addiction

More Love Stuff

~ Emma ~ 2 Comments

I started a poetry writing course this week. It was a good idea, I think. Except today I’m having all sorts of rebellion against it primarily because at this point in my life I feel pretty done with education and everything that comes with it. I did not know I would feel like this prior to enrolling. I am glad I signed up though. Intuitively it feels like the right move. And I’ll definitely learn some new skills and tricks and be able to take the feedback and apply it and that’s cool. But, do I even want the feedback?

What is it for? Is what I’m asking myself today. Bigger picture, higher reason and intention behind this. I never have really thought about changing or trying to improve my poems, so what’s driving this?

I think it is to glean a little bit more about my propellor and the wind speed as well as the velocity. To know the exact direction the air is blowing here is a little tough, but there’s definitely a wind force that, I’m trying to just let “be” without searching too hard to fully know how strongly it’s going to blow or for how long and in what direction.

We do things because we enjoy them and there doesn’t have to be a reason. There are all sorts of life events that drive us closer to something while also at the same time, driving us further away from something else. That’s just the momentum of life and of growth I guess.

There are things about this course that are irking me but it’s mainly because of introverted-ness and just wanting one on one with the instructor and not to have to interact with any other students, or participate in any of the group things, like the discussions and such. The first assignment was to write about oneself and introduce ourselves to the class. And I found that exercise impossibly difficult. Writing about who I am, what I like, what I do – I couldn’t access nearly the same kind of creative juices to produce something I was even just okay with, from doing that exercise.

Writing is a lonely, (in a good way) solo sport and that’s why I love it. It’s isolating and that’s why I love it. It’s singular and that’s why I love it. It’s private, hidden (until it’s not), and it’s one of my favourite things to do with my time in whatever form.

So why sign up for a course where other writers are going to hear me, see me, feedback me, and sort of know me? Still not sure, but it’s par for the course (no pun intended) with stuff like this, no way around it really. And I am actually enjoying reading some of the other students’ poems.

The prompt for the start of this blog this past January was, an important relationship ending that had sparked a lot of intense emotion and inner turmoil as well as a transformation that came out of left field. It was as if writing was not an option now. Why? Poetry started to spew out and it was like, what? Funny how break-ups do that. But it’s more than this.

I think of all of the most wonderful poetry that’s ever been written and at least 70% or more has got to be related to some kind of heartbreak, lover entanglement or distressing or obsessive infatuation to the point of demise, kind of writing. But why? I think it’s partly because we know it’s an all too common and shared experience, and we are humans after all, looking to belong to and be a part of some sort of tribe, even if we are introverted solo natured people. Those parts of ourselves have nothing to do with the primal parts of being human.  

Writing about love brings us back to ourselves and at the same time expands the tribe.

Love and its impact. Love and its overwhelm. Love and its underwhelm. Love and its proximity. Love and its consequences. Love and its addictiveness. Love and its tight or loose parameters. Love and how it’s measured (I don’t believe it can be measured though). Love and how it’s given, how it’s shown, how it’s received. Love and how free it is. Love and how unconditional it is. Love and how binding it is. Love and how controlled by it we can get. Love and how conditional it can be. Love and how it royally fucks with your brain, while you are swimming in it and also when you’re drowning from it.

Shall I keep going? I’m almost out, but I know there’s more.

The reason I write is love. I love writing, the act itself and I love writing about love and from love. Even when we think love isn’t running our lives, it is. It is the driving force behind everything and the reason we are here.

I’m grateful for the man who is not even close to knowing the degree of impact he made on my life, for helping to inspire a further awakening, (I feel like if I awaken any more though, my third eye just may never close). An awakening that would not have occurred without him. They are right when they say that certain people are meant to show up in your life to teach you very valuable lessons and to help you become the person you are supposed to be. Even if they are only meant to be with you for a season (or nine).

When I told my poetry instructor about how I came to be writing poetry, she replied that for years she had been writing fiction and then boom, a horrible break-up and there she was, arms and legs deep in only writing personal poetry, no more fiction or short stories for her.

