Facebook and Trips vs. Vacations

I totally need better titles for my blogs. "Inside the Mind of a Nathan" and "Pieces to My Story" are way too bleh. I have no idea what I tried at the very beginning, but I relented very quickly.

Facebook. It's a thing. A tiresome thing. Almost as tiresome as so many things. I'm trying to hold on, but it's crap. Mostly.

I've been trying to figure out what's going on inside people's minds who announce that they are temporarily leaving Facebook (or some kind of hiatus like that). The idealistic conclusion is that they've relied on Facebook to host much of their communication (which isn't too farfetched); thus, they must request that the people who contact them regularly must now do so through a different medium.

Come on, folks: it's 2016. If you interact with a person regularly, you have their Facebook, cell number, home number (if they have one), and email address – at the very least. I think we can easily refute the notion that Facebook is their main forum of communication.

What's next? My suspicion is that they – under the guise of rejecting Facebook's self-obsession – have fallen into that very trap. They are (it seems), more or less, saying, "I feel that Facebook is too consumeristic and self-obsessed. I am now taking a non-committal stand against it by 'turning off' my Facebook for a while. Please notice how avant-garde I am, and give me attention through some other avenues."

I can't quite craft any other conclusions.

And don't get me wrong; I'm not saying I am above the love of attention. I have a bloody blog for internet's sake. The Facebook pretense is a bit much though.

In other news, I've been sleeping a dash better. Some day, however, I would like to take a real, proper vacation. I recently read an article that distinguished between taking a trip and taking a vacation. In most cases, people take trips. This is ok. This is good. It's not a vacation. A trip is where you are still planning and plotting and keeping things in order. A trip is where you're taking care of your kids and you've scheduled a bunch of healthy, educational activities for them. A trip is where you may come home with more gladness, but you still come home with less energy.

A vacation is where you rest. Your kids may come along, but you rest. There are luxuries, and those vary from person to person, but you rest. You don't plan too hard; you rest. You don't keep everything in control; you rest. If you go to a museum, it's because you wandered into one at your leisure. If you go on a hike, it's because your body needed it and the day was sunny.

I forget exactly how she phrased it, but a friend of mine once said she wanted to take an all-inclusive vacation where she'd just sit on the beach and read. That might be a bit wasteful, but it somewhat identifies the essence of vacation: you don't have to worry. It's all available if necessary, but you can rest if you want.

I could use a vacation. I wouldn't know how to use it, but I'd probably figure it out. I imagine I'd waste the first few days: something trivial, fidgety, or ineffective like playing video games. Video games have their place of course, but they're not fully restful in many cases. So I'd start off the first few days just wasting time, maybe just to test the fact that I'm really not expected to do anything. I'd probably eventually drift into reading. And then I'd drift into writing!

I'm kinda avoiding Werbel. It's hard work to write sustainedly. Even when I know what I want to write next, I still feel the energy needed to perform such a task. That's why I tell my students (and myself) to write a little bit every day: writer's stamina.

How many publishers will turn me down before I get one? J.K. Rowling was turned down over 10 times.

Shh shh. Write a bloody book first.

I just realized that one of the most cumbersome things about writing Werbel's story is depicting what I see. I like action and dialogue, but I really do see scenery and images. It's not a very good book. It's my first practice book. Just keep writing. Just keep writing. What do we do? We write, write, write!

Alrighty, time to writey.

But first, Marek Ciba is a funny man. We were playing Sternenfahrer last night, and he called they freight rings "ringy dingies" and the jets "jetty betties." It made me chuckle :D

He and his wife are leaving tomorrow. I'm saddened.