A blog by Ross of Penge (formerly of Balham)

I blogged pretty extensively during 2014 and early 2015, but got out of the habit. In the time since there has been a huge amount I've sort of wanted to write about (politics, terror etc) but I haven't. I tried several times, but anger and frustration about what was happening prevented me from getting things down in a coherent form. Given I couldn't express what I felt, and it didn't seem like it would make a difference anyway, I let it lie fallow.

It's now early 2017, and I'm back, blogging about my attempt to do the first month of the year without social media. After that, who knows?

And why gateway2thesouth? Named after a famous sketch popularised by Peter Sellers:

"Broad-bosomed, bold, becalmed, benign,
Lies Balham, four-square on the Northern Line."

I lived in Balham for 23 years - longer than I have been anywhere else, and it still feels like one of the places in the world I most belong.

Wednesday, 4 January 2017

Day Three and a normal schedule returns

I’ve now been back at work for a couple of days, and that means I have much less ‘free’ time – time for hanging around when having a look at Twitter seems a good idea.

I’ve found I’ve been out of bed quicker the last couple of days – simply because I don’t have ten minutes of social media to do. Can’t say I’ve really found a great way to use that time yet though. I listen to Radio 4 and drink tea, but rather than rushing for the train I’ve found myself with plenty of time.

On the journeys to and from work I’ve been catching up with the podcasts I didn’t listen to over Christmas, and picking up the German Courses am doing on Memrise. It’s free and is definitely working, although as with all distance learning the lack of a place to practice is what is missing.

I’ve tried a few of the language learning Apps. I actually prefer DuoLingo but Memrise has so much more material and quantity has won out over quality this time. I can’t use the app while walking, but still manage to do between 30 and 50 minutes most days.

In the office we do of course have an IT policy but incidental personal use is OK, so checking FB at lunchtime would be fine – plenty of people seem to anyway. But the temptation just isn’t there – if I have ten minutes there is plenty of proper news (or just look at Wikipedia and follow the interesting links) without needing to reach for Twitter.

I am looking at less news – I’m getting the headlines but not digging into more peripheral things that I would see because someone had shared them on my timeline. This is what I had hoped – because much of that will be ‘bubble’ stories – ones I am likely to agree with or be interested in, because I have selected the people whose posts I see in the first place. It leaves me worried about what I am missing though – is there really so little happening (ex Trump’s latest Tweets*) in the world? It’s the first few days of the year when everything is full of review and resolutions, so it’s possible, but I worry I am missing something. I think I might try to find another news-based podcast just to ensure I’m missing nothing that matters.

* Which I am of course only aware of due to the Main Stream Media

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