Disposable Women?

July 5th, 2011

No Final Resting Place

Does the amending of bail conditions and subsequent release from house arrest of former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, accused of sexually assaulting a maid at his New York City hotel on May 14, mean he’s not guilty? The District Attorney has not dismissed any of the charges against Strauss-Kahn, but you’d think he had and that Strauss-Kahn had been unanimously acquitted from on high from much of the media coverage. Now that some inconsistencies have allegedly been found in the story of the Guinean immigrant woman who accused Strauss-Kahn of rape, that apparently settles it: it’s impossible that she’s been a victim. Let the trashing begin!

Why? Because she lied on her application for asylum in the United States, hardly a rarity for people desperate for the chance at a better life. She also lied on her income tax returns by including a child that wasn’t hers. Illegal, yes, but let’s not pretend that lying on your income tax returns isn’t common practice. The woman also discussed the case via telephone in a taped conversation with an incarcerated marijuana dealer, during which she allegedly said that she both knew what she was doing in pressing charges and that Strauss-Kahn was wealthy. Again, so what? Let’s be real: with the phony war on drugs and disparity in sentencing, many of us know people incarcerated for drugs, and not just weed, either. And let’s not play coy and perpetuate the pretense that the American Dream isn’t for sale, highly expensive, and that aggrieved people don’t want monetary compensation along with that helping of justice.

It’s time to permanently bury the delusion that false rape claims are common, when such claims occur less than 3% of the time. Ditto the prejudice that it’s only rape when a victim’s conduct is beyond reproach. This mythical, perfect victim doesn’t exist. Neither should an absurd standard that having had too much to drink, or multiple past sexual partners, or lying on an application for asylum, or knowing someone in prison on drug charges – honestly, who doesn’t or hasn’t?! – negates our right to assert that we were raped and to have those charges pursued in a court of law. As it is, if you’re not the perfect victim, you’re turned into a perpetrator. The New York Post has been making the totally unsubstantiated charge that Strauss-Kahn’s accuser is a prostitute. I shudder to think of what could be unearthed and distorted in my past with unlimited resources. I’m not sure about those trees falling in the forest, but if the victim is imperfect, does that mean no crime can be committed?

I don’t know what transpired on May 14 in that room at the Sofitel. I also don’t know what happened to 36-year-old Marie Joseph, whose body was found in the bottom of a public pool in Fall River, Massachusetts after it had laid there two days. None of Joseph’s friends with whom she’d gone to the pool reported her missing. According to news reports, her boyfriend said he figured she “Wanted to be alone,” which explained her disappearance at the pool and not answering her phone for 48 hours. What does it say about how little value Joseph had that when she vanished no one, not even her man, looked for her?

I don’t know if Dominque Strauss-Kahn is guilty or innocent. What I do know is that too often women, and black women in particular, are treated as if we are disposable, to be used by others as needed, discarded when it is convenient, and if we live to speak out or file charges destroyed by a media doing the bidding of the wealthy, powerful and male when we respond inconveniently. Where is our right to a fair hearing, to justice? (According to news reports, Tristane Banon, a 32-year-old French woman journalist will file charges Tuesday that Strauss-Kahn raped her in 2003. It will be fascinating to observe how her allegations will be received.)

What I do know is that Dominque Strauss-Kahn has resources at his command that most of us cannot imagine. I know that he has spent a lifetime supported by the benefits of white supremacy and male privilege. His accuser, a black woman from the tiny nation of Guinea, has more than likely lived a life characterized by vulnerability, exploitation and defenselessness. Unless the alleged victim recants, let the trial proceed. Let justice be done in a court of law, not behind the closed doors of the District Attorney’s office or the courts of the press or public opinion.

A Note: And in the “Give me a cup of smug with that pseudo-news” while we’re at it category, here’s a clip of MSNBC analyst and Time magazine columnist Mark Halperin’s revealing characterization of President Obama after his June 29 press conference, during which he took Republicans to the proverbial woodshed around their insane debt ceiling manuevers.

