Digital Minimalism

A couple months back, my assistant shift coordinator at the temple told me about a great new book called Digital Minimalism. The basic premise is that many of us have gotten way too caught up in the many technologies that are available, and so we need to cut back to those things that are most essential in order to reclaim our lives.

I put it on hold at the library right away. I know I have a problem with technology. My phone is practically glued to my hand at all times. I've managed to curb my social media addiction a bit but only because Trevor set the password so I can't get in without him. Sometimes when he signs me in, I manage to stay on for a few days in a row, and the pull to look at my newsfeed is still strong, even though it's never very fascinating. It seems that most people are pulling away from social media a bit. My friends and family don't update as much as they used to.

Turns out the book is very popular, and I was in a long wait list at the library. I finally got to check it out at the end of June. I'm only a little ways through it right now, but it's a great read so far that does an awesome job of explaining the intentional psychological manipulation behind several apps and technologies, carefully designed to suck people in and keep them there.

Pretty soon the author issues a big challenge: give up all optional technologies for 30 days. Reset your life. Go out and remember what other interests you have and what you used to fill your time with before the smart phone era.

Then, at the end of the 30 days, really think through what technologies add value to your life, and what you can do to optimize their impact while avoiding negative side effects. Only let back in the most valuable things, and be aware of how you spend your time.

So, here we go. This is my official public commitment to 30 days of no optional technologies. To me, that means no mindless internet surfing, limited social media (I can think of a few potential legitimate needs that might come up, like checking the RS Facebook page for activity details), no pointless phone apps for the sake of fun or distraction. On my laptop, I've reactivated the StayFocusd extension that blocks certain websites during certain times, and I've limited my access to websites that tend to distract me. If I forget and try to visit those pages, StayFocusd stops me with a friendly message, "Shouldn't you be working?"

I think I'm still going to let myself blog, since to me that's just a form of journaling. You can take "optional technologies" pretty far--I'm still going to have an occasional movie night or what have you. We don't have access to any TV channels so we don't watch a lot of mindless TV, but we did take Netflix and Hulu off our Roku for now to prevent mindless scrolling through the options there. I'm not going to completely cut out Facebook Messenger and texting, but I'll try to cut back and focus more on face to face visits, and focusing on the people right in front of me.

Wish me luck! I really want to cut back on my smart phone obsessions and get back to living a healthier lifestyle.

Harry Potter is real!

Today I got an email that St. Mungo's is looking for a new Research Manager:

My first thought was, St. Mungo's??? Isn't that the hospital in Harry Potter? It's real????

My next thought was, I need more exposure to British culture than what Harry Potter gave me. Sheesh!

Rediscovering My Love of Reading

Reading has always been one of my favorite pastimes. When I was a kid, each time my mom took me to the library I'd check out a good 20 books or so, and I'd always read them before they came due 3 weeks later.

As an adult, sometimes it's not so easy to find the time to read. In grad school, I had to cut back a bit. Since I've gotten married, I've cut back a lot. My husband and I are admittedly pretty tied at the hip. When work is done, we are almost always together doing some shared activity--often something related to housework, or our callings, or whatever, but also fun things like board games and movies and just talking. Something that requires our focus on each other and whatever task is at hand--not prime time for reading.

But I've been feeling an itch to get back into my writing, to finally take my stab at the great American novel. And it's been said many times that you can't write if you're not actively reading.

So I've set a goal to make time for reading every day. I first set the goal about 2 weeks back, and so far it's gone well! I went on my library's CyberShelf page and found something readily available that I'd been meaning to read for a while--Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. That was a quick read done in just a couple days. I went back to see what else was easily at hand, and stumbled across a thriller novel (that sucked me in with a child psychology beginning) called The Girl With All the Gifts. So far I'm halfway through. This is just like old times. It feels good!

Now to see if I can beat down my perfectionism beast enough to delve into creative writing again...

Quotes

One of my favorite things about the Kindle is that it saves everything you've highlighted in all of your books in a special file called "My Clippings." I am a big fan of quotes. I am always trying to find new places to store them for easy access. This feature of the Kindle is great because it stores so many quotes for me and provides references so I know exactly where I got them.

Today I was going through my clippings reading through some of my favorite quotes and I decided to share some of them here! Hope some of you are quotes fans too.

From Alexandre Dumas' Count de Monte Cristo:

• "...we frequently pass so near to happiness without seeing, without regarding it, or if we do see and regard it, yet without recognizing it."
• "Youth is a flower of which love is the fruit; happy is he who, after having watched its silent growth, is permitted to gather and call it his own."
• "Have you never experienced for any one that sudden and irresistible sympathy which made you feel as if the object of it had been your old and familiar friend, though, in reality, it was the first time you had ever met? Nay, further, have you never endeavored to recall the time, place, and circumstances of your former intercourse, and failing in this attempt, have almost believed that your spirits must have held converse with each other in some state of being anterior to the present, and that you are only now occupied in a reminiscence of the past?"
• "God is merciful to all, as He has been to you; He is first a father, then a judge."
• "'Alas,' said Monte Cristo, 'it is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!'"
• "Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,--'Wait and hope.'"