Love does stuff to us that we should never ignore.

I think about Shakespeare and the other love poets and I think about the students in this class, and all of us writing poems from our places and our certain states and how really, it’s all just the same. It’s pretty simplistic. I mean not all poetry is about love, but it is actually, even if the content has nothing to do with love. It’s still the love of doing and the pain of maybe writing, but it still is coming from a loving place, even if the words are cruel. It is your soul’s expression and mode for healing…for something to alter, to awaken…in that moment or in the moments after. Is there heart behind this? Of course. Is there rage, anger, sadness? Definitely. But those emotions never cancel out the ability or the power of the heart.

When you receive a bunch of external validation, approval, acceptance and appreciation (and maybe throw some infatuation and idealization in there too) and then all of a sudden it’s gone, you need to reach and rely on the reserves you have inside yourself, to provide all of that just from you. And relying too heavily (or at all) on any of that from external sources, never a good outcome. Even if you had a decent relationship with providing your own validation and such, you can still get high off of constant praise and affection and adoration when there’s a steady stream coming from something outside of you. And it can end up drowning out your own voice. And when there is a disproportionate reliance here then the result is something like, oh I don’t know, Romeo and Juliet.

I think about the level of chemical withdrawal that Shakespeare must have been feeling in order to write that play and wow, that’s some serious shit.

I still don’t want to make changes to my poems or experience constructive feedback in order to improve them. I think they are perfect just as they are. Each one holds a great meaning for me. I wrote them the way I wrote them not for validation or to impress anyone but to hear myself a little bit stronger and a little bit harder and a lot more intentionally. To see myself more clearly and to let myself know, that I am seen. To help fill a bit of a void in my life. But it turns out, voids don’t last forever and they’re not actually real to begin with. The voids exist by our own doing and they can very easily be undone and you can find your way back to yourself, to that void-less, free, and whole you.

I think that the greatest acts of love are not the ones we do for others, but are the one’s we do for ourselves. And maybe running after love is a part of loving ourselves but, choosing not to race after it or chase it, can be an even bigger part of allowing more love into our lives purely because we already have and we already are, all the love that we need. And that is something I think we only discover once we have been changed because of one or more, of the various presentations that love has made in our lives. It jolts us and it’s the undoing and recreation of ourselves as a result.

If I could give any advice to Romeo and Juliet it would be: “Don’t off yourselves just yet, this isn’t that bad.”

Phone War

~ Emma ~ 1 Comment

Breaking up is hard to do you see.
I wrote a blog post about my phone.
Really wanted to say, “Adios buddy!”
But now here I sit, me plus phone much less lone.

Addicted, withdrawing, one more hit.
I like the feeling sometimes, when you get lit.
Although you give me much pleasure and delight,
I shall find a special and new place for you, just for tonight.

It’s not so bad, I can go seconds, minutes and hours, but can I go a day or two?
Without you there’s a void, and it sucks.
I’m filling it, filling it, filling it with all the things that I do.
But what if, just for fun, we played a little game called, “chuck it and run” or, “surrender to flux.”

Oh let’s play! It’s one of my favourite games I do say.
Energy and time and focus, now mine all mine.
I love this game because it gives the way,
To more fulfilling and appetizing things, to which I will dine and dine and dine.

Oh dear device, like a cat and mouse chase, except, there’s too many mice.
I will leave you alone to regroup and refresh.
I am taking the hiatus now too, less noise, less mess.
This time away from you, actually, turning into something very nice.

It’s good to change things around and make up your mind and stick.
I had an amusing time with this line, trying not to say dick.
Temptations and emotions and cravings abound.
You never even as much, utter a slight sound.

Phone you trick me, taunt me, lure me and haunt me.
How much longer can we go?
I plan to leave the country one day without you in stow.
I wish you had a real brain, like me, so we could experience more glee.

Ok, enough. I still think you are amazing.
The beautiful way you try to help and make life simpler and easier.
I will be thanking you for your gifts from now until the next phasing.
But I must admit dear phone, some things that you do, unfortunately, make life drearier.

