I am the type of person who needs her email inbox mostly empty to focus on work.  I can’t sit down and write when there are unanswered emails piling up.  If we go on a trip, I have a digital folder where I place all messages I need to answer when I return just so my inbox can continue to look nice and neat while we’re away.  For me, a cluttered inbox = a cluttered mind.

Keeping that inbox neat steals from my work time, by which I mean my writing time.  I not only lose an hour in the morning writing people back, but my finger automatically flicks to my email while I’m working, and when I see new messages, I need to open them and read them and sometimes respond to them.  In turn, my writing brain feels jumbled, rushed.  Chopped up into tiny fragments of concentration.

Opinionator in the New York Times addressed this as I was debating whether or not to log off email and hide all electronic devices.  Wait, scratch that.  I know I should log off email and hide the electronic devices.  I know that I need to remove the capability of checking email because the temptation is always there.  I guess what I was debating is… can I?  Do I have the willpower to not check email for hours at a time?

The truthful answer is usually no.

My hopeful answer is, “of course!”

Opinionator said it perfectly:

It is this constant background awareness of email that can cause real problems. Unlike traditional mail, email is always active. You can’t fire off an email and then put it completely out of mind; there is at least some slight awareness of the message’s continuing life, the possibility of a reply, the need to keep refreshing the stream of digital correspondence. And that’s the best-case scenario — more often, it is the nagging collection of unanswered emails that weighs on one’s mind.

And they made me gulp with the final point that we pay for every word.  I mean, no, not literally.  But if I’m answering emails, I’m not writing.  And if I’m not writing, I’m not getting paid.  So getting a handle on the email situation is a financial concern.

I affixed a post-it note to the top of my desk which reads:

Minimize email while writing.  Set timer to check if need be.

It’s a little sad that I need to write such a duh reminder to myself; will I really forget to not check email and get down to the business of writing?  Yes.  Yes, I’ll purposefully forget since checking email is easy and writing is hard.

So if it takes me some time to return your email, I apologize.  I’m trying to get a better system in place; one that allows me to be prompt but not feel overwhelmed or that I’m detracting from work time.  I’m sure I’ll reach a balance, right?  Like around the time when they implant that computer chip under the skin so I can just think answers and my brain will automatically send out emails on my behalf.

I know people believe that the main reason why I seem to get nothing done is because I’m ruining my concentration playing Candy Crush.  And yes, that is true.  But the email situation isn’t helping.

How do you feel about your inbox?  Does a messy inbox stress you out and keep you from concentrating on whatever else you need to do?

This past weekend was our anniversary, and we went to the beach to celebrate our marriage by running on the sand as if we were in a Vagisil commercial.  Actually we stood on the sand and stuffed our mouths with Thrashers.  But it’s mostly the same thing.

We also went to a famous Rehoboth pizza place that shall not be named because I’m cranky beyond words at this moment.  We had this brilliant idea to purchase sauce and bring it home so we could recreate the restaurant experience in our own kitchen.  Their pizza sauce is vegan.  Their tomato sauce is not.  Josh went up to the counter and bought the tomato sauce, not realizing that.  I didn’t look at it until we got home.  So we now have jars of unusable meat sauce on our hands.

So.

I need a great tomato sauce recipe for tonight.  Here are the parameters:

(1) I’d like it to cook for an hour or so.  I have a lot of quick tomato sauces, which are fine.  But I’m looking for a sauce that feels as if a lot of love has been put into it.  Time = love.  So I’d like it to cook for at least an hour.

(2) I’ve always preferred recipes that use canned tomatoes over fresh tomatoes.

(3) I am not a fan of oregano in sauce.  Basil is fine.  Parsley is fine.  A bay leaf is fine.  But oregano is not.

(4) It has to be vegetarian — no meat.  Cheese is okay, but no beef, pork, chicken, etc.

If you have a recipe that fits this description, or you know that your recipe can be tweaked to fit this description, leave it in the comment section below or email it to me.  If you’re okay with me posting your recipe at the bottom of this post so others can use it too, please let me know.  If you don’t say so, I won’t post it.

Thank you for saving our dinner.

Image: Nomadic Lass via Flickr

In the past few weeks, we’ve started a lot of things that we haven’t finished.  We’re working through a few books at once — Python for Kids and Super Scratch Programming Adventure.  We have an unfinished game of Zork on the iPad with the thief still skulking around.  We started Dash online and worked our way through a few lessons; and now that tab is staring at me while I write this, guilting me as if it can see that the Snap Circuits are out on the dining room table and I have a post-it note reminding me to order a Raspberry Pi.  Lego sets are half built, we have dice but no game in progress, and a solar robot with no sun (or perhaps just a bad panel).

