Inconvenience & Intention

"...intention trumps convenience" (53)
"...the inconvenience might prove useful." (65)
— Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism

I'm typing this in Writer: The Internet Typewriter, a distraction free editor that requires me to remember codes to set formatting and hyperlinking when I post these things to the blog. It's wildly inconvenient compared to the ease of Microsoft Word or Google Docs, but I use it anyway. Part of the motivation is that it is distraction free. I'm typing plain text onto a blank canvas. There are no menus, there is no grammar check, there isn't any good sharing system (though the guy who develops it may add that last "feature"). It's just a way to put words on the screen the same way a typewriter puts words on paper. The only difference is that I can use backspace, delete, copy, paste, and undo. That Writer is distraction free is the big draw for most users. I'm more into the inconvenience.

Using something intentionally inconvenient sounds like lunacy. Maybe it can be, but in this case it puts the focus on intention and in that way the inconvenience proves very useful indeed. Because I can't format anything in this editor and since I have to remember markdown codes and symbols in order to have things format correctly on the blog, I am much more intentional about the writing and about prioritizing clarity over anything else. There is work that can be done without such focus but writing as well as I can demands it. Convenience too often subverts that kind of focus.

I only have a minute left to write. The ziti is about to come out of the oven. I took some time with that too. Boiled pasta, grated cheese, made some sauce, mixed and poured all that in a baking dish. I could have grabbed some already made from Wegmans but I like the inconvenience. It's useful and tastes pretty damn good.

Old-School

I miss my insurance agent.

I'm not sure that I've started a post so oddly in my life, but I'm okay with it. I really do miss my insurance agent. I was with Joe Cerroni for a long time and I really liked the guy. Every time I think insurance I think of Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day, but Joe wasn't like that. He was friendly, calm in crisis, helpful, thoughtful, and professional. I liked calling my insurance agent. He made me feel good. Part of that was an additional quality Joe possessed as a person in business: he was old-school.

On birthdays he would send a postcard. He followed up with us after we had had a problem. He didn't send email but made phonecalls. He mentioned things we might want to add to our policy but never pushed the sale. I recommended him to everyone I know.

Then he retired. I wish him well in everything, but oh how I miss my insurance agent.

The folks who took over his agency are nice enough. They are up to date. I get automated emails about things. They tell me every little product I might want to purchase. They are new-school in every way.

A few weeks ago when I bought a new car, I visited the new offices, got lost in the hallways, and eventually found the agent. We sat down and she worked at selling me a whole new plan. The idea was to save me some money. She tried to get me to buy an umbrella plan. I said no. She worked out a whole new plan for our home owner's insurance and switched things around for the car. It took just over two hours of a day I had meant to save for myself.

I never spent more than half an hour in Joe's office. He moved it right along. Easy-peasy.

About two weeks later I got a call from the new office saying there was a problem. The inspector had decided that our roof looked sketchy. He did this from the ground and I wonder what the assessment would have been had there been the usual four inches of snow up there. Whatever the case, the policy was now declined and the agent said we had two choices: go back to the old policy or put on a new roof. I assumed her use of "we" did not extend to helping us pay for a new roof, so I said to go back to the old policy.

Today I received word from the bank that holds our mortgage saying that we don't have hazard insurance and the bank is going to charge us for that. Ugh. I called my agent but of course they aren't open on the weekend. I'll have to deal with this next week.

If this were Joe, I might be looking forward to the call. It's not Joe. It's definitely not Joe.

In the mail today was a letter from our retirement guy, Rob Sylvester, with a form I had requested. Along with the form was a handwritten note on paper showing that Rob supports Guiding Eyes For The Blind (nice!) explaining where I needed to sign and thanking me for working with him. Old-school in the extreme and just to my liking. If only he sold insurance.

I'm old-school, or, as Johnny Mercer wrote:

I'm old fashioned
But I don't mind it
That's how I want to be
As long as you agree To stay old fashioned with me
Oh won't you stay old fashioned with me
Oh please stay old fashioned with me

Truly Good Tools

In a few weeks we will lose Inbox by Gmail, a service providing an enhanced front end to Gmail. Google has decided that Gmail is good enough and is killing Inbox like a bull in the ring, spears sticking out of it and some fool in a ridiculous costume showing off like he's done something. I could complain about this all day, but that would be less interesting than comparing cat food.

Inbox has been a good tool. It looks and feels good, is efficient, and automates email some. I'm no fan of email — I'd rather write letters — but it's a necessity and so I sought out a good tool for it. That was Inbox.

