I had my first lesson yesterday for my Part 2 exam, the second stage in becoming a driving instructor. I'm hopefully going to be taking my Part 1 (Theory) in the next couple of weeks, but I have to have 18 hours instruction before my Part 2, so the lessons need to start now. I'd been thinking about how I drive over the last couple of months, trying to spot and eliminate bad habits, but it turned out yesterday that my main driving fault is one I wasn't even aware I had. I change gear too soon, even changing up as I steer round corners. Not necessarily life-threatening, but enough to fail my test.
It did make me think, though, about my other faults, in other areas of my life. I can list lots of things about me that need working on - some urgently - but there must be some faults of which I an completely unaware. Which is why I need genuine friends, who will point out the problems I hadn't noticed - and why I'm not being much of a friend if I won't do the same for them.
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
I get by with a little help...
I have been having a bit of an emotionally up and down time recently, and there are some habits and personal issues in particular that I think that it would be helpful for me to write about. I don't want to keep a journal, but I have thought several times about starting a blog. "But," I hear you cry, "you already have a blog - you're writing it now!" Yes indeed, but here's the thing: I know that only a few people read this blog, and most of them are accidental visitors via search engines, but I think that a couple of people who know me read this occasionally, and I wouldn't want to tell them any of the stuff that's on my mind. In other words, if I genuinely feel that I have some emotional stuff to talk about, friends and family would be the last people I would want to share it with. I'm sure this isn't uncommon: there would be fewer therapists if everyone talked to their friends and family. Nevertheless, it struck me that the people that I think of as closer than strangers friends would be the people to whom I would be most wary of telling the truth about myself.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Giving up Twitter
I have decided to give up Twitter. Having adopted it when it was just emerging into general public awareness, I'm now abandoning it just as it seems to be really taking off. There are several reasons for this, which I'll go into in a minute, but first a couple of caveats. This is not in itself a criticism of Twitter: of course it has its faults and shortcomings, but they are not the reason for me to abandon it. Nor is it a criticism of other social networks, the way they are used, or the people who use them. I know several people who are enthusiastic and prolific users of Twitter and Facebook: this is not in any way intended to be a commentary on them or the way they use social networks. This is an entirely subjective point of view and a completely personal decision.
OK, so why give up Twitter?
I have recently had extended periods of not using it, first as a discipline during Lent, and lately I have deliberately not posted (though have read tweets from other people), because I was ambivalent about whether I wanted to post some things. I decided not to post anything and see how that went. The result was that I became more convinced that I could easily manage without Twitter. Of course, millions of people manage without all sorts of things that we take for granted, so I needed some reason why not using Twitter would actually benefit me. At the very least, I wanted to be sure that using Twitter wasn't adding any positive benefits to my life, in which case giving it up would save time that could be used on something more productive.
I'd been ambivalent about tweeting some things (and therefore posting them on Facebook, since that was set up to happen automatically) because ideas, impressions and feelings that were important to me at the time were not necessarily things that I would want to share with a wide group of acquaintances. This meant that I was tending to self-censor things that were genuinely important to me, and was left with my daily trivia and minutiae: what I was eating, where I was going, whether or not I had lost any weight. This is a caricature of Twitter: frequent and regular updates about nothing at all. Did I really want to be broadcasting this stuff? I know there are a few people who like to know what's going on with me, but I'm pretty sure that they don't need every detail - and I have a Facebook account to which I can post as easily as I can tweet, so I wouldn't be cutting off anyone who genuinely wanted to find out what I was doing. As for everyone else, I have to be honest and say that I'm not that fascinating.
Similarly, although I am interested in what my friends are doing, I found that looking at a Twitter stream was becoming more an exercise in skipping through tweets than actually finding anything; Twitter had become a way of using up time, or a distraction when I was putting off dull tasks. I regularly found that I would check Twitter on my phone and feel that I had neither gained anything nor added anything useful. It was not, to use a marketspeak phrase, "adding value". If the time I spent reading tweets could be spent doing something that does add value, or that at least doesn't leave me feeling like I had just wasted time, then wouldn't it make sense to give it up?
