A Domino Effect

Life has got all up in my face over the past week, in the nicest of possible ways.  If it’s not a book I can’t put down it’s a night out with friends, a lack of sleep or a desire to simply sit in the park after work and watch the sun go down. That’s life I suppose…some weeks stretch out with the prospect of endless blogging, others are characterised by appointments, to-do’s and a desire to leave the computer switched off.  Bear with me folks, normal service will resume shortly…

Image above from here.

Outside of work, I spend at least some small part of each day on the internet.  Sometimes it’s to read, sometimes it’s to write, sometimes it’s simply to check my bank balance, my eBay and the news headlines.  Whatever I’m doing, however, I’m always online to do it.  And while I don’t happen to think that the internet is quite the vortex of eternal time wasting that lots of people see it as (it’s all in the tab management, people), I do sometimes wonder just how much I would get done if, instead of flipping open my laptop in my spare seconds, I ploughed my energies into my projects, or my books or even, heaven forbid, my household chores.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I decided, in packing for caravanning at the weekend, to leave my laptop at home and do just that: other stuff.

As a result, I went through two balls of wool on my latest crochet project (crochet ladies back me up please – that takes a while!), I read upwards of 100 pages to finish one book, and I also got stuck into another.  I found time to drink gallons of coffee in front of the caravan fire, to walk, to eat chilli and ice lollies, to watch Avatar and to take a rather cursory paddle in the (blimmin’ freezing) sea.  I’m not saying that I would have achieved none of this stuff if I’d also been blogging, or thinking about blogging, or reading other peoples’ blogs, but I certainly wouldn’t have done it all.  And it was nice to do it all.  It felt productive, satisfying, like a real achievement.  Someone asked me this morning what I did with my weekend, and for once I didn’t feel flummoxed by the number of hours that had escaped through my finger tips and straight into my Google Reader.  I think the internet is an awesome, adventurous, inspiring place, full of interesting people, great writing and thought-provoking ideas.  Just once in every while, however, I want to make a conscious effort to remind myself 0f just how much life exists in the vast swathes of space outside of the four corners of my screen.

What about you?  Do you ever force yourself to take time offline?

Image above from here.

A list of things I love you say?  Well OK then, but only because it’s Thursday…

Edinburgh sunsets. Tonight’s was a bluey pinky haze that set off all those church spires to perfection.  When Edinburgh looks like this there really is nowhere else in the world I’d rather be.  Of course when it looks like this there are plenty of places I’d rather be.  Swings and roundabouts, chaps, swings and roundabouts.

Swimming. After what feels like an eternity, the Royal Commonwealth Pool is back in business.  When browsing the opening times earlier in the week I came across this page.  It’s a timeline of peoples’ memories about the pool, going right back to the 60s when it opened.  It’s actually quite touching reading about peoples’ memories of school holidays and “chips on the way home”.  I had only been to the pool once prior to it closing for its mammoth refurbishment, as part of a school trip when I was 11.  I went back this evening and was mightily impressed all round, especially with the lane spacing (what? it matters!).  Wide enough to allow me to pass another swimmer without accidentally punching them in the face, not so wide that the lane divider was so far out of my reach that I should worry about drowning.  Such is the standard by which ALL swimming pool lanes should be measured, I think.

The return of The Apprentice. And here I was wondering what would fill the void left by Masterchef.  Disgustingly compelling viewing.

Kit Kat Chunky. Belgian Waffle was talking about these recently, and as soon as the idea had lodged itself in my mind I was all but powerless to say no.  I’m glad I didn’t: these things are lip smackingly delicious.  I think it’s the thickness of the chocolate: a good 5mm either side of the crunchy wafery bit.  No messing around.

Storytime. This week has been all about getting to bed by 10pm and opening up a book.  I’m currently reading A Week in December, and have plans to move onto Shalimar The Clown followed by Wuthering Heights (I’ve bored you all before with tales of my apathy towards “the classics” but given my undying love for Jane Eyre I’m considering making a standing exception for the Brontë sisters.  Considering).

Manning up.  It’s no secret that I hate using the phone.  I wish I loved it, but I don’t.  I wish I could pick up the receiver with abandon, be awesome at the small talk and instinctively just know how to fill all those awkward pauses where neither participant in the conversation actually knows what’s going on.  But I can’t.  Sometimes in life, however, we don’t get the luxury of a choice.  So today, faced with an absolutely unavoidable phone call I decided that I could either freak the eff out or man the eff up.  In the end I managed it, albeit with a small measure of internal bribery (you’re not drinking a SINGLE DROP of coffee until you pick up that piece of plastic and DO THIS THING.  This turned out to be a winning strategy: my feeble phone phobia is small fry compared to my wanton caffeine addiction).  I might have run to the bathroom and fist-pumped the air afterwards.  Might have.

Anyway, more than enough about me.  What’s happening in your world today?

Image above from here.

I have recently read two posts on the same blog (that shall remain nameless – you’ll find it if you look hard enough), both consisting of not much more than the blogger asking her readers for money to fund a trip she’s taking.  That’s right.  Not for a charitable cause, not so she could go and volunteer her time at a soup kitchen, not because she doesn’t have enough cash to buy a tin of baked beans for dinner.  The plea was simply for money to support her in quitting her job and swanning off to more exotic parts of the globe, presumably while the rest of us remain in our jobs and feel jealous.

