Category: Posts

Make the coffee, shuffle to the office, fire up the computer, because it is the morning, and that is when I write.

I don’t really know what I’m writing about, but I’m writing.

I’ve been on the road for four days, and my back aches and I’m undercaffeinated and I overslept this morning, but I’m writing.

The stack of mail on the table that waited for me to return reminds me that I have so many open loops I need to deal with – but I’m writing.

We won’t even speak of my overflowing email inbox, and the people I have let down because I am a chaos machine with poor executive functioning skills – but I’m writing.

It’s a Federal holiday, so the banks are closed and the mail won’t run and would anybody even notice if I didn’t write today, but I’m writing.

My cats missed me while I was away and are currently rubbing against my legs demanding to be cuddled, but I’m writing.

My country is collapsing and people I love are threatened and I don’t know what to do, so I’m writing.

When examining art that confuses you, things to consider might include asking if you are the intended audience, or if this is a medium you understand. If it isn’t, perhaps ask people who do understand it to explain it to you.

Or, you can accept that not everything is for everyone, and that whole universes of art exist that are powerful and brilliant but were not made with you in mind.

Or, I guess, you could bitch that it was boring on Social Media.

One more thing for people who look like me:

The USA will be majority non-white in less than 20 years. More and more, pop culture will not feature you, prioritize your opinions, or solicit your favor. Markets will not swing based on what you want, and people who look like you will be less prominent in mass media.

You have a choice: You can see this as an opportunity to learn new things, to see art outside your gaze, to develop in understanding of the world around you, or you can complain, whine, and whither into hatred.

This is a cultural sea change the likes of which our country has never seen before. I hope we do not waste it.

On a shelf over my desk, at eye level when I stand, are 8 reference books. They are mostly “How to write English good” books – a dictionary, a thesaurus, Strunk and White, Garner’s English Usage, etc. Because I preach and write occasionally about theological matters, I have an Oxford Annotated Bible there as well.

One can argue that Google is faster, and for some things it is. But my goal is not to be faster – it’s to be better.

The things that are wrong with my writing will not be improved by my doing it faster. And while the internet may contain a vast collection of information, sorting it is becoming harder and harder.

When I was a small boy in Mississippi, I would often use the word _ain’t _in speech. To which my aunt would reply, “Ain’t ain’t a word, because it ain’t in the dictionary”. It would frustrate me, but part of me really liked that there was a standard, a “right” way to do it.

That doesn’t mean I don’t break “the rules”. I do all the time. But if I do, I want it to be because I know I am breaking them, and not because I am ignorant of them.

Trying to figure out blogging outside of the WordPress ecosystem (where I’ve been for ~17 years) is so frustrating. (WordPress as a CMS is so bulky and unwieldy, and their “website builder” direction the last 5 years or so is extremely un-user friendly.)
I know I’m entering my grumpy old man phase, but my WordPress-powered blog in 2007 was super-customizable BY ME.

With no real tech knowledge, I installed it on a server in 5 minutes.

Writing and publishing on it was intuitive.

I could Google, “How do I ____?” and there were answers on the first page of search results.

Now, it seems my options are:

Use our locked down ecosystem and if you want to change literally anything, it’s $30 a month.

Or

Learn python and markdown, create a virtual server, and open a command line before you write a word.
Designing websites and writing on websites are different skills, different interests, and different hobbies.
I’m *this* damn close to seeing if my Blogger account is still active.

“Would you hide an immigrant from ICE?”

A friend asked me this the other day. My first thought was, “This is where we are, I guess.”

When we read the Diary of Ann Frank in school, something pretty quickly jumped out at me. Their world was populated by two kinds of people: Those who would turn them in to the authorities, and those who would not. Their world did not have the luxury of considering other kids of people.

In our current political reality, I think not much has changed. There are people who will turn in their neighbor, and people who will not. Motives really do not matter. If you turn in Ann and her family because you are concerned about the rule of law, they are as equally dead as they would be if you turned them in because you are a right-wing extremist.

The world I live in right now pretty much has two kinds of people in it: Those who would report their neighbor/ coworker / family member to ICE, and those who would not. Motives and reasons and justifications don’t really matter.

I know my answer. You might not agree with me, but I suggest you give this some thought.

Because one day soon, you might have to figure out which of those two kinds of people you are. And it’s probably easier to decide that in advance.

Tuesday night it hit 14 degrees, which is not unheard of here, but is also not what most days are like, thank God. I didn’t have any meetings planned until lunchtime, so I decided this would be an excellent day in which to sleep in.

When I rolled out of bed at 10 minutes to 7 (I am, my wife tells me, bad at sleeping in, but to be fair, that is almost an hour and a half later than I normally get up) I padded into the kitchen and started the coffee. I noticed the sunshine coming in the kitchen window, the hoarfrost on the grass in the backyard, the cats under my feet. I feel peace and calm.

Then I realize I had left my phone in the bedroom.

