Weekend Assignment #304: Frazzled! How Do You De-Stress?

This one, like so many Weekend Assignments, comes from my life this past week:

Weekend Assignment #304: How do you de-stress when you're feeling frazzled?

Extra Credit: The Weekend Assignment may soon have a co-host. That okay with everyone? 

(numbering corrected 2/5/10)

Frazzled. It's a word I keep running into lately, and I'm not the only person who has applied the term to me this week. In British English it apparently has a slightly different meaning than here, or at least a broader one. On Doctor Who it's been used to mean "broken beyond repair," or possibly "burnt out" in the sense of electronics. For me, though, it primarily means the way I feel when this is a good visual approximation:

Which I suppose does mean "burnt out," in a sense. But I hope not beyond repair!

Anyway. I've been working on a complex and difficult project at the Church, the sort of thing where I fix one problem and two others pop up. Time has not been on my side, so I've had to scramble frantically to get things done, sometimes on even less sleep than usual, spreadsheets proliferating wildly in my wake. On Friday I was sent home to rest and de-stress, on the grounds that I hadn't had a day off since the 3rd or January, or was it the 1st? It was getting pretty obvious to others that the pressure was getting to me.

So what did I do when I got home?

I worked on the problem a little more, in email, and it helped.

I watched the series finale of Dollhouse. And it helped.

I petted the dogs. And it helped.

I edited photos for the Round Robin. And it helped.

I did laundry. I'm not sure it helped with that particular source of stress, but at least now I have clean clothes!

Then today I met with the church treasurer for several hours. And it helped A LOT.

Generally, there are three things that seem to help me:

1. Sleep. I cannot overemphasize this one.
2. Get away for a bit. Yes, that can be escaping into Facebook or a tv show, but that's too routine to help all that much. Getting out into the mountains with the dogs and my camera is a much better bet for me, as I did last weekend.
3. Solve the problem. That's really the big one for me. It's fine to take a break, but if I can then tackle the actual problem and triumph, even over a small piece of it, that's what really helps me. How about you?

A word about the Extra Credit above. Sometimes the Weekend Assignment, as much as I love it, adds to my stress. After two years of making up the questions, with occasional suggestions for "guest professors," I find it hard sometimes to come up with something that's interesting to write about, not too complicated or obscure, and that hasn't already been asked by me or by John Scalzi before me. To avoid getting completely burned out, I've asked our friend Carly if she's willing to co-host the Weekend Assignment starting a few weeks from now. This means she would be creating and posting half of the assignments, bringing fresh ideas into this old meme. She's already come up with the idea to have a logo for the Weekend Assignment, as I've posted above. I encourage you to use this logo in your own blog. It's available in several sizes besides the big one:


250 pixels wide


220 pixels wide


125 pixels wide

I've included the following link so you can make the logo clickable if you like: http://outmavarin.blogspot.com/search/label/Weekend%20Assignment. We'll have a similar one for Carly's blog once we get going - assuming it's okay with you folks, of course! Or just link to the week's particular Assignment entry - e.g. this one.

Meanwhile, let's take a look at the results of later week's Assignment. For Weekend Assignment #303: To Tweet Or Not To Tweet, I asked whether or not you use Twitter and why. Click on the names below to read the full responses:

Julie said...

I love Twitter as much as it frustrates me. I've had to unfollow and/or block some folks who started off interesting and then suddenly changed into non-stop self-promotion machines of the most annoying kind. Oh, yes: Twitter is a very useful tool for promotion, but, like any other tool, it can hurt you if you use it wrong.

Carly said...

Ok, I admit it. When I first heard about Twitter I had to wonder what the big deal was. Ok, so you can find out in real time that "Henry" in Boise, has just milked his cow. Or maybe you could find out within a matter of seconds that "Simone" in Fairbanks has just finished her breakfast, but really, why would I care? Ok, it did intrigue me that someone famous could share their day, I mean that would be pretty glamorous right? I mean, it's going straight to the source, without all those pesky tabloids to make it all up, or airbrush the heck out of it. So, ok, I could see that as fun. Hmmm, I thought, maybe there was something to it.

