30 Day Writing Challenge: Day Five

A place where I would live but have never visited...Alaska

Alaska knows that it challenges me.  The long winters and the prospect of days where the sun never makes an appearance are formidable.  I once read a book about basketball in Alaska (not my sort of book at all but it was well recommended for young adults) that depicted the difficult lives of adolescents and their struggles to participate in competitive sport in a world where roads close for months, and teams are forced to travel to their competitors by plane.  I once watched a reality television program about Alaska that focused on a family-owned plane company that transported people to and from areas where roads become impassable.  These possibilities - the perpetual night, the roads that close for months on end, the foods that are unavailable for months at a time - should be warning signs; however, they intrigue me.  They describe a way of life completely foreign to me, where life is forced by the cold to grind to an almost imperceptible stop, because wouldn't life be simpler in Alaska anyway?

I suppose that is what draws me to Alaska - the open simplicity; humanity is forced to accept that nature is bigger and bolder than anything we can dream up.  The glaciers, the Northern Lights, the Grizzlies...they are spectacularly not man made, yet they are astoundingly foreign.  The wide open spaces call to my introvert soul and whisper dreams about solitude and silence that can be found nowhere else.  There is a life in Alaska where I would be myself out of necessity because my nearest neighbors would be miles and miles and miles away.  The colors would be richer and the smells crisper, their edges tinged by frost.  One day would fade slowly into the next, and time would stand still.  I would learn to do without.  My impulsivity would be forced into inaction.  There would be nothing left but to be.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day One

I picked up this 30 Day Writing Challenge on Facebook.  I've been waiting for months for a good reason to restart this blog, and while this might not be the most exciting way to get writing again, it is at least a beginning.

So let's just jump in, shall we?

Day One:  Five Problems with Social Media

1.  Social media can be one huge time suck.  There are myriad benefits of social media, and I am sure I'll detail them later; however, it is remarkably easy to be drawn into a world that takes on greater importance than one's own life.  It's difficult to turn it off and walk away.  I often wonder what I would do with the time I waste on social media.  Knit more?  Read more books?  Write?  Enjoy my family?

2.  I've seen a lot written lately about how social media can contribute to depression because it is so easy for us to compare ourselves to others and leave ourselves lacking.  This is a tendency I already have - the propensity to be self-critical, and social media gives me yet another a mirror to hold in front of myself to criticize my every action.

3.  Social media makes it easier for people to say things to others that they would be unlikely to say in person.  It provides a sort of buffer between real life and fiction; it gives us a wall to hide behind.  I have fallen prey to such digital extroversion myself but have also seen it in others.  It distances us from our words so that we feel it is our right to say anything.

4.  We risk opening our lives to an invasion of privacy that we would otherwise guard against.

5.  It is increasingly well documented that too much screen time can negatively affect us in many ways, including disruptive sleep patterns, contributing to sensory overload, and preventing us from engaging in more mindful activities.  Although social media is certainly not the only culprit, it does provide us with yet another reason to spend time on a screen rather than interacting in our own real lives.