What Are We Mad about This Week?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

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I have been taking the weekends off from Facebook, and something strange has been happening on Monday morning. Feeling like Rip Van Winkle, I open up Facebook and review the news from the weekend. I catch myself wondering what people are angry about this week.

It’s strange to feel so detached from the passionate debates of the past two days.

Of course there are many things that we can legitimately become angry about. The world is rife with injustice. I’m not doubting these things or suggesting that we embrace complacency.

Rather, I’ve been noticing that the daily use of Facebook can lead my mind into a kind of ongoing angst and anger, if not a sense of anxiety. In light of the injustices and problems in our world, I’m concerned that despite the benefits of awareness that comes through Facebook, it’s also creating a mindset of anger and anxiety that leaves me unable to thoughtfully engage the problems of our world in a constructive manner, let alone the people who disagree with my perspective.

I will never doubt that Facebook has been a great tool for sharing worthwhile causes and events. Heck, even the much-derided ALS Ice Bucket Challenge led to major research innovations and potential breakthroughs. I follow causes such as the Preemptive Love Coalition primarily through their Facebook page. Social media can do more than raise awareness for a cause—it can help us take organized action.

However, social media isn’t as great for fostering empathy, hosting complex, nuanced conversations, or creating a mindset that can take measured steps toward solutions. It’s so very easy to assume the worst about others, to lament what “those idiots” think, and to demonize people who post smug memes mocking what I hold dear. More to the point, I’m sure I’ve done all of these things to others plenty of times as well.

I am committed to being constructive, redemptive, and action-oriented within my resources. I don’t want to go through my life critiquing and criticizing others without ever getting involved in a cause. In fact, for many years I’d been involved in prison ministry, and I immediately noticed that I wrote with far more snark and divisiveness online compared to the way I reached out to the men in prison. I wanted my in-person words to guide my online words.

This brings me back to the weekend breaks I’ve been taking from Facebook (and all other social media channels). I don’t know how long I’ll keep this up, but I feel the acute need to know what I am like without any social media interactions. I need to feel the gnawing desire to check in and to ask what’s driving that and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. The more I’m driven to check in, the more I need to examine that drive and where it’s coming from.

I need solitude each day, and a big part of creating that space means learning to cut myself off from distractions and time wasting activities that eat up precious blocks of five, ten, or fifteen minutes.

I need solitude in order to hear the still, small voice of God.

I need solitude in order to recognize when my mind is spinning off track into anger, fear, and frustration.

Rage can become a lifestyle, a habit that we cultivate by constantly feeding it tidbits of injustice and fear from our circles and from the news cycle. In fact, news outlets and social media sites have every incentive in the world to push outrageous events into our faces. That isn’t to say there aren’t journalists doing good and essential work. Rather, the people running these companies need to attract viewers in order to maximize profits, and rage works.

The worst part about today’s outrage culture is that we need solitude in order to actually address it, but we’ll no doubt hear guilt trips that we’re putting our heads in the sand or acting irresponsibly if we disconnect for an extended period of time. The pursuit of an actual solution appears to be just another part of the problem.

Activists and saints surely figured out ways to address injustice before social media, and I trust that a bit more mindfulness and consideration about the way forward will help us take better steps forward together.

I care deeply about the injustice that America has inflicted on the Middle East (see the Preemptive Love Coalition for more ways you can help the most desperate refugees today). I think often about our criminal justice system, and I still associate names and faces with sentencing laws and parole policies. I very much want to stay engaged. I want to feel the anger of the injustices people continue to suffer. I can use Facebook to raise awareness about these issues, but I need something more than rage.

I need the focus and direction that comes from silence and contemplative prayer.

I need a still small voice to speak in the midst of the storm, or I’ll most likely become just another voice in the storm.

Why Bloggers Should Share Their Posts on Their Personal Facebook Pages

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

facebookThere is a trend lately among bloggers to share their