Ego, mush, technology decay

My mom and step dad are out of town, so expecting the worst. 

Too many thoughts of death, and then what? What does life look like then? How does one rebuild or have a life without a parent you’ve relied on? 

The ego says big, extraordinary life, drama… or security, or wishes fulfilled. 

What if it’s more simple. Settling, family, moderate income. Slip into working class like the majority of the population. Nothing the movies would show,  not wealthy, not powerful, not particularly noteworthy. Maybe a parent has to move in, or you have to move in with a parent. Maybe it’s a health issue. Maybe it’s just not being able to keep up. Maybe it’s spending too many moments lost on a cell phone…

I alternate between these things, fears, fantasies, unsure what decisions to make and ultimately - I will end up with a life that was ok. How do I know? Because I have thus far. Some outlandish things, and some routines of boredom… but all trending toward gray. 

Because I’m choosing to dull, to withdraw, to downplay, to regulate, to khaki and collar it… ? How many life giving things happen in a day, am I noticing and grateful? 

Am I distracting and avoiding? And diminishing… 

This morning I sat in the waiting room at the dentist. Staring out across two parking lots, to a retirement home. I wondered if they had good reviews. It’s only a mile away from my dad’s house. Would he be happy there? Would he prefer to live with one of us? I know he’d be cranky, like his father got. I know he’d be depressed. I love my father, but I also despise the way he gets when he’s being selfish. I imagine as he gets older, he’ll be more that way. Less hearing, less memory, less gratitude. I don’t want to believe it, but I can see it happening. I don’t think he’ll keep his bitterness to himself, I think he’ll probably want to die. 

Colleen was saying that about her mid 90s mother, “she thought she’d go at the same time as my dad.” Basically implying she doesn’t want to live, and doesn’t know how to live without him. 

I was in the dentist office, and the two other people in the waiting room were on phones. I tried not to be on mine. It’s harder and harder. I feel I’m losing life to this device, and at the same time not sure what else to do. I wish the smartphone did not exist. I wish that we could regress in technology. Probably it would be better for our species. I watched a video today of a person reporting. Research about how young people are less cognitively capable than the generation before them, for the first time in over a hundred years.. we are getting dumber. I believe it. 

I feel it. I feel hours drained away, and whereas before I might have at least been drawing, or building something, or crocheting or something while I watched tv, now I am engaged and thumbing the videos along. 3 seconds, 10 seconds, 30 seconds boring.  I try to watch a movie without looking at my phone and basically realize I can’t anymore. 

Every night I say - you should read a book, or play guitar, or write, or exercise or socialize, or build the world you want to exist in…. but instead I find hours and hours of time to scroll. 

I can’t even keep up with the technology. And I don’t really want to. 

I’m not sure what I’m doing. But I’m not thrilled about the direction we as a society are choosing. I know that we will over throw this fascism thing, but it feels like we will just replace it with a different technocracy corporate thing that kills us all the same. 

My ego wants to believe somehow I will be or could be different. But my behavior shows I’m stuck running in place, stuck to a screen, stuck without creating anything of real value. 

What would change that?

What would i be willing to change?