Ahhh, bliss! Yesterday I ponied up the whole £1.50 to add spam filtering to my mailhosting package, and it’s as if a noisy construction site next door just closed down. (Or more like a 24-7 p*rn studio.)
Because I have a top-level domain (my name + .com), I get flooded by at least a hundred random messages a day. I order things online and — very selectively — sign up to sites and newsletters, so that meant I had to filter through everything that got diverted into my Junk folder by my mail program’s own filters in case there was something new I might want hadn’t been added to my safe-list. I didn’t appreciate how much time this took until now. The barrage of filthy, duplicitous crap has… stopped. I feel like I’m sitting in the woods in total silence.
Along those lines, I also removed my profiles from various dating/chat sites, because I found myself constantly tempted to check in with them, or get into long chats with random people — which is all very nice, but had nothing to do with the intention behind joining those sites (finding romance, if I’m honest with myself), and salted acres of time in which I could have been planting something meaningful.
My self-discipline exists in not having things in my environment in the first place; once they’re there, I have no willpower (I don’t like sweeties, for instance, but if I have them here, I’ll munch through the lot of them).
So last night, not having this distraction available, I made two books while spending time with Patrick watching movies. I also got to bed at a reasonable time, not something-o’-clock in the morning, because there was no particular reason to turn on the computer. Apparently I’m not alone in this: I read a news item the other day about the link between insomnia and late-night Internet use or television-watching. It makes sense: something bright shining in your face is pretty much the opposite of the “night”, “darkness” cues that tell the brain it’s time to sleep.
Now, the big question: Can I make Facebook work for me, or do I finally pull the plug on that, too? Unlike the general public, who seem to think it’s a wonder, I just find it annoying. Sure, it’s really cool to see that folks from high school are alive and well (and all married with two children, apparently). Beyond that, though, or the initial C.V. conversation, there isn’t much to say in most cases. Which is perhaps why everyone resorts to adding gawdawful, pointless “applications” to their pages and sending me links so I can add them, too. No thanks; getting ‘poked’ by an Internet application is no more pleasant or purposeful than being poked in real life.
I do receive informative invitations to friends’ events, but these are often overseas, or conflict with my general time-stinginess since I’m working on a book. So that’s just another dash of guilt stirred in with the portion of my attention it takes to deal with the announcement e-mail.
Could I make Facebook work for me as a micropublisher? Perhaps, if I could use it to connect with readers, authors, or crafters who might be interested in the what I’m doing. But I’m not sure that anyone would ever follow through and actually buy a book; I know I’m growing weary of receiving requests through the site.
So, okay, that’s a project for next week: see how Facebook works as an audience-growing tool. I’ll leave it alone for now.
I do this: I get everything working, then I want to dismantle it and get it working better. For the time being, concentration, productivity, and sleep are awfully nice to get back in the latest configuration of things.
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What I’m reading:
I really enjoyed a BBC documentary called The Century of the Self, which looked at the way Freudian psychology was brought to America, developed into the science of “Public Relations”, and went on to influence every aspect of modern life, from our purchases to our activities to the policies of our governments. The documentary isn’t available for sale, but you can watch it on Google video.
I have a tendency when I find something I like to then go and explore the source material it came from — which often turns up a more potent essence of the thing I found compelling, even if it’s less comprehensible or practical. (For example, the workshop experiences I had with Landmark Education led me to the work of Martin Heidegger. Okay, yes, he may or may not have been a Nazi apologist, but we all have our foibles! That doesn’t make me afraid of looking at his ideas about language, thinking, and being.)
Several key figures kept coming up in The Century of the Self, so curiosity has led me to their writings, which are the source of the ideas in the series:
The Hidden Persuaders, by Vance Packard
Propaganda, by Edward Bernays
One-Dimensional Man, by Herbert Marcuse
Also on my stack are:
The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben
Poetry, Language, Thought, by Martin Heidegger
This reading has made me question my thinking about psychology. For some time, I’ve written it off as what I call “The Science of Blame”. The personal work I’ve been doing for nearly a decade has been focused on goals, designing a future that gives me what I’m doing today. To this thinking, emotions are merely a byproduct. It’s been useful, and has produced tangible results in my life that I’m happy for. But now I’m looking back into the shadows, questioning what’s motivating these activities, and there’s some crazy stuff in there. (You’re doing this for that reason? You really believe that? How weird.) I don’t intend to do nothing but stare into that pool and become rooted to the bank, but having that information makes other choices possible.
So, er, this is what I’ve been thinking about. Not that you asked for any of this.
I’m also back to work. Speaking of which, I’m going to go do some.
