Friday, February 22, 2013

A productive day away from the Web

You know why it's called The Web. Because it's sticky and you can't help going there. All good little flies, comme moi, et peut-etre, comme toi*, manage to get entangled and spend about 80% of the daily work hours buzzing around, doing the Internet ablutions, over and over, before settling down like a bee (I know, I'm changing my metaphor). We settle on our flower, no matter what type, and do our business. But soon, we are aloft and flying, scanning again.

It's fucking annoying and pathetic and such a time-waster.

What I want to know is: What did people use to procrastinate before the Internet? Suggestions welcome.

So today, I went to my mamas. She was out. She doesn't have wifi. I still had Internet on my phone but I muted it - it usually is - and got down to it, man.

I worked solidly from 10am - 3pm. I raided mum's fridge at about 11.37am (don't you love that 'about' slipped in there?) and had left-overs and two large glasses of Buddha's tears tea. I did the following writerly tasks:

1. cleaned out all my superfluous folders to do with my next writing thing. I had duplications, I had irrelevant notes, I had lists and shit all over the place. My desktop is already a brothel, with damp towels lying everywhere and used condoms under the bed, and DD bras just HANGING OFF THE BACKS OF CHAIRS LIKE IN THE MOVIES. So you techie types will be pleased to know that my folder for Thing Two was cleaned up like the backyard after rain. Slashing and burning and whippersnippering all over the place. Filling my 'trash can' and emptying the fucker. So now all that is relevant to Thing 2 is IN THE ONE PLACE. This is quite a major achievement pour moi.

2. I went through my hand-written notes for Thing 3 (which after going through Thing 2, a far more advanced Thing, I realised Thing 3 might become Thing 2 chronologically. It's a much easier thing.)
I transcribed some text and notes for this project and became very excited about it all over again. This is something I haven't looked at for months because I've been focused elsewhere but it's a Thing that has come very easily and fluently and is quite the contemporary Thing (compared to the others, which in my mind - again, that cavernous, dark space - I conceptualise as more saga-ish) which I'm quite pleased with.

So, enough about me. What do you think about me?****

* Wondering why I'm using Franch***? I've had one wine.
** I lie, it's two.
*** Does anyone know to which movie character this refers? (In my own mind, quite possibly.)
**** Bonus point for person who picks this movie character.


17 comments:

Anonymous said...

I may know bugger all about literary controversies (though I am grateful for being educated), but movie quotes (from the 20th century) are getting more towards my area of expertise. It's from Beaches innit (though not quite a direct quote I think)? Although, I have to admit, the first thing I thought of was that line from the TISM song, "Kate Fisher Of Men".

The Franch thing, I haven't got a clue about and will leave to Mr E to solve.

Congrats on getting your virtual brothel organised, Melbs. As for resisting the procrastination and general dicking about, here's my method: I write a weekly to-do list, breaking every complex task down into less complex sub-tasks and sub-sub-task (and so forth) until I'm left with a huge list of simple and easy things to do for the week. Then I challenge myself to get as many things as I can done in a day. Having things broken down means that even if I've only got ten minutes before I have to do something else, there's probably something on the list that's going to take less than ten minutes that I can fit in there.

I've heard of some people who go a step further and turn it into a game where they assign points to sub-tasks and have bonus points for completing all sub-tasks in a task and so forth and every week they try and beat their high score, but I haven't gone that far. Yet.

Melba said...

Well spotted, Alex, yes from Beaches, and yes I STUFFED IT UP. So double points because it was a shit rendition. Correct quotation:

But enough about me, let's talk about you... what do YOU think of me?

I knew something was missing (only the bit that made sense and made it funny. Far out).

Let's leave the Franch thing a little longer but it's was from a mainstream movie and it's pretty obscure.

I am seriously impressed by your system of getting things done. I used to be a huge list maker but not so much any more. Well, I make lists but I don't really run them to more than half a page or so these days. I think I've simplified my life so I don't have so many tasks but there is still a lot to do.

Melba said...
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Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...
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Melba said...

Oh fuck off all you people. You make me excited, thinking there are real comments, and then I come in and see it's just you spammy dicks.

Anonymous said...

Spammy dick sounds like an unpleasant surprise you get when a fella takes down his strides.

And I think this here has to be the most hilariously blod-faced, tits-out-brazen spam comment I've seen in a long time.

On the other hand, the Blogger settings panel thingy might have settings for either blocking anonymous comments (which I notice most of the spam is) or reporting individual comments as spam (which may or may not make a difference - depending on what the Google people do with that information).

Melba said...
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Anonymous said...

Um, did you delete your own comment as spam or something?

Melba said...

No, sometimes it comes out double, I don't know why and it shits me. Makes me look like I'm trigger happy but I only push the button once.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I've seen that and I imagine it must get pretty annoying. In this instance though, it looks like you posted once and then just deleted it. It kind of threw me, because I'm used to seeing you delete posts only when the double post thing happens. Trigger happy in the other direction, maybe?

Melba said...

Is that because there's a minute between them? They were duplicate, I didn't accidentally delete one of mine...

Anonymous said...

Interesting. As I look at the page, this is the order of comments I see:

Spammer: 26/02/2013 2:31:00 am
You: 26/02/2013 12:30:00 pm
Me: 26/02/2013 5:03:00 pm
You: 26/02/2013 5:13:00 pm [Deleted]
Me: 26/02/2013 6:16:00 pm
You: 26/02/2013 10:56:00 pm
Me: 27/02/2013 10:15:00 am
You: 27/02/2013 5:19:00 pm

Normally, when that double-post thing happens to you, I see a regular comment followed immediately by a deleted comment; which is not the case here. Are you seeing something different? (Lucky you put the timestamps in when you did, eh?)

Melba said...

Hey you're right. I must have, but I remember seeing two of the same post and deleted one of them, must have been mistaken. Let me look and try to think what I might have said. It would have been an excellent comment of that I'm sure.

It was something about anonymous comments and changing that setting (which I haven't yet) but that I was against censoring anonymous comments really. Then I might have said something about the traffic increase but maybe not. So it wasn't anything interesting at all, just a response to your suggestion about the anon comments and the spam.

Mystery solved but I still don't understand why I deleted it.

phoenixmummy said...

Can I contribute? What do I think of you? I think you, Melba, are fucking amazing. You're so smart and together and make the most sense of all the people I know. Even though I don't see you that often, you make and have made, such a difference in my life! :)

Melba said...

Oh Jojo I realise I have to text you back!! Eeeeek.

Thank you sweets. Make me smiley... x