Finally: I’ll be attending and speaking at SisterSong; Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective conference in Miami, Let’s Talk About Sex: Love, Legislation and Leadership, July 14 – 17. This is an absolutely wonderful, activist coalition of national organizations committed to defending women’s rights. They’re also dedicated to having a fabulous time while fighting the good fight. The conference promises to be enlightening, inspiring, and fun! Hope to see you there.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Just Thinking..., NiaOnline.com Link, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Stopped, Not Stuck

June 29th, 2011

A Hummingbird Image courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

It’s intriguing how sometimes, often from someone from whom you least expect it, a brief action or a few words can dramatically change your direction. Or shed light and illuminate a space that you already thought was perfectly clear. These moments are impossible to predict. They are always surprising, random, and spontaneous. Yet when I think about where my head has been when these flashes of, let’s call them random enlightenment, occur, it is usually in transition of one sort or another, either in work, life, relationships, values, a way of seeing. Whatever’s going on, change, welcome or not and usually difficult, is the dominant theme in my life in those instances.

Last week I thought I saw a Hummingbird, those tiny birds whose wings beat an average of 3,000 beats per minute, the only bird that can fly forward, backward, up, down, sideways and hover in midair. At first I thought it was something falling past my window, until I realized it wasn’t going down. For a moment I thought it was a Dragonfly, since the day was hot and almost windless, the perfect weather for such insects in New England, but it lacked that creature’s long body and irridescent wings. It hovered by a bush outside the window, the beating of its wings suspending it in mid-air, and then was gone. So was I, on to the next task, the whatever it was forgotten. It wasn’t until a few days later, reading the local newspaper, that I came across an article about Hummingbirds and realized that was more than likely what I had seen.

Years ago, I described myself to a woman I didn’t know very well but was trying to work with on a creative project as “Stuck.” She kind of chuckled at that. “You’re not stuck, you’re stopped, like a Hummingbird,” she said. The difference, she went on to explain, is that even when it is is in one place and appears to have stopped, those wings are always beating, those delicate birds always in motion. When you’re stuck, there’s no movement; when you’re stopped, you can also be profoundly in motion.

This casual, random, circumstantial conversation with an acquaintance caused me to shift the way I had been perceiving myself, the project we were working on, and in the long run changed the way I view work and creativity. It made me more accepting of not only my creative process, but that of others, and more open to the possibilities and potential riches hidden in what may at first seem to be insignificant encounters with others.

In the last few weeks, I told the story of the Hummingbird to a very smart woman I had just met. As with the woman who told me the Hummingbird story years ago, we were meeting to discuss working on a project together. This woman was not surprised by my story, but suggested that the Hummingbird might have real significance in my life, might be a totem for me, and suggested I research Hummingbirds and, if I wanted to, consider bringing them into my life in the form of a pin, a picture, or in some way. Great conversation. Then, of course, life intruded, and immediate demands, mine and others, overwhelmed thoughts of Hummingbirds. Until, that is, one stopped outside my window, unstuck but in that one place, hovering there just long enough to remind me that I life is a constant process, and I too am always in motion.

A NOTE: Congratulations to all and a rare kudo to New York State government for passing a law allowing same sex couples to marry. It’s long overdue. Congratulations and best wishes to all those who fought for this right and intend to take advantage of the benefits – spiritual, finanacial, legal – of marriage. Did I say good luck, too?

AND: Because Gil Scott-Heron was a superbly talented musician and a cultural griot and because he made many songs as powerful as The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and because he loved Black people and told us like it was…Enjoy this! And this! This, too!

Jill Nelson 6/28/11 – The blog with the musical notes!

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Just Thinking..., NiaOnline.com Link, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Forget Weiner’s Pants, What About the World?

June 14th, 2011

Whatever it is, it's Too Much Information! Image courtesy the N.Y. Post


“The world is falling down, hold my hand, It’s a lonely sound, hold my hand,” the talented, ferocious and recently departed Abby Lincoln sang, words that become more tangible each day, and instead of fiddling while America collapses we’re busily engaged in media concocted and driven collective diddling of New York Congressman Anthony Weiner’s over-exposed weiner. Still, it’s hard to get Abbey Lincoln’s rough voice and those haunting lyrics out of my head.

As unemployment rises, the depression – oops, I mean recession – deepens, the FBI is given even more power to invade the privacy – via pawing through the garbage and other unsavory means – of citizens suspected of nothing, as Wall Street, the biggest financial beneficiaries to date of the financial collapse they created and the rescue by American tax dollars first in the Bush and continuing in the Obama administration continues to pout and delare itself picked upon; when $6.6 billion in shrink-wrapped U.S. dollars sent to Iraq has simply disappeared and Americans can’t hold on to their homes; as public schools continue to be a last resort for parents without resources, when regular people who’ve worked hard all their lives are afraid to retire and some rich guy buys a $230,000 guard dog, it’s hard to argue that the world is falling down.

