It’s 8.15, Sunday morning. Outside there are just a few wispy strips of cloud in an otherwise perfect blue sky, the sort of sky only my country can do. There are still leaves on the trees, but there’s some yellowing at the edges. It’s crisp out there, as in the temperature is low, probably around five degrees, which is nothing – in a couple of months it will be minus five, or less, much less. So here I am, in the dining room, where I am writing this post by hand. I have the heater on, and three layers of tops, and tracksuit pants, and ugg-boots, but that’s already too much information, isn’t it.
The fact is that I can’t wait to get outside. There’s a chook-yard to clean, and a veggie-patch that’s starting to look just a little bit sad and sorry for itself – the basil’s long gone, and the tomatoes only have a week to go before they’ll be done and dusted. Most of all, however, I want to plant bulbs, yes, daffodils, jonquils, snow-drops and more. Despite this house being 120 years old, there wasn’t much garden when I moved in; the place would have been decimated by decades of searing summers and pitiless winters, and, far too regularly, drought. But I’m getting it together, it’s a cottage garden now, I think that’s what I’ve created.
But here I am at the dining-room table, writing this post, because that’s what I do first thing every Sunday morning.
This time three years ago I didn’t have the internet at home, not even a private email address that I could access from someone else’s computer. It was when on residence at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River that during the final-night celebration the other artists handed out business cards with details of their on-line lives. On the drive home I resolved to at least get an email account – how much of a professional writer could I be without it?
Within months, I had not only an email address, but also Open to Public, my formal web home, if that’s what it is, and Under the counter, which quickly became Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecot. And then I started Verity La, and then the Childers Group, an arts advocacy body, which, of course, needed a site. And then bloody wretched Facebook reared its ugly head; I signed up because I’d been invited to participate in a writing project and the only way the organiser would communicate was through FB, those initials sounding like those of a close friend, but that’s hardly the case.
This week I realised that I now have five active email accounts. And then there are the Facebook messages, and mobile-phone calls and messages, and sometimes even the land-line rings, though mostly it’s only telemarketeers who call these days.
I confess that it’s quite a struggle to juggle all these strands of what’s become my own on-line life. I enjoy this blog, very much in fact – it’s become something like a diary that I write with other people in mind. However, I’m glad that from the outset I committed to doing only one post per week, and only an hour or two of participating in other blogs. Facebook has become a necessary annoyance more than anything else (and I’m avoiding Twitter like the plague). It’s the whole email thing that’s got out of control. On the back of an envelope I’ve estimated that I receive between three- and four-hundred emails each week, and the vast majority of them are important and/or interesting. So my laptop has become a source of stress, with only the odd bit of pleasure thrown in, if I’m lucky.
How do you keep your on-line life in check? What rules do you put in place, if any? What do you do when your digital living starts to unravel in front of your eyes?
I tell you what I do. I go out into the garden and remove plants, or plant plants, or clean out the chook-yard. Or sometimes I just sit outside on a little bench with a cup of coffee and simply watch the chooks – how good it is to observe them going about their lives. Do they care that they don’t have access to Youtube or 24/7 coverage of what’s happening in the world through multi-media newspaper sites? Do they care that they don’t know that someone on the other side of the world has just had the worst cup of soy-chai latte in the history of the universe?
No, not in the slightest, and I envy them for that, I really do.
16 comments
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April 15, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
whisperinggums
Oh, great post Nigel … I’ve been involved in the online world since around 1996. I joined my first online reading group in January 1997 and I still haven’t worked out how to manage it all! Online groups, blogs, email, Facebook … and sort of at the edges of Twitter though I barely touch that one.
It’s so easy to get sucked into the online world and I know I get sucked in more than I’d like to, and yet I like what I’m sucked into. Does that make sense?
And on that note I’ll close and go out into the sunshine. Just sitting with a book suits me … !
April 15, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Sue, thanks, as always, for your thoughts, but I’m also glad that you’ve been able to enjoy this glorious autumn that we’re having.
