Football Counter-Programming 2015--Week 6

Credit: mentalhealthy.co.uk

Hooo boy. What a week of non-football related stuff it has been for me. And so, why should YOU be allowed to think about football when I most definitely cannot?

So . . . its another week of everyone's favorite Fall event that doesn't include the letters P, S, or L.

It's Football Counter-Programming!

Come on Log Lady. I really need some help shaping the topic this week. What have you got for me?

From episode 5 "Cooper's Dreams"

As fate or the cosmos would have it . . . the Log Lady's words this week are extremely prophetic to my state of mind right now. I definitely feel like I am playing a part on a stage that everyone is looking at. A spotlight is an uncomfortable place to be and I am living my (very small) part of it in a very hot, very uncomfortable space.

I would LOVE to form the perfect answer to try and explain this spotlight away. But it is so very true that the "answer cannot come before all are ready to hear" (or when the corporate rules disallow).

In today's social media world (and of which I am definitely a part) people never show a willingness or a readiness to hear others and to listen. That is simply not how we use the Internet. Will it every be a place where reason and logic can play any part? Or will it simply be an echo chamber in which anger is shouted? A place in which only supporting views are propped up? Human nature being what it is, the answer to those questions is . . . probably not.

So, I guess blaming the Internet culture won't get me anywhere.

My "anger at the fire" is extremely evident right now. And I know that it is both childish and disingenuous to complain about the nature of the Internet . . . now that Ï* am within its glare. People tend to whinge when things don't go their way. Will that stop them when the spotlight shifts to become someone else's problem? Or will they deserve it?

I hope that I am honest when I say that I have tried (especially since the 2012 election cycle) NOT to contribute to this Internet culture of the Five-Minute Hate. As this series of posts demonstrates, I try to keep it light and fun as often as not. There is enough anger in the world (and online) that I don't need to be contributing to it any further. And, as the events of this week have amply proven, anger only fuels more anger. It is not an environment where reason and persuasion lives comfortably.

So . . . how am I supposed to respond to all of this?

First and foremost, I try my best to maintain civility in my online discourse. Remember to try and imagine the other people on the other side of my screen as complex human beings with their own problems and dreams. I can't lash out in anger and narrow-mindedness just because they have. That doesn't make it better or widen the rules of acceptability.
...

*crickets*

...

I just don't know how to go forward with this. I've been struggling on how to think about it all week long. As usual, I put the blame on myself for not being intellectual enough, for not taking things as seriously as they need to be taken and for diverting myself too much.

So . . . what will come? I don't know. I guess I'll just continue to stew in my vagueness until things change and the spotlight moves somewhere else.

***

(The next day . . .)

As I sit editing this (yes, I do edit and think about these posts a bit), trying to figure out my thoughts, I am also listening to this week's Dear Hank & John podcast.
They are coincidentally talking about the struggles of seeing both sides of a political argument--(at the 19:07 mark).This made me think a bit more about my situation. It reinforces the fact that we don't have to live in a yes or no world--no matter how badly the Internet wishes it were so.

I encourage you to listen to this episode and to all of their episodes. In between the fun and jokes are moments of good advice (really, there is some).



So, that is going to be it for this week. Lots of vague hanky waving.

But . . . until next week . . . don't forget that no one else cares whether your team successfully employed the no-huddle offense to tie the game before halftime last week.

* I in the corporate sense. If I, alone, myself, was in this predicament, I would be curled in a ball in my bedroom and certainly not typing about this or anything else at all.