I’m a contemplator. I think about things, ponder them, mull them over. I take my time, try to understand things fully. A question comes to mind, and it’s off to the races to learn about something only peripherally important to me.
I’m much less good at making a decision. I want it to be be perfect. I want it to be right. The result? It isn’t anything at all.
How to change that could be a question. Or it could be a decision. Perhaps, an action.
One of my objectives for this year has been to give less time and attention to the noise that gets in the way of accomplishing whatever it is you’re working on.
It’s an ongoing process, learning to not give time or attention to what you can’t control. Even more important? Learning that if you do give it attention, it can keep you from getting anything done.
If you can do something about it, great. If it’s frustrating, identify steps to get through, or manage it. Then move along.
Over the last month, I’ve rediscovered something I thought I’d lost. I always knew it was there, waiting for me, but hadn’t done a thing about it, except maybe worry that I’d forgotten how to do this.
Writing much more eloquently than I have about this topic, here’s iA Writer’s say on the matter:
The Web has lost its spirit. The Web is no longer a distributed Web. It is, ironically, a couple of big tubes that belong to a handful of companies. Mainly Google (search), Facebook (social) and Amazon (e-commerce). There is an impressive Chinese line and there are some local players in Russia, Japan, here and there. Overall it has become monotonous and dull.
It’s the same thing everywhere you turn. Writing here has been a great reminder of what made the Internet so great to begin with.
They continue:
There seems to be a weak undercurrent of old and young bloggers like us that feel sentimental or curious and want to bring back blogging. Blogging won’t save the world. But, hell, after two weeks now, we can confirm: it feels great to be back on the blogging line.
In short: more critical thinking, less sound bytes.
We can do this.
— h/t Patrick Rhone and Swiss Miss
There’s plenty of headlines right now trying to understand what to make of the role of Russian bots in the US 2016 election. Twitter even confirmed that the number is far higher than they had previously disclosed:
Twitter has admitted that more than 50,000 Russia-linked accounts used its service to post automated material about the 2016 US election – a far greater number than previously disclosed.
Announcing the discovery in a post to its website late on Friday, the company said the posts had reached at least 677,775 Americans, all of whom would be receiving a warning by email.
Twitter and other “free” social networks derive their value by numbers and concepts like “user engagement” and “interaction”. Even if it’s a bot that’s artificially driving up those numbers, Twitter still benefits. Attention is attention, and feeds the graph to show the shareholders. Twitter is even insulting enough to try to absolve themselves of some responsibility:
Twitter’s open and real-time nature is a powerful antidote to the spreading of all types of false information. This is important because we cannot distinguish whether every single Tweet from every person is truthful or not. We, as a company, should not be the arbiter of truth. Journalists, experts and engaged citizens Tweet side-by-side correcting and challenging public discourse in seconds.
Twitter is actually a very effective means to proliferate all types of false information, because it’s effective at simply proliferating information. Reports by users are great, sure, but a bot has limitless energy and doesn’t even have feelings. Plus, how can users take seriously a company who won’t enforce their own rules when a certain individual makes nuclear threats. Then they double down and indicate that world leaders get to play by different rules than the rest of us.
Oh, and those bots they’re insisting they’re working so hard to fight against? Here’s how that’s working out:
The PR war over the US government shutdown has been a tale of rival hashtags. Democrats are desperately branding it the “Trump shutdown,” while Republicans are pushing the phrase “Schumer shutdown,” after Democrat Senate leader Chuck Schumer.
The GOP is getting a boost with that message from a now-familiar ally: Russian bots. In the last 48 hours, Russia-linked Twitter accounts tweeted #schumershutdown more than any other hashtag, according to Hamilton 68, a project run by the German Marshall Fund think tank that tracks tweets “tied to Russia-linked influence networks.”
It’s increasingly clear that a platform that brought many together has now been hijacked and is working overtime to drive us apart. It’s being used as a tool to spread lies, disinformation, and foment distrust all in the name of engagement.
Time to disengage.
I spent part of my evening going through some mail, scanning documents, and wrangling small elements of life back in order. I have a ways yet to go.
I’m hopeful that this newfound bit of momentum works like a reverse snowball.
