Radio silence, words, and more.

[mrissa]

1. 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.

Comments

[pmrabble.livejournal.com]

Wood, Dove, Violin Concerto in the fist half, 7th in the second half. But the're's always Osmo trying to make us dance in the aisles during the final movement!

I'll look for you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I looked, but I didn't see a guy in a kayak anywhere at Orchestra Hall last night.

Also, some of Osmo's conducting for the Beethoven closely enough resembled my godson bopping that I was charmed (and awake).

[pmrabble.livejournal.com]

Third tier balcony audience right, second box back, front row. Limited visibility, but fantastic sound.

Curious, what did you think of the Sibelius Violin Concerto? My usual accompaniment wanted to go up and strangle the soloist; I thought he did a very nice job.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah, we were on the main floor at the far back.

I thought the soloist did fine with the violin concerto, but I wasn't that impressed with the concerto itself. It felt to me like sort of the compilation of everything people always do with a violin concerto. Liked the encore quite a bit, though.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I distinguish between "wasting time online" and "socializing online". I'd like to do less of the former, but I'd actually like to do more of the latter.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Word up on pretty much all of point #3, from Edward III to the tabbing thing.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Okay, I am an ignorant Left Coaster. What specifically does doing May baskets entail? I have never done it. It sounds potentially nice.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You make up baskets of flowers or fruit or candy or whatever small things meet with your approval. For me the canonical basket is the woven heart kind made out of sturdy paper. And you go and hook the basket over the doorknob or lean it against the door, and you ring the bell and run, and then they open the door to find daffodils or Lindt balls or whatever you've left them.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you. That sounds quite nice. A sort of reverse trick-or-treating. And while I think of woven heart baskets as being a specifically Christmassy sort of thing, doing somewhat bigger ones in spring-like colors would be a pleasantly crafty sort of thing to do. But yeah, the geographic dispersal of one's friends makes it tricky.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Reverse trick-or-treating exactly, and on the other half of the year, too, to make it even more appropriate.

[katallen.livejournal.com]

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.

Yes. And the rest of the paragraph too, but this first off.

[pameladean]

I'm glad that the words came back.

P.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

I gave up wasting time on the internet for Lent this year. For me, it meant that I read and sent emails, and LJ and Facebook, but only to communicate with other people. And I still did nonfun things online, like banking, managing my netflix queue, and looking up phone numbers and directions.

What I stopped doing was reading webcomics, blogs of people I don't know, humor sites, and most importantly, stopped just following link after link after link. I wouldn't lump keeping up with friends in with the latter list.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I'm glad the words have come home.

[redbird]

That's an important distinction between being online and wasting time online. For me, for example, reading and posting to LJ isn't wasting time; hitting "refresh" repeatedly on a weekend evening when nobody is likely to have posted anything new or interesting in each short interval is in the wasting time mode, and starts to be irritating as well, because unproductive.

Sort of the internet equivalent of junk food: recognizing it doesn't mean I'm going to stop eating, or even swear off the specific site; it means trying to be more mindful.

I may be the only person at my office with no games on her PC: one of the first things I did when I was given a computer there (a week or two after being hired) was get IT's okay to remove the built-in Windows games. In my case, it was to spare my hands--the spider solitaire thing is addictive, for me, and I had to go cold turkey. I'd already taken it off my home PC. (The IT guy may have been surprised, but had no objection.)

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I was never a big Beethoven fan until this winter. I think I used to classify him under boring, which isn't the same as unpleasant, but is kind of a take it or leave it proposition.

But this winter I discovered that Beethoven cures what ails me. His music has become this enormous lift. I leave feeling peaceful and relaxed. LIve is best, but even recordings (especially of piano music) help my mood and tension.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

I, too, am kind of irritated by the talk of "giving up facebook for lent" and other resolutions which are basically equivalent to cutting people off. I have tried to be aware of how I spend my time, and realize that sometimes it is very easy to spend time socializing instead of working. But putting work first doesn't mean that you cut off your friends and family, whether the medium is the internet, the phone, or an actual, physical water cooler. I don't think it would make sense to anyone to say you were giving up the telephone for lent, so this is something I interpret as reactionary and anti-technology, rather than spiritual or whatever.

[keilexandra]

3. I certainly spend way too much time on the Internet... and unproductively, too. I need to start reading LJ consistently instead of in huge blocks on the weekends. And cut back on certain other forums, and work on the novel, and and and. You get the idea.

But like you, I value my online friendships too much to take a true hiatus; and also like you, email is sacred.