So a little less contact, a little less checking.
There is nothing I will miss that cannot wait.
My mind and body and spirit very due, for less of a pecking.
Thank you. Grateful. You have been a Saint.

Goodbye for now, going to try something else.
Maybe I’ll walk or cook, or go for a swim.
No. I think I’ll paint. Paint with passion and heat so everything melts.
Yes. Painting. Painting is the better option for the win.

Broken Up and Down

~ Emma

Break ups suck. Even when it’s the right thing. “We’re gonna be fine. We have to do it and it’s the right thing to do. And nothing bad happens when you’re doing the right thing.” Ryan Gosling once said. George Clooney followed that line up with, “Is this your personal theory? ‘Cause I can shoot holes in it.”

I am in the process of breaking up with my phone and technology’s influence on my life. Complete overhaul, something I knew I needed to do because well, I want to feel what it’s like to be alone with myself again. Totally alone. And if you know me, you know I prize being alone. But even when I think I’m alone now, I’m not really.

“Our attention is the most valuable thing we have. We experience only what we pay attention to. We remember only what we pay attention to. When we decide what to pay attention to in the moment, we are making a broader decision about how we want to spend our lives…If you wanted to invent a device that could rewire our minds, if you wanted to create a society of people who were perpetually distracted, isolated, and overtired, if you wanted to weaken our memories and damage our capacity for focus and deep thought, if you wanted to reduce empathy, encourage self-absorption, and redraw the lines of social etiquette, you’d likely end up with a smartphone” – Catherine Price, How To Break Up With Your Phone.

Does this not scare you?

In my third year of Sociology, I took a course called, “Technology and Society.” It was one of the scariest academic four and a half months of my degree. And that’s saying something because there were many “scary” moments learning Sociology. But scary in that amazing way. At least, I thought it was amazing.

This was 2007. At the time I was much on the same page with the theme of the course being how technology is ruining people and taking us further away from our natural humanness. Fast forward to 2026. Yeah…like…holy shit.

A lot of attention was paid in that class, showing up for every lecture like it was a lifeline. I knew if I missed out on anything, I’d probably regret it. This one was different than any other course. I was really excited for each following lecture because I sort of felt like someone was telling me something from the future that I needed to keep in my back pocket really securely for the next twenty years, and I guess for the rest of my life. And now this information, there’s just too much of it. My pockets are overflowing. I am, you are, ticking time bombs now. The longer we let devices do what they’re doing, the closer we come to exploding. Oh wait, crap, that’s already happened.

What we know has no impact, gaining insight about this addiction crisis means zippo unless we start doing something about, what we know. And I love the people out there who are doing this. And now I’m one of them.

I sat in the very front row of that class each week. The professor would speak as if he was already in 2026 and he knew the future of my brain, of everyone’s brains. It’s exactly what I’m reading now about the things that phones are doing to us. But reading and hearing about it, is a different story than living it right? We all know we should be spending less time on our devices. But habits are not easy to change, especially this particular one because there’s a zillion people out there employed to make sure, we stay hooked and never break it. My prof described at the time how cell phones and technology eventually would be controlling our lives and how quickly we will lose our sense of relating with each other as we become codependent with technology. What did that even mean? Gotcha. I know now.

I was kind of anti technology at the time. Still am. I didn’t like having a cell phone and it really frustrated people when they couldn’t reach me when I lived abroad (shout out to Hayley and Munky who could never find me at Bondi or Coogee). Everyone had Nokia cell phones texting and arranging where to go and meet and I was always the one who left my cell in my dorm room and continued to use the landline on my desk. I just didn’t want people knowing where I was and I didn’t like texting to make plans. I like talking, with those things we have in our throats, vocal chords. You know those two bands of smooth muscle tissue located in the larynx at the top of the trachea? Ya, those. And I like planning ahead. “Let’s meet here at this time. If something happens and we miss each other, let’s try again another day.” If they showed up at that time and place amazing, they knew if they didn’t, they wouldn’t get another chance to rearrange plans or chat to me that day until I got home. A fun trick to know who actually wants to see your face and who’s just treating you like an option. Some days I was left standing at the beach bus stop alone, only to get back to my dorm room that night to seven missed calls and fourteen texts from Munky being like, “I got caught up painting meet me at Coogee instead!” I headed to Bondi that day and had a blissful afternoon watching the surfers and eating fish and chips solo. At twenty three that behaviour flies, at forty two, see ya.

