Whither Social Media?

I’ve been waffling lately over the role social media is going to play in my life going forward. And several factors, both personal and global, contribute to that uncertainty. And by “social media” I’m largely referring to Facebook.

On the global level: Several friends have deleted their Facebook accounts in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal currently simmering in our national discourse. And I have to say that the egregiousness of that data breach is breathtaking. No, it’s not surprising, especially to one who has worked in online media and made use of the data even a benign, casual mining effort can glean. But the malicious intent behind Cambridge Analytica’s efforts—and more importantly, Facebook’s casual dismissal of the impact of those efforts—makes all of the comparisons to Orwell and 1984 resonate. And for what? A measly $100,000—that’s what Facebook sold us all down the river for. A company that is valued at many billions-with-a-B sold us out for what is to them pocket change. That pisses me off.

In the wake of the revelations I, like many others, downloaded my Facebook data. And what it showed me was this: not using Facebook on my phone and not doing any of those inane “what kind of a fill in the blank are you?” quizzes, along with clearing my cache every time I close my browser, helped minimize any damaging information that might have been shared. But then again, you wouldn’t have to be a whiz-bang data analyst to look at my page to deduce that I a) am liberal, b) like sports and c) listen to the Grateful Dead. Wow. Earth-shattering…not. But it’s the thought that counts.

(Side note: Years ago, the ex-boyfriend of my niece responded to my mention of the fact that I clear my cache by rolling his eyes and saying, “Oh, you’re one of them.” “Yes,” I told him. “You don’t want to know what I can learn about you if you use my station’s site…and I’m not even trying.” Turns out I was right.)

On the personal level, my social-media hiatus in February was both illuminating and disheartening. I found that I was like an addict going through cold turkey—reinforcing all the insiders’ observations that they had programmed Facebook to give you that dopamine hit and keep you hooked. But I also found I enjoyed putting time that might have been spent surfing Facebook into doing other, real-world things. In the words of Jackson Browne, “I want to live in the world, not behind some wall.” I want to see the world with my own eyes, feel it with my own hands, hear it with my own ears. I don’t want to live vicariously through Facebook-savvy others.

Where that rubs up and creates a problem is that I enjoy staying in touch with a lot of people, friends who, if we’re being honest, I wouldn’t be in contact with were it not for Facebook. No one (me included) writes letters or cards anymore. I detest talking on the phone. And those friends and I really aren’t going to just email to stay in touch. Life being how it is, Facebook DOES enable us to keep our friendship active and vibrant, even when we’re thousands of miles and a few decades apart. That IS a cool feature.

No, I don’t believe a handful of people deleting their accounts is going to have an impact on Facebook’s corporate behavior. But I also don’t have to contribute with every click to those inside the company’s getting richer and richer by engineering to the downfall of western democracy. And yes, I do believe Facebook’s impacts could (they haven’t yet, not completely) prove to be that insidious.

One friend chastised me prior to my hiatus, saying I should just not sign on. And maybe that’s the answer. Right now I’m weighing the pros and cons of deleting my Facebook account, going on hiatus again or just not signing in. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts, friends. Thanks.

PS: Yes, I have this blog set to require approval before comments appear. I will approve every comment that engages on the topic. There’s just too much spam for me to open things up completely.

PPS: As for other social-media platforms: I don’t Twitter much because its news focus (and that’s on me based upon which accounts I follow) is just too exasperating. I’m getting to like Instagram—and yes, I know it’s owned by Facebook. But being able to quickly (and visually) see what friends are up to is, I must admit, pretty cool. And thus far, it hasn’t been overrun by bots and trolls and depressing news.

Opinion, Uncategorized

What a Difference…

…a few inches makes. I can see women everywhere nod knowingly.

Okay, vulgarities aside, it’s true: just a few inches of water lifted me from being a resigned and nervous to happy and calm, all in the space of just a few minutes.

