self-realisations: livejournal, moods and time.

[baratron]

I woke up today feeling like shit. Hadn't had enough sleep the night before due to (a) spodding too late, (b) Richard leaving a half-finished A-Z of London jigsaw out on the table, (c) noisy people in the flat above us, (d) some sort of insomnia that's unusual for me, where I kept waking up and not being able to get back to sleep. Finally, I had a nightmare, and when my alarm went off for me to get up and go to work, I was in a state of panic, anxiety and meeping. I worked out pretty quickly that I couldn't possibly go into work, but I was shaking far too much to actually call them and say so (which is a Really Bad Thing, by the way). Richard had already gone out to work (a source of more distress, as I'd been asleep when he'd left, and I hate him leaving without being able to say goodbye), but luckily there was A Non-Random Cute Person staying in the flat, who was able to lie on the bed with me and hug me while I meeped and burbled and sobbed incoherently for a while. There's something very reassuring about a warm, friendly, solid body which helps me in that sort of state, and gradually I started feeling better. Eventually, the NRCP and I started having a conversation about relationships, which was warm, fuzzy and leading to imminent Declarations of Poingage. So by the time I actually got to work, I was feeling really, really good - loved and emotionally strong.

This evening's work was just fine - I was doing one of the projects that I don't particularly like, but I was having a good day with great respondents, and on a roll, achieved and exceeded the target. Richard and I managed to get the same train home, and when we got in, we spent an hour or so sitting together in the front room hugging and talking about Important Things and trivia. Felt even more warm, fuzzy and loved. So around 11pm, I switched on the computer and proceeded to try to catch up with livejournal. By 1.30am, I felt like shit again - depressed as hell. This didn't make any sense - I should have been feeling great. I'd had a fantastic day in everything that I'd achieved, and I was listening to new CDs that arrived this morning by bands who have the ability to pull me out of any mood slump. So what was wrong?

Livejournal. It gets me down. Why? Because I never have enough time to keep up with it. I've just about managed to claw my way up to "only" being 350 posts behind in terms of stuff said by real people, and that's taken me hours. If I have a couple more busy days, I'll end up as behind as I was yesterday. I could just not read it, "mark all as read" in my mental map, and read new stuff, but I'm afraid of missing something important. And this is just livejournal, which is just one of the online communities that's important to me. I haven't read alt.poly properly in nine months or so! I just don't have the time!

And I realised why it is I don't have the time. I'm trying to keep up an online habit gained in the times when I'd spend ten hours a day plus in front of a networked computer. Even when I was working (and working hard, in the case of my final year of degree), I'd be able to read and reply to email and chat to people in slots of 5 minutes idle time here and there. The job I'm doing now doesn't come with net access. I don't have enough time to read everything I want to, and I certainly don't have enough time to post everything I want to. Usually, I post maybe 1 livejournal entry for every 3 or 4 I write in my head. At the moment (having a busy life), the ratio's up to 1 of 10. I miss those entries that don't make it!

The solution is simple, yet not easy. I need to find some way to keep up with things during commuting time. Having something to type entries in would be useful, even if it was only offline - because although I do jot down ideas for posts in my notebook, I can't write entire posts there and type them up when I get home. I just can't make myself do that! Bearing in mind that I have a decent phone now with GPRS, I could even read whilst travelling if I had something to display the text on (I think scrolling through the average LJ post on my phone screen would make me scream). Richard has a Palm Pilot that he hardly uses, but I've never been able to get to grips with the "graffiti" system it uses - give me a keyboard any day! Clearly, I want to get one of the smaller Psions or something like that - it can be old as long as it can be made to work with GPRS. But I can't afford to buy a new one.

So I appeal to you: does anyone (preferably in the UK) have an old Psion that I could buy for not much money?

Comments

[kshandra]

Livejournal. It gets me down. Why? Because I never have enough time to keep up with it. I've just about managed to claw my way up to "only" being 350 posts behind in terms of stuff said by real people, and that's taken me hours. If I have a couple more busy days, I'll end up as behind as I was yesterday. I could just not read it, "mark all as read" in my mental map, and read new stuff, but I'm afraid of missing something important.

