Getting My Life in Order Part 2

Since the end of December I've been having a grand old time clicking the UNSUBSCRIBE links in dozens and dozens of emails that show up in my inboxes (on three major email accounts). I never read most of the stuff that comes in, instead I would just delete it. As it turns out, as long as you don't opt out of an email, the sender uses that as an opportunity to keep sending.
So, while the quick and dirty method of selecting a bunch of mails and deleting them was effective for the moment, it didn't stop anything from coming. A few people had warned me that clicking an unsubscribe link is like swatting a fly. That is, when you kill a single fly, a dozen of its friends show up to the funeral. So far I haven't had any experience like that.
It's nice to get some control of the inbox. Frankly I was a bit surprised at how much stuff comes in and piles up that I just don't ever bother to read. Ads, newsletters, press releases, you name it. Unless it is specific to my job, or what I'm working on at the moment these messages often just sat there waiting for me to do "something" with them. I'd kid myself that "eventually" I would get around to at least scanning these things, but that doesn't happen either.
So, I've set up a pretty good rules system in Apple Mail to take all the newsletters that I know I need to follow in the course of my job, and divert them to a NEWSLETTERS folder. At this writing there are 17 different newsletters that I actually do check out regularly for my job, and each of them goes to this folder.
Emails from coworkers go into individual folders as well. This has the added benefit of keeping conversation threads intact for easy reference. No more scrolling around the in box -- just go the right folder and the entire conversation is there.
A quick scan of the folder counters shows me which coworkers I need to respond to sooner rather than later, and the newsletters I still get are more easily scanned when they are in one folder.
But the key, as I said before, was my aggressive UNSUBSCRIBE campaign. That simple step alone has  eliminated maybe half the stuff that filled my inbox each day -- if not more. Now, when a new mail comes in, I get a perverse pleasure in deciding that I will read it, delete it, or click UNSUBSCRIBE right away.
Taking power over a technology that had gotten way out of control is very cool.

Writing it was the easy part

Now comes the hard part. My novel is done. Now I’m just doing line edits as I begin the search for an agent and publisher. Or I will self-publish if I have to. The idea is to get this thing out there to complete the cycle.

See more progress on: I will publish my novel, either through a publisher or by myself.

Getting my life in order

Not that my life is any huge mess you understand, but now is the time to make some changes for the New Year.

First -- and overarching -- pice of business is to get the darn book published one way or another. I am currently reading A.J. Jacobs' The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment and I was struck by the chapter on outsourcing. If you don't know Jacobs, he is a writer who lives a Plympton-esque life of trying extreme baehaviors. For example, in The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, he read the entire Encycolpedia Britannica from A to Z, and chronicled the experience. In The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, he tried to adhere to the Old Testament's rules and principles. Both books are fascinating (and highly recommended).
Annnnnnnnywaaaaayyy... In the new book there is a chapter about how Jacobs outsourced his life to a pair of personal assistants stationed in India. They did everything, including reading his son a bedtime story over the phone, and arguing with Jacobs' (long suffering) wife in his place.
In a post script to that section, he says that a reader who was unemployed decided to outsource his job search. And it worked. 
I wonder whether I can outsource my publishing attempts? Hmmmm...


One other thing I 'm doing right now is simplifying my email inbox by unsubscribing to everything that isn't sent from someone I know. How and why I got on these lists is long forgotten, but I haven't read any of the newsletters in ages. I was in the habit of just deleting the messages. Now, I hope, my in box will be cleaner and leaner. Unless, of course, the story I keep hearing about how unsubscribing just leads to getting your name on multiple other lists is true. We'll see.

What Am I Reading? And Then There's This

Bill Wasik, senior editor of Harper's Magazine, is the guy who created flash mobs. You've probably heard of them, maybe you've seen them on YouTube (here's a good one by the brilliant Improv Everywhere group). Basically it's a public scene where a large group of people, often strangers to each other, have been contacted in advance to arrive at a specific location, at a specific time, to perform a specific act, and then disperse.
In his book And Then There's This, Wasik relates tales of the early flash mobs (and how they were eventually co-opted by corporations for marketing) to introduce readers to larger world of viral culture. He examines the phenomenon of nanostories -- those trivial events and people that take on an overblown importance because of the echo chamber behavior of the internet. He gives a glimpse behind the curtain of hype as it relates to rock bands, guerilla marketers, and politicians, and shows how easily it can be manipulated.
This is a fascinating book, and fits nicely alongside the Gladwell volumes (The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers) as well as Steven Levitt's Freakonomics.

Character Sketch: Delta

Delta is in her late-20s. She is what might best be described as a child of nature, sort of a throwback to the 60s. She's thin, about five-two, has long dark-blonde curly hair that frames her head like a lion's mane, brown eyes and freckles across her nose. She's also rather spacey...

Lonny and BB pushed open the door and stepped into the blinding sunlight. As they walked around to the side of the building, BB saw the young woman again, playing fetch with her dog near Lonny's car. She scooped up the dog and walked up to them.

"Hey guys, all done with your ASAP?" she said. "You aren't headed south by any chance are you? Say down to Miami?" she asked.

"Yeah, we are," BB said. "How'd you know that?"

"I'm psychic," she said mysteriously, peering over her sunglasses. "Delta's got the gift."

"Delta?" BB said.

