Contacts in Context

Yesterday my phone of three years, an MDA from T-Mobile, was retired and replaced with a G1 also from T-Mobile. According to one of my new year’s resolutions, I need to learn about any electronic devices purchased and take advantage of most of the bells and whistles available. The G1 has many more nifty bits than my old phone and I’ve spent much of last night and today diving into the new.

A large task that I’ve never actually done before is the integration and updating of my various contact lists. With G1 being a google phone, transferring my main email address from a yahoo account to a gmail account seemes like a good choice. I’ve used the same yahoo account since early 2002 so I don’t make the choice lightly. Even knowing there are ways to keep my yahoo account and get updates and sync my contacts and other various tasks, I’m still going to spend the time and the effort to change over.

Already there have been excellent benefits to the new phone. When I changed to my MDA phone three years ago, we simply took the SIM card from the old phone and put it into the new phone. All this time I’ve had new contacts in alphabetical order on the top of the list and all the old contacts I had from before the MDA were in alphabetical order below that. The folks with numbers I should have had memorized were a pain to scroll down to.

Sixty seconds gone…

…coming up with this subject.

As I wait for my first cup of coffee to reach my brain, I’m sipping my second and watching the April 13^th episode of House on Hulu. I’m also brain storming with pen to paper about what half dozen tasks I should do today from my list of several dozen.

It’s only a little after 8 in the morning and I’ve had more thoughts and motivated actions then I normally have this time of day. Lately I’ve been going back to sleep at 8 a.m. because I have only slept a couple of hours or I haven’t slept at all. Since I went to bed at 2 a.m. last night and got up around 6, I should be more tired. I expected to be. And yet, here I am, awake and more mentally productive then I have been in weeks.

Sweet Land of Liber-Tea

Today I read several news stories related to dozens of grass-root protests to publically object to taxes, government spending, President Obama himself and various other gripes. Their motivational theme was inspired by the original Boston Tea Party. Since I’m not sure what “No Taxation without Representation” has to do with what is being protested today, I ended up reading several articles and visiting several sites to try to figure out what the deal is. So, President Obama is doing what he said he would do before elected and is putting the country more in debt in an effort to stimulate the economy and save our nation from rampant unemployment, homelessness and various other messes left behind by the old admin. He must be the anti-Christ or the new Hitler? He must be a communist, socialist, fascist or some other evil-ist? Seriously? 

 

One small step

If I were an island, it’s possible that I would continue to coast, managing my stress by monitoring how much news I take in. Luckily, I’m not an island. Going on fourteen years ago I chose to create life and forever expanded my responsibility and obligation to one and then another child.

 

It is true that I could choose to not take that responsibility seriously. It is also true that for several years I’ve been struggling with personal demons. Personal demons are my why of summing up having children before I was in a position to give an optimum go at it. Doing okay is not good enough.

 

So here I am: a mother of two, a wife, an American, a woman. With blinders up, I’ve seemed to manage. It’s a lie. I’m terrified. Self medicating on my drug of choice – distraction – is killing me. I’ve consciously constricted my circle of influence to my daughters and my husband. The time has come to be courageous and pull my head out of the sand.

 

With countless false starts, I’ve feared embarking on another failure. Too many potential plans have mired me in indecision. This time, instead of waiting for my search for answers to come to a conclusion, I’m just going to take the first steps. Step one is easy. I need to learn to sleep so that my mind isn’t so fogged I can’t take the next step. With a firm commitment, I wish you goodnight.

CyberSocial

Today’s informal agenda included contacting several individuals. My monitor currently sports three open Word.docs, one Excel spreadsheet, one picture folder, yahoo instant messenger, one SMS message via yahoo instant messenger, skype messenger, yahoo news and five explorer browser. One of the explorer browsers has three tabs open to various pages of Facebook. Basically, my computer is as cluttered as my house and my head.

 

The point of the digital laundry list is that much of my computer is dedicated to keeping in touch with real live people. The people I live with, the people I’m related to, the people I’ve been friends with and the people I only know via online games or blogs. When I want to contact one of those people, I have several electronic options to do so. I send it on my time, they get to it in their time and eventually communication happens.

 

I have sung praises to the age we live in, but I have to wonder, is this contributing to my neurosis? Neuroses? I feel like I’m managing my mild agoraphobia and various anxieties. I’ve even considered that upping my communication with friends and family might be helping me improve. But if a good 80% of my socializing is via email, instant message or message board, does it count as socializing? Am I becoming too dependent on electronic filters?

 

Last night I began to compose a message via facebook to a friend of mine on the east coast. I’m working on a project and I thought she might have some excellent input. I ended up giving up for the night when it became obvious I was spending so much time giving her background information before I could ask what her thoughts were. My plan was to pick up the message in the morning with a fresh brain.

 

To be fair, my friend is an incredibly active and busy individual. So sending a message that she could respond to when her schedule permits does make sense. Yet, as I began to flesh out the message today, I had the aforementioned thoughts and before I could get anxious, I was dialing her number. As her voice mail picked up and I squished the “leave a message” anxiety down, I mentally laughed at myself.

 

Chances are good that she won’t have time to call me back. It’s not very important that I get her input specifically. I don’t feel good that I called instead of sending a message. She could be too busy for the message too. All I’ve done is save myself twenty minutes of typing time. If she does call me back, I’m thinking the call would take about ten minutes tops. What if she calls when I’m unavailable? Crap. I’ll stick to emails next time.

do you mind?

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of blog writing and no posting. Several word document pages long, they have no end or audience. The situation says something about my present state of mind. Hell if I know what that is. And the angels say, “Exactly.”  

Special is as special does

I am supremely unhappy and it’s my own fault.

 

 

 

Addendum:

I posted this and then had an amazingly good day. Life’s been busy and I haven’t made time to post since this last one. And now that I’m taking a moment to catch up and post, I recognize that this particular post and the silent time since then may make it seem like I must have been supremely unhappy for days. It was a moment I under-posted. There is so much I want to say, and I don’t know if this moment from days ago is worth going into more then this addendum. It was a rough morning and a wonderful evening. I bet you’ve had them too.

 12:41 p.m. Thursday, September 04, 2008

 

 

Daddy Five Oh

Today my dad turned 50. Next weekend well celebrate at his house. For today I called once in the morning with well wishes and the girls called him tonight to sing happy birthday via speaker phone.

Feels like I’m catching up.

dream to rip

Today is the third Tuesday of the school year for both girls. We’re now getting into the nitty-gritty of a regular school year routine. So are the girls a little extra sensitive because I’m feeling unhappy about my husband being gone for work until Friday? There were tears tonight over spilled juice.

 

I didn’t sleep well last night. Over two weeks of sleeping at night and getting up early and last night was the first night of real issue. Three nights alone means I must be cautious of eating late and sleeping flat on my back. No one will be waking me from nightmares. Tonight is the most important. The next two I can sleep or not as long as what needs doing get’s done when it needs to be done.

Picture Game

My friend Erin posted a photo game that I thought would be fun to do and share. Thanks Erin!

 

The concept:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name

1. melissa, ix, a punto de dar a luz…, 2. Just a Perfect Day, 3. Triple Exposure?, 4. full color, 5. still from ’secretary’, 6. X’s prize…, 7. the met reflected, 8. Castles on the Beach, 9. Radiance, 10. tranquility, 11. The Land of Misty, 12. Ambersand