14/ Fatigue

Last week I was asked the perennial question,

"What do you do all day?" 

The question was posed with kindly concern far from the rancorous, accusatory tone of a breadwinner returning grumpy, tired and fed up from work.  Even in this uncertain,  shifting epoch work of its nature no matter whether performed well, or poorly, provides an adequate description of a day’s, or night’s, activities.  Being at home provides no such tolerable account.  It’s of no consequence that Herculean tasks may have been accomplished throughout an exhausting day.

"While I was out at work you were ensconced comfortably at home!"   

I understood from this question for the first time the driving force that has impelled the explosion of social media into our lives.  Twitter allows even the most banal episodes of our daily lives to be broadcast as they happen.  Instagram permits sending out pictures of them.  Facebook allows even more detailed details to be disseminated.  Nobody need be left in any doubt about how the day was filled.

The downsides of this clog of information are legion.  Once begun you have to keep at it or be presumed deceased, missing, or comatose in hospital.  Then your agog audience have to keep checking and reading and remaining alert for any latest messages.  Then there is the willing suspension of disbelief that all this posting of information is always only an edited, filtered artfully presented version of reality.

It is pointed out that social media amplifies FoMo (fear of missing out).  Albeit this ugly acronym looks suspiciously more like the name of a hobbit, Fomo Brandybuck, a distal member of the adventure-loving Baggins clan who snuck along because he couldn’t bear the feeling that Bilbo and Frodo were leading much more exciting and fulfilling lives fighting trolls and a dragon and hanging out with a cool friendship group. 

Me?  I’ll have to confess during the day sometimes I get poleaxed by fatigue and have to rest.  Are you interested really in knowing that?

© Benóg Brady Bates