How screen time has quadrupled

Screen-shot life expands from politics
to work, classes, meetings, worship services

The idea that meetings and work and classes can all be conducted online is wishful thinking.

I don't buy it.  I don't want to spend hours and hours at a screen just because we are all homebound.  

I'd rather just read a book or garden or write.

Al-Anon meetings--NO, not online.

Hebrew classes--NO, not the same as hearing and speaking Hebrew in a classroom.

Pilates via video--NO, not me. 

Church services online--NO thank you.  I'll light a candle at home or take a walk with a view.

Now the UCLA Extension wants me to take my quarterly writers' workshop online.  using the Extension's version of Facetime.

I took my first-ever UCLA Extension 100% online class this winter quarter, with Liz Stephens.  I'm sure she's a great person, but I never met her or the other students.  

When you're all writing memoir, it's hard enough to become vulnerable and to give helpful but gentle comments without trying to do that through the internet. Misunderstandings occur when difficult subjects are handled by email or texts.

This online class took much more time than an in-person class--all time spent in front of a screen.  Horrible for my posture and my wrists.  More screen time, anyone?  Not to mention more time spent watching cable news, texting, using Twitter, etc.

Posting my writing, reading other people's posts, submitting comments--that part wasn't so bad.  

But reading other people's comments on the readings, and then commenting on their comments on the readings, as well as reading their comments on my comments on the reading--all that was billed as "discussion." 

Which it was not.  

I've already paid for this course (when I expected it to be in a classroom), so I'll bumble along, but I certainly will not sign up for another distance learning workshop on memoir writing.