Good Source Material

Like a Mar-A-Lago bathroom, the internet is glutted with information. More than we could ever want. Not unlike the plethora of national secrets found in the Shitter In Chief's own powder room. No doubt, there are secrets we regular folk never thought we would have access to in earlier times, but in this day and age, all you need is a bowel movement at a cocktail party, and you might be the next one to possess your very own stolen blueprint of world-class nuclear armaments, or the top-secret military plans to invade a certain country, in case you're in the neighborhood. Just ask Trump's lawyers; they're sharing all the receipts.

In the resort's bathroom, perched over all the national secrets, you'll see a Costco toilet with a ‘soft close’ seat, eliminating annoying seat slamming, which I argue will pay for itself in peace and quiet. That is until it pinches Donald in the ass – just like his reckless behavior has.

If you don't have time for a Florida cocktail party and tacky watering closets, you can always take the toilet with you to the lavatory of your choice in the form of a smartphone and a login to any geek forum. With patience, you'll soon find that some low-ranking intelligence agent will leak enough state secrets to be dangerous if the former Commander in Chief doesn't beat him to it.

Rest assured; the internet is filled with grifters of all ranks from top to bottom peddling information for clout. If nothing else, they provide us with endless content to write about it. But, we'd be wise to remember they may just as well be a distraction.

But Donald's skidmarks are not what I want to talk about in this article. Forget about national secrets. Ever since the rise of social media newsfeeds, nary a thought has gone unexpressed. Even Victoria has more secrets than most Twitter addicts these days. What's worse, sometimes we think it's real life.

I want to talk for a moment about where good writing comes from and, as a byproduct, good reading. The digital age has brought much more information to our fingertips, including this very post. But between an information war in Europe and a misread Facebook comment, so much digital content is having an outsized impact on the way things go in what we call the meat space, formerly known as real life. No doubt, it's because we fall prey to our notifications, taking them to be representative of reality. And many writers are leveraging this fact to determine the content they create, writing for maximum impact on traffic when writing ought to be because something needs to be written.

I've always said, "You can make a lot of money as a used car salesman – but then you're a used car salesman." Such is the case for any hack whose priorities are clicks over quality. The now-defunct Buzzfeed's Pulitzer Prized reporting is not as famous as their pedaled listicles looking for eyeballs on ads rather than inviting you to discover something or think differently. A recent top story while writing this piece was a trash bin of 21 shocking things about the Duggars. A far cry from in-depth investigative journalism exposing human rights abuses against Muslims in China. Writing for search engines or decision engines is tempting because people like to be liked, but writing for writing's sake is much harder.

Sometimes when I write, I picture myself in a Karate chopping fight spree like a scene out of Kill Bill. For several moments, I’m swinging and kicking in what seems like overdone and mostly pointless moves until suddenly comes the big slice of the samurai sword. Bam! I hit you with the closing line, except it doesn’t kill you. It just sets you up for the next one.

Other times I'm just pounding my meat hands against an expensive collection of buttons, hoping something worthwhile comes out on the other side. But that’s what a slow news week will do to you. Or Covid Brain. Bourbon Brain can do the same to words, depending on which glass you're on. Usually, it helps with the first and hurts with the last.

Inevitably, I always rise from the ashes like all of us phoenix types do (if by phoenix you mean Phoenix University and ashes referring to the closest thing I have to a diploma). After a good week of wishing I had never published my last piece and wondering why all my attempts at writing produce content no better than the pages of Leviticus, suddenly, a new vision comes to mind. Finally, something worth writing, if only a single opening line. Inevitably it comes to me in the night when I am no less than an hour past my target bedtime, and I can't sleep – because if I do, I'll forget what I am writing in my head.

When writing feels dry, the best place to look is the social media newsfeed. So that you can feel even more depressed that you have nothing to say while you watch other people saying nothing for you.

Believe it or not, many journalists use social media for source material. But they shouldn't. Social media is no better look at the world than the view from hell. But hell is not a good place to get your news.

Recently I heard someone say, "I realized if I removed social media, I would spend much less time on my phone." I can relate. I have a complicated relationship with my phone. It's somewhat electric. We get on each other's nerves but can't keep our hands off each other.

With my first cellular back in 1998, I couldn't wait for it to ring so I could demonstrate my connectedness at all times. I'd look important and learn more about my insurance agent all at the same time. I'd take the call without fail, no matter what I'm in the midst of. While buying groceries, in waiting rooms at doctors' offices, at the library before Google replaced it, and really anywhere else. Invariably, at elevated volume.

Today, things are different. I like cauliflower just as much as the next guy, but I don't want my ears to look like one, so I won't hold a phone to my ear for more than fifteen seconds in case of an emergency. And I shouldn't have to. That's why God invented Airpods. I'll leave the phone-holding lifestyle to construction foremen and those who are happily stuck in the 2003s. Besides, I'm more of a 2-way pager kind of guy, except now my 2-way pager comes with a flashlight, a camera, and access to every song ever released commercially in the last 100 years.

The problem is my phone's singing voice is not as beautiful as it once was. Its song is more desperation than cantor. Desperate for my attention, begging for permission to hearken unto me even more. But I can't do it. I can't read one more notification akin to a razor taking shavings of lifespan away from me one bubble at a time, only to tell me more of the same; someone you know posted a picture. A recent tweet from x, from y, from z. Please, please read me.

I've got plenty to read. Most of it, more thoughtful, more interesting, more arresting. Some of it is topical, a thought piece here, a friend's missive there. Some of it is topographical, the body of water, the trees, and the hilly area where we watch the sunset. Some of the best reading, in my opinion, is reading the landscape.

When I write, I need good source material. And unlike many of the journalists who lived on Twitter and now are trying to find it elsewhere, I do not consider Twitter a reliable source. The world sounds like a terrible place through the lens of Twitter. It seems nothing but superficial through the window of Facebook and Instagram. I don't know what we're seeing through TikTok. But it all seems to leave us feeling weary. If your measure of the world is through that of a police radio, don't expect to find a planet you want to live on.

It's time to change your sources. So find a conversation. Maybe one or two of those conversations are in a digital space but with a person on the other side. But hopefully, in more of them, you find yourself looking him in the eye. Or belly up to a bar. But every now and then, stop. Take a break from it all and have a conversation alone, with the quiet, because for me, those are my best sources.