Building meaningful and strong connections does not happen through a device. I knew that when I was twenty and I know it even more now.

No wonder people feel so starved for depth of connection these days. Sure you could say the opposite, that staying connected through a phone is effort, but the way you use the device is what makes or breaks the connection. I very much believe we are getting further away from actually knowing each other. I don’t care what you say, this stuff on the phone…it’s not connection. It gives us wonderful things to make our lives better, but it’s still establishing an unhealthy addiction. Slowly, or maybe faster than we think, reconfiguring our brains.

I like when people say, “Let’s stay connected.” I’m always like, “Ok, how should we do that? What does connection mean and feel like for you?” They look at me funny like I just asked them if cheetahs are waterproof.

Getting clarity on the definition of connection is important to me, as it’s different for everyone. Mostly because I am completely finished with any kind of connection that isn’t in the realm of, “Who are you…really?” You reach your 40’s and you stop giving fucks about stuff that used to matter so much. I’m after depth and interest and honest, raw communicating, with like open ended questions, lots of them. You want to know someone, open end question the hell out of them. I was after this in my 20’s and 30’s too not just now. I’m still after it today because it’s a secret weapon.

So I’m breaking up with my phone. Breaking this down into a full on, nuanced break up. I wanted to do this when I was 23 and here I am almost 42 doing the same thing. Some things don’t change, some things change a lot. Changing my notifications, alerts, deleting apps, cleaning up screens and pages, no more badges, greyscale mode, Auto Reply text messages alerting that I’m “out of the office and living like it’s 1996” and, before I reach for my phone I will ask myself, what for, why now and what else. What else could I do right now other than check my phone? Why am I picking it up right now? What am I picking it up to do?

I’m ok with change, especially when I know this is going to be a really good thing. Break ups take time, adjusting to new habits and going through withdrawal and riding out the urges, understanding why this is the best thing for me to do for my health while also recognizing that some people won’t understand, agree or want to share in this break up mentality with me. That’s ok, I can’t be anything but me: keep unfollowing the herd, listening to my own beats and walking down a path that’s lonely sometimes, but it’s as Munky might say, “less constrained.”

“Phone. noun: a device that uses either a system of wires along which electrical signals are sent or a system of radio signals to make it possible for you to speak to someone in another place who has a similar device.”

Key word, “speak.”

Life is not meant to be like this and I will resist the way technology is taking over and wrecking our brains and social skills and our ability to pay attention, until I’m wrinkled and grey. It is lonely sometimes, but it is also cleaner, fresher, quieter, simpler and a lot less chaotic.  

We are all addicts now and what the next twenty years are going to look like, I honestly am not super stoked to find out. However, I can feel something brewing that I can’t quite put my finger on just now. And if you’re reading this today, remember I said this and call me up in twenty years on your landline! I wish I could meet my professor for coffee and see where he’s at now with all of this…stuff.

Nothing bad is going to happen. It’s the right thing to do. No holes in this theory. Just do it. Raise your vibration my fellow souls. What one person can do so can another. Will, persistence, focus, motivation, drive, consistency. Then one day magic, you’ve changed a habit and your brain is better for it.

“We must act, individually and collectively, to make our attention our own again, and so reclaim ownership of the very experience of living.” – Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants.

Last thing. I’ve removed the “like” and “comments” feature on my blog because…nope. If you like reading these fantastic, but I don’t need to know anymore. Some things are best left a mystery. There is a better and more meaningful way to let someone know you like something they did. I’ll let you figure that one out on your own.