Most of the people that I follow I do not know and am unlikely to meet in real life. It's always fascinating to get an insight into someone else's life (which is why so much TV is essentially "look at what these other people are doing") but if I didn't know about what these people are doing it wouldn't actually change my life. Similarly, the organisations I follow have so rarely told me anything that has made a difference to me that losing their tweets would have a negligible impact. If someone starts following me on Twitter, I check their Twitter page, and if it looks like they say things I'd be interested in then I'll follow them. Almost nobody who has started to follow me (and why would you want to, if you don't know me?) has got a follow back from me. I'm sure there's an argument that following someone back is the kind of reciprocal behaviour that makes the digital world go round a little more smoothly, but I simply don't want to know dull details about strangers. Sorry.
Online social networking is an adjunct to real life social networking, not a replacement for it. Having 50, or 500, or 5000 followers on Twitter doesn't make up for having few real friends. Having a few good friends with whom you can talk and share confidences, and a wider circle of friends that you can socialise and have fun with, plus 500 Twitter followers is significantly different from feeling isolated from people and using online networks as a way of masking loneliness. For me, it makes more sense to try and develop closer relationships with people I care about than to have a long list of people who tell me things that don't have any emotional impact at all.
I actively dislike the competitive element of numbers of followers, or indeed the value that is put on having many followers. You don't need to be Ashton Kutcher to be seduced into thinking that 10,000 followers is better than 10 followers, and never stop to question the assumption that "many, more, most" is synonymous with "good, better, best". You don't need to have any self-esteem issues to start feeling like the number of people following you must somehow be related to your interestingness, your fame, your value as a contributor to the global conversation. My most recent tweet, "Steve has nothing to say", was a couple of weeks ago. Two people have started following me in the last three days.
The wider question, whether I do have anything to say, and if so what, how and to whom, will continue to occupy my thinking. I'll use Twitter to send a couple of direct messages to people I know in real life, so that they know they won't be able to contact me that way, and then I'll tweet a link to this blog post. Then, I think, that will be it. If I miss the Twitterverse terribly I can always come back; I don't think I will.
OK, so why give up Twitter?
I have recently had extended periods of not using it, first as a discipline during Lent, and lately I have deliberately not posted (though have read tweets from other people), because I was ambivalent about whether I wanted to post some things. I decided not to post anything and see how that went. The result was that I became more convinced that I could easily manage without Twitter. Of course, millions of people manage without all sorts of things that we take for granted, so I needed some reason why not using Twitter would actually benefit me. At the very least, I wanted to be sure that using Twitter wasn't adding any positive benefits to my life, in which case giving it up would save time that could be used on something more productive.
I'd been ambivalent about tweeting some things (and therefore posting them on Facebook, since that was set up to happen automatically) because ideas, impressions and feelings that were important to me at the time were not necessarily things that I would want to share with a wide group of acquaintances. This meant that I was tending to self-censor things that were genuinely important to me, and was left with my daily trivia and minutiae: what I was eating, where I was going, whether or not I had lost any weight. This is a caricature of Twitter: frequent and regular updates about nothing at all. Did I really want to be broadcasting this stuff? I know there are a few people who like to know what's going on with me, but I'm pretty sure that they don't need every detail - and I have a Facebook account to which I can post as easily as I can tweet, so I wouldn't be cutting off anyone who genuinely wanted to find out what I was doing. As for everyone else, I have to be honest and say that I'm not that fascinating.
Similarly, although I am interested in what my friends are doing, I found that looking at a Twitter stream was becoming more an exercise in skipping through tweets than actually finding anything; Twitter had become a way of using up time, or a distraction when I was putting off dull tasks. I regularly found that I would check Twitter on my phone and feel that I had neither gained anything nor added anything useful. It was not, to use a marketspeak phrase, "adding value". If the time I spent reading tweets could be spent doing something that does add value, or that at least doesn't leave me feeling like I had just wasted time, then wouldn't it make sense to give it up?