Good tools are tough to come by and often require lots of experimentation. It took two semi-disposable fountain pens, and three really good ones to arrive at the pen I currently use which is just right for me in every way. Similarly, I've crafted a sheet of lined paper through trial and error over the course of years. (I don't make the paper but have designed a page I print on the back of used copy paper.) Online, I've found a fantastic minimalist writing tool. Six years ago my wife bought me the Chromebook Pixel on which I'm typing. It was the finest of tools when she gave it to me and remains fantastic no matter what Google says.

The best tools need to be owned outright. The fountain pen is mine and will be for another twenty years, maybe longer. The only way I'll lose it is if I, well, lose it, have it stolen, or break it somehow. It's the same with the paper. These things are mine.

The minimalist writing tool is great, but the guy who runs it can shut it down tomorrow. Google stopped updating the Chromebook. In those cases, I'm out of luck just as I am with Inbox. Much of why I prefer analog tools has to do with ownership which makes them much more dependable, as any good tool must be. Google can't end-of-life my fountain pen (though they might want to).

There is more than sentimental value to ownership. Ask any renter who has been told by the landlord it's time to move. It's possible to have a good tool that is rented or borrowed, but to truly good tools must be owned. I know everyone thinks Google Docs will be around forever, but I can't guarantee that, so it is only a good tool so long as Google allows me to use it. That's hardly dependable.

I thought Inbox was a good tool, but in a few weeks it will wink out of existence and there's absolutely nothing I can do about that. I just borrow it.

It's said that if you are not paying for a service, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold. I add that if you don't own the product even a little bit, you are owned a little bit by it. I got owned by Inbox just as I've been owned by Gmail for years. Sometimes that's okay, but the more I think about it, especially as I have to let go of Inbox, I'm certain that it isn't very good.

Compromise is part of life and my addiction to online word processing, email, and the rest come with a price. Every morning, and often through the day, I pick up the fountain pen, uncap it, and let it glide across the page. The words are all mine, the paper too, and the pen is completely my possession which kind of sets me free as a truly good tool should.

In The Clearing Stands A Writer?

Since waking, I've been at work in wondrous ways that nonetheless seem to bring me no closer to cleaning my desk. I'm sipping a drink (seltzer, gin, and the juice of one orange) and banging away at the typewriter creating even more paper. I had hoped to clear things away.

I read a friend's fourteen pages, wrote a note to her, then wrote about all of that and was able to recycle all those pages. I read and tweeted about a tremendous New York Times piece recommending spider webs then recycled those three pages. I typed a letter to a friend and recycled several pages and envelopes he had sent. I typed that letter on the backs of an article I wanted to send him, thus relieving the desk of two more sheets. I sorted all the mail into the bin and the bill holder.

At this point I expected to feel as though I had gotten somewhere but the desk seemed about as swamped as before. I still have the print of a Dani Shapiro article here. I've read the piece but feel like there's something to write about it. And the clock needs a battery. I take the dead battery to the basement, add it to the recycling, grab a fresh battery, notice the laundry basket, find the clothes still damp, clear the lint trap, and start the dryer again. Upstairs I install the battery and set the clock realizing how long I've been distracted. My desk is still a mess.

There are three sticky notes on my paper planner. The first is a quote about meditation. I used half the quote in my newsletter but the other half feels useful too. I shake my head and drop the note in the bin. The second note, about the business of writing, something I need to learn, has been stuck to the planner for three weeks. It mocks me. The last is an idea for a blog post or a book chapter. I should make time to write that but first the desk.

I'm far enough into this piece and into clearing my desk to wonder if there's any point to either of them. I'm suspicious of lessons learned but sure of the virtues of a clear desk. I feel very far from any kind of wisdom.

After that paragraph I shelved three books that had been behind the typewriter. A fourth book caught my attention and I started the introduction before remembering the two books I'm already reading. A third will grind everything to a halt. I've started a to-read list. It's eight books long and I wonder if it was better to forget books I wanted to read. I rarely ran out of reading material and the list already weighs on my mind.

I'm not going to clear the desk. I'll admit to that. Father forgive me for I have sinned. As soon as I clear it I'll find more paper to save if only for a while. These are ideas. These are possibilities. I'm not ready to let them go just yet nor am I able to attend to all of them. Days like today I pick and choose.

There's a quote from that Dani Shapiro article:

Had Jane Kenyon (or Virginia Woolf for that matter) lived long enough to be told to build a Twitter platform, she might have resisted. She might — as many of us do — have found ways to build a fortress around herself, a cathedral of peace and silence. She would have emerged from that cathedral...only in her own time, and at her own bidding.

I've been at this work for six hours. The desk is still cluttered with paper, pens, a typewriter. The shelf next to it is a mess of paper, books, my planner, and a folder I hoped would organize things. It turns out I've built a fortress of paper that is not a cathedral of peace but might be a temple of ideas. I rise from the chair and genuflect to the desk onto which I will now add this sheet, one more piece of paper that might be a leaf from the tree of wisdom. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"