Freda (welcome!) said...

I tweet. @fredalicious

Following 434
Followers 566
Listed 24

Mike said...

I know there are a lot of people who think Twitter is stupid or only for self-important people, and they can be right, but it can be useful at times, too. I've learned about several things first through Twitter; earthquakes, plane crashes, etc. Not to mention that J.D Salinger had died. I've never read Catcher in the Rye, but still, it was important. If used right it can be fun and informative and full of spambots, but there isn't much you can do about that.

Duane said...

I was avoiding social networking sites like the plague; they just didn't seem like my cup of tea. Several people told me I needed to get on Twitter, but I kept putting them off. One evening, my wife basically just put me on Facebook, and within a day or two, I finally decided to take the Twitter plunge. Both have worked out pretty well for me. 

So there you are - five responses to last week's Assignment. Will you join us this week, and tell us how you de-stress? Here are the guidelines in case you're interested:

1. Please post your entry no later than Friday, February 5th at 6 PM. (You can also post your response in the comments thread, but a blog entry is better.) I hope to get the next WA posted on Friday night, or Saturday night at the latest. If you get it in before I post, basically, you're golden!
2. Please mention the Weekend Assignment in your blog post, and include a link back to this entry. Using the logo is encouraged but not mandatory.
3. Please come back here after you've posted, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below.
4. Visiting other participants' entries is strongly encouraged!
5. I'm always looking for topic ideas. Please email me at mavarin2 on gmail.com if there's a Weekend Assignment theme you'd like to see. If I use your idea, you will be credited as that week's "guest professor."
6. I haven't run into any unpleasantness with this meme, ever, but just in case it ever happens, know that I reserve the right to remove rude or unpleasant comments (not to mention comment spam), and to leave entries off the linking list if the person has been majorly unpleasant, or fails to mention the Weekend Assignment in the entry.


That's it for now! I hope to hear from you soon.

Karen

Weekend Assignment #303: To Tweet Or Not To Tweet

This week's guest professor is Carly, subbing for me after I confessed I was stuck for a topic:

Weekend Assignment #303: Do you Tweet? Why or why not?

to which I add

Extra Credit: If you do use Twitter, how many people follow you? How many do you follow?

Back before the 2008 election, when I was newly unemployed (again) and not yet on Facebook, I spent about five hours a day on Twitter. Every day I promoted the day's blog entry (this was when I was still blogging every day), a task made easier when I signed up for Twitterfeed to automate the process. I supplemented this with the occasional 140 character quip or observation or opinion or microburst of personal news.

But most of what I was doing in the weeks leading up to the election was clicking on the links in the Twitter accounts I followed, including a couple of people and shows at NPR and several sections of The Huffington Post. Reading those alone took up vast amounts of time.

Once the election was over, I was no longer as intensely interested in the day's political news, and the time spent on Twitter started to feel excessive. At the same time, I was followed by more and more TwitterSpam (Spitter?) accounts, however briefly, and sorting through the new followers started to get tedious. I soon cut back my Twitter activity. At first I tried to check out Twitter every day, however briefly, but soon I wasn't booting the site at all, unless I posted a photo on the related site TwitPic.



My posts on Twitter continued, however, thanks for Twitterfeed. Every time I posted an entry here or on the church blogs, a blurb and a link hit Twitter. All this automation was great and easy until Facebook was added to the mix, and then AIM. With all these sites feeding each other,  the cross-posting can get ridiculous. Check out the effect of last night's post on my Facebook wall above. Overkill much?

Still, I think it's a good platform, if you don't let it rule your life, or if you have bundles of time and no reason not to hang out on Twitter. I currently have 176 accounts I follow, from friends to actors, news feeds to Doctor Who set reporters (fans) in Cardiff, Wales. And I don't read any of them any more unless I have a specific reason to fire up the program. 160 people follow me in return, and seldom see a word that isn't piped in from the Outpost!

