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One thing that I've found about staying away from Facebook is that it makes me feel so strange about my opinions. I don't know where to place them. I don't know where to field them. I don't know where their home is. I've watched films and TV shows and listened to albums and songs and I just don't know where my reactions and my feelings for them go.

Facebook is where I would post trailers or quotes or captions or videos of songs or news articles. And that's how I would basically feel a binary fulfillment of showing people (my friends I guess?) what I liked. What I was getting into. As far back as high school with what now would be called a blog, I was posting 'reviews' and 'reactions' to movies and music. And now without a social network, I feel like before I even start a reaction or a text message, someone else's reaction is already going to be "yeah, I know" or any variant of that. It's been a really long time since I talked about a band or a show or a movie and someone said, "What's that about? Where did you find that? What is that? How did you feel about that?" And I guess with Facebook's system of Likes or Loves or Laughs or Wows, it felt at least like a currency that was filling the empty space that was there.

I've thought several times about starting a 'review' blog, something similar to what wrankmusic began as and ended up as. Just to have a place to dump thoughts and review into. This coming from the dude who has several times thought about tweeting "No one cares about your review," but haven't because of what it might mean for someone who wrote a review with the same positive standing and excitement who happens upon it. 

It's true, though. That review isn't the point. 

The artist getting out of their head space and calling something finishing and sharing it is the point. 

So, I think to go on Facebook and write a reaction to the new Stranger Things show or the first couple of episodes of Mr. Robot or a few No Man's Sky tracks I dug up or the game Inside. And it just feels like it won't matter to anyone but me who wrote it, because I've written it. 

It's weird, man. Why does this matter to me? 

Even jumping on something like Reddit, I see the reviews/reactions there and so much of it seems so much more well thought out than how I feel about what comes out of my mouth/fingers and I wonder what the point of throwing my two cents into the pot is. In fact, I went on /r/gamestop and dropped some thought on an actual work question and gave some insight, and it got downvoted. I didn't take it personally-- wait. I took it personally at first but then realized, you know, realistically, it was just the words that I guess got to be TL;DR or just really not helpful, overall. That's fine. But still, something I know about and something that I functionally am good at, it still doesn't even get any credo. I deleted it. 

But that Reddit space... it goes both ways, right? Like I could jump on any group and just drop a thought on something, an opinion and have it shredded. At least it would be people right? At least it would be someone somewhere? Would that equal the thumbs up or the heart or the gaping mouth emoji? 

Post script.

Had a dream a couple of nights ago that I've been lost in thought about since I woke from it.

In the dream, I had been handed a letter in some strange cursive that I haven't seen before. And the connotation was that it was a suicide not from my father. It read:

"I thought it would be better this way."

What a dark fucking omen.

In the dream, everyone was instantly in the phase of acceptance, sort of the way you act when an old dog passes or you uproot an old dead tree. Very strange overall vibe. We talked in past tense and we embraced the absence. Very void of emotion. 

My sister was the one who found his body. He had been in the bleachers at a baseball stadium, sitting alone when someone came upon him. The letter was found in his dresser sticking out of the top drawer. 

It's been a very long time since I had a dream so 'real', not in the sense of how immersed I was in it, but how close to actual context and character it was to reality. 

I often disassociate from people, relationships, humans, etc. I find a way to build them into this caricature of 

themselves, makes it easier to lose them or laugh at them or dislike them. Even make them a hero or a villain. But this one had nothing but modest over and undertones. The reality was palpable.

My father and I have the weirdest relationship and I have him built into this specific figure with so few actual details. I don't know if this will act as a wake up call or if it will be something else to any degree. But it made a lot of things very substantial.

Ark.

Been noticing myself as someone who is easily, too easily distracted. Don't know how it started or how I became one of those people who are impossible to tie down. I even expect the weirdest things of people when engaging in media. When I'm showing you a song, I want you to listen and notice things and not talk through it. When films are on, I don't want you to talk to me about anything other than the observations you're making within the film. Save the questions until the end.

Oddly enough, while I'm watching shows or films, I can't help but find myself eager to make notes or pick up a pen or a phone and start googling things. What I need to start doing this time around, as I'm trying to make myself a more focused reader, writer, speaker, watcher, observer, is to remember to simply make smart notes for myself to come back and check later, to flesh out later. And to let myself get fully engulfed into the art or the medium or the idea that's being expressed in front of me. 

Example.

Currently put on a film about isolation. As it's starting, begin making a list of other films I want to check out that relate to isolation. While I'm doing that, I open up the Chromebook to start googling "Films about Isolation" and start adding films to the list that started when the initial film started. And the whole time, I have my headphones on and the audio of the film is happening, and I'm peeking up and looking down and not immersing myself into the actual piece that started the whole cycle. 

Is this what I would want if someone was reading my stuff? 

Is this what I would want to be looking out at if my band was playing a show? Some other cats making notes in their phones about other bands to check out that I remind them of?

Hell no.

Trying to become more present. I think I was more present than this at one point. Maybe, maybe not. But I know I want to be.

Maybe that's why I feel my days completely slip away feeling like I've never actually done anything. Maybe it always feels like I'm only halfway doing anything.

I've also got this whole other tangent I want to go off on about how I've just been noticing that most of my time is spent trying to escape reality and the next series of things I want to do is about returning to the core of a reality without media involved at all. But that sounds devastating. It reminds me of the concept about how you're not supposed to shut the A/C off, just leave it on an average temperature all day because at the end of the day, it costs more to cool the house down after turning it off than it does to just be moderate the entire day. 

Man. 

Shelter this birth.

Very strange habit I fall into.

Whenever I'm listening to music, watching a film or TV show or even writing something personally. I am instantly transported, at some point in the writing, to want to share elements of it. I'm almost addicted to that feeling of sharing and waiting for the opinions of others.

I'm currently in the process of writing this thing and it's not done, it's not even through the first leg, and I'm already thinking of the first list of people I want to send it to to see where I'm at. To see if where I'm at with it is okay. To see if it's even worth getting to the finish line. This is the wrong way to do it. 

I just don't want to get to the end of this and feel like Ben Wyatt when he finished Cones of Dunshire. It's probably one of my favorite moments of Parks and Recreation. He goes into this lengthy and insane explanation of this board game that he's invented. It's completely convoluted and he's spent about a week or two without a job and built this game in isolation. And he's explaining it to Leslie, and at the very end of it, faced with her silence, he comes to the realization, "...this is nothing, isn't it?"

SO GOOD.

So funny. But at the same time, is this what my writing is like? I can't get to that point. I'm trying to write in a column, in a vacuum. Just going to get to the end of it and have it stand on its own. 

Would rather be happy with it and 'defend' or 'explain' the finished project than let it be warped and changed and divided by its audience.