That Elephant site with the nice community

So, I joined Mastodon and I really love it!!

I went looking because his muskness was threatening to buy Twitter (that makes me part of the previous wave in April 2022), but this threat wasn't the direct cause, just the trigger. I had been looking for an alternative to the Birdsite for years but didn't come across Mastodon. It was an article that discussed what people might do if Elon bought Twitter, and the writer doubted that people would make the step across to Mastodon - and my ears perked up!

Masto... what?  I took a look immediately. Got a bit confused about this "instance" business, didn't get much further straight away. Looked into it again another day, okay that's the same as a server, got it. Hang on, there are really small servers, does that mean you get stuck with just a few people?  Oh no, actually those servers can all talk to each other so the exact instance isn't all that important. Right-hoe.

Which one?

I got stuck on that again. To cut a not endlessly long story (but not the shortest one either), short into concise form: I found one that I liked the sound of, writing.exchange, because that promised to feature writers and I was following quite a few on Twitter already. And Zirk.us also looks like a good community if you want to try somewhere else that's open to sign-ups (at time of writing).

It proved a good choice because Writing.exchange is not a huge instance like Mastodon.social or Mastodon.online - that's good because the ratio of moderators/admins to users is better on a small to medium sized server and they will react quicker if you were to run into trolls or harrassment.

I have not encountered any of that so far, at all. Mastodon is actually a nice place that prides itself on a community culture. For example by keeping posts accessible by adding descriptions (captions or alt text) to images and other visual items so sight impaired people can also enjoy those posts; and also by applying something called a CW that I want to explain further.

A CW on Mastodon (or the Fediverse) applies a 'Read More' or 'Show More' label to anything below the line in your post template. You can put whatever you want above the line, like a headline, subject or teaser - I must say CWs are great for jokes! You don't want to give the punch line away from the word go, right? So hide it for people to click through when they want to see it.

Think of a CW as a Content Wrapper, it gives so much more control to the people scanning their timelines: they get to decide if they want to see and engage with your post if it is about something that not everyone is keen to encounter.  That could be politics or health issues; food, mental health, direct eye contact, NSFW, or anything else where you wonder if you want to just blurt this out into your TL or if you want to give your followers the opportunity to decide that perhaps they're not up to having to scan by your post.

A CW is also great for truncated really long posts. The best reason for using CWs is to avoid people unfollowing you. If you feel that a photo with pronounced eye contact isn't something to get excited about, that might be true for a great many others too, but there will be those who find it really difficult. Just think of an issue that you don't want to encounter, and you'll get the gist. My personal bug bear is food photos, I can really do without those. And yes, a CW is actually short for content warning, but that's not to say that it has to stay being called that.

You get lots of other ways of shaping your timeline to your satisfaction. You can mute phrases, mute people (for varying lengths of time), you can block and unfollow - you can keep to your home timeline, spend most of the time in your responses, and you can even filter those reactions. You can also switch off seeing boosts by specific accounts, again for varying lengths of time if you think they just need to get something out of their system. You can follow posts in only those languages you specify (if you want to) or leave the default to all. You can set all CWs to expand automatically so you don't have to click through. There is a huge amount of functionality that I seriously appreciate. All this is brilliant. Take a while to get to know, but so worth it.

Here's more info: Boosts are re-tweets, they show the post to your followers and anyone who clicks through to your profile/timeline, and increases the reach of that post. It's a nice thing to do for others. You can also favourite or like a post - this will tell the poster that you enjoyed what they posted, and puts it into a favourites list in your profile. Likes/Favourites do not get shown publicly, this does not increase a post's reach. You can also use Bookmarks to keep a note of posts. If in doubt favourite or bookmark because timelines are now moving much faster (with the huge Nov 2022 incoming wave) and you might not find this post again. Oh yes, Mastodon posts are referred to as toots (that compares to tweets), but you don't have to use the expression if you don't want to. Up to you.

