Information overload, focus and blog extinction
I love reading articles that seemingly have nothing to do with my own life, but still awaken something inside me. They might spark an idea, amuse me or simply be about a subject matter that I’m “into right now”, in the moment or this season of my life. Sometimes it’s as simple as two themes colliding. Maybe the book I am currently reading is touching a bit on the subject I see someone else mention, so out of curiosity I click over and read it too. I am seldom disappointed because there is so much interesting stuff to discover everywhere. These days, thinking about commonplacing, quoting others and writing, I have been trying to save more than usual (or maybe I’ve always been this way – horder of information). Sometimes I just bookmark the link and try to tag it so that I might find it in the future, but sometimes I find quotes that I want to save or keep for myself, and then I copy and paste them or type them out where ever I am. On the phone or little notes everywhere. Haha, it’s crazy. In any case, I do try to share a few of the books/links/quotes/sparks from time to time and today is such a day! Lucky you.
Below is little sample of all the thousand of links I’ve clicked this past month and found worth reading, saving, watching, quoting – and now today, sharing! If this was a AA meeting I’d present myself as “Hi friends, my name is iHanna, I am a information hoarder!” Not sure I need your support, all I need is for you to also share an online article you love or click on over to these ones… LOL.
As I am going through old blog posts I notice almost all of the blogs and articles that I linked 15 or even 5 years ago are not longer to be found on the interwebs. It makes me quite sad that I did not, at the time, save the quotes or ideas a bit better, but perhaps it is for the best (or I would probably try to recreate the entire blogosphere of the internet on my own because I really really dislike when information/inspiration is deleted)! But hence forth I will write a bit more for myself about why I link, what’s catching my eye, what I am interested in. Maybe in 10 years I’ll be grateful for those notes. Maybe not (probably not, right?).
I am a collector after all, of things, moments, quotes, the past. A curator of ideas and links too. Here’s today’s little link love haul / list / post / share…
Focus your attention
Wendy Mcnaughton, a artist and Substacker whose posts I read religiously, writes about creating (mostly through art and drawing) in a way that makes me fall in love with her writing – and envy how easily she seams to push them out into the world. Recently she had a series of posts on activism as well, and wrote about a beautiful poster filled with just text. It starts:
This is your assignment.
Feel all the things. Feel the hard things. The inexplicable things, the things that make you disavow humanity’s capacity for redemption. Feel all the maddening paradoxes. Feel overwhelmed, crazy. Feel uncertain. Feel angry. Feel afraid. Feel powerless. Feel frozen. And then
FOCUS.
Pick up your pen. Pick up your paintbrush…
Read the rest from that poster Focus your attention in that post
The text on the poster encourages you to take action, to stay creative, to be bold. I absolutely love it. It gives us permission to be overwhelmed, which I think is unavoidable, but then gently nudges us forward. And talking about overwhelm…
Information overload
I recently subscribed to Oliver Burkman’s newsletter after reading a few of his online sample texts. One was about information overload, and as it is something I often feel, I was interested in how he advice us to handle it.
… this means treating your “to read” pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). After all, you presumably don’t feel overwhelmed by all the unread books in the British Library – and not because there aren’t an overwhelming number of them, but because it never occurred to you that it might be your job to get through them all.
quote from his Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket article
I love the way he writes and would like to get my hands on a copy of his new book Meditations for mortals, but it also makes me sad to be one of those people who it never occurred to that it is not my job to [insert random activity that I obsessively keep doing] “get through them all”. Other things I can’t quite: blogging, sharing my every find, curating the internet, mourning all blogs lost in the ether through the years, snapping photos without a plan, adding projects to my to-do-list without finishing the previous 10-1000 ones… and so on. It’s just life, I know.
By the way, I am not easy to persuade to add my email address to any newsletter these days. This is because I use my inbox as work tool and I am not very happy when I spend a lot of time there. The only reason I subscribed to Oliver’s newsletter The Imperfectionist is because there was no way of getting it as a RSS feed to Feedly which is where I read blogs. Feedly keeps my big river of information floating, and I love that it is contained there, always waiting for me. I don’t have it set to notifications so the only way I know to read anything newly published is by opening it when I actually have the time to read a bit (mostly on the phone). Although it is a bucket, because all unread items stay unread until I say so, I am trying to (when I feel overwhelmed by the number of awaiting articles) mark some “as read” and forget about them. I don’t know what I might be missing, but it really is not my job to get through them all! Note to self.
By the way again, did you know that all “newsletters” on Substacks have a RSS feed? I absolutely love that fact and feel so grateful for it. To me it means that you do not have to use their app or subscribe via email to everyone you want to sample read or follow. I think email newsletter is overwhelming, and I funnel the few ones I subscribe to into a special folder and then I forget to read them there). With Substack publications you can simply copy the url (for example mine is ihanna.substack.com) from the Substack you want to read as a old fashioned blog, and add it to your (free) account on Feedly where you will see all new posts pop up! I haven’t seen anyone mention this feature yet, but I think it is brilliant.