Don’t even get me started on apps.  The Room is still unsolved, Can You Escape is holding me hostage, and I can’t remember the last time we watched a whole video with Khan Academy.

Sometimes I feel as if there is too much out there; too many cool opportunities, too many cool projects: just too many parts and books and sets that pile up, covering the surfaces of my house and making me feel very very anxious over how many things we’ve started but haven’t finished.

I mean, don’t we need to finish them?  Like library books?  Or… dinner?

I’ve been internally debating whether it’s better to go wide or go deep when it comes to interests.  Is it better to dabble, trying dozens of games and books and projects?  Or is it better to seriously commit to one thing — Python, let’s say — and immerse ourselves in it fully?

Because the kids have limited time.  Very limited time, once we toss in school and homework and language lessons and sports.  And I want them to discover all the things I thought were fun as a child, and experience all the new stuff that has come out in the meantime.  Some of the activities will fall to the wayside out of disinterest, and I think that’s okay.  They shouldn’t keep up with something if it doesn’t speak to them.  But that still leaves too many interesting possibilities to fit into a compact schedule.

It’s important for a child to follow a project through to its end point.  To decide to code a video game, and finish the video game so there is the pride that comes from having a finished product.  But how many finished products are enough finished products?  The Wolvog completed a great game at computer camp last summer.  Can we count that as a goal reached and now play around for the rest of the year?

I think more than other areas of life — at least for girls — there is a feeling that if a chosen area isn’t explored well and deeply, the cry of “fake geek” will ring out, as the Doubleclicks express so well.  I’d love to expose my kids to facets of Geekery that I don’t know well, such as Dungeons and Dragons.  It’s been over 20 years… uh… maybe more… since I’ve last played.  And unfortunately, it’s a game where it’s hard to find friendliness unless you go deep.  Unless you fully immerse yourself in that world and learn the rules and commit to a campaign.  I can’t speak to what it is like to try to fit in as a boy, but I can tell you what the ChickieNob will experience if she doesn’t delve deeper that the Ring trilogy and the Hobbit when it comes to Tolkien; her thoughts will be dismissed, her commentary written off.  Even if she does read the Silmarillion or The Children of Húrin, her ideas still may be dismissed due to her sex.  But at least she can fight back by shooting off all the names of Morwen.

And then there is just the bare fact of not going deep enough: you can’t, for instance, accomplish a lot with a surface understanding of coding.  Is it worth touching on programming at all if we’re not going to follow through to the point where we can depart from the books and do our own projects?  Sometimes depth matters beyond proving your Geek mettle.

With writing, there are some ideas that fully come to fruition, gently guided from a series of notes into a published novel.  There are many other ideas that grabbed me in the moment, filled me with excitement while I wrote, but fizzled out after a chapter or two.  It’s not that I didn’t love those stories, but it wasn’t the right time to tell them, either due to mood or timing or other commitments.  I know there is always a chance that I’ll circle back to those stories, especially if the right opportunity presents itself.

Maybe that’s the attitude I need to take with some of our projects.  That it is better at times to go wide until you find the place to go deep.  And plumbing the depths of a bit of Geekery isn’t something that happens for every project, book, or game started, but instead is something that can’t be always planned or predicted.  Sometimes we just stick with things because they stick with us.

Or sometimes your mother tells you that she spent a lot of money on that Lego set, and it better get built.

Just sayin’.

Do you think it’s better to go wide and try a lot of things, or go deep with just a few areas that interest you?

cross-posted with GeekDad

Remember when I said I was going to stop playing Candy Crush when I hit level 300 (since I missed my other promise to stop playing at level 200)?  I lied*.  Obviously.  Since Level 305 just turned me into a pathetic, frantic, credit-guzzling loser.

Level 305 wasn’t that difficult a level, and I thought I’d pass it in a try or two.  But one or two tries became something more like (cough) 20… maybe more.  And suddenly I wanted it done.  I convinced myself that I had to pass it last night.

So I went online to play because it seemed like the type of level that was less difficult online than it was on a device. (You know that, right? That different levels are easier online vs. on a device?) After a try or two, I got it down to only a few jellies unpopped; the closest I had come to winning up until that point.

