SWWAN celebrates Single Working Women's Week
Can’t sleep. It’s getting light at 4:30 these days, but that’s not why. Have to be on the street by 7 am today. Attending a daylong seminar on getting your non-profit organization visible in the press and other media. Our non-profit arm SWWAN Academy will be providing opportunities for women to have extraordinary educational experiences–to help them grow as individuals and to hone the types of leadership skills needed in today’s workplaces.
We’re kicking off this year’s Single Working Women’s Week by co-hosting a booth with SWWAN preferred vendor Radiance Fine Jewelry at the Wicker Park Fest/Bucktown Sidewalk Sale July 26 and 27. Select items will be 50% off. Rebecca, Radiance owner, offers paid SWWAN members 25% off all jewelry repairs (not including watch repair). Plus, she’ll be offering an additional 10% off regular merchandise for SWWAN members during the sale.
For your $50 annual subscription as a SWWAN founding member, you get a listing on our website, vendor discounts all year, and your own ad space-plus-links on the SWWAN website for your business or cause. Heck, you can’t buy an ad for that anywhere. Such a DEAL!
Well, it’s 5:20 a.m. Gotta go get ready for the long day away from the office. Thank goodness for cell-phones-with-email; at least I’ll be able to respond to any urgent client needs.
Sleepless night / technology creep
Sleepless night. Toss and turn and finally give it up and get up. Sometimes I just read a novel til I get sleepy. Sometimes, like tonight/day, I am obsessed with work responsibilities and have to get on the laptop.
I keep my laptop on a rolling table in the living room next to the recliner chair. Gives me a a place to work early in the morning when I’m not ready to let Angelina the bunny out of her cage yet, or when I’m just tired of being in the office. Plus it’s great to put my feet up a little bit.
But what’s funny is, even though I got up to work, I don’t immediately start doing the project that was on my mind. I turn to my emails instead–and suddenly I’ve got all this busywork to do to clear those up. As one colleague said, then email unwittingly “becomes the thing to do.” Then I’m reminded of other things I haven’t done, I notice stray documents on the desktop, open them up and find something I’d like to do with that as well. And too often, this goes on and I remain sidetracked and don’t even get to the project I intended to work on… Oh, look, there’s a receipt that needs to be entered into QuickBooks…
Then I notice things like, gosh, the birds are singing like maniacs at 3 a.m. Isn’t that nuts? And of course I want to make a note of that on Twitter because…why? Why the compulsion to do these non-essential but sort-of-fun things? Don’t know. Is this a function of a creative mind–or just a scattered and disorganized mindset? Then I feel the need to write a blog post about it, and I wonder if this happens to any of you guys, too?
Does the fact that I can do almost anything I want while sitting at my computer make me a victim of technology creep? Or how about the fact that I take my Treo phone with me when I’m away from the computer so I’m always able to send and get email. Well, I know this happens to a few other women.
The answer is to set limits and stick to them. Here’s another post on how to cut down on technology creep–tried to comment on this post, went through the whole magilla of signing up for a TypeKey account to be able to comment, and then found the “site has not signed up for this feature.” What a waste of valuable minutes that I could have been busy doing…well, something else.
Talk about contributing to the very phenomenon you’re talking about curbing.
Tip for busy single working women–cool reminder system
How many times have you thought, while driving your car, “oh, darn, I forgot to…”? And of course, you can’t type on your cell phone (assuming you have gotten one of those with a keyboard that receives email, and if you haven’t, consider doing so–it will revolutionize your life) because you’re driving.
Sometimes I’ve called myself at my office and left a reminder message to do the forgotten thing. But strangely–or maybe not so strange because my main office phone doesn’t have a flashing light or other attention-getting indicator of when I have a message waiting–I often forget to check for messages when I get back in the office. And then I don’t remember to do the thing.
Sometimes I’m in bed when I think “Oh, darn…” so I have to do one of two things: turn on the light to write it on the steno pad I always keep handy–because who wants to get up at 3 am on a winter night and go dig up something to write on? Or I have to turn on the light to see the keypad so I can dial my cell phone (I keep the sound off so I don’t have to hear the ding-ding reminders of tasks and appointments I haven’t yet cleared) and leave a message there. But that’s not foolproof–when I’m in the office I rarely use my cell phone so often don’t see “message waiting” notices.
The only nearly foolproof way for me to see something is to get an email about it, because I check my email religiously many times a day. In fact, when I’m in the office I live with it open. I’ve tried shutting it down so I can focus on a project, but half the time I end up having to re-open it–to send a client a question, look up a previous message, etc. So email is my most-used method of communication.
