Choose Joy

When I had an account on Twitter, and later, Threads, I got used to blocking people.

I would say that for more than a year before I left Twitter, I got into the habit of blocking accounts that spread hate or people who would troll my account. I'd also steadily block sex bots that would start following me.

If someone was going to follow me, I wanted them to be real.

Similarly, when I joined Threads, I'd have to block accounts on a daily basis. It's like the hatred had found its way from Musk's cesspool into Zuckerberg's platform, and I wanted to shut that noise down.

I left Threads the very day that I learned that Zuck had given a million dollars to Felonious Tangerine Turd's^* inauguration. I was not interested in supporting an oligarch.

Luckily, I found a soft place to land on Bluesky.

Overall, the tone of people on this social-media platform is relatively positive. And I know that some have said that Bluesky can be a bit of an echo chamber for the left leaning, but I'd rather be in a space with like-minded individuals than share it with far-right nutjobs.

As you can tell from this post, I'm not always the most positive person, either. But I try.

Until yesterday, it was rare for me to block someone. Sure, I'd run across someone who would respond in a hateful way to something I've posted, and I wouldn't hesitate to block that individual. One of the great features on Bluesky is that you can mute someone's comment so that your followers don't have to see it, either.

Yesterday, within the space of a few minutes, I found myself blocking several people.

No, they weren't trolls looking to give me grief: they were people who seemingly disliked the politicians and political parties from which I distance myself. On some level, we were like-minded people.

So why did I block them?

As soon as somebody follows me, I check out his or her feed. I'm interested in seeing who the individual is and why they would choose to follow me.

Now, I'm not one for keeping my political views hidden. DW has even warned me to watch what I say on social media, especially since we'll be passing through American airports on the way to our next travel destination.

I've tried, but it's hard. I'll do my best to stay joyful in my posts but I'll occasionally re-post a political message that I find worth sharing. I try to avoid typing some names but I don't always succeed. 

If a new follower only re-posts other people's posts, without adding content of their own, I tend to not follow them (I may, in fact, follow the person who shared the original post). If a new follower doesn't seem to share my interests, I won't follow them. And, of course, if someone has absolutely nothing in their feed, I won't be following them back.

But yesterday, when I saw that I had new followers, I did something that I had rarely done before, especially on Bluesky: I blocked them.

These followers, didn't like what was going on across our border, to the south. They did not like Canada' Conservative parties, especially not their leaders. In addition to sharing posts from other people, they put out content of their own. So why would I block them?

Frankly, it was their bios that did it.

I love reading people's bios. I want to know what their interests are, what they do, what part of the world they come from, but mostly, what brings them joy.

And people don't necessarily have to provide all of that information in their bio, but I appreciate when people let others know who they are.

When I saw that I had a bunch of new followers, their bios only told me what they hated. Some followers used handles that described their hate. And when I looked at their feeds, it was saturated with negativity.

Sure, I was under no obligation to follow them back and I could have let them continue to follow me, but I thought, I don't want someone who is consumed with hatred on social media to be following me. I don't want to see them liking or sharing anything that I post. I don't want to attract that kind of audience.

I get it: people are angry. People are frustrated about the growing fascism around the globe. We all want to let people know that we need to step up.

We all need to punch Nazis.

But for as much as we are upset and worried about what is happening around us, we cannot lose sight of the good that is in the world. We need to also find and maintain the joy in life. Be mindful of and resist the hate that is spreading. But be joyful, because it can spread, too.

To those who want to be angry on social media, to those who want to share information about how hateful people seem to be acquiring power more and more, all I can say is, you be you. Fight. Stay strong.

But please don't follow me.

Happy Monday!

^* Sorry, that name's not joyful. But sometimes, you've got to call it like you see it.

No Regrets

There are people that come and go in our lives. Some who are with us for long time that are forgotten after years of absence; others, who are with us for a relatively short time, but are remembered, no matter how long they are away from us.

I only knew Joy for a year, maybe longer. She stopped being part of my life more than 30 years ago. But as a young teen, she was my first love.

It was her wonderfully twisted sense of humour that first attracted me. Her wit. Her sarcasm. Her sly eyes. She took crap from no one, would dish out a double helping of any trouble she was handed. Woe to those who ever wanted to bring trouble to her.

