What the hell are we all doing here on this internet thing? Smashing out blogs at an alarming rate, updating our statuses, poking and tweeting and retweeting and messaging and telling people where we are and how we feel.
And whatever we wrote last week is consigned to history. I mean, the data grabbing marketing people have it, but we have no use for it. I've seen the stats on my blog, my latest articles get read a lot but the old ones get about 4 hits a week.
Yet we keep churning it out. Is this the best use of our time? Do I blog for you or is it just my own ego trying to look like I know what I'm talking about? I've written nearly 1000 blog posts in three years! Should I have written a novel instead, or spent that time getting deeper into my screenplays?
Did you know I've been single this whole time? I'm good at writing statuses and making people laugh and inspiring people to maybe sort of start writing a script; but where's the intimacy? What am I doing in my life?
Is your productivity better this year than three years ago or worse? There are so many people online with advice, tips, help. How much of it is useful and how much of it is a pile of shit? Did Shakespeare need to read Seth Godin's blog every day, or did he just get on with it?
Social networking is useful in that I've met great people, shared my projects and even garnered some interesting work. But most of the time, it's wasteful! Every moment I log into Facebook is a moment I could have spent writing, or getting to know someone better face to face.
I'm not techno-phobic, I've always embraced it all. But I don't think this is it, I don't think that on our death beds we'll be wishing we spent more time on our MacBooks. All my friends sit around the dinner table with their phones out. Everyone in the cinema is texting. Are we capable of two hours without BBM'ing and tweeting, or is it too much for our wired up brains?
When iPads were first released, thousands of people lined up to buy them. Nobody even knew what they did, they just wanted them. And everyone wants the next iPhone. We're locked into this model of consumerism where we always want the next thing and then the next thing.
You can say it's healthy and I'm sure for many of you: it is. But far too many people are just spending all their money on devices which detach them further and further from their lives. And the next shiny black metal device isn't good enough, cause you'll get a newer one in six months.
But don't worry about me, I've finally decided to be in a committed relationship. With a Kindle.
They say insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.
It's okay to fail, just don't keep failing in exactly the same way.
On the other side of your self-perceived limitations is where the river is flowing. You have to adapt, change, learn, grow.
I can't sleep so I've been sitting here figuring out all the dumb ways I self-sabotage.
Not sleeping is one of them. Calling my self sabotage dumb is another, I am actually extremely sophisticated at self-sabotage! I can make a script problem seem like it was caused by the paper jams and I can convince myself a relationship problem was caused by international terrorism.
But it's when you see your same patterns repeating that you know you have to change.
It's like that moment in a movie when the main character has to decide whether to grow and save the world/get the girl, or to just curl up at home.
In life, even after you change and grow, you can still lose.
But if you don't at least make the leap, you might as well just throw in the towel.
