Faded Jeans Living

Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Did I just see a picture of a dead body? Don’t look back. Keep scrolling. My finger doesn’t even pause anymore. How did I get here?

---

I say “home” in the sense that this is where I started back in 2016. At the time, I had a lot going on—a recent divorce, debt, depression, and using alcohol to cope with it all. WordPress was a simple platform to get my thoughts out of my mind and into the universe. I was blogging to work things out, searching for patterns, and trying to see whether I was alone in my world or if others connected with what I was experiencing and laying down. These were some deep blogs, and I can’t remember how many times I asked myself, Do I really want to hit “Publish”?

Through several years of posting, connecting, and supporting each other, I slowly grew a bit, and life got better. One of the biggest changes was my decision to quit drinking—and my goodness, the community that was here at the time around that endeavor was huge. Many of us were on the same train. I felt beyond supported and loved, and I had an amazing team in my corner.

The sobriety finally took, the debt got paid off, the depression became manageable, and the divorce became a turning point for real good change within me. Growth.

Change is inevitable, and eventually many of us drifted in different directions with our newly discovered powers. It’s like we all hit it hard out here—almost like K–12 school—and then moved away to go discover the world. Things get a little fuzzy when I think about what I was doing between then and now, but I can say my posts slowed down, and I wasn’t putting in the work to maintain my connections or discover new ones.

Bringing us up to the present, I find myself spending quite a bit of time on Facebook because of a group I follow. I also follow several channels on YouTube. With each app, I often catch myself scrolling on the main page, getting tossed this way and that by all the stuff the algorithm has woven to keep me sucked in. Slowly, I’ve realized that being out there isn’t a nice place to be—for me. When I close my iPad after these sessions I feel drained, wasted, and definitely not lifted uP.

Along with this theme of social media sucking me in and making me feel like shit, The News has become less about reporting facts and more about pressing all of my “oh shit” buttons—just like social media. Left- and right-leaning newscasts are both fucking ridiculous! All of it leaves my insides spinning.

Coming out the other end of all that funness, I don’t feel good overall. Like everything, there’s some goodness in it—but you have to be in warrior mode to fight through the matrix to find it.

So here I am, back home at WordPress after my journey away. Why? Because I want to be in an environment where I’m not being bombarded as much by ads, fake news, self-proclaimed experts, and AI-generated bullshit. I want to read someone’s post, hear their wins, losses, dreams, vulnerabilities, thoughts, and reply, I completely get you! I want to once again feel the goodness that surrounds us. I want to feel human.

Dwight🦋