Medium Deep Thoughts
It’s been over a month. That’s it. Just wanted to acknowledge the passage of time before getting started. I had some swirling thoughts this morning.
- What happens when people start to believe their own hype? I’m thinking specifically of authors as I write, but it applies to all of us. It’s a dangerous habit. Addiction? You start to believe in the infallibility of your every thought, the magic of your every word, or that there is truth in your tokenism.
- When it comes to authors writing series or even books that are written within the same ecosystem, writing for yourself is dangerous, but writing just to please a fan base is equally dangerous. There has to be a balance, which is staying true to the characters and the plot you’ve set in motion.
- Students having phones in schools is starting to feel like an infestation. I’ve had students show up late for class because they were looking for a charger. I’ve had students get up in the middle of a lesson to check their phone. I’ve had students receive FaceTime calls from other students during class. Every transition for them is phone time. Every walk down the hallway is phone time. Every bus ride is phone time. It’s addiction. I was addicted once. . .to Donkey Kong. - I’ve been keeping my distance from social media lately. I was never a big poster, but more and more I’m finding myself not even going to the apps on my devices. I’m disillusioned with it, or I’m just disillusioned with the way people use it. It’s the attention-seeking behavior. It’s the secondhand exhaustion I feel from those seeking validation. It’s the way right and wrong seem forgotten in the scramble for likes and follows. It’s how easily we fall under it spell. It’s a cult of personality. - I’ve slowly started to unfollow authors I read. I’m a post-modernist kind of reader—the author shouldn’t matter and too much exposure to what’s going on with them ruins the magic. I know very little about what Richard Peck believed, but at the end of the day, there isn’t a single book that I’ve read in the last 10 years that I wouldn’t give up for just one more book by him. Marriage doesn’t need mystery, but maybe the reader-author relationship does. - Don’t get me wrong, authors are still my rockstars. I want to hear them champion social justice. I want to hear them rage against curriculums lacking in relevancy, competency, and diversity, but maybe I don’t need to know what Hogwarts house they’ve been sorted into, how al dente they like their pasta, where they got the dress with the flamingoes on it, or about how they crushed their friends in an epic game of laser tag. That’s enough of that. I think I’ve properly channeled the old man shaking his fist at the kids riding bikes across his yard. Have a happy Sunday.