It Was the Worst of Times…

Dickens opens The Tale of Two Cities with opposition. “It was the best of times… It was the worst of times…” This got me thinking the other day when I used it as the title for one of my project’s posts that perhaps I should also look into the opposition. As an artist I can see the vision and can connect to it globally, but it is so easy to lose my focus and self with such powerful media constantly at my fingertips. I need to figure out someway to filter the information and contacts. I need to somehow bypass all the gunk that seems to bog me down that becomes irrelevant. Some of this information I want but much of it I don’t. It’s becoming too overwhelming with hours and hours wasted on trying to sort though it all to get to what I really need. My heart aches some times because though I have this vast network of people, inspiration, and potential connections that can help me, I still can not seem to get to the core of those dreams because I am overwhelmed by the technology from which it’s channeled. The Internet and Facebook are so new that we have not been able to harness them as viable tools yet. Right now it seems to be a mass of splatter as world, thoughts, and concepts collide into a mass of infinity. Facebook is definitely clunky and difficult to maneuver, and it seems the more they try to simplify for general consumption, making it easier for everyone to use the further it gets away from actually becoming practical. It seems that everyone on Facebook has hundreds of friends. The real question is how do we maintain and manage so many friends. I can no longer keep track of all the people I am communicating with and it’s becoming even more frustrating to establish and cultivate a relationship with them, when everyone else seems as overwhelmed with this as I am. I spend a great deal of time trying to wade though it all and respond and keep on top of it, but it completely sucks the time out of my day to do so. For it to become a viable tool it must first become something that we can organize. It needs a page that is private to the user that easily allows us to filter and group our contacts and friends, make notes on these connections, and be able to track how we have interacted with them in the past. I am meeting some of the most amazing people; I would like to maintain that connection but I only seem to see them briefly and they disappear. There are some built in tools in Facebook but they are not user friendly or easily accessible without jumping back and forth between multiple pages. We must be able to filter it more specifically to our needs, be able to define the parameters of what it is we want or need to see and not just be bombarded with masses and masses of information constantly streaming toward us. My focus this week is to figure out how to secure and make better use of these networking tools and somehow find a way to organize them. I guess I am feeling a bit frustrated lately and know I need to keep focused on my work and the process of creation while maintaining my balance.

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