My Social Disconnect

Last week, I posted a Facebook status to say that I’m deactivating my account. I have a lot of reasons for making that decision, and I’d like to touch on a couple of them here.

The first reason is to devote more time to my freelance business, as well as my creative writing. That may seem an odd choice, since so many “experts” tell writers they need a robust online presence to succeed in today’s writing industry. However, a writer needs something to promote, and I find that too much of my creative writing time is spent surfing the web or liking posts on Facebook. I start researching for my novel, and then get sucked down a rabbit hole. As a result, my novel sits waiting for attention. Until it’s completed, building an online presence is the cart before the horse.

In addition, I haven’t given enough attention to marketing and growing my freelance business in recent months. True, I have some steady clients; however, I’m the kind of person who needs new challenges and opportunities to learn new skills. I haven’t done enough with that recently, and it’s time to shake off the rust and learn something new.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the change is that I want a more authentic connection with the people in my life. Yes, Facebook makes it easy to bridge the miles, but how “real” are the interactions through it?

When I was a kid, I lived 13 miles from the town where I went to school. Most of that distance was over unpaved roads, and we were too far from the township limits to be on its water or phone networks. Since this was in Arizona’s Sonoran desert, we didn’t have a water well on the property, so my family hauled water to store in tanks for household use. That practice always made me a little “odd” in the eyes of my classmates.

The bigger oddity, however, was our lack of a telephone. This was the 1980s, when kids were glued to the phone during the summer, and really fortunate kids had their own phone lines in their rooms. Since we didn’t have a phone at all, I was often cut off from the ever-changing social circle during the summer months. While that made the start of each school year difficult (since I had to “remake” my friends each year), I learned to treasure those friends who would write me letters during the summer. I came to appreciate the importance of a personal connection as represented by an envelope in the mail.

Those experiences have prompted me to log off of Facebook so I can connect more personally with the people I care about. I know it takes two to tango, so this experiment will only work if my friends and extended family reply to my emails, phone calls and letters. Since I recognize that keeping in touch without Facebook may be challenging, I expect I’ll reactivate my account at some point. I’m hoping to stick with this experiment at least until the new year. We’ll see if that works or not.

During my Facebook experiment, I’ll still be regularly posting to both this personal blog and my business blog. Hopefully, the quality of my writing will improve if I have more time to think and write about the issues that matter to me.

Seeking New Challenges

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I’m a little stumped for a topic for this week’s post. Usually, something has occurred that I feel compelled to share and/or boast about. Even when nothing interesting happens, I can usually count on the political arena to give me fodder for a post. But this week, nothing has sparked my interest or outrage enough to base a blog post on it.

That’s a bit odd for me, since I’m one of those people with opinions on nearly every topic. And, I’m also so fond of the sound of my own voice (whether spoken or written) that I feel EVERYONE should hear my opinions. Yes, my ego is alive and well, thanks for asking.

On a serious note, I often discover what I truly think about a topic only by writing about it (either here on my blog or in my journal). That is, the act of writing about a topic helps me crystalize my thoughts and put new ideas into context with the rest of my beliefs and values. Since writing and thinking deeply are intrinsically linked for me, I’m a bit surprised that I don’t have something to discuss this week.

I’m also one of those people who crave learning and new challenges as often as possible. Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that I feel a bit stuck in a rut with my editing work. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I work nearly full-time as an editing contractor for an educational website company. I’ve had a senior editing position with them for almost a year now, and I noticed recently that the work is longer challenging. Instead, it simply feels routine, and I find myself getting bored.

When that happens, I know it’s time to take on a new challenge. That’s one of the reasons I’m enrolled in a poetry writing class. While that helps assuage my craving for a challenge, it doesn’t feel like it’s pushing me as hard as I need right now. So, I’m looking for something else to add to the mix.

Thinking about it, I get into this “I need a new challenge” situation fairly often throughout the year. While this feeling can strike at any time, I realize it’s most common in May and September. For reasons I don’t fully understand, those two months are when my need for a new challenge most likely compels me to make a major change in my life. May tends to prompt me to look for a new job, while September makes me introspective, looking for ways to improve myself (perhaps by growing spiritually). Perhaps it’s a holdover from childhood and the school calendar, but I have a feeling there’s a deeper cause behind why those two months are so significant. I just haven’t figured out the reasons behind it yet.

The Rollercoaster of Life

The past two weeks have been hectic ones, full of emotional highs and lows.

One of the emotional highs was a weeklong visit from Jen’s younger brother, Chris. He flew into New York the evening of August 31^st, and returned to Seattle the morning of September 8^th. During his visit, Jen and I took time off from work to show him around the city. We both enjoyed our time as “tour guides,” and exploring the city with Chris reminded us of all the reasons why we enjoy living here. Some of the highlights we hit included the jazz scene, the museums, a baseball game, the food, and a Broadway show. Chris also got a kick out of eavesdropping on the colorful locals during our treks around town.

Chris’s visit also brought one of the emotional lows, since our cat, Geoffrey, took ill during that week. His illness kept me home during one of our planned jazz excursions, and that illness led to a trip to the vet. That led to two days in vet hospitals, visits to a specialist, and a plethora of pills, liquids and injections. A large sum of money later, we have a diagnosis of pancreatitis linked to a chronic gastro-intestinal illness, which caused a flare-up of our cat’s diabetes. These conditions can all be managed to give Geoffrey a longer, happier life, and that’s a relief. We had to put our other cat, Maya, down last November because she had cancer. We’re not ready to be a household without pets.

I’m not sure if this is a high or low on life’s rollercoaster, but I’m a few weeks into my poetry writing class. So far, I’m enjoying the class, although the weekly lectures have underscored just how little I know about writing poetry. I’m enjoying the exercises, although I’m not at all pleased with the work I’ve produced. I’m trying to remind myself that I’m a beginner as a poet, and this class is helping me lay the groundwork for future efforts. It’s hard to keep that perspective on things, though, when I’m such a perfectionist.

The weather and temperatures are hinting that autumn is coming. While I love autumn, it’s also the time of year when things get hectic in the legal world, which means Jen spends more hours either in the office or working from home. I suppose I should be used to the rhythms of the legal calendar by now, but it still catches me by surprise each fall. I think one of the biggest frustrations about her longer hours is that autumn marks the start of the new theatre season. That means a lot of shows start up, but it’s harder for us to see them since we’re never sure what her schedule might be.

All in all, though, life in the Nichols-Simon household is going well. Life is a journey, and we’re both trying to remember to embrace the trip, not the destination.