Writing in any form is always and essentially an act of trust. The writer trusts that he has something to say, something that he is able to say, something worth saying. He trusts that an audience, even an audience consisting solely of his future self, will find it so. He trusts the words to communicate what he intends to communicate – a dubious proposition to anyone who has reflected on the nature of language. Even a writer who writes, intentionally, to deceive trusts, with the uneasy trust of the co-conspirator who can never be sure if his trust is well-placed. And he trusts those being deceived to be as gullible as he needs them to be – a dubious proposition for anyone who has ever studied history.
In this time of information overload, with some arguing for complete disclosure of one’s personal life and others who wish everybody would keep some things to themselves, a new wrinkle has emerged. One has to trust that what he is sharing will not damn him in the eyes of some real or imagined future employer. The professional is supposed to be walled off from the personal – Facebook on the left hand and LinkedIn on the right, and never the twain should meet.
I think this is the most dubious proposition of all.
I’m not about to launch into a polemic in defense of full internet disclosure. There are others who can do that better than I can, mostly because I don’t necessarily believe in it. But I write all of this as a maybe long-winded way of saying that its about to get personal.
But before I go further, please accept this comic that I did not draw:
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Tags: 12-step, AA, alcohol, Articles, Buddhism, buzz machine, christ, Christianity, clowns, confession, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, depression, disclosure, drama, dreams, drinking, drugs, eastern religion, employment, facebook, freelance writing, hopes, information overload, Internet, jeff jarvis, jesus, journalism school, linkedin, meditation, mental health, mental illness, npr, platforms, preaching, privacy, professionalism, psychiatry, psychology, public radio, religion, rock and roll, SEO, sex, social media, studio 360, This American Life, writing, xkcd
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I googled theta waves today, part of a developing interest in meditation, and came across Get High Now. Note: this does not constitute an endorsement of drug use, but rather a window into the myriad ways our brains can be coaxed into altered states by the application of targeted sensory stimuli. I’m preparing to establish a regular meditation practice, but in the interim, and probably beyond, I’m not averse to a little help from science – and programmers.
Budding photographers – and perhaps seasoned ones as well – will be interested to check out this virtual lighting studio, courtesy of Lifehacker. Between this and some of the more basic simulators out there, developing an eye for the finer points of photography is getting easier and easier. Or at least more accessible.
Finally, returning to the realm of self-improvement, I didn’t know that internet therapy was a thing. And I don’t know much more than that it is a thing, and that at least one study has found it to be effective.
Tags: addiction, alcohol, anxiety, Australia, counseling, depression, disorders, drugs, eastern philosophy, get high now, hypnosis, lifehacker, lighting, meditation, mental health, news, odds and ends, photography, psychology, science, science direct, self-improvement, technology, therapy, theta waves, virtual clinic, virtual tools
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I have a lot of buried emotions. Going back to childhood and further still, I learned to repress a lot of things – anger, sadness, wildness, hurt, rejection, vulnerability, pain of all kinds. I learned- rightly or wrongly, by whatever degree- that to act out my emotions would embarrass or harm me.
When I learned about the Tao (substitute ‘the need for inner peace’ if that has bothersome connotations for you), I mapped my repressive patterns onto it. In other words, every hurt that I was unwilling to feel, every fear and resentment and wounded affection, I buried, hid from others and myself, so that I could appear put together.
This came at a cost.
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Tags: anxiety, buddha, Buddhism, christ, Christianity, demons, depression, emotion, evil, jesus, meditation, mental health, narratives, pain, pandemonium, personal, psychology, society, spirituality, suffering, tao, taoism
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The Army may have finally gotten rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but in another significant way, it is still a backward institution. This story in NPR lifts the curtain on a systematic culture of disdain and abuse of soldiers who are suffering from debilitating psychological and emotional pain.
If you have time I really recommend listening to the radio piece. Listening to these soldiers’ stories is a real eye-opener. The Army treats the emotionally wounded like so much broken equipment to be tossed aside.
Tags: anxietyd, audio, depression, mental health, npr, ptsd, radio, soldiersw, US Army, war
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