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National Day of Unplugging

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I keep a blog planner inside my regular datebook, and I keep a list of yearly happenings in my Evernote app on my Kindle; everything’s on my Kindle. Apparently, this date (for the day of unplugging) was wrong (right weekend though), but I’m going forward because the other option is skipping it, and I’ve decided that moving forward is the better choice. It’s not exactly a resolution, but it’s…something.

This weekend was/is National Day of Unplugging, running from sundown Friday evening until sundown Saturday. Take an hour or two or the whole twenty-four, unplug and get away from technology. (And to be honest, you could pick a random day on the calendar and follow through with unplugging, but they have a website.)

If this is something you think will work for you, do it.

A couple of years ago, I unplugged our family at the dinner table. It’s not always feasible; we sometimes (maybe more than sometimes) eat in front of the television, I instagram my food, and on holidays, I photograph the family with my cell phone. We still continue to abolish the phones at the table, although I don’t criticize my son’s girlfriend even though I’ll give my son a pointed look when he takes out his own phone. And to give her credit, she’s not the first one to take out her phone.

I’ve been thinking about this day all week, and I realized that despite this sounding like a good idea, it’s hard to disconnect and I don’t even mean the addictive nature of screens.

I am definitely well aware of the addiction. There was a time that I checked my phone every five minutes for messages and all through the night for FOMO (fear of missing out for those of you not fluent in text). I think I’m much better than I’ve been in the past. (I know I am.) I will actually leave my phone in another room and I silence it about 90% of the time in meetings or with people unless I’m expecting a message from my kids.

However, I think technology and screens have really been a benefit for many of us.

We have the opportunity to meet like-minded people who have our same interests and our medical problems. We can talk and share and learn. If I’m stumped on something, I’ve been known to go to Twitter or Facebook and ask. People on the internet are very helpful (most of them and most of the time).

For those of us with mobility issues, we have an easy link to the library or the doctor (through telemedicine). Our prescriptions can be automatically filled and delivered.

When I was growing up, we visited both sets of grandparents every weekend – Saturday for one set and Sunday for the other. I would go with my cousins to their side of the family who I wasn’t related to but none of that mattered. We were part of the same family through my cousins and everyone was within an easy drive to spend lunch or the afternoon, watching home movies or running around front lawns.

Now…

And with the ongoing pandemic and the lockdowns sporadically repeating throughout the year, screens have kept us going; through work, play, and family get togethers. Where would we have been the last two years without Zoom or Google Meets? Remote learning for schools, work from home for parents, televisits for doctors all happening because of our screens.

While it is an understatement to say that Facebook has its problems, I get to see my cousin’s kids growing up. I’ve never met the kids except when two were babies, and it is so wonderful to see their soccer games and hockey tournaments and beach trips. And their smiles. Through her mom’s Facebook I see my uncle and aunt who I haven’t seen since well before the pandemic and it’s a treat.

I’ve been able to attend church services through livestreaming when I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) go in person. I’ll be attending this morning as well. I’ve attended online retreats and classes, lectures in other states without having to leave my house. What a great thing, especially in the winter!

Ninety-nine percent of the books I read are on my Kindle. I haven’t taken a physical library book out in five years – they’re all borrowed on my Kindle. I am almost constantly reading and without my screen I wouldn’t have that.

I watch Chef Jose Andres while I make his Angel hair pasta. It’s not like he’ll make a house visit to teach me these professional techniques.

We’re able to see what’s happening on the ground, in real time in Ukraine and we are able to counter Russia’s lies. In real time. We can support when they’re alone in their homes, scared and defiant. In real time. We can see their bravery and resilience and get inspiration from the Ukrainian people. In real time.

I do unplug on Yom Kippur. I still read on my Kindle, but I turn off the internet and stay away from Twitter and Facebook and email. I will text in an emergency.

What I’m saying is: if you want to unplug, Unplug.

If you want to take a break, decide how long, and Unplug.

But I’m also saying being plugged in isn’t the boogeyman. For many people it’s a savior and unplugging is a privilege that they don’t have.

It’s important to remember the benefits we get from being connected as much as we enumerate the stuff we perceive as bad.

