my shattered attention span and why i fake my oms...

Recently I was having a discussion with a colleague about how audiences now ingest media so much differently than they did when we were kids (we used to have to walk six miles in the snow in order to get to the Macintosh with dial-up...). We talked about the obvious differences, including form factor due to technology advances, but the most drastic difference seemed to be in the ability or need we have to multi-digest so many different inputs at the same time.

We used to complain when the person holding the remote while watching television flipped through the channels endlessly, unable to commit to one show. And with so many channels available on cable, it really was hard to stay satisfiedwhen who knew what possibilities were awaiting on the mulititude of other channels.

But now, with multiple windows, TiVO, TV programming online, as well as a number of other options, you don't need to flip through channels. You can have everything at once.

Because there is so much to see, it's hard to know where to direct attention to. Our attention spans aren't just short, they're shattered into tiny multi-dimensions. Which is where the problem starts...






How many windows are open on your computer right now? At any given time, I have about the 15-25 open on my machine.


There is a mess of Sticky Notes on my desktop that pop up at me when I logon. I can't make dinner without doing at least one or two other things, and the same goes with talking on the phone. And driving? Well, it's even hard to just drive these days. Even with a hands-free device, I find myself constantly tempted to check mail on my phone while stuck in traffic, eat breakfast, lunch or dinner , depending on the time of day, and catch the news on NPR. And obviously, this is also where we have heavy talks with our kids or overhear what's going on in their lives.

A basic requirement of most jobs is to be able to juggle multiple deadlines, of which I always have multiples of, along with multiple email threads, meetings, projects and stakeholders. There are times when I have so much going on in a single moment that sometimes I find myself switching back and forth until I remember to stop and do one thing at a time.

Then there is the whole work/life balance thing and managing multiple schedules, activities, and responsibilities for a family of five. Granted, I'm not doing a perfect job, but everyone goes to bed at night clean, alive and fed. (Managing expectations is a also good thing.)

Meanwhile, kids and adults in record numbers are being diagnosed with attention deficit disorders. Is it a coincidence when we're trying to stuff as much as humanely possible into a single minute? There could be any number of causes. I'm not blaming the epidemic on technology, but it does make you think for a second about what could happen if we slowed down a bit.

I've begun going to yoga again and as a result, have begun to understand that concentrating on being in the present is extremely and painfully difficult for me. During the class, I struggle with trying not to do more than one thing at a time, or cycling through my massive to-do list. And it takes all my will to be mature enough to get through the chanting of the Oms without giggling. Especially when some of the yogis in class start harmonizing their chants.


But every once in a while, after I am able to actually concentrate on the moment, I find that
the results are exponentially beneficial. I feel focused and even more productive. And it feels good enough that I've begun trying to incorporate that practice at different moments in the day. And this actually takes some effort. Especially when you consider that this post has taken me a week to write because even in the last hour, I've been interrupted numerous times to explain why forks don't feel good up your nose. (Seriously, I just work here...)


After working so hard to speed up, it's even harder to slow down. And how amazing that the longer term perspective and a single focus is even more productive. Maybe I'll even get to a point where I'll be able to not fake an Om.


Or maybe not.

today it's an ipod--what will it be tomorrow?

There has been a lot of talk around our house about what Samuel wants for his birthday. Though it's a bit indulgent, my kids know that their birthdays are the one day a year where I'll finagle and wrassle whatever to figure out how to make things go their way (within reason, of course!). So after the kid got over the fact that we absolutely will not buy him an iPhone (seriously???), he lowered his expectations and told us he wanted an iPod.


Okay, I can get into that--he can listen to music in his room, or in the car... And nine years old seems to be about the time where a kid gets pretty interested in their own music. But then he started talking about being able to download movies on the Nano and play games, and the truth is, I just don't want him downloading movies or games so that he can sneak off to his room and watch in private. Partly it's because I totally don't trust his own judgement as to what is okay and not okay to watch, but it's also that I want him hanging out with the rest of the family, too. And seriously, the kid has a Wii and a DS. Why does he need another form factor to play games on?


So after much discussion with his grandparents, we all agreed that a Shuffle would be the best move. Super cute, no screen, lots of music. And the other day, a package arrived for Sam in the mail from his Saba Moty and Grandma Myra. When he saw the Apple box he was ecstatic. And then he noticed there wasn't a screen on the shuffle.

"Um, there's no screen," he said.

"You don't need a screen to listen to music," I said, holding tight.

"Hey, you're right!" He grabbed the shuffle to charge it and then listened to the songs his Saba recorded on the shuffle of his own music over and over until he went to bed.

