Day 1: What Happens When You're Sad and You Don't Medicate with Netflix

Today was the first day of my project 75/25 Create/Consume. From the moment I woke up, things were different. Generally I wake up to my phone alarm and immediately get on Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr to see " what's going on in the world", as if the mishmash of information and fluff on these three sites would be any indication thereof. To be fair, most of my friends post a lot of news articles to Facebook, so I do get an indication of what's going on in the realm of politics, etc., but the fractured way that information is dispersed on social media is no way to view the world or choose what goes into your head. Quite often I start the day in a blind panic over climate change and health care, and that's before I've even had my coffee. I know it's a bad way to start the day. But I do it anyway.

Today, however, instead of diving into the internet, I wrote morning pages - a practice of stream-of-consciousness writing from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way that I haven't done in some time. It was easy. Words were just pouring out of me. I guess it's been a long time since I checked in with myself. After that I meditated and went back to sleep, it being my day off.

My husband Lee and I already had things to do today that didn't involve creating.We had some second-hand shopping and a game of pickleball with a new friend from work. We weren't creating anything, but we weren't consuming anything either. After that we went to a craft store to gather items for our as-yet-theoretical crafted Christmas gifts. (I guess with all the time I have allocated for creating, they will probably happen, but I've never been a "crafty" person, so I feel a bit intimidated by our projects.)

Then we got home. I was in a seriously cranky depressed mood (part hormones, part being in a big box craft store in the suburbs). All I wanted to do was binge-watch "The Great British Baking Show" or "The Office" or maybe some C-grade romantic comedy with Jennifer Garner. And I couldn't. Because I had only accrued a few minutes of consumption time. Not enough.

This bone-deep need to drown uncomfortable feelings in pop culture is not new to me at all. It might even be inherited. As a child I saw my father watch television from morning to night - whenever he wasn't working. Sometimes he'd read, but usually in front of the television. I'd read in front of the television too. It felt homey and natural. When my mom passed away it became more obvious to me that it wasn't necessarily normal to watch that much TV, even if you did read at the same time. My mom's presence had sort of made it seem alright. Dad would come to the table for dinner. Mom would sit in the family room with Dad and they'd talk while watching TV. They'd take walks together or go out for social events sometimes. But then when I was 20 and my Mom died, my brother and I would often struggle in vain to get my Dad off the couch and back into the world even for a half hour. He'd turn the TV on before work as he got ready. Then he'd fall asleep to either the TV or his old-time radio shows at night. They'd turn off on a timer after he'd presumably fallen asleep. When I think about this now, I get it. I'm a lot like my Dad. That urge to go straight from "I feel sad/scared/depressed" to a Netflix haze or to scrolling endlessly through my Facebook feed is the same thing, just with a different technology.

So what did I do with my cranky depressed self? First, I meditated. Then I ate dinner and talked with my husband instead of reading a book or sticking my nose in a phone or putting a TV show on in the background. Then I updated my Project 365 photos on Facebook and updated my books read in 2017 Note on Facebook (yeah, I like making projects for myself). All of this felt very nice. I put some of our new ornaments on the tree. I made a decorative ornament display. I cleaned a bit. I harvested collage items out of old magazines. I started this blog.

All in all, though I haven't started the great American novel, it felt like a productive day.

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