jews? Or did it begin long before that?

And we aren't out of the woods by a long shot. 

Just how many choices have I made in the last two decades that were really and truly my own? Specifically the last ten years...I feel like they've been stolen.

Choices. Delusional belief that we are actually free. 

We're not. We've been sold to psy-ops. We just have to figure out how to buy ourselves back. How hard can that be. Right? 

Ramblings

 I've gone off the socials again and I'm glad of it. Once a week to check Facebook. 

Meantime I'm finding things to help me understand the socials and the deep polarization that I have believed for ages is created...in other words I believe that fundamentally we have more in common than not, and we need to find a way back to that. And we need to get off devices (but shit I'm writing this on my iPhone, so...)

I've recently digested The Social Dilemma and The Great Hack on Netflix as well as a podcast called Your Undivided Attention. All have been beneficial and scary. Is this a dystopia, and if so how do we course correct? Is democracy under assault, dying, and what do we want the future to look like? How do we navigate a world full of conspiracy theories aimed at exploiting every human weakness and fear that we have?

Then I paint some from this Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings book or knit in an attempt to sooth my brain. Lianna is concerned about the excessive number of "mini paintings" I'm producing in the way that only a five year old can be. "You have enough of these mini paintings, omie. There's a lot of them. Why are you making these mini paintings?" I give her a canvas and a brush periodically and wish I had these resources when my kids were small, both the physical and emotional ones. 

I'm learning that I don't like abstract. The impressionist one wasn't as hard as I thought once I got rolling but it wasn't by favorite. I'm getting better at sketching with pencil and with paint. 

I'm ever aware of and grateful for the space to play with all of this. I still worry about Gene working so I can I play. But at the same time, if he doesn't then my stuff would fall apart - babysitting.so Rachel can have a safe place for the child while she's working, museum volunteering, art...they'd all be mostly eliminated. Does unpaid labor have value, the endless question and internal battle. That and imposter syndrome. Fun fun. 

The goal : make a painting that is art from my brain, and sell it to someone not friends or family. For five minutes it'll make me feel like I can paint. Then I can go back to feeling like a fraud. (Insert lol emojis here).