...

When I was a little girl, I often watched movies like The Goonies, Father of the Bride, and Home Alone. I remember seeing the pristine neighborhoods, and assuming that my future would be to grow up, get a nice job, get married, and settle in such a neighborhood. A neighborhood with sprawling, two floor houses. Houses with basements AND attics. Houses with giant Christmas trees that have no logical reason to put up because I'd be taking trips to places around the world. I didn't truly want these things or feel an ambition to fight for them. I simply had internalized these movies as a realistic life path.

So yeah, I now realize that my mental model didn't stem from materialism, but because it was what Hollywood embedded in me. That one grows up, goes to college, works hard, and ends up being able to afford to buy a house. I now realize how naive I was. That the baseline set in those films as "normal" (though one can say that the point of the Goonies was that they couldn't keep the house!) was not normal. And it's not just that it's not the baseline expectation for this era. That it never was. That those movies were a false representation of reality.

Obvious... but not to me. I watched a lot of TV as a kid, so most of my reality WAS woven from what Hollywood told me. What Disney told me. What Saturday morning cartoons and blockbuster movies taught me. Regardless of the fact that I never experienced such a reality myself.

But the point of this is not to talk about housing or affordability or capitalism and its marketing machine. It’s more about stories. About how pervasive they are and how they shape us. How we use them to construct our reality, outsource our ethics, and as an excuse to narrow our view as to what is possible in life, both at a micro and macro level.

I remember growing up, enjoying films and books, and entertainment of all stripes. I remember growing older and internalizing the fantasy component, yet still enjoying it, because it was a fun escape. But in time, I felt the escape felt a bit more empty. I don't really care about pop culture, or movies, or very popular books anymore. The heady rush of reading something salacious, or thrilling, or enjoying plot twist after plot twist (which became extra ubiquitous post-Gone Girl) became in time more like a sense of impatience. Part of me wishes I could enjoy that stuff, but I think I felt it got boring, or I read or watched too much of it (one sad side effect of autism that I WILL overdo a thing).

Ironically, this drove me back to basics. A slim tome of poetry or philosophy. A well brewed cup of tea or coffee. A nice notebook, or a well written sentence. I have become, I guess, even more boring to others as I reject the mental models that forged me growing up.

Life is funny. It IS a mix of creation vs systems. It's accepting some things, and fighting for others. There doesn't seem to be one perfect answer to everything every time (darn it). Lately I feel the need to design more on my terms, even if I'm the only one that embraces it. Even if it pushes some people around me away.

If consumers want to be entertained, and the images shown us as entertaining are images of violent dehumanization, it makes sense that these acts become more acceptable in our daily lives and that we become less likely to respond to them with moral outrage or concern.
– bell hooks (All About Love)