What did I miss

Did you miss me? Just kidding. It's a rhetorical question. I know the answer.

I missed you too. What I didn’t miss was any of the social media I’ve been on a cleanse from for the last three weeks.

Alright, maybe I missed it a little.

But you'll be glad to hear I went against all my only child instincts, the ones that scream I can do what I want because the world revolves around me, and stayed strong. I didn’t cave to temptation. I kept my scrolling thumbs otherwise engaged with chores like typing, turning pages on actual books (I’ll never use an e-reader, don’t get me started) and of course the remote since I used some of my reclaimed time to binge The Sopranos, start The Rehearsal and finish the latest season of For All Mankind.

Now that I've tried this little experiment, I’ve learned I can live quite well without Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Having said that, there are events in the world I do want to comment on in real time. Like the can't-happen-fast-enough inevitable indictment of Cadet Bone Spurs.

So I’m moving on to what I like to call the second phase of my cleanse. Behavior modification.

While moderation and I have never made good roommates—Breaking Bad sixteen times, Springsteen over 70 times, The Godfather a gazillion times, the craps tables at the Venetian more times than I remember, Disney's Tower of Terror fourteen times in a row—I’m going to give it another go.

My new regimen, like brushing my teeth and walking the dogs, will be twice a day. Once in the morning, and again in the early evening, a few hours before bedtime to make sure I'm still not seeing the iPhone screen on the inside of my eyelids when I close my eyes to hitch a ride to dreamland (another thing I can use my thumbs for).

I’ll also be challenging myself to limit my two daily scrolls to fifteen minutes each, which to my new way of thinking gives me more than enough time to read through new posts, wish everyone happy birthday and anniversary, reply to all with the clever snark, razor-sharp wit, keen insight and borrowed memes you’ve come to expect from me. Then I'll sign off.

That’s right. To make it just a little less appealing, I'll be logging in and out each and every time I go online. No point in leaving the apps open and tempting temptation.

And if I'm bored during the hours in between—say waiting in a doctor's office, standing in line or wondering why curbside service is taking so damn long to bring my burger out to the car—I'll just find something else to occupy my time.

So it's official. Starting today, I’m back baby. Go ahead, hit the smiley emoji, read the hashtags and AMA.

Thumbs down

A lot of people have been asking how my social media cleanse is going. At least I think they have. I can’t go online so I don’t actually know.

I’ve been at it, or not at it, for five days now and I have to say it’s going pretty well. But it’s a lot harder than I thought it’d be.

Clearly I was much more addicted to making snarky comments, pithy observations, endless and endlessly deserved Cadet Bone Spurs bashing, posting Tweets I thought were funny, clever memes, pictures of Ace and Lucy (world's greatest dogs), being the first to break news about recently departed public figures and celebrities, and racking up the likes than I thought I was.

It is nice to give the old scrolling thumb a rest. It’s also nice to reclaim time in the mornings and evenings to make a dent on that stack of new books piling up on my nightstand, continue bingeing The Sopranos and getting to bed earlier so there’s more night to wake up in the middle of.

At least now when I’m up in the night I’m not reaching for the phone.

The other frustrating thing is, to paraphrase Steve McCroskey, it looks like I picked the wrong week to quit social media.

What with the search at Mar-A-Lago, Cadet Bone Spurs taking the fifth over four-hundred times in his New York trial, Republicans losing what little was left of their conspiracy-theorin', propaganda-believin', election-denyin', Nazi-lovin', cult-joinin' minds over everything even more than usual, I can only imagine the cleverness, wit and belly laughs I'd be contributing as well as appreciating on social media right now.

I did make a minor modification in my program. Originally I was going to delete the social media apps from my phone. But I've discovered it's easier to reload the apps than it is to log back on once I've logged out. So the apps remain, but I'm logged out of all of them. And honestly, with my fat fingers and bad eyesight, logging in is much more of a challenge than I'm looking for right now.

Of course I am getting a low level thrill from the fact that, as promised, I’ll at least get to do a quick breaking and entering to put up my Rotation and Balance posts. Don’t worry, there’ll be no cheating.

Log in. Post. Log out. No one gets hurt. I won't even stick around or check back to see if anyone gives me any likes.

At least there’s light at the end of the tunnel. This trial run is only going to be somewhere between three weeks and a month, and then I’ll reassess my scrolling ways.

Like losing weight, exercising more and paying for an upcoming wedding, I’m sure this will get easier.