The next morning he wanted to download music from iTunes.

"I need an email address," Sam told me as he maneuvered through the site.

"No, you don't," I told him. I'm picturing him receiving spam about xxx enlargements and not being able to filter that from real email, whatever that is when you're nine years old.

"But how else will I buy music?"

"You don't have a credit card," I said. "You need one to buy music, so until you have one, you have to ask Daddy or me. An email address isn't going to help you with that."

"Okay," he said thoughtfully. "I need a credit card."

"What you need is a full-time job," I told him. "But you can't have that yet, either."

I'm bracing myself... The tween years are approaching.

i drunk me some iphone kool-aid and now i'm in love...

There are so many things I could write about since I've been offline for a few days. I could fill you in on our second trip to the Great Wolf Lodge and how I'm a little nervous about what a professional watersliding mom I'm becoming.

Or, I could tell you about how Boaz was home when we got back from watersliding, and how incredibly delicious it is to be a two parent household once again.

Or, I could even tell you about my Korean Full-Body Scrub at the Olympus Spa this weekend after my 8-mile run and brag to you that after being massaged with what I think was sandpaper for 3/4 of an hour, my skin may now be even softer than Naomi's.

Or, I could even do some complaining about how my blasted Blackberry failed me yet again, and how AT&T cheerfully gave me the news that I was one month past the phone's warranty date, but I'll hold that for yet another day.


Because my friends, I am now the proud, proud owner of a iPhone 3G. How did I wait so incredibly long for this?

I'm pretty cheap and willing to wait for a deal, so I'd decided to wait until March when I could renew my phone contract and get a discount on the phone. But the charging function in my little Blackberry Pearl somehow broke and it left me with little choice. I did check out all of the cheaper alternatives and read more reviews than I needed to. And then I bought my new phone.

Let me tell you how many seconds it took me to set up my two email accounts: 30

It took 30 seconds, people! Apple definitely has intuitive user interface down to a science. And I'll bet you've been wondering where I've been. Well, I've been to the PC side and while I'm still a PC girl, I am definitely am converting in the way of mobile phones.

The apps... I'm speechless. I can use this phone for everything. The RunKeeper app tracks my runs with GPS so I don't need to buy Nike shoes just for the Nike+ system. The Facebook app keeps me up to date with my Facebook crack all day long. Urban Spoon recommends restaurants in my area and in case I ever get a babysitter, I'll be ready with dinner plans. And these I've just found during the thirty minutes I allowed myself to go all gaga over the phone before getting some work done.

I'm off to go synch all four of my online calendars... Is it even possible that one device could do everything? It seems too good to be true, but I'll let you know. For now, I just heart my iPhone.

how facebook has turned my life into a serial novella...

The social app Facebook seriously brings out the worst in me. Since I joined Facebook, I've had a totally conflicted and bipolar relationship with the site, and I've been obsessed from the start.

Which is the result the developers were probably hoping for.

But the reasons I'm addicted to FB are similar to the reasons why I comb through the front photo section of People magazine while waiting in line at the supermarket. Or why I read those juicy Phillipa Gregory novels in one or two sittings, eschewing sleep or reason.

FB is incredibly entertaining. I used to rationalize that is was a useful networking tool and that my time spent on it would be somewhat valuable.

When I joined, I added everyone I knew and then wasted countless hours combing networks for not only people in my life who I wish I had more time to keep in touch with, but also those people I'd lost touch with over the years. It was so exciting to meet up with people I never expected to talk to again, like my first best friend from Huntington Beach who lived a few doors down from us, but then I moved away when we were eight and you know how those things go. And how great to catch up with friends from high school, college, or various other periods of my past who I'd completely lost over time. And then how completely odd to see their profile albums filled with kids and spouses and completely new lives. It's like finding a forgotten chapter to your favorite serial novel.

But then there were the odd events. At first when I got the email apology from a college boyfriend who'd dropped me like a hot potato for seemingly no reason, I felt totally redeemed. What a completely civilized world this was to receive an apology from a guy who'd hurt me more than fifteen years ago, and then could apologize rather articulately about it once he'd grown up. We became "friends" again.

Here is a relationship that in our modern world rarely exists, and probably would not naturally exist without a social network like Facebook. It's absolutely exciting to to be able to find anyone again so easily.

But what do I do with this? I'm a mother of three, married, barely balancing work and life and the purgatory that is my laundry pile. How the hell am I supposed to balance 203 friends on Facebook?

