Friends Don't Let Friends Unpause: Curing Your Email Addiction

Oh Boomerang.... I do love you! It's an app. Get it.

You fling those emails away from me, like a shield deflecting arrows, poisonous tranquilizing darts.

You take over my email interface with a big blue "unpause" button, daring me to unplug the dam. You are a dike holding back the flood threatening to inundate my life with non-urgent, vapid, moist emergencies.

I sit at my computer, trained by the incoming emails, to wait more. Wait for another fire to put out, another flame to quell. It's become a sick habit, a twisted pleasure.  I'm on it, I'm busy, I'm responsive.  What for?  And at the cost of what?

Now, when the dam unleashes its fury at 6am, 1pm, and 3pm, I see a small litany of unimportant requests. I deal with them in 5 minutes. I don't waste time waiting for them. I don't intrude upon my family, my fuel, my loves, waiting... waiting... waiting... for all the requests that might make me feel important.



Research shows how much energy it takes to shift attention between one's "deep work" and shallow work.  Research shows how damaging email is to the psyche, to our sense of being overwhelmed by external pressures.  I have succumbed to those pressures, and have seriously wondered how I could possibly survive in my job without my addiction to email.  I respond to emails when I get up at night to pee, I respond to emails in the middle of other meetings, and I respond to emails while my children are trying to get my attention. My stupid smart phone makes this impulse to responsiveness all the more seductive.

Small fires are so fast to put out. Just give me a second, I have to just write this one quick thing.

____________

Here's the genius of Boomerang, for someone like me.  I'm not required to exert any kind of will power.  Turning off my phone's email ability hasn't worked.  Scheduling email times hasn't worked. Telling others that I don't check email except at certain times most definitely doesn't work.  Self-restraint DOES NOT WORK.  The quick-hit of email responsiveness is too addictive. You know what I mean, right?  If I'm not doing anything else, at least I'm performing a virtual persona of productivity.

This is just not acceptable anymore, for reasons I won't go into now.

______________

Suffice to say, Boomerang is your solution if you suffer from something similar.   Every time I have that impulse to check email on my phone: too bad! Every time I want to stop grading papers so I can check email (it's so much more interesting, no?), too bad! Every time I want to avoid my children's requests to see if more urgent requests are transmitting online, too bad!  Every time I want to avoid taking out the trash, too bad! Every time I want to pretend I'm so important in front of somebody who intimidates me, too bad!

I just simply must do something else with myself than open up my fucking phone.  It's brilliant.

Boomerang is also so genius because of the language it uses on the button it highjacks your email interface with-- "Pause"/"Unpause."  When you're in a "Pause" timeframe, Boomerang takes over your email and lets you know!  You can override the pause, and unplug the dam.  If you make the fateful decision to click on "Unpause", then God save your soul.  A little time clock thing will start, and, like a bomb going off, you'll start to see your inbox fill up.  Boomerang makes it hard to open the floodgates, discouraging you to make that decision whimsically.  The psychology of this is perfect for me.  I can't easily unpause on my phone; I have to be on my computer to do so.  The dam is breachable, but it's not easy.  Your interface is always reminding you to "Pause" again.

Let's pause on this idea of pause.  I have read several books on the value of the sabbath, the pause built into our rituals.  I have read at length about how our current work ethos punishes pausers.  Extract labor, extract labor, extract labor-- to think of this in Karl Marx's terms.  The interstitial moments, when nothing is happening, where nothing is taking place, have no value in contemporary life.  My loved ones send me articles cut out about how we need a pause from technology. I find beautiful articles in Buddhism magazines about the detriments of technological distraction.  I "get" why my email addiction is a problem.  But I haven't been able to translate that knowledge into action because, frankly, I'm weak when it comes to discipline and will power. Don't even ask about how much wine I drink, or the egregiousness of excuses I can muster to justify getting an iced mocha on any given day.

For a weak soul like me, Boomerang is some kind of savior.  I'm sure I sound like a proselytizing fiend, and I'm not getting paid to write this.  I genuinely want to share my story with  you, dear reader, of an addiction solved and a soul saved from the torturous drip, drip, drip of the email inbox.

What a genius name!  Can't touch me!



Update: despite no mention in the downloading process (I'm also not very detailed in my reading of fine print. See above, reasons why I need more time afforded by getting off email: because I'm BUSY!), it turns out this app costs money at some point.

I'm currently exploring its beauty, and wondering whether I can manufacture the kind of will power required to do what Boomerang does for me.  I'm also wondering why Google hasn't already created this functionality.... Anyway, sorry if I misled anybody, and get ready for that beautiful blue "Unpause" button to just go away.

I think I'll pay, as my friend Janelle says, because it's like you're getting your money's worth in email vacation!

