After 72 hours and several calls to technical support, an issue I am having is nearing resolution. All of the human beings I\u2019ve spoken with- some of whom simply could not help me- have been polite, attentive, and expressed what felt like genuine concern.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the people, but the broken systems and tools they\u2019re forced to work with. And this in a company with a market value of 16 billion dollars.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been reading, lately, books about Wall Street (which just goes to show you how good the writer of said books is, as it\u2019s not a subject I otherwise have much interest in). Talk about a broken system. Talk about tools that don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
Consider, also, what\u2019s going on in American politics right now. Nominees, duly selected, and utterly reviled at the same time.<\/p>\n
My own brain, even. A few days ago I wrote about short-circuiting my own natural tendency to get bogged down in pointless, fruitless thoughts. These damned heuristics.<\/p>\n
I see the appeal of shortcuts and tools, obviously, but they take on a life of their own. We go for efficiency, but there\u2019s no escaping entropy. I\u2019m trying to do more writing lately, right? But I end up spending more time playing with novel-organizing software, reading advice from so-called plot-masters, moving my manuscripts from Word to Scrivener to Google-docs. These processes can be emotionally satisfying\u2014but they\u2019re also absolutely unproductive. Maybe I get a burst and do some actually writing, but nothing\u2019s getting finished.<\/p>\n
Maybe this is why people tend towards a zen of simplicity. And urge to throw it all away. I\u2019m all for self-reflection, and blog posts like this one are simultaneously the very problem I\u2019m talking about and a kind of impetus to discover a solution. A kind of koan? I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m just trying to say I get why people are so gosh-darned smarmy about finding a way to \u201cjust be.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an excuse I make for myself, anyway, when I\u2019m frustrated by what I said above, about how \u201cnothing\u2019s getting finished.\u201d At least I\u2019m writing. At least I\u2019m being. And yet and yet and yet. All these tools, all these algorithms, all these soul-less artifacts.<\/p>\n
When I climb into bed at the end of the day, with a book, I\u2019m not thinking \u201clet\u2019s get lost in another world.\u201d I\u2019m thinking \u201clet\u2019s finish this and write a review and make note in my diary of my writing word-count and get on to the next book.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After 72 hours and several calls to technical support, an issue I am having is nearing resolution. All of the human beings I\u2019ve spoken with- some of whom simply could not help me- have been polite, attentive, and expressed what felt like genuine concern. It\u2019s not the people, but the broken systems and tools they\u2019re … <\/p>\n