How about you? Do you tweet often, or a little, or not at all? Please tell us about it in your blog, or in the comments thread below.

While you're thinking about that, let's have a look at last week's assignment. For Weekend Assignment #302: Your Favorite Charity, I asked whether you contributed to any charities, and which ones. Click on each name below to get to get to their blogs and read more:

Florinda said...

Some of the causes I support aren't necessarily the first things that come to mind as "charities." For example, I'm a sustaining "Star Member" of KCRW, one of the LA area's NPR stations, which means they automatically get $10 from me every month. I was a member of the Memphis Zoological Society for several years after I no longer worked for them (or even lived in Memphis), and I feel guilty about letting it lapse. My support for them comes from personal knowledge of what they do, and I really should get around to joining again (especially since several of their member benefits are reciprocated by other zoos).

Julie said in comments...

Hi Karen, I'm swamped again this week, so I'm answering in the comments. Accept my apologies. I figure this is better than not doing it at all.


I support several charities. I can't say that I have a favorite. Amongst those I support are The Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and local food banks. My last charitable donation was just this week. Several of the local food stores participate in the "Souper Bowl," which supports local food banks. All someone has to do is grab a bag and take it to the checkout along with the rest of their purchase. I do that often during this time of year.

Your turn! Here are the guidelines:

1. Please post your entry no later than Friday, January 29th at 6 PM. (You can also post your response in the comments thread, but a blog entry is better.) I hope to get the next WA posted on Friday night - no more of this Sunday night stuff!
2. Please mention the Weekend Assignment in your blog post, and include a link back to this entry.
3. Please come back here after you've posted, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below.
4. Visiting other participants' entries is strongly encouraged!
5. I'm always looking for topic ideas. Please email me at mavarin2 on gmail.com if there's a Weekend Assignment theme you'd like to see. If I use your idea, you will be credited as that week's "guest professor."

I hope to hear from you soon.

Karen

99% Relieved!

Obviously it's too soon for lab results, but it looks like I don't have cancer. Dr. L. described my tissue sample in a way that strongly contrasted with what she would expect to see if cancer were present. Apparently I was right: there's nothing wrong, just unusual. I can live with that!

The procedure was at least as painful as I anticipated, and it was almost funny how often Dr. L. and I kept apologizing to each other - she for inflicting pain, me for yelping so much. I'll spare you the details. But it's over with, and so worth it. By tomorrow I probably won't be sore any more. Even if I am, it will be minor, and I won't complain.

Last night was kind of difficult. I was too much on edge to sleep well after writing my blog entry. It didn't help that the bedroom was cold and the dogs were hogging the blankets! I should sleep much better tonight.



In the morning I'm supposed to go over to St. Michael's and do a little consulting about our online presence. Mostly I'm going to try to teach them how to use Twitter and other social media more effectively. Also we need to streamline the process of getting sermon podcasts online. It's not getting done at the moment, and that's partly my fault. Also, I can't seem to fix the widget above to stop the repetition. Odd, that.

On the accounting front, John and I agreed to spend the money on a CPA review course. I have a particular one in mind, but will do a little more research to make sure it's the most cost effective one. So far I think it is. Studying for the exam will mean spending less time messing around online, but that's probably a good thing. As for the concerns I wrote about last night, they're still there, but they don't negate the idea that studying and taking the exam is the logical next step. The deadline for choosing a study option is early next week, when a year-end discount expires in the course I'm considering.

I'm sorry tonight's entry isn't more coherent. Now that one crisis is over, I should be able to get back in the "swang of thangs" shortly.

Karen

The Web of Ideas

I want to write an in-depth thing here, but I can't really do that tonight, having spent over two hours just preparing the visual parts of the thing and with church in four and a half hours. I've had two hours of sleep, with no chance of more until I dump sufficient words into this entry. So let's get an introduction going, and I'll try to revisit the subject with something approaching profundity some other time.