On second thought, those might not be the best examples.

Reclaiming my time

If you know anything about me, and if you don’t by now you have no one but yourself to blame, you know that for the most part, in life and online, I'm a social butterfly. I comment, I post, I joke, I engage.

What I also do is scroll, sometimes doomscroll, first thing when I get up and last thing before I go to bed. If I'm up in the middle of the night—did I say if? I meant when—I also take a look at what I might’ve missed since I went to bed.

I’ve spent too many hours, way too many hours, going down a YouTube rabbit hole. And even though I’ve now seen every version in existence of Springsteen singing Twist & Shout, all the Breaking Bad and Friends blooper reels and discovered some of my favorite artists I wouldn’t have known about otherwise (Paul Thorn, John Moreland), I’m not getting those hours back.

So I’m reclaiming my time. I’m going on a social media cleanse for a bit, and see if I can’t put that reclaimed time to better use. SPOILER ALERT: I know I can.

I have close friends who've found themselves in Facebook jail for thirty days, and at first it sounded awful. But right now, honestly, no Facebook for thirty days sounds like heaven.

My friend and great writer Kathy Hepinstall, who's probably written another book in the time it's taken you to read this sentence, signed off of Facebook for good awhile ago. I didn't get it then, but now I recognize that, as usual, she was ahead of her time.

The first step will be to delete the Facebook, Messenger, Twitter and Instagram apps from my phone. I'm all about easy, but if I want back on I'm going to make myself work for it. And I'm not looking for more work.

As much as I'd like it to be, it won’t be an entirely cold turkey withdrawal. I'll still post the occasional link to my Rotation and Balance blogpost, but only because my seven readers demand it. What I won't do is sneak back on to see how many people liked it, cause seriously, where's the percentage in that?

Because I do what I do for a living, I’m expected to maintain a certain level of social media awareness. So occasionally I'll look but not comment. I’ll be stealthy, ninja-like and silent—just like you wish I was in real life.

You won’t even know I’m there. And I won’t be unless my job absolutely requires me to take a look.

I realize this is going to put a big dent in my wishing you a happy birthday/happy anniversary game, but it's the price I'll have to pay. And just to make sure I don't miss yours, happy birthday and happy anniversary in advance.

One of my best friends since elementary school has never been on Facebook. Never had an account, never logged on. I asked him about it one time, and he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be your friend in real life.”

So, if you need to get hold of me, you can always text or email. We can even set up a time to have a meal, face-to-face. I realize you'll have to change out of pajamas to meet me, but that's just the price of being my friend.

Anyway, not a total goodbye to social media, just so long for now.

And of course, like a wise man once told me, I'll still be your friend in real life.

The long goodbye

Yesterday was a very good day. At twelve minutes before noon eastern, you could actually feel the country—nay, the world—breathe a sigh of relief we’d been holding in for over four years.

In case you’ve been living under a rock,—in which case there’s a better than average chance you might be a Trump cabinet member—the reason is because decency, compassion, intelligence, experience, diplomacy, scientists, grownups and words spelled correctly are once again calling the White House home.

There were also a lot of predictable songs being played, quoted and sung to celebrate the occasion—all taking aim at a certain orange-faced, tiny-handed, democracy-hating, Stay Puft, unstable genius who was leaving on a jet plane (at taxpayer’s expense) for the last time.

Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead.

Goodbye To You.

Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye.

Good Riddance. Not the Green Day song: I’m saying good riddance.

And I’m filing this one under better late than never, but almost all the social platforms that gave Cadet Bone Spurs a megaphone to spew his bile and idiocy finally decided to cut off his oxygen by banning him and his hate rhetoric. This isn’t to say he’ll be gone from the public eye entirely, what with that pesky impeachment trial and New York state indictments coming down the pike, but his exposure—at least to the public—has been greatly sidelined.

I’m sure his fragile ego and malignant narcissism are handling it just fine.

Anyway, like almost everyone in the world not wearing a red hat, I’ve had more than enough of him. I refuse to give him anymore mind space.

So as of today, I’m announcing my candidacy for….wait…that’s not it. Oh, right. I’m announcing I’m done posting memes, retweets, cartoons, articles and anything else talking about Trump, even if it’s how awful he is, to any of my social feeds.

Yeah I know. I’m sorry to see them go too.

But really, it’s just redundant. It’s like saying the sky is blue. The ocean is deep. Trump is a festering piece of shit.

