The element in common is to slow down, pay attention tot he world, and take the time to do something different. It doesn’t have to be one thing all the time.
Today, I’ve been reading. Other days, I draw, or maybe write. Many days, I photograph, though if I’m honest, not enough days.
I don’t have to be great at any of the above to enjoy them, and it’s liberating to just let go, enjoy the process, and keep doing more.
I made sure there was less on my plate today. I gave myself a chance to breathe, to watch the world go by, and to look up for a change. Mind the bullshit, but look for the beauty.
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Friday will be twelve days in a row worked without a break. Sometimes saying yes to too many things is a cause for being so busy. Noted.
Some days, I get too busy for my own good. On these days, I think less clearly, think less critically, and feel less effective.
Fewer of these days seems like a good plan.
Since I’ve been posting more here, I’ve noticed a gradual change in the questions I ask myself.
Before, I found myself asking what was happening in the world. Then I might ask about what was happening with my friends.
Now, I’ve been asking myself, what will I write today?
It doesn’t mean I’m not aware of the world. But it does mean I’m taking the time to reflect, think about finding meaning in my own life, and actively working on making a difference in others’ lives.
I just finished reading Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes. It was a fascinating read, not to mention a sad one. The version taught in school, if taught at all, favors the victors. Though the book is full of thoughtful observations, a few toward the end really stood out to me:
A Hawaiian word can have so many meanings and associations that each noun becomes a portal into stories and beliefs, like how the word for wealth, waiwai, is just the word for water spoken twice.
Language so clearly reflects a cultural value. Here, I take this to mean that water is essential for life, and to have more water is to be wealthy. It’s simple but powerful. (As an aside, I also love the word haole, because it’s one of those great words whose meaning is so perfect for its sound.)
In keeping with the theme of powerful words, there’s also this:
[Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole’s] “Over the Rainbow” is as sweet and soft as trade winds rustling through palms. It is the perfect song for Hawaiian vacations because the tranquility of its sound captures the feeling tourists flock there to find. Even though it’s a song that is actually about the human inability to be happy where one is, the suspicion that joy is always somewhere else.
I’ve always loved his version of the song. It was recorded in just one take, according to the above-linked Wikipedia page. Here’s the video below, and it’s equally beautiful. The video celebrates both his life and death by including fans scattering his ashes into the Pacific ocean. Very moving.
After a fairly busy weekend, I took some time this evening to listen to some best-of episodes of one of my all-time favorite podcasts, Professor Blastoff. I usually am driving while listening to podcasts, so while home, I picked up my Apple Pencil and doodled.
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David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), writing about why he left facebook years ago:
I quit Facebook back in 2011 for a lot of reasons, but perhaps the most crucial was to rebel against its core mission: Connecting the world. I was over-connected with the world, acquaintances and friends from the past, and I wanted out.
In my own reviewing of my use of facebook, I’ve realized just how little it adds to my life. Since that time, I’ve looked at it about once a week, just to see what it feels like. The little red dots become more insistent. “You’re keeping a new friend waiting,” the dot informs me. “Your friends haven’t heard from you in a while”, another dot says. A red dot with an increasingly large number beckons for my attention. “Here’s what you’ve missed since you last signed in.”
The feeling I get without all that? It’s better than the feeling I get when seeing it. It’s a relief to close the tab and move on.
Regarding DHH’s point about acquaintances, I’m “friends” on facebook with people I’ve met once, or perhaps twice. Our paths crossed through other friends, and maybe we enjoyed a good conversation at that point in time. Despite not ever seeing each other since, we still see each other online, though we don’t interact. I often ask, “How do I know this person again?” They’re great people, of course, but it’s a marvel to realize the cognitive effort needed to remember someone, then make sense of whatever they post about.
I started using facebook when it first started out in the world, when I was in college. I connected with new college friends, and some high school friends. I’ve never been to a high school reunion. Facebook tells me all I need to know, but more than that, I didn’t really enjoy high school and have no need to go back and relive it. I don’t keep up with friends from high school, even on facebook. So what am I waiting for?
Here’s DHH again:
In real life, this force [of losing touch] is mercifully thrust upon you at critical moments for self-discovery and evolution. You leave university, and you automatically lose touch with most of the people you knew there. It’s not an affront to anyone that this happens. It doesn’t take any effort. Everyone accepts that it’s a natural process.
Different people play different roles in your life. Those roles fluctuate with time, and if you drift apart, there’s no reason you can’t reconnect later, should your paths cross then. I’ve noted that often in that instance, we pick up right where we left off. Or we pick up in new place, realizing how much we’ve both grown.
Maybe the fear of letting the past go makes it that much more difficult to open up to the future. But wherever you go, it’s okay to make those connections, touch others’ lives and in return let theirs touch yours. When the time comes, it’s okay to move on.
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.