"That's me -- Delta Dawn LaCroix to be exact. Yes, I was named after that country song, but now I go by just one name, like Madonna, or Cher, or... or whoever else goes by just one name..." her face went blank for a second, like a light had flickered off and then back on. "Liberace I guess. This little fella is Boo, short for Boo Boo. I guess he goes by just one name too." 

She extended the dog's paw to Lonny, who shook it. 

"So you're a psychic, huh?" he said, humoring her.

"Oh yeah, I've got the gift," she said. "Yes, yes I do." She thought for a second. "At least I think I do."

BB rolled his eyes, a gesture that didn't go unnoticed.

"I know what you're thinking," she said. "You're thinking this girl's crazy, or she did one too many hits of acid when she was in high school, which may or may not be true -- either or both. But, see, I know this... deep within me I have this power." Delta closed her eyes and made a fist that she pressed against her forehead. "I just know things."

"And you psychically sensed that we were going to Miami, huh?" BB said.

"Yep," she answered brightly, her eyes open again. "Well, that and I kind of peeked and saw the open road map of Florida in your car."

"That's cheating," Lonny said. "That doesn't prove you're a psychic."

"Yeah... I know," Delta said. "But see, ever since I was a kid, I've had these super clear moments when I knew that I was, you know, different -- not Michael Jackson different, but different because I had a little extra mojo going on in my life." 

BB and Lonny glanced at each other. "Different," they said in unison.

"Yeah. It's kind of like I always had an awareness that other people didn't have. I was born in New Orleans, down in Creole country. My mother and I lived above an old storefront that had been converted into a church where they practiced voodoo. When my mother was pregnant with me, the resident voodoo priestess read her fortune and told her I'd be different. I was finally born during one of the worst lightning storms they ever had down there."

Delta reached into her pocket and pulled out a small leather pouch tied shut with a cord. "When I was just a few days old the priestess gave me this -- it's called a gri-gri -- to protect me from evil spirits and such. And then later, when I was about six, she pulled me aside, looked deep into my eyes and told me I had the gift."

"And what, exactly, is 'the gift'," asked BB.

"Well, I don't honestly know," Delta said. "At least not yet. The priestess was never really clear on that part of it, plus neither my mother nor I spoke Creole. But I've always had a feeling it has something to do with psychic abilities and such. Or not. But I know that someday I'm going to do something big, and lately that feeling has been getting stronger and stronger. I don't know what it is yet, but I can feel it coming. Sometimes I hear a voice that kind of guides me and keeps me out of trouble."

"Lately I can relate to that," Lonny said sheepishly.

"Uh huh, see?" Delta nodded, looking at BB and pointing her index finger at Lonny. "Anyway, it's something that's been building, and somewhere there's someone who can tell me what it is and what I'm supposed to do with it. I've been traveling around the country seeking out different spiritual teachers for the last year or so trying to learn more. That's why I'm here in this dump of a town."

"You thought you'd find the answer in New Jersey?" BB teased. 

"Weird, huh? But I heard there was a really far out guru here, a guy who went off to live in a cave in the woods for two years until he found enlightenment. Then he came out and told everyone he had found the meaning to life and stuff by communing with nature. I had to come here to see what he was all about. I found him here almost a week ago. It wasn't too hard really. He had a certain air about him, if you know what I mean."

"You mean an aura?" Lonny suggested.

"More like an 'auroma' -- he smelled like he hadn't bathed once in those two years," Delta said, wrinkling her nose. "It didn't really help him blend in too well with the locals.

"Anyway, he turned out to be more of a psycho than a psychic. He kept talking about some massive government conspiracy to make us all into zombies -- and I'm thinking 'television, duh!' you know? Plus he kept looking sideways at poor Boo here, like he would have eaten him for dinner if he could get away with it. A real loser. So now I'm on my way to Florida because rumor has it there's a voodoo priestess living in the Everglades who can see into the future and stuff."

"And you believe that?" Lonny asked.

"Who knows? Maybe this voodoo priestess can finally tell me what my voodoo priestess was trying to say. I don't know, I just feel compelled to go to Florida. It's that feeling that something is going to happen, you know? Anyway I want to check it out for myself. Maybe she can tell me what I need to know, maybe not. I'll eventually find the answer. And when I do -- watch out world." 

What am I reading? The Soul of a Chef

Like a lot of people I know, I usually juggle two or three books at a time. Just finished Michael Ruhlman's The Soul of a Chef. I am a die hard foodie. In fact at one point in my life I seriously considered quitting my job and going to culinary school. Ruhlman's book, the follow up to The Making of a Chef , allows me to continue to live out that dream vicariously through Ruhlman, who actually did go to culinary school. In this book he searches for what it actually means to be a chef. Along the way he understands that all the classical technique he was taught at the Culinary Institute of America represents just one aspect of cooking. The great chefs have a unique quality that sets them apart. Most interesting to me was Thomas Keller (owner/chef of the famous French Laundry) who treated the food he cooked with great respect, almost in a Buddhist style. The food had been, after all, a living thing and "gave its life" or, in the case of, say, a grain or vegetable, you must respect the farmer who cared enough to grow the food. Interesting concept.

Now THAT'S a long title

According to Mental Floss magazine, the full title of Charles Dickens' book David Copperfield is The Personal History, Experience, and Observation of David Copperfield, the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery, Which He Never Meant to be Published on Any Account.