Damn it! Old habits die hard. Sorry (not sorry).

Fear not, I’ll still be putting up political posts, maybe even about his grifter family members or android son-in-law. Just no more directly about him. Every time his name gets mentioned, it keeps him in the public conversation and a kitten dies. I don’t think any of us want that.

Besides, there’s a whole new administration to make fun of, although I’m sure for the most part it’ll be the good-hearted, good-natured kind.

And don’t you worry about me backsliding on my promise. It’s as solid as the new year’s resolution I made to lose weight.

For the last twenty years.

My high school girlfriend

If you know me, or follow this blog regularly—and if you do someone really should show you what a library looks like—you know once I get hold of a joke I like I hang on tight and ride it straight into the ground.

Now normally, after that last sentence, I'd follow it up with "Just like my high school girlfriend." It's my version of “That’s what she said” —an easy joke I've used numerous times in more posts than I can count. And I'm sure more posts than you wanted.

The good news is I'll be retiring that joke for awhile. The bad news is the reason why.

Yesterday I happened to be thinking about my actual high school girlfriend Sandy. She was never the one I referred to in the joke. In fact I never had a specific person in mind—it was just a funny line I could use over and over. And over.

Anyway, when I went to the Google to look up Sandy, what came up wasn't her Facebook profile or her Twitter account. The first thing I saw was her obituary. Turns out she passed away unexpectedly back in October. And even though I hadn't spoken with her in decades, it was still a gut punch that hit me like a ton of bricks.

I remember a few years after we broke up, we wound up getting together for a mini-reunion to catch up with each other's lives. What I found out was that Sandy had a very tough go of it in the years since I'd seen her. She'd had problems with drugs, which I knew she'd dabbled with in high school. She'd gotten married, but her husband was in prison for armed robbery, caught by undercover cops in the middle of a drug deal. And, while she was trying to figure her life out, she was back working at the same dead end data entry job for a car leasing company she'd had in high school.

According to the obituary, she moved to Florida in 2006, and had been working in the mortgage industry for Bank of America. Apparently she was a fairly high-ranking banking officer there. She’d also become a hardcore animal rights activist, and had eight dogs, a snake and an iguana—all of them rescues.

It was nice to read that in the years in between, Sandy seemed to have turned her life around and become an accomplished professional. I hope she was a happy one.

So again, I'm retiring the "high school girlfriend" joke for awhile. While it was never about her, now I can’t say it without thinking of her, even though I know she'd appreciate it. Hey, funny then, funny now.

Besides, that line's not the real joke. The real joke is thinking people who were once special to you will always be around. The punchline is they won't.

God bless you Sandy. You meant the world to me and you'll be in my heart forever. Rest in peace.

How low can you go

In the limbo dance (I'll pause while you all hear "Leembo Leembo Leembo" in your head), the goal is to see how low you can set the bar before you decide you can't go any lower.

Sound familiar?

In advertising unfortunately this is a dance you get invited to on a daily basis. It comes at you from all directions: Client. Budget. Holding companies. People on your own team. And if you say no to the invite, then suddenly you're not a "team player" (as if I ever was), and pegged as difficult, which I may have been called once or twice. Today.

Most creatives I know would wear that label as a badge of honor. We'd all rather fail with quality than succeed with garbage. But it's easy to see just by grabbing the clicker and turning on the TV or radio, opening a magazine or going to a website, that it's not a landscape that supports that point of view very often.

It's not a state secret that in this world of reduced budgets, no AOR/project-based clients and the amount of money being spent on 360 campaigns for everything from running shoes to laundry detergent (how're those Twitter and Facebook engagement numbers for Tide working out?), agencies operate much more fearfully than they ever have.

So I just want to take this opportunity to raise a glass and say thank you to my fellow creatives, creative directors and everyone who keeps pushing to make the work better, tirelessly fighting the powers working against them and managing to turn out work that's as creative, interesting and inspiring as it is results-getting.

Also, thanks for leaving your dancing shoes at home.

Trick of the trade

Freelancing at ad agencies, or anyplace for that matter, there are commonplace, everyday things I, like most people, have to tend to.

Check email. Answer said email. Check bank balances. Go on Facebook, Twitter and Instgram and tell people I'm working on a social assignment (I kid because I love). Perhaps, hypothetically, respond to a request for other freelance.

