Accomplishment...of sorts

Rambling. That is what I feel like I am doing. Rambling through books, pages,  e-mail, blogs, the Internet. Collecting things to paper the walls of my mind. I'm supposed to be writing and, in a sense, maybe I am. Working things out somewhere around the edges until something clicks into place. I'm not sure what I am looking for. Maybe a distraction from pain. Maybe a secret to life. The secret. But I don't think there are really any secrets to life. It's pretty much all out there in the open, if you really look for it.

But. But what? I'm not sure. My brain has turned off, more or less. I read through books, learning. Slurping it up, hoping to know things that someone else has known a lot longer than I have. Or they've known it more surely than I have. I feel like I have a Teflon brain. Nothing sticks these days. Is it the pain, causing things to slide off before they have a chance to take root? I am getting some work done. Edited a short story manuscript, sent it off to my editor, gotten some cover graphics done for the same person for his book. I started editing one of my novels and worked through several chapters in two books (by the same author) on how to outline a novel. Got all the worksheets and checklists and such from the books loaded into files on the computer for easier use. Lots of typing there, but it did not make my fingers itch to type my own words. Where is this going? I'm not sure.

The weeks are broken up with various activities; Tuesday is friend day, Wednesday a study circle is supposed to happen, Thursday evening a writing group. These things all break my week apart and make it hard for me to focus. I know something is coming up, so I know I will be interrupted and my thought processes disrupted. Getting down to work, sticking with it, is hard to do if I know that something is coming up. My mind jitters around, never landing on one thing. Unfocused because there is that thing waiting around the next hour. Taking two hours at a time to work is not something my mind seems bent on doing. It wants large chunks of time. Huge blocks of non-disturbance to look forward to. Ah, a straight path to the goal. Hours and hours of unbroken stillness in which to frolic and create. Time that spans great distances between now and then, until my mind comes back to the present--emptied and satisfied with an accomplishment of some sort. I don't find that easily, but will not give up my scheduled events--they are important! I need to learn to work between those times and get things done. 

So I play at getting organized. Okay, so it isn't really play, because it does bring organization to the chaos. That's a good thing. 

Voice from the Ether

Weird? Scary? Okay, let's just go with weird. Scary, not so much. Irritating, definitely.

As I was meandering through my on-line writing group, reading and enjoying what has been written in the past few days, a voice pops up and starts yammering at me about Arm&Hammar laundry detergent. Now, that's not unusual--or wouldn't have been had I been using IE8, since IE8 had started allowing all sorts of pop-ups to adjust themselves to my browsing choices (yeah, I clicked on the "block popups" and it doesn't always work these days...).  With voice feeds. So, I switched to Chrome--and no more annoying pop-ups at all! Chrome is (was?) working well. Until this morning. A few minutes ago, to be exact.

The voice, all chirpy and nice, starts talking about cleaning aids. I look down at my toolbar and taskbar and there is nothing open that is not supposed to be there. No pop-up taking up valuable desktop real estate. I check the tabs across Chrome, nothing extra there. There is no visual to match the voice that is yammering away. Then it stops. Hmmmm....strange. Then it chirps out "Hey! Have you gotten any coupons yet?" Every few seconds. Annoying. Weird. I turned off my speakers, end of problem. Speakers off for five minutes. I turned them back on, thinking the voice in the machine would have given up. Not so. Immediately "Hey! Have you gotten any coupons yet?" blares out, followed quickly by: "Looking for solutions? We've got more!" Now I'm ticked!

This is *MY* space! I paid for this computer. I pay for the right to access the Internet. I pay for the electricity to keep it all humming. I'll be damned if I will ever pay to buy products that show up, unannounced, in my life. I did not invite this chirpy female voice to high jack my air-, brain-, or any other-space I might occupy at any given moment. I have my writing group tab open, I have my gmail account tab open. There is nothing else going on or open on my computer except for non-connected programs like PageFour and OpenOffice. Is one of them the culprit? I don't think so. Has Chrome decided to allow pop-up voices rather than pop-up visuals into the mix? If so, I will be shopping elsewhere for a browser. One that does not allow for such a blatant invasion of my privacy.

