Articulated Unsteadiness

How often does it happen to you that you feel you're not getting understood properly?  How often your jokes get misunderstood and misinterpreted?  It happens, all right?  But how often do you feel that you're not comfortable around the people who belonged to your comfort zone?  It's hard, right?  

I'm having a kind of restless feeling for no particular reason.  Little things bother me, I know.  Then something "told" me to listen to some music to avoid the crap inside my head.  I opened the folder of my music collection, felt to listen to some instrumentals and coincidentally Beethoven seemed to grab my attention.  I selected some tracks and it started to be played.  

Moonlight Sonata!  Though randomly, but I felt 'that's exactly how I'm feeling right now, if my mental state could've been articulated through music, this is exactly it'!  A kind of haunted silence, and then a kind of confusion and sadness is there in this symphony. 

I'm feeling good.  I really like this idea of putting my worries/restlessness through words and letting them ebb away.  Sometimes you really can't figure out the sources of your mental unsteadiness and I feel it's better not to react on them or expect some miraculous thing to happen and let it go away.

Am I Infoholic?

I follow a popular blog Zen Habits where Leo Babauta lately wrote about A Survival Guide for Beating Information Addiction.  As I was going through it, I became quite unsure whether I'm an information addict or not. 

According to that post, some major symptoms of being infoholic include constantly checking emails/social networking sites and feeling anxious being disconnected even for a day.  I was thinking about it and I don't really find myself completely fitting into that template.  

I do check emails and Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Blogger minimum 50 times a day to see if there's any update.  I was thinking if that's unusual or not.  Let's dissect a bit more. 

I behave this way in several situations. 

• When I've put my key already in the virtual world, like a status update, a tweet, or I've mailed someone.  Then I have this urge to know how people respond to it.  It can be important or an unimportant issue being discussed.  
• Now the addictive part comes.  For unimportant things, it's not usual to act in an addictive manner, unless you're NOT SO BUSY!  Are you not remaining busy when you're supposed to be busy?
• I may be procrastinating on something.  I'm just using it as an escape route for not doing what I'm supposed to do.  For example, I used to be so infoholic at the time of exams! 

I don't behave as an infoholic when I'm,

• Really enjoying doing something and remaining busy with that work.  It may be office work or any other work.  For instance, sometimes I get so engrossed doing some data analysis, that checking mails is the last thing on my mind at that very moment.
• I do check many times whether I have any update through my mobile when I'm moving.  But if I'm really enjoying something, like I'm out with friends, talking to interesting people, watching something interesting on TV, or cooking, I don't really get desperate to check the updates.  
• I CAN imagine spending an entire day disconnected. 

Are you taking a break from work/after work?  After coming home from office, I read many blogs and browse random things.  Although, not all might be a productive use of my time.  It's okay if you're spending a relaxation time online.  But do you have an alternative?  Can you spend that time doing something productive?  May be a bit of free hand exercise?  Or just noting down and planning for some project that you've put aside for a while?  Or simply doing something worthwhile, may be watching a movie.

I have personally experienced the side effects of being information addicted.  You lose focus, get distracted, you try to do multiple things at a time.  Like I've been checking emails many times in the middle of writing this post (Does that mean I'm not enjoying writing?).  Whatever it is, it's not productive.

I liked one idea given in the survival guide, and that is to use positive public pressure.  The idea is nothing but having accountability.  As it said, leverage the power of social media to beat social media.  Just like giving a status on Facebook, "I'm not going to use Facebook for the next 120 minutes!".  Sounds like fun, productive as well.  :)

Split Screen Sadness

With all the worries and stress around her, she really needed a miracle.  Miracle in terms of what, even she had no slightest idea!  She didn't expect any.

He bumped in like a real charmer, though unintentionally, a sheer coincidence, may be.  His presence works like a medicine for her.  A little eye contact, may be a smile or few words of courtesy feel more than enough.  Things start to heal inside her.  Inner peace starts to seem not too far away.  It's funny how quickly your mood can change, how deep your heart can sink, and how much one person can affect you.  

And it hurts so bad at the same time.  She still wonders why things happened the way they happened.  The end is not too far.  She wishes if she could write down every word he says.  The memories are precious to her, if not to him.