Bad as it is it’s difficult to find anyone to talk to about it, much less take action. Call me a Luddite, but it seems that with all the new technology we’re addicted to we’re further a part and communicating less than ever. Behind all the hype about the fabulousness of social networking, for the m ost part here in the USA, there’s no there there. Instead there’s a surfeit of irrelevant infotainment passing as news, self-referential preening in the guise of sharing and intimacy; cliques passing as interest groups, and endless one-up-personship. It’s high tech, virtual 24 hour junior high school. Why, why, why? Wasn’t the real thing bad enough?

What are we doing in this place, where our relationships become less actual and more more virtual each day? Where smiley or frowney face icons and other pre-fabricated symbols express emotion? Where hearing the sound of another person’s voice over the telephone, much less over dinner!, is an odd, disturbing or charming reminder of the way we were. What’s beyond the giggles and sneers at Congressman Weiner’s texting, sexting and the release of pictures of his penis and his macho posturing in gym garb into cyberspace – shades of Bishop Eddie Long? The sad, tawdry, and boring truth is that his behavior is commonplace, mundane, his sexual posing not new or revelatory, but banal. As so many have noted, such behavior goes on all the time. We give more than cursory notice only because Weiner is an elected official and got caught. We are appalled not at what he did but that someone in his position was idiotic enough to do it. (As for President Obama’s comment that “If it was me, I’d resign,” well, yeah, but the point is it would never be you, Obama. You’re too smart, circumspect, cautious, controlling – and did I say aware of what it means to be a Black man in America? – to take pictures of any part of your anatomy, including your face, and privately send it to individuals, especially individual white women. Rustle up that lynch mob, boys!)

In the end, there’s something sad and lonely and shabby about Anthony Weiner’s stupid, arrogant actions and technology posing as community and activism as the world falls down. So-called social media has convinced us that texts, tweets, and Facebook postings are equivalent to the touch, feel, sight, smell and sound of actual, not virtual, human contact. It seems that we have lost sight of the notion of technology as a means to facilitate real world connections, that in too many instances the medium has indeed become the message. Change, community, and collective action comes about in real, actual time, not in the sorta’, almost, but never quite there virtual world, but in the messy intimacy of real engagement, not hip tweets, Facebook cliques, or photographs of weiners or yesterday’s dinner.

Jill Nelson 6/14/11 – The blog with the musical notes!

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Just Thinking..., NiaOnline.com Link, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Silence of the Plants

June 8th, 2011

Relaxing in the Garden Image courtesy the author


Beauty, surprise, color, fragrance, texture, taste, sound, the plants in the garden offer me all these, a feast for the senses, from the impossible purple-blue of a Clematis to the delicate drop of sweetness hidden in the center of a honeysuckle’s flower. Outside the garden the world rushes on, for the most absent sanity, privacy, or the silence necessary to introspection. Here, a tsunami of information, much of it petty, purient, and useless, is constant. In the garden I find what I deeply value in the world today, silence. Plants do not ask, demand, talk back, chatter, or threaten. Their needs, for varying amounts of water, light, nutrients, are clear, simple, easily satisfied. Even when they’re not, when there is no rain, or too much sun or too many clouds, when the soil is overworked, bitter, devoid of a single scrawny worm signaling the presence of rich, healthy soil, plants usually hang in there. They do not make excuses, complain, run away, try to pretnd they are something they’re not. They may not thrive, but they manage to survive until the rains come or go, the sun shines or sets, the worms return, until nature delivers what is needed. Best of all they do so silently, patiently, without complaint.

In work, in life, in a world full of words, it is easy to be overwhelmed. Sometimes there is so much talk, so many queries, needs, demands, confessions and retractions, and general commentary swirling around that it all melts together into an incomprehensible cacaphony. I know somewhere in this 24 hour news cycle of too much information there are important things being said, but sometimes I’ll be damned if I can make it out. Then, the whole world seems to be talkin’ loud and sayin’ nothin’ and it’s time to go to the silence of the plants.