Most of the people that I follow I do not know and am unlikely to meet in real life. It's always fascinating to get an insight into someone else's life (which is why so much TV is essentially "look at what these other people are doing") but if I didn't know about what these people are doing it wouldn't actually change my life. Similarly, the organisations I follow have so rarely told me anything that has made a difference to me that losing their tweets would have a negligible impact. If someone starts following me on Twitter, I check their Twitter page, and if it looks like they say things I'd be interested in then I'll follow them. Almost nobody who has started to follow me (and why would you want to, if you don't know me?) has got a follow back from me. I'm sure there's an argument that following someone back is the kind of reciprocal behaviour that makes the digital world go round a little more smoothly, but I simply don't want to know dull details about strangers. Sorry.
Online social networking is an adjunct to real life social networking, not a replacement for it. Having 50, or 500, or 5000 followers on Twitter doesn't make up for having few real friends. Having a few good friends with whom you can talk and share confidences, and a wider circle of friends that you can socialise and have fun with, plus 500 Twitter followers is significantly different from feeling isolated from people and using online networks as a way of masking loneliness. For me, it makes more sense to try and develop closer relationships with people I care about than to have a long list of people who tell me things that don't have any emotional impact at all.
I actively dislike the competitive element of numbers of followers, or indeed the value that is put on having many followers. You don't need to be Ashton Kutcher to be seduced into thinking that 10,000 followers is better than 10 followers, and never stop to question the assumption that "many, more, most" is synonymous with "good, better, best". You don't need to have any self-esteem issues to start feeling like the number of people following you must somehow be related to your interestingness, your fame, your value as a contributor to the global conversation. My most recent tweet, "Steve has nothing to say", was a couple of weeks ago. Two people have started following me in the last three days.
The wider question, whether I do have anything to say, and if so what, how and to whom, will continue to occupy my thinking. I'll use Twitter to send a couple of direct messages to people I know in real life, so that they know they won't be able to contact me that way, and then I'll tweet a link to this blog post. Then, I think, that will be it. If I miss the Twitterverse terribly I can always come back; I don't think I will.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Post-Lent reflection
It's rather more than six and a half weeks since my last blog post, though my Twitter feed has been busy, and I've even ventured into the confusion of another revamp to Facebook. Apart from being glad that Digsby plus Twitter integration means that I don't really need to go on the actual Facebook site, what have I learned?
- Giving up telling people about me was easier than I thought it would be
- Not knowing what was going on with other people was harder than I expected. I have got used to knowing what's happening with people since I joined Facebook, but because I never maintained friendships before that, I had no fallback methods (calling round to see someone, phoning them) of finding out what was going on for people.
- Using Twitter and Facebook is self-reinforcing. Having "I'm not using Facebook for Lent" as a status is OK, but in most cases I don't want the last thing I said to be the last thing I say, so I keep wanting to make sure my status is up to date. One tweet leads to another.
- Living online is pervasive; it encroaches steadily on real-world life, so that it's possible to spend increasing amounts of time reporting and reflecting on real-world life online, and then spending even more time reporting and reflecting on online life.
- In a consumer society, there's a strong drive to be interesting or appear important, because that turns me into more of a saleable commodity. If you don't think this is true, consider Facebook not telling you (and everyone else) how many friends you have, or Twitter without the number of your followers in the sidebar.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Twitter Grader
This is a bit sad. What's worse is that I look at this and think "How could I get more followers so that I can move up the rankings?" And then I get depressed because I'm less interesting than the Red Funnel Ferry.
No, it's OK, life is not a popularity competition. It doesn't make any difference to my self worth whether 6 or 60 or 600 people choose to be informed about the minutiae of my life. (But if you are reading this and use Twitter, please follow me, please please please)
Thanks to James for the link and helping me realise that the world is, in fact, madder than I suspected.
No, it's OK, life is not a popularity competition. It doesn't make any difference to my self worth whether 6 or 60 or 600 people choose to be informed about the minutiae of my life. (But if you are reading this and use Twitter, please follow me, please please please)
Thanks to James for the link and helping me realise that the world is, in fact, madder than I suspected.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Facebook friends
I quite often click through to the page on Facebook that shows "People you may know", and then delete any people I've never actually heard of until I'm left with a page of people who I do know but wouldn't ask to be a Facebook friend.
Is this odd?
Is this odd?
