It appears cobwebs have grown all around this place. Life has been a little busy in the insane sort of way and I’ve been sleep deprived for well over a year now. Attempting coherent thought to turn into words to write down has been a little difficult.

Things that have happened in the past many months:

• first birthday celebration
• trip to Lebanon on my own with the little man
• many, many, many sick days for the little man, minus the entire summer (2 months) he spent out of daycare and with his dad
• 3 ER visits for respiratory issues for little man
• 2 hospitalization stays for little man, which we care to never repeat
• 1 asthma diagnosis and subsequent medication
• incessantly blaming myself for my kid’s health issues
• lots of cursing at the news
• more sleep deprivation
• voted and shocked by results (Virginia)
• discovery of even tastier coffee

That kind of sums it all up. I’m hoping 2018 will not be as bad in the illness department, but don’t expect much in the politics department (which is nothing short of depressing and maddening).

In the age of digital media, sharing words and photos for many of us has become a large part of our everyday lives. It allows us to communicate with others that are miles away or across the globe, share a variety of ideas and experiences, and easily capture our daily lives with the immediate gratification of posting and showing everyone what we’re up to.

There are drawbacks. Your life is on the internet, which means should platforms allow it, they can grab your photos and use it in their marketing campaigns without needing your permission. Forget about the CIA or NSA or any other secret government agency, companies are gathering our data based off of our search histories, what we buy, and even what we click on. They build profiles and are better able to bombard us with online advertisements, and sometimes those ads even make it to our physical mailbox.

Then there’s the whole issue of online bullying and trolling – the scarier and more serious issues that come with having an online profile. While yes you can be bullied at work or in school, the internet opens up a lot more of those trolls that come out of the woodwork and cause immense damage.

Suffice it to say the lack of privacy is an issue. Many of us seem to be ok with that because we continue sharing our lives – or pieces of them – online.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s when the internet at first did not exist and then later was born. Of course this means that my life was documented on actual 35 mm film, rather than a smartphone or other digital camera. It’s not until as an adult did I choose to start sharing pieces of my life online.

And quite frankly, I’m very thankful for that. I’m thankful everyday that pictures of myself as an awkward teen are not online anywhere. I’m thankful my parents could never post videos of me growing up, showing the ridiculous and silly things I’d say or do (I was truly one class-A goofball and sort of still am). I’m forever thankful that I was able to make the choice myself later on as an adult to blog, join facebook (then quit facebook), join instagram, share photos online, so on and so forth.

So when I had my son, I chose to limit his online exposure. Except, as you all know, I have a bit of an addiction called photography. I do love the instant gratification that my smartphone allows me in taking a photo, editing it, and then posting/archiving it.

How could I combine my love of photography with the fear of sharing every aspect of my son’s life online? I want him to be able to make the choice as to what he shares – if anything – of his life online.

While I was pregnant, I came across an Instagram account where the mother took photos of her child without showing his/her face. I wish I had saved that account by following it, but for some reason, I didn’t. So I decided I would try and do the same.

It gets tricky trying to share aspects of someone’s life without showing them completely. But I like the challenge it brings and have even created a simple site around it called My Little Constellation.

I just hope that one day when my son sees this – if it’s still up – he won’t hate me for sharing parts of his life online. Even if it is more obscure.

Sometimes I want to tell my brain to stop thinking for a good five minutes. In fact, I’ve ordered it to do so on multiple occasions, but it has yet to comply. I wake up thinking and analyzing, I go to bed with thoughts streaming through my head at light speed, and even in my sleep I know my mind is busy examining a multitude of things.

How are we to weather this political change? Will I lose my job in a few months because of proposed budget cuts? Will Matt lose his job? Will we both lose our jobs? How will we provide for our son if we do? We’ll lose our house and then what? What’s my backup plan? Do I look for a new job again? What’s going to happen with our insurance? Will our son be able to attend public school in a couple of years? Will there even BE any public schools left? Is this country going to war with the rest of the world??

I feel powerless to make much of a change. I’m not sure where to turn anymore and I’m getting more and more frustrated. When I’m faced with a problem, I want to solve it. It’s likely why I chose to work in the field of communications: everyone comes to me looking for answers.

The sorry reality of this world is that we the people, the ordinary, the middle class, the poor, the 99%, we are powerless. We do not run the world, but rather are run by an oligarchy that is made up of a corporatocracy. To think otherwise is futile and so very naive. We live in a world that is a combination of 1984 and Brave New World.

Unless we have copious amounts of money, we do not and will not have power. Power always has and always will be in the hands of the few. Plato – ugh Plato – even addressed this in The Republic.

Hope and faith are laughable. They are human made to help cope with reality. Some people – in fact many – get so lost in them that they end up turning away from the reality that faces all of us.

The way our society has been built, in fact the way the entire world has been put together is based on economics and who holds the keys to the money box. And once that few holds that type of power, I can assure you, they’ll never ever want to let go.

New Outlets to Follow/Read

• The Atlantic
• The Intercept
• The Guardian
• NPR