Timelines are chronological, there is no algorhythm that keeps you from seeing some posts - and that gives you full control. And did I mention the very best thing about Mastodon? It is free of ads!! No advertising, no sponsor message, no nothing like that. Such a relief.

And that means that the owners and admins of your instance are paying for that community's use of the instance. That in turn means that it's a really good idea to give them some money once you're happy that you want to stay on that instance. We want them to be able to keep the lights on, right?

 

Yes, this is an actual mastodon, the image above is of two mammoths.

 And if you try one server but find you're not so keen on the Home timeline (which is posts from people on your server), then you can move. You can take your followers with you (check the guidance on the two options so you pick the one that's best for you), but not your posts.

When you first start to use your shiny new account, the place will feel rather empty: search by using hashtags (there is no text search), and follow anyone who sounds even slightly like a likely prospect. Then look at the followers of the accounts you like best, and follow more people. Check out replies to posts you enjoy, follow those. Lots of short sesssion to build up your timeline of what you want to see.

Publish an #intro post, include some hashtags of your own to allow people to find you. It is slow going at first, but you will get there. If you want to have a look at posts from outside your own instance, there is the federated timeline but it can depend on the time of day (time zones!) of what you get to see.

What I love about Mastodon is that people are respectful towards each other, and often kind. The culture is great - and even though I didn't get it straight away (they want me to use content warnings, seriously?), it all grew on me. I really appreciate it now.

There are other ins and outs about Mastodon and the Fediverse. When you ask on Mastodon you often get an answer, you can also ask me here if you like - I'm happy to help.

Tips for decluttering

Baby steps
Doing a little at a time is perfectly acceptable. Rome wasn't built in one day so you don't have to be super woman aka domestic godess who achieves the total Beautiful Homes look by raising an eye brow. You get to take what time you need. And every little bit you do is one thing less that needs doing. This is progress!

Impetus
Dealing with just one or two items is better than throwing up your hands in despair and not touching anything. This is a good method to break through complete paralysis: pick up just one item and deal with it. Whatever shape or form the "dealing with it" takes: put it back where it should be, try it out to see if  still fit for purpose, gift it to someone else who needs it, or get rid of it another way. Just make sure you did something you wanted to do with this one item so you have one achievement under your belt, no matter how small or how significant. It all counts!
Then reward yourself for this success. This is important: you need the positive head space rather than negativity that clouds what you already achieved. Make sure you celebrate every little bit of success that ocmes your way! Reward yourself! 

Reward yourself
This can take all kinds of forms. Pick a reward that means something to you.
It could be quiet, relaxing time with a tea you love out of your favourite mug, sitting somewhere that you enjoy. It might be time playing with a dog, or 15 minutes reading a book or magazine. It could be a breather at an open window for however long you enjoy when you get to think about nice things and put all the chores out your mind: this is time that belongs to you.
I have other ideas that may work as rewards: knit for a bit, watch a specific tv programmes or a show you recorded (or Netflix), take a breather at the window, have a chat with a friend or neighbour, go for a walk in an interesting or relaxing place, look in on a shop you wanted to check out, make a cultural date with yourself of attending a museum, gallery or a talk, go for a ride, chill out on the sofa, wear your most favourite outfit, dance around the house to a song you love - I'm sure there are many other things that can make meaningful rewards or celebrations. Write them down when they occur to you, it's nice to be able to look it up when you can't think of it. 

Just something you enjoy and that makes you feel good.

 

I'll think of some more and will add them.

Now all I have to do is to follow my own advice... Okay then!

What happened?

I'm utterly aghast.

I just went to look at my blog (that I post to rather too infrequently, apologies!) - and I couldn't access it because I'm not one of the invited readers...?

Hello?

I'm the author!? Why wouldn't I be able to access my own blog?

So I checked the settings and found that it was indeed set to 'invited readers only.

That was not my intention. Of course I want people to be able to read my blog, that's the entire point.  I really don't know what happened.

