{"id":4536,"date":"2017-04-04T16:02:23","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T23:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=4536"},"modified":"2017-04-04T16:02:23","modified_gmt":"2017-04-04T23:02:23","slug":"virtual-memorials-at-sea-04052017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=4536","title":{"rendered":"Virtual Memorials \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [04\/05\/2017]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I\u2019ve been doing an unexpected amount of soul searching as of late. Not exactly on purpose, just kind of by accident. I\u2019m feeling better for it as a matter of fact. Memories are odd things, we cling to them sometimes \u00a0a bit too much. In this electronic age, it is so easy to keep ever y single little thing, every letter every number, every\u2026stupid meme. Things that mean absolutely nothing suddenly become indescribably important and things that actually are important just get lost in the shuffle\u2026<\/p>\n

So in an effort to find the real memories that I want and need to keep, I\u2019ve found myself getting rid of many of the others. Virtually and digitally speaking that is. I\u2019ve cut back heavily on my use of social media, paring down the content of my account to almost nothing, cutting back my \u2018friends\u2019 list to contain only actual friends and relatives (and only relatives that I actually speak to, or that speak to me). I\u2019ve trashed most of my email, done away with most of my subscriptions, gone back to drafting everything for the blog on paper first (and posting only small portions of it), and am investing in an inexpensive wrist watch to avoid having to constantly handle and rely on my phone just to keep time.<\/p>\n

This has been a wonderful and remarkably decontaminating \u00a0process. Every time I hit the \u201cdelete\u201d button on something, I feel a little tie to something insignificant slip away. And none of it is important, I keep the important stuff elsewhere, but I realized I had fallen victim to a strange kind of virtual hording, I was keeping everything<\/em> and if you keep everything, you end up in some ways valuing nothing.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I have just become more conscious of decluttering my life, or perhaps it\u2019s just that I really don\u2019t like being so incredibly reliant on technology, which is odd I know considering what I do for a living\u2026but I prefer these days to live in the real world, a world of real pages and fresh flowers and actual sunshine\u2026of phone calls instead of emails and texture instead of pixels\u2026it\u2019s not a pride thing it\u2019s just\u2026reconnecting without \u201cplugging in\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

Memories\u2026are strange things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been doing an unexpected amount of soul searching as of late. Not exactly on purpose, just kind of by accident. I\u2019m feeling better for it as a matter of fact. Memories are odd things, we cling to them sometimes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,17,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-reflections-below-the-waterline","category-south-of-the-border-2017"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-1ba","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4538,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536\/revisions\/4538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}