Whatever Came to mind over 25 Minutes of rain sounds today.

I’ve been inactive on the internet for a while now. I think I crashed out of twitter in 2022 shorterly before Musk bought it and turned it into something truly toxic.

At the same time I stopped blogging, mostly stopped writing, and generally just gave up on my activism too. I’ve done the odd bit here and there, but it’s nothing like what I used to do.

My relationship with attention was way off. I was seeking a lot of it, I couldn’t give it to anything for more than a few seconds, and I just struggled to have periods of silence. I needed to have something to look at/listen to at all times but never really paid attention to it either. After nearly three years I’m still struggling.

Going off Twitter hasn’t fixed this.

Giving up blogging hasn’t fixed this.

Being less of an activist hasn’t fixed this.

It’s not uncommon for me to be watching TV and also consuming some form of media on my phone at the same time. I’ll have a brief moment of realisation that I’ve missed something important on the bigger of the two screens, rewind back whatever it is, and make a commitment to pay attention only to fail and realise I’ve missed it again. This cycle repeats a lot, until I eventually turn off the TV.

This happened most recently while trying to watch Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s TED talk on the very subject I’m now writing about. It was a good talk and confirmed what I think most folk already know.

The main thing that has occurred since I gave up sharing my voice on the internet is that I’ve felt more lonely, more isolated. I’ve never found socialising easy, and cutting out the social internet and blogging has only made it harder.

There’s also something about writing and publishing on the internet that scratches an itch for me. I don’t know if it’s attention that I’m craving or just an outlet for sharing my perspective on things, but I’m always drawn to it.

Give Me Coffee And Pizza is going to be a space for me to scratch that itch. While the themes of the old blog will undoubtedly come up, this isn’t going to be an active travel blog. It’s just a dude in his 30s shouting into the void and listening out for a yell back.

I’m off to potter about in the garden. Have a good weekend.