In the garden, it is quiet. The plants may very well have voices, a secret life, but they are not discernible to me. Here, among the plants, the language is soft, tender, composed of sound, not words. The garden’s voice is that of a bee buzzing or fly zipping by; the subtle, totally different sounds the wind makes when it blows through the leaves of a birch tree or the stalks of young flowers; the tinkling, giggling, sometimes rasping sound as the wind rushes through and pushes the slender leaves of tall grasses against one another. The garden sings a lovely, tender, seductive song without words, worry or judgement, a natural and nurturing meditation ripe with color, beauty, texture and intoxicating fragance, ours to enjoy, wordlessly, temporary respite from the sound and the fury.

Of Interest:
Here’s a preview of a coming documentary, “Dark Girls,” as well as a brief article on the film from TheRoot.com. Your thoughts about this film that seeks to examine discrimination based on skin color in the Black community? Does the film speak to you? Why or why not?

Jill Nelson 6/7/11 – The blog with the musical notes!

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Just Thinking..., NiaOnline.com Link, Uncategorized | No Comments »

No Time to be Smug

June 1st, 2011

President Barack Obama Official White House Photo by Pete Souza


Looking at the field of prospective contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, it’s tempting to feel smug. But given the volitility and ignorance of much of the American electorate and the continuing and effective efforts by Republicans to disenfranchise and erect obstacles to suppress voters, to do so could be perilous. In a steadily diminishing field of candidates populated largely by extremists, opportunists and idiots – and sometimes all of the above – it would seem that President Obama could relax, particularly since potential candidates with any intelligence have been smart enough to not throw their hats into the turbulent waters of Tea Party loyalists, GOP extremists, and a country engaged in two wars and struggling to pull itself out of severe crisis. Who’d want to run when a recently released Gallup Poll of potential voters gave former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney 17 percent and Sarah Palin 15 percent, with the highest percentage of voters, 22 percent, choosing “None of the above” or having no preference?

Yet it’s not impossible that dislike of Barack Obama, his administration and it’s policies might be harnessed by some candidate and transformed into a campaign that speaks to many Americans. While it’s difficult to see who has the potential to do that at this moment, the fluidity of politics and domestic and international events teach us that anything can happen. There’s no time to be smug. That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy Obama’s comedic trouncing of Donald Trump and other possible GOP candidates at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Or chuckle at Sarah Palin’s current “One Nation” – definitely not under a groove! – East Coast bus tour – or is it a book tour – who’s destination she’ll share only with Fox News? Or Mitt Romney trying to disavow the health care plan he instituted when he was Massachusetts governor, a plan disturbing similar to the Republican’s much revile ObamaCare. Or Newt Gingrich, the Washington insider desperately trying to rebrand himself as an outsider and explain a half million dollars in jewelry purchases with his Tiffany credit card. Then there’s Herman Cain, former CEO of the Godfather Pizza chain, anti-abortion, and the obligatory black candidate. Michelle Bachmann, the Congresswoman from Minnesota who knows less about American history and the Constitution than my 9-year-old grandson. (Actually, I take that back: it’s an insult to my grandson!)

The President is poised, confident, in control. He is clearly a superb politician and a master of giving his opponents so much rope they effectively hang themselves. He is imperfect, but his flaws pale in the sea of reactionary less-than-mediocrity that surrounds him. The offer to contributors on the re-election website, of a mug with his picture on one side above the words “Made in the USA” and his recently released long form birth certificate on the other evidence of, not smugness, but political savvy and a wicked sense of humor.

Jill Nelson 5/31/11 – The blog with the musical notes!

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Just Thinking..., NiaOnline.com Link, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Talkin’ Loud, Sayin’ Nothin’

May 26th, 2011

Here’s a link to a piece I posted today, 5/26/11, on for TheRoot.com, a provocative site worth bookmarking.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Deep & Beautiful

May 25th, 2011

African American Flag by David Hammons Image courtesy the author


In the past week I received several dozen outraged emails about some idiot who blogged on Psychology Today’s website that Black women are “significantly less attractive than women of other races” because, according to him, we have too much testosterone. The author, psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, has a history of incendiary, unscientific, attention grabbing writings, and this one was apparently his latest. In response to the immediate uproar from readers when his posting went viral, Psychology Today pulled the posting within a day. Here’s a link to Kanazawa’s article on another site.