The problem is to do those things, I have to go through the agency server to connect to the interwebs. And then, the agency has the password to my bank account, and can read that email I got from the Head Of The China Treasury, who has a charitable donation of $35,000,000 only I can be trusted with (it was easy - all they wanted was my bank account and social security number. The transfer will be here any day now).

Many people far less paranoid than I am just shrug their shoulders, use the servers and surrender a certain amount of privacy for a nice day rate.

So what's a guy who loves his day rate and his privacy to do? Glad you asked.

You pick up one of these little gizmos.

This is my own personal wi-fi hotspot. About the size of a credit card, half as thick as an iPad and password protected, I connect to it and suddenly I can do all my personal business from my computer without the prying eyes of the IT guy, who really should be more worried about getting me that mouse I asked for three weeks ago.

Now, I could've used my smartphone as a hotspot, but then I'd have had to change my plan. And since I've been on AT&T with unlimited data plan since my first iPhone, I wasn't going to do anything to jeopardize that deal.

This device, cleverly called My Go Phone, lets me buy either 2G, 5G or 8G of data a month. I chose the 8G - it's seventy-five tax deductible dollars a month and worth every penny.

So if you have a personal email, a financial matter, or—hypothetically—a job offer you'd like to discuss with me, feel free to email me. Thanks to this snappy bit of technology, it'll just be between us.

Until Mike in Digital Experience hacks it.

Friendscaping

A couple years ago I was talking to Jeff Nicosia, a writer friend about Facebook. I mentioned I had way too many friends on there - the majority of them weren't even in the inner circle - and I was thinking about thinning the herd. To which he replied, “Never underestimate the value of a little friendscaping.” Good advice. And not just on social media.

The longer I'm on these sites, the more I wonder why I got on them in the first place. However one benefit is I can actually control who sees what I post and who I interact with.

Naturally I want as many people as possible to see my funny, snarky remarks, and click on the links I post to this blog and get the word out. And I'll be the first to admit, even if you're not, that when I go on an obsessive/compulsive tear about the Kardashians, or live Tweet the Academy Awards, it's a funny read. You know it is.

It's the kind of quality writing that's attracted over 24 followers to this blog.

The truth is I don’t want it enough to carry the deadweight of people I haven't heard from in a year or two. Also, I've grown weary of seeing the same predictable comments and memes I disagree with get posted to my timeline or Twitter feed from people who have no other contact with me. I've put up with their posts just like they've put up with mine. But my patience for all this unearned reciprocity is thinning.

It may be the only thing about me that is.

Some friends, make that acquaintances, think social media is a big contest to get as many contacts/friends as they can. It's alright, they're entitled to think what they want. I'm not going to judge them. I won’t call them needy. And desperate for attention. I won’t do it.

So today, I’m taking Nicosia's advice and doing some long overdue friendscaping. Which means tomorrow, I’ll have a fewer number of friends online.

But the ones that're left will know they mean more to me than just a larger tally.

Light at the end of the day

I hope you're sitting down. I don't know how to break this to you, but my Jedi instincts tell me the best way is to just come right out and say it: there are a lot of babies and whiners on the internet.

I know, I'm as shocked as you are. Shocked.

If you've been on Facebook or Twitter in the last couple days, like me you've probably noticed an ungodly amount of posts talking about how much people hate daylight savings time. How they just. don't. understand. why we have to change the clocks at all. How they're soooooo tired because they lose one hour in 24 out of one day in 365.

I'd like to promise all of you complaining about it that this is not the worst thing that will ever happen in your life. Trust me.

As you might've guessed, I happen to be a big supporter of DST. And I can't even begin to understand why everyone else isn't. There are so many more reasons to like it than not.

Let's start at the wallet. The fact it's light until almost 9 means electric bills go down. Way down for at least six months. Who's against that? Whiners? Anyone?

Next, the hideous commute I'm up against every night seems to get a little easier, because for some odd reason drivers are able to navigate better when they can actually see the road and what's around them. Body shops don't do as well during DST, but they make it up when we Fall Back.

Finally, and this may just be me, but I seem to have more energy. The longer it's light out, the longer I think it's not time to settle in for the night. I'm out and about longer getting more done. Not just more of what I have to do, but more of what I want to do.

So for all the whiners out there bitching and moaning about switching All The Clocks In The House! ahead and losing your precious hour, I say this with love: just shut up.

You'll get your hour back in November.

Look at it this way. Now that the day's longer, you'll have more time to think of something else to complain about.