Friday, September 30, 2011

Happy Birthday, Blog

Good morning!

I couldn't let September end without acknowledging that this week is the 1-year anniversary of when I started this blog.

It's been a great year. Having a blog to motivate me to write more often has been excellent for this person, who, at the age of 35, still procrastinates. (I guess procrastinators, like proofreaders, are born, not made.)

One limitation of a blog about editing and proofreading is that, eventually, you will cover all the grammar topics that it's possible to cover. And there's only so much you can say about commas, even if you're a grammar nerd like I am.

So I imagine I'll start to cover topics more often that aren't strictly related to editing, like last week's blog about common sense. Having this blog about editing for the past year has made me realize how many other things I want to write about. I even contemplated starting up a second blog to cover those things. Then I came back down to earth and realized that will never happen. It's enough of a challenge (a welcome challenge, but still a challenge) to write once a week or so when you work full-time and have a toddler. I couldn't keep two blogs current (unless I was being paid to blog... how DO you get a job like that?).

And now, I've been staring at that cake picture for so long that I'm starving, so it's time for breakfast. Happy Friday, everybody!

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Why Common Sense is Dead











  • common sense noun : sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts

Years ago, I laughed when I first heard the quote, "Common sense is not so common" (attributed to the writer Voltaire, among others; no one's quite sure who said it).

Nowadays, I find that statement to be more true every day. Things that used to be commonly accepted are not anymore. Everything from "You shouldn't spend more than you earn" to "You can't trust someone who lies to you" (just look at politicians for the most high-profile violations of those two).

I would chalk it up to my own aging. What's considered "common sense" surely must shift over the years. But I see another source of the fragmenting of common sense.

The Too-Much-Information Age

The Information Age is a great thing. Right? We have unprecedented access to knowledge and perspectives from around the entire world. It's an embarrassment of riches.

But with those riches comes responsibility. Now that more information circulates out there, we're expected to know more of it.

At some point, our brains just fill up, like a maxed-out hard drive. Believe me, I have the greatest respect for the mighty human brain and its distributed storage of knowledge in neural networks. But there are only so many neurons and synapses to go around. When it fills up, if something new needs to go in, something old must come out.

The New Common Sense

Off the top of my head, here are a few things we are expected to remember nowadays that our ancestors 100 years ago were not:
  • Traffic rules and regulations
  • Health insurance rules and regulations
  • Thousands of state and federal laws that have been enacted in that time (because ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it)
  • Hundreds of computer usernames, passwords, and website URLs
  • How to use and maintain a personal computer
  • How to use anywhere from a handful to hundreds of different software applications and web applications, plus hundreds of functions within each one, plus all the new features introduced with each new "upgrade"
  • How to use e-mail, and what to do with the thousands (even millions) of e-mails that pile up over your lifetime
  • How to operate, troubleshoot, and maintain the several dozen electric appliances that you probably have in your household
  • Modern medicine: What it can fix, what it can't, and which symptoms should cause you to take what action
  • Scientific research. If you're going to use this research wisely, you have to keep track of which scientific conclusions are well established (in other words, worth believing because they are backed up by years of repeated, well-designed studies) and which ones have been demonstrated in only one or two studies (in other words, conclusions that you're better off ignoring until future research substantiates them).
  • Hundreds to thousands of popular culture references. This may seem optional, especially compared to the above. But there is a degree to which people take you less seriously if they say something like, "NO SOUP FOR YOU!" and you stare at them cluelessly instead of smiling.
And those are just the things that nearly everyone needs to know. Depending on your personal interests, you likely seek out more information voluntarily and fill up your brain even more. For example, if you pride yourself on keeping up with current events around the world, then you'll be maxing out those neurons with the infinitesimal details of happenings in various countries.

Makes life in the 1800s seem appealingly simple, doesn't it? No wonder people chuck it all and move out to the country to live on communes. I've had that urge myself.

Fragmenting of Common Sense

With all the information thrown at us, it's no wonder people feel overwhelmed. And when people feel overwhelmed, they tend to fall back on things that they believe.

I'm not talking about belief that is independent of facts. What I mean is that I think each of us forms a set of beliefs -- our own personal version of "common sense" -- based on our own personal distillation of the available facts. Perhaps this was always true, and that's where quotes like "Common sense is not so common" -- which dates from the mid-1700s -- came from.

With a much larger number of facts available, I'm not surprised that a much larger variety of interpretations of "common sense" have emerged.

I'm also interested in how it becomes "common sense" to relieve yourself of information overload. (Because stressing out is bad for your health -- isn't that common sense??)

For example, everyone knows it would be ideal, from a security perspective, to have a different password for every computer application that you use. Yet I'd bet the vast majority of us use the same password for everything. To someone who works in IT security, it might be common sense to have different passwords for everything. But to the average Joe, it is common sense to avoid remembering 100 passwords when you have enough stuff to keep track of in your life. Likewise, it's common sense that if you write down your password on a post-it note and stick it to your monitor, then anyone who happens by can access your computer. But to someone else, it's common sense to keep the password on that sticky note because if they don't, they'll forget what it is.

No More Common Knowledge?

Nobody has access to exactly the same facts as anyone else anymore (if only because the 24-hour day limits the amount of information each of us can absorb). So "common knowledge" and common experiences, and therefore common sense, may become a thing of the past.

Maybe soon there will be no more common anything. I hope that's not the case because no one likes to feel isolated. We all enjoy being a part of a community where we have things in common.

I think we have all felt that isolation already. How many times do you read about someone online, or see them on TV, and think to yourself, "This person is so different from me rationally/spiritually that they seem like an alien to me. I have no idea how anyone could possibly think or act that way." And it's hard to believe that they live just across town from you and shop at the same stores as you and vote in the same elections as you. Yet they do, and they're probably thinking the same thing about you.

Imagine trying to govern a nation of such individuals, with fewer and fewer "common causes" to get behind. I do not envy our leaders.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The Curse of Creativity

First of all, I know I haven't been on in nearly a month. I know that equates to being in a coma or dying, as far as bloggers go. Let's just say there were extenuating circumstances. The important thing is, I'm back!

And now: THE CURSE!

The curse of creativity is when you are so taken over by an idea that you drop everything else in your life to pursue it.

I'm not just talking about ignoring calls from your friends and family for a few weeks or neglecting your children. I'm talking about pushing aside basic human needs in your hot-headed urge to get the idea down on paper, or canvas, or on your guitar, or in Photoshop, or on the computer.

Like sleep. "Sleep be damned!" says your mind when it's on fire with a creative idea. Food is another one. I personally adore food so much that I would eat chocolate chips out of the freezer for an entire day rather than starve myself completely, even for the world's best idea. But I have heard of folks who survived for days on caffeine alone.

My husband and I have talked about this curse before. He is a musician and songwriter who has stayed up many a night composing. For me, it's writing.

There's something desperate about the drive to get your idea out of your head and into a more permanent form. The drive is almost... let's not get too graphic here... procreative. It's a little disturbing. But it's the truth. It's urgent. It's a feeling of "now or never." If something thwarts your urge, you'll be frustrated. You'll get over it eventually, maybe even quickly, but you'll feel like you've been denied one of the very biological needs you shoved aside to pursue your idea in the first place. It can be that powerful.

For me, I was wide awake at 5:30 AM today with an idea for a screenplay. I gave up on sleep, got up and sat down at the computer. Three pages of notes later, I've written down all of the main characters, their histories, the basic plot more or less from start to finish, and even some dialogue. I'll let you know if it turns into anything.

I'd love to hear your stories of what happens to you when the creativity bug bites you.