Not that I read all those emails. After the first few I deleted the avalanche of others once I saw from the subject line what they were about. I’ve been around long enough to know that there is no shortage of opportunities and reasons to be insulted as a woman and a Black women, and I’ve learned to avoid these petty, manufactured, self-aggrandizing pseudo-controversies. Sure, there’s an odd comfort in feeling both offended and righteously indignant, but to what end? More productive to focus my energy on the many substantive issues affecting women where my attention might actually have a positive impact. Reproductive justice, encouraging young women, HIV/AIDS, violence against women, incarceration; the list is long.

It’s a waste of time and energy to allow myself to be pimped by others, or to indulge in easy outrage. A glance around me in any space where there are Black women – including in the mirror – reinforces what I already know, that in spite of the dominant culture’s efforts to force us into a mold, notions of beauty are so subjective as to be irrelevant. And skin deep. We are beautiful in all our shapes, textures, ages, styles, attitudes, and colors. Do I really have time to buy into some ignorant opportunist’s contention that we’re not? For what? Why should I be manipulated into using my energy to be insulted and outraged – and passing on my anger to others via cyberspace – when a far better use would be to focus my energy and passion to contribute to or create something that embraces and supports black women?

Sometimes I think we’re so used to being ‘buked, scorned and dissed that we’re addicted to the pain and outrage it creates and the choreograped ritual of reacting to it. And yes, there’s a certain unity in realizing that women all over the country or the world are all insulted and angry over the same thing. But wouldn’t be be a lot more powerful if got angry over stuff that really matters, rather than in response to the latest stupid insult, and unite proactively and positively to do something about it? We all know that it’s a lot easier to react to what is than imagine and create what could be. Have we forgotten that some things aren’t worth wasting our time or dignifying with an answer?

Jill Nelson 5/24/11 – The blog with the musical notes!

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Benefits of Friendship

May 17th, 2011

Friends
Image courtesy Getty Images


I’ve been thinking lately about the possibilities and limitations of friendship. Is it a good thing to sometimes hold back and pull our punches in friendships, or it being silent and circumspect an aspect of fear of intimacy? We’re living in difficult times, economically, politically, culturally, and in numerous other ways, and on some level every one of my friends is struggling. Some are unemployed, others under-employed, some in the midst of the process of recreating themselves to adapt to a shrinking and changing job market. Most of my close friends are either stretching themselves and their resources to help aging and sometimes ill parents – and negotiating fractious relationships with health care providers, insurance companies, and family members to do so – or mourning the loss of a parent. Those with children, no matter their age, are always worrying on some level. Friends with partners have problems too, as do those without companions. Health, education, general welfare, everyone’s got something going on that’s adding stress, yet we are silent.

It’s not that I don’t talk with my friends about the difficulties and challenges in our lives, but it seems to me this conversations are proscribed, not necessarily a bad thing. For the most part my friends and I don’t talk in depth about the things that are challenging and sometimes close to overwhelming, us. If we do, these conversations are usually fleeting, even in friendships that are longtime and intimate. Yet this does not make the friendship less valuable, but perhaps more so. Why? One friend shrugs and asks simply, “What’s the use of complaining?” Another sister who has a great gig points out that it’s uncomfortable and insensitive for her to complain about the demands of her elderly parents to friends who have recently lost both parents and their job. “I’m trying to relax and escape all that drama when I hang out with my girls,” explains another woman, quick to point out that she’s equally circumspect with male friends. Then there’s the need to front or save face, or at least put on a happier one than you really feel. This response is fuled by varying measures of insecurity, fear that friends will think less of you if you let it all hang out, and friendly affection, as in, just because I’m feeling lousy there’s no need to make my friends feel bad, too. More fun and also therapeutic to push the chaos to the back of my mind, tune out of my angst, and have a good time with close friends. Reality, and it’s possibilities and limitations, will be back soon enough. Maybe part of the joy of friendship is that it offers a safe space to simply take a break, let go, and enjoy, surrounded by like-minded people who have your back. Now, that’s deep.

Is one of the ways we nurture and preserve friendships knowing when to remain silent? Is escape from every day stress one of the joys of friendship? Do we want – or need – to be completely candid with friends? With anyone? What do you think? Maybe it’s cool to recognize and embrace both the possibilities and limits of friendships and choose wisely to – at least sometimes – save the deep, difficult, and complex conversations for me and my therapist. I hope she has someone to talk to as well.