Monday, June 09, 2008
This is Steve
Two thoughts from the last 24 hours that are knocking up against each other in my head. The first is something that came from Preaching School last night, about dealing with feedback, and how it's useful to have a small group of people who you can trust to give you honest feedback about a sermon. My reaction was that that sounded like a good idea, but I would struggle to find such a group of people. Outside of family, I have some people whose comments I would certainly take seriously, but (outside family) I can't think of anyone who I would include in a "feedback group".
The second thought is that I've recently started several blog posts about how I feel, and have then abandoned or deleted them. It's certainly the case that I'm finding it hard not to be depressed at the moment, and that I'm alternating between wanting to overcome it, get myself motivated, etc, etc, and giving in to it, being self-destructive and really despising myself. I'm not sure, however, why I'm finding it hard to publish blog posts about that. A look through the archives of this blog will find any number of posts about feeling down, or dealing with it.
There is an element, I think, of not wanting to keep on going endlessly on and on about how rubbish everything is: I don't want to write it and I assume most people don't want to read it. But somewhere there's a link to that first idea, about with whom I have honest relationships, and to whom I can say "I'm feeling down" without making a joke about it, or adding "...yet again, sorry".
Not sure there's an answer to this, and I have run out of blogging time, but if I have any further thoughts about this, I'll put them here (probably!)
The second thought is that I've recently started several blog posts about how I feel, and have then abandoned or deleted them. It's certainly the case that I'm finding it hard not to be depressed at the moment, and that I'm alternating between wanting to overcome it, get myself motivated, etc, etc, and giving in to it, being self-destructive and really despising myself. I'm not sure, however, why I'm finding it hard to publish blog posts about that. A look through the archives of this blog will find any number of posts about feeling down, or dealing with it.
There is an element, I think, of not wanting to keep on going endlessly on and on about how rubbish everything is: I don't want to write it and I assume most people don't want to read it. But somewhere there's a link to that first idea, about with whom I have honest relationships, and to whom I can say "I'm feeling down" without making a joke about it, or adding "...yet again, sorry".
Not sure there's an answer to this, and I have run out of blogging time, but if I have any further thoughts about this, I'll put them here (probably!)
Monday, September 17, 2007
Friendships
I've just finished reading Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz", and can't wait to turn back to the beginning and start reading it again. Sometimes I love the way that God works. I decided to check my hotmail and there was a message from the library to say that one of the three books that I ordered on inter-library loan had arrived, so over I went to the Library to find that Redcar and Cleveland Library Service had very kindly lent me their copy until 7th December. So I decide to have a quick look through, and what do I find, but a whole load of engagingly-written stuff about loving enemies, about how self-discipline doesn't get you anywhere without allowing yourself to be loved by God, about how it feels to be pretty much totally obsessed with yourself and your own needs and how destructive this turns out to be? Wow. All the stuff I've been thinking about recently, tied together and expressed much more eloquently than I could have done.
Anyway, I was walking back over from the Library when I had a sudden thought. For a long time I've had issues about the way that the Church repeats Jesus's idea of God being a father, sometimes without much consideration for the growing numbers of people who have either no experience of having a father, or have had very bad experiences involving fathers. I think that we as a church need to be careful to say that when you know your dad isn't perfect, that's because in some way you're comparing him to what you think a perfect dad should be like, and that idea of the perfect Dad is one way of understanding God. Anyway, I was crossing the road and thinking (as is my habit) moderately miserable thoughts about friendships and how rubbish I am at them and never really believe that people actually like me (apologies to anyone who is reading this who considers themselves to be my friend: it's not you, it's me), when it occurred to me that if people who have issues about "God is like a Dad" need some extra care, then maybe people like me might well have some issues around "My Friend Jesus". Now, I know that this sounds pretty basic, duh, but it has never ever occurred to me before that if I spend my life thinking that some people like me and quite a lot of people tolerate me, but friendships are things that only happen to other people, then it might conceivably affect the way I look at my relationship with God. Because I don't keep in touch with people (the only person from my past who I have any contact with - excluding a couple a generic Christmas letters - is my friend Julie who sent me an email a couple of weeks ago, after not hearing from me for about four years: apart from that I have no friends from school, from previous jobs or homes or churches) I assume that nobody would want to keep in touch with me. There is nobody I would call on in a crisis or ring up to ask if they wanted to go for a drink. And I assume that God has the same kind of relationship with me, which I know intellectually is weird and wrong but nevertheless I will go away and think about this some more.
