I left the bar this afternoon, and the sun was setting perfectly over the roof of the casino. The sky was full of cotton candy clouds, and the street, with the palms moving briskly and the staid traffic lights not yet on, made for a picture that would sell a million vacations. I almost took a picture, it was so beautiful.
Almost.
It was certainly not the most stunning sunset since I’ve been here. There have been sunsets so colorful I’ve watched rainbows hold meetings in order to counter them. I have seen skies that were almost fatal, in that you would never see the world look this beautiful. This was pretty, sure, but it wasn’t mind-blowing in an atmospheric regard. What it was was a perfect capture of this little town on this larger peninsula with this beautiful waterfront shot. It was, in short, a “Welcome to Gulfport” picture. It would make you move here, and I almost took the picture.
Almost.
Then I thought: why? I am not a “go back through pictures” guy. I’m just not. My memories are the ones I make and I don’t feel the need to capture them. I used to, decades ago, and I still have those pictures (and that’s what they are, photos that fill an album) so to take this picture, it would have been nice, but then I would have done nothing with it. It was my own memory. And believe me, the clearinghouse of confusion that is my brain, I’ll remember it. It’ll show up in a book.
It sounds stupid to say I feel disconnected since I’ve shut down my social media accounts, but I do, just not in the ways you might think. I don’t miss them. I’m not waking up wondering what updates I haven’t seen. The disconnect comes from something probably more organic I can’t explain. I am away from something that seemingly defines a huge percentage of the people. I am free to be my own person, even if everyone around me is living in the world I left.
It’s empowering and terrifying all at the same time, but most importantly is that I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. If anything, I’m finding what I lost a long time ago: me. It ain’t all good, and I’m wondering about who I am, and my identity now versus the 22 year-old I always think I am, but it’s pretty awesome for the most part. Scary? Yes, but only because everything good, every change, should be scary. As I once told an old friend: “If it isn’t scary, it’s not worth doing.”
If you want to see the sunset I saw tonight, come find me. The internet is a beautiful thing for a bajillion reasons, but what it’s not really is a way to connect with people. You can communicate with them all, sure, but to connect with them involves being on that street, at that time, on that day, with those conditions. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but do you know what is worth more than that?
Words shared together, not online, but in real life.
PopcornJackTerry 