:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

I know I have a problem when I’m walking for less than 10 minutes from the café to my house, and I’m trying to remember to tweet something clever.

I know I’m a little unbalanced when Facebook has quadruple the visits of my invoice program.

When I’ve checked my inbox more times than I can count in a three hour span, I know that an intervention is needed.

Nagging questions come to mind: Am I too focused on creating an image for myself? Am I consumed with the minutiae of my day? Am I obsessed with self-promotion? Am I simply contributing to the noise and clutter of the world?

Over Christmas vacation, I kept a very low profile on my trinity of distraction. I left e-mails unanswered. I avoided Twitter like the plague. I even stopped myself from scanning Facebook for distractions.

Instead, I tried to focus on single activities such as writing a little, reading a book, or jotting down ideas in a notebook. Here are a few things I learned in the process:

Twitter Can Bring Out the Worst in Us

At its best, Twitter is a really efficient and low pressure way to communicate information with a broad group of people. At its worst, Twitter is a soul-sucking cesspool of self-obsessed minutiae where I scream out, “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!”

I started to think about what I wanted to tweet and what I saw others tweeting. At a certain point I grew weary of it. Twitter is a “what have you done for me lately” kind of service. It can be a grueling taskmaster that fragments ideas and chews up huge chunks of time with little to show in return—that is, if used for the purpose of distraction.

The Immediacy of Communication Enslaves Us

While reading a book or jotting ideas in my journal, I often thought that it would be nice to know if I had any e-mails in my inbox. I mean, my agent could have sent an e-mail saying that a big time publisher wants to pick up my next book!

Unfortunately, I can’t use that excuse 30 times a day, or however often I want to check my e-mail. OK, I try to do that. Saying no to myself is hard. The immediacy of our communication can be extremely convenient and also maddening. I can do something now, and putting it off until later feels like I’m doing something wrong.

What could possibly go wrong if I put off checking my e-mail of Facebook until later tonight? I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out. I heard a story once about a musician who missed a pretty sweet gig in Europe because he hadn’t check his e-mail first thing in the morning, and now I live my life tethered to the internet, fearing that I’ll miss… something.

When everything is important, we lose balance and perspective, treating everything as essential. This weakens us to the point that we can’t give our best energies to the most important things.

We All Grow Weary

My calling in life is to write. It drives me every day. If I can string together a few thousand words in a day, I go to bed feeling like I’ve accomplished what I’m put on earth to do—even if it all gets scrapped the next day.

Despite my love for writing, I needed a break from my blog and my books. I still jotted down ideas and even figured out my April Fools prank while on vacation, but as to my regular writing schedule, I needed to step back from it for a few weeks.

If my blog was allowed to continue making demands of me and my time, I would have wearied of it and treated it like a chore and not a joy.

The thing about seasons of rest is that we often don’t realize we need them until we immerse ourselves in the peace of silence and stillness. I have learned to recognize when my mind is spinning too fast for its own good, but I can only detect that if I stop long enough to diagnose what’s going on.

We take seasons of rest on faith, trusting that we need them and that God can work on us if we stop long enough to ask for his wisdom and healing.

I sat in the main hall at a recent conference attended by 1,000 creative, innovative, and smart people. Many of us traveled hundreds of miles and paid hundreds of dollars just to be in that room together.

We changed our schedules. We missed family time. We reordered our obligations in order to be physically present in the same room.

What did we do once we were in the same room together?

Like junkies desperate for a fix, the majority of the people around me poured over their cell phones and ipads, tweeting, texting, and even playing games.

I sat by myself with people all around me using technology in order to be “more connected” with more people. The people in that room were connected indeed. They had lots of “connections,” but they weren’t necessarily interconnected with the people either around them or appearing as bits of text on their devices.

Connected vs. Interconnected

Technology is such a wonderful tool. I’m not here to slam it in general. I tweet and text, but I also think we need to frankly discuss the quality of our connections and how we use technology in particular situations.

