by Diane Tate

May I have some opiods to chase my dopamine, please?

My highly social nature + my incessant need to uncover truth has traditionally been a source of pride, enabling me to be a journalist, sleuth and master of no trade (aka “generalist”).

But pride cometh before the fall: thanks to current networking technology, I can now feed my social and search beasts at alarming rates. It started slowly with email….escalated with Facebook….and was fueled to whole new levels by IM, Skype messaging and Twitter. Now I have services like FourSquare which text my phone to immediately notify me who is going where and subsequently permit me to research, add tips, stalk others … the ADD possibilities for those seeking external stimulation are endless!

Specifically, I’m noting that my capacity for reading and writing beyond a short email or tweet is eroding; that my Facebook activity steps up considerably when I am forced to read through a document longer than one page; and that I must multitask with my human-computer interface when encountering a simple human interface, lest I neglect my extroversion of any possible input.

So it was with great relief that I had the patience to read all of this piece (yes, first seen as a friend’s post on Facebook but actually a normal-length article from Slate…which still writes articles vs. being pure post redux). It neutralized my neurosis by stating it in concrete and physiological terms.

And that’s good enough for me. Just proud that I finally finished this post!

This very post is a cry out for intervention. Sponsored by AT&T.

Mint | Free, Simple Personal Finance Software
by Diane Tate

The eye of the tiger

I’ve never been sure if it is simply unsettling or outright rude when people over the age of four transgress their social boundary with a hovered gaze. Only recently has this led to some real confrontation.

  1. Yesterday I shamed my spinning student when I announced to the class that I was staring her down. That did the trick and she looked away (note: she explained later that she often just “zones” by staring at the teacher…but, still….).
  2. Later in the day in a cafe, I found myself unable to listen to my friend catch me up because the woman next to us – while pretending to eat her Waldorf salad – overtly stared at us each time one of us uttered a word. Remember, this was a cafe folks – not a library. So I kept looking back at her and mercifully, she would back down. However….every time we resumed our conversation, she jumped right back in, compelling me to simply stare her down. Result? She let out a nervous smile, got up and left 1/3 of her salad there. Mission accomplished! (Of course, this was a Seinfeld moment that only video can fully capture).
  3. The coup de grace came today in Sausalito when I failed to notice one of the thousands of self-entitled cyclists crowding up the (AUTOMOBILE) route. Alas, my blissful Sunday afternoon happy place was interrupted by an abrupt, childish fist thump on my car accompanied by some choice expletives and accusations. My natural response immediately kicked in: gleefully smile back! But, this didn’t lead to victory; rather than use his endorphins for their stress-relieving purpose (come on: Sausalito, sunny Sunday afternoon with a clear blue SF Bay view?), he proceeded to ride up to my car, scream at me and threaten to call the police. Which only drove me to smile at him more.

While I technically “lost” this third face-off, it somehow felt the most gratifying.

Mint | Free, Simple Personal Finance Software
by Diane Tate

A brush with extinction

Much to my chagrin, my inordinate need for self-expression has been slowly migrating away from this beloved, cherished forum to Twitter. This entropic pull away from organizing my thoughts in a systematic, comprehensive manner and instead towards regressing into simple, visceral reactions has begun to diminish and impoverish me.

Fortunately, my liberal arts formation was jolted back from hibernation today:

She also wants to … continue to speak her mind on the social networking site Twitter, one of her favorite venues to reach out to supporters.

“She”…yes…..”she”…ummmm….the human being that can reduce me to a mass of inarticulate, suppressed and frustrated energy of stellar (think black hole level) proportions. For all its value it has introduced, Twitter is undoubtedly her favorite venue for the same reason I lament it becoming mine: it is but one of the many roads taking us to Idiocracy today.

Thus I assure you that, as long as she is in the public square, this blog will continue… if only for the sake of preserving subject-verb-object communications and the cerebral cortex as we know it.

However, I am too dumbfounded at this point to say anything more specific on today’s news.

Still trying to warm the super-ego back up.

Mint | Free, Simple Personal Finance Software