We all know that hollow feeling of having scrolled to exhaustion. The sun rises and sets without ever laying a direct ray of life affirming sunshine on me some days. I scroll until I am tired of one app, then I switch to the next one and the next one. All the while knowing I could and should be doing other things that are much more worthwhile. But for some reason, I can't set the phone down.
Why? What is it doing that I like so much?
Well, to start, my phone is much more entertaining than four white walls. It is only a flick of the thumb away. It is easy to start. But what happens when I am stuck inside the phone which seemingly has no walls?
I run free-- I consume content like Hunter S. Thompson consumed illicit substances. Art, performance, science, sex, absurd stories, more sex, videos of war crimes, kitties, random facts about things that will never concern me are pulling me in every direction except outward. The phone takes you many directions, but never away from itself. Always inward.
Everything else in my life fades. My poor, unguarded ADHD brain only nags me quietly as a backdrop to my stimulus orgy, that I should really be doing chores or planning my future.
Once in a while the things that I learn online are useful, but I would easily say 97% is absolute wasted time.
And this leads me to my art piece. If I was to zoom out, I feel that this piece is how I feel about my phone in my rare moments of clarity. It is a device that make you forget the obvious. It makes one forget the life around them, and most importantly it makes them forget that our precious time is limited. We forget Death. That is why this piece is called "It is Easy to Forget About It."
You may find this to be quite grim, but really, remembering that I will one day die is excellent motivation for me to put down my phone. To do something worthwhile. To look another living being in the eyes. It really seems to me that one action in real life, no matter how small, is worth ten thousand thumb scrolls. So it is now on the last day of 2022 that I tell you that I wish to change. This is my resolution, to think about death a lot more in hopes of living a lot more.
Thank you for reading and looking.
Happy New Years.
- Inkhead
