More Practice

Toying with the beginning of a new story idea. It starts something like this:

Blast from the Past
After draining a par-saving 20-foot putt and settling back onto the driver’s seat of his golf cart, Mike took a swig of water as he picked up his iPhone to check email. The three others in his foursome were all finishing the 14th hole when Mike looked at his in-box and watched as his whole world exploded into a billion pieces of kaleidoscopic light.

There was only one new email but the name shining up at him from the screen burned like a laser as the phone receded with his hands down an ever-lengthening tunnel. Mike was jolted back to the golf course when Tom dumped his putter into the bag strapped to the rear of the cart and settled with a thud into the passenger seat.

“Nice par, dude,” Tom said. “Put me down for a six.” “Thanks,” Mike muttered as he looked over at Tom and then dropped his iPhone back into the drink-holder on the golf cart’s dashboard. He turned back and grabbed the stubby pencil to mark the scorecard lashed to the steering wheel. Then he put his foot on the accelerator and led the way to the next hole.

Mike was first to tee off on the 15th and it did not go well. His tee shot sliced like a fighter jet banking hard right in a dogfight, disappearing into the hardwood forest lining the fairway and prompting catcalls from his three golf partners — his oldest friends. “Ahhhh, shit,” he mumbled. “Guess I’ll use my mulligan on that one,” and he placed a second golf ball and tee in the grass. The second shot stayed in the fairway but went half as far as his typical 275-yard drives.

“The wheels are coming off, boys!” Tom hollered. “We may yet take some money off this guy.”

Two chunked fairway irons and a pitching wedge got Mike’s ball onto the green, where two overly cautious putts left him a couple of feet short of the hole. Tom called it a gimme and tossed Mike his ball.

Mike’s drive on the par-three 16th was a line drive straight into the water between the tee box and the green; he had an uneventful bogey on the 17th and shot a snowman on the par-five 18th.

Between every shot, he lifted his phone before his face and stared at the screen.

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An Announcement

Hi Folks,

The current front page at TakeToTheShip.com

Just a quick post to let you know that I’ve created a new site for Further- and sailing-related information. It’s called Take To The Ship, and you can find it at that name dot com. That’s where I’ll be posting anything related to my life and times on board my boat. I’ll have stories and photos, and I’m hoping to do a lot more video, all in an effort to share the joys and woes of boat owning and adventuring. Like me and the boat, the site is a work in progress, but I hope you’ll tune in regularly. I’m putting in the option to subscribe so you’ll get notified whenever there’s new information. That should make things easier.

Here at lukehsmith.com is where I’ll continue posting my personal stuff. I’m planning to post some of my writing and there will undoubtedly be plenty of navel-gazing posts (spoiler alert: a whole lot of shite on that side of my life in the past few days), information on what I’m reading and so forth. So if you’re not into that side of my life (and really, why would you be?), I’d suggest you head over to Take To The Ship. Make no mistake: this site WILL continue. I’ll just be using it as my self-therapy tool and repository for work- and creativity-related aspects of my life. Yeah, I hear ya: boring.

Anyway, thanks for tuning in here. I hope you’ll stick around and watch my brain melt even further. And I hope you’ll tune in for the fun stuff over at Take To The Ship.

Best to all,
Luke

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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