Category — Uncategorized

I just read a truly stunningly fantastic book, Followers by Megan Angelo, and I need to unpack some of the thoughts in there–the deep ones and the not-quite-so-deep ones (like today’s)–completely spoiler-free. So dive in with me, yes?

All you need to know is that Followers moves back and forth between 2015, which is just like the real 2015, and 2051, which is a future society where some people’s lives are televised 24/7, like The Truman Show.

The first quote was just funny, but once I stopped to think about it… I really couldn’t make sense of Twitter. It’s someone from 2051 reflecting on what life was like back in the olden days. On page 112, Marlow visits a nursing-home-like place and encounters a man there:

“I was Twitter-famous,” one of the old men croaked at her, glaring, and Marlow just nodded and smiled, pretending to be impressed. She had never quite understood Twitter, through ***** still talked about it like a dead, beloved friend. Short messages, but to everyone, mostly pointless, with blatant lies allowed–Marlow could not imagine what had been the appeal.

[See, really, no spoilers. I even blotted out the person’s name with asterisks so you won’t know the connection between characters before it happens in the book.]

I laughed reading the lines, but then I thought about it. Why do we go on Twitter? It’s not a great space for unpacking big feelings, unlike a blog. Anyone can read it, unlike Facebook. It’s mostly pointless, again, unlike a blog. And blatant lies are allowed by the platform itself… how is it even a helpful source for information?

I don’t spend a lot of time on Twitter. I pop on to get questions answered (eg. is a site down for everyone else, or is it just me?) and sometimes to post a thought so I don’t lose it. It’s not my favourite platform. Though, I guess, you could break down every other internet space–including blogs–by similarly stark observations and wonder why we spend so much time online.

Do you like Twitter?

My ghost child haunts me less and less these days. They used to be around all the time, but now they only slip their hand in mine in random places. I can go months without seeing them. Sometimes years.

A person delivered old advice she got from Carolyn Hax back at her in her column when Hax was giving advice to a person who was upset that she never had another child. She wrote,

We long for this imaginary alternative past where we focus on the happy details — so it feeds the notion we missed out on something, but in reality, anything could have happened. Who knows what would have been if you’d had that second kid/moved abroad/taken that job? It could have been great; it could have been terrible. Maybe that’s simplistic, but it’s worked for me many times.

A third child could have been wonderful. It could have been terrible. But my brain chooses to only focus on the sunny side. I let the ghost child subtract sometimes in the way any additional small child subtracts as you have to navigate their schedule. (“We couldn’t have done X if we had a baby in tow.”) But I don’t let them subtract with fictional tantrums or marriage stress. The ghost child is perfect.

And maybe I need to do that; to remind myself that it is also detrimental to focus on those happy details. To daydream about a ghost child who never has to prove themselves because I don’t know the story at all. Or if I’m going to daydream, to do it honestly, imagining all the possible versions and not just the hoped-for ones.

I am an overpacker. I am a maybe-I’ll-need-this person. I’m a well-I-have-room-anyway person. Someone who brings a few extra books and an unreasonably large collection of unnecessary socks. (What if my feet get cold? Then doubly cold? Then triply cold?)

Vox tells me that “a person’s packing style — whether they pack light or pack heavy — is a distinctive personality trait.”

Yeah, that fits. Because I’m also a we-should-probably-save-this-empty-jar-because-what-if person. And I carry a few extra books on me even when I’m just going to the grocery store. (What if something happens and I’m stuck in the store for so long that I finish the first book? And then the second book?)

But I’m also (if I do say so myself) a smart packer. I pack all of the bags in our house before big trips. Everyone leaves their stuff in the living room, and I divide it up into the correct piles and then slide things into the suitcase accordingly. And then we play musical suitcases as the trip progresses, consolidating clean items together in carefully marked bags so everything remains organized.

And Vox’s point that we’re trying to carry familiarity with us while we’re in the happy stress of travel, absolutely.

What is your packing style?

Immediately after my grandmother died, I called her number knowing she wouldn’t pick up. I just wanted to dial it one last time before the number was reassigned to someone else. I still keep her contact details on my phone because I like to scroll past her name.

So this article about a woman who emails her dad after he dies resonated with me. She works through her grief by telling him about it: “For months I transcribed the hostile anguish in my head into emails to my father, which I would then seal off with the addition of his email address and save in my drafts folder.” Until the day she accidentally sends one.

And then another. And another. What started as an accident becomes a purposeful action, telling her father’s old email account what is happening in her life. And then she receives a response.

She writes,

I shot the signals of my mourning into space for months, fully expecting them to die unreceived. And when I least expected it, someone sent signals back that said, “You are not the last living witness to the relationship you had with your father.” Our loved ones take so much history with them when they go. The death itself is never the only loss we’re mourning.

It’s really an incredible piece.

The perfect first line: “History is full of people who just didn’t.”

And then, “I like no. It’s sidewise to a reverse mantra (om). It’s stealthy, portable, and unslouching.”

Before I read that line, I though of action as better than inaction, doing as better than not doing. But so much can be accomplished — a louder statement sometimes made — when people refuse to participate. When we take a look at all the things we’re not doing and celebrate that inaction. To examine the negative spaces of our day and cheer ourselves on for protecting those inverse, quiet moments.

There is a lot of power in not doing.

So what are you not doing today?