Information overload, focus and blog extinction
Hauntingly sad but also some hauntingly beautiful advice. Happy October!
I love reading articles that seemingly have nothing to do with my own life, but still awaken something inside me. They might spark an idea, amuse me or simply be about a subject matter that I feel "into right now", in this moment or season of my life. Sometimes it's as simple as two themes colliding. Maybe the book I am currently reading is touching a bit on the subject I see someone else mention, so out of curiosity I click over and read it too.
I am seldom disappointed because there is so much interesting stuff to discover everywhere. These days, thinking about commonplacing, quoting others and writing, I have been trying to save more than usual (or maybe I've always been this way - horder of information). Sometimes I just bookmark the link and try to tag it so that I might find it in the future, but sometimes I find quotes that I want to save or keep for myself, and then I copy and paste them or type them out wherever I am. On the phone or on little notes everywhere. Haha, it's crazy. In any case, I do try to share a few of the books/links/quotes/sparks from time to time on my blog, and today is such a day! I am also sharing all this to the newsletter because… I’ve been absent since I started it. Back on the saddle, right?
Below is little sample of all the thousand of links I've clicked these past months - and found worth reading, saving, quoting - and now today, sharing! If this was a AA meeting I'd present myself and say:
Hi friends, my name is iHanna, I am a information hoarder!
Not sure I need support, all I need is for you to also share my obsession, like me and what I share - or simply heart it below... LOL.
As I am going through old blog posts on my blog Studio iHanna I notice almost all of the blogs and articles that I linked to 15 or even 5 years ago are not longer to be found on the interwebs. It makes me quite sad that I did not, at the time, save the quotes or ideas a bit better, but perhaps it is for the best (or I would probably try to recreate the entire blogosphere of the internet on my own because I really really dislike when information/ inspiration simply seams to have vanished)! But since last year and hence forth I will write a bit more for myself about why I link, what's catching my eye, what I am interested in. Maybe in 10 years I'll be grateful for those notes. Maybe not (probably not, right?).
I am a collector after all, of things, moments, quotes, the past. A curator of ideas and links. Here's today's little link love haul / list / post / share...
Focus your attention
Wendy McNaughton, an artist and Substack writer whose posts I read religiously, writes about creating (mostly through art and drawing) in a way that makes me fall in love with how she writes - and envy how easily she seams to push smart, thought-proviking ideas into the world. Recently she had a series of posts on activism as well, and wrote about a beautiful poster (now on my wish list) filled with big, bold text. It starts:
This is your assignment.
Feel all the things. Feel the hard things. The inexplicable things, the things that make you disavow humanity’s capacity for redemption. Feel all the maddening paradoxes. Feel overwhelmed, crazy. Feel uncertain. Feel angry. Feel afraid. Feel powerless. Feel frozen. And then
FOCUS.
Pick up your pen. Pick up your paintbrush...
- Read the rest from that poster Focus your attention in that post
It encourages you to take action, to stay creative, to be bold. I absolutely love it. It gives us permission to be overwhelmed, which I think is unavoidable, but then gently nudges us forward. And talking about overwhelm…
Information overload
I recently subscribed to Oliver Burkman's newsletter (not on substack) after reading a few of his online sample texts. One was about information overload, and as it is something I often feel, I was interested in how he advice us to handle it.
... this means treating your "to read" pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). After all, you presumably don't feel overwhelmed by all the unread books in the British Library – and not because there aren't an overwhelming number of them, but because it never occurred to you that it might be your job to get through them all.
quote from his Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket article
I love the way he writes and would like to get my hands on a copy of his new book Meditations for mortals, but it also makes me sad to be one of those people who it never occurred to that it is not my job to [insert random activity that I obsessively keep doing] "get through them all". Other things I can't quite: blogging, sharing my every find, curating the internet, mourning all blogs lost in the ether through the years, snapping photos without a plan, adding projects to my to-do-list without finishing the previous 10-1000 ones... and so on.
It's just life, I know.
By the way, I am not easy to persuade to add my email address to any newsletter these days (thank you so much for adding yours to mine if you did).
This is because I use my inbox as work tool and I am not very happy when I spend a lot of time there (it never feels productive). The only reason I subscribed to Oliver's newsletter The Imperfectionist is because there was no way of getting it as a RSS feed to Feedly which is where I read blogs. Feedly keeps my big river of information floating, and I love that it is contained there, always waiting for me. I don't have it set to notifications so the only way I know to read anything newly published is by opening the site or app, and I do that only when I actually have the time to read (mostly on the phone). Although it is a bucket, because all unread items stay there [unread] until I say so, I am trying to (when I feel overwhelmed by the number of awaiting articles) mark some "as read" and forget about them. I don't know what I might be missing, but it really is not my job to get through them all! Note to self.