Something I realized a few months ago was that I enjoy doodling. It doesn’t have to be anything specific. I’ve never been the most visually creative person, but it’s a fun way to think outside my usual box (which is filled with words). Tonight, I put on some instrumental music and let my mind wander. This simple little chevron number was one of the results. I plan to do this more often, and may post some of them from time to time.
I’m not alone finding that social media isn’t actually about being social. The disconnect I find now, more than ever, is actually by design. Here’s Zeynep Tufekci writing for Wired:
These companies—which love to hold themselves up as monuments of free expression—have attained a scale unlike anything the world has ever seen; they’ve come to dominate media distribution, and they increasingly stand in for the public sphere itself. But at their core, their business is mundane: They’re ad brokers. To virtually anyone who wants to pay them, they sell the capacity to precisely target our eyeballs.
Zuckerberg wants you to believe that your voice matters. Tufekci continues:
They use massive surveillance of our behavior, online and off, to generate increasingly accurate, automated predictions of what advertisements we are most susceptible to and what content will keep us clicking, tapping, and scrolling down a bottomless feed.
Your attention, your information, their profits and power.
— h/t Brooks Review
I took a step today.
It lead to more steps.
I’ll take even more tomorrow.
Something that seem obvious which never fails to surprise me: taking a chance and doing something that I’m afraid of (afraid because it’s new, or I afraid I won’t know what I’m doing, or afraid that I know what I’m doing but know it won’t be perfect) always seems to turn out better than I expect.
A leap of faith doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be a leap.
Piles of mail stack up because life gets busy.
Boxes that remain unpacked after a move because even though you need to sort things (and discard them), they’re packed and out of the way.
Paperwork that piles up because you’re busy trying to learn a new software to manage paperwork.
Some are choices, all are circumstances. And all happened to me over the course of the past year. The longer I’ve left it, the more stuck I end up feeling.
Learning to let go of of the diversions is helping me to regain focus, manage the stressors, and take even small steps in the right direction.
This seems an especially important year to recognize that racism is still very much alive and well. Actions, as always, speak louder than words.
For interesting reading, there’s a great piece at Time about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement which notes a striking resemblance to the current Black Lives Matter movement.
For interesting listening, I have found that there are wonderful Black voices to listen to, and they’re not hard to find. Because I listen to a lot of podcasts, here are some recent favorites:
We have much work to do, and part of that work is to give other people a chance to tell their stories and to do whatever we can to elevate them and make this world a more welcoming place to all.
Austin Kleon, on handling the stress of the daily news cycle:
A friend of mine said he didn’t know how long he could wake up to such horrible news every day. I suggested to him that he shouldn’t wake up to the news at all, and neither should anyone else.
There’s almost nothing in the news that any of us need to read in the first hour (or two or three or four…) of our day.
Part of how we seem to have gotten here is that our undivided attention is being demanded on a near-constant basis. Tweets have become breaking news. It feels like the only way we’ll be able to get away from the mess we’ve created is to try to walk back a bit. To push ourselves away from the sense of urgency. Our issues are indeed urgent, but split decisions are rarely the best decisions. We live in a world that is using this urgency to fracture us, and we’re taking the bait hook, line, and sinker.
I used to want to know the news right away as a way to get the dread over with. It filled me with worry and anxiety, neither of which are productive ways to meet a challenging world.
Austin Kleon also references Leonardo Da Vinci’s lists for what he wanted to learn each day. We need more reflection, more community, more compassion.
As I’ve been writing more here over the past couple weeks, I’ve discovered I’ve taken the time to let myself get lost in thought. Sometimes those thoughts get written down, in some form, other times I let my mind wander and sit and doodle with some music going in the background. Sometimes I just sit in the quiet and stare blankly ahead at nothing in particular.
Looking for novel stimuli still beckons, but I find greater inner peace when I sit down and let my mind wander.
Spotted this sign tonight while out celebrating my birthday. In today’s world, it feels extra important to support your community and enjoy the little things. Thanks Chocolate Dude for helping me celebrate life and reminding me about this.
Among the many modern words in today’s vocabulary I don’t particularly like are buzzwords like user engagement and brand. The former is a very loose-meaning relation to connection, while the latter is (or feels like) an attempt to remove the personality from your person.