PS I do understand it when you say that you get sucked into the on-line world more than you like, but you also like it when you do get sucked in. Every so often, something happens on-line that is truly wonderful, but, for me, it can be a hard slog to find those gems. Regularly reading your blog is a great way to start!
April 15, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
Gabrielle Bryden
Nothing much better than watching chooks – I have an afternoon routine of cleaning their water dishes, feeding, check of eggs, pick up overly clucky roosting chooks who need a break from sitting on eggs which will disappear when they return to coop ;), clean coop of poop (they free range most of the day so not much poop in the coop), check for escape routes and rampaging goannas or snakes, and sit on bench seat and watch the pecking order in action!
April 15, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, I think what you’ve posted is the perfect antidote to, well, everything!
April 15, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
lipsorpenciltips
I love reading your blog. You speak your mind in a very comforting way – because you are real and when you’re irritated, I feel it as if it were mine, and perhaps that’s why I like you so much, because you resonate with me. Just last week, I went into a bit of a tailspin over all this constant communication. It can be overwhelming. I find that I get really behind unless I calendar time for each part of my world. I went into my calendar at work, which I can access from my cell phone – and I went to work chunking out blocks of time to read, time to write on my blog, time to respond to people, time to sit and do nothing, time to devote to poetry. And these are all just the things I do in my precious free time, of which I have very little. So – tiny nuggets of time is all I’ve got, and I want to completely be present in the space I’ve got. When I listen to someone, I want to really listen – not be checking things off in my mind of other things I should be doing. I want to simplify, and that may not be possible without walking away from the online world. I’m blabbering. I don’t have any answers whatsoever, clearly. But I hear you, and I’m struggling with the same things. Hopefully we all survive this! And yes, just watching the chickens in their coop is surprisingly relaxing and fun!
April 15, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Lipsorpenciltipcs. I think you’re right that what the internet offers is ‘tiny nuggets of time’; it doesn’t offer immersion, well, not often. I also like your approach of simplifying. I’m often astounded how some people are called ‘simpletons’, when in fact the simplest people are often the smartest, because they’ve already had to process so much to get to that point. Thanks for dropping by, and I look forward to hearing more about your blog. And, yes, more power to chickens!
April 15, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
pensive pete
The Spring will soon bring forth the Joy of your labours. Your cottage garden will shine a light just for you. The chooks will lay their eggs and continue to teach you the ways of the earth. These are the truths of our exixtence, the simple natural beauty of the World.
April 15, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks Pete. Regrettably the chooks are off the lay at the moment, but here’s hoping that they’re back into the swing – spring? – of things soon!
April 16, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
Mark William Jackson
Your writing about a “Walden Spot”, something I read about on a tech blog as being essential in a totally wired world. I spent most of yesterday building a raised garden bed, 7.2 m long, 600 mm deep, adjacent to my 2 2.4 x 1.2 m vegetable patches. It’s not just the wiredness you need to escape, working within the mind for too long can send you insane; physical work helps stimulate the “a-ha” moments (also known as “shower” moments). I could write more but rather than fill up your blog I’ll PM you on FB and copy vast chunks of text into an email, I’ll also be referring to this page via twitter as #goulburngetstheinternet while I search for @nigel!
April 16, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Mark, funnily enough, what I love most about your comment – and there’s a lot to love – is the fact that you gave the exact dimensions of your new veggie patches. I forgot which writer said it, but it seems to be true: we want numbers: numbers of carriages on a train, numbers of fingers on a mutilated hand, numbers of people standing at the edge of a cliff. Now, back to the topic: the Walden Spot – I’ll go looking into that. In the meantime, I’ll do my very best (I actually typed ‘pest’, which is apt) to get through another week without a Twitter account!
