As a kid, I remember sitting for hours on my grandparents' living room floor filling up notebook pages with the adventures of Lightman, his sidekick, Invisible Sam, and his nemesis, Evil Cassie. There was never a shortage when it came to notebooks. I'd find stacks in my grandpa's desk, his preference being those legal sized yellow note pads. He would often fill up pages of his own while watching the evening news.
The details of Lightman's story have become fuzzy over the years. I do recall that he wore a belt around his head with a lightbulb attached to the back, as if he were experiencing a perpetual "A-ha!" moment. He had a red cape tied around his neck and wore a long-sleeved shirt with a giant L emblazoned on the front - sort of like a low-budget Superman. His friend Sam was, well, invisible. I would often draw him with dotted lines and not much else. Evil Cassie had wild, curly hair, preferred to dress in black, and was never without her beloved Shitsu, who was equally evil, snarling and biting at anyone that came too close.
What continues to remain fuzzy, however, is where I found all of that inspiration as a mere ten-year old. Nowadays, I can hardly draw stick figures let alone find time to write pages upon pages of short stories. The obvious answer seems to be that it was a time with less distractions. Being born in the late 80s, I grew up in that in-between era where I can remember a world without computers and cell phones but have now spent more of my existence with technology than without it. We didn't have a computer in the house until I was in middle school, and my parents put off giving me a cell phone until I finally wore them down at sixteen with my tales of woe about how "uncool" I was becoming being the "only kid" in my school without one (I had a flair for the dramatic).
But it seems like the introduction of technology into my life came at the cost of my creativity. I stopped writing and drawing. The notebooks found their way into a bin in the basement to collect dust. Lightman's story was left without an ending.
And despite the vast amount of information now available at our fingertips, I cannot say with certainty that it's done much for our collective intelligence - mine included. The show Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader has some relevance. The fifth-grade version of me would certainly outsmart my present-day self. I remember fifth grade as the year of "Pigskin Geography", a curriculum in which we were assigned lessons in U.S. geography by tracking the travel schedules of competing NFL football teams. I wouldn't say that the questions were easy. In fact, I seem to recall that they required hours of research which often involved my parents and me sitting on the living room floor with various encyclopedias trying to figure out the elevation of the nearest mountain range to upstate New York (the Buffalo Bills were playing that weekend).
These days, I imagine such a degree of difficulty when it comes to homework would have parents and kids rioting in the streets. Who would have time for such things? But the funny thing is, I don't remember it being a burden. In fact, I look back on those memories rather fondly. I had fun doing homework and bonding with my parents. I genuinely learned something. In fact, it was the one and only year I participated in the school's Knowledge Bowl and did fairly well.
But the computer came shortly after that. Soon the sounds of dial up internet filled our living room and the only writing I found myself doing was via online chat and instant messenger.
"Can't you just call them?", my mom would ask in exasperation as my sister and I spent hours typing out messages to friends.
The downside of dial up internet was that it was connected to our landline resulting in an inability to use the phone until we logged off. With siblings living in various states, mom's Sundays were often spent on the phone catching up with them, and her new favorite topic of conversation was how dial-up internet had become the bane of her existence. As a teenager, I found her aversion to messenger and online chat as "old school", but looking back, I feel like she had a mother's intuition that all this advancement in technology was coming at a cost. Not much has changed there. Today, she affectionately refers to all types of social media as "ass book".
I feel nostalgic about those early years of my life. It was a period where there was time to be idle, time to allow myself the opportunity to think, daydream, and just be. The daily grind of the standard 8-5 workday often zaps my creative energies. I'm unlikely to remember something unless it's recorded in my Outlook calendar. More often than not, I find myself getting home, making dinner, and flopping on the couch to mindlessly scroll on my phone until it's time for bed.
My purpose in creating What's the Difference is to cultivate better use of my free time. Time in which I can rest, restore, and allow my mind to wander. The title is a tribute to my Grandma Gloria. I admired her sort of laissez-faire approach to most of life's challenges. Her favorite phrase was "What's the difference?". And while it may not have been foolproof, it does remind one not to take life so seriously. It's ok to do less, to take more naps, to spend time daydreaming. And if that idle time results in some creative ideas, I'll post them here - the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between.
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