But before you drop your cups of tea in astonishment, as I very nearly did, one of these posts did actually offer something in return.  A postcard, to be precise.  That’s right, the blogger was offering to send readers a postcard from her holiday (which sounds properly epic by the way; it’s no weekend in a tent in Bognor for which I might well have sympathy enough to award something, if not money then perhaps some wet wipes or a pair of thick socks) in return for a donation of around £6.  Wow, thanks for that.  I get to lose money AND have you rub the awesomeness of your holiday into my face via air mail?  Gosh, you shouldn’t have.

No, really. YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE.

I’ll say no more about the blog in question because I’ve seen this happen elsewhere before and my sense of indignant disgust has been just as searing.  Am I alone in finding the idea of bloggers asking their readers for money in this way to be almost unique in its ability to simultaneously depress and enrage?  I don’t come across it a lot, perhaps because once a blogger I love starts asking for reader cash injections on the regular I usually unsubscribe faster than I can do a Liz Lemon-style “What the WHAT?”.  Nevertheless, when I do come across it I’m always flabbergasted by how brazen people can be.  I especially hate it when the plea for cash is wrapped up in a silky pink ribbon and sold to the reader on the basis that it’s actually for his or her benefit.  That the blogger going off to sunnier climes to “find themselves” is somehow being done for and in the name of the readership, as opposed to the blogger him or herself.  If you want to be upfront about it, fine.  I’ll still think you’re crass to be asking but at least you get points for honesty.  Whatever you do though, don’t try and sell your appeal for money as something that will benefit anyone but yourself.  I could use many adjectives to describe my thoughts on that practice but for the purposes of brevity I’ll limit myself to INSULTING.

Before you all start thinking I’m some kind of uncharitable moron who doesn’t realise that everyone needs to have some cash in their back pocket to get by, let me say that I’m not against people making money from blogging per se.  I get that some people blog for a living, and no, I’m not silly enough to think that those who do pay for their teabags using a currency of eloquent words and sophisticated ideas.  If a readership is ready and willing to hand over cash to someone who is working bloody hard for it by writing an amazing blog then I think that’s absolutely fair enough.  My objection only really begins when I’m asked as a reader to hand over the money that I myself work bloody hard for to a blogger who has done or who proposes to do very little to earn it.

What about our own stuff?  Our own pipe dreams, our own travel ambitions?  I have a list of places in the world I’d like to visit that’s as long as both of my arms.  If I spend my money paying for other people to live out their travel fantasies, will I ever get round to fulfilling my own?  And that’s not even to take notice of the elephant in the room, which is the fact that it’s 2012, the economy is dying in a ditch and you now get far fewer loaves of bread for your £10 than you did a few years ago (FYI this is my go-to analogy when discussing or reading about inflation.  Inflation up = less loaves of bread for a tenner.  Inflation down = more loaves of…you get the picture.  I’ve not yet worked out how this applies to people who bake their own bread.  Less yeast, perhaps?).  To cut a long story short, heaps of people are feeling the pinch right now, and heaps of people are doing all they can to eke their pennies into pounds.  Bloggers asking their readers for money to fund exotic holidays against this backdrop to me comes across not just as wildly unrealistic but also as embarrassingly crass and insensitive.

Put simply, if a blogger really wants to make me reach for my debit card, he or she needs to offer me something I either really, really want, or absolutely can’t refuse.  They need to create something amazing, like a tutorial that I can’t already find on YouTube, or a wall-planner that kicks the ass of anything I could make with an empty cereal box and a glue stick.  They need to write something I really, really want to read, like an awesome short story or a no-fails allowed guide to getting up early in the morning.  What they absolutely must never, ever do, as far as I’m concerned, is whine at me for money solely so that they can then go off on amazing trips that I want to take myself/write in coffee shops during the middle of the day while I’m at work/DO ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING FUN WHILE I’M AT WORK.

Is that unreasonable?

Image above from here.

This weekend has been brilliantly quiet and relaxing.  I wasn’t in any particular need of such a peaceful window of time, but it’s never not nice to enjoy a couple of obligation-free days of reading, walks and cycling in the sunshine, eating pizza and cake, drinking wine and coffee and watching the usual quota of films and TV.  The weather over the past couple of days has been truly Spring-like.  Still nippy enough to warrant a jacket, but dazzlingly sunny nonetheless.  After months of cold, dreary Winter (when we didn’t even get any snow!) it feels so good to finally have the sun on my face again, to look at daffodils, to feel the afternoon light stretch into the evening.  My boyfriend and I cycled along the Union Canal towpath last night, just as the sun was beginning to slink its way down beneath the Pentlands.  The atmosphere down on the canal was almost carnival like in its bustle: dogs, runners, walkers and cyclists, all out to enjoy the first proper day of Spring and to bid a firm goodbye to the shackles of Winter.

The upcoming week holds holiday planning, swimming (I’m excited to visit the newly refurbished Royal Commonwealth Pool here in Edinburgh, which seems to have been closed forever) and -- wait for it -- the start of the 2012 caravan season!  On the blogging front, I’m due to guest post here at some point during the next couple of days.  Congratulations to Paul on his reaching 500 paragraph film reviews (500!).  Keep your eyes peeled blog buds.  In the meantime, enjoy a mash-up (or three) on me.  Found yesterday when I was researching my post on music -- Grease vs Snoop Dogg is my favourite.