An Inside Joke

Before deactivating my Facebook account, I posted a photo of Rainer Werner Fassbinder as my profile picture. The New German Cinema was in vogue in Iowa City during the early 1980s. I saw more than 20 films by Fassbinder during a two-year period. He died on June 10, 1982, of a drug overdose/suicide. The joke was that as prolific as I was on social media, as Fassbinder was in film, I ended my own Facebook life by deactivating it, partly because I felt addicted to it. I suspect no one got the joke.

The changes in my social media use mentioned in yesterday’s post have had an immediate effect. Maybe not exactly cause-effect, but since I removed social media from mobile, I have been sleeping more soundly and more hours of it. I reduced mobile device screen time by half yesterday, to about three hours. I seem to be getting back to having seven or eight hours of sleep in a night. While that takes time from doing things I love, it is likely good for my health. Other positive changes seem to be happening.

It took a while this year, yet I am deep into revision of my current book. I had 63,000 words on January 1, yet the whole thing needs restructuring. I spent part of yesterday working on a new outline. It’s not finished. Having written the first book, I learned a lot about how to create a readable narrative. I plan to apply those skills as the major re-write begins. I will start with a solid outline and then, from the beginning, rewrite each chapter as if it were a stand-alone piece. The main epiphany is I need to focus on a smaller set of narratives. I’m thinking 25-30 stories. My whole life won’t fit, and there is no reason for it to do so. It’s not like I’m Robert Caro writing the biography of LBJ.

Yesterday one of my shoes wore out while I was walking on the state park trail. Water began to seep through the hole in the sole and by the time I finished 30 minutes of walking, my left foot was drenched. When I got home, I tossed the shoes in the trash and dried my feet. I made a note to buy a better pair of walking shoes soon.

There are a lot of moving pieces today. Having more rest and a new pair of walking shoes seems like a necessity. Also humor can help if people get the jokes.