Day 5- June 19, 2012
My morning began at seven a.m. with a mini earthquake. My phone was vibrating incessantly until I turned off the alarm I had set to make sure I made it to my first job on time. When I'm not working at my high class burger joint, I do clerical work at a local veterinary clinic. I usually work from nine to noon, but because I had to be at the restaurant by eleven-thirty, I arrived at my first job an hour early. From seven to seven-forty a.m., I ate breakfast and got ready without any media. Then, I worked at the clinic from eight to eleven. The only media I encountered at this job was the radio playing a country station softly in my supervisor's work room. For the most part, I was able to ignore this small amount of media, mostly because I am not a huge fan of country music.
Then, at eleven, I drove to my other job, changed in my car, and then began waitressing at eleven-thirty. Today, I noticed the pervasiveness of media in our patrons' personal and social lives as a couple of tables brought either ipads or laptops into the restaurant. I would like to clarify that these were not business people out for a working lunch, but families or groups of friends who just couldn't seem to part with their electronic friends as well. One table in particular was that of my boss's family, who I happened to be serving. The majority of the table was media free, but one of his sons was completely immersed in his handheld DS. Not only were his eyes distracted by the bright colors on the screen, but his ears were also spoken for by an expensive looking pair of headphones. Serving him was like serving a deaf-blind-mute, and I was thankful that all he ordered was a simple kid's meal and didn't need any drink refills. Honestly, though, this kid was not even there for this family luncheon. Even when I came over, ten birthday singers in tow, to celebrate my manager's other son's birthday, he remained isolated. Poor guy missed out on eating the giant and delicious looking mudd pie in favor of getting to the next level. I don't know if I can stress this enough so let me just repeat: He missed out on EATING CHOCOLATELY GOODNESS because of media. Granted, the mudd pie is about 1368 calories (I looked it up) so it's certainly not the healthiest choice, but, I mean, come on. I watched this kid miss out on life, as it stood right in front of him, begging to be ogled and gobbled. I guess the brightness of his screen must have blinded him, because I don't think that he could see it.
At two p.m., I was able to go on break so I went home for about two hours before I had to be at work for the night shift at four-fifteen. By this time I was starving, so over the next two hours I ate a lot to make up for my hours of empty stomach and to prepare for the night to come. It was during this time that I made a minor breach in my fast because I watched the season finale of Girls, the new HBO TV show by Lena Dunham. I consumed a seriously large amount of hummus and pita bread while watching that show, which proves that whole fact that you shouldn't eat while watching TV because you eat more than you should because of the (you guessed it) distraction. I wasn't proud of myself for doing this, but at least I have stayed off all of my social media completely. I also haven't listened to the radio in my car at all, even when I was driving home from work late at night and all I want to do is unwind with some tunes. I've learned that silence can be relaxing too. I know that that seems like a simple conjecture, but I think that a lot of us have forgotten it.
Silence scares us now, and we seek to fill it with pointless words, melodies, sounds. We don't view silence as the great comforter but the great predator. I think we have this idea that silence signifies danger because of horror movies or something, but we forget that it isn't the silence but the short bouts of suspenseful background music that should really worse us. You hear that playing behind you in your real life, and I give you full permission to run. However, I've never heard of a murderer making the extra effort to bring an iPod dock to a potential crime scene, so the media version of real life horror is inaccurate. Wow, what a digression that was. At any rate, I watched the TV show because I hadn't watched any TV that day and I knew that the only other time I was going to watch TV would be later tonight when I worked out so I gave myself a pass just this one time.
I was back at work by four-fifteen on the dot, and was held captive there until ten p.m. When I got home at ten-thirty, I immediately began my workout, all the while watching the new episode of Pretty Little Liars. (It was intense.) I hate to admit it, but PLL is one of my favorite TV shows. Even though I know how ridiculous it is, I just can't get enough of it. This is an example of a media addiction in my life from which it is too late to save me. I have been sucked in and will be a devout fan of this show until the liars discover the identity of Allison's killer and A. For those of you who understood neither of those references, congratulations on avoiding the blackhole that is the PLL fandom. After I finished working out, I made myself a chocolate strawberry-banana smoothie, as usual. (The addiction that I have to these things is not one that I am ashamed of or worry about.) Then, I wrote my blog post for Byte Me: Day 4.
I took breaks from my writing to text with my best friend whom I hadn't talked to in three days because she was visiting all her high school friends, and I didn't want to disturb her from real human contact. However, I was really happy that she texted me because I had missed her so much. Say what you want about the fragmentation of identity through technology, it's probably true, but I really did feel a strong connection to her while we were texting. Obviously, it wasn't the same as our multi-hour talks via skype that we have every Thursday, but it was enough of a connection to successfully continue our friendship. She was asking me for advice because her life had recently been derailed with a very interesting plot twist. (Her life is a Dan Brown novel; mine's a Lifetime movie. This is why we're friends.) I don't know why I seem to be the go to person for advice, because if I was any good at giving or taking my own advice, my life wouldn't be the hot mess that it is. I could explain farther, but maybe I just want to force my readers to read the rest of my blog to see if you can put the pieces together. Challenge accepted?
At any rate, I counseled her until about one-thirty a.m. when I literally could not keep my eyes open a moment longer. I gave her one last suggestion and then said I was going to sleep, knowing full well that there was time to talk about it and figure out a solution tomorrow.
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