SLIDE TO POWER OFF

I'm reading a book. "Zen and the art of happiness." Five minutes into reading, I get three text messages. I respond to them. Ten minutes later a twitter notification. I acknowledge it and proceed to turn all my notifications off. 

The words in the book are literally melting off the page before my eyes. I have a very bad attention span. Once it's interrupted my mind will continue to wander. I'm very scattered brained. 

I put the book down and proceed to check everything. Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Emails, and I start to fuck around and never pick the book back up. Just like that my thirst for enlightenment has died for the night and I opt to watch Dragonball Super and Mr.Robot on my Macbook. 

My night ends at about 12:30am and I go to bed. 

I wake up at 7:05am. Time to go to work. 

Today I'm not feeling hearing or seeing anything. I slide to power off. 

Slide to power off is when you turn off your iphone. I don't know if it's the same for Android users so I felt to need to explain that. 

I won't lie. My hand was always on my left side ready to draw my Iphone out of my pocket as if I was cowboy in a western participating in a duel for my life. 

Every time I felt the urge to check my phone I forced myself to go do something outside of it. I had this strange withdrawal. It's like quitting a drug cold turkey. My mind and body is so dependent on my phone that I didn't know how to react without it. 

I get off work and I go write. As soon as I turn my phone on I see people texted me. I respond to them and I leave my phone in a chair in another room in my home. I continue to write and I went to bed around 2am. 

Friday. I feel so fucking different. My mind is clicking on all cylinders. My body feels like I ate a senzu bean. I feel real good. Mind, Body, and Soul. Today will be a great day. 

I go to my homie Mvstermind show at Delmar Hall. I'm standing in front of the stage initially with my phone out. Snapchat open. I look around at everyone else doing the same. I say to myself "Fuck this shit," and I go and sit down where I have a clear view of the stage and I slide to power off. 

I drank hella water and enjoyed the fuck out of my bro show and went straight home to brainstorm and write down some ideas for my writing. The weekend officially begins. 

It just felt so satisfying to not show everyone where I was at, what I was doing, and whether if I was having a good time or not. Only people who knew where I was the people at the event. I want to keep it that way. 

The whole weekend I did not give one flying fuck about my phone. My mind has never been this clear. It was such a rush for me. People still were texting me but I didn't care. I'm slowly moving away from texting also. Here's why.  

What has happened is that all small talk I've successfully avoided in person has made it's way to my text messages. It annoys the fuck out of me. 

I can tolerate it if the person lives thousands of miles away from me but if it's a person doing the shit where I live I'm not doing that shit no more. I'll only text for business purposes. 

Text messaging is for quick interactions and to set up face to face meets or dates. Starting now I swear to god if you don't get your point across in under 3 text messages I'm not responding anymore after the 4th text message you send. I'm not texting "just because" anymore.  

I'm forcing people to call me or meet up with me. I'm not about to sit around and text all day. Look at it from a dating aspect. People are seriously trying to get to know someone through text messaging. Anybody can type you anything. It's such a impersonal way to try and get to know someone. A stupid way also. There's no feeling. It's empty communication. 

When I don't text back in a timely manner I have to explain what I was doing and I'm sick of that shit. When I'm at home my attention is at it's worse because I'm either writing, reading, or watching something so my phone is face down somewhere in the house. Now I look like an asshole because everyone else lives revolves around texting so they think I'm ignoring them on purpose. 

Texting is getting the slide to power off treatment from me. 

Social media is a whole different beast. It's where I'm most conflicted. 

I have to use it for what I'm trying to accomplish. It makes the most sense. I just don't like the bullshit that comes with it. I don't like seeing people's opinions even if I agree with them. It's given hatred a safe room. It's easier to throw rocks and hide your hands because of social media.

The good thing about it is that I'm able to share what I create with everyone and share a laugh or two with people but in my best interest I think it's best that I focus more on the business side than the leisure side when it comes to social media.  

What really bothers me about social media overall is that nothing is genuine anymore. Love is not genuine on social media and not even hate is genuine anymore. It's the weirdest shit ever. 

For example. I can find Drake's Instagram account and type him "You a bitch ass nigga, your music is trash, and I hate you" and just press send. It's just that simple to send hate but is that really hate? Do I truly hate Drake? 

Am I sending him that just to get a rise out of him or to get attention from the people who are also commenting? What if Drake didn't have any social media? Would I even give a fuck about him? 

Hate was real before the social media and the internet period. Go back to the 80's. Tom Cruise was one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. If I wanted to hate on Tom Cruise I'd have to put some effort into my actions. 

Social Media wasn't alive back then so I would have to get a piece of paper, write out a hate letter, buy stamps, find out what address to send it to, and I won't even know if Tom Cruise got the hate letter. I just have to sit and hope he received it. It took actual work to hate. If I took time out my day to do all that then the hate is truly genuine.

Today a lot of hate we see on social media isn't genuine. It's just driven by the worlds most dangerous drug. Attention.  

The past 4 days have been so eye opening for me. I'm already a passionate man. My Slide to power off days have taken my passion and amplified it 100 times over. As a creator my passion is my fuel and I love that about myself. Just me having the potential to do something great and impactful with writing in my lifetime is so cool to me. 

When I slide to power off I think more and when I think more I tend to ask myself, 

What is my overall goal? 

What impact do I want to leave on this planet?

What do I truly want? 

I felt that my phone was starting to control my life. Slide to power off was a option I was blessed to have. 

Love, Benny available now.