Face to Face

              I despise Tik Tok and reels more than corporate jobs and the 9 to 5. I would rather collide my Subaru head on with an oil tanker than spend a single day in a cubical. I can reach the entirety of mankind from the palm of my pathetic little hand, joy to the world! Record one video a day you say, one itsy bitsy video. It won’t kill you, and at least it’s not as bad as everyone’s crippling social media addiction that consumes the first hour (at least) of every single fucking morning. With all the skiing and mountaineering I do, I am told it would be a hit! I could make so much money! Engineering is also lucrative, and see how much I give a fuck? I would rather kill myself. So the lemmings have inherited the earth, after all. What would happen if I joined forces with the influencers? I’m now in my throne above all, crafted from the finest moon rock. I look down at the puny marble of life below. Distant memories of blue moraines and giant talus fields wet my cold cheeks. Water of the ocean streams from my eyes as I recall the life that flowed through the gentle estuaries of Scappoose Bay and the prehistoric sturgeons that would launch from the water like a submarine missile, displaying their mythical powers. My head presses into my hands to hide these beautiful visions from my lonesome eyes, but I only feel the soft touch of a lover who loved me as I was, long ago. I can never love again, not how it was.  

              You say that I am mountain man, thus the exception. I too am human, and while my friends know my bloody hatred for phones, I have not escaped the vacuum. The battle begins the instant my alarm is off. My phone pleads for attention, just check your emails it begs! Again, I fall for this sneaky little trick. Give a mouse a phone, and soon he has spent hours of his life on Instagram, reviewing his credit card statements and planning a trip to ski Siberia. This only ends with existential dread, I don’t even know if my bed has a right side anymore. I acknowledge this to be a weakness of mine, so I am taking small but sure steps to eradicate this behavior. My phone no longer sleeps next to me, and I allow my daily screen time to haunt my home screen. Slowly I dig my moat.  

              I am addicted, but unlike cocaine and alcohol, I can’t live without it. I frequently rely on Instagram to network, and the ability to manage my bank accounts and emails on the fly proves to be a powerful way to stay up to date and organized throughout the day. Lord knows what I would do without my calendar or Google maps. In the world of QR menus and instantaneous responses, you must step up or step down. I will never be able to escape this technology, no more than the Comanche was able to resist the rifle.

I will concede that I do not know my entire journey, as man never can but will not admit. Down the road I may have to break a few eggs in the name of marketing, and utilize the global scale offered by the internet. Until it is necessary, I have no desire to preemptively cave to social media. Right now, it dissociates and depresses me and offers no reward that is worth the price I pay. I learn face to face, place to place, but maybe the reward will tip the scale one day. Good god, I hope this will never be the case, but the future’s not ours to see. Now I take my own journey, and for a road map, all I have is heart.