Did I perhaps change this myself with the intention of turning it back on soon? But why would I do that? It is an utter, utter mistery to me.

This is incribly peculiar and it teaches me that I should check my own blog a bit more often.

Well anyway, we're back in business! (I sincerely hope)

Well, wow... About voting

I only just saw the 'embed' function of YouTube videos so I want to try it out. It helps hugely that I really like this video and am desperate to share it, even if just on this blog. It's a bit hard-hitting:


What do you think, does this make young (and younger) people more likely to vote?

I think it would have influenced me, particularly because I like to think that I have a contrarian bent... Not sure how true that is but this video would have spoken to me.

On the other hand I have often voted. And I like politics: I read and watch as much as I can and I feel hopeful that more people voting can and will make this world a better place - if we could only all make the effort: pay attention, think about context, causes and consequences and then exercise our democratic right to have our voice heard. In a nut shell: to vote.

What do you think?

Procrastination - how to slip, slide past it

The easy, not the hard way.  [Prepared earlier, in Jan 2018. Oops, talk about procrastination...]

Any time I see an article about how to beat procrastination, I read it.  I hope for the ultimate insight that will help me get rid of this awful obstacle that makes me feel paralysed and bad, bad, just horribly bad. Ugh.

"I would like to do xyz, but...!  I can't get going, I can't make myself do it, it's too hard, there is xyz difficulty that's stopping me, I just can't." - It's this awful feeling of being stuck in hardening mud. Very close to dried in concrete consistency.

Horrible!

So this last post I read talked about a mental exercise that is meant to connect you with the person you will be once you've done it, or achieved a long-term goal (something like it, I'm not actually quite clear on that point). I'm not too keen on this because it asks you to put yourself rather deeply into the paralysed state of how you feel when you're stuck.  To my mind that's not helpful because it makes me feel even more paralysed. I'd rather come from the other side: from a positive, constructive angle.

This other piece has a different piece of advice that might be pretty helpful: trading in the whole shebang of how dreadful you feel about being stuck right now with what it takes to spend only five minutes and make yourself do the dreaded task, - literally just for the five minutes. You can stop at that point.

I find this pretty helpful actually, particularly when it talks about being in the flow that puts you in a mental state when you no longer care that you used to be stuck once upon a time (when on earth was that? Oh pooh! I've forgotten already!).  That all sounds pretty familiar.

Embed from Getty Images

I just don't know that I can commit to these "just five minutes" all the time and with all the procrastination issues that I run into. Sometimes I am unable to motivate myself into even just five minutes, and that ends up making me feel ever worse... Bleurgh. You can imagine.

I found a way of sort of slipping or sliding past the procrastination obstacle, it works relatively well for me.  I suppose it is a version of the five minute rule. But hey! Whatever works, right?

So: here's what I found what works for me. There are a few different elements to it so it hope that some of it I might work for you too.

Procrastination is all about feeling very stressed or fearful of doing something. There's a heck of a lot of anxiety because I either want or desperately need to do something but it is getting worse and worse because I am just not doing it. I put it off, and put if off, and put it off...

While I do that I manage to get all sorts of other things done!  I'll voluntarily wash up, change the bed sheets, shine shoes... or those displacement tasks. The mere thought of the task makes me shudder and quickly turn to something else, because it is just all too much.

Anxiety Central.

But let's go with the constructive angle, let me pick an example.  I made this beautiful embroidery of orange trees and and a gorgeous border of fruit and berries. The embroidery was all done (halleluya!) but I wanted to turn it into a cushion cover and give the whole thing to my mum as a present. I knew she'd love it and was really looking forward to being able to hand it over.

Did I?  Nope. It must have taken me about 10 years, give or take. And the most horrible, "I could kick myself in the butt" part of it all was that it took me an hour to put the cushion cover together.  Once I started.

It was that starting that was the problem and something else.