Online Organization

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Computers and the Internet were supposed to make our lives easier and reduce the giant paper piles on our desks. Unfortunately, what has happened to most of us is that we’ve simply transferred our piles of paper to our computers in the way of files. For those of us who are savers we have files we never delete, emails we never delete. Instead of weeding out what we no longer need, we keep things in triplicate and create new categories and new folders to hold it all. We crossmatch and cross-post, and we never get rid of it.

In the last couple of years, I’ve managed to begin to get a hold of my online/on computer world and declutter it.

It’s not easy to let go of things; especially when we think we are saving it for a reason. Why do we keep blurry photos of our kids? There is something holy and wholly important about those things we’ve created. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. The same holds for what we do on our computers – our writing, our art, our lives; pretty much.

I have found (although I’m always looking for new ones) some really good organizational tools, both online and through apps.

Many people who read my blogkeeping posts will already know that I do most of my work currently on my Kindle Fire with my keyboard. The one downfall of not having a mega-gig hard drive on my pc is not having a mega-gig hard drive. I really need a place to store my writing.

One way I store my writing is not to. If I post it here, I log in the word count in my blog planner (which is still on paper), and I either delete the “paper copy” or I upload it to Dropbox. WordPress already has my final copy, so as long as I tag and categorize properly, I can continue to refer to my posts and writing.

Dropbox is my first line of defense in the online organizational onslaught. Dropbox gives you space in the cloud that you can access from their app or an internet browser by signing in from any computer. You can get a paid account for more space, but whenever I hit my limit I get on my pc and transfer whatever I’m keeping to my hard drive.

Evernote. This is like that pile of scrap paper and post-it notes you keep on your desk or posted on your office cork-board/bulletin board. This is another app that you can use from the app on your smartphone, tablet, or from any desktop by signing in. There is also a paid premium account, but I’ve always gotten by with the free version.

I’m still on the paper version, but a good calendar app is worth getting. CalenGoo is one I used before my Fire came with one pre-loaded. In addition to that, I really like a list-making app. The one I use and the one I really love is 2Do.

Other apps that I use on my Fire (links are for Amazon, but all of these should also be found on Google Play and the Apple App Store) include:

Office Suite Pro
Adobe Acrobat
Pocket – this lets you save links – articles, videos, etc for watching later and OFFline.
Skype – great for communicating long distance/internationally for free. My family used this when my husband was in the Philippines on business and I’ve used it for my online groups.

A Print Plug-in for your tablet (I use Epson. A wireless printer was probably the best investment I’ve made in the last ten years.)

A Scanner Plug-in (I use MDScan, but I haven’t used it often enough to give a proper review.)

You’ll want some kind of email client. My Fire has one that keeps all of my various accounts on one client.

Obviously, you’ll want to figure out whichever social media apps you need by what you use. I will probably do a separate post on social media apps at another time.

These can be adapted to whatever your needs are, and most of them can be downloaded for free. Check out the paid options also; they might be better for professional needs.

As a writer, I’ve bought very few of these, and I almost never complain about them. I L-O-V-E love my Fire (which would be apparent to anyone who reads my page). I’ve done more writing and more posting in the last year than in the last several.

The organization keeps me on track and lets me write instead of constantly looking for things or keeping track of ideas.

Please add your own organizational apps in the comments and/or organizational tips that you find useful.

Is It Civilization if There is No Internet?

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Every year we travel to my mother-in-law’s for Thanksgiving. We visit with her and my brother-in-law and see my brother, sister and nieces on the weekend. It’s wonderful and a lot of fun, and we hang out and play, watch the parade, take pictures, visit the cemetery as people are wont to do on the holidays, and go shopping. It’s all very civilized. We actually did pretty well this Black Friday. We started at 1pm, finished and home by 3. Gotta love Target’s two day sale! We did a proper Black Friday once. It was actually a lot of fun. The kids were little, and we were finished before 7am and went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. It was still barely light out.

The one challenge we do have every year is that all of us are connected. My daughter wants to video chat with her new friend. My son wants to watch You Tube. My other son wants to keep in touch with his friends who were home from college and catch up on his medical/paramedical podcasts. My husband and I also have our digital vices.

