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Radio silence, words, and more.
May. 1st, 2009 03:53 pm1. It is May Day! And yet again I have not done May baskets. I should probably just decide that I'm not going to, but it keeps popping up in my head each year, so I'm not sure that would actually work. I really have a hard time justifying driving all over pillar and post to my friends' houses and then not seeing my friends. Possibly I should map my friends and pick a region and only do May baskets in that region. Hmmmm.
2. I would like to once again call your attention to the existence of Fourth Street Fantasy Convention, which is (now that it is May) next month! Many fine people are already attending! One of them is me! Most of them are not! Still plenty of room for one of them to be you! Twenty-three days for the pre-reg deadline. Give it some thought.
3. I did an unannounced radio silence yesterday: no sending personal e-mail except in emergencies, no reading anything online--lj, Facebook, comics, news, nothing. I needed the mental quiet, and it was good to have it. I also react badly to the implicit notion that one should be assumed to be in reach of internet discussion and ready to focus all energy upon it at the drop of a hat.
On the other hand, when my friends talk about how they need to do less "wasting time online," I feel something of a pang: in many cases, online is my only mode of keeping up with them much of the time, and I don't really feel like maintaining a friendship is a waste of time. But on the other other hand, there is a spectrum, with a long letter to a dear friend on one end and reading back strips of a not-very-clever comic on the other.
So what I think I'm going to try to do for May is to concentrate my time reading stuff on the internet to first thing in the morning and some time in the evening, so that I'm still keeping up with friends but not faffing about looking up the origins of Edward III's mother just because I can. I don't intend to read less of lj total, but I do hope to reduce the time spent tabbing over, hitting refresh, reading two entries, and tabbing back to what I intended to be doing in the first place. Deliberate and intentional will be our watchwords. (Note: I count e-mail as separate from "reading stuff on the internet," so I'll still have my e-mail open pretty much all the time. This is by no means a guarantee that I will be at the computer anything like all the time.)
This is why I removed the games from my hard drive: sometimes I'm stuck on a bit of writing. Sometimes when I'm stuck, I need to persevere, and sometimes when I'm stuck, I need to get up, move away from the computer, make myself a cup of tea or fold some towels or something else. In neither of these cases was playing Free Cell actually useful. And I removed the games rather than fencing them off the way I'm going to try doing with reading stuff online because I didn't actually enjoy them, they just occupied my hands, whereas I actually do enjoy reading stuff online, so it's worthwhile to keep, in its own section maybe. We'll see how that goes.
4. Yesterday the words came back. After Grandpa died, there was a short period when I couldn't write at all--about two weeks--and since then it's been about a month of dragging each word out kicking and screaming. Which I do, because, y'know, this is what I do. But yesterday they were fluid again. Yesterday I could compose a paragraph or a scene rather than a letter or a word. Glory be. Oh, the relief that is work.
5. I really hope they do the Beethoven first and the Sibelius second tonight, because I'm pretty exhausted, and I would prefer not to sleep through the Beethoven, but I am a great deal less analytical about Beethoven than I am about Sibelius. I don't enjoy it less. I'm just less thinky. And tired.
2. I would like to once again call your attention to the existence of Fourth Street Fantasy Convention, which is (now that it is May) next month! Many fine people are already attending! One of them is me! Most of them are not! Still plenty of room for one of them to be you! Twenty-three days for the pre-reg deadline. Give it some thought.
3. I did an unannounced radio silence yesterday: no sending personal e-mail except in emergencies, no reading anything online--lj, Facebook, comics, news, nothing. I needed the mental quiet, and it was good to have it. I also react badly to the implicit notion that one should be assumed to be in reach of internet discussion and ready to focus all energy upon it at the drop of a hat.
On the other hand, when my friends talk about how they need to do less "wasting time online," I feel something of a pang: in many cases, online is my only mode of keeping up with them much of the time, and I don't really feel like maintaining a friendship is a waste of time. But on the other other hand, there is a spectrum, with a long letter to a dear friend on one end and reading back strips of a not-very-clever comic on the other.
So what I think I'm going to try to do for May is to concentrate my time reading stuff on the internet to first thing in the morning and some time in the evening, so that I'm still keeping up with friends but not faffing about looking up the origins of Edward III's mother just because I can. I don't intend to read less of lj total, but I do hope to reduce the time spent tabbing over, hitting refresh, reading two entries, and tabbing back to what I intended to be doing in the first place. Deliberate and intentional will be our watchwords. (Note: I count e-mail as separate from "reading stuff on the internet," so I'll still have my e-mail open pretty much all the time. This is by no means a guarantee that I will be at the computer anything like all the time.)
This is why I removed the games from my hard drive: sometimes I'm stuck on a bit of writing. Sometimes when I'm stuck, I need to persevere, and sometimes when I'm stuck, I need to get up, move away from the computer, make myself a cup of tea or fold some towels or something else. In neither of these cases was playing Free Cell actually useful. And I removed the games rather than fencing them off the way I'm going to try doing with reading stuff online because I didn't actually enjoy them, they just occupied my hands, whereas I actually do enjoy reading stuff online, so it's worthwhile to keep, in its own section maybe. We'll see how that goes.
4. Yesterday the words came back. After Grandpa died, there was a short period when I couldn't write at all--about two weeks--and since then it's been about a month of dragging each word out kicking and screaming. Which I do, because, y'know, this is what I do. But yesterday they were fluid again. Yesterday I could compose a paragraph or a scene rather than a letter or a word. Glory be. Oh, the relief that is work.
5. I really hope they do the Beethoven first and the Sibelius second tonight, because I'm pretty exhausted, and I would prefer not to sleep through the Beethoven, but I am a great deal less analytical about Beethoven than I am about Sibelius. I don't enjoy it less. I'm just less thinky. And tired.
