Navigating a blizzard...

The highly anticipated "bomb cyclone," forecasted for New England, hits tomorrow! When did we decide to change the title of our weather events? What happened to the term Nor'easter? All the chatter about the number of inches has made me curious about the rate of snowfall. Incredible to think about how those lovely little flakes accumulate so quickly after their gentle journey to the earth and provide such a stunning landscape and some havoc. Reflecting and imagining something right out of a Robert Frost poem, while sipping coffee, and eagerly reading my various social media pages for updates. I then thought, as my eyes became wide and my heart started to race, is there a correlation to the amount of snowflakes falling during a blizzard and the virtual blizzard of information displayed on my laptop daily? What does our abundance of social media add up to? What type of landscape are we creating?

How many snowflakes fall at any given moment in any given location has certainly been scientifically studied. I started to google the answer, to share with you, but started reading about cubic feet and various equations to determine the rate and amount of snow. I stopped. The answers I read became purely mathematical, void of imagination and completely unromantic so let’s go with the very technical answer of “a lot!” My desire, is to correlate how many snowflakes fall during a blizzard and the rate of social media posts in our individual FB, Instagram and Twitter feeds at any given time on any given day. I was truly struck and overwhelmed, during the very early hours of this morning, as I obsessively switched back and forth, to the various social medias updating myself on the news of friends, art, fashion, food, and politics. Yes, snowfall research tucked in there too. So, indulge me and let’s just imagine there is a relationship here while albeit far fetched yet maybe not so much?

We can be mesmerized by the weather, the intensity of a storm the beauty of snow falling, and the magical landscape courtesy of new fallen snow. Pretty straight forward yet visually we watch tens of thousand flakes fall and manage this information pretty handedly. Our reactions to events in nature seem quite straight forward and not requiring much mental agility as our daily involvement with social media demands. We are visually affected by the beauty and intensity of a Nor'easter yet the blizzard of information provided by our news feed is something quite different. I find it curious, certainly stressful, problematic and very worrisome. Our social media feeds challenge every neural impulse of the brain and emotional response. I struggled to make sense of the posts that continued to scroll this morning as one image is a heart wrenching rescue animal in great need of its “forever home” and the next is a Houzz post promoting decorating trends for 2018! What do I do with this huge informational shift? Lured in by both positive and negative posts can be quite seductive and destructive to one’s sense of well being. Praying for the animal while being preyed on to consume? Are we wired to process information in this fashion? Not so sure. Truly studying a topic offers one the ability to gain a more thorough understanding of a subject or situation. Attempting to process a multitude and varied range of topics is problematic, in learning and understanding, when we reduce the information to sound bites limiting knowledge and encouraging one to simply react. Not ideal on any level! Even if you feel that you are just scanning, the less than desirable posts, one does take in the image or those first few comments and all the while your brain is recognizing the information and ushering some response. I feel the weight of it all...how do we mentally manage the blizzard of information? Do we compartmentalize? What do we learn or truly absorb from sound bites of information? Time will tell…

Warming trend to a balmy 17 degrees today and the sun is shining. Today, I am letting the cold clear air fill my senses allowing nature to be my visual… “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.” Robert Frost