#I think I'll focus on reading and writing. My texts are also becoming more complex wrt to structure methinks

[misskamelie]

The joy of being able to understand more and more the emails in the local language without having to use the English translation below <33

[sinaliciousposts]

I confess, I've been rewatching a lot of My Hero Academia and finally finished season 6. Aaaaaaand I can't help myself. I am an Endeavor fangirl. I don't know why, but maybe I just like the most complex characters that in reality are emotionally unavailable. Who knows?

So I tried something knew to write about. An inner monologue of him realizing that he fell in love with another pro hero, before he became our No. 1 and started his redemption arc.

(In my mind Rei also divorced the shit out of him. I would have if I'd been in her shoes, just to protect my kids from the maniac.)

Struggles

Why is this happening? This is ridiculous. I don't have time for this. I'm supposed to be focused on becoming the number one hero, surpassing All Might. But every time I see her, every time she smiles in my direction, it's like something shifts within me.

Love? No, that's absurd. Love is for the weak, for those who can afford to lose focus. I have responsibilities, a legacy to build and uphold. I can't let myself be distracted by silly emotions.

And yet, there's that nagging feeling, that flutter in my chest everytime she's near. Damn it, this is frustrating. Why can't I control myself like I do in battle? Why do my thoughts become a chaotic mess when it comes to her?

Maybe it's just admiration. She's a competent hero, dedicated and strong. Perhaps I've mistaken respect for something more. I can't afford to be vulnerable, not after all the times I've fallen short of my own expectations. I can't and won't allow myself to disappoint myself again over a foolish notion.

But... I've seen the way she looks at me. The way she listens to me, even when I'm not speaking. Is it possible that she... no, that's wishful thinking. You damn fool, get yourself together.

And yet, I can't escape this pull. It's like an undertow, dragging me into uncharted waters. I've built walls around myself for so long, to protect myself from exposing my weaknesses. Love is just another weakness, isn't it?

But what if it's not? What if letting someone in doesn't make me weaker, but stronger? What if I just could learn to accept that I'm not perfect, that I've made mistakes, that I have flaws?

Damn it, this is infuriating. I can't let myself be swayed by emotions, but... I can't ignore them either. Perhaps, for now, I'll postpone this decision. I'll keep my distance and regain control over my thoughts again.

-Ding-

Wait, a text? From her? What does she want? "Hey, are you free tonight?"

Maybe... maybe it's time to take a chance. To see where this path leads. This is just another challenge I meet head-on, right? If she's willing to accept me, flaws and all, then maybe... just maybe... it's worth it.

#############################

I hope you liked it. Don't know if I got his character right, but I tried.

Thanks for reading :)

[theghostpinesmusic]

