You Don't Have Mail

The number of times I unlock and glare at a backlit screen throughout the day bothers me.

Ellen Cushing, who writes for The Atlantic published a January 2025 story that says: Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time that Americans spent attending or hosting a social event declined by 50 percent. Almost every age group cut their party time in half in the last two decades. For young people, the decline was even worse. Last year, Americans aged 15-to-24 spent 70 percent less time attending or hosting parties than they did in 2003.

A 48-year-old pal of mine manages a half dozen people half her age. A couple of weeks ago, she told me she was sad for them because they work primarily to keep the roof over their heads. When she asks them their plans for the evening or the weekend, they tell her, “nothing” – no tickets to hear music, no getaways, no social gathering because it all costs money they don’t have.

I understand that I can make decisions, and I have free will like most of us, but the truth is that I'm now over a decade into having a computer the size of a small wallet on my person, 18 hours a day and I don't have to lecture you on how diminishing this can be in the overall quality of life–

Because we are never allowed to get bored anymore. Remember when we used to get bored and we would have to search and maybe create something to entertain us?

This happened all the time when we were kids because mothers sent us to the streets. No negotiation allowed, and so there you are sitting on a concrete curb with your siblings whom you are weary of and with the other street urchins of whom you were also sick and tired of (as they were of me).

This isn’t about waxing nostalgic, but the truth is that we’d get on a bicycle and head out somewhere, or nowhere, just anywhere and we’d end up in a creek, and there were crawdads, and then there was a scary man and you squealed, and you ran away and then you found a dime on the sidewalk and then everybody fought over what you were going to get at Dairy Queen and you had to share it with the six other kids hanging around so maybe you’d get one bite.

Or you went to the free swimming pool because there’s a day if there ever was a day, a fun and exhausting day even if you crashed your skull on the concrete bottom or scraped your legs on the ladder with no rubber on the steps.

But you got to know those you were with and most important, you got to know yourself.

When is the last time you went to a play or to a live music performance? When is the last time you were outside just looking at the trees or the rabbits, or there's a neighbor you haven’t seen in six months and you strike up a conversation and suddenly 30 minutes have gone by, and you learned that that neighbor once won a bread baking contest and that they greatly admire your garden daily.

My screens give me none of that, yet I log on, tune in, emotionally and psychologically will myself over to said screens and life’s swiftly slipping by and I don’t even notice.

I fantasize regularly this scenario: We all decide that, one month out of the year, we shut down the internet and there's no instant anything. You can't buy anything. You can't scroll and see a certain politician whose name, should you never see it again, makes you feel better.

I let multiple headlines every single day slam into my brain like the torture it is.

I attended a drag show recently and enjoyed Sunday brunch with a friend.

The heart and talent and extensions to me of themselves is energizing, delightful, inspiring and simply fun. They invest real effort and create something. I am the audience they deliver it to.

We are so much richer and happier, and I’ve not laughed like that in a minute. So I’m determined to not let backlit screens and the very important news I believe my emails contain take my heart or my soul.

Yes, we have free will and yes, technology is wonderful. The internet is a thing few of us could imagine 50 years ago and I don’t want it to go away.

I just want to laugh until my eyes water again. And I want to discover something about another human I never knew. I want to try to lift 8-pound weights this week with my trainer rather than the 5 pounds I’ve mastered.

And so, I step away from the screen. You know. The very screen you are now reading. 😊

Try to Be Nice

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