Look at me I’m wonderful

by Rick Johansen

A trip through my Facebook memories reveals a social media past that today I abhor in others. Pure showing off, latent exhibitionism; “oh, look at me, isn’t my life great?” and all the rest of it. At this point, I should explain that these are the words of a rambling clinical depressive. They always are and because of that condition, my diagnosed ADHD and undiagnosed Christ knows what else, there’s often a degree of irrationality to what I write. You already know that. Why do I abhor who I used to be on social media? Because I still don’t like – hate, is not too strong a word – who I am and have always been. And so today, away for a birthday weekend in York, there will be no mass photo dumps or gurning selfies. If I can’t stand my boat race, why should you?

In recent years, since I started to rail against photo dumps and the like, I made what was an unconscious but it turns out correct decision to attempt to draw pictures with words, rather than always taking the easy option, for me, of just posting photos. I am not sure that I can, if truth be told, but it is the effort to do so that drives me on, provides me with a reason to carry on. As Donald Fagen so accurately put it, “You can’t fight the fella in the Brite Nightgown” so it’s best to treat every day as if it’s your last and every time I settle down in front of the computer screen, an empty page in front of me, I sit there with that in mind.

It’s important to add that there is nothing wrong with gurning selfies and photo dumps. It’s me who doesn’t like them and that’s not a right and wrong thing. I just see it as the on-line equivalent of taking an enormous photo album (ask your parents, kids) down the pub and showing every page people you barely know. Because that’s what social media in general and Facebook in particular really is. Where you are friends with people who are often no really your friends at all. The way my mind works, or perhaps doesn’t work properly, is that I think it’s a bit mad. In reality, it’s just a bit mad in my eyes.

Don’t think you will escape photos of bits of York, though. I will probably use some photos on Facebook if they are particularly interesting to me and I feel they may be interesting for some of you. Today’s trip to the National Anorak … sorry … Railway Museum will be a case in point. Who doesn’t want to look at a picture of the prototype Deltic? Selfies? Hell, no. I’ll leave that for those of you who look in the mirror and love what they see. That is something I never see in myself.

So happy birthday to me. The sun is shining brightly over this beautiful city and now I’m off to enjoy it. If you’re good, I’ll describe some of it to you later.

Toodle-pip (I’ve never written that before. That’s what I love about writing).

 

 

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