My media diary is forcing me to declare something I already know to be true but don’t want to admit…my email has quietly become the air traffic controller of my life.
I spent the vast majority of my time consuming and transmitting bits of media from my email. This was accompanied by similar activities in my messaging platforms (WhatsApp, Apple Messages and Facebook Messenger) and undergirded by a number of Google Forms, Docs, Slides and Sheets I was constantly diving in my Drive to retrieve and tinker with.
On the bright side, the internet has brought the great gift of streaming TV of which I partake in hearty dosages when I am worn out by my email driven exercises. It’s a vicious and screen-heavy cycle. But I do believe it is the golden era of television and I am enjoying it. This week alone, I enjoyed a number of episodes of two comedies: In the Long Run (an Amazon Prime show about an immigrant family from Sierra Leone in the UK created by Idris Elba) and Big Mouth (a Netflix animated series about the woes of middle school and puberty). I watched my usual mediocre but ritually comforting TV dramas on Hulu that release an episode a week: The Bold Type (twenty-somethings working for a magazine in NYC and wearing cute but definitely uncomfortable outfits), Good Trouble (twenty-somethings living in a co-op in LA) and good ol’ Grey’s Anatomy. Lastly, I watched a smattering of movies on Amazon Prime: Morning Glory (skip it), The Last Black Man in San Francisco (watch it!) and re-watched Lost In Translation (a classic). This was several hours more streaming than usual attributed to being sick on my couch for a good part of the weekend. I like to think if I was feeling better, several of these hours would have been spent doing something outside possibly in the company of others but they could’ve easily been spent making the Google Docs bubble bigger.
I also read a bit for fun (The Three Body Problem, a Chinese sci-fi novel), which does not usually happen when school is in session beyond a little reading before bed (currently a chapter of Little Women each night) and again was attributed to my illness. It felt strange to be reading a book and not an article and moreover for it not to be for class or my thesis. I used to devour books as a child and absolutely see a shift towards reading less as the internet has played a bigger role in my life.
My news consumption was minimal and has been since Trump was elected. I read through the NYT updates that get stored up in my notifications center (push alerts are turned off) every few days, skim a couple tech news briefs and sometimes read articles sent to me by friends, family and colleagues. I also Google information when my interest is piqued by class reading or conversations and read articles this way. I also have been following the coronavirus outbreak in Italy via the New York Times since I am supposed to be leading a trip in Rome over spring break.
Perhaps I can develop strategies that make it feel less like I am muddling through email and the Google Suite all day everyday. Total extraction seems impossible but I did expect graduate school to have way more reading and way less email than it does.
