Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Household

Stranded by Technology

By

Recently an older couple’s GPS system guided them down a remote, impassable forest road on their way from Portland to Reno. They ended up stranded in eastern Oregon in a foot and a half of snow for three days.

I also feel let down by technology this week. As I mentioned in a recent post, my Internet connection was down for over a week. Last Wednesday I was thrilled to finally have it up again, almost giddy.

Then my computer crashed.

The infamous Windows “blue screen of death” popped up … then blackness. I restarted the computer and was greeted by: “Missing Operating System.”

We rushed the computer to some local computer wizards, and we’re hoping they’ll be able to recover some of what we lost. (No, we did not have everything backed up.)

Of course, I vow to be better about backing up my hard drive from now on, but this whole dreadful episode left me with a few other things too:

  • Clear priorities

The first thing I thought of when the blue screen popped up wasn’t my work, or even the two novels I’ve written and rewritten and rewritten again, which resided there on that crashing hard drive…* It was an adorable series of photos of my son in a terry-cloth frog robe that I took when he was about nine months old. A lot of the photos of our son are stored in other places. But the frog-robe photos and quite a few others will be lost forever if those computer wizards can’t recover them, and that’s heart breaking.

On the other hand, the pictures I still have of my son have suddenly taken on a lot more meaning, and I have new plans to organize them into albums.

(*Yes, I backed up those novels, although I may have lost some more recent edits.)

  • Mission: downsize the data.

Part of the reason I was not as good at backing up my hard drive as I should have been is because there was just so much data on there — non-essential documents, blurry photos, outdated information, etc.

I lost some things I wish I still had. But what surprises me is that I also feel a bit lighter without all the junk that was on there. I’m on a new mission to keep my hard drive from becoming a dumping ground again – to only keep data that’s meaningful, to delete all those blurry photos, and to regularly purge outdated files.

  • Mission: Organize the data

Starting afresh has some other benefits. I’m already being much more systematic about the way I store my computer files, and I plan to keep it that way.

This whole episode has made me realize that the stuff contained in my computer files is not that different from the other stuff in my life. It can be tempting to keep everything, since there are so many more gigabytes of space to store it in these days. But virtual baggage is still baggage.

I’m ready to pare down, to simplify, and to organize.

(This post is for Steady Mom’s Thirty Minute Blog Challenge.)

From Coal Country to Bee Country?

By

Tammy Horn, also known as the “Bee Lady”, is waging a one-woman campaign to reclaim land throughout Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia previously destroyed by strip coal mining. She wants to reforest reclaimed mine sites with sourwood trees and wildflowers and turn Appalachia back into a honey bee corridor. (Beekeeping was once a common vocation for many residents’ parents and grandparents.)

Horn would like to train hundreds of residents in beekeeping. They could jar honey, make cosmetics, and also learn more advanced beekeeping skills, like queen-rearing and  pollination services. She hopes beekeeping can restore Appalachia’s damaged ecosystem and boost its ailing economy.

You can read more about Horn’s Coal Country Beeworks here or visit her website here.

Resolving to do nothing

By

Photo credit: Tammy Strobel

I wrote a lot about resolutions in January. What I didn’t mention is that I don’t usually make New Year’s Resolutions.

This year I decided to though.

I’ve read and heard a lot about the benefits of meditation over the years, most recently in this fascinating interview with Jill Bolte Taylor, author of Stroke of Insight. Taylor is a neuroscientist. Several years ago, she had a nearly life-threatening stroke that wiped out the left side of her brain. She lost her ability to talk, read, and write. But without the left side of her brain functioning (that’s the part that thinks logically, names things, and worries), she felt an extreme sense of euphoria and well-being. Taylor believes meditation can teach the rest of us to quiet the left side of our brains and experience a similar sense of well-being .

I’ve also read about various studies showing that meditation can boost the immune system and make people happier.

