February 28th, 2025
Scratch scraaatch SCRATCH.
There is a squirrel making noise in the roof as I type this. It sounds like he might be carving a wooden spoon, but I suspect he’s actually up to something a bit more nefarious.
Scritch scraaaa...
The racket fades to nothingness; a question mark not to be answered tonight.
Snow falls. So too, the temperature. And when everything is good and frozen, the land opens up.
Some snowbirds fly south. Some rodents hole up. And some of us bundle up and venture out.
Out on the frozen lake, silence rings clear under the pellucid light of the sun’s low arc across the sky.
Winter is my favourite time to walk the land. Fresh tracks in the snow reveal that I’m not the only one. An island, a bog, a ridge...everything is within the reach of a steady plod. Distance closes and intimacy is found in the spaces between.
Out here, away from the incessant buzz of the modern world, I can hear myself think. Fractured thoughts at first - narratives with no beginning or end - but slowly, they settle, and I arrive.
Back in the city, it’s not so different.
A nocturnal Godzilla ambles clumsily around in the upstairs apartment. It sounds like he’s putting together IKEA furniture tonight - at least, that’s the bedtime story under the clock’s flash of 3 AM.
Okay...maybe things are a little different in the city. There is a relative hum about; the people, their hustle, and screens that outnumber us blinking / bleeping / buzzing for our attention in some desparate attempt to pull us through mental portals and out of the rooms we live our lives in.
*gasp*
Remember to breathe...
I have a love/hate relationship with technology, stemming from roles both as a consumer and computer scientist. I love the problems it can solve when used with care, but hate the problems it can create with capitalism. And when our attention is the economy for the latter, it’s literally “their” fiduciary responsibility to grab for it with every trick in the book. It’s no wonder that our focus is fractured from time to time.
Technology is a tool. The good and bad of it lies moreso in how we use it than the blinking / bleeping / buzzing thing itself.
The question becomes, how can we use technology and not be used by it? Or, more specifically in this context, how can we titrate into the cacophony of connection and not give up our focus? It’s a koan I have been sitting with lately, fighting the survivalist urge to nuke my online presence and disappear off the grid. There is deep value to being informed, but there is also deep damage to being derailed. Doubly so in both regards, as we navigate the escalating chaos of these times.
Personally, willpower has proven to not be enough. I need hard lines: deleting the news widget from my phone, reaching for an analog watch, implementing a no-phone policy in the bedroom so that it’s just me and my thoughts and Godzilla assembling IKEA furniture.
Is this weakness? Yup. I’m weak and fully admit it. The feed is addictive and delicious, like a bag of salt and vinegar chips I was too lazy to portion out into a bowl. But denying this weakness or shaming ourselves only serves the tech giants (and food oligopoly). The real goal isn’t willpower; it’s creating richer, more present days with the finite life we’ve got - something impossible when constantly scrolling.
In disconnecting from the infinite feeds vying for my attention, there is space. And this contrast then allows me to step back into the flurry with clearer head and re-connect as I would rather: being fully present when reading the news, having actual conversations with new and old friends, sharing thoughts through digital pipes to people like you.
It’s not about being online or offline, it’s about being awake in both; finding a way to oscillate between the two intentionally and sustainably. The answer to the koan, it turns out, is one that shapeshifts day by day.
Time in solitude is part of this dance. I disconnect so that I can better connect - in love with the woods, but not ready to run away to them.
And with that, it’s time for bed.
Be well,
David