It’s Not Just Me

Hi there.

This will be my last post for a few weeks, for a couple reasons. On Wednesday, I’ll be going out of the country for a vacation with my extended family for about two weeks. Then upon return, I’ll be packing up for a move into the first home my wife and I have ever owned together.

While I’m sure to be writing and reflecting on a lot for some mental solace during all the tropical leisure and manual labor packed into this time, I know I’d have a hard time continuing to post online with everything going on, so I’m taking my space. All else I’ll say, for now, is how grateful I am for the challenge of posting here almost every weekday for the past year, and how I look forward to continuing to refine the format of this blog as this thing called Foraging for More continues to evolve and take shape. Thanks for being on this journey with me.

Now, a poem from a little under a month ago about striving for connection amidst an attention economy that often obscures the need for basic human connection by persuading us to prioritize countless other, usually paid, experiences. I’m also including a video reading of the poem before the text, for a change. If you appreciate this format, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel for similar updates.

I’m convinced it’s not just me:

                  Somewhere along the lines, we lost
                  the ability to connect with each other
                  instead of through the products we produce for each other
                  under copyright closed doors
                  until the products became dependencies 
                  and the people expendable
                  especially in times
                  when quarantining's commendable.
                                      
                                       "Why call my friends?
                                         They probably have as many meals, books, and movies
                                         to consume and produce on hold as me
                                         when they're not catching their breath in the race for money
                                         that necessitates its own spending
                                         buying cures for overwork and underexposure."
       
                  But there's something deeper
                  we've stumbled into backwards:
                  why we've become this scared of each other,
                  the sides of myself you unleash,
                  all the sex and deaths our touch leads to.

Life is the slowest release drug there is;
Ain't it a bitch when the best thing's also the hardest?