This particular train of thought started on Twitter, or, taking the long view, on AOL Mail, or, slightly longer view, on the Outpost, or very long view, on television in the 1970s and 1980s. A few days ago in this blog I mentioned science historian James Burke, whose Connections series of shows and series The Day the Universe Changed led years ago to my buying some of his books and even a Connections computer game. In preparing the entry I checked transmission dates on Wikipedia, imdb, YouTube and elsewhere via Google, and found a Burke-related site that didn't turn up the last time I Googled him. All these connections between web sites led to my explaining a little bit about his work, which is fundamentally concerned with a connective view of innovation. Burke loves to show how seemingly disparate people, events and ideas interact in unexpected ways, increasing knowledge and creating change. Part of his thesis is that you need a macro view of what Douglas Adams called "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things," as opposed to a "reductionist" view of knowledge that causes more and more specialization, so that individuals "know more and more about less and less," and can't effectively disseminate their ideas outside the silo of their specialty.

Some of my open tabs tonight in Firefox, including several James Burke sites.

Well, anyway, because whatever I was ranting about that night reminded me of James Burke and I worked him into the entry, I ended up using the title of one of his books / tv shows for the entry title, which I then promoted on Twitter and Facebook. The next day I got AOL mail informing me that a James Burke enthusiast was now following me on Twitter. I followed him on Twitter, which led me to still more Burke links.

More open tabs, including a web of Doctor Who resources.

Another thread of ideas I followed around the web today started, on the Doctor Who blog Planet Gallifrey. I happened to see the beginning of the entry on my revamped Outpost sidebar, read it, and left a comment. I subsequently revamped my sidebar further with a cities-and-flags visitor counter I nicked from Martha while making the rounds on two or three different memes. The counter isn't perfect; it thinks I live in Phoenix and can't narrow down the point of origin of some folks beyond "United States" or "United Kingdom." But I was pleased to see a number of UK cities pop up overnight, and got to worrying that they were following the link from the Who blog comment to the Outpost, only to be disappointed by the lack of Doctor Who speculation in this blog. So I spent and hour or two writing up my thoughts on the subject of this year's Doctor Who Christmas special, which has a character called "The Next Doctor" in the episode title. Fans are feverishly considering each emerging detail about the upcoming story to try to figure out who the heck he is. My in-depth hypothesizing on the subject on my LiveJournal (so as not to overburden you folks with esoterica) was rendered slightly obsolete later in the day, when a link on the Doctor Who Forum led me to an article with a quote that makes the possibilities even more confusing. The article also led me to the official BBC Doctor Who site, from which I found a link to BBC archived copies of early typed documents from 1962 and 1963 that led to the creation of the original tv series. Amazing stuff!

And that's not even counting the back and forth between the Outpost and blogs of Round Robin participants, and the ideas that inspired. Or the fact that my pastor at St. Michael's was experimenting with Twitter, so I recommended the Dean of the Episcopal cathedral in Phoenix as someone to follow, who immediately started following both of us!

Connections between my open tabs.

Now, none of this results in a cure for cancer or a better way to travel to Mars, a plan for making Detroit car companies viable, or even a job offer for me. The knowledge gained from the day's browsing is essentially trivial, except what I absorbed from two James Burke screencasts. But it does show in microcosm some of what Burke is talking about, the serendipity of ideas connecting across space and time. Web 2.0 enables us to learn more and more about more and more, not just about less and less, and can help to spark new ideas and innovations. Or it can just be a pleasant waste of an evening. My fairly specialized interests led me in several directions on this particular day, but they could have ranged much further.

One very simple set of connections shows me part of what's at stake. Two hyperlinks away from the visionary, scientific Burke's site was a link to a video rant with the following description:

Psalm 2
Saturday, November 29, 2008 9:33 PM
Why do the heathen rage? Obama is the antichrist and this world is doomed! The return of the Lord Jesus Christ is at hand!!