The thought crosses my mind: How am I ever going to be able to listen to music on my computer again? The thing is, if I am on the Internet doing research for one of my WIPs, I might like to have on Celtic Drums, or some country tunes, or heavy metal--depending on what I am researching for. I've had the experience of having my music going and clicking on something I wanted to listen to on-line. I figured one would cancel out the other, see? Nope. Didn't work that way. I got to hear them both. Not an easy feat to separate out the noise from the news. So, does this mean I won't be able to enjoy my music while I'm on the Internet without having to listen to whatever is hammering away at me to buy this or that? It has been fifteen minutes, I've turned my speakers back on again--sound check--and she's still at it. It isn't right. It is another insidious evil perpetrated by the mega-industrial complexes vying for our cash, our laundry, and our lives. Invasion of my privacy is not an acceptable way to get me to buy into your product line. You have just lost a once valued customer. Although, now that I think about it, it could be a little on the scary side. They, meaning corporations, already track our spending through our bank cards, credit cards, and any other means they can. Now they want our private minutes, too? There are so many other, more important things going on in the world. And while those things are going on, while our attention is drawn away for a moment, advertisers and corporations creep into our veins. It's just wrong.

Social Networking

First, let me see if this works. Yes, it does.

Okay, now that we have gotten that out of the way--that being the ability to copy and paste from my PageFour application directly into my blog here. The question arises because I can't copy/paste from my OpenOffice application into my blog. And while I can use MS Word and actually publish directly from that application, I am using a sadly outdate version that is, to say the least, not doing a lot of the things I need it to do; such as cooperate with others who have much newer versions. Backwards compatibility, it seems, is a thing of the past. Updating is too expensive. Hence, OpenOffice. PageFour is a whole other app--that I have learned to use and really like! And then there's the question of security issues that MS does not cover with such an outdated program. Ah, the vicissitudes of life...

[False alarm: It will only copy/past one sentence at a time. Drat! The workaround: copy from here, paste to a Word doc, copy from Word, paste to blog. Life should not be so complicated.]

At any rate, today's subject will tackle, for me, social networking sites. There are many! A few of the ones I belong to: Ning, MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook. Not to mention all the other places I've joined where there are group forums, such as Goodreads, NaNoWriMo, Duotrope, Sampa, Flickr, etc. (That's just a drop in the bucket!) Are we humans joiners by nature?

Each of these applications seems to have its own jargon, though many of them share commonalities. It's hard to keep up these days. My experience has been: First, there was Myspace, which everyone invited me to. Then, Twitter, Ning, and Facebook. I'm not sure if that was the order in which they came into being. I am only sure that it is the order in which I was invited to join (according to my best recollection).

So, am I getting tweets from twits? Not so much, these days. Nor am I getting much action from Myspace. Not since Facebook, at any rate. As for the twitters; as I said, those are pretty sparse. I mean, the tweets from the twits. Is that actually what people who use Twitter are called? It seems like it should be, since it is easier than calling someone a Twitterer. That sounds like a stutter. Come to think of it, if someone sends you the same tweet a dozen times in a row, would that be a twutter? And I don't think my friends on Twitter are twits, though they may think that of me from time to time. And when do you actually capitalize these words? Is it Twits or twits? Should it be Tweets or tweets? Is it Twick or Tweat? No, wait! That's still several weeks away.

According to WordWeb, another very handy application, though not social, a twit is: a noun; 1. Someone who is regarded as contemptible, or 2. Aggravation by deriding or mocking or criticizing. Then we have the verb usage: twit (twitted, twitting) meaning to harass with persistent criticism or carping.

