Shrinking The Bullseye

For my mid-20’s to mid-30’s there were weeks where I’d Tweet what was on my mind a few times per day. Occasionally I’d post something on Instagram too — some waterfall I’d been to, or a cool dog I was hanging out with. I’d load images of someone on a bike and add a caption of it onto a Tumblr page. Then I’d go to LinkedIn to update my profile picture. Then I’d write a blog post featuring my favorite, completely unknown, fictional character, Brian Summers. Then I’d write another blog post about the band, Spoon. Most of the time, though, I would post my thoughts and opinions on Facebook. Sometimes I’d get drunk and update my status or whatever it was called in 2009 — Eric is “trying to get. that. dirt off my shoulder.” Or I’d say something about the movie I was watching, or the place I was at with friends or I’d quote Roger Sterling or Bruce Springsteen or Hemingway or whoever. It was almost all nonsense. I was young, drunk, Millennial and looking for a way to speak my truth(!) to anyone who’d have it.

After years of this scramble to kill time and craft messages for a community of friends, family, classmates and/or people I met one time at a bar, I realized nobody cared. some people agreed with me and affirmed my thought or opinion and, others opposed it. Seems almost too uncomplicated. But these matters were themselves uncomplicated. I was just babbling on about how Die Hard is a great Christmas movie or how I felt about Brett Favre after his dramatic retirement and reentry into the NFL. Nothing too heady.