Let's Talk About Something, Shall We?

Let's talk. Get your coffee, your tea, your sippy cup full of Bailey's that you think no one knows about, whatever. Just get your beverage and your ass into a chair and listen up. Put down your phone. We have to talk.

You know who you are. Don't look over your shoulder, dear. I'm looking at you. There is no one back there. Good? Good.

Stop posting shit on facebook. I mean it. Stop. You are on a hiatus.

For one month, just live your life. Go out, eat dinner, look at the person you are with. Talk to them. Enjoy the savory and the sweet and don't touch your phone. Keep your hands free to gesture while you talk, gently touch the hand of your loved one or stick your gum under the table. I don't care. But stop staring at the four inch screen that you think is better than the world. It is not.

Stop staring at the computer monitor. Yes, this one. This very one. Stop staring at it while lurking through other people's lives. Stop putting yours there. Because the truth is, Facebook and other social media sites are like a pair of glasses that don't belong to you. Sure, you can see through them. Maybe even better than your regular vision. But soon enough, they give you a headache. You are trying to see normally through a lens made to avoid just that. You are being fed certain pieces of someone's life and you are plucking out choice pieces of your own to offer up for slaughter comments. STOP.

This is your life. Right here and now. The feeling of your elbows on the too-hard desktop that you wish was a pillow. The tightness in your legs as you keep the laptop propped up in bed. The glow of the lamp you need to turn off to get any sleep. The feeling that you are being watched that makes your head tingle so you look up. Right into the eyes of someone who wants your attention. Give it to them. Even..... no ESPECIALLY if it is all you have to give. It is precious and rare and real and full. Like your life when you stop trying to live it through a carefully crafted narrative that you think makes you look better to people you never see.

Go.

Now.