Is Trump a Liberal Stunt to Make America More Progressive?

Yeah, it's kind of a joke. But haven't you wondered?  He's so anathema to liberals.  But he's also anathema to conservatives.  Everybody's jumping ship.  The swamp is getting drained.  The art of the deal, or craziness?

Might there be some long-term good for progressives amid the horror?

For the record: I was one of those people who watched the 2016 election unfold into a lonely night of sleepless dystopia.  I have acquired a new series of anxiety conditions related to Trump: hives, anxiety, depression, etc. You know the drill.  I am a die-hard progressive and am disgusted and horrified and mostly heartbroken by the fraction of America that elected this beast.

But I'm starting to get it.  Even though I don't like it. Or agree with it.  I'm starting to get it.  We all need to start GETTING IT, even if we don't like it.

And, of course, as an academic, I am trying to pull myself outside of the vicissitudes of popular political media to ask "how is culture changing right under our noses? What's going on that people aren't talking about?"

Although I fundamentally disagree with the whole "empathy" bandwagon that liberals have espoused since Trump won, I do now for the first time understand (even though I disagree with) the logic of the so-called Trump base.  My politics always end up on the other side of them, but I'm starting to appreciate the "art of the deal," the irreverence to partisan status quo modus operandi, and the flashy political theatrics that constantly contradict his actions.

I was one of those privileged white people who didn't really recognize the shitstorm that was the race situation in American before Trump (B.T.).  I always understood that our wars, our prosperity, our definition of America had to do with the oppression of all kinds of people, and that this continues today.  But what is new A.T (After Trump) for this one liberal academic is a sense that I have to take these other viewpoints seriously, even if I don't agree with them.  I am now reading Strangers in Their Own Lands, along with Between the World and Me--not because I believe these two perspectives are relativistically all equally "right," (like "violence on all sides"), but because I do think that if we're going to move toward a more liberal society, we're going to need to engage these Trump supporters at their own terms.

In other words, what would it take to get into the same rooms and conversations with these isolationist, afraid folks who now have been brought even more out into the light?  It doesn't help us to get on our high horses, no matter how right they are.  So, what does it require from us to listen responsibly? Calling out is all fine and well, but to what end? What are we trying to achieve?

I don't know about you, but I want to change minds, hearts, and souls.  I think we have to figure out where our shared humanity is, instead of preach argumentation on a soapbox about our awesome liberal values.

You got my attention.  You're not just evil.  You are afraid.

Empathy is not the right word for this insight, and I am profoundly annoyed that popular discussion is so fixated on it.  Look it up, people, that's not what a national identity or a democratic state is based on.  Democracy is all about figuring out how to compromise amid differences.  I can scream my views more loudly, but all it will get me is laryngitis.

The zero-sum-game logic of Trump's base has been around for a long time.  He's not the problem.  He's just the symptom, it goes without saying. Let's stop beating this dead horse.  Let's stop talking about how crazy Trump is.  Obviously, he is.  But media that focuses on his craziness is missing his actual strategy, his actual actions.  Media coverage of Trump needs to change entirely, instead of applying the same metrics for this guy as they have for presidents past.  I'm not saying media should be inured to his craziness, but that they need to get much smarter about how they represent his craziness.  Just shaking heads over his crazy ain't getting us anywhere. I'm getting tired of it.

Trump's craziness is not interesting to me, beyond the usual shock factor that has always boosted his ratings.  I want to suggest that his swings and oscillations are totally consistent with each other, not signs of his eradic temperament. He is not, as liberals would like to think, and as pundits always tout in op-eds and late night shows, totally hypocritical.  Or at least, that's not just it. To dismiss his craziness as such is a grave mistake.

We are now living in a world where his hypocrisies make sense; we need to catch up.

For example: tweeting blustery stuff against immigration immediately after hanging out with "Chuck and Nancy" doing some bipartisan deals with democrats is an example of his potential to actually change the political ground we all stand on-- in potentially very liberal ways.   He doesn't care about allegiances; he cares most about his narcissism.  This may actually work in our favor.

Not to mention the way he's brought some conversations to the fore, and shaken up even the conservatives.  They have had to jump partisan ship to distance themselves from him.  Take Lindsay Graham, Lisa Murkowski, or John McCain, just as examples.  What will Trump do to the GOP?  I'm actually titillated to watch.

I wish pundits and news reporters would stop describing his inconsistencies as craziness-- it just fuels partisanship and the divisiveness in this country.  Trump shaking one hand while yanking the other's leg makes total sense; it is not hypocritical or two-faced.  It's precisely what he means by "the art of the deal" and "draining the swamp."  Hang out with Nancy one day, and Steve (Miller? Bannon?) the next.   Keep us wondering.   Is banishing Bannon part of his larger strategy?  Probably.

