Why Writing and Art Still Matter in a World Transformed by Technology

Shifting thoughts, trouble focusing. A lack of pleasure in things that once brought me joy. Like having the leisure time to lay down with a book and get lost in its pages. Like feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin and being able to just spend time laying there. Like cozying up in a coffee shop or quiet corner of the house and writing for hours. Like grabbing a paper and a pen and beginning to draw. 

The younger me loved to think, read, and write. I had so much passion and so many thoughts stored away. I was so opinionated. Ignorant yes but learning and full of life. 

I hated technology. I felt that it was sucking the life out of us all. The me who was so energized by playing outside with my friends dreaming up new worlds, pretending I was Katy Hotchkins a British explorer traveling the amazon hated the feeling of sitting in front of a screen for hours or being forced to lean into a norm of life revolving around cell phones and computers.

Social media for me was a joke. I posted things that made me look like a fool because in real life I loved seeing my friends reactions. I was off put and embarrassed by the thought of being the type of person that spends too much time online. I saw the modern world’s growing dependence on technology as very dangerous and I felt one day I would become one of the few left who valued, loved, and carried “the old world” forward with me. 

Fast forward 15 years and the reality is I am immersed in the world of technology. It is really a tool for connection and laughs and learning new things. It is also a center for brain rot and a time/attention sucker that unplugs us all from fully living in the moment, even if that moment entails boredom or unpleasant feelings we’d rather avoid. 

My reflection tonight is the admission that the child me was right about this – but the world changed anyways and you can’t fully detach from that. I think you can learn from it. Learn what you should do and should not do and find the balance that brings out the best in you. Try to use it for good, for connection, for laughs and learning and expression of creativity but also be intentional about taking breaks to do the things that you once loved and that really made you who you are. 

If you are a writer you must write. If you are an artist you must create art. Maybe the world needs us less as time goes on but it was never really about them anyway. The beauty was what happened inside of you. That moment where you felt fully alive and in touch with all of your logic and emotion, heart, soul, brain and it came out onto that white page or canvas and filled it with something that you saw as heartbreaking or simple or beautiful and it was yours. Your finger print. Your perspective. Your life experience. And you didn’t want to just hold that inside. You not only wanted to, but you needed to share it. Express it and let it go and let it live and let it touch another heart in ways you maybe couldn’t have even imagined. And even when the page or the canvas just ends up in the trash, that act of “doing” changed you in some small way. And the more you did it the more at home you could feel in your own skin. Because when you look back you see, you didn’t leave anything on the table. You lived all that you could with the time you were given. You developed and used your gifts and shared it. Maybe it impacted others or maybe it just impacted you. And then every room you walked into felt different. Because you walked in a “free” person who didn’t have the burden of unfulfilled dreams on his shoulders.