Author: Jimmy Lem

Interact physically…I have a series of meetings scheduled for the coming week to see four separate groups/people.  All of these were set up via Facebook prior the fasting and three are supposed to happen on Saturday, the day after I break the fast.

And there is the reality – Facebook is primarily limited to being a means to arranging a physically meeting.  It’s not real interaction – it’s a “social substitute”…”attention methadone”…not too much different than smoking or overeating and with some dangerous and not so obvious connections.

Also, interact physically with myself – always being on Facebook means never truly being alone.  I don’t know how it works for other people but I have lots of evidence that leads me to believe that I need to recharge, to get grounded, to take all the confusing pieces that rush by during a normal day and piece them all back together in my own language.  Constantly trying to always be active in this false world does not allow me to do this but only serves to further confuse.

Since checking in at a hospital in Dec 2012 and until roughly this same time last year, I lost about 120 pounds…but since then I have stayed at roughly the same weight. Make no mistake that I am very happy about that. It’s very possible that I would not be alive to write this.

However, to be healthier and happier and probably live even longer, I should probably lose another 70-100 more pounds. Very hard to do. I’m not getting into all the mechanics but please know I am under medical care and have changed so much and have researched very meticulously – and I have decided that it starts in my head. Whatever happens in there translates into retaining.

Since I left the hospital I have posted my daily weight on Facebook and simultaneously kept a spreadsheet. It obviously helped – feedback was good and major milestones were – in my eyes – to be celebrated with my friends. People reached out to me to find out how and bonds were formed and strengthened. But eventually I stopped the spreadsheet. I think my focus shifted towards what everyone else was thinking – this type of behavior I believe contributed to my weight gain to begin with.

Today for the first time since I left the hospital I did not post my weight. And I may never do it the same way again. I also picked back up on my spreadsheet again and will reconstructed the missing time based on my FB history when I go back online. I will still share my weight upon request but I found that I need to see what happens if I focus on me first. That’s the experiment and I commit to the next year just like I committed to this past year of posting even if I wasn’t losing.

So I move from merely being alive to being happy…

Experiment three is to listen to music.    Without distraction, looking out the train window…I will allow myself to blog though…I’m not however posting on FB what I am listening to…I’m not googling for who plays what…not looking to be the expert…and especially not looking for valudating “likes” – this is about listening…thoughts come in of work, of being the expert and how little that has actually got me…how the whole thing, revealed as the mirage that it is, crumbles away.  When I get home I’m going to try to play one of these songs, but I might be too tired.

Today’s experiment was detached observance.  Sitting in a public place and observing without judgement.

I came to this by realizing somewhere between yesterday and today that as much as I wanted to read Thomas Pynchon’s V,  there were so many other books that I had not finished…and because I am not checking my FB account every five minutes, I opened the Kindle app on my phone and started to look for the Tao of Stress and picked up where I left off – at this exercise.  According to the book, to simplify one’s life one must first observe one’s self and it seems like the way into that is to just sit there and observe the rest of the world…and it seems to be true, my mind did open up…”flooded” is probably a better way to write it.  No, I did not have all the secrets of my universe revealed to me in ten simple minutes but you know I did get a shadow of an idea about how to change my LinkedIn profile…meaning that my work life is something I want to change.

I also was reminded of something I read the other day – “you can do anything but you can’t do everything.”  The first step today seems to be to accept the “flood” and then carefully consider what I want to do.

I’m on Facebook more than most people. I’ve made and lost friends there, rekindled long-lost friendships. Near the beginning of the year I decided that Facebook’s value may mainly be limited to both meeting up with and at the very least getting on the phone with people….and that there was something about the public “wall” dynamic that perhaps I did not like…and there was certainly something about a little red number telling me that I needed to respond in some way…that the little number in my email at work and my Facebook account containing some little slice of some of my nearest and dearest were merging…at this point maybe burned out, I launched this larger experiment at approximately 7PM Tuesday…to avoid FB until Friday AM – for about 50 hours.

So many other things that I wanted to do – reading Thomas Pynchon’s V, studying for an IT test, calling an old friend I had not seen since 1993 – so many thing fragmented and left on the side of a road – a road that only seemed to be about multitasking other people…when multitasking itself seems more and more a fiction of self-promotion and not an actual thing that can be done. …and then the deeper reality – my goals of health, career, love, happiness, art all may be affected as well.

Art – I originally came to FB to share my art, photos, music. What a terrible way to short-circuit my creativity by falling victim to being a feedback or attention sponge … These are very natural things to be sure but I believe that my growth as an artist and a human has been affected. I’m convinced that even this rambling post is a result of such distraction.

…and how can I multitask people…? I want to know them, love them…I’m not sure that there is an electronic substitute for what I’m calling “the eyebrow” – long knowing that I’ve hated long phone calls, now I also know that I need to see people’s eyebrows move to know and love them, for real. I love each and every one of my FB friends as much as is possible within that medium but it sure is a lonely world…what a lonely medium. I’ve lost touch with “the eyebrow.”

How can I avoid all the editing I’ve ever done in my head if I use a medium that allows me to perfectly edit my thoughts and send them? How can I grow? And how can I fully believe in what only amounts to edited slices of other people’s lives – is this worse than not knowing them on FB?

Experiment one today was to simply smile at everyone on the subway and while waiting at Penn Station – no one smiled back, many were on their phones – that’s all OK, I’m not trying to rack up numbers like so many Facebook friends…I’ll keep on trying.

I love my Facebook friends but I do hope that can understand that I need to do this for myself…and I do hope that if they really don’t notice that I can handle that too…