I've been a pretty bad friend, colleague, and overall communicator. For a long time, particularly since the end of last year. I've posted here about doing "better," and I think I am, but in very specific ways. Other things have gotten more difficult; specifically, I have felt an uncharacteristic amount of shame around letting people down, and not being able to apologize or even reach out. I haven't talked to very many people since January; and it's not feeling any easier to reach out and repair my damaged and neglected friendships. I'm not sure why I can recognize it as a problem and yet not do anything directly about it. I'm already at maximum anxiety and discomfort most of the time; adding a phone call where I know I deserve to be chastised causes a peak and then slides away from me as impossible.
To one stupid end, I have fully blocked my access to social media. It's addicting and primarily destructive to me. If you need me, please email me, nick at this domain. Or text me, or better yet, call me; even if you want to yell at me, you can call me. It's easier for me to answer than to dial.
I can feel something unclenching, after just a few days without twitter. There is enormous guilt about not "keeping up" with the cavalcade of horrors, but I'm still reading the news; just less frequently, by way of rss subscriptions, which are significantly less-compelling by virtue of their length. Surely, on my deathbed, I will look back on the amount of time I spent fussing over the precise ways in which I want to be scoured by chaotic information as a shameful waste of finite materiality. Yet here, unfortunately, we are.