I’ve practiced meditation occasionally over the years, but this year I decided to commit to 15 minutes every day. Like most people, I’m busy. I have a toddler, so solitary quiet time is a rarity. And when I have it, I’m usually feverishly working. So this idea of sitting silently for 15 minutes a day felt like something of a radical act.

What is meditation?

People use many different techniques to meditate. The general idea is to try to focus your attention on one thing. Some people say a mantra or “om”, some sit in front of a mirror, some dance or walk.

I simply sit in silence, close my eyes, and try to focus on my breath. When I inevitably find my mind drifting, I just try to bring my awareness back to my breath. I use the word “try”, because meditating is not as easy as it might sound.

Much to my surprise, in just one month, I’ve noticed some fairly huge changes in the way I think and feel.

• More focus.

I have not always been the most focused person. I partly blame the Internet, because I got used to jumping back and forth between ten tabs at once, skimming things, and clicking from link to link. Then I transferred that mindset to my daily life.

For example, I was reading a lot of books at a time. I’d have four or five stacked up on my nightstand. I’d read half of one, then pick up another, then go back to the first one, or pick  up a new one. And even though I’ve always loved fiction, I got distracted from novels most easily, often putting them down after a few chapters.

I am thinking so much more clearly now. I’ve mostly eradicated multitasking from my life. I make a checklist and do one thing at a time. And I’ve been reading one book at a time start-to-finish and have finished a number of novels. (I imagine making checklists also plays a role in my new-found focus, but more on that in another post.)

• Just being, not thinking

It’s easier for me to just be, for its own sake, without over-thinking it. For instance, I can stand in my backyard and feel the wind, listen to the birds, hear the trees rustle, and smell my neighbors’ woodsmoke without even naming those sensations to myself. Meditating seems to be teaching me to feel without thinking, just as Taylor suggested.

• Emotional awareness.

When you meditate, you observe emotions coming and going. You’re supposed to just be aware of them, notice what they do to your body, and name them as they pass. “Fear, anger, impatience, etc.” After practicing this during meditation, I’m more aware of how I’m feeling when I’m not meditating. (This can be quite helpful when living with an irrational (but adorable) toddler.)

• Making peace with slow

I love listening to the radio and podcasts, but I also spend a lot of my days in silence. I find that I’m even more at ease with the silence now. Also when those inevitable slow times arise during parenting, i.e. waiting for a toddler to eat, get dressed, fall asleep, walk in the same general direction as you, etc., I’m seeing them more as opportunities to practice being present and aware.

Honestly this radical experiment I undertook last month feels a lot less radical now. I don’t feel good unless I sit and do nothing for 15 minutes. It’s starting to feel essential.

When I used to run four or five days a week, I felt an incredible freedom knowing that I could just run anywhere if I needed to. I feel a similar sense of freedom knowing that I can just be.

Do you meditate? If so, have you noticed changes in the way you think and feel since you started?

Save

Simplify Your Time Online

By

I’ve had no Internet connection or a very spotty one for the last week. I rely on the Internet for my work, not to mention to create this blog, so it’s been frustrating, maddening, and at times, depressing to be disconnected. But it’s also been eye-opening.

During my first hours without the Internet, I thought of dozens of things I “needed” to do, but could not – access my email, download a podcast, read an article, check an account balance, see what I had on hold at the library, etc. I was shocked by how much of my life I’m living virtually – not in the, um, actual world.

After my offline experience, I’m eager to streamline my online time. And I’m going to embrace five strategies toward that end. If you’re also feeling a bit over-connected, here are some things you might try:

1. Consolidate your email

Over the years, I’ve created several email accounts. I have one for my writing business, and one for this blog, and then there’s my personal email and the one I created for newsletters and the like. This multiple-email-address approach has had its advantages, but it’s inefficient. I’m ready to consolidate into one account.