Whoever posted this ill-informed bit of paranoia has a right to do so on his or her own site, assuming the video (which I didn't look at) doesn't violate the DCMA or advocate assassination or treason. But there are people who believe such things, and it's unhelpful to the stability of the country and the world. The Web should be used, in part, to expose people to factual information and encourage rational thought, overwhelming ignorance with a flood of knowledge.

Enough. I've gotta go to bed!

Karen

Confessions of a Newly-Addicted "Political Junkie"

One of my most recent button designs

The term "political junkie" has been around for a while now. There's a guy over at NPR, Ken Rudin, who is commonly called "the Political Junkie," as if there were only one such person; but really it's a fairly common condition, especially in the autumn of 2008. It certainly applies to me these days, and to John, and to lots of other people.

Now, I freely admit that I have kind of an addictive personality anyway, a distinct tendency to obsess over one enthusiasm or another for months or years at a time before being seduced by the next one. Over the past 42 years or so I've had all-consuming interests in the Monkees, the Batman tv series, the Beatles, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Quantum Leap, my own novels-in-progress, and...well, I'm probably forgetting at least one more. But this latest addiction, to reading and watching and discussing the day's Presidential Election news, is a little different from the rest. For one thing, it's sucking up all my waking hours at a time when I have more time than usual to give to it - eight hours more, plus commute. For another, it's an addiction that's hitting thousands of Americans at the same time, if not millions.

Why is this? I think there are a number of factors involved:

1. This particular election is really, really important. With the economy tanking, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragging on and a huge public resentment building toward what the Bush administration has done to this country and the world, voters are aware that we need to elect someone who is capable of improving the situation. The course of future history over the next four years is in our hands, and we don't want to screw it up.

2. This election is personal. We're the ones who will suffer if we elect the wrong person. Maybe other people will suffer too, but for each of us there's an immediacy that wasn't there before. What about my job, my house, my health insurance, my 401(k)? These questions are more obviously and closely connected to who is elected than they've been in decades.

3. This election is historic. Unless something extraordinary happens in the next couple of weeks, we're about to elect this country's first African American President. He's already defeated a viable female presidential candidate in the primaries, and faces a Republican ticket that includes the country's second female vice presidential nominee. And all this is happening against a backdrop of the biggest economic upheaval in nearly 80 years.

4. This election is dramatic. Just look at the cast of characters, and the twists and turns in the ever-changing plot. We've got the guy with the funny name and unusual background, who defies all attempts at stereotyping with his level-headed, analytical unflappability, coupled with a sort of pragmatic idealism. We've got the old war hero, once respected by nearly everyone, but now a tragic victim of his hubris and other fatal flaws. There's the trusted mentor/sidekick, generally steady but occasionally good for a laugh. And there's the ingenue, a perky source of sexual interest and comic relief but with a dark streak of meanness and corruption that nearly outweighs her general cluelessness. We watch them all every day as they confront each other's endless accusations, revelations, prevarications and obfuscations, helped or hindered by a cast of thousands from political pundits to Joe the Plumber.

5. This election is information-rich. I probably read at least 30 screens full of brief tweets on Twitter today, 95% of them political, 75% of them containing links I followed to read dozens of news and commentary postings on everything from economic theory to the difference between ACORN's troubles and actual attempts at voter fraud. On top of that I'm getting a few dozen political emails a day. I'm almost glad I'm unemployed at the moment, because I'd never keep up otherwise.

Doctor Who was never this all-consuming. Then again, Doctor Who was never this crucial to the real-life future of the human race.

Karen

Eating in the 1960s, Modern Style

Good news and bad news for me Monday night and Tuesday: I finally found the place on the almost impossible-to-navigate Arizona DES web site that tells whether my unemployment has been paid out. Yup. $240 was paid on October 1. The bad news? It was paid into a debit card account, and to date I have not received the card. But you know, groceries can't be put off while bureaucracy grinds along. So late Tuesday afternoon, while the dogs waited anxiously for their trip to the dog park, I went shopping.