There are a few articles out right now in big-name publications (including this one) about Dr. Anne Lembke's new book on dopamine and our collective tech-driven digital addiction. I haven't read the book yet (it's on my shortlist!), but the articles have highlighted a number of findings and arguments that resonate pretty deeply with my experience of the last 10-15 years of my own life. So I apparently wrote a goddamn *wall of text* about it. There are two big takeaways for me so far. First is the one that the linked article focuses on: the biological mechanisms that digital platforms exploit to make themselves addictive, and how that leads to 1) our needing to use them more and more to achieve the same effect over time, and 2) the resulting vacillation between fulfilling these addictions and the other side of the pendulum swing: the brain's natural move to balance things out coming to feel more and more like legitimate depression as we become increasingly acclimated to the idea that our every waking moment should be flavored with some dopamine blast from external stimuli. Despite my work in what was once called "new media studies" and is now usually called "digital humanities" (or perhaps because of it), I've always been a bit ambivalent about the idea that more technology, more complexity, is somehow inherently good for us. I got my first Facebook account because a colleague of mine created it for me while I was in the bathroom. I created my first Twitter account because it was required for a graduate seminar. For what it's worth, I've deleted both since. I try to maintain a good balance between being online and being in "the real world," as I still, geriatrically, call it. And yet, what Lembke writes about here resonates with me deeply, frighteningly. I can't concentrate on one thing for long stretches, a hallmark of most of my hobbies and my career for most of my life, like I could ten years ago. Writing a long-form post like this takes intentional concentration, when fifteen years ago, I wrote something of this length mostly every night, before going to bed, to help me process the day (yes, on my *blog*, in case the young'uns were wondering). Just sitting and reading more than ten pages of a book at a time is hard for me. A decade ago I might have read 200 pages of an engrossing novel in a sitting without noticing the time even passing. It's all because I constantly feel like I might be missing something. *Of course* I'm missing something. But nowadays, I have this brain worm that says I should be able to see/hear/listen to it all, and to not do so is not just to be left out, but to waste whatever time I have left on Earth by not doing and learning Important Things. So, this spring and summer, I've been trying to (mostly) quit. It hasn't gone very well. It feels remarkably like quitting smoking did, way back when. A realization that makes me want to quit more, but also makes it harder to do so. When I'm not constantly stimulated, the depression tends to kick in, fed further, of course, by all of the "real life" things that have happened over the last year-and-change. It gets better the longer I work at it, but it's still tough. Unless I'm in the woods, in which case it's super-easy, but that's a subject for another lengthy post or ten. Anyway, this is all to say that Lembke's claims about technology's contribution to our collective mental unhealth really struck a chord with me. I mean, I know spending all day plugged into the internet isn't good, but I hadn't really explicitly connected it to my own mental struggles, I don't think, until today. Maybe that'll help me change something. New information, especially when it isn't wrapped in a candy-coated dopamine shell, often helps me do that. If I can focus long enough to read the book, anyway... Lembke's other point, which I'll only briefly touch on here because I've already rambled for a lot longer than I planned to, is something that was a little more familiar to me than the dopamine-withdrawl/depression connection: the idea that digital tech is stealing

our ability to concentrate in long-form ways and to learn and connect deeply. You can read more about her take here, if you're interested: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/aug/22/how-digital-media-turned-us-all-into-dopamine-addicts-and-what-we-can-do-to-break-the-cycle I'd say, based on my own experience and my experiences with my students, they don't only harm our ability to do these things, they (maybe more importantly) harm our ability to *want* to be able to do these things, or to believe that they're important things to be able to do. I feel like the worst of the "Get off my lawn!"-ers writing this, but I also believe it's true: we *need* the experiential benefits that come from immersing ourselves in the pace and scale of the real world, which are so much slower and smaller than the hyperreality the internet promises us. Not to cross my wires too much here, but we come from the natural world, not the industrialized world, and we act in ways that are better adapted to our environment, better *for us*, when we have that "real world" as an influence. The more that influence is supplanted by dopamine-producing machines of our own making, the less we resonate with the world around us, to our own peril (and, in ways that are becoming more and more obvious, the peril of the rest of life on the planet). But that's a whole other topic for another day, as well... We are meant to live and function locally, at scale, and though there are *absolutely* some fantastic things that digital technology has made possible, our brains simply can't process having 2,000 Facebook friends (for example) in a meaningful way. It's no wonder to me that we are the most "connected" (that word's a bit fraught here) that we've ever been in human history, but also as lonely and alone as people have ever been since we've been tracking such things. Deep connections with others and deep learning are necessary for us to be able to form functional, lasting, and intelligent communities, whether those form in our local, physical space, online, or some hybrid of both. But most of the platforms we rely on these days don't care about those things, they care about ad revenue. I don't have some big conclusion here (I'll leave that to Dr. Lembke), I guess I just wanted to process some of this by writing it out. In the old days, I'd post it online and then have some discussion about it with others who read my post and commented, and it would at least feel a bit like having others in the room and discussing, debating, and learning together. In 2021, I'll post it on Facebook and Tumblr, and maybe get a few likes, or hearts, and we'll all move on to the next bit of content. And to be clear, that's not a dismissal or criticism of anyone who follows me on those platforms, but an illustration of Lembke's point: why read some rando's long screed about nothing when there are so many other things to look at that make you feel better, faster? Why write a long comment when your afternoon could be better spent seeking out something less fraught, and less time-consuming? I get it. I do it, too. But I'd like to not.