Media To Restore
The last couple of weeks I have been having a time. As I wrote about here.
There was a combination of things, some to do with nothing particularly and some to do with everything. I’m not trying to be vague, but you know how it is. Sometimes, it just feels like a mess.
In this state some decisions were made for me. There was no capacity for certain things and no energy for others. But one thing I did decide to do was strip right back to the basics when it came to the Media I was interacting with.
It started with eschewing Spotify for CDs and, even CDs for the radio. This took the pressure off deciding what to listen to and having any expectations around what came on. I have been listening to Triple J. Not everything is to my taste. But I don’t mind that because the whole thing is to let go of the control. So, I listen to the unpolished style of the announcers, I wait for songs to finish and become pleasantly connected to the community when I hear mentions of the ‘feature album’ of the week. It’s been very non-demanding and for that, I have been grateful.
I reread books by Maeve Binchy. The, now deceased, Irish author is like chicken soup for the soul to me. I know them well enough to not keep myself up reading all night, but it’s been enough time that I am still caught up in the story.
I am a magazine fiend, but the options just aren’t there like they used to be. After a special trip to Magnation I now have the writer’s issue of Fantastic Man (a relation of one of my forever favourites, The Gentlewoman). I just love print and the way people who work in magazines put things together, from the actual pages themselves to the photography and editorial. My sister then lent me GQ (the best dressed men issue) and I fell in love with the medium all over again. And then by some beautiful quirk of fate when I needed it the most, the latest issue of The Gentlewoman arrived, and it just made me so happy.
Anne Hathaway has been a salve to me these past couple of weeks. I watched Love & Other Drugs, for the first time and it was exactly what I needed. I laughed a lot and I sobbed. I like Anne Hathaway a lot. But I like how I don’t see her and then she is working and she’s around and looking amazing on press tours and then she disappears again. I like that. It’s refreshing and a nice reprieve from having people in our faces all the time. I also started We Crashed.
Speaking of not having people in your face all the time, I unintentionally took a break from Instagram. Possibly the most restorative thing I have done over the past week. I deleted it from my phone for the afternoon (I do this a lot, but this time I didn’t reload it) and just felt a pleasant separation. I must admit, I have been thinking about it quite a bit and often thought about putting it back on, but I figure everything is still there, or isn’t. People haven’t stopped talking to me, I still found out one of my nearest and dearest had a baby and I am still enjoying the internet. It was the break I didn’t know I needed.
Lastly, I organised the apps on my phone. The phone is interesting without Instagram. It serves a different purpose.
This restoration of sorts is still going. I am back at work this week so I will have to interact with certain media things out of obligation. My day will be at the mercy of my timetable and my afternoons will not be filled with YouTube. But at least I feel like I have taken enough of a step back, that I don’t feel so overwhelmed I can’t go forward.