A Watched Pot Never Boils
I had a blog once. It was called A Watched Pot because I was referring to the old adage āA Watched Pot Never Boils,ā which to me was the perfect description of how I related to the Internet: emails, mainly. I would email people and impatiently wait for replies. Very often the replies didnāt come in a hurry, so Iād be waiting a long time, checking my inbox frequently. I tried to learn from the experience and see that the more I checked, the greater the anguish and disappointment when there was nothing there. But I didnāt learn enough, apparently, because I still have lots of bouts of looking at watched pots, whether it be waiting for replies from editors and publishers or waiting for people on Twitter to engage with my tweets. This is nothing new to anybody who has spent time online and adapted their nervous system to āthe way things are.ā I believe Iāve seen, in the way things bubble up online, people referring to āscreaming into the void.ā Thatās what weāre usually doing. Thatās what Iām doing now. The lungfuls of screaming donāt quit. Even though the void often gives nothing back.
I remember a philosophy professor once saying in Intro to Existentialism that the only way that Sisyphus could give meaning to his existence pushing the rock uphill was to develop a āstyleā to the pushing, to make the pushing unique and meaningful to himself, even if no one else was present to observe the style. That also describes many endeavors on the Internet to me.