As more awareness comes to light about the role of social media in the world today, it’s starting to become very clear just how pervasive a problem this is.
For instance, note this selection from Antonio García Martínez, writing for Wired:
Whatever piece of content, however brilliant or vile, that received an escalating chain reaction of user engagement would receive instantaneous, worldwide distribution. Having “gone viral” became a greater trophy than appearing “above the fold” (now a ludicrous concept).
Translation: it doesn’t have to be good, critical, or thought-provoking, just as long as people can’t stop talking about it. That is, until the next thing rolls around.
If you follow the links in the article above, you’ll find one to Mark Zuckerberg’s first post-election post, which yielded this (emphasis mine):
We helped millions of people connect with candidates so they could hear from them directly and be better informed. Most importantly, we gave tens of millions of people tools to share billions of posts and reactions about this election. A lot of that dialog may not have happened without Facebook.
To users, here’s what Zuckerberg likes to say:
Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful[.]
But to the people who Facebook accepts money from (read: anyone but their supposedly core user base), they say this (emphasis mine):
Facebook, which told investors on Wednesday it was “excited about the targeting”, does not let candidates track individual users. But it does now allow presidential campaigns to upload their massive email lists and voter files – which contain political habits, real names, home addresses and phone numbers – to the company’s advertising network. The company will then match real-life voters with their Facebook accounts, which follow individuals as they move across congressional districts and are filled with insightful data
It’s not about what they say, it’s about what they do.
A friend of mine in college used to say that if you’re going to do something, do it. But if you’re going to say that you’ll do something, then waste your time doing something else, you’ve wasted two opportunities:
To add insult to the above, you’ve probably spent time doing the second thing while simultaneously thinking about the first.
Sometimes you need to focus and get something done. Sometimes you need to take a break. Learning how to tell the difference, and intentionally acting accordingly, is the challenge.
There’s an idea I have about how I’m trying to get started. I can see a finish line, and see a route to get there. I even know how to run.
Where I get stuck is that no one is around to fire the starting horn, so I have to do it myself.
Should I do it now? Or wait a bit until I feel more ready? Will I ever be ready? What do I need to feel ready?
The questions flood in, and meanwhile, I have yet to start.
Guess I should finally try out a post here on micro.blog. I’ve been blogging more lately, old school style, and realized I missed it. Not yet sure how I’ll use this site, but willing to give it a go.
Last year, I felt like I’d forgotten how to write. Last month, I realized that wasn’t the case. Still, I had lost momentum. I let other things take up my time and attention. In that process, I thought about writing, but never actually got around to it. Here and there, I would write a reply or comment on what someone else had written, but that helped to clarify their ideas, not my own.
I’m nowhere near where I want to be now, but I can tell I’m moving in the right direction. Writing here has helped me rediscover something I thought I’d lost. This simple act of writing has helped me realize I can take small steps and work toward a number of things I want to accomplish.
I’ve long had the vision to see what I was going for. Now I see how I can take steps, just a few at a time, to work toward getting there.
In addition to what I’ve been calling nanoattention, there’s another problem with our current state of social media has gotten us: let’s call it the squirrel.
When you look again at that list I wrote the other day, which was just ten items long, it’s striking to realize that that’s ten different things, by ten different sources. With typical perusal, that might take 20-30 seconds to scroll through. I’m a light user by social media standards, so if we err on the side of 30 seconds, and say I spend 10 minutes on the site, that’s 200 different snippets of text, advertisements, photos, and maybe videos (if I watch said videos, that would of course slow the rate of consumption).
The sheer volume of information is hard enough to fathom, but then when you try to sustain your own attention to something after being intentionally distracted every few seconds, it’s a wonder it takes so long to regain focus.
It’s becoming more apparent that social media is a perpetual jump cut through life.
Today, I taught my last Zumba class. It’s something I’ve been thinking about, and then planning, for the last couple of months.
It was great to see many wonderful people who have made it a lot of fun to teach over the years. I saw today just how much teaching a one-hour class, seemingly such a small thing, has brightened people’s lives. It’s a wonderful feeling, and one I’ll miss.