Before I successfully stopped smoking I had the same issue and it got me onto the solution:

How am I going to do this?  

What are the practical, actual steps that I'll do?  How am I getting this done?  What does it take? That was it!

Before I was able to envisage stopping smoking I had to start thinking about how I was going to do it. Was I going to use nicotin replacement products like gum or patches, would I want to go with sugarfree lollies to give my mouth something to do? How did I want to approach it?

It still took months but this was the essential first step I needed to put in place, it didn't work without that. In the case of the cushion I needed to ask myself what sort of cover I wanted to make and what the first step was.

A big frill around it has to be sewn to something, and not just the embroidery itself. I didn't realise that: it was just this big mystery about how a mysterious process that would turn a flat embroidered piece into a slip cover. Funnily enough I did a cushion cover with the same technique a few months before I finally spent the hour getting over my ten year long hump. So I learned just in time, but I hadn't thought it through.

So that's what I want to think about in future: anything I procrastinate about: I want to think of the practical steps I either need to take, and that I want to do. It doesn't have to be the way other people would get this done, I can find my own way!

If you want to do the same but feel totally clueless about where to start: the Internet is your friend. It is your very clever friend. It seems to obvious but type in your question: how do I...?  More often than not (and several hours of fun researching this later. Beware the rabbit hole, but hey! That's fun too) you will find an answer of something to try. If it doesn't work for you then keep looking.  Figuring stuff out is part of the feeling of achievement, you don't need someone to take you by the hand and talk you through this: you've got this!

Just one little bit

My other very practical advice for those tasks that I find difficult to get started on is to get to your feet and go get one very small bit done.  Something as small as winding a sewing machine bobbin with the right colour sewing thread, or washing an ashtray out. Or pulling out one of the bits of paper you need for your tax return, something small. Anything at all.

With the understanding that you don't have to do anything else. I don't like to commit to five minutes, it feels like too much pressure. All that expectation that I'll get even five minutes done!  It is paralysing.  I might be able to do a single little bit - and I like to go do that as soon as I think of what it might be. Just slip it in there!  Just a nice, quick one.  Nothing more. Oh no Sir! Utterly, completely, definitely no, not at all, nuthing more...

...oh go on then, just a little bit more. Or not, no pressure. But if the next little bit seems easily do-able, why not? Every little helps!

Sometimes you get into the flow (that's what you're aiming for) but not always. Be proud of that single thing you managed to do! It is more than you had gotten done before that. Sit back down, celebrate the feeling of achievement! You've done good.

And whenever the urge or the thought comes up of what the next step might be, go and do that too - however long after the first one. At some point you'll start doing this thing that you've put off for so long. You've "tricked" yourself into it by taking the pressure of expecation out of the equation. That's sometimes all it takes.

And here's the last element that helps me.

A change is as good as a rest

When I sew a project that feels endless and I find it difficult to keep going - this often happens when I haven't found "the flow" or dropped out of it.  I know I could do more but I am feeling something close to revulsion about having to carry on with the blasted task.

Then a bit of a change is good. You can do something like changing the order of things that you need to do to complete your tasks, or you can go do another small (unrelated) task that also helps you feel achievement. It's probably a good idea to do something that won't take long. It does happen that I'll happily distract myself from the dreaded task by deep-diving into something else that I get the flow thing with. You might get yourself back into it with another stab at a small thing only.

The benefit

And the last thing I'd like to add is that it helps a lot to have a visual image in mind: something that will or could happen once you're successful. I kept imagining the look of sheer surprise on my father's face when he'd realise that I no longer smoked. It really kept me going, it was such a nice thing to aim for because it made me feel exceedingly good.

So that's my ideas. I'd love to hear of other things that help you get around procrastination. Please comment!

PS: These posts are also pretty good: why procrastinators procrastine (part 1) and how to beat procrastination (part 2). Actually thinking about it, these posts probably did influence my ideas (as above) quite a bit. So give them a read, see if if kicks something off in your brain.