Elective blackouts
As a creature who thrives on trends and technology, I was reasonably upbeat about Earth Hour 2009. Volunteering to spend a full 60 minutes in temporary darkness was like downloading an entire 90210 episode on dial-up, an impossibly exotic proposition.
On the one hand, my inner romantic aesthete saw it as a chance to simulate life in Elizabethan England, when things were much slower and electricity was as foreign as regular showers. My twentysomething self, meanwhile, considered duct-taping a bunch of laser pointers and aiming them at paranoid pedestrians. Yes, I thought I would be that bored but, alas, I was mistaken.
After a quick phone call, I decided to escape the persistent din of apartment life and redeploy to the secluded tree-lined hamlet where my parents reside. While dimming the lights to raise awareness about global warming was easy enough, telling passing cars and obnoxious Eastern European neighbors to shut the hell up was another matter. So suburbia it was.
A Thousand Chatting Avatars
As 8:30 p.m. drew closer, birthday cake house after birthday cake house began going black. Oddly enough, the curious absence of light — even for just an hour — triggered a sudden recollection of other elective blackouts I’ve experienced. Against this backdrop of no power as will power, I realized that I had given up things that, while petty compared to the issue of carbon emissions, were just as significant because the desire to change came from a genuine place.
Celebrity gossip sites were the first casualties of this supposed enlightenment crusade. There was a time, about four years ago, when I got hooked on PageSixSixSix.com, a blog that would rebrand itself as PerezHilton.com sometime later. Much of the appeal lay in the escapist and often defamatory nature of the website. Back then, it was crazy and therefore fresh.
As Perez’s shtick got old and predictable, however, I shifted my attention to Oh No They Didn’t, Just Jared and The Superficial, a dirt-dishing trifecta that seemed less commercial and more my style. While I owe them for keeping me well distracted when I needed to be, I did reach a dead end when nothing I read — even comment threads about Miley Cyrus — seemed worthwhile anymore. The noise of a thousand chattering avatars, all under the wrong impression that what they had to say mattered, had become too much to bear; I had to tune things out — cold turkey. Now I get all my scoops — Hollywood and otherwise — from Tumblr so I think I’m in a much better place.
Consume Less, Live More
Other guilty pleasures — money- and time-wasters too many to mention — soon followed and I found myself interacting with myself more thoughtfully and living more deliberately. By consuming less, it seemed like I was in control again.
Of course, there were potential addictions to which I could’ve tethered: Facebook, the best way to remind me of people I don’t want to be reminded of; and Twitter, what happens when the public restroom pipe known as MySpace breaks downs and leaks into a brand-new infinity pool. No thanks. Which brings me back to Earth Hour.
Since I edit news stories for a living, I have no shortage of speed or information in my life; what I do lack is stillness and silence. I had no idea that willfully sitting in the dark for such a scant amount of time would be so refreshing and liberating. When it was all over and lightbulbs everywhere had sprung back to life, I made a pact with myself that I’d indulge in this type of activity more often. At least more often than one Earth Hour per year.
Ultimately, slowing down and cutting back — with all the attendant luxury those words evoke — is good not only for the health of the planet. As it turns out, it also does wonders for the human soul.
