Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-changes, oh, look out you rock ‘n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-changes, pretty soon now you’re gonna get older
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
I said that time may change me
But I can’t trace time—Changes, by David Bowie
You may have noticed that my pace of blogging has slowed markedly over the past few months, well, actually, for far longer than that. More like half a year, or almost a full year.
Life has been throwing changes fast and furiously at me lately. Big changes and small ones. Changes that I deliberately started, and changes that kinda just happened to me, when I wasn’t looking. There have been so many changes in my life, that I am feeling a bit overwhelmed at times. Sometimes, a lot overwhelmed. Some days I feel that I am doing well, rolling with the punches, and other days, I feel depressed and hopeless, barely able to get out of bed and face the day.
I have, rather deliberately, made a decision to cut back on my consumption of mainstream news media, as well as my formerly heavy use of social media. I was spending too much time learning about whatever the latest outrage was in the world, and getting upset over it, when in most cases, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it (particularly if it was happening in another state, province, or country nowhere near me).
I was also spending a lot of time—too much time—on the snark subreddits, a habit I am slowly weaning myself from (more on that here, in a blogpost I wrote in February). I did delete my Reddit account, and I also switched from the web version of Reddit to a mobile app, Apollo, using it without bothering to set up a new account, which makes it easier to avoid seeing news stories which might trigger me in some way. And I stay off the news and politics subreddits now!
I also learned that I had simply swapped my former Facebook and Twitter addictions with a Mastodon addiction (different platform, but the same problems), and I have therefore decided to cut back significantly on the time I spend on Mastodon, and use a mobile app (Toot!) that, again, allows me to avoid seeing news stories about whatever political outrage is currently trending in the U.S. or somewhere else, that I can’t do a damn thing about, and which only lands up enraging or depressing me.
The result of these changes is that I am feeling less depressed—at the cost of being a little more ignorant about what’s going on in the real world!
I have also decided to incorporate more physical activity into my life. The easiest way for me to do that is to replace my 10-minute car drive to and from work with a 40-to-50-minute walk (depending on how often I stop and sit down on a nearby park bench!). I’m still working my way up to walking both ways, both to and from work, and my legs and feet are often sore lately, but it feels good. I feel like this is a positive step (or, literally, steps!).
Speaking of transportation, I finally went and purchased a new vehicle after driving my old car for twenty years, until it was literally falling apart! In fact, it was an expensive throttle problem with my old car that forced me to start shopping for a new car a few months earlier than I had planned, and then I had to wait several months for my new vehicle to be delivered. I love my new car!
Also, three weeks ago my family helped pack up and move my octogenarian mother and nonagenarian stepfather from their condo in Winnipeg to Alberta, to live with my brother and his wife. This was a major, MAJOR undertaking, and I am still working through all the emotions relating to this change, including dealing with the new reality that I no longer have any immediate family in my home city (although I do have my friends, and some more distant relatives, here). That’s a big change.
So, as you can see, I have been dealing with a lot of changes in my life recently (including a few that I don’t wish to talk about here). What does that mean for the blog? Well, I do plan to continue blogging, but I’m not sure when I will return to my formerly blistering pace of blog posting! This is yet another change, this one the result of the other changes I have enumerated here (plus the few that I haven’t talked about, ones that involve other people whose privacy I wish to respect).
David Bowie’s song, which I quoted up top, is all about the impermanence of life and the difficulty of adjusting to the changes that come with it. I find myself identifying with this song a lot lately, and more often than not, turning to face the strange.