https://jsoppenheim.com/2013/05/06/reading-richard-adams-_the-girl-in-a-swing_/

Back when, I would be done . . . and perhaps working on my own work . . . or working on a photograph . . . or a piece of music.

With multiple blogs, the Facebook nexus, news from everywhere in the world in near real time all day, redeveloping a necessary, even healthy, seclusion is proving challenging. For any of even middling independent means or involved with discretionary or leisure time, the challenging of organizing this mess is really pretty large.

The offer of money — independent contracting that obligates time on a calendar — may help organize the wealth in the information environment; developing a commitment to an independent project may also clear away some of the power of a sweeping information current.

Either way, we’re going to have to evolve “countermeasures”, lol, in web-related behaviors and habits.

On two blogs, my first and the latest in personal journals, I’ve kept a category titled “19th Century Modern” and (from an apartment) it’s partly about assuming aristocratic privilege _at any level of income_ and using time to get to the things we like to do — keeping a garden, playing a sport, working on an art — and if we’re too busy here on Facebook, we’re “chatyping” in place of all those other things.

Among my retired friends — I’m really not in their category — none have the complaint of being bored or of having too few activities or obligations. The drift is opposite: over-involvement in many things seems more the cause for concern. Plainly, for bright people with the means to volunteer time or indulge private pursuits, the environment, even if the real space thing is as small as a computing station in a room in a house, is as rich as can be.

The time has come on the “information highway” to throttle back some notches.

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“FTAC”: “From the Awesome Conversation” — my term for what is engaged in 1) the daily round of chatyping and cross-posting on Facebook, and 2) more specifically, the global democratized political conversation accessible in that venue.  “FTAC” has become a category on my “BackChannels” blog.

While one mind may well address many pursuits in life, one cannot ecologically, professionally, or socially do so equally or without the support of quite a bit of gathered financial and social capital — more than I’ve got, in any case.

Chatyping online seems a most convenient and least cost pursuit, but the same proves expensive in time and uncertain as regards various forms of return, from the development of influence, which is where I think I’ve done well on Facebook, to nurturing new business (not so good by way of how I feel about where I’m sitting at the moment).