Back in the olden days, before twitter/Twitter, a friend who was also a twit would have been annoying indeed. I mean, we've all had the experience, right? The constant harassment, criticism, and carping away at us until we wanted to punch them one? But I don't currently see my friends who twit me as being annoying or harassing in any way. The occasional "B rite bak, gotta use the potty!" or the "I've had my 3rd cuppa 2day and am now ready 4 action." did get a bit lame at times. Sort of in the category of TMI (Too Much Information!), if you know what I mean. But most of my friends are pretty level-headed folks not given to info-overload. So I don't consider them to be twits in the least, even though they do twitter.

We've turned google into a verb these days: "I'm going to google that and see what I find." or "I'm googling that review even as we speak." come to mind. Does that mean that when I interact on Facebook or Myspace that I am facebooking? myspacing? Does that make Ning, ninging? And what if you get stuck with that one, like a broken record??? You could be ninginginginging.... all the day long.

And why do we join so many groups? It's like jumping ship these days. First one app comes along. We like it! We send invites to every person who has ever come through our e-mail inbox--whether we remember them or not. A revolution starts. People come pouring in to this new and shiny site in droves. Ah, we have established contact. We have lift off! The site hits the airwaves, television and radio pick it up and talk about "the latest social networking trend" and we all, if we haven't already been invited by at least a dozen or more contacts, decide to give it a look. We join, we make connections, we love it! Pretty soon we aren't seeing much action on our other social networking sites. Everyone has abandoned ship and taken up with the life raft. So be it. Another day, another trend. Is there no loyalty in the world? And trying to keep up with all those networks we've joined will be interesting, to say the least.

Let me tell you--it can be done. If you are willing to put the rest of your life on hold. If you are willing to quit your job, ignore your family... But, hey!, they are all twitterfacebookmyspaceninging, too. No problem. Just add them to my ever-growing list of friends/contacts and I can tell them when dinner is happening. "We r dinnering 2nite @ approx 7pm after I get dun w/my tweets." Since I am using all apps at all times, then I am not being disloyal in the least. And the apps nowadays are almost all interlinked in some mysterious fashion so, when you post to one, it may broadcast to the others. At least, that's the way I think it works. I really don't keep up with all the others much of the time. Like most others, I tend to go where my peeps are.

And look at all these people I haven't heard from in years! Everyone of them here--together at last. Sighing in bliss, we tweet to our heart's content. Until we remember that the class bully whom we just 'friended' was not our friend. And our exes found us through friends of friends of friends. And it really bites to have a BFF paint all your secrets on their walls! Yeah, there are down-sides to all this social networking. I won't even go into all the political gaffs out there. Must exercise caution, perhaps?

Gotta jam, my twits are waiting!

Making Confusion Out of Chaos

Spending time learning what you thought you already knew can be, in a word, frustrating. Instead of simply being able to just do something, there are all sorts of other steps involved. It's not a matter of knowing what you know. It's not that easy. Today, I feel decidedly disorganized. I put two photo books together. Then I read the forums on all sorts of "issues" having to do with the physical printing of these books. Soft-proofing came up several times. So, I learned about that. Found out my current software program does not allow for soft-proofing. There is no work-around for it, either. After spending hours and hours reading, tracking down other areas to study up on, downloading an ICC file and installing it where it needs to be in said software, then finding it can't be used...frustrating. Learning should be fun--and lead to something tangible. A headache is tangible, I suppose.

Which leads me to the Chaos. I have too many files on my computer, which clogs it up and makes it slow. I can't run more than two apps without the machine getting slow and crashing. Can't listen to music while working on graphics, which is something I love to do, as it gets my mind out of the way for the creative rush of images. But, music software and graphics software do not run smoothly together. Break out the CD player/boom box and use that. But, where are the CDs I like to listen to? The ones I've created for my own listening muse? Moved about here and there. Chaos. Nothing is really where it is supposed to be. So disorganized feelings and more frustration.