It still doesn’t feel easy, but it does feel right. And when I do teach once in a while, be it to sub or to join in a Zumbathon, it’ll be more special as a result.
Onward and upward.
A quick perusal of my facebook feed yields the following:
Social media thrives on attention. Based on the ten items above (a relatively random sample, taken by scrolling all the way down a few pages), showed 20% sponsored content, 20% content not relating to anything I was seeking out, and 30% status updates (random thoughts from friends), 10% meme, 20% pictures. It can only be assumed that the attention goals of the ads to get views/attention/likes and generate sales. For photos, perhaps get comments and interaction. Status updates, the goal might be to have a brief conversation. The group conversations’ goal is to drive more conversation.
I’ve been pondering lately if any of the above is actually meaningful to me. Sure, I’m connected to people, many of them who are people I enjoy knowing. But are my friendships strengthened? Am I learning something new, be it about life or anything else?
I feel like I say all the time that I want to get together with friends and catch up and have coffee, but more often than not, I just see them online. This is as true for long-distance friends as it is for those who are local. Social media has made me feel a lot less social. Why catch up when I’ve seen what you want to catch up about?
Is the constant sharing, the quick bytes of information, even leaving us with less room to think critically and reflect more on our own lives? The sheer volume being posted to facebook alone is staggering. When we’re so busy posting every little thing, we’re no doubt missing the big picture.
A casual conversation in the workplace today reminded me of the need for filters. A small tale of gossip took the focus away from what needed my attention, and did nothing to help me get done what I needed to get done.
Sometimes, you need to block out the things which get in the way of providing good care, communicating an important message, or maybe completing a report. Things that take away that focus only make it more difficult not only to get back on track, but to so well.
I’m working on building a filter: responding in adequate time when not completing other important tasks, and not letting my attention be taken up with things which build neither rapport nor character.
I’ve noticed a recent sense of urgency in many areas of my life. Today, it was a sense of feeling behind at work, and trying to hurry to get caught up. The reason I’m behind is an external cause (though, to be sure, I’ve undoubtedly been to blame for being behind from time to time, just not in this case at the moment), but it nonetheless is cause for anxiety. I’m not even the most organized, though for certain parts of my work, I need to be. It’s something I’ve been working on, which I think may be part of why it’s giving me such pause.
In other areas, I notice urgency as well. Urgency to take to social media and post pictures of what I’ve been up to. Urgency to react to the latest news. Urgency to respond to status updates and tweets.
The news is a perpetual state of urgency. The 24-hour news cycle used to rely on television, but can now reach you in your pocket, anywhere in the world, and is beginning for attention at every turn.
It is a daily challenge for me right now to not feel rushed, but I recognize that when I can keep my cool, I feel better and do better work. I just need to remind myself that I can do this.
My friend Jana, writing about the twists and turns of 2017:
While the general social and political climate was stressful and hard to deal with on a daily basis, music and opportunities for my world were actually…incredible. Things I did not have on my radar at all happened, and opportunities I had only dared dream about came to fruition in “screaming color” as T-Swift would say.
I’ve been thinking about this, too. A few self-discoveries this year startled me, such as rediscovering a niche in my speech pathology work which had been dormant, and realizing I have a knack for combining it with my current caseload. It’s had me asking new questions, trying new things, and discovering new challenges to tackle.
Then there’s this gem:
I envision goal-setting as more like keeping a balloon afloat in the air. You have to kind of boop it along…follow it when it takes a weird turn, stay nimble and flexible while you guide it to where you want to go. Tiny little shifts in direction can send you off to a new direction entirely.
This gets to the heart of what I was thinking about yesterday. I tend to not think much about goals, other than very abstractly. While I don’t see that changing too much, I have realized that having a vision for how I want to live my life is important. I so often consider quality of life for my patients, and consider it less for myself. How I spend my time is how I spend my life, and I want to be able to enjoy it.
At the same time, I’ve appreciated this sort of curve for how I’ve followed the balloon(s) in my life, and in more recent years let myself follow their path. What struck me recently was that one of my balloons had me standing in one place, while the others were starting to float just out of reach.
The epiphany was that I wanted to go chase down those other balloons.