Sunday, February 20, 2011

Just a little to the right

I'm a bit overwhelmed today. I'm still working on stuff in the same week as I should be so not feeling as overwhelmed as I thought I would be. I wonder if that is under overwhelmed?
I'm learning the RSS system. I get the idea but I sort of think I've had it without knowing it. I've gotten daily emails for years from word a day writer Anu Garg which is either a daily post or an RSS feed of Anu only.
And I've got to say, I love the idea of RSS feeds. I've been encouraged by various sites to use them for years now and am excited about finally learning them. However this is a cautionary blog tale I'm telling.
The sad story that connects this weeks subject and my post together:
It all started with the computer. I got a new one late last year. Wait, this is a good story: My old computer broke down. The.Day.After.The.Semester.Ended. I had a feeling that the gods who tell people stuff were telling me to start changing soon because as a part of my organizational disability, I never saved anything. I just let it sit there on my computer waiting for computer death.
I like organization, something that anyone who knows me will never believe as I throw massive amounts of papers and books around because I can't figure out how to organize them. I have had, to my count three daily planners, not because my life is that busy, but because I get confused on how to transfer things. So I'm in this fascinating new world of blogs, RSS feeds and tweets and guess who has no idea where to put them or what they should look like? Yep, that's the girl - sitting on the couch, holding her notebook computer, looking bewildered. I really really like this stuff but I don't know how to control my control of it.
I swore I would change. I would become all knowing, I would save everything and it would be organized. I got a calendar on my computer and connected it to Goggle calendar and put every little assignment in for two classes. I was proud. Also happy because I figured out that I could move the little items around on the calendar so that what I needed to do on Tuesday I could now do on Wednesday.
I made notes and wrote things down and developed a google reader of my own. And that's when the world started crashing down. I love reading the blogs on Google reader but I now have 19 of them. The site looks messy, slightly confusing, slightly overwhelming and oddly shifting to the left of the page. I found out that I might be tagging or bookmarking what I'm supposed to bookmark or tag on delicious so I need to go back and wade through it. And now RSS feeds. They are wonderful. I love the thought of someone else looking for what I might want to see. The problem is, yet again, we're getting very messy. I've looked at Topikality which beats the pants of of GoogleAlerts in neatness and advanced searching, so I'm feeling soothed by a site that looks organized. But how to make all of this into a page that I want to read?
I believe, honestly that there is a way to move all of this onto one page, neat, nice and organized. However what I've learned so far this week is that I don't know how to do it.

3 comments:

  1. Your post made me chuckle, because I've had exactly that same problem. I love Google Reader, since I use a lot of other Google Apps every day. But my reader has been getting ridiculously cluttered from the amount of feeds I've been subscribing to lately (mostly for this class). It's been driving me crazy! That is, until I realized you could make folders. Revelation! Needless to say, I am very pleased. Admittedly, the page still looks the same, but my table of contents in the sidebar is much improved. :)

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  2. The other thing I like about the folders on Google Reader is that I can scan the whole folder's worth of posts for the most recent on that topic, or read them source by source, when I'm more interested in what a particular individual has to say.

    That said, my favorite feature of Google Reader for avoiding that panicky sense of being overwhelmed...the 'mark all as read' option! Rest assured I would never do that to my classmates' blogs. :) But when I just haven't kept up with the very latest and best news on readers' advisory or library tech options or anything else I think I should read or want to read--'mark all as read' is my friend.

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  3. Folders, you said folders!! Yipee! I'm on it.

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