By the way again, did you know that all "newsletters" on Substacks have a RSS feed? I absolutely love that fact and feel so grateful for it. To me it means that you do not have to use their app or subscribe via email to everyone you want to sample read or follow. (I think email newsletter is overwhelming, so I funnel the few ones I subscribe to into a special folder and then I forget to read them there). With Substack publications you can simply copy the url (for example mine is ihanna.substack.com) from the Substack you want to read and add it to your (free) account on Feedly where you will see all new posts pop up! It works exactly as old time blogs from any of the blog services. I haven't seen anyone mention this Substack feature yet, but I think it is brilliant.
Back to online finds.
Amplify the voices
I found this very cool site, Amplifier.org, that you must bookmark if you haven't already (especially interesting to teachers I think). It is all about posters and campaigns for important issues. Yes, it's political but you are too, no doubt about that. Amplifier is a nonprofit media lab building campaigns to amplify the most important movements of our times – according to themselves. Here you will find beautiful, free to use (and downloadable) art about all kind of subjects.
If you work in a place with lots of people, go print some that you agree with or think is important - and hang them up there, around town - everywhere! I love this idea to help all of us spread important messages of unity and democracy. If people don’t read blogs, maybe they read posters? I found amplifier via Anna Brons who writes about the power of political art also on Substack, in a whole series of posts that is really great. This series is about the importance of voting and giving voice to our opinions via art. In linked text she has a great interview with artist Lisa Solomon who, when asked what it means to be creative, answered:
I think being creative is really an act of observation and faith. We look, we seek, we want to learn, we are delighted, we find wonder… and then we find a way to express that to other people.
That spoke to me as well. I usually link to articles about creativity and write about my own process, but I think these things today is of importance too.
And overwhelm and focus - what could be more about the creative life, right?
That's three lovely names / link titles / ideas / articles. I think I'll stop there even though I have more ready to go. But I will save something for the next link love post. After all both my posts in the series "Inspiring me right now" contains "three things": the Process, Writings & Daily pages and Thrifty Thursday, collage sheets & an illustrated life by a creative mom,
:
I thought these were quite newly written, but OMG - they're already from last year. Because it has been so long since I did some link love, here's a bonus (not that fun) thought:
When blogs become extinct
It is from a blog called Urban Adventure League that I happened upon from another link list that I enjoy - also from an actual blog that is still being updated weekly! This Urban blog is not a regular read for me because it is about biking mostly, but it is written by someone who has been blogging since 2005 so almost 20 years (almost as long as me! I started my blog 2004 - back in April we should've celebrated the 20th birthday but I did not send out any invitations for some reason). Anyway, from the Urban Adventure blog I read an interesting blog post called On the ends and potential beginnings of blogging era. They write (and I could've written this myself):
...it became quickly apparent that the wave had already crested, and within a few years the number of blogs that posted regularly dwindled. By about 2015 there was only a hardy handful left, many of which posted sporadically and haphazardly.
Yet I still kept plugging away, despite the audience seeming to disappear, as this blog became a journal of my life, something I could look back on. I say “seeming to disappear” because my stats still look pretty good, and I get several “SEO service” spam emails a week. But people don’t engage with my blog in the way they used to–it used to be all comments, but now it’s mostly “likes”.
Urban Adventure League
I feel you man, I feel you. And my blog doesn't even have a like button (by my own choice). They also quote this from another blogger:
I realized that blogging, in the form we had come to know it, was about to become extinct.
That sentence makes me sad, maybe mostly because I did not realize this. Has everyone else moved on? Maybe. But I'm still here. Am I (almost) alone? Yes. Am I sad about that? Yes. Have I posted more sporadically this year than ever before? Yes. Will I give up? Nope.
If you'd like to keep me around, stay subscribed. Click over to Substack to “heart” it or comment on any of these ideas. I am also sharing this to my regular spot ihanna.nu because I am a creature of comfort, habit and old fashioned like that. And then I'll be back here (and there) soon. Because I am not a quitter.
I know how to focus. I know how to keep on in the face of overwhelm. I always pick up the pen (or paintbrush or camera or...). I will always be around. Until I'm not, of course.
If you feel that you got some value out of this blog post please consider (if you can) to donate a cup of coffee to the creator iHanna. It’s quick, easy and very very much appreciated:
I hope this was not information overload for you. If it was, all I can say is: a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
PS: But how about creating DIY Postcards?
I will open the DIY Postcard Swap Fall this weekend. Sign up then and stay tuned my friends. If you’re new and curious, I wrote about the swap in my last newsletter which was this spring. Of course I meant to write again sooner and then more often, yes indeed. But you know. Life.
If this is too much for you right now
Yes this is long, again. I like long format things, like books and articles and blog posts. If you feel overwhelmed it’s okay to 1) not read it at all (you do not need to tell me), 2) read it later maybe during the weekend, or 3) await the next newsletter which, maybe, will be shorter or: 4) x:it or instagram scroll your way to bliss where everything is quicker, smaller & gloriously bite-sized and it takes no time at all to digest two hours of content. ;-) xo
Your blog will never go extinct in my life. You bring me joy, inspiration, happiness, wonder, thought-provoking things to ponder!
Thanks so much for the mention! I love knowing people are using RSS to read and manage their substacks.