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Antonia Malchik's avatar

"Is the canceling of every social media account, or every long overdue email response (not to mention the unreturned ones), or denied request for coffee or beer or whatever a metaphorical severing of one of my own digits until none remain?"

I'm not going to be watching this movie (I just can't anymore; there's too much sorrow every day as it is), but it feels like ... no? Though it's hard to say without seeing the full context. Deleting all my social media definitely affected my work, how it reaches people (or doesn't), how I can talk about it, who gives it attention. I knew that going in, though I didn't know how *much* it would affect all of that (a lot more than I realized). Even if I had, though, I don't regret it a bit. Not having that reach doesn't affect my ability to write, while interacting with social media in any way affected, for the worse, *everything* about my life including writing. I have to rely more on friends and connections spreading my work, and on my own voice, which maybe isn't a bad thing even if it doesn't go as far. No matter what, though, it's worth it to feel like I'm alive rather than half-dead, curating a self for an algorithm. In either case, I'll be dead and forgotten someday. I'd rather live life while it has me.

Everyone's relationship to these things is different, as you point out.

Plenty of other choices affect these things, too, though. Even choosing to live away from any real writer community makes a big difference in opportunity. But there are so many things that I do with my time that I wouldn't if I had more of those opportunities. I don't know that it's the worst thing in the world to be forced to ask what makes us feel alive, even if we don't have an opportunity to do it as fully as Haines did.

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Anna E's avatar

Teachers appreciate the guests who visit our classrooms, the new perspective our students get to have as a result, and the wisdom of poets. Thank you for doing that work of love.

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