Now granted, FB gives me a chance to keep up with friends that I don't have time to see. I know when Kim needs a run, when Ben has shot too many Nerf arrows at his mom, and I get to see all the political musings of my friends in their status reports. I check all of these WAY TOO OFTEN. And with cool little mobile apps, I can post photos and my own status reports to my own profile whenever I want. In fact, there have been days when I've had FB in the back of my mind all day long. I find myself thinking about how I can turn funny things that happen throughout the day into FB status statements. I wonder who has updated their own profiles.

In fact, I'm wondering right now if anyone has posted any new photos...

I've been a proud abstainer of Twitter because with the blog, I feel like I spend too much time thinking about my status, but FB seriously has stepped in where Twitter has been pushed out. And I gave up Second Life (yeah, I really don't want to talk about how lame I am so hush up now) because it seriously sucked up hours of my life and spit them out into the ethers.

So now I have to figure out how to control Facebook, especially since it's got too tight a hold on me now to give up completely. I need to control my Facebook Addiction. My name is Amy and I'm addicted to Facebook.

Facebook has also introduced new social dilemmas into our life networks (one of which includes using the term "life networks"). For example, I found an old college friend through search during a massive procrastination session. There were a few people in the results with his exact name, but while looking through his friend list, I recognized a mutual friend so I added him as my friend.

A couple of days later, he accepted my friend request. Woohoo! But when I looked at his profile photo, I saw that he looked very different. He'd gained weight and his hair color had lightened and his eyes had gone blue. He was now single and living in another country. He had glasses now and his childrens' names had changed. Oh wait... Hmmm...

So what do I do now? How do I break up with this friend who really isn't my friend?

I even find myself following his status reports. He enjoyed his vacation, his kids are doing well, enjoying school. But um, I don't know this guy from Adam. Is it completely rude to delete his friend status? Will he be offended?

I foresee future studies and seminars about managing your Facebook accounts in the same way they exist for managing your Outlook boxes. Set aside a certain time of day, only allow yourself an allotted amount of time, schedule some Facebook time on your calendar, etc.

Not a bad idea... But I wonder what Dan and Becky are doing right now...

mama needs a new phone...

All right. So I don't really need one, but I want one very, very badly.

I've been phone shopping because I just hate my Blackberry Pearl. Hate it. I hate it so much I keep waiting for it to die, or for one of the kids to kill it "accidentally" like they did with my last phone. Everytime I look at it wrong, it screams SIMCARD ERROR at me and I have to shut it down and start it up again, which is about three times a day. And sometimes I don't receive any email for long periods of time (and it isn't because I'm not really not getting any--really).

And while other than those issues, it works, I haven't quite handed it over to Naomi to take it's little crackberry life forever because that seems sort of wasteful (and I'm trying hard to earn back my super nature girl status). But mostly because I had such high hopes for it, and cannot believe it's such a drag. Because it really is so petite and almost cute.

So I've just been looking--not full-on cheating on my Pearl.

And I can't find ANYTHING that is just so irresistible I wouldn't be able to pass it up. And really, I'm so up for irresistible. But I have requirements and while they don't seem to hard to fulfill, I haven't found the dream phone to fulfill my wildest cell phone dreams. Sigh...

Here is what I'm looking for:
1. I want to be able to have two Exchange accounts on the phone so that I can differentiate between home and work email. I've read that the new iPhone won't let me do this, so I'll check that one off my list even though it sounds so amazing, I'd give up my #3 requirement.

2. I want faster internet service than my Blackberry provides. (...and I'm not looking to surf on this service--I just want it to not take a short eternity to click on an emailed link. But okay, it would be fun to have the sort of connectivity B gets on his iPhone)

3. I'd like something not huge. In fact, because I refuse to ever clip my phone to a holder on my beltloop and don't often wear shirts with chest pockets like B does, if I want to have my phone on me during meetings, I need to place it on the conference table where it buzzes or vibrates when it rings. It's an annoying occurrence that happens all the time at meetings and it's distracting when you're presenting something and someone's phone begins to unapologetically and unabashedly vibrate. And to be honest, more often than not, it's a guy's phone that is buzzing around on the table. Which got me thinking...

What I love about my Pearl (and why does it have to have such an adult toy name?), it that it fits neatly and discretely in my back pocket. Nobody has to know when I vibrate.

I don't care about large number keys because my fingers aren't huge and quite honestly, I don't need too many features, though I'd love to have my phone be my main email form factor since I spend so much time running around.

So my question here is, why is this dream phone so hard to find? I'm seriously not looking for the George Clooney of phones here. But it seems to me that most of the phones I've seen are made for men. Seriously. Why else are they so incredibly big? Do the tech companies out there think that women don't like toys, too? Or am I being unreasonable?

If you have any recommendations, I'm definitely up for them..