Anyway, I was walking back over from the Library when I had a sudden thought. For a long time I've had issues about the way that the Church repeats Jesus's idea of God being a father, sometimes without much consideration for the growing numbers of people who have either no experience of having a father, or have had very bad experiences involving fathers. I think that we as a church need to be careful to say that when you know your dad isn't perfect, that's because in some way you're comparing him to what you think a perfect dad should be like, and that idea of the perfect Dad is one way of understanding God. Anyway, I was crossing the road and thinking (as is my habit) moderately miserable thoughts about friendships and how rubbish I am at them and never really believe that people actually like me (apologies to anyone who is reading this who considers themselves to be my friend: it's not you, it's me), when it occurred to me that if people who have issues about "God is like a Dad" need some extra care, then maybe people like me might well have some issues around "My Friend Jesus". Now, I know that this sounds pretty basic, duh, but it has never ever occurred to me before that if I spend my life thinking that some people like me and quite a lot of people tolerate me, but friendships are things that only happen to other people, then it might conceivably affect the way I look at my relationship with God. Because I don't keep in touch with people (the only person from my past who I have any contact with - excluding a couple a generic Christmas letters - is my friend Julie who sent me an email a couple of weeks ago, after not hearing from me for about four years: apart from that I have no friends from school, from previous jobs or homes or churches) I assume that nobody would want to keep in touch with me. There is nobody I would call on in a crisis or ring up to ask if they wanted to go for a drink. And I assume that God has the same kind of relationship with me, which I know intellectually is weird and wrong but nevertheless I will go away and think about this some more.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Eurgh!
Having a bit of a down week. Nothing wrist-slashingly major, just that all the things I've been putting off are catching up with me and leading to a generalised feeling of dread and incapability (is that a word?). However, I'll start knocking things off the list one at a time, and I'm moderately confident that life will be sunny again before you can say "You have eaten my best friend's goat" in Albanian (if you are Albanian or a fluent Albanian speaker, it might be slightly longer).
Last night we continued our mission to find an Italian restaurant for Rachel's birthday. So far we've tried La Dolce Vita in Hamble and Reggina's in Botley. La Dolce Vita have live music on Wednesdays, when we went, so we had to put up with a slightly annoying singer, but the food and service were good and it was reasonably priced. Last night at Reggina's we were put on a table near to the kitchen and the main entrance (despite having booked) so there was lots of coming and going right next to us, which wasn't conducive to relaxation. Although it looked more upmarket than La Dolce Vita, the food was not as nice and the service was indifferent, and it cost more. We'll see what else we can find between now and Rachel's birthday.
I thought I'd give Facebook a go, since Si has been saying how good it is for keeping in touch with people. I have to say it's not a site for the miserable and socially incompetent, simply reinforcing that everyone else has more friends than I do, and that they're all closer and more relaxed with each other than I will ever be. I'll give it a go, but as someone who finds it hard to do social networking in real life, it doesn't come easily online.
Last night we continued our mission to find an Italian restaurant for Rachel's birthday. So far we've tried La Dolce Vita in Hamble and Reggina's in Botley. La Dolce Vita have live music on Wednesdays, when we went, so we had to put up with a slightly annoying singer, but the food and service were good and it was reasonably priced. Last night at Reggina's we were put on a table near to the kitchen and the main entrance (despite having booked) so there was lots of coming and going right next to us, which wasn't conducive to relaxation. Although it looked more upmarket than La Dolce Vita, the food was not as nice and the service was indifferent, and it cost more. We'll see what else we can find between now and Rachel's birthday.
I thought I'd give Facebook a go, since Si has been saying how good it is for keeping in touch with people. I have to say it's not a site for the miserable and socially incompetent, simply reinforcing that everyone else has more friends than I do, and that they're all closer and more relaxed with each other than I will ever be. I'll give it a go, but as someone who finds it hard to do social networking in real life, it doesn't come easily online.
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