Category: Writing

To Wi-Fi or not to Wi-Fi, that is the question

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.

It seems that even Shakespeare knew about the trials and tribulations of the inter-webs, well before Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.  It can be a veritable cess-pit of humanity at times, so I thought about long and hard about getting a connection for the kirk.  Did I really want to have that sort of intrusion / distraction available at what is a place of refuge for me?

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has been modified over time for different purposes.  The slightly tongue-in-cheek additions of ‘Wi-Fi’ and ‘Battery’ for me speak to the importance of knowledge and power.  ‘Scientia potestas est’ (knowledge is power) is the motto of my secondary school, and over the years I’ve tried to develop my knowledge to increase my agency.

Working from home is one of the things I value in my professional life, so I needed to decide if being able to work from Ohakune was going to be important to me.  Since my commute was extended from 10-20 minutes to 90 each way, I’ve really valued the ability to work from home on the occasional Friday.  It has also helped to avoid the weekend exodus traffic by being able to get on the road by 4pm.

What has finally swung it for me is the sheer convenience of being able to control heating systems remotely, as well as view live streams from the security cameras on the property if need be.  I’ll also be able to stream entertainment if I want a quiet night in.

Next time:  What lies beneath

Why I write

This photo of Mt Ruapehu from Ohakune was taken around 1910. 

Most people who know me well know I’m an ‘extroverted’ introvert and a very private person.  I might be on Facebook and Twitter but it’s not like I’m into sharing my every action or thought.  Speaking in public or writing and publishing a blog aren’t easy for me – so why do I write?

I write because it’s not easy for me.  I write to practice writing, to become better at it, to try different styles of writing.  Sometimes I’ll bash out a post as a travel-log or musings upon a topic.  Other times it’s a quick and dirty update with photos so that I can see my progress.  Going back and re-reading my posts last weekend as I added categories to them was a great reminder of my ‘before’ and ‘after’.

I have an uneasy relationship with words.  Whilst I may have been the earliest of my siblings to speak, I was born with a hearing impairment like a number of children at that time.  That means I don’t always hear what people say, misunderstand their meaning, and misinterpret what they have said.  That’s lead to some hilarious and painful conversations at times.

We have such a strong aural tradition as a society.  From parents reading and singing to their young children, listening to the radio, or live and recorded music.  TV shows and movies were around but not as dominant as they are now.  I’ve always loved reading books.  There I could be more certain of the words I was reading, and gain my understanding of their meaning from the words around them and the context.

I may have loved reading as a child but I was rubbish at English in my first year of secondary school.  I’d always sat at the front of the class during my primary schooling due to my dodgy hearing.  At secondary school I was often sitting in the middle of the class due to my family name.  I changed it when I was 16 so I then ended up sitting at the back of some classrooms.  I don’t think I can blame my class seating position on my understanding of English though!

I went to the sort of girls’ secondary school where the ‘brainy’ kids did French and Latin as their third form (Year 9) electives and everyone else did Shorthand-Typing and Home Economics.  My mother figured that I’d struggle with French so it was Latin and Shorthand-Typing for me!  I may not have ‘passed’ School Certificate (NCEA Level 1) Latin but at least it took my understanding of English from a ‘C’ to an ‘A’ in three years.

The other thing it did was take my writing from simple to complex.  Let’s face it, a sentence in Latin translates to a paragraph in English so I was rocking those tenses!  Unfortunately that didn’t always translate so well to the business world, where active language and plain English are preferred.

By my 30’s I was having to relearn how to write business documents in a way that others could actually understand.  Readability statistics are now my best friend!  More recently I’ve explored copy-writing techniques to improve my business writing.  But writing fact-based documents which have specific legal meaning is not the same as writing for personal pleasure.  A journey of 10,000 hours starts with a few blog posts.  Thanks for joining me on this journey.

Next time:  The cabinets are coming, the cabinets are coming……………..