The new normal

My wife is working from home until further notice and has a bit of a flu. I am working from home as well, because our daughter is home from daycare and she can't go to her grandparents, for obvious reasons. This makes working more difficult than normal - The new normal.

Well, luckily crypto is holding up well under the economic pressure… oh, I should have refreshed the page.

While not elderly, I am actually in a high-risk group to be heavily affected by a virus of this kind due to the treatment I have for my stomach disorder, as it heavily suppresses immune response. For peace of mind, I made sure that my life insurance was in order last week so that at least if death comes a knocking, my wife will get some kind of cash payout that will cover a portion of the house we have just bought until she can work out what to do.

Crypto was part of the insurance policy I have set up too, but at current prices, it doesn't really put much of a dent in things at the moment. However, who knows in the future if it will be able to bring some security after my untimely demise. I think some people fear thinking about their own death, but for me, it brings some comfort. I don't really fear death though, nor what comes after as I think that it is highly unlikely that there is any after at all. The comfort comes in being mentally prepared, if not physically.

What I am glad about at the moment though is that when I can't concentrate on work, I have the ability to write a little bit for Steem. I used to write a lot more than I do, but over the last year and a half, life has got in the way and I have slowed down a bit. However, with the feeds drying up and a lot of content quality reduction as people say "fuck it, this is the new normal", I figure, Why not?

Why not post decent content? It seems to me that while so many people are locked in doors and social interaction in the real world is being put on hiatus, it is the perfect time to think, write and engage. Try something new perhaps, write in a genre or about a topic untried before. I remember back in 2017 when I started writing fiction in short stories for the first time, then poetry on top. It was kind of scary to put them out there, but also liberating.

We tend to spend far too much time where we are already skilled, already comfortable and then we wonder why we feel so much discomfort when things change - when the new normal arrives. If we are in a constant state of intentional change and always on our toes on purpose, our ability to not get caught on the backfoot increases, and we can react in what is hopefully a cleaner and leaner way.

One of the benefits of Steem for me is that it allows me to have time in my own mind thinking about the areas I choose, rather than be continually directed by the external forces. Yes, I often choose Steem related areas, as that is where my interest s lay, but they are definitely not the areas that I am the most comfortable with from a technical level. Also, there is a social charge to the areas as so many people have differing opinions and very little self-control to be part of the discussion without emotions taking hold of them. This can raise the reactive stakes quite a bit.

"Emotional Stake" should be one of the indicators on Steem, as it seems to be an independent and controlling force, regardless of one's actual Steem Power. It is interesting to observe how emotional people get over what would even in their area, be insignificant amounts. I count this as a positive for Steem, that people get so emotionally invested they can't control themselves. Though - that is the "internet normal" we have created, a space for people to voice all their displeasures and be their worst.

Have you ever considered what is the best of the internet? When you spend your time participating in discussions online, are they normally in the positive or the negative? I wonder what that tells about our individual consumption habits. For me, I think I spend more time in the neutral zones of conversation, as I am aware of the dangers of polarization of views, as groups that polarize close off discourse and create echo chambers, that can then be hijacked and weaponized.

Yet, it is interesting to think about what we consume online across the social platforms. Perhaps on Facebook where there are friends and the algorithms look to support our thinking, we end up consuming more light-hearted positive. Maybe Instagram does similar, and then drives images that we have searched out in the past. Twitter might take the other route and give us a more negative view of the world however, as the polarization increases engagement and Time on Site metrics.

Steem?

Well for me it is generally consumption through my feed either directly or through what those I follow share. I am not much of a searcher for content unless I have a specific question in mind I am trying to answer, which is why I do not spend hours watching YouTube videos that add nothing to my life needs. What I do find though when reading some of the content is how narrow some people's view of the Steem world is, where they take one tiny metric that becomes their whole view of the platform - for example, price. Price is down, things suck. Price is steady, Justin Sun is awesome. Price is a terrible indicator of a project - market cap is worse.

But it is funny when people create content that they themselves wouldn't consume given the opportunity. I find that a lot of the automated content goes into this bracket, as there is very little to engage with, very little of interest. People are interesting - I want to hear about people, their lives, their challenges, their triumphs. I want content that tells of people, that gives me answers to questions I have not yet thought of asking but will improve my life by considering. I want to hear the observations from real experience and real life. Yet - too many think that all that means is to talk about how they feel about something at any given moment.

Feelings come and go like clouds in the sky, yet people act as if they are constants. Because of this, they react and produce based on their feelings of the moment without thinking about whether they will feel the same 10 minutes, or ten days later. We all react badly at times, but some seem to have that as their default setting.

As said, I think about death quite a lot and if given the chance to look back at my life, I want to be able to say that I couldn't control much of what happened to me, but at least on average, I have no regrets in the way I reacted to them. I don't want to look back at me kicking and screaming and trivialities and insignificancies. This is the same for my Steem content, as while I know that I have my ups and downs, I don't want it to look like the market graphs.

But that is me, you have your own normal, but I think we should all consider from time to time at least, whether we need a new normal.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]