It started with Saturday’s mondo nor’easter. It blew through the Mid-Atlantic with not a whole lot of precipitation but a whole lot of wind. Storm-force winds: steady in the 30s and 40s, with gusts into the 60s out of the north. Knots, not miles per hour. It wasn’t too bad up in the cove where Further is tied up, but out on Chesapeake Bay it was blowing right down the bay. That meant the wind was pushing the water right out of the bay and into the ocean. Which meant that the water level dropped — even up in my little cove. And with a wind that fierce, the water level dropped a lot.

Tilting sideways Friday night. Made for an uneasy evening.

I knew based on the forecast on Thursday that Further would end up sitting in the mud. It happened before during the winter several times and is, according to the locals, a winter phenomenon. As I say: it happened earlier this winter, so when Further’s keel touched in early afternoon on Friday I wasn’t too worried. Earlier in the winter I wound up high-and-dry enough that my propellor was actually sticking out of the water, but Further drooped forward, toward her bow, and it was simply an inconvenience getting on and off the boat.

My fear Friday night was that my mast would tangle with my neighbor’s mast. That would have been bad.

On Friday, the water raced out of the cove. I went from floating to touching the keel to most of the rudder out of the water in just a couple of hours. And for whatever reason, Further not only sagged forward she sagged sideways, toward her port side.

Sitting in the mud isn’t a big deal. The keel and hull are strong and the mud in my cove is quite soft. What was nerve-wracking was that as Further sagged to port, her mast got closer and closer to the mast of the sailboat tied up beside me. I doubled up my lines on the starboard side hoping they, and a piling that stood between the two boats, would keep me vertical enough if the water continued to drop. And given the forecast — the winds were supposed to peak Friday night but continue blowing out of the north until Monday — I had every expectation that most of the water was leaving of the cove.

My neighbor helped me with my lines and thought I’d be fine. I wish I’d had her confidence. Our masts weren’t lined up as Further tilted more and more, so that gave me a little bit of room. There wasn’t much more I could do late on Friday I climbed into my bunk and went to sleep.

And when I say “climbed” I mean “climbed.” Further was heeled over probably 30 degrees to port so I slept more on the side of the hull than on the mattress. But I was warm and cozy, and I’m blessed that when I’m tired I can sleep damn near anywhere. I actually zonked out from midnight until 5 a.m., and then again from 5:30 till 7.

Saturday morning and Further was where she’d been when I went to sleep the night before.

I woke on Saturday to find the boat in basically the same position as it had been in when I went to sleep: tilting forward a bit and steeply to port. Another climb up and out of my berth, through the cabin, and then a long stretch and jump to get to the dock revealed that no, the boat hadn’t sunk any deeper. But I had. Assuming the forecast meant that, at best, Further would be in her predicament until at least Monday, I wondered from coffee shop to coffee shop in Annapolis, unable to bear looking at her as she sat like a beached whale. I worried about everything: how long the lines could hold up under the strain, if the piling could really bear Further’s weight, when the electrical work that was scheduled for the coming week could actually happen since there was no way the guy was going to be able to get his tools across the gap from dock to deck. And it was doubly a shame to sink into such a funk because Saturday had dawned gorgeous: brilliant blue sky; warm sunshine; yes, still breezy but not as bad. And I couldn’t enjoy it. All I could see was my foundering vessel as dark thoughts raced through my mind, most along the lines of: what the hell had I gotten myself into? Seriously. I was THAT bad.

And then something almost miraculous happened, and it happened at the most unexpected time.

All’s well that ends well.

I was sitting at the picnic table on shore near Further as the midday low tide approached. Jumping on board (I’m serious: literally JUMPING from the dock) to once again check the lines, I looked to a piling in the middle of the cove, the one with the depth gauge nailed to it. Friday night, as Further reached her nadir, the water was about an inch away from the base of that piling. But now, as the tide was bottoming out, the water was touching the wood where it entered the mud. The water was about an inch, maybe two, higher than it had been the night before. But the tide was still going out AND the wind was still blowing from the north. What the…?!

A short while later, right at dead low tide, and the water had surrounded the base. A little more time and it was now an inch on the OTHER side of the piling. The water was coming back into the cove.

