The oversharing of vacation photos

So what's the secret to not giving shit?

 

I was born in 1970 and do not live in fear that someone might see a pic of me in the bathtub when I was a child.

 

You know what? I'm going to try to give you a good answer. It will be hard to explain, maybe, but I'll do my best. I hope it helps somebody.

Perspective is a big part of it.

I had and have led a fairly charmed life. Loving parents, solid childhood, lots of fun experiences and lucky breaks, great career, beautiful boys. So even the slightest slight felt like a wound to me. I could be seared by a mean shot on here or on Twitter. Someone might cut me off in traffic and I could be mad for hours. Then some seriously awful shit happened to me. Some of the people closest to me in the world betrayed me in significant ways. It's not pleasant, to go through something like that. But it really does put a mean Tweet in perspective. What the fuck was I thinking?

I'd like to think that people can get to that point without something awful happening—just by taking stock of the world around them. My brother sent me a picture today of his best friend's mum. We've known her most of our lives. She's dying of cancer, and she's in a hospital bed, frail, drugged, bald. She's chosen to end her life on Tuesday at 3 PM. Her family will gather around her and say goodbye, and then some buttons will be pressed, and she will be gone.

There is no point spending whatever time we have on Earth angry or fearful or jealous.

Or, to take a different kind of view, I often think of the universe. It's 13.75 billion years old. There are more stars than grains of sand on Earth. (Think about that. Look at a beach, a single beach, and think how many stars that is. And then think about how many of those stars have planets around them. Now think of every other beach, and sandbar, and desert. HOLY FUCKING SHIT.) Depending on what you need in that moment, you can tell yourself that nothing matters because life is too short, or nothing matters because the universe is so big.

I've said this before here, but I say "Mars has two moons" a lot. It's become a mantra to me. I picture Phobos and Deimos orbiting around Mars, and the long line at the bank doesn't really worry me anymore.

I don't want to sound like Oprah, but gratitude is also important.

When it comes to caring what strangers think of you, the other thing that almost always follows, if you feel judged or wronged in some way, are thoughts of revenge.

Thoughts of revenge do nothing to the person you want to hurt. Those thoughts only hurt you. Your intended target isn't thinking about you, or worried about you. They're living their life, probably unaware that you're mad, or, even if they do know, uncaring that you are. That's why they're assholes in the first place. So, you can either curl yourself up into a twisted little ball of hate, or you can let it go and live a good life. If you still need to think they should suffer in some way, trust me, life will take care of that, too. Everybody gets rung eventually.

Better yet, take that negative energy and turn it into a positive. For some people, that's exercise. Cardio can be huge. For me, I like to go walk on the beach (SO MANY FUCKING STARS) and pick up garbage. I'll do that for an hour, see a cleaner beach, the very tangible bags of trash that will now go to a landfill instead of into the lake, and feel much better about my world. I guess you have to find the thing that for you feels like meditation—maybe it's meditation?—that just allows you to breathe a little bit and release your shoulders.

It's not about never getting mad, or hurt. Those are very human emotions, and they can be helpful sometimes. They can be sustaining in the right circumstances. It's about recognizing when those emotions are hurting you or those around you. I have a temper, and it still gets ignited. But it takes a lot more than it used to for me to get angry, and when I do get angry, I can get rid of that anger more quickly.

Think about what changes or affects your actual life. These digital lives we're leading, they do nothing to change our realities. If you get your revenge on somebody, has it really changed anything about your world? If you impress someone, or wound someone, or make someone angry, has your universe changed in any good and measurable way? It has not.

What you can do to change your reality is to do kind, positive things for you and the people you love.

Perspective, taking a breath, turning that energy from a bad into a good.

Do all of those things, and I guarantee that you'll be happier. More content. More secure. And some night you'll be walking on a beach somewhere, or looking up at the stars, and you'll wonder why you ever gave the slightest shit about how many likes you got. I promise.

 

Maybe it's just if you were born in 1973.

 

I'm so old there's a Rubens of me in the tub out there somewhere.

 

Right.

But it’s addictive and so easy to get sucked into. It happened within 10 years and none of us realized it was happening.

And, look, I don’t begrudge engaging with people online. It’s really useful. The people in my everyday life I can debate Mississippi State’s end-of-game strategy last night are far and few between.

But I don’t need the guy in my high school chemistry class to validate me taking my kids to the Shedd Aquarium.

 

But his second-grade "graduation" will be posted, so all is good.

 

It is addictive, absolutely. It's literally designed to fuck with your head. So, you can either not use it, or try to be conscious of what it's doing to you and fight it. Use it, but be aware if it starts changing your real-life behaviour or how you feel about your real-life self.

I've had some good stuff happen lately, and trust me, part of me still wants to jump on Twitter to announce it, both to feel validated and to stick a fork in the eye of people who have talked shit about me over the years. But that's a terrible instinct. I should just be able to enjoy my success for what it is. And the kind words from people I know and care about should be more than enough.

Also being able to, like, buy food and provide for my kids.

 

I spend a fortune on books each year (and borrow many from the library), and I couldn't possibly care less that my favorite authors don't have a big social media presence. In fact, it probably helps, so I can't discover they are huge assholes (looking at you, Stuart Woods).

 

@typefitter's right.

Hard as it is, love everyone. Then you'll be OK.

The radiant missus and I travel a lot for work. A lot.

And never post anything to social media about it.

On Saturdays, though, if we're out having an adventure, we'll text a photo to the rest of the family, who are likewise out adventuring.

 

Good point there that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I like knowing my friends are at the Eiffel Tower or hundreds of feet below the Caribbean on a dive trip or that their daughter just won the state high school softball championship. Just not necessarily 50 times.