Dancing with irrevalency

Or disinterest. Not sure.

“Mom, come look at this, it’s hilarious.” Those words always exasperate me. First, because it’s usually not hilarious. Second, because I’m usually cutting up a chicken or something equally irritating to stop doing, and third because it’s often a video and I hate watching dopey videos.

“How long is it?” If the answer is anything longer than a minute forget it. These lunatics I live with often try to get me to watch seven minute long videos of things they think are hilarious. Nothing is that funny. I used to wonder who had the time to create these videos until I realized these young people were making huge amounts of money to do so.

Used to be you had to have talent to be in show biz.

I do watch videos, I subscribe to quite a few YouTube people but it’s always about doing something, learning something, some skill or knowledge I don’t possess but would like to. Sometimes it’s about travel. I enjoy travel so I watch travel videos but not very often. I also, often skip ahead, and I always skip the ads. Part of it is the attention span thing I wrote about a few days ago and part of it is that I’m not interested in staring at YouTube all day, which I am starting to feel is making me slightly irrelevant.

I dance around with that word a lot. How long before I’m irrelevant?

Not just YouTube, which is often a really useful thing. If your dryer breaks and you want to save some cash and fix it yourself, it’s on YouTube. If you want to plant bulbs in your garden, YouTube. Listen to a recording of Winston Churchill’s “We Will Never Surrender Speech”, YouTube. I think I use YouTube the way old people do, and I’m ok with that. Mostly. Sort of.

However, the social media/technology world is just filled with a whole bunch of stuff I could not care less about. I kind of have to be on Facebook for work but if I didn’t I would be so outta there. I find it toxic and pointless, where it used to be fun. Pinterest also used to be fun but is now so business driven it stresses me out. I used to look at it to get ideas about where to plant hydrangeas and what color to paint the bathroom and now it keeps trying to get me to sell my wares to people.

I don’t have any wares. I could never have wares because the idea of selling something just fills me with anxiety.

Now there are things like SnapChat (which is awful) BReal and Lemon8 (both of which seem pretty benign) and don’t get me started on TikTok, it’s diseased. I’m sure there are others I’ve never heard of all which leads me to the conclusion that I don’t care about any of it. It’s stressful and noisy and I hate it.

I do listen to a bunch of podcasts and I like to play solitaire to turn my brain of while waiting around for something, like getting the oil changed in the car. That is about the extent of my interaction with the phone. Oh, and I still like Instagram for looking at Irish cottages and villages in the Cotswolds.

All of the people who do care about such things, seem to be unhappy all the time. So much so that they seek out therapists, self care in the form of apps, retreats, alone time, and something called social wellness culture (I have no idea what that means) when really what they need is put down the phone and pick up and issue of British Country Living and brew a cup of tea. Maybe arrange a vase of tulips to look at. Go for a walk. Speak to an actual human being who lives in your neighborhood. Join club. Work for some higher good. Pray.

I find that this too makes me a little bit irrelevant. In addition to a few other things, not the least of which is being older and looking older.

When I posted about some post menopausal stuff last week I had a few ladies commented on Facebook about their own experiences and a few of them struck a chord with me. Some of the ladies felt that they were largely ignored, in their work lives, overlooked or just plain mouthed off at because they are “too old” to be taken seriously. First off, these ladies are my age, that is to say, late fifties. Not eighty. Not that eighty is too old to be taken seriously, I think sheer courtesy demand that everyone be treated with polite attention when they speak. Particularly in the case of a nurse, as was the case with one of the ladies in question. Late fifties is not too old be in the work force and be treated with the respect that your experience demands. My Irish temper would probably not cope well with any chit of a thing giving me lip at my job at this stage of my life. This situation would not end well, first for the chit and eventually for me, I see HR being involved.

I also look my age in that I have some spread, it’s less spread than it was a few months ago but there is spread. I fear this will always be the case. There is also a disturbing two wrinkles between my eyes, a little high up, and it’s getting worse because I don’t see as well as I used to and I squint more often. Oh yeah, I can’t see so I keep having to grab my glasses which I often misplace so be patient with me. I find that people are less patient with this than they should be and how this will this look when I am eighty I shudder to think.

I’m not particularly upset about looking my age. I have lived every minute of these years. I’ve been dealt some harsh blows and it shows. I’ve laughed long and hard and it shows. I’ve eaten a lot of bread and it shows. That’s ok. Life is meant to be lived and I’ve lived it and mostly loved it and it’s all left it’s mark. Those days when I’m not ok with it I use a charcoal mask and get a manicure. I will not be getting shots or anything like that because, first of all it’s just not me. It would not work. My one excursion into false eyelashes was a disaster of epic proportions so I can’t imagine what kind of ridiculous thing that would happen to me should I decide to spend a lot of money on face injections. I’m just not the sort of person things like that would work out. I’m a manicure and mask person.

I feel very fortunate to have the kind of job that doesn’t require me to be subjected to the impatience of the very young. Mostly it’s me and my laptop and often it’s me and my notebooks. I do a lot of my best thinking with a pen and paper. A bit of clutter on the desk or table, some books piled here, a few newspapers I’m meaning to catch up with, always a pile of mail, my planner with notes and thoughts and appointments. It’s the expression of the way my brain is processing these days. An overflowing file cabinet, neat at the core but slightly cluttered and in need of a bit of a clear up.

Technology is knocking on my editorial door though. AI technology could replace an editor, much more effectively than something like Grammarly. I’ve not been too impressed with the writing I’ve seen Chat GPT+ do, it’s pretty soulless but improvements may happen and out the door I could go.

Eh.

So irrelevant I may yet become. At least in the world outside my home. Here I am still very relevant, and really that is the most important thing in the world anyway.