SO, if you made it through all that, here’s the payoff… I’ve found a very cool program–free–that lets you punch a speed dial key on your cell phone (or dial from any phone if you have the number), speak your message into the system, ask for a reminder, specify the time, and then quit worrying about it. Fifteen minutes before the designated time, an email will appear in your inbox with your message nicely transcribed into print! And you can even Jott friends, family, and colleagues, too.
The Jott voice recognition software does a handy job with regular speech and is pretty good at guessing spellings of names, etc. It keeps lists online and a number of other things that might be helpful for you. So visit the Jott site and download it for free.
One caveat. When you choose to send a reminder to yourself, you’ll receive an email, but you’ll also receive a text message–and your phone may charge you big for that. They tell me they are working on fixing that so you can opt to send only an email to yourself. So if you say, “no” to “do you want a reminder?” you won’t get the email, either. Then you have to remember to log onto the Jott site to see your reminders. But if you’re like me, even that can be helpful because sometimes I remember I was supposed to do something but don’t remember precisely what it was, so having it somehwere-I-can-find-it is still helpful.
As for friends, family, etc., you can avoid having them get charged for a text message by simply not putting in their cell phone number when you list them as a contact. Then they will receive only an email reminder.
Sending yourself or someone else an email with your voice. Isn’t that a cool trick for when you’re on the road?
Now, let’s see, if I want to replace the light/paper/pen thing in the middle of the night, it means I would have to start keeping my cell phone in the bedroom when I go to sleep… But then how will I remind myself to go get it when I go out?
Sigh. Guess nothing’s perfect.
Saturday night single
Single working woman, what are you doing on this warm (in the temperate zone) Saturday night?
I just tried my first “instant play” from Netflix. You get to download a movie to your computer and watch it immediately. I was glad because I wasn’t sure whether I could only use the service in between physical discs arriving–which would have been hard because there’s always one coming from your “queue” or going back to them.
Anyway, I was able to download my first instant play–after of course downloading the proprietary software to play it. Okay, I thought. Even if I already have two free DVD player programs installed, guess I can add another because instant access without any extra charge to movies not remotely available on Cable’s OnDemand is a great idea.
So I picked my first instant play from among movies I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to see again. The Killing Fields was the first one. And I quickly remembered why I didn’t want to see it again. All about blood and politics and anger during the Vietnam era. But I did learn something fascinating. The star of this movie is Sam Waterston–the guy who’s been playing Jack McCoy on Law & Order (one of my favorite repeat television shows) for many years. So I can see now he was a passionate political believer from the very beginning. What a joy it must be for him to be able to mesh his career (playing a guy fighting for justice) with his real feelings. Incidentally, I have no proof that that’s the case. I’ve just noticed over the years that actors who care about issues tend to accept parts in movies that expose those issues. Check out the roster in the movie Crash.
But, again, I digress. The point I wanted to make was the Netflix proprietary software is very sensitive to how strong/consistent your internet connection is. So it happened that after about 10 minutes of the movie, I got a message saying, “your Internet connection has slowed, so we are adjusting playback to avoid further interruptions.”
They say they’ll need 20 minutes. Okay, I say. This is good. I’ll now always have perfect performance from Netflix movies. So I make myself some popcorn. Let the pet bunny out of the cage to run around. Take the sheets out of the dryer and make the bed with fresh linens (that’ll be fun tonight!). Pour myself a glass of wine. And finally the 20 minutes of “adjusting” is done. The movie recommences.
I keep watching the blood and gore and anger and realize this is not my favorite type of entertainment on Saturday (or most any other evening), but I keep watching so I can study Sam Waterston as a young man. After 30 more minutes, I get that message again.
This time, I write in my journal for a bit. Then try to figure out who among my friends might be interested–and available–to chat at 8:30 pm on a Saturday evening. Call a dear friend who’s recently become a little more available and chat for a while. While we talk, the software’s chugging along “adjusting” and then re-starts. I turn the sound down and continue chatting while watching. Once we ARE finished talking, I turn the sound up to watch again–and lo and behold, 5 minutes later I get that dread “adjusting” message again.
As you may imagine, I now decide to simply turn the freaking thing off. I wonder does this just happen the first time you use an instant download? If it happens every time, I’ll have to seriously “adjust” my expectations!
Earlier this evening, I took a short walk to the local drugstore–just to get out of the house and enjoy the warm evening. It’s really interesting to stroll through a heavily Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago on a spring’s first warm evening. You encounter pocket after pocket of loud and enthusiastic music, some from cars going by, many from open windows of houses and apartments in the area. It’s like the warm weather is the cue to turn up the volume and start dancing. I really like that in a neighborhood.
So what did YOU do tonight? I hope you enjoyed yours, too.