What have I been up to for the past month?

  • I got sick of writing “I’m a big slacker” posts. No one wants to read those.

  • Besides paying work (which I could use more of), vacation, and family time, I’ve been reading the Bible through, following World Cup soccer, and learning the game of go (research for a novel… at least that’s the excuse I use). What’s so interesting about soccer and go? They’re both incredibly elegant. Simple rules, endless possibilities. Americans may tell you that soccer is boring, but they aren’t paying attention to what happens between the scoring. Go is the one game the computers can’t beat us at.

  • I haven’t opened my RSS reader in at least a month. If I open it, I’ll find thousands of headlines screaming “READ ME!” with no filter to screen out stuff I don’t care about (that’s why I miss SearchFox). There are feeds I really do want to follow, like Signal vs. Noise or 43 Folders, but even the good ones are gateways to massive time wastage. I’ll end up clicking through to another and another link. If I blow an afternoon on surfing in the interests of “catching up”, there will still be 2000 new headlines tomorrow. “Catching up” is a myth.

I don’t want to contribute to the noise, either. I hate the term “musings” that so many people attach to their blogs. If you ever catch me using it, quit reading. I haven’t had any thoughts that were original enough to post, or worthy of the time. I can’t seem to write a post without spending 30 minutes cleaning it up and messing with links. After I update my site, I have to go check everyone else’s to see if they’ve updated theirs… and, of course, leave a comment so they come back and check mine.

The problem with the blog format is the signal-to-noise ratio. It’s too easy for us digital kids, Generation Soundbite, to crank out (and consume) superficial “musings” like there was nothing else important to think about. I’m writing this post in a notebook. I wanted to avoid even the overhead of turning on the Powerbook and getting distracted from writing.

I got a new book light before vacation. It only really works with paperbacks (so I guess I need to spend even more money on the hardback version… brilliant marketing). So I went to the library in search of a decent paperback to take out of town. I stumbled over two classics I’d never read: East of Eden and Fahrenheit 451. I started the latter first because it’s shorter, and closer to my usual SF/fantasy light reading territory. In 451 (which I haven’t quite finished), books were banned, not because of any subversive or anti-establishment content, but because people just quit reading. Attention spans weren’t equipped to handle anything tougher than TV. Burning the books was just entertainment.

(There are some scary foreshadows of the reality TV trend, as well as people who walk around all day with earbuds or cell phones stuck to their ears.)

Our fascination with “musings” is like crying on TV. Ever notice how, since the whole reality thing started, even the news tries to catch people crying? It satisfies our craving for drama and spectacle, on the surface, anyway. It breaks down the fourth wall (between performer and audience). In 451, a character has TVs on three of her walls and begs her husband to install a fourth.

Am I Thoreau now? Maybe in some ways. I’ve already talked about the problems that come with being a sponge. Another one is the inability to discriminate. I don’t have the free time to chase every rabbit trail that I come across. Not if I want to progress as a writer, developer, husband, father. Not if I want to keep the buzzing out of my head.

So is the blog a distraction or an aid? It depends on how I use it. I can practice my writing fine without it. The blog is for peer review, conversation, and brand recognition. Eventually I need a portfolio to show off.

But. If I’m not writing — and I haven’t, really, in the past month — the blog is an irrelevant distraction. The writing needs to come first; if it does, the blog takes care of itself.

Or is this just another “I’m a big slacker” post?