Oh, hon.... *hugs* I've been going through this myself over the last few weeks. It's in my journal, but under no circumstances do I want you to feel obligated to read it - particularly as you've just said exactly the same thing ("missing something important" was my big stumbling block, too). I had a day off from work yesterday, and I sat down and spent three hours trying to catch up with what I'd missed while I was out of town last weekend.

Three completely uninterrupted hours. No food, no bathroom breaks, no reading any-damned-thing else but my friends page.

Honey, nobody can devote that kind of time to this. Nobody should.

(And I'm staring at my fingers as I type this and wondering exactly who has possessed me...as little as five days ago I'd've been looking at this entry and beating myself up for - wait for it! - almost missing this post 'cause you're not in one of the filters I've been checking regularly.)

It is possible to kick the LiveJournal habit. It's not easy, and I doubt I'll ever really be cured, but it can be done. Good luck.

*hugs*

[aegidian]

Or stop being compulsive about reading everything - and just read the recent stuff.

If a thing is important people will tell you about it - with words and vibrating air molecules and stuff.

Read LJ when you want, cut down your friends list - no one will mind too much, limit yourself to reading the most recent N posts, where N is your number of friends. If an entry contains references to stuff you missed, you can always switch to their journal and read back.

Stop at a sensible time (12.30am) and go to sleep. Without guilt, the limit's there to preserve your health, which is more important to us than whether you read our blah or not.

Cuddles, Giles

[inquis.livejournal.com]

*hugs* If you're feeling guilty about it, that's a really bad thing. It's only a livejournal. If *anyone* got pissed off at you for not reading their entry, they're really not worth having as friends.

Have you thought about just catching up on actual friends and dropping communities? I don't know if you do that already, but it might make the catch up load a bit smaller. Or even, if you've had a few days off reading it, just make your own post, and mention that you haven't had time to catch up, and ask people to post links to any important entries in the comments section, thus making sure that a) people know you haven't read things and b) anything worth reading is brought to your attention.

Don't have any portables at all I'm afraid, so can't help you with a psion.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I've written a long reply to this and everyone else in my main journal, here: http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=baratron&itemid=69648

Now my finger hurts. Middle finger of left hand. Too much typing, argh.

[elfgeek.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean, this is the reason why I stopped reading alt.poly. Some 4 years ago I once posted a question and I couldn't even keep up with saying thank-you to everyone who had given me constructive advice (that's a big deal for me as I was brought up to believe that you need to say thank you to ppl who help you).

Anyway, I have this filter on LJ now and if I am away for like 3 days I only read the friends that are on my filter (which are the most important and closest friends). I found it helped a great deal, because there *are* ppl who annoyingly post several times a day with total nonsense. If you have time it's okay, but not if you're behind with reading anyway.

So maybe if you prioritise which online-communities are most important to you in your life right now? If you want a bit of everything, use a friends-filter on LJ and for usenet, Giles can probably give you better advice on reading alt.poly and killing threads, than I can. ;-)

If it's some consolation, with my exams coming up and always-on DSL, I'm finding it very hard to budget my online time as well. :-)

[geminigirl]

Don't know if Palm technology is any different over there, but over here some of my friends who found graffiti frustrating managed to put Jot on their handhelds which they seemed to prefer. I couldn't answer anything more than that though.


Second, have you tried filtering your friends list at all? That way you only read the journals you define as most important and can catch up on others later.


And truthfully, I don't read all the posts on my friends page all the time. It's too much to keep up on.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Ok, you said you don't know much about it, but do you know if Jot also a writing tool? It's the whole "using a stylus" thing that I have trouble with. The Palm Pilot has a programme which displays a keyboard for you to click in, but it is so so slow compared to normal typing.

I discovered that I can type on a Psion Revo keyboard fairly easy, and that's pretty small. Even a mobile phone in text message mode is much quicker for me than trying to use the damned stylus.

