Facebooked

I really meant to have a Wednesday post.

I thought that even if I am not blogging daily, I could still maybe do one sometime between Monday through Wednesday for non-music topics, then do a review on a Thursday or Friday. It would still have some correlation with my old system.

Then Wednesday was a shockingly terrible day.

I am not writing about that now. I am just glad it appears to have been an aberration, and not a plunge into a bad new normal. It did really throw things off, reminding me that I can plan all I want, but there are strong elements of unpredictability in my life.

I suppose it is a good lesson, because I have been frustrated with some entities that are reactive when they should be proactive, and whoops! Sometimes reactive is the best you can do.

Also, it is a reminder that I have limited time, especially in the way I use Facebook. That's what I want to write about.

I can't sit at my computer all day, which has a lot of good things about it. Even if I joined the 21st century and got internet on my phone, it would not be helpful to have my face glued to the phone all day.

In addition, I recently created a Facebook profile for my mother. Literally, I did it three days ago.

I did it to try and help her feel more connected. Once a day we log in and I show her things and we look down her feed. I'm not sure how much it will help, but it was something to try. So far she has found it kind of interesting.

It also means that even part of my time on Facebook is not for me. Since it is time that I am spending on her, I probably would not be on the computer then anyway. Her profile is not taking away from my personal time or computer time; that's just the disease.

(Although her profile has attracted some new people to me, which does relate to the next bit.)

It is hard keeping up with the news, though it is still important to me and I make it happen. It is still important to share.

It also remains important to me to not let uninformed replies stand. Some of you may be familiar with my bulldog-like tenacity in holding to points. It just may be hours before I see something now.

I know people are used to instantaneous response in this day and age. I cannot currently provide it.

There are some frustrations with that. I think the primary thing that may be noticeable is that I am going to be somewhat harsher. I used to work really hard to avoid the word "stupid". It can be incendiary, and it is hard to appeal to a person's better nature by insulting them. I know that, and I am nonetheless going to be holding back less.

You might think that I am putting so much patience into care-giving that I don't have any left for Fox News watchers, but that's not really it. It's more of a combination of seeing that they tend not to change their minds anyway. If the point of taking the long way around is to get them on your side, it's not a great point. If I can make them think, great. If I can only be frustrating, I will take that.

A friend of my sisters recently posted something that ultimately was saying that the votes of rural people should count more (it was electoral college-related). I don't think she really meant that; but all of these counties can't be wrong! The thing is, the data was also wildly inaccurate, and she specifically said she had checked the numbers.

Now, accurate numbers would still have given her the majority she intended, and I think it's worse that she didn't check the logic than that she didn't check the numbers, but still, she was lazy and lying and then got mad that every time she even tries to post something on Facebook people jump all over her. Except that most of her corrections were being pretty gentle. I get that it's not fun being called wrong, but surely it's better to learn from it than to stay wrong.

But they don't! That's why I'm not going to spend a lot of time coddling. I remember one long thread where one person finally accepted - after screen shots of federal regulations - that undocumented immigrants don't collect welfare. I don't think it changed her political mindset at all, and I would not be surprised if she ended up "forgetting" the one little fact she stopped fighting.

Here's the thing: "fake news" is an old strategy borrowed from the Russians, and the point isn't to discredit any one story, but to discredit all stories. When you are skeptical about everything and nothing can be known to be true, then nothing matters and no one is good. Well, some people get elevated to a weird kind of savior-status that I don't get at all, but most people are bad.

It's a lie. It's a bunch of lies, actually, and it all matters. There is real suffering going on, and there are people trying to do good things, and it all matters.

I care about it so much I should be arriving in a cloud car from Care-A-Lot. This is neither fun nor relaxing, but it's how I am and I don't regret that.

Unfortunately, stupid stuff may sit on my page for a few hours before I have a chance to get to it, but that leads to another really good thing. I have smart and caring friends that will sometimes school you when I don't have the time.

Thank you especially Kristen and Pauli. You know why.