April 17, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
tristanfoster
My offline life more or less keeps my online life in check for me. I don’t mind saying (now, anyway) that at the last place I worked I had quite a bit of freedom to cultivate an online life, including building a blog, writing posts and visiting the blogs of others. But at my current job I’m walled off from all the “fun” parts of the Internet, and so I’m only really left with time for twitter and a single email account to manage in my free time. I think of a return to blogging (and topics to blog about, and ways in which to be a better blogger) far too often – that I’m paying for hosting and URLs which are completely unused probably only adds to the temptation.
Twitter can be a distraction but what I like about it most is the commitment required is ever-so close to zero. I don’t personally know most of the people I interact with, messages have to be succinct and I quite often have slow, muddled “conversations” with people over many days (ironic, given that twitter’s main selling point is it’s ability to capture life in “real-time” [funny all this emphasis on “real” in the virtual…]). This should be a nuisance but it has a certain charm to it.
But yes, it’s easy to let it all get out of hand and if it all imploded in on itself tomorrow I don’t think I’d care – or lose – too much. If nothing else, I’d get to spend more time doing the equivalent of your chook watching, which for me is sitting on the balcony with a book in my hands.
April 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Tristan, sounds like external forces have brought a level of focus to your on-line life, which is quite handy really, isn’t it.
Although I have all but no experience of Twitter, and I’d like it to stay that way, I can understand the attraction of the brevity. It also seems that it’s more of a professional tool, whereas Facebook is more the true social-network tool, whatever that is.
Regardless, I hope you’re able to spend plenty of time sitting on your balcony with a book in your hand…
PS: Last Saturday I wrote the above post about how my on-line life has pretty much got out of hand, but this morning what did I do? Started another page on Facebook. It’s for a worthy cause – Verity La – but still it’s yet another thing to manage. Perhaps it’s just the way were are right now.
PPS: Are you sure that you don’t want to start up Lead Igloo 2?
April 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
broadsideblog
I don’t tweet, even if I should (to keep up with my competitors, ugh.) I blog 3x week but write many of them in advance so I’m never scrambling for content. I enjoy FB and have twice used it recently in a very different and helpful way — to crowdsource ideas, both on where to take my next holiday (friends started offering their homes!) and how to fix a cellphone.
I agree it’s easy to get too sucked into this stuff and even more important than ever to unplug and go look at the sky…or chooks…or flowers.There is nothing (short of a heart attack) that is really that urgent.
I enjoy your blog because it has a dreamy and reflective quality. I can totally picture you in your Uggs…albeit on the other side of the globe.
April 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Apr
Nigel Featherstone
About Twitter, what I’m seeing more and more is the whole ‘live tweating’ thing, particularly at forums where attendees tweet all the way through the event. Whilst I haven’t participated in any of these ‘live’ Twitter discussions, I have read the resultant discussion, and it can be a really interesting record of people’s thoughts and the conversation that flowed from that.
And crowd-sourcing – it’s a fascinating idea, isn’t it.
Thanks very much for your comments on this blog – it’s always lovely to have feedback. As I said in a previous post, I’ve come to the rather comfortable position of treating this blog as a diary I write with other people in mind; and I do try to create posts that will have resonance with readers. Funny how blogging, in many ways, has become old fashioned in the context of other social-media tools such as Twitter etc!
But I’m off to put out the washing, and stare at the chooks for a bit…
May 10, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Geoff
I’ve pondered on this … in my uggslippers whilst watching my chooks – coffee’s usually involved somewhere too. Like someone said a little further up … earlier on …up there … whatever, getting away from the machine is just so important … living outside of your mind. The curse of all these somehow private conversations is that we (well, I) dwell on them afterward – like while washing up or when I could be engaging in real-time conversations with the people around me.
Anyways I’ve forgotten my point but I would like to say that though recently arrived (I came here via broadside which seems oddly circular in a funny kind of way) I enjoy your style of writing and like what you’ve done with the place. carry on 🙂
May 10, 2012 at 9:16+00:00May
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Geoff, that phrase: ‘getting away from the machine is just so important’, I love it. And thanks for your very kind comments about Under the Counter. I hope I can keep doing good things here, with help from commenters like yourself. Cheers!