[lovingboth]

I have a Psion 3a lying around as a spare - it's borrowable. It doesn't have an IR port, so you'd need to wait until you got home before uploading anything to the PC. But that's not a problem, is it?

The keyboard's ok - two fingered (or thumbed!) typing works, more doesn't. If you want a good palmtop keyboard, you want a Psion Series 5, and I don't have one of those myself yet.

It's reminded me to pester someone again about selling me their pre-Series 3 Psion machine - runs the same EPOC software, about the size of an A4 piece of paper, very good keyboard, ideal for library use.

As far as the rest goes, you're talking to someone who normally has important Things That He Should Be Doing Rather Than Reading LJ, but... This is the second version of this response - the first was lost in a crash that's afflicting my PC about once a day at the moment. This was taken as an opportunity to go out and do some of the things I need to do.

Various other draft replies were lost, but I shall resist the temptation to find the messages I was going to comment to. Well, most of them.

As has been said, friends groups are extremely useful. If you want to cut down, one LJ filter is to ignore anything that's not friends-only. If it's public and important, you'll hear about it anyway. Similarly, ignore online test results, and try to ignore things hidden behind lj-cut tags. Skim, skim, skim.

I know I'd far rather see you in person than on LJ - shall we fix a date for the Thorpe Park trip? In April, Mondays 22nd and 29th or Fridays 19th and 26th are good for me. The Fridays are dates the exclusive ride time is available...

Off LJ, I still have unread mail on uk-poly, and that's just had a fortnight's silence. If I see what's the next unread at u.p.p, I get something in the middle of June last year. It helps that Lisa does read uk-poly - if anything interesting is said, I get to hear about it second-hand. The rest is probably all junk. I've certainly lived happily without reading it.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

If you have hands my size, Psions are fine for typing. I need to get my Psion3c's backup battery fixed (translation: smile at conflux until he does something>), but I used to use it for exactly what you suggest.

I think you can get a Psion3 from Loot for £50 - I have copies of the software for PC download if you need it. You'd still need the fancy lead though.

Best of luck for managing to cut down your LJ reading without feeling guilty/missing out. I often just scan the pages and only click on "Read more" if it looks *really* interesting. I find that I can avoid all the ones that say "Look at this link!".

Hope to see you sometime.

xx

[lovingboth]

There are two times when I wish I had smaller hands. One's when typing on the Psion, the other was the subject of lots of 'have you seen this on Amazon' emails a year or so ago :)

The backup battery really is easy: open one of the pod bay doors, use a long fingernail to get the old one out, take to shop and say 'I'd like one of these please', put new one in... Repeat same time next year.

I've got a 3c and a 3a (oh, and an almost broken 3a) and I still use the DOS link software rather than PSIWin! It's a 3mx or a 5mx I'd quite like - ie either a faster 3c or a faster 'new' one - and they were both still £100+ s/h the last time I looked.

And me you.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I have A Certain Friend Who Shall Remain Nameless (looks in the direction of the USA) who posts several interesting links a day, usually with extremely minimal commentary. Grrr!

[lovingboth]

mactavish? Yes, but it's resistable... usually.

*Smiles* and *Hugs*

[otterylexa.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I was around to provide cuddles and listening while you were meeping and wibbling.

Non-Random Cute Person (I like that label, I think I'll keep it)

Ha!

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Being a Random Cute Person is a good thing, and I like to acquire as many of them as possible. They make the house decorative, for a start. Moreover, Specific Random Cute People are even better, because they are in your house for a purpose, and not simply to make it decorative. However, many people would get confused if I'd described you using a phrase like "specific random", so Non-Random Cute Person works a lot better.

This may sound a bit kill joy but...

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

Really think of going for a hand held that you can't use with a mobile and can only use when you get home. Or be determined not to plug it in to your mobile. Otherwise I would Imagine your phone bill will go through the roof in a bad way. The typeing on the train and downloading when you get home sounds a good plan. You could even upload some journals before heading off to work to read on the train.

*Huggs*