Disconnection
I told Ian on Saturday that I feel like I'm sort of "phoning in" life lately. I'm a little crazy, perhaps -- a little depressed (or as close to it as I get). I'm just floating for a bit. Stay tuned to see how your heroine survives this latest peril and eventually breaks out of this funk... but beware that there may be periods of silence until then as I sit on the couch in my sweatpants watching TV marathons, content to let the world roll by for a bit.
That was Saturday for me. I just did not feel like participating in the human race that afternoon.
...which brings me to something that came up in discussion with friends last night once I'd decided to interact with other humans again. We got into a discussion of various pet peeves we each hold. One friend said that his grumpy old man pet peeve is when he can't make contact with someone in this age of great connectivity. I certainly have sympathy for his annoyance by itself. It's something I hadn't thought consciously about until December when my old friend Stacey introduced the news article which inspired me to host the "quiet hour" every afternoon at work. Now that I am in a conscious state of continuing examination of this issue, I feel like I have a right to disconnect. I feel most strongly about this in the workplace, where I will steadfastly refuse to carry a Blackberry, or set the expectation that I will check my work email outside of office hours for as long as I possibly can do so in my career. Ian and I keep cell phones, but we have no landline in our house. I do not regularly check my personal email in the evenings or on weekends. I rarely log into Trillian (an instant messenger program) on my home computer... As an extrovert, I love and indeed crave the company of other people... but I like that to be on my terms. I don't feel the need to remain available to the beck and call of the outside world 24/7 -- and that's not just the depressive sweatpants talking (how's THAT for a cartoon visual for you??), I always feel that way. I think that time is one of the most precious resources each individual has. How I choose to tie strings to my time is an important freedom to me... Now, going back, again I certainly sympathize with the annoyance of trying to reach someone and being unable to do so. I think I just have to chalk that up to the category of annoyances we all feel from time to time when other unique snowflake human beings don't always do what we want them to do. The courteous thing to do is to set appropriate expectations for how and when I connect and disconnect, however -- maybe I should simply make better use of changing my outgoing voicemail message on my personal cell phone? I used to be great about that when I traveled a lot; perhaps it's a tradition I should re-examine.
In the overall world of re-examination, the Too Much Clutter alarm went off yesterday. I swept through my clothes, and threw out a small pile of things not appropriate for charity, and got a much bigger pile together for Goodwill -- not a mountain, but maybe enough to fill a regular kitchen trash bag. Then I went through my surprisingly large collection of cosmetics, and filled a small cardboard box with all the ones that didn't make the cut of desirability. I know "they" say never to apply someone else's cosmetics for health reasons, but there are a lot of rules "they" state which I ignore. I boxed these up, and gave them to my girlfriend Kristen who was happy to paw through them. What she doesn't want, she'll pass onto another girlfriend of hers whom she'll see this week, and thus my germs will start a zombie pink eye plague which will take out the population of the central plains states.
Starting a clean sweep felt good, although those were the easy parts. I need to tackle my crafting supplies. Ian's mother has been shipping us her old stuff with declared lack of pressure to keep it if we don't want it. I just left most of that stuff in the boxes in which they arrived, moved them from the apartment to the new house, and there they stay in a spare room in the dark. I know there is far more crap there than I will ever use, and what I do wish to keep, I need to organize nicely so I can find things when I need them. I suppose that like all great endeavors, a single step in the right direction there would be better than none.
That's about it from my head today.
Trace
That was Saturday for me. I just did not feel like participating in the human race that afternoon.
...which brings me to something that came up in discussion with friends last night once I'd decided to interact with other humans again. We got into a discussion of various pet peeves we each hold. One friend said that his grumpy old man pet peeve is when he can't make contact with someone in this age of great connectivity. I certainly have sympathy for his annoyance by itself. It's something I hadn't thought consciously about until December when my old friend Stacey introduced the news article which inspired me to host the "quiet hour" every afternoon at work. Now that I am in a conscious state of continuing examination of this issue, I feel like I have a right to disconnect. I feel most strongly about this in the workplace, where I will steadfastly refuse to carry a Blackberry, or set the expectation that I will check my work email outside of office hours for as long as I possibly can do so in my career. Ian and I keep cell phones, but we have no landline in our house. I do not regularly check my personal email in the evenings or on weekends. I rarely log into Trillian (an instant messenger program) on my home computer... As an extrovert, I love and indeed crave the company of other people... but I like that to be on my terms. I don't feel the need to remain available to the beck and call of the outside world 24/7 -- and that's not just the depressive sweatpants talking (how's THAT for a cartoon visual for you??), I always feel that way. I think that time is one of the most precious resources each individual has. How I choose to tie strings to my time is an important freedom to me... Now, going back, again I certainly sympathize with the annoyance of trying to reach someone and being unable to do so. I think I just have to chalk that up to the category of annoyances we all feel from time to time when other unique snowflake human beings don't always do what we want them to do. The courteous thing to do is to set appropriate expectations for how and when I connect and disconnect, however -- maybe I should simply make better use of changing my outgoing voicemail message on my personal cell phone? I used to be great about that when I traveled a lot; perhaps it's a tradition I should re-examine.
In the overall world of re-examination, the Too Much Clutter alarm went off yesterday. I swept through my clothes, and threw out a small pile of things not appropriate for charity, and got a much bigger pile together for Goodwill -- not a mountain, but maybe enough to fill a regular kitchen trash bag. Then I went through my surprisingly large collection of cosmetics, and filled a small cardboard box with all the ones that didn't make the cut of desirability. I know "they" say never to apply someone else's cosmetics for health reasons, but there are a lot of rules "they" state which I ignore. I boxed these up, and gave them to my girlfriend Kristen who was happy to paw through them. What she doesn't want, she'll pass onto another girlfriend of hers whom she'll see this week, and thus my germs will start a zombie pink eye plague which will take out the population of the central plains states.
Starting a clean sweep felt good, although those were the easy parts. I need to tackle my crafting supplies. Ian's mother has been shipping us her old stuff with declared lack of pressure to keep it if we don't want it. I just left most of that stuff in the boxes in which they arrived, moved them from the apartment to the new house, and there they stay in a spare room in the dark. I know there is far more crap there than I will ever use, and what I do wish to keep, I need to organize nicely so I can find things when I need them. I suppose that like all great endeavors, a single step in the right direction there would be better than none.
That's about it from my head today.
Trace