I've gotten so used to being busy that when I wake up and don't have anything to do, when I can sit on my couch and read, drink coffee, I feel a real sense of physical unease. I know this is just a stage, that actually this unease comes from being taken out of the stream of internet and interconnection, constant connection, the stream of information and infotainment. Yet there is a fear that I'm missing something or not doing something, not doing something enough, accomplishing something, producing. And then there is also the fear that people are seeing me even while I'm not seeing them, that social surveillance continues on Instagram, Twitter, when I'm not paying attention.
Part of the evolution of the downtown scene, so to speak, is a shift from a focus on people making things, albeit perhaps not very good things, but at least things—podcasts, music, theater, film, writing—to straight gossip, straight-up gossip (a kind of never-ending debutante society chatter); and you really can see people who have failed as artists, often actors, shifting from any attempt at real art with integrity to just either self-promotion or, yeah, this weird form of gossip as entertainment, slander as entertainment (memeing). It's actually deeply sad and pathetic. But I also think it's not