From Kathryn Stockett's The Help:

• "No one tells us, girls who don't go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens."

From Shannon Hale's The Goose Girl:

• "The tales tell us what they can. The rest is for us to learn. The question is, are we smart enough to figure for ourselves? Now, that's what I'd like to know."

From Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief:

• "You have gifts you have only begun to know."
• "Go with what your heart tells you, or you will lose all. Hades feeds on doubt and hopelessness. He will trick you if he can, make you mistrust your own judgment. Once you are in his realm, he will never willingly let you leave. Keep faith. Good luck, Percy Jackson."
• "The gods have their reasons, Percy. Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing."

From Jane Austen's Mansfield Park:

• "'I pay very little regard,' said Mrs. Grant, 'to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.'"
• "There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere..."
• "We do not look in great cities for our best morality."
• "He had not faults but what a serious attachment would remove."
• "That is what I dislike most particularly. It raises my spleen more than anything, to have the pretense of being asked, of being given a choice, and at the same time addressed in such a way as to oblige one to do the very thing, whatever it be!"

From Edgar Rice Burroughs' Gods of Mars:

• "The one on whom all responsibility rests is apt to endure the most."

From Edgar Rice Burroughs' Warlords of Mars:

• "It is strange how new and unexpected conditions bring out unguessed ability to meet them."
• "...right was on my side, and I think that that must give a man greater confidence than though he knew himself to be battling in a wicked cause."

From Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone:

• "For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve-like the soul's version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable."
• "'I have no strategy,' said Zuzana. 'I just want to skip all this and get to the part where he's my boyfriend. Not to mention, you know, the part where he's aware I exist.'"
• "Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic."
• "You'd have to have, like, a lentil for a soul to hate wiener dogs."
• "'Beauty,' Brimstone had scoffed once. 'Humans are fools for it. As helpless as moths who hurl themselves at fire.'"
• "Never repent of your own goodness, child. To stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength."

From Frank Beddor's The Looking Glass Wars:

• "An undisciplined imagination is worse than no imagination at all. It can do more harm."
• "'Even in that world,' the caterpillar said, 'where no one knew you were a princess, you were to marry royalty. It seems that destiny will not let you deny who you are.'"

From Lauren Oliver's Delirium:

• "You know you can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes, right?"
• It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed."
• "The one good thing about being kind of shy is that nobody bugs you when you want to be left alone."

Goodreads Addiction

Okay, I admit it, I am addicted to Goodreads. I love being able to share with all my friends what I am reading. I love being able to see what books my friends are reading. I love checking to see if my friends have already read a book, and then accessing their reviews to help me decide whether or not I want to read it, too.

I also love just surfing through my friends' to-read lists to see what new books are coming out.

Today I found three that I am really excited for. I would probably run out and find a copy today... except then I looked a bit closer and saw that none of these books have actually been released yet. (Ahhhh... dang it... why???)

Note to self: If I ever do become a published author, I need to get my books up on Goodreads in advance and build up anticipation. I have a feeling Goodreads makes authors' readerships jump up a LOT.

So, the books:

Click here for official Goodreads blurb.This one appears to be an Irish fairy tale. Note about Irish fae: they aren't just pretty little winged creatures. They are devious. You don't want to mess with these guys. This book is about Jenny, whose brother Tom was "swallowed whole" by the trees of the nearby forest. Years later, she ventures into the woods to find him, and has to navigate the treacheries of the fae in her quest. Sounds like there will be some romance too, with a moody fae type named Jack.
Alas, this one won't be out until August 16th.

This one sounds like a combination of Tangled and the Little Mermaid to me, although more mature than the Disney films. Evelyn Winters lives in an underwater society (but I don't think she's actually a mermaid). She was selected from hundreds of children for her perfect genes, to be "Daughter of the People" in her utopian society (called Elysium).  Then one day a Surface-Dweller (Gavin) stumbles into her home, and she finds out that everything she knows is a lie, and the woman she calls Mother is actually a monster. Together she and Gavin try to escape, but then she learns that "her own mind is a ticking time bomb." (???) I am very intrigued by this one, but it won't be out until November 12, 2012 (gah!!!!)

This one was inspired by Jane Austen's Persuasion (my favorite favorite Jane Austen book). A sci-fi version of Persuasion? Yes please! Set in the future after a genetic experiment killed off most of humanity, leaving it in the hands of Luddite leaders who have outlawed most technology. Elliot North (essentially, this is Anne) is a member of the upper class. Four years ago, she blew off her childhood sweetheart and former servant, Malakai "Kai" Wentworth. He is now a famous explorer (and yes, a captain) and it sounds like he is a revolutionary of some sort. Their society is on the verge of crumbling, and as a result Elliot is forced to rent out some land to Kai and his Cloud Fleet. She thinks this is their second chance, but Kai is intent on showing her what she missed out on by letting him go. For Darkness Shows the Stars comes out on June 12.