Bear with me. This may come off sounding a little convoluted. But there’s a point and I’ll get to it eventually. Today’s joint Words of the Day (WOTD) are “FOMO” and “OG.” Which are acronyms that stand for “Fear of Missing Out” and “Original Gangster,” respectively. What the…? Like I said, bear with me. It will all come clear by the end. Hopefully it will be worth the wait. But remember: The joy is in the journey. I think maybe I read that in a blog somewhere?
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This here is a blog, right? And that would make me, for lack of a better term, a blogger. So imagine my consternation yesterday upon receiving in my inbox the following email from my Alma Mater, specifically from the editor of my University’s Alumni Magazine, announcing the online release of their Winter 2024 issue.
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“So evanescent, so bygone, so early two-thousands?” What the…? I guess for me, Old Gangster that I am, “early 2000’s” is actually pretty up-to-date. C’mon, I was already 42 years old way back in 2000, so I’m no spring chicken – then or now.
As for the pace of my reading addiction? Well, let’s just say that one book a week is plenty ambitious, let alone two. Hell, my wife usually reads ten different books at once. But that’s another post for another day. I guess the bottom line for me is that some people have much more FOMO than others. More power to ’em, I say. Oh, and also this: RELAX, guys!
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The deeper point lurking in the substrata under all the angsty FOMO is this: Beware the Casual Myopia of the Relatively Recent. That is to say, when looking backwards over time, stuff that happened yesterday or last week not only looms larger in our rear-view mirror than stuff from the dim mists of the distant past, but it tends to put our eyes a bit out of focus. And that’s not only a shame, it’s dangerous – especially while driving at night – because it skews our vision. And it makes us susceptible to all sorts of short-sighted assumptions.
Do you doubt it? Well, read on if you dare. And try not to run into anything while you’re doing it.
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My grandparents were born in a time before radio. My parents were born in a time before TV. And I was born before the Internet came to be. So, when a thirty-or-forty-something alumni-magazine editor says “Blogging is passé,” I say: “So what?” Hey, we weren’t born yesterday, sister. Best to get over our Casual Myopia of the Relatively Recent and expand our horizons to include the Big Tent. And that, dear Editor, includes OG-bloggers, like me.
Or, to cite another example: There was a time when paper newsprint was a revolutionary innovation. Think Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and Ben Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” Or hell, go even further back and think Johannes Guttenberg’s printing press and the King James Bible for that matter.
There was also once a time when Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley were the sole sources of evening news in most American living rooms. Nowadays, we pick our news sources off a drop-down menu according to our pre-existing biases. And whether that’s an advance or a regression I leave it to you to determine.
But my main point is this: Technology marches onward without waiting for any of us to keep pace. Is it any wonder that Instagram and TikTok and YouTube have supplanted older forms of infotainment? That doesn’t mean reading hard-copy books or news flies out the window, any more than it means that blogging is passé. It just means we now have a bigger menu to choose from. And more noise to contend with.
The only constant is change, and the pace is picking up. But also, at the same time, be careful to watch out for the Casual Myopia of the Relatively Recent. Because there can be more than one obstacle at any single time in our forward-leaning path to the bright future: Word to the wise; ignore it at your peril.
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As for FOMO? Um, sorry, can’t help you with that one. Maybe try some old-school therapy? Hey, take it from an OG-psychotherapist and blogger like me: In the grand scheme of things, it probably wouldn’t hurt.