By mid-afternoon enough water had come back into the cove that Further was no longer resting on that piling. I placed a second fender on the boat’s rail, just in case, and tightened up her lines. A short while later, I had to tighten her lines again. A bit later, while tightening the lines again, my neighbor walked into the marina and exclaimed that our masts were almost parallel once again.

Saturday afternoon and the masts are parallel again.

Further wasn’t floating yet, but wow! What a transition. And still the water came flowing into the cove. I could savor the sunshine pouring down out of the blue sky and welcome the ducks that swam around my bow. I returned everything in the cabin that had fallen from its place the night before and enjoyed being able to sit on a horizontal seat.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose. I removed the secondary lines this morning (Sunday) and reset all the primary lines such that Further is a tiny bit farther out into the cove and a tiny bit closer to the starboard side of her slip. And in hindsight, I can be happy about a few things.

For one, the boat was comfortable when heeled over. That’s important because that’s how she’ll be when we’re out at sea. Yes, I’ve lived life at an angle before and it’s fine. But it’s a drag when you’re doing it at the dock. Second, some friends (both in Annapolis and farther flung) were very helpful throughout the stressful parts of this event. Third, this was a record low water level (eclipsing the record set earlier in the winter) and spring is fast returning so a repeat episode seems unlikely, knock on wood. (If I see a similar forecast in the coming weeks, I’m motoring out of my marina and staying at some other marina with deeper slips for a couple of nights.) Combined with another recent hair-raising episode (I’ll recap that one later) that let me know my bilge pumps and alarm systems work properly, and the takeaways are that Further, despite all her scrapes and bruises and other signs of age, is a well-found vessel. I look forward to getting her out into bluewater where she can let down her hair a bit and be in her element. That day is coming…

Ocean Fun, Uncategorized, , , ,

‘Twas a Good Run

You may have noticed a slight change in these pages this week. I resolved on Sunday that I was going to write something new – actual creative writing, not just posting my jumbled thoughts – each day for the coming workweek. The urge arose because, well, because I haven’t written squat in about, oh…three years. And in recent weeks since landing here in Annapolis, I’ve been encouraging a couple of new friends to write THEIR stories and projects (both of which I believe are really good ideas). I had become the living embodiment of “do as I say, not as I do.” So I figured just making myself write SOMETHING would help.

And it has. No, nothing I’ve written this week is any good but that wasn’t the point. It was more an exercise to get my writing muscles going again. So on Monday, I sat down at the local coffee shop and whipped out that hockey scene. Some of you probably have heard that the described scene is actually my vision for what heaven (if heaven were to exist) would be. And since I had skated Sunday night, hockey was front of mind and I jotted it down.

Tuesday’s story arose when I got to reminiscing about a fond memory. I took the kernel of an evening in San Diego, layered on memories from other times and places, and cranked that out. Again, it was an attempt to use long-dormant writing muscles, this time to evoke a scene and an emotion that might resonate with others if I could paint the scene properly.

Yesterday’s scene was an attempt to present dialogue. It was prompted by a friend who’d contacted me to say there was a preponderance of death in my recent posts and wondered if I was all right. I started with her inquiry, combined several different people and places and times in my life to form the two characters, and dropped them into the coffee shop where I sat each morning this week.

And that’s where I sit now, unable to make it four days in a row. Hence, this apologetic and explanatory post. But I’m not really sorry or upset. After too long a time being inactive, these baby steps have been a good way to get rolling again. I wasn’t going to go from zero to novel or screenplay in one fell swoop. I’ll work up to that. And as Hemingway taught, I’ll leave off each day knowing what is to happen when I pick up the story the next morning so I won’t draw a blank – like I am today.

Now I need to do the same thing for the muscles in my scrawny arms and legs, and ample gut. And as with this week, I’ll start with baby steps. I’m not going to jump right into running a marathon or doing some crazy-@$$ed Crossfit workout. Not right away, at least. Those will come hand-in-hand with that Great American Novel that will be in the works. Soon. 😉

Practice