Joy's round face usually had a smile. And it was that smile that distinguished her from her twin sister, Joanne, who tried—and failed—to fool me into believing that she was my girlfriend. I remember one time, at their house: me, sitting on the sofa, listening to Leonard Cohen, waiting for Joy to rejoin me after a trip to the washroom. The person who came into the living room and snuggle up to me got shoved away: "Back off, Joanne. You're not fooling me," I said.

It was the smile, the way that Joy carried herself, that was unmistakable.

Joy and I broke up and got back together a handful of times in the year that we dated. Our biggest challenge occured when my parents found out that we were having sex (we were way too young—being a parent now, I shudder to think of my girls in any similar situation in the years to come). Joy and I got through that patch, but I finally broke up with her when my new friends at my new high school took me in a different direction from Joy and my old high school—my family moved from Gatineau to Ottawa. It wasn't just the distance that turned me away from our relationship; it was also my new environment, my new life. It was a tough breakup, but it had to be done for me to move forward. It was tough, but I have no regrets.

I saw Joy and her sister a year or so later. They were visiting their brother, who lived nearby. We spent a couple of hours together: I had my driver's licence, and the three of us went for a drive. It was nice to catch up, but it made me realize how much I had changed since our breakup. I was fully immersed in my new life, and our relationship seemed so far removed from who I was that day, though I was and am still aware that our relationship had had a strong hand in making me the person I was. After that day, when I said my goodbyes to Joy and Joanne, I expected to never see them again.

I was wrong.

In 1989, the year that Lori and I started dating, I had returned to my parent's house after having lived that summer on my own in New Edinburgh. I had moved back in with my folks after leaving my full-time job at the camera store to go to university. And though it wasn't surprising that my parents would be protective of me, living under their roof, it was strange for them to treat me like I had never lived on my own at all. So when Joy called up and wanted to get together, it was amusing for them to want to shield me from her, as though somehow she would get me to leave Lori to start dating her again.

We met for coffee at a place on Bank Street. Joy hadn't changed a bit. And yet, she had changed a lot. She still had that round face, those mischievous eyes. But in speaking with her, she seemed to have mellowed. She had already had children but was a single mom. Some 22 years later, I barely remember the details of our meeting. We didn't stay long; perhaps for only one cup of coffee. But what I did take away from that meeting was that Joy and I were very different people. While I didn't regret the relationship we had, I couldn't imagine what had held us together for that year almost 10 years earlier. Again, when we said goodbye, I fully expected it to be our final goodbye. We had had closure on our relationship—twice.

Last week, I received a message on my Facebook wall with a request to "friend" someone (I hate using friend as a verb, but the digital age has flushed the English language down the toilet—that's another blog post of its own). The message was simply "I don't know if you remember me...". It was Joy.

How can you forget your first love? Though she had only been in my life for a year or so, though we had only seen each other twice since our final breakup, though I hadn't seen her in 22 years, I remembered Joy. And I accepted her friend request.

We exchanged e-mail messages. I told her about my work, that I was married, with two kids. That I was still living in Ottawa, though I lived for a couple of years in South Korea. Joy had three children: her oldest, 29; her youngest, 21. She had never married and was single. In her words, she had never found the right person. And she was still in Ottawa.

And so we agreed to meet, to catch up.

Joy said that she hoped I would recognize her, but it was she who didn't see me sitting at a table on the patio of the pub. I'd have recognized her anywhere. She still had that round face, those devilish eyes that had been so full of fun when we first knew each other.

Joy is happy. Her three kids have grown. She's a grandmother already, soon to have two more grandkids arrive—both of her daughters are expecting next month. She has a good government job. Her health is good.

We caught up. Our lives had gone in very different directions, neither necessarily better than the other. We had grown into very different people than we were those 30 years ago. We had seen and experienced different facets of life, each with its ups and downs. We learned about the people we had become and we were happy for each other.

There were no regrets.

When we parted ways, I had already learned that our goodbyes were never final. I didn't tell myself that this was our last get-together. And so I told her to keep in touch.

And I have no regrets.