Change fonts every time I start a new paragraph. Why? This program doesn't hold the font setting. Weird. Another level of confusion to toss onto the pile marked Chaos. If I could simply start at the beginning and move things to where they need to be, where they belong, then I'd be left with simple confusion. Better, by far, than full out Chaos, I'd imagine. Could it be that easy? No. Because I want to work on my projects, not sort and separate life into neatly organized bins and boxes. My office is a mess! I have sorted through so many files and such, and come to the conclusion that they multiply when my back is turned. Insidiously. Just when I think I am getting a handle on things, things move around. Time to toss the dead leaves and old files. Start over. Oh, but this and that and the other might come in handy some day! Can't toss them. It's almost like a birthday or Christmas or 'Ayyam'i'Ha, finding all these old things. They feel new. Bright and shiny. Keep them! Toss them! A brain at war with itself. Not a pretty picture and not an easy environment in which to create. And I'm just looking for one silly note, one reference that might put all this chaos into a more malleable structure.

Instead, there's a frozen feeling to each minute. Should I do this first, or that? Organize my physical files or my computer files? Both? A little at a time? So I drink gallons of ice water and sit in my sweltering office and hack away at the story, the image, the learning. Jumping around and not getting anywhere.

I felt productive the last month or so. Not so much now. Fidgety and flighty now. It's not that bad. It's not that good. It's a matter of figuring out how to get it all under control. Mine. My control. I need a plan and a schedule--and a bit of meditation wherein concrete ideas can float across my mind and a sense of "I can do this!" behind the whole organizational process. Bring Chaos down to the level of Confusion, where it might become more manageable. Enough rambling. Time to sort the stacks.

Discovery

Discovery is a great thing. This past week, I have done a lot of refreshing of my memory at Lulu.com, as well as doing research on other POD sites. I have found another, Blurb, that looks interesting—and with their BookSmart software download, which is free, a lot of excitement surrounding putting together photo books for publication. Maybe I will actually do something with my art photos and graphics that I also generate with them. I spent hours and hours using BookSmart, and enjoyed it. So, now, I have Lulu and Blurb to work with. No excuses for not getting things done!

Also, my current collection of short stories is still in progress. It is with “my” editor, who is bogged down with a zillion projects that are also consuming vast amounts of time. Which gives me a bit of a breather in order to work out the cover design for the book, as well as a title, which it still sadly lacks. I may add more to this blog later on, but for right now, that's where I'm at. Besides having too many thoughts flying around inside my head to keep up with. I have an editing group going on today that I need to prepare for, sit that is why this is so short. Not enough time in a day...as usual.

But I do want to leave with one final thought: today is 11 September 09. It has been eight years since the Towers were destroyed. Hate is such an insidious thing. We get caught up in it at our own peril—and the peril of others. I have noticed, in recent months, how much hate and invective is spewing forth in our own country these days. Talk show hosts and television wags dump vitriol out there, one side bashing the other in a continuous stream of one-upsmanship and blame-gaming. Even, and especially, before gathering the facts and getting to the truth of the situation. Politics has become so divisive that there is talk of potential riots in the streets of this country. We came together, for a short time, as a nation—a world—after 9/11. We can do it again. Just leave all the jargon and hate-mongering aside. Put down the old and tired ranting, the outworn shibboleths of our ancestors, and join in this prayer:

“O Thou kind Lord! This gathering is turning to Thee. These hearts are radiant with Thy love. These minds and spirits are exhilarated by the message of Thy glad-tidings. O God! Let this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees, and render this just government victorious. Confirm this revered nation to upraise the standard of the oneness of humanity, to promulgate the Most Great Peace, to become thereby most glorious and praiseworthy among all the nations of the world. O God! This American nation is worthy of Thy favors and is deserving of Thy mercy. Make it precious and near to Thee through Thy bounty and bestowal.” - 'Abdu'l-Bahá

And when we are done praying for this Blessed country, let's not pick up hate and anger again, but, instead, educate ourselves—dig deep for the truth and let that be your guide. Then pray for the whole world. If we try, I believe we can discover love enough to circle the globe with our prayers. We all need prayers, right?