I'll be devoting my next few posts to expanding upon the ideas in my last one (about regulating the content, quality, and amount of information that I allow into my head). I do think that decluttering and cleaning up a mind is just so much more important than weeding out and organizing a few closets...
because...
the information and news and communication and entertainment sources that are available in the world today can be cesspools of dirty, useless, addictive, filthy, shallow, and utterly stupid content.
They can also, as we all know (good always tends to balance bad), be incredible sources of good information, entertainment, knowledge, inspiration and healing. Sometimes it seems harder to find them than the weird, nasty, inane, scary, psychopathic killer ones (I'm all about the adjectives this morning)...but they do exist.
I guess, at some point, I simply decided to filter out the former and, as much as is possible anyway, only let in the latter.
Just to clarify...I'm neither anti-tech, nor anti-entertainment.
While I do believe I would function and live quite happily in a Little House on the Prairie, (reading books by lamplight, writing on a old type writer, communicating by talking face-to-face, sending actual letters), I'm not about to spend money I don't have and move far away in order to replicate the life.
And I do, in fact, enjoy certain aspects of technology. I watch TV in the evening. I have a few apps on my phone to help me track and remember things. GPS keeps me from getting lost, and I would never be able to maintain my current quiet, country writer's life if I didn't have my trusty keyboard and laptop, website and wifi.
I know if I sent anything in to an editor today via Canada Post, I wouldn't be taken seriously.
And so, yes, I enjoy and appreciate what screens can offer this world. I am, however, still wary of them, keep my exposure to them to a minimum, and try to stick to more wholesome, fun and educational content whenever I find myself sitting in front of one.
Now, whenever I watch something, I put it through certain filters...ones that I think I subconsciously maintain to replace those natural sensory filters I've lost to my AVM and radiation.
Now whenever I watch something, I ask myself:
Is this relevant to me?
Is it any of my business?
Does it teach me anything?
Is it positive? Does it make me laugh, and feel better about the world?
Seriously, my poor brain is dark and bruised enough.
Why on earth would I choose to allow anything into it that may darken it further?