I am the biggest fan of the liberal news media, but the fact that they keep stomping moral high ground about Trump instead of seeing the genius of his strategy to play all sides is a sign that they may indeed need to improve.  There is new evidence out that media focused on "the negative" of Hillary's campaign more than his, and that the media handed him this election.  His assaults on the media are a brilliant way to distance himself from that debt, eh?

Obviously Trump is flipping the finger to the whole system, and regardless of his actual stances, this is why he has a base of people who love him.  I can't believe I'm going to say it, but I also sort of love him for it.  "Screw you. And you. And you."  He hates Paul Ryan as much as he hates CNN.  They're all missing the point.  Break the rules, throw everything into the air and see where it lands.

Trump isn't really a die-hard ideologue or Republican.  His ego may actually work in liberals' favor sometimes, and that he has no loyalty to Republicans.  He wants to piss them off too.  How might this all work out well for liberal progressive agendas?

There are some interesting possibilities, and I'm surprised more pundits aren't talking about them.  Yes, he's appalling and makes me want to throw up and cry all the time.  What is happening to the American dream? Going to hell, yes.

I do have an American Studies training, so this is actually important to me.  What "we" stand for as a nation-- and all our historical hypocrisies-- is important to me.  But I wonder if it's worth getting over my response to his demeanor (wanting to throw up), in order to stand back and watch a bit, and see how these pieces all fall down.

Republicans like Flake, McCain, and even Graham may turn more liberal than we've ever seen, and just to appease their own fans! What a radical thought!

Republicans may decide it's better to go with pro-choice, or pro-immigration, or pro-liberal-thing-of-your-choice in order to shore up the reactionary tide against Trump.  Politics might actually trump partisanship-- finally!  When it becomes acceptable for Republicans to support climate scientists and DACA supporters, you know Trump is reworking politics in fascinating ways that may actually benefit liberal agendas.

Middle of the road Republicans are going to look downright liberal compared to Trump, but so too will middle of the road politicians be held to a "higher" standard than they were before.  If Trump can be the consummate hypocritical narcissistic ever to walk the planet, but still see the benefit in screwing off all his party-liners in order to "make a deal," then perhaps we're not fully in the apocalypse yet.

Let's pay attention to the deals, not the swill coming out of this man's mouth, pores, and ass. It's hard, I know, because he is truly abhorrent on so many levels.  But culture is shifting under our noses and feet as we sit here agape at his boorishness.  The chits may fall in interesting places that liberal progressives might take great advantage of, if we're paying attention, and if we're not so horrified by what he does to women's pussies.  He may very well drain the swamp, and for the better, moving even right-winged folks more left in an effort to distance themselves from him.

Don't stop protesting. Don't stop calling your congresspeople, organizing your communities, mustering passion where you never thought it existed before. I'm not trying to downplay the urgency of the times.  But I do think, if you're a progressive, you must be squirming in your seat with glee just a little about the ways that he pisses off his base, other GOP folks, the usual suspects, almost as much as he pisses us off.

He may turn our stomachs and push all our buttons, but I wonder about the long term.  Maybe he's actually some kind of Frankenstein fantasized in the darkest hour of liberal nightmares.

Resilience: A Keyword in Environmental Studies?

Everybody likes the idea of resilience, right?

Resilience connotes bounce-back-ability.  Grit.  Adapting to change and dodging hardship.  Surviving struggle.

Why wouldn't we want to design resilience into communities, cities, architecture, cultures, young people?  Why wouldn't we want to raise our kids this way?  Why wouldn't we want to study the ways in which these things have proven resilient in the past, in order to emulate them for the upcoming storms?

Or, put another way, why would we resist grit, given all the shit?



















We hear it like this:

What's wrong with millenials?  They lack resilience.

Why do we admire hardworking migrant farmworkers?  They're resilient.

What can we do about colonialism?  Cultural resilience.

Cities designed for climate change? Resilient.

Communities that can come out on top after a disaster?  Resilient.

Survivors of sexual violence, institutional racism, intergenerational trauma? Resilient.

Critiques of the word abound.  It's got a lot of problems, as these statements show.  Condescending, fetishizing, appropriating.....  It smacks of privilege.

It puts responsibility for pulling up bootstraps on the individual, and absolves structures and history of blame.

It erases, or risks appropriating, historical ways of managing colonial violence (e.g. Vizenor's concept of native "survivance").

In the context of climate change, "adaptation and resilience" become funding opportunities that accept business-as-usual carbon colonial-capitalism as inevitable and fixed.