Are we actually interconnected with people, sharing our lives with them when we have the opportunity? Perhaps there was some interconnecting happening over those phones and ipads at that conference, but I’d venture that most of what happened in those moments could have waited until later.

When you’re in a room filled with people who intentionally showed up in order to learn and network, texting should be on the lower end of priorities.

The thing is, it’s hard to sit next to a person and start talking. I did this over and over again at that conference, and each time I would have preferred to send that text message or tweet rather than break the ice.

One guy kind of grimaced, as if I was torturing him by asking what he was up to at the conference. Other folks welcomed a chance to talk about what they love to do. Some introduced me to their friends. Some of us even swapped business cards.

Arriving at that point was hard work.

The easy connection through impersonal technology will always be easier than becoming interconnected with a flesh and blood person who may ignore or reject you. It’s costly, but the quality of that connection has the potential to change lives.

Costs and Rewards of Being Interconnected

Real life change can only happen when we reach out and risk something. The conversation may fall flat. I may say something stupid. There are a hundred ways a conversation can run off the tracks. The point is that there are real blessings to be given and received when we are interconnected with the people around us.

While I’m advocating for seizing the moment when we’re in a room with others, we can also make powerful, life-changing connections through technology as well. I’m not ruling that out by any means. Sometimes you may be spent emotionally and reaching out isn’t the best idea.

However, next time you’re at a conference, I encourage you to turn off your phone and talk to the person next to you. Look for the person no one wants to talk to. Find the people who are open to connecting in genuine ways that extend beyond the simplicity of a text message.

Technology is great for keeping us in touch with one another, but there is no substitute for the connections that come about when reaching out to the person in the next chair over.

When I first started blogging back in 2005, I had a great system. I woke up around 6 am, ate breakfast, and then worked on my post from 6:30 to 7:30 am. That left me time to clean up and head off to work. I rarely missed a blog post.

Today I struggle to wrap up my daily blog post by 7:30 am. In fact, it would take a miracle to keep anything resembling that schedule. Looking back on those days, I often wonder what the heck happened.

Twitter and Facebook happened.

As a freelance writer who has to manage his own schedule, it’s easy to just perpetually put everything off, especially with so many fun distractions out there. In 2011 I’m working on a new system that isn’t quite perfect yet.  If I boiled my system down to one word, that word is this: consequences.

If I don’t wake up early to tackle that blog post, then I need to cut something enjoyable from my day. Perhaps I don’t get to work out. Perhaps I lose reading time. Perhaps I have to go to bed extra early to make up for lost time.

Without consequences I’ll be tempted to skip my daily word count, marketing, and freelance goals—many of their benefits are hard to quantify since pay checks come so sporadically for me and marketing benefits are especially hard to measure. I have plenty of plates to keep spinning, but sometimes I’m tempted to spin one or two and put off the others.

If I don’t hit my daily targets, I now have something immediate to lose.

This reminds me of the parable of the three servants who were entrusted with money that their master expected them to use and multiply. Am I using and developing the gifts that God has given me? Or am I sitting on them and tinkering away on a few odd projects and then frittering time away on Facebook? How can I be faithful?

Part of remaining faithful and disciplined with the gifts God has given me involves creating immediate consequences. Without consequences, I think I would just putter along and fail to use all of my gifts and spend my day bugging friends on Facebook and Twitter.

All that to say, the dominance of Stephen Fry on Twitter is safe.

How do you discipline yourself when working?

A few days ago I had about twenty minutes to spare before running off to an appointment. I sensed a gentle nudge to sit quietly before God to pray and to just make myself available to him.

And then I thought, well, twenty minutes is a pretty big chunk of time. I’ll just go on Twitter to see what’s happening, and then I’ll sit to pray.

I read through the latest stream of updates, and then I noticed an interesting article. Without even thinking about it, I clicked it.

After reading the article, I obviously had to leave a comment.

After hitting the submit button for my comment,  I checked the time. I had five minutes.

Shoot.

