Sandra’s Miscellany

Saw this on another site and just had to borrow it:

Communication with an engineer is only slightly more difficult than communication with the dead. –Lorren ‘Rus’ Stiles, Sr.

Hilarious! (My apologies to the engineers out there. But I have to say that my first experience with an engineer was when she handed me a lovely 4-page document about her program and it included everything — except the command to actually run the application.)

I just added a WebHelp-specific tip to the ole blog. It took me a while to sort out what went where, even with the helpful documentation provided by demi-god Peter Grainge.

So I wrote up my own instructions for calling WebHelp from a launch page. Tech writers, enjoy.

I’m not an old codger. I swear. I’m just the other side of 40 and enjoying the fact I have a little more life experience under my belt than I did when I was 20 and thought I was invincible.

But the other day I was chatting with the dSO and decided to make a cup of tea, and I asked him if we could pause the conversation while I put the kettle on. Being the easy-going guy he is, he said, “Sure.” Why did this seem necessary to me?

Because I find I’m not interested in multitasking anymore.

A few years ago I had a project management job where I would commonly work on three or four projects each day. I could walk down the hallway of developers and conduct several different, highly-detailed, technical conversations and an hour later still record those details — accurately — in requirements or product specifications documents.

Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve been out of that particular game, but I find myself less and less willing to attempt those feats of memory and acuity. It’s not that I can’t do it, but that I don’t want to.

I originally put this down to aging — Such feats don’t do anything for my self-esteem, I don’t feel the need to do eight things at once, I’m more patient. But the dSO suggested, when we talked about it (after the tea was made), that it was due to the mindfulness meditation I’m doing.

Becoming mindful of my surroundings, interactions, and feelings with the “now” means that multitasking is, essentially, distraction. If I multitask, I may be doing eight things at once, and may even be doing them well, but I’m distracting myself from being in the Now. I’m filling up my moments with activities (as I have a tendency to do) that may or may not be the task that actually lies before me.

Interestingly, multitasking has come up on some author email groups after some of us got hold of this article in the NY Times. Most of the conversation is based around whether or not one should use a cell phone while driving, but it seems to me that something much deeper is being indicated — that we constantly distract ourselves from being present in our own lives.

So I may not do as much every day, but I’m closer to being fully present in the things I do. Not only am I able to concentrate more fully on my singular tasks, but I feel less scattered and harried because of it.

One thing at a time for me.

Bombshell is no more, and I’m moving on to other (bigger, better) things. Obviously, I needed a new blog design, like changing a hairstyle after a break-up. I’ve been shopping around for other blog template designs, but most of the ones I liked didn’t work “out of the box,” so here’s the design I decided on.

The image is a bit too soft for me, but I’ve been doing some photo housecleaning and found a ton of vacation photos I can use instead. Once I get some of them scanned in, I’ll be good to go.

I’ve also expanded the site a bit to cover technical writing, which will be of little interest to most of this blog’s readers, but I need somewhere to store all that stuff until I can be bothered to launch a tech writing site. (See how easy it is for me to get over-committed?)

This week is the last push to the finish to get Without a Trace in to the editor and then it’ll be time to take a break!

Wow! Lots of fun stuff has been happening:

First off, the Athena Force continuity is scheduled to start releasing in August 2007 with Line of Sight.

Secondly, my book, #8 in the series, will be out in March and is called…Drum roll, please…

WITHOUT A TRACE

Wow! That’s soooooo much better than HUNTER and works great with a subplot I’ve got going. Brilliant!

Now I need help figuring out what to call this blog. “Real life” will be settling down for me in the next couple of weeks, and I’d like to get back to regular blogging, if y’all are still out there. Any suggestions on naming this thing?