2. Subscribe to your favorite blogs

I read a number of blogs regularly. These are the ones I’ll have delivered directly to my inbox. I don’t want to clutter up my email too much, so I’ll reserve subscriptions for my favorite blogs. (If you want to subscribe to New Urban Habitat, I added a subscription button to the sidebar up there on your right.)

3. Use a feed reader

For the blogs I read on a less regular basis than my favorites, I’ll continue to use my Google feed reader. It makes it easy to read many blogs in one place, but it can also be overwhelming. I find myself only visiting once a week or so. (That’s why I’m going to have my must-reads delivered to my inbox.)

4. Leave the Internet closed while you compose

I love to research, so when I’m writing an article, a blog post, or even an email, I often find myself clicking over to Google to just look up one thing … and then one more thing. I’m amazed by how much more quickly I’ve been writing without Internet access. In the future, when I need to look up something, I’ll make a note of it and do all my research at once.

5. Put Internet-surfing last on your to-do list

When I go online first thing in the morning, quite a few other things on my to-do list tend to go undone. Lately I’ve been doing all my other chores first, which keeps things running more smoothly at home and with my business.

This post is for Steady Mom’s 30 Minute Blog Challenge.

What are your strategies for simplifying online time?

Is boredom good for us?

By

In an essay in the New York Times Book Review, Jennifer Schuessler argues that boredom is an “important source of creativity, well-being and our very sense of self.”

She points to research indicating that when we’re stuck in a boring situation, like lying in an M.R.I machine, certain areas of our brains register greater activity than when we’re engaged in basic tasks. Which areas? The ones responsible for “autobiographical memory, imagining the thoughts and feelings of others, and conjuring hypothetical events” – the same parts you’d use to read or write a story.

These days most of us seem to want to avoid boredom at all costs. We carry around an arsenal of hand-held gadgets to distract ourselves. Our cellular phones alone have cameras, music players, hundreds of “apps”, and constant Internet access. Our culture tends to celebrate busy-ness and minimize the importance of vacations. And many of us fill the leisure time we have with television. In 2008, the average American watched over five hours a day.

But in our quest to eradicate boredom from our lives, could we be throwing away other things too, like our ability to imagine and be creative?

What do you think? Is boredom good for us?


Do-it-yourselfing

By

Sometimes, just occasionally, I’ve been known to go a tad over-the-top when it comes to do-it-yourselfing.

My husband’s a good sport, but he’s been a much-needed balance when I come up with a new lofty idea.

For instance, several years ago, he (and every gardening book I read) warned me that I should start with a nice, small, manageable vegetable garden for my first few years. (Of course, I did exactly the opposite and predictably regretted it.)

And occasionally when I’m giddily filling my husband in on a new craft that I’m eager to tackle, which might require the purchase of a loom or something, he is good about gently reminding me of a certain short-lived obsession I had with making mosaics several years ago. It lasted, oh, about a week and a half.

And while my husband has been on board, I’ve noticed a certain look cross his face when I’ve insisted on making the pizza dough, the sauce, and all of the toppings from scratch; or baking all of our bread; or adopting four baby chicks when we were already overwhelmed caring for an infant and 3 cats; or making my own herbal tinctures; or fermenting kombucha on our counter-top.

So yes, over the years, I’ve been known to get a tiny bit carried away with do-it-yourselfing, and fortunately my husband has been here as a voice of reason…

Until he started brewing beer.

Of course, I was thrilled that he was embarking on a do-it-yourself hobby that may also save us some money.

He started by brewing a few pre-prepared kits from the brewery store. Great.

Then he began buying his ingredients separately and mixing up recipes from books. Splendid.

Then he discovered an old folded-up recipe in the back of a book he found at a yard sale, and decided he needed to tackle that one. Okay.

And now he’s talking about tearing up half of the backyard to plant barley, buying a temperature-controlled refrigerator, and learning how to malt barley in the garage. Uh oh.

I’m a tad terrified. But I also can’t help but admire his can-do spirit.

This post is for Steady Mom’s 30 Minute Blog Challenge.