Not my usual purchases.

Way back in the very early days of my first blog, Musings from Mâvarin, I wrote about wanting to go "shopping in the 1960s." I was talking about how great it would be to hop in a time machine and pay 1960s prices for mint-condition midcentury modern furniture, early Marvel comics and every doll, toy, etc. I ever had or wanted. (I'm not sure I owned up to that last part in the actual entry.) I was thinking about that premise today as I shopped, because I wasn't going for the foods I usually buy. In essence, I was trying to go grocery shopping in the 1960s.

The idea actually came from a little snippet in Time magazine:

U.S. Cheap Food Gets a Boost As the economy tanks, companies that specialize in inexpensive food products see an opportunity: [...]

OH, YEAAHH! Kool-Aid's most recent TV ad ended with the tagline "Delivering more smiles per gallon." Second-quarter sales were up, which "speaks to the value that Kool-Aid represents," says a spokeswoman.

MMM, MMM, GOOD A new Campbell's Soup and Kraft Singles marketing campaign is coming soon, with the slogan "Warm hearts without stretching budgets." Campbell's stock rose on Sept. 29 as the Dow Jones dropped 778 points.

Kool-Aid and cereal and Campbell's soup, and presumably Kraft Dinner (as we called it) and Chef Boyardee. Sounds like 1960s food to me! When I was a kid, my mom served a lot of Kraft Dinner and canned Franco American Spaghetti, part of the convention that a "balanced" meal should include a meat, a vegetable and a starch. The vegetable was seldom fresh, unless it was a salad made primarily from iceberg lettuce. Cooked vegetables invariably were purchased either canned or in the form of a small, frozen, cardboard-wrapped brick. And oh, yeah: lunch was Campbell's soup and a bologna, salami or ham sandwich, usually with one slice of Oscar Meyer lunchmeat.

Now, these food selections by my parents stem partly from the fact that options were more limited back then. Produce wasn't trucked in from distant countries, just from Florida. Frozen dinners were from Swanson (the original "TV Dinners" and Hungry-Man upgrades) and Banquet, period. I don't remember seeing natural style peanut butter until college, or yogurt, or microwavable anything; things like designer coffee and Chunky Monkey ice cream arrived even later. We've also lost a few options over the years (Koogle, anyone? How about Crispy Critters?), but overall the choices are wider and better and potentially healthier.

And more expensive. In light of that Time piece, I'm realizing that my parents, both children of the Depression, were probably economizing with all those canned goods. Well, fair enough. With cash flow slowed to a trickle here at Casa Blocher, I need to economize, too. So I went around Safeway deliberately looking for cheap foods, using those childhood memories as my guide. I will never again buy canned peas, but I did buy Kraft Dinner and Campbell's Chunky Soups (introduced in the 1970s, actually), and Oscar Meyer lunchmeats.


Of course, you can't really shop in the 1960s, not even for groceries. Even if I could stand mushy peas and Wonder Bread, I couldn't walk out with a cart full of groceries for $20, as my dad used to do most weeks. Put it this way: buying the soda that was on sale and other bargains using by Safeway card netted me a "savings" of $15.00.


And of course, I didn't carry it all home in sturdy brown paper bags.

It's well past 7:00 AM as I'm finishing this entry, even more of an all-nighter than has been my habit these past few weeks. You know why, don't you? After the grocery shopping, I did take the dogs out, and was late for the debate on tv. I watched the second half with my laptop actually in my lap for once, and then MSNBC commentary shows while updating the Round Robin links on my sidebar. I found it impossible to concentrate on the debate while making dinner and messing around on the computer, and even during the rerun of the debate my attention wandered at times. After watching it and the political postgame shows, I designed this:


I also caught up on the Twitter feed, which took all night. I've been following the huffingtonpost, nprpolitics, tpmmedia, politifact and other tweats, most of it include links to articles. I end up reading most of the articles, and that takes a while.

7:35 AM. Can I go to bed now?

Karen