We can always justify doing one more thing, but when I look back at that moment, I essentially squandered a chance to love God with all of my strength and to seek his Kingdom first. It was a good blog post, but I once heard someone say that the good is sometimes the enemy of the best.

Did reading that blog post and leaving a comment actually move me closer toward the most important objectives in my life? Probably not. While we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over our to-do lists, there is something to be said for hearing God’s voice and responding with quiet time before him.

Sometimes we need to just stop.

We can always add another chore to the list during the holiday season. However, are we leaving space for God and letting him rise to the top of our priority lists?

Lately, God has been claiming my time in the car. It has been really great. I’ve had some refreshing moments of prayer and meditation while driving that I would have missed if I’d had the radio on. Nevertheless, when God wanted to move in my time at home, I found reasons to distract myself.

It’s a process. It’s a relationship. There will come times when we lose sight of what’s most important. Thankfully God is passionate for his people, and he is patient with us. I’m blown away that he sticks with us.

As our schedules fill up during the holidays, may we find the time to stick with him and to enjoy the love he has for us.

For more posts about finding Jesus during the Christmas season, drop by Bonnie Gray’s Faith Barista Blog.

I’ll be doing a twinterview with Englewood Review of Books today at 10 AM, EST. This is my first time doing something quite like this. I’m looking forward to it.

Our topic will be Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life, my introduction to contextual theology that provides the basics of theology and culture. Here’s the press release from the good people at NavPress, my publisher:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Colorado Springs, CO)—NavPress, the publishing arm of the Colorado Springs based U.S. Navigators, announces that on Monday, July 13^th The Englewood Review of Books will be interviewing NavPress author Ed Cyzewski, author of Coffeehouse Theology, on twitter at 10 AM EST.

This “twinterview” will take advantage of twitter’s 140-character message length to provide readers with a brief introduction to Coffeehouse Theology, Cyzewski’s introduction to contextual theology.

To participate in the interview, log in at www.twitter.com, and sign up to follow “edcyzewski” and “ERBks.” For answers requiring multiple tweets, the name given to individual posts on twitter, there will be a “>” character at the end of each tweet. Each tweet in the interview will begin with “@ERBks”.

Twitter is an online networking service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

The Englewood Review of Books is a weekly book review published by Englewood Christian Church, Indianapolis.

I’ve gotta ask… Do you find that Twitter profile pictures subconsciously influence who you follow?

This afternoon I was looking through my list of recommended folks to follow on Mr. Tweet. Sometimes I passed on people just because their profile pictures were odd, confusing, or perhaps a tad creepy. This is in no way a judgment on anyone, only an observation of my knee-jerk reactions to profile pictures.

Once I stopped looking at the pictures that threw me for a loop, I realized that many of these people were the kind of folks I wanted to follow. In a matter of seconds I had sized up someone because I either can’t make sense of their profile picture or find it immature, or something else. It’s funny how fast we reach these conclusions.

So I’ve been thinking that I need to be more careful about the way I review folks on Twitter, looking at what they tweet, what their interests are, and who they are networking with.

I can’t be the only person who has done this. Can I? Have you noticed similar trends on your own? What is the ideal Twitter profile picture?

I signed up for Twitter because I heard it’s a great way to keep track of news and to share information. So far it has delivered. I find helpful links, share my own, and interact with the 60 or so people I follow.

The hardest part to get used to is the 140 character limit for each post, or “tweet” as they call it. I eventually conformed, and have since loaded the Firefox TwitterBar plug in to make it easier to post throughout the day. I also loaded an extension to my Windows Live Writer that automatically sends updates to Twitter about my blog posts. Connecting Twitter to Facebook means I don’t need to post the same thing twice.

As I use TwitterBar, I have actually learned to tweet well below the 140 character limit. Suddenly 140 characters seems luxurious.

Now I’m beginning to wonder if a word limit would help my blogging a bit–force me to condense my thoughts into brief posts instead of rambling down the page. While there always will be a place for long blog posts digging into important topics, Twitter hints that we can say just as much with a lot less.

200 words seems about right.