Social Isolation Is Improving My Technology Skills

Thursday night I attended a Greater Hartford SCBWI Meet and Greet. By way of Zoom. Someone in my family decided to memorialize the moment with a picture, which means...blog post!

This was a come-as-you-are event. I want credit for having replaced the flannel shirt I'd been wearing for days (and have on as I type this) with a cleanish cardigan. For some reason, I also felt compelled to brush my teeth. However, if you look very closely, you can see I wasn't wearing socks.

In order to take part in this event, I had to learn how to use Zoom. By which I mean another family member got me set up. Remotely. Because he ran through a practice with me, I got to see him, which was an additional benefit. It appears I can take part in Zoom meetings, if someone else is hosting and sends me an invitation. I don't know how to initiate anything myself. (Like I'm ever going to want to initiate a gathering, even on-line.) That's what I mean by having learned "how to use Zoom."

On Monday I'm signing up to try to get into a SCBWI workshop conducted through Zoom. There are a number of those kinds of workshops coming up in the next few weeks I may be able to be part of.

This is a big tech step forward.

But We're Not Just Talking Zoom!

In the last two weeks I've also learned how to insert photos and images into word documents so I can write illustrated letters to family members. This is a ridiculously easy thing to do. I should have tried it long ago.

I also learned how to "show this thread" on Twitter, for a long-involved reason that is also connected to what I've been doing recently. Another ridiculously easy thing to do. Embarrassed I never tried it before.

There Must Be Historical Precedent For This

I am sure there are all kinds of examples of cultures making technological advances, because they needed to respond to illness or war or natural disaster. I'm guessing someone has also written on  individuals who have done the same thing. It's definitely happening for me.

Time Management Tuesday: Take Advantage Of Technology

I am obsessive enough to want to get a little work done when I'm away from home. Not a lot, a little. And I learned recently that technology is my friend when it comes to getting that little done.

The Romance Of The Journal 

 

See that beautiful journal to your right? A birthday gift from my sister a few years back. Journals, whether they're beautiful or not, draw many people. There's something very nineteenth century about them. We imagine writers in days of old simply writing their ideas down in their journals as the ideas came to them and publishing the whole thing. Who needs an editor? Could happen again, right?

Yeah, I'm not all that romantic. What I was using my beautiful journal for last year was that little bit of work I wanted to do when I was away from home. I did some essay attempts in an airplane on my way home from Seattle. I wrote drafts of several reader response blog posts while I was waiting for a family member who was having surgery. I thought I was making excellent use of time away from home.

And then I lost the journal.

Okay, I lost it in my office (it turned up a week or so ago) which is not that severe a loss and also speaks volumes about the state of my work environment. Nonetheless, the journal, and the work I had done with it, was as good as gone for...I don't even know how long. I don't know when I lost it. Hell, I didn't know I had lost it until I found it.

If You Want Real Romance, Get An IPad

Last summer, I got an iPad. I will spare you the details of my relationship with this thing, of my plan to one day have it contain my entire life. For our purposes, all I need to do is tell you about my iPad on retreat week.

Yes, that's right. I'm still talking about my retreat week. The one that came at the beginning of January. It was just that good.

The beauty of the iPad is that it connects you to the Internet, which, you must admit, a journal does not. In January I underpainted some blog posts directly into my blog. Instead of having to copy them over from a traditional journal after I got home, all I had to do was edit them. Marketing ideas...submission plans...story ideas...I e-mailed them to my laptop, which is where all those things are stored. No transcribing them from a paper and pen journal onto the laptop. I cut and past from the e-mails. Cut and past...faster!!!

Whatever you do with a journal is left stuck in the journal. With an iPad, you can do something with whatever you do. And I haven't even looked into using the Pages feature. Though I didn't care for Notes.

Yes, if you're very patient and have very little or supple fingers you can do this with your phone.

In addition to the things this iPad can do that the journal can't, I've had it for seven months. It's barely out of my sight. I do not lose it, because I use it for more than I used that journal for.

I love tech. What more can I do with this thing?

Time Management Tuesday: Learning Curves For New Technology

Have I mentioned my new laptop? I don't think so. I will be talking about its splendors sometime in the future, but today I'm going to drone on a bit about how technology is wonderful, absolutely wonderful, for managing time and getting things done. But technology is always changing, which means learning curves, over and over and over again. And do they ever take time.

Very few people can afford the time to just stop working and learn how to use, say, a new word processing program or make the jump from a standard cellphone to a smartphone. We have to work while we learn, we have to use that phone while we learn. I think of this as a martial arts model. In the schools I've attended, you're thrown in with all the other students of all different levels of experience and knowledge. You follow along as best you can, and then step out to work on the skills for your level. Then you jump back in with the others, going back and forth like that. It works for them, but they take the long view. Everything will come with time.

That's how things work with new technology to a great extent but for a different reason. We jump right in and work with the new, not because we take the long view but because we don't. We can't stop to study because we have to keep producing. But there's no getting around the fact that we're not producing at peak efficiency and speed, because we're struggling to learn the new technology as we go along.

A case in point

My laptop arrived two weeks ago loaded with Word 2013. I haven't had to acclimate myself to a new word processing program for some time, because I've been using Word 2003. For the very standard straight manuscript typing I do, it has worked very well, and I haven't had to lose any time learning the new bells and whistles of all the versions that came between 2003 and 2013. Now, my computer guy could find a way to get 2003 onto this laptop because he's kind of a rogue and that's how he rolls. But we have another computer guy in the family, and Computer Guy II pointed out that at some point Microsoft will stop supporting earlier versions of Word, and then what do I do? Computer Guy I, being a rogue, as I mentioned, would take the attitude that we fight it! We do not give in to the man! Computer Guy II, on the other hand, is more of a make-love-not-war tech person. Since I've got this maintain-the-mind-of-a-beginner thing going on, and I'm willing to concede that maybe Word 2013 has something positive to offer me, beyond the fact that it is simply on my computer, I decided to go with Computer Guy II on this one.

This morning, after having used Word 2013 for two weeks, I spent fourteen minutes getting a header with numbering onto a new chapter file. That is a good thing. On the last two chapters, I spent around forty to forty-five minutes on headers and numbering pages. I am making progress.

But I've also lost work time. In my case, I'm hoping that the time I lose now will be made up for in the future because of the splendors of this laptop.

Do We Get Everything New Devices Have To Offer Learning This Way?

In my case, the answer to that question is, "No." I'm on my second digital camera. I never learned all the options on the first one, and I use only a fraction of what I could on the new one. I've even carried the manual in my camera case, hoping that I'd find time while traveling to sit down and browse. That rarely happens, mainly because I can take a good enough picture and let it go at that. My iPhone is my favorite material possession right now. One of the reasons I got it was to listen to podcasts. I do do that, but directly from the site that originally produced them. I haven't figured out how to download podcasts to my iPhone. In fact, the Apple store won't let me purchase podcast apps from my phone because of some password problem I haven't had time to even try to resolve. I always take the easy option that provides a lesser result because I don't have time to go another way.

The irony here, folks, is that the technological device that could be a major factor in managing our time requires time to learn to use properly.