Amplify the voices
I found this very cool site, Amplifier.org, that you must bookmark if you haven’t already (especially interesting to teachers I think). It is all about posters and campaigns for important issues. Yes, it’s political but you are too, no doubt about that. Amplifier is a nonprofit media lab building campaigns to amplify the most important movements of our times – according to themselves. Here you will find beautiful, free to use (and download) art about all kind of subjects. If you work in a place with lots of people, go print some and hang them up there, around town – everywhere! I love this idea to help all of us spread important messages of unity and democracy. I found amplifier via Anna Brons who writes about the power of political art also on Substack, in a whole series of posts that is really great. This series is about the importance of voting and giving voice to our opinions via art. Anna has a great interview with artist Lisa Solomon who, when asked what it means to be creative, answered:
I think being creative is really an act of observation and faith. We look, we seek, we want to learn, we are delighted, we find wonder… and then we find a way to express that to other people.
That spoke to me as well. I usually link and write more about creativity and my own process, but I think these things today is of importance too. And overwhelm and focus – what could be more about the creative life, right?
That’s three lovely names / link titles / ideas / articles. I think I’ll stop there even though I have more ready to go. But I will save something for the next link love post. After all both my posts in the series “Inspiring me right now” contains “three things”: the Process, Writings & Daily pages and Thrifty Thursday, collage sheets & an illustrated life:
I thought these were quite newly written, but OMG – they’re already from last year. Because it has been so long since I did some link love, here’s a bonus (not that fun) thought:
When blogs become extinct
It is from a blog called Urban Adventure League that I happened upon from another link love list that I enjoy – also from an actual blog that is still being updated weekly! It’s not a regular read for me because it is about biking mostly, but it’s by someone who has been blogging since 2005 so almost 20 years (almost as long as I’ve been blogging! I started my blog 2004 – back in April we should’ve celebrated Studio iHanna blog’s 20th birthday but I didn’t send out any invitations for some reason). Anyway, from the Urban Adventure blog I read an interesting blog post called On the ends and potential beginnings of blogging era. They write (and I could’ve written this myself):
…it became quickly apparent that the wave had already crested, and within a few years the number of blogs that posted regularly dwindled. By about 2015 there was only a hardy handful left, many of which posted sporadically and haphazardly.
Yet I still kept plugging away, despite the audience seeming to disappear, as this blog became a journal of my life, something I could look back on. I say “seeming to disappear” because my stats still look pretty good, and I get several “SEO service” spam emails a week. But people don’t engage with my blog in the way they used to–it used to be all comments, but now it’s mostly “likes”.
Urban Adventure League
I feel you man, I feel you. And my blog doesn’t even have a like button (by choice). They also quote this sentence from another blogger:
I realized that blogging, in the form we had come to know it, was about to become extinct.
That sentence makes me sad, maybe mostly because I did not realize this. Has everyone else moved on? Maybe. But I’m still here. Am I (almost) alone? Yes. Am I sad about that? Yes. Have I posted more sporadically this year than ever before? Yes. Will I give up? Nope.
If you’d like to keep me around, let me know. I will post this to my Substack “newsletter” and see if it gets any comments, likes or shares. But also to my regular spot ihanna.nu because I am a creature of comfort, habit and old fashioned like that. And then I’ll be back here (and there) soon. Because I am not a quitter. I know how to focus. I know how to keep on in the face of overwhelm. I always pick up the pen (or paintbrush or camera or…). I will always be around. Until I’m not, of course.
If you feel that you got some value out of this blog post please consider (if you can) to donate a cup of coffee to the creator iHanna via Kofi. It’s quick, easy and very very much appreciated:
I hope this as not information overload for you. Sorry if it was, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
If you ask me about the swap I’ll know you didn’t read this: I will open the DIY Postcard Swap Fall this weekend. Blog post about that to come. Stay tuned my friends.
PS: Christmas shopping from Sweden needs to be done this month!
You might also want to check out these from the Studio iHanna Shop
Thanks for the shoutout! But to be fair, what you quoted from my blog wasn’t said by me, it’s a quote from Ailbíona McLochlainn from her blog.
And I’d define my blog as it is about biking, sorta. ;-)
The first quote is you right?Otherwise I’ll change it in the blog post. The later short sentence was from a quote, thanks for correcting my mistake.
/Hanna in Sweden (love my bike but don’t read bike blogs, sorry)
Great read! I especially enjoyed your links to campaign and activism resources. Thank you.
Oh yes, so glad you found all that via me. I think it is great all that you do as an activist – and glad to link you to these awesome resources.
Great content. At one point, I was sharing my links. I do share two links in my Sunday Posts (for instance here), but I should do more. Thanks for inspiring me to do that again
Thanks for the visit Emma! You read a crazy amount of books but I’m happy to see on is by a Swedish author! :-) Hope you like it. I think link love is important to keep blogs connected and for all of us to find “new” inspiration to keep going. :-)
It does feel like the blog is becoming extinct, but then I see people talking about it a lot on Threads and maybe it’s making a come back? It’s defiantly not what it once was, and my substack gets way more traction thanks to the built in network, but I won’t let go of my blog in a hurry; the personal journal aspect is the main point of it these days as I continue to scream into the void!
I’m a long time reader and you still inspire me! I think your blog pics are so colourful and you write honestly, I naturally feel uplifted.
Aww, thank you so much. I am glad you decided to leave a comment today.