Seattle and Raleigh-Durham marketing, graphic and brand design studio Design Kompany

I am getting to the point where I want to unplug my computer permanently.

Here’s why:

• A salesperson calls DK at 9:02am to ask us how we like their service. Following up is cool, but please don’t call me first thing in the morning about your stuff. Be interested in my stuff, for one. Give me time to drink my tea, for two.
• I have unsubscribed TWICE from a newsletter I don’t want because I find it irrelevant to me. Why do they keep adding me? Stop it.
• DK gets a query for an internship from someone in Dublin. We left Ireland in 2004. That was FIVE YEARS AGO.
• Interruptions get in the way of completing anything. Making yourself busy actually makes you less productive.
• Creepiness. If you want to know about someone, you Google them first. Isn’t that a little… odd?
• Telephones? Who uses these anymore? Are they bad or something?

I can’t help but thinking much of these feelings stem from the fact that I didn’t have the Internet or an “interruptive” lifestyle when I was growing up. I just had Super Mario Brothers, Expos-Cubs doubleheaders, and Guiding Light.

No texting, Flickr, Facebook, or love in 140 characters or less.

[booming deep voiceover] Until now. This summer, DK finally updates!—

No wait, I’m kidding.

Maturity. Or: Cynicism of being over 30

There comes a point in your life where you realize you can connect with people both younger and older than you. Older because yeah, they get it. They’ve been there. They’ve had those times, too. Younger because wow, they’re excited about everything, and I used to be, too. Pow!

All of this is brewing because many points came up as DK took a long, leisurely walk on one of Seattle’s long, leisurely summer evenings last night. Sometimes just walking and talking shakes out all kinds of surprising and, at times, rather uncomfortable “new” ideas.

What I’m saying is, the thing about “new” is that it’s only “new” to you. You can’t go around dissing stuff just because it doesn’t make sense to you personally, right?

So I have to get over my feelings about how the modern world is changing and isn’t it odd that we’ve got overconnectivity on the computer networks and underconnectivity in real life. It’s why I wanted to host Gather, and Flourish, and stuff like that. This wasn’t an issue when I was in my early 20s. Back then, I would up and move to a foreign country for the sake of adventure. Japan for a year, Ireland for four.

But it’s more than that.

Being an individualist is totally American. I realized how nice it is to see variety in style and personality after a month in Denmark a few years ago. I was staying in the district called Nørrebro, which is kind of depressing because every house and person who lives there looks the same. It was good to get home and see color again.

But unapologetic individualism is also a really strong trait of Gen X.

If you don’t remember where you were and what you were doing when news of Kurt Cobain came out, then you’re not going to understand why this is such a big deal. I remember going down from my college dorm with some people I’d never see again and waving around those lighters that came from who knew where into the night where we burned candles, and watching the wax melt and run into the drips of oil caked on top of the pavement.

Yeah!

But that’s so uncool to people who’ve grown up in the Internet era.

Right? And the idea of willfully sharing your personal information willy nilly online (okay, not that extreme, but you know what I mean, right?) is totally normal. For Generation X’ers like me, it’s… weird. Until you turn the corner. Until you accept that what you thought was weird actually is no longer weird, and is, in fact, the norm.

Wait! Press pause for a second.

Hey, isn’t that a little scary? Isn’t this the stuff of 1984 and We the Living and all those crazy books we had to read at enrichment camp in the summers of the early 1990s. Yes! It is!!! I heard that Facebook was partly sponsored by the CIA. The Central Intelligence Agency. Yeah!!! I used to have a bunch of opinions on the Government Watching All of Us when I was a high school student at a boarding school paid for by the government.

Unsubscribe me

Maybe all the conspiracy theory stuff is paranoia. I’m really not publicly talking about it, except here, that is. And maybe, yeah, maybe it is nutty. But maybe it’s keeping the line in check.

The line. In check.

Which is easier to do if you have less to look at, and more time to think things over. Unsubscribe me, please. I was fine without your threads. I’m done with all the clutter.