I was so tired, and I just wanted to go to bed, and that is why I did what I did.  I had those free Facebook credits they give you when you pass level 35, and I used five of them to purchase five more moves.  That got me closer, but I still couldn’t clear the board.  So when the offer to pay eight credits for more moves and a wrapped candy came up, I took it.  I spent 13 tickets to get past this board.  And the worst part is that I cleared it with one more move, so the other moves were purchased but unused.

After the board cleared and it allowed me to pathetically beg for tickets, I didn’t feel that sense of relief I usually feel.  I felt like those times when I was babysitting as a teenager and I ate all of the family’s sugar cereal.  I mean, yes, the parents usually told me to help myself, but I never knew if they meant it.  So I would eat the cereal and then wash the dish so no one would know that I had gotten into their Count Chocula in a major way.  Because there was a shame in it too, a sense of gluttony.  I was there to do a job, keep their children alive, and instead I was taking food from their mouths.  Well, not actually out of their mouths because that’s gross.  But you know what I mean.  I was stealing breakfast.

Candy Crush gave me the credits as a thank you, but that doesn’t mean I was really meant to spend them.  And not on such a nothing level.  It would be understandable if I spent them on level 350.  But not level 305.  I could have passed that on my own if I hadn’t taken it so damn seriously.

I act as if I’ve never played a game before.

There is no way (that I know of) to get more Candy Crush credits unless I purchase them.  So now when I need a ticket or when I get to a truly hard board, I am screwed.  I feel as if a genie just offered me three wishes and I used one up by stupidly muttering to myself, “I wish I had a camera so I could take a picture of this genie!”

I deserve it.  I deserve it for playing Candy Crush so stupidly.

By the way, I’d like to publicly apologize (now that I’ve admitted to it) to all the families I babysat for: I ate your cereal.

* In my defense, I thought about quitting.  But then I got confused: do I quit before I play level 300, or do I quit after I play level 300?  I decided to go with after level 300, since beforehand, I would only be able to say that I passed 299 levels.  But once I moved onto level 301, it felt uneven again.  So I continued.  It’s a never-ending cycle.

I had a little bit of a headache after watching About Time due to a long cry.  By “long cry,” I mean that it started in the theater during the film, continued into the bathroom after the film, and I was still erupting in a few loose sobs on the way to the car.

It started with my friend, B, sitting next to me.  She was bawling before my brain clued me in that my throat was closing up from one of those giant lumps that form pre-tears.  And then I heard K sniffling down the aisle.  And finally I just let loose; one of those big, hard cries where you open the door and consider for a moment the enormity of life.  I mean, yes, we all have those moments during the day; usually in the form of worrying where we remember how precarious and precious life is.  But it’s not often that we’re sitting in a theater and suddenly realize that… oh my G-d… time is continuously moving and at some point, everyone we love will be gone.

Cue tears.

It wasn’t what I expected at all.  We joked that our husbands were probably home, thinking that we’d come home all amorous after watching a romantic comedy and we’d ravage them.  And maybe that is what would have happened if we had seen the filmmaker’s other movies like Love Actually or Notting Hill.  But that isn’t this film.  This film is sort of like Rachel Getting Married.  I mean, yes, that movie contains a wedding.  But it really isn’t the type of movie that makes you feel like getting laid.  It’s more the sort of film that makes you face plant on the comforter and just sob and sob and sob.

Which is all to say that I am 100% set on buying the film when it comes out on DVD, and it hasn’t even left the theater.  I’ve already looked to see if it’s available for pre-order because that’s how much I loved it.  And yes, I will likely go back and see it again.  And no, the holes in the plotline didn’t bother me.  Because it was that fabulous.  It was like having dinner with Chris Hemsworth (how he looks in Rush, not how he looks in Thor) and having him suddenly vomit on you.  I mean, yes, you’re covered in vomit, but you’re having dinner with Chris Hemsworth.  So you can totally ignore the chunks of food in your lap because… come on… he’s just so cute.  That’s how good this film is.  It can vomit on you, and you don’t mind.

Not that you’ll get vomited on if you go see it.

I got home and wrote my best friend that I thought I was seeing a love story, but I turned out to be seeing a LIFE story.  She couldn’t even respond to that cheesy line at all.  I mean, completely ignored it.  But that’s how emotional I was walking in from the film.

So… yeah… see it.  If for nothing else, the moment that Bill Weasley and Mr. Dursley are in the same room which is all kinds of wrong, but is also all kinds of right.

Go with someone who will cry with you; not some stoic movie watcher who is going to point out that there are a bunch of times they bend their own time traveling rules. I went with a bunch of girl friends, and I’m so glad we took one car because it was the best ride home.