Operation Unplug

Confession time: I am a time-waster. Not just a procrastinator, but a serious time-waster. The devils on the shoulders of this vice are the Internet and television. It is just sad how many times I sit down for a mere hour of blog-surfing or to check out an episode of CSI (just one, I tell myself) and the next thing I know, it’s 4:00 in the afternoon and I’m still in my pajamas and haven’t accomplished anything.

I have been thinking about this problem of mine and also about what people did before there were 9079858796 channels of satellite TV and 3028439025329840 million pages of Internet info to consume every minute and brain cell of the day. I can only imagine how much more productive life was. And how much reading got done! I miss reading for fun.

So this week I am conducting an experiment on myself. Introducing Operation Unplug: For the next five days, Monday through Friday, I am disengaging from my devices. No TV and no Internet (almost). No mindless smartphone use.

Obviously, anything academic is still okay. I literally have to use the Internet or I will fail my classes. Likewise, I feel like watching the news in the morning is something fairly necessary to stay on top of national and world goings-on.

I am also allowing myself a few indulgences, since quitting cold turkey is never advised. Under the rules of Operation Unplug (rules which I just wrote), I can have one indulgence per medium:

• Computer - I can access my blog, but for no more than 30-45 minutes per day. 
• Phone - I can use twitter, but again, only once a day. 
• TV - I can watch Jeopardy with Brian from 7:30-8 (yes, we really do watch it almost every day) and Glee on Tuesday.

But that's it! No CSI or random TLC shows. No Food Network. No online shopping for shoes I can't afford. No wedding blogs and random etsy surfing. No checking my facebook on my phone every other hour.

In order to prepare for this experiment, I have taken several precautions. I have created an extensive blacklist on the Self Control app on my computer. I seriously wish I had known about/had access to this in college – you set up a list of sites, set a timer and for that amount of time the app will not allow you to access the sites. There’s no way to break it, as far as I know, unless you just uninstalled the whole thing I guess. You just have to wait for the clock to run out. Every morning I plan to activate the app for the next 24 hours.

I have also moved the distracting apps on my phone (facebook, RSS feed, etc) to a page wayyyyy in the back so I do not just automatically open them when I look at my phone and put a big note on the TV that says DO NOT USE ME, KATHLEEN. GO READ A BOOK.

But this is still going to take a considerable amount of self-discipline – an amount I’m not positive I have.  We shall see.

The Facebook Conundrum

I've been struggling lately with what to do about my facebook and twitter accounts now that I'm a real person in the real world, not a ridiculous college student softly cushioned in the Millsaps Bubble.

Most of my peers have heard it a million trillion times: You have to keep your facebook, etc "clean" or potential employers WILL find you and they WILL hate you and you WILL be fired/not hired.

Lately I've been getting a somewhat different story from my professors, who are much more tech-savvy than last semester. These professors are saying you HAVE to have a blog and you HAVE to tweet and you HAVE to facebook and you HAVE to read every news site and blog and tweet out there and you HAVE to make all those things news-centric and compatible to build your brand or you WILL be left choking on the dust of others.

And I get it and I'm excited by it and it is one of the things that I really like about journalism today. I have already admitted to being a social media whore. I spend just as much time planning posts for this blog as I do actual assignments for a grade. (Just kidding, Mom and Dad! I was exaggerating for comedic effect! I spend over 86% of my time thinking about, doing and reflecting on homework!)

But for me, the blog/facebook/twitter me has always been somewhat separate from the professional me. They are both sides of me and they both co-exist happily inside me, but I just don't know if they co-exist as happily outside of me. Here's the thing: I like news and journalism and following news and journalists on twitter and sharing cool articles on facebook and writing my responses to the changing media world on my blog.

Buuuuuuuut.... I am twenty-two. I also like wine and I like to tweet about it. I like to dance my ass off and make ridiculous faces and put pictures of such things on facebook. I like to write the word "ass" (along with other colorful words) on my blog. I am not ashamed of any of this. I like telling funny and/or embarrassing stories about some of the ridiculous things that occur around me. I don't want to give that up, but I also don't want my potential employers to hate me and fire/not hire me just because I tweet more about wine, Penny and bacon than international crises.

I want to be professional. But I don't want to lose my online self - a self I enjoy expressing - in order to be so.

eHoarding

Before I came home, I got all my documents and songs and videos and pictures and Internet bookmarks transferred from my old computer to my fancy new one, and in doing so, I reaffirmed an fundamental truth about myself.

I am a minor-league hoarder.

I mean, I'm not going to be showing up on A&E anytime soon, but I definitely tend to keep things rather than throw them out.

I ran into them again a few months ago, before my mom and I threw a massive garage sale to raise money for my big move to Boston. I had kept the most random shit from my 22 years of live. What's worse, I had moved a lot of it here from Utah! There were things still in the moving boxes from eight and a half years ago, clearly untouched. I found newspaper articles from the 8th grade, books I hadn't looked at since the 5th grade and - worst, or perhaps best, of all - my Lisa Frank club binder from the 3rd grade.