Jill Nelson 5/17/11 – The blog with the musical notes!

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Just Thinking..., NiaOnline.com Link, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Video from “Remixed and Remastered” Conference, The New School, 4/8/11

May 11th, 2011

Image courtesy The New School, Media Studies

On April 8 I gave the keynote at a conference on film distribution at The New School in New York City, Remixed and Remastered: Defining and Distributing the Black Image in the Era of Globalization. Great energy and conference! For those who couldn’t attend but might be interested in my remarks, here’s a link to the video. Here are links if you’d like to see clips from some of the films featured at the conference, and my subsequent column. Enjoy, and as always, feedback welcome!

5/11/11

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Just Thinking..., Uncategorized | No Comments »

Controlling the Connections

May 11th, 2011

Sometimes, inundated and overwhelmed by all the technology we have to connect us to other people – cellphones, computers, email, texting, ipads, smartphones – and the social networking sites designed to stimulate a virtual community, I feel farther away from other people. Technology may be in abundance, but it’s still possible, in the midst of this brave new world of constant – though virtual – connectedness, to feel alone, alienated and out of touch. What I’ve learned is that technology must be used thoughtfully, with control and in moderation.

Absent restraints, technology easily loses functionality and becomes merely another addictive, albeit a legal and socially acceptable and encouraged one. Is it really necessary to check our email dozen times a day? Check texts in the movies? Turn our phones back on the minute the curtain closes or the credits roll? Answer the phone when we’re out with friends? It is as if the technology enables us to avoid ever being in the moment. The 21st century of looking over the shoulder of the person we are talking too for someone better, we use technology to surf life for something more compelling than the moment we are in. When the technology that connects us to one another becomes an end in itself and no longer a means to bring humans together for human contact, it is an addiction. It loses it’s transformational power and becomes voyeuristic, alienating, narcissistic and plain unsettling.

Over the past few months, in the interest of escaping what increasingly looked like an addiction to technology for it’s own sake and a habit with lots of low low’s but none of the high high’s associated with other addictions – so where’s the fun? – I’ve curtailed my wanton behavior and instituted a few restrictions:

During the workday, I check my email twice between 9 am and after 5 pm. Or I try to only check twice during the day. The truth is, email is largely a way to avoid the hard work of doing my job under the pretense of checking important messages. Truthfully, very few are important, and the ones that are can wait until after 5.

I don’t visit Facebook. Though I haven’t yet permanently deleted my page, I haven’t been on it for weeks and truly feel better for it. It’s time consuming, voyeuristic, narcissistic, and this great virtual community often made me feel lonely. My friend Aishah says, “I don’t have public friendships.” I don’t think I want to have them either.

I stay off the Internet as much as possible during the workday. If I’m not checking my email, or FB page, or reading news headlines, articles, links, on and on and on, there’s no need to be on the web. I’m more productive when I stay pretty much in my word processing program and write, but it sure feels odd, as if I’ve time travelled into a distant past. Wow, this musta’ been what it felt like to use a typewriter, wite-out, and have to go to the library to fact check. Actually, that was what it was like when I started writing, not all that long ago, either.

I turn off my cellphone when with friends. If I forget to turn it off and it rings, I don’t answer and turn it off. Oddly, this seems to drive some people crazy; they’d answer my phone if they could. Actually, it makes me feel free, relaxed, and in the moment. For the record I haven’t missed a call from President Obama, the Dali Lama, Aretha, Powerball, or anyone else possibly considered urgent.

It hasn’t been easy kicking the habit, but I’m more productive and feel more positive and centered. I’m also able to more deeply appreciate the communication and information technology brings me now that I’m not constantly gobbling down whatever comes my way. This new way of interacting with technology is not unlike making better food choices. When I give myself a limited number of fat calories, I’m a lot ore selective about where that fat comes from. I also have more time. To read, spend with friends, think. Whatever I do, my mind is clearer. Less cluttered with a glut of too much un-solicited, often useless information, not to mention the need to post on Facebook or Tweet or Text or Phone-in some pseudo-hip but equally useless information of my own.

Your thoughts? Is the role technology plays in your life positive, negative, both? Do you feel the need to manage it? How?

(FYI: There are no links in this blog in keeping with less reliance on technology. Links return next week!)

Jill Nelson 5/10/11 – The blog with the musical notes!

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Just Thinking..., NiaOnline.com Link, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries