• Shhhh….

    Posted on December 22nd, 2009 by and currently 14 commenting.


    This morning’s photo courtesy of my niece.

    Yesterday’s post from Spike really got me thinking. I have to confess in a way it even has me up at 4am writing.

    Something odd is happening to people. At least from my slightly skewed point of view.

    We have gone a step beyond multitasking. We have started multi-sharing.

    Everyone and anyone can become “famous”. Well, sort of. All you you need is point of view, a personality, a blog, a facebook and a twitter account. An interesting job helps. Sometimes.

    hmmmmmmm.

    I also saw a link at the end of the day on a twitter remark from @ellmcgrit (love her, she is just such a happy twitter-er). And the gist of it was this:

    We all need to rest.

    I am going to step out on a limb here. I am a bit tired of all the conversation. Maybe that makes me weird or anti-social, but I feel compelled to listen and participate and engage with the world for the most part. I love it really. But all this “opportunity” is driving me… well, to be up at 4am to spend some quiet time with my thoughts (No wait, I am blogging… is that quiet time with my thoughts???)

    Don’t get me wrong. I love being able to stay connected with people I meet and like. Like Ellen. And our clients and potential clients. It’s really quite nice.

    There are some people though, who are out there so much and so often, I have to wonder…where are their families when they are constantly online? Where are their friends?

    I had dinner with a someone the other night, someone I hadn’t seen in a while. And I realized after dinner, this person had been on twitter while we ate. Seriously. Commenting on some #event.

    I know this fact because I checked twitter before I went to bed. So weird. Is that anyone else’s bedtime ritual? So wonderful in some ways but so very, very weird in others.

    I also attended a meeting with a group of people recently, nice people, but this one guy sat in the meeting with the sound of his key board clicking about every five minutes. Now, who was he fooling???

    I know the sound of 142 characters when I hear it.

    I told myself, well — it’s his job, kinda — but I had seriously been on plane all day getting to that meeting, the least he could do was give me his full attention for a couple of hours. Am I alone in thinking that kind of behavior is just odd?

    Does anyone else have a love-hate relationship with online conversation tools besides me?

    Makes me want to find a river and go fly-fishing. Makes me want to take up fly fishing. (Thanks Ellen for putting that idea in my head…) And thanks to Aaron for giving me my new favorite word at 5:30 this morning. “Futzing.” Good word.

    See the struggle? It’s not all good and not all bad.

    Now. Shhhh. Get still. Go Rest.

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  • http://blog.stroutmeister.com Aaron Strout

    Robin – glad to provide you with a new vocabulary word. “Futzing” is definitely one of my favorites. It’s the perfect description for kind of bumbling around doing stuff without really doing anything in particular. Very Winnie-the-Pooh-esque. ;)

    As for your post, you make an excellent point about trying to do too much. Many times I’ve been the person that over does the conversing/sharing/updating. I haven’t achieved balance yet but am constantly working on being better about leaving my iPhone in my pocket, especially when I’m in the presence of company. I’m also working harder to “shut down” when I’m with my wife and children.

    What I’ve found is that the cliched saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder” can certainly be applied to social media. When I’ve been REALLY disciplined, I’ve unplugged from e-mail/Twitter/blogs/etc. altogether. Not only did I feel refreshed when I came back to my “social,” but I enjoyed it more.

    Thanks for making me think today. Over the holiday, I’m going to try and do a little “shhhhh-ing” myself.

    Aaron | @aaronstrout

  • http://brainsonfire.com Robbin

    Arron, you make a great point. Someone once told me “Brains on Fire” is very seductive.And I remember having an ah-ha moment with that set of words.

    Being “social” IS also very seductive. It’s like a relationship, only I do wonder… would anyone miss me? I kinda doubt it. And if no one misses you when you aren’t there… is it real?

    Must be the holidays prompting this deep thinking. Enjoy your shhhhh time. And your family and the Austin sunshine. Futz a bit offline.

  • http://adfarmonline.com Warren Fick

    Robbin,
    There’s no mystery here: you’re a person, you like people — including yourself. So the opportunity to “be with” thousands or millions of others is fine in terrifically small doses, but not as a way of life. I wish I hadn’t just hit print and tacked the following quote to my bulletin board (it’s cork, it’s real, it’s not online). But I did and now I don’t know who “gave it” to me. I hope someday to be able to walk up to the person who spoke it and shake their hand. Not an AR hand, but a for real hand.

    Here’s what they said, “People are interesting. Ideas are interesting. Stories are interesting. Real stuff is interesting. Brands are interesting (or, at least, some of them are). Even ads can be interesting. But media? Meda just connects those things. It’s a conduit. Media is not interesting. Not even the ‘social’ kind.” Merry Christmas.
    Warren

  • http://www.800ceoread.com Jon

    Unfortunately, leaving this comment sort of negates my agreement with you (which I do, wholeheartedly). It’s a sick world we live in.

  • http://brainsonfire.com Robbin

    Warren, I love those words. Beautiful…

  • http://www.webitty.com Ed Tennant

    About a decade ago I worked for a consulting firm that insisted on a monthly stakeholders meeting where you checked your cell phones at the door. Only the presenter had a laptop during the meeting. For one hour, or so, everyone reviewed the project risks, without interuption. Recently I’ve been wondering if you could pull off a meeting like that anymore. If I have to be in a meeting, I sure would like to have everyone 100%. Imagine the productivity of total focus.

  • http://brainsonfire.com Robbin

    Oh Jon, Not a sick world really, Not at all. Maybe we are are just hungry.

    I like what Warren said to me: “you’re a person, you like people — including yourself”.

    Or like my friend Rob Morris told me, we all want to be a part of a bigger story. Thanks for being part of mine today.

  • http://www.lehilender.com Chris Jones

    Robbin, there’s a desperate need in today’s world for some quiet. Time was, you could go outside in the dead of night, or even the early morning, and there would be nothing of the human world in it. A few crickets, maybe a nightjar, an owl. Nothing else. There is a peace for the soul in that quiet, and a chance to hear one’s own thoughts, and occasionally even the whisper of something else, something not ourselves, calling to us.

    How many of us ever have that experience anymore?

    With Twitter and Facebook and MySpace, to say nothing of Pandora and iTunes, there is never any place for us to just BE. Always there is something streaming in, and usually something streaming out, without any chance to process, to understand, to grow some wisdom to go with our knowledge.

    A month ago I added a one-hour block to my calendar twice a week for “pondering”. I thought I needed a minute here and there to just think. No phone, no computer, nothing. Just me and a pencil and a sheet of paper. After a month, I can tell you that that is the most critical time on my calendar all week, and I can tell you this because I have been unable to get myself to observe that time even once in eight chances. Always something comes up. I can’t do 60 minutes twice a week. That’s a tragedy.

    When I have taken time, usually really early in the morning, to think and to plan and to ponder the things I’ve been reading and doing, I find that I’m spectacularly more effective at everything I do that day. I find that I get solutions to intractable problems, remember things better, even find that I know people I should visit, people that I should call. People that need me to connect with them. I wouldn’t have thought of it, except that for a moment I could actually HEAR, because there was nothing, for once, to listen to.

    Thanks for the post.

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  • http://www.dancewithstrangers.com Kyle Flaherty

    Robbin,

    Thank you for elegantly writing what many have tried.

    /kff

  • http://@ellmcgirt Ellen

    Sweet Robbin. Thanks for including me in this post. The very thing I love about fly-fishing is the very thing I love about the questions you are raising here. It’s personal. It’s an immersion. You are becoming part of something bigger. And you have to actually be present to see its beauty. (This is a lot of what I love about being around you and your fellow tribe members, by the way.) In one way, that sounds a lot like Twitter, doesn’t it – a river of human, uh, expression? When all the world is a platform, it becomes an almost irresistible compulsion to operate primarily in that psuedo-public sphere. When all the world is a network, the temptation is to redefine ourselves as indispensable nodes on that network and not physical beings who need physical things. And that’s a big part of the difference. “Damn it Jim, I’m a man, not an app!” I miss Dr. McCoy. He would know what to do.

    So, I’m going to go twitter that we’re having this conversation here. Am I now part of the problem? I often joke with people when I’m ranting about some damn thing or other in politics that I’m completely intolerant of intolerance. I’m human. Funny thing about being human, the balance is the tricky part. It’s like when you’re wading across a busy river, after having studied the riffles and runs and tied on your best guess at fish food. It feels so fucking good to be out there in the middle of a wild world, navigating the slippery rocks, setting up your cast. But step wrong, and you’re in a jam: The river always wants to take your foot away and send you tumbling. But it’s always worth it, even if you get soaked.

    Merry, happy. Let’s go fishing.

  • http://brainsonfire.com Robbin

    Thank you all for sharing your sweet wisdom.

    And Ellen, we will go fishing.

    For now I will just share one more thing . You know those sappy little magnets with words on them. A dear friend of mine (@libberalla) gave me this on Sunday and I have given this magnet a place of honor on my shelf here at work.

    Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It meas to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. {unknown}

    See you next year. I am going quiet for a bit…OXOXOX

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