Unfortunately, my mother-in-law is not connected. To anything. No internet. In fact, all her neighbors have password protected wifi. I’m usually against ‘borrowing’ other people’s internet, but this might be classified as an emergency. Sadly, we do not know their passwords.

It’s almost impossible in this tech centered world we live in to gauge the amount of time we spend online or attached to some sort of social media site. Our friends are so far flung out that we almost forget how far they really are because they are always so present in our daily lives.

Well, during Thanksgiving week, we do know. Apparently, I check my Facebook and Tumblr first thing when I wake up. I post about my day all throughout the day, and I attempt to blog here every day. Every. Day. This is not usually such a challenge except for the pesky writing bit, but during Thanksgiving week I am finding it next to impossible and have to adopt a new writing ritual.

I spend my afternoon thinking about what I want to write about, and then I spend the evening typing and editing and rewriting, and then proofreading, saving, etc. I can set it up and find my photos in the gallery from earlier that day or the day before that goes well with my words on the page…er….screen, and then there is the frantic attempt to find wifi the next morning. The kids ask constantly – do they have wifi wherever we go They do, but can you use it is the real question.

The first place I posted from was the local Starbucks. I had a free drink waiting, so it didn’t cost anything, but we did look kind of stereotypical, out of touch, constantly attached to the digital world, forgetting about the “real” world or meatspace. It’s Thanksgiving morning and all five of us were crammed into a small booth, each with our faces buried in our various smartphones and/or tablets/Kindle Fires. At one point, I noticed the family of three sitting next to us. They had a coffee and the boy was on a smartphone. I can almost always tell when someone is watching me (although I think they were checking out my keyboard), so I looked up and caught the mom’s eye. I laughed, she laughed, and then I even said, I know we look ridiculous but my mother in law has no internet. She laughed. She seemed to understand our predicament.

The second day I was more ready. I had everything set up as a draft in Word Press and as soon as we got to DQ (Dairy Queen) for lunch, I connected and hit publish. Easiest five minutes I’ve ever spent.

At this point, my kids were having trouble connecting their devices. Mine remembered from our visit in the spring, so it just automatically connected. I was online in a matter of seconds.

Today, this will be posted from my brother’s dojo. He has internet, wifi, but he hates that we come to visit and use it and go online, but it is our only opportunity to get our stuff done. Yesterday when I connected at DQ, I had fifty-eight emails waiting to be read, and that was with checking them on my 4G phone earlier. (The 4G kills the battery, and I can’t post to WP with that – that’s why I don’t use it as often as my keyboard and kindle.

We go home tomorrow for The Walking Dead and Pizza Hut’s Triple Treat.

The question in the title must still be answered:

As civilized as we’ve become and continuing to become, is it really civilized if there is no access to the internet?

The answer remains to be seen.

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Recommendation – Evernote

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evernote

 

 

My first smartphone wasn’t smart at all. It looked like an iPhone, but none of the icons were actually apps. I could surf the net but it wasn’t until the Android system that I finally understood and began to use apps.

I’ve been using apps for a few years now, and my favorite, most useful, the one I recommend to all, glowingly and effusively, is Evernote.

I have the app on my phone, my Kindle, and my computer plus I can access it from any computer by signing in at Evernote(dot)com. It is all synched and ready each time I open it up.

While I was still experimenting with this type of organizational app and trying out different ones, I was always drawn back to Evernote.

It really is the best one out there.

Evernote can be as general or as specific as you need. You decide how many notebooks you create. You choose and create your own tags. You can save things to a top menu for shortcuts if you’ll be using something more often for a period of time. You can even share your notebook with others if you want or need to.

Currently, I have seventeen notebooks and way too many tags, and I’m working on paring it down.

In addition to my long-hand notes, I also use it for checklists and collecting photos and links for other projects. It’s an all-in-one app; there are things it does that I haven’t even discovered yet.

I find it essential for my writing as well as organizing the information in my personal life.

It’s also free if you use the basic program.

Give it a try. You won’t be sorry.