As soon as I picked up my phone and scrolled though the social media feeds, I find myself getting angry about things the current President is doing. I find myself reading articles – almost all opinion pieces – about how bad it is. I feel the urge to respond, to chime in “me too!

Then it hits me – I’m doing it again. It’s me. The problem is me.

I do not have to live this way. I had a “before the phone” experience and an “after the phone” experience that morning, and trust me, the before experience was better.

The problem isn’t my phone – it’s a tool, like the hammer someone uses to hit a mugging victim is not the problem. The hammer is agnostic, and so is the phone. In both cases, the user is at fault.

I’m not so willing to give the platforms a similar break, though. Unlike the hammer, or the phone, they are operating exactly as their creator intended: manufacturing stimulation, generating outrage, pulling me deeper and deeper into engagement. If it’s designed to be addictive, and you are addicted, it’s hard to blame the addict for falling into a trap someone set for you.

The only way to avoid the trap is to stay out of the woods.

I’m not giving up my phone – given my work and the environment I live in, that’s untenable. But, I can change how I interact with it.

**I deleted social media apps from my phone.**

I still have Instagram on my phone, but I don’t get “lost” on Instagram the way I do on other apps. If it becomes a problem, it will have to go too, but I like taking occasional “in the moment” pictures and sharing them, and seeing yours.

**My desire to stay informed is at odds with my desire to remain sane.**

Unlike a lot of folks, apparently, I don’t doom scroll in the evenings. Instead, for me, it’s morning that is the problem. I’ve used my morning cup of coffee to scroll social media to see what has happened while I was asleep. But honestly, that’s a very innefficent use of time, and algorhythims are not a great filter for deciding what I should be reading.

I need three kinds of news: Global, national, and local. Of the three, arguably, the local has the most impact on my day to day life. The crime wave in my neighborhood or the selection of a garbage collection contractor has far greater impact on my daily quality of life than does the potential tarrif on goods made in Mexico.

**I changed my news stack**

Starting local, and moving outwards:

We subscribe to our local paper – [the Clarion Ledger](https://www.clarionledger.com/). It’s not a great paper – like many legacy media, it’s been gutted, but it’s at least as deep as what I would glean from social media, and it doesn’t have an algorithm. I read the weekend edition local coverage to get an overview of what’s rising to the surface.

I also read [Mississippi Today](https://mississippitoday.org/), our state’s nonprofit news organization. (Find your local [nonprofit newsroom here](https://findyournews.org/), and then donate money to them). They are the best at telling me what’s happening at the state level. Again, state level news is far more important than national in terms of my daily life. A 10% sales tax on groceries impacts my life much more than whatever happens to the national income tax, and is far more in my control to influence as well. They have an app, so I can read it in an algorithm-free environment as well.

This week, I added a subscription to The Guardian’s weekly news magazine to the mix, and installed the Guardian’s app to my phone. They are a UK based news org, and so, in an age where US media is in a flurry to bend the knee to this current administration, having a trustworthy outside perspective is valuable. This gives me both (US) national and international coverage, is well written, and I like paper-based media – the act of sitting down with a cup of coffee to “read the news”.

It’s worth noting that all of these sources cost me money. But paying to actually read news means I take it seriously, and if you are not paying for a product, you ARE the product.

I still have social media accounts, but I have to be at my desk to use them – I can’t doomscroll while sitting on my couch, watching a movie, or at the table while eating Cheerios, or, God help me, at a stoplight. No, just like we did in 1995, I have to go into a separate room in my house and turn on a machine to see that part of the Internet.

I’ll report back next month on how it’s working for me.

It’s getting cold as hell tonight, and so for supper I made my platonic ideal of chili, which means it tasted like the chili my mom made when I was young. We served it with Fritos, as God intended, and with good sharp cheddar and sour cream.

There is a lot I do not like about the world right now, but on a day where many bad things happened, I managed to make good food and feed my family, and that is not nothing.

There is a lot that will need to be done over the next four years. I have zero guilt about taking time to rest from it today.

I’m preaching tonight at Safe Harbor Church in Clinton, MS – a church with a large LGBT contingent in their congregation.

Tomorrow is the inauguration, and many of us, not just those in that community, are nervous.

God of love, God of hope
God of our understanding and longing
On the eve of the inauguration,
We are gathered tonight in this place to seek your will
And to learn how to try to do it.
We recognize that our desire to follow your will does not mean we always do
But we trust that our desire to please you does, in fact, please you.

It is a rough time right now, and many of us are fearful.
We do not always know where we are going, or what the future holds.
Our future is uncertain, shadowy, unknowable.
But we trust you, and seek the comfort of your presence.
We know you will not leave us, or forsake us,
And in the presence of our enemies, you prepare a feast.

Protect us, oh Lord. Watch over us
As we labor, and as we rest.
Give us strength to resist, hope to sustain others,
And make of us a testimony to your glory.

Amen