(Don't worry, I took pictures for posterity before putting that thing out of its misery:)

The club rules as written by the club president ( I was totz VP)

Luckily, in the case of the garage sale my moneylust was just slightly higher than my desire to hoard and I cleaned out a LOT of stuff that I will never need or want ever again. Some trash, some donations and plenty of sales led to a much less stuff-laden Kathleen.

My hoarding tends to stem not from some psychological trauma or need, but from three basic rationalizations:
Rationalization 1: "What if I need it at some future point?"
Rationalization 2: "I paid good money for that."
Rationalization 3: "It's sentimental!"

But then there's ehoarding, and although rationalization #2 doesn't typically apply, there's a new problem: space. For physical things, I only have so much space, and I'm not into climbing over boxes and stacks of shit to get to my bathroom, so at some point that shit's gotta go. But on my computer and in my email, I can keep every document I could ever need (and many, many more that I don't), and it never feels like its taking up space.

But I know that in reality, it is. So I am making it my goal to keep this shiny beautiful computer clear of all the crap I kept stored on my last one. Starting with cleaning out over 15,000 pictures. From just the last three years. I KNOW. Ridiculous. Gots. Ta. Go.

On the Ninth Day of Christmas

my true love gave to me

nine awesome apps!

By now, my true love's hard-earned bacon is getting spent pretty quickly, what with double slankets and cap sacs and Anthropologie aprons, so I'm going to give him a break on the ninth day and just get some apps. Because in this age of technological over-saturation (my favorite topic), I can't ever have too many things available to me at the touch of a button.

just a sampling

So let's see what we have here:
Echofon for Twitter: I tweet, therefore I am
Plants vs. Zombies: killing zombies, all day erry day
LOLcats: guilty
Bergdorf Goodman's Today's Shoe: show me the pretty
New York Times: keeping up with the homeworks
TV Guide: for seeing when Jeopardy is on
Hey Tell: walkie talkies are only slightly cooler
IMDb: reading about every movie I've ever seen, and several I haven't
Mobile RSS: so I can catch up on my blogz, anytime, anywhere

...eight catnip eyeballs

seven Anthropologie aprons

six fannypacks for your head

FIVE POTTER PRESENTS

four snuggie knockoffs

three Ed Hardy hookahs

two handerpants

and an ornament of yummy sushi

 Category(s): awesome

(Find them HERE)

we are living in a technological world and I am a technological girl

I've been thinking a lot about the crossover - and in many ways, takeover - of the communication world lately.

For example, I use and/or consume books, magazines, tv, newspapers, smartphones, facebook, twitter, blogs, etc - and most of them all in one day! I am clearly a social media guru.

(Brian lovingly suggested that social media whore might be more precise, but that's neither here nor there).

But in this time of too much information becoming the only acceptable amount of information, where is the line? When do you cross it? Does it even exist?

Fellow (former) BU journalist and one of Brian's favorite sports guys, Bill Simmons, recently wrote a great article about a potential side effect of all this communication crossover for professional journalists.*

I think we live in a cool time. Cool, but scary. Things are changing and fast. I remember a time when people didn't have cell phones. I remember when we got our first family computer and when the Internet entered (and changed) our lives. I remember when facebook was founded (and only for college students), and every permutation it has undergone since.

The scary part, besides the whole "big brother is watching" element (a post for another day), is that kids five years and especially ten years younger than me don't have any idea what life is like without their own personal phone attached to their hand and their own personal computer attached to their lap (see two posts ago). They don't know what life is like without the immediate gratification of the Internet or the constant social feedback of facebook, twitter, etc.

When I was little, if I wanted to interact with my best friend, I called her house phone from my house phone and make plans to meet up for the afternoon or a sleepover. Then I'd go to her house, or she'd come to mine, and we'd play. In person. I hardly ever call my friends on the phone anymore. It's all texting and email and gchat and heytell and the occasional skype. Do kids today play the same way I did? I can't imagine they do.

In Communication 101 lecture today we conducted an experiment to see how many televisions people have. Out of 425 + freshman students, almost all of them had at least four tvs at home. Three students had 9, 10 and 11 tvs in their homes - all for families of four people or less. I find this terrifying.

I also read an article today in the New York Times about toddlers essentially becoming addicted to their parents' iPhones, which are used as entertainment, teaching tools and an easy way to pacify a fussy baby. I find this terrifying too.

Now, I am guilty of all the sins of technology - taking it for granted, being a little too attached to my computer and smart phone, checking my twitter compulsively even in company (it's so rude, I know, but I can't stop!), and of course the aforementioned social media overload.

And I think its awesome that I can blog and tweet and put my pictures on facebook. I enjoy sharing my thoughts with my friends. That I can keep up with people in Mississippi, New York, Oregon and more (even across the sea in Ireland) through technology. My career will more likely than not depend on me using multiple media in this way.

But I can't help but think there is a trade off somewhere along the line. Can't help but think these changing times are cool... but scary.

* So should I tweet about this post? A tweet about a blog post inspired by a different blog post about a tweet. How meta.