Writing Your Online Life

Text Messages

Go into your phone and scroll back to the oldest text exchange you can find. Print out the words, cut them up, and construct a new conversation out of it. Put it side by side with the old conversation. How might your conversation have gone differently? Would your life have changed somehow?

Online Shopping

Go to a shop online that you have fantasised about, but that you’ve never actually shopped at. Maybe it’s too expensive, or you have not allowed yourself to do it for some reason that is unknown to you. First, fill up your shopping cart with every item you want and can fit in your shopping cart in 2 minutes. This is a bit like the game show Supermarket Sweep that began in the 1960s, where people have to fill up a shopping cart by running through a supermarket in 1:30 seconds. After the two minutes are up, take a look at your cart. Write through your items. You may want to take special note of their descriptions, and the technical writing/description of each item as well, which includes things like volume, measurement, material, etc.

Money

Open your bank account online and go back at least two years or more to this exact month. Rewrite (copy) all the purchases, deposits and deductions for that entire month. Do not click any links for more details, such as clicking through to see a photo of a check. Then, write down everything you remember from the list of deposits, purchases, and deductions. For any item you don’t remember, guess what it could have been. Make something up. These memories needn’t be constrained to only the exact item purchased – say, a bagel with cream cheese and lox – but also, anything else that comes back to you from that day, what the light was like in the bagel shop, the man who bumped into you and spilled his coffee and didn’t apologise. After doing this exercise, tune in to your body and see how you are feeling. Is there a constriction, or some other feeling in you? Write through this feeling.