Is it a good word? Can we talk about cultivating resilience in the Anthropocene without participating in all these erasures of blame and history?  Or is it just a worthy ideal we can all get on board with?

______________________

This keyword entry is inspired by a Facebook thread involving a cast of brilliant thinkers who expanded my own thinking immensely: Britta Spann, Julie Sze, Mary Mendoza, Jennifer Ladino, Deborah Miranda, Anita Mannur, Leena Dallasheh, Rachel Pye Hamling, Stacy Alaimo, Aubrey Streit Krug, and Dianna Fischetti.  I'd be so dumb and uninspired without these women.  Child development, social and clinical psychology, popular culture, indigenous studies, the environmental humanities-- these fields approach the term quite differently.  

"Are You Tired? You Look Tired!"; Or, "Why Aren't You Acting Like My Mom?"

If you read any of my posts, you know that I am thinking a lot about how to balance my love of teaching and the slippery slope that love falls into when I lose myself in their demands.  I'm sensitive to their feedback, worry about each of them, and do, in many ways, feel like their mom. And, as I noted in my last "rant" post, I do this willingly, and the payback is that teaching truly fuels me.

However, this past year's wealth of disasters--natural, political, and otherwise--has worn me (and many of you, and many of my students) very thin.  We're all keeping our heads just above (sometimes below) water, just treading, trying to anticipate when we'll have to take a deep breath to survive the next wave.  I can't help but feel obliged to help all my students do the same, and that sense of obligation is what's really going to drown me.

So, I've started taking some self-protection measures.  Dear reader, do not be mistaken that these are signs that I don't continue to absolutely adore my students and teaching.  I just want to be sure I can keep doing this for the long haul.  Ok, here it goes.  Some confessions:

1. Make it a goal to get worse student evaluations.  Did I just hear you gasp?  It's not that I could actually handle it if they were worse.  It would be like a sword in my heart, to be sure!  But it's a trick I play on myself to release myself of some of the minutae of the worries I have about them.  Being a hair less beholden to those evaluations in my approach to daily teaching life is probably healthy, right?

2. Ask for less feedback from students.  Is that another gasp?  I know, I'm totally losing my marbles.  I have always been one of those earnest professors that asks for feedback at every turn and then implements the feedback, and I have benefitted immensely from students participating in shaping the classes with me, and by them appreciating the transparency of my pedagogy.  I will still solicit feedback, not to worry.  But I am overwhelmed by it.  I'm frazzled, I'm losing my bandwidth to process all of the concerns. I feel like saying, "I'm doing the best I can. Give me a break." Sign of burnout? Yes.  I'll get back on the feedback wagon, but I'm just taking a short hiatus while I tread water.  Also, asking for feedback is weird: I'm getting all kinds of requests to do and solve problems that are not within my purview, and I worry I'm setting students up for expecting that I can solve these problems.  I'll fix this issue at some point, but I think I must have conveyed the message somewhere along the line that my teaching will resolve all their existential crises.  Maybe it's because my teaching seems to be causing all of their existential crises....  Oops.

3. Balance all the ways I identify as a teacher with realizing I'm also other things.  I love Rebecca Solnit's chapter in A Paradise Built in Hell, "Dorothy Day's Other Loves." It makes me cry. I have other loves besides this vocation, even though I love it.  I just have to spend some time remembering what those other loves are.  And I need to retreat into those loves-- just a little bit-- to remember how to breathe.

4. Get told I look tired by my students a lot more.  This one is a double-edged sword, and I can't say I set out with it as an explicit goal.  However, since I started taking some of these protective measures, I am spending less energy and time tripping over myself trying to perform my profound love for students.  When I see them, I don't just immediately light up and gush all over them like I used to.  I don't ask them, at every turn, like I used to, how they are and what's going on in their lives and how can I help?  I'm not acting like a customer service agent; I'm just sometimes thinking about other things like whether I have time to write, or what I want to make for dinner, or what to ask my kids about their day when I see them, or what I was doing on 9/11/01, or whether I should call my grandma, or whether "misplaced" is the right word to describe attention to climate change in the context of Harvey and Irma, or... This isn't about distraction, or denial.  I still love my students and get a lot of juice from them in return for this expenditure of brainpower on them.  But I am just slowing down, a la The Slow Professor, which means I'm just not bursting out of my seams all the time to please. I don't think this is tragic or that this is a sign that I am not absolutely in love with my students and profession anymore. On the contrary, I think it's something akin to sustaining this love.

But you're right, when I hear "you look tired, are you tired?", as I do more and more these days, what I'm really hearing is "why aren't you acting like my mother?"  Also, isn't there a rule that you're not supposed to comment on how a person looks?

Or maybe I really am just tired.