My new book is forthcoming: A Clockwork Universe.
E. Writer
Congratulations Vanessa Marie! Watched your graduation. Would not have missed it for the world. 🥰 ❤
What growing up in the 1980s was like.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DW_fHFniD2w/?igsh=MXJ4dThhaHBxcWlzYg==
Here's a test I took for Chinese practice. These are fun and it really tests your ability to speak and process words quickly.
Here's a video where I am practicing Chinese.
Victor Lana Very impressive! I've been using Duolingo French for about a year now, but I cannot do it often enough to make significant progress.
E. Writer I was actually thinking about French next. How do you like it? I probably would not be at this stage in speaking Chinese if I had not learned Chinese about 13 or 14 years ago. I started learning in 2009 but I took a break for 7 or 8 years and forgot a lot of it. I was able to jump back in.
Genuine Reflections: Out into the void
A few times a year, I force myself into public events as a means of proving that I exist beyond the suffocating walls of digital spaces. Digital, online, virtual, to me represents the unreal. Imagery, that can produce anything it chooses without genuine connection to reality. I learned to distrust it. Thus, it is important to touch grass occasionally, to experience real people, trees, the wind on my face, a snowball, the radiant sun, or moody rain. Events are always lovely, and so are the people I meet...but I am often left with the distinct feeling of disconnection, or standing within range of something quietly vibrating danger--maybe danger is too strong a word, but it is something I cannot readily identify. Perhaps it's intent. This is no one else's fault, this is a unique quirk of my personality, which is why I often strive to challenge it. Perhaps, I have been a writer for too long... too many decades, existing on pages and screens. Nourished by and subsisting only on thoughts and words. That perhaps has become my handicap. The demands of being a writer today requires significantly more than writing the text. It demands physical and digital presence. What I hope to do is exert some control over this reality that I too, am guilty of creating. I am choosing today, to write, and not concern myself with being present for in-person events and to do what feels natural and organic to me. I will also manage a limited digital presence except to release my writings. I yearn for a quiet, serene, writerly life and day-to-day life balance of simple living. So that is what I will focus on maintaining along with my health. Ultimately, I want to slow down.
Darryl Shirley You acknowledge you follow a passion that keeps you engaged in a self-imposed shell or artificial reality - more so now because of the new demands of modernizing and constantly changing "digital society". The digital world is where it's at - people aren't getting information from TV, bookstores, coffee shops, or social group meetings as the post WWII generation did (baby boomers). Nothing wrong with that - you go where the action or need is that utilizes your skill. Stepping out of that bubble to seek human contact demonstrates you haven't lost yourself, and you are human!
E. Writer Indeed. My shell is the reality, but the virtual digital environment i engage in daily, like this one, is the digital reality we've traded for the real physical world 🌎. The digital world can make fake things seem real. Can trick us into believing falsehoods. Or be used to alter reality or deceive us. The world has become an unstable place as a result.
Frank Hutton Thus my continued, regular embrace of the real (physical) world, which isn't subject to belief. That embrace keeps me...(wait for it) grounded.
E. Writer Everyone believes they're not influenced but they are in some form. When we watch the news, the media is creating a narrative about the world. Most people believe it. Remember all of the police shootings in the 2010s? Seemed like there was a new major one every month that made national news. We rarely hear about them now. Remember Qanon? We never hear about it now. News media and social media immediately ceased talking about it in 2020. The reason we don't hear about these things (and this is just one or two examples of the manipulation), is because someone with power is choosing what the public should be angry, frightened, suspicious or excited about. We don't choose what's interesting to us, that's chosen for us. Thays why I disconnected. It's all a manipulation and we are all unwitting participants, whether we agree with this fact or not. Two months ago, every news story was about a certain group going from neighborhood to neighborhood. Suddenly that stream of information stopped. We don't get the news, we get a narrative.
Frank Hutton I don't believe I'll ever believe I know what "everyone" believes.