OK, perhaps not, but in the somewhat unlikely case you did, and have been gnawing on your knees for just over a month wondering, I though it about time to witter on about 2009. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

My name is Neil and I’m having a difficult time with tech

As the real world grows increasingly entwined to the virtual world, I grow increasingly indifferent to its siren song. Once the focus of endless hours wading through page after page of dross with the shimmering hint of something worthwhile just around the corner, now a useful tool when I need to learn the etymology of “adrenaline” (discovered in 1901, in case you are interested).

It has taken me some time to isolate the technology ailment I am just starting to heal, but it boils down to interference. The web is noisy – I doubt you would argue that. As a result it has in the past become not a distraction, but simultaneously irritating and useful, but always diverting. Like a  neighbour who is happy to chat over the fence with a cuppa while imparting his priceless gardening tips , who continues to mow your lawn while he’s out doing his own, yet plays Radio 2 just a tad too loud in the morning when you’re struggling to get up to full speed productivity, and parks his car sticking just a little too far out on his drive so you invariably have to reverse carefully around it.

Each year I spend less time feeling my internet activities are genuinely productive and fulfilling.

The facebook to wrench a thousand hairs

After much grumbling deliberation, I recently created an account with the dreaded facebook. From the moment of verifying my email address, the level of frustration followed by sheer exasperation at how poorly applied the site is in terms of how one is forced to use it, has taught me never to be optimistic again.

It is clearly designed to keep you logged-in whilst trying to decipher what on earth is going on, obsessing about the various activities of “friends”, and generally constantly filtering out noise – which does not end when one logs out (the infamous facebook bacn).

The facebook experience sums up my growing frustration and feeling of wasted energy with tech in general.

There is simply no time for this waste

A theoretical weekday for me – should everything run to schedule:

• 0630: Up and grabbing breakfast whilst Breakfast meanders along on the TV and I try just once to remember the weather forecast for more than 5 seconds after it has been broadcast.
• 0700: A scan through both work and personal email inboxes to establish messages requiring later attention. Inbox Zero by 0730 is the aim, and achievable most days. I also catch up with overnight twittering.
• 0730: Time to get cleaned-up (are you sure you want all my bathroom-related activities?)
• 0800: Deal with personal emails, blog posts, various other online activities such as messages, networking, commenting, reading, research, all that stuff.
• 0930 – 1900 work. Of course there are breaks for lunch and appropriately dispersed mugs of coffee.
• 1900: Dinner. Usually with a little TV as background.
• 2000-2200: Writing time (~900 words written, or a chunk of editing). TableRappers doesn’t just happen, you know.
• 2200-2300: Wind-down. Try to relax a little so that sleep is achievable at a reasonable hour.

That, at least, is the theoretical, optimum daily schedule. It rarely comes together as planned, particularly after my West Coast USA work colleagues reach their morning at around 5pm UK time. Creative time is, as you can guess, at an absolute premium. Today, as an example, dinner was not until 2030 and right now, it is 2348 and I am, for some reason, suddenly driven to complete this post.

How much creative energy is being sucked into my tech void?

More than I am prepared to continue losing, that is for sure. My non-commercial creative activities, such as drawing and painting in particular, must be shoe-horned into that schedule in the slivers of free time that opens up here and there. 

What pains me the most is to have the most fulfilling, challenging, and enriching activities bullied into dusty corners by everything else. 

And yet…

When managed, the internet, and technology, is a wonderful resource. Having recently rekindled an unceasing battle with creating just one satisfactory painting in watercoour, online resources have helped me to understand how to move my explorations forward. 

However, I wonder how much further I might be in this creative development if I simply traded the online research time for painting and exploration. 

So 2009 is about using the internet less?

In a way, perhaps. More accurately, it is about taking control, about harnessing the positive whilst pushing the negative, unproductive, and unfulfilling off a very high cliff.

I believe if I can release the grip of much of the interfering technology, it will make elements of my days far more productive, thus opening up genuine free time not only to explore mor creative activities, but perhaps also sociaising and spending time with family.

You might say in undertaking to write a novel, I am bringing the added pressure into my day to day life. Only someone who does not understand the creative urge would consider that a worthy suggestion.

2009 is about simplification, about setting aside the unproductive to enhance the productive, discarding the worthless in exchange for the fulfilling. 2009 is about change.

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For the past few days, and for no particular reason, I decided to de-twitterfy my life. I neither read from nor posted to twitter (apart from automated posts from this blog whenever I publish a blog post). It is now towards the end of the third full day and I feel just a little detached. Work and personal project schedules disable any real effort in maintaining communication streams with friends, and so twitter filled that gap by maintaining most of those friends (those also using twitter, of course) within my peripheral vision as they tweeted their way through their days. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

I have the urge to divert even more of my day away from working on my big project (TableRappers) to emailing various friends to reach out and discover how they are getting on – I have resisted as that will kill a chink of productivity.

This was an interesting exercise in understanding the place twitter has in my day to day activity, and I’m delighted to say it will remain a part of it for a good while (though the odd holiday here and there is inevitable).

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I recently wrote about how I have little actual “luck”. This often manifests itself in games of chance – which I try to avoid like a celery and Marmite sandwich (that’s for another post). One might wonder why I spent much of my geeky teen years buried in Dungeons and Dragons since the level of dice use in that game surpasses any other.

In school I would play chess, draughts (checkers), even bridge for a little while, but the game that has always thwarted me is backgammon. I considered since it involves a combination of strategy and chance, that I might use that strategy to finally overcome my die-throwing handicap. No such luck. In fact, it became immediately clear that my usually strong ability to strategize had been demolished through adding that chance element. I can honestly say I can never remember winning a game of backgammon and so the mystique of Omar Sherif deepened with every loss.

One friend, Gerard Sands, if my memory is functioning this morning, would thrash me at backgammon in a remarkable way often leaving me agape at the speed of his victory with him clearing his pieces in a handful of die rolls, while my pieces moved around the board like extras from Dawn of the Dead (the original, not the “run around fast and hungry” version).

So when a link popped into my inbox about online backgammon – no, it wasn’t spam – I actually considered giving it a shot and revisiting the demoniacally inadequate die-throwing of my past. If I could only crack the strategy and discover how to move the pieces around to compensate for the devilry of the die. At least online I can hide my humiliation in private. But I know chance will win out and toy with me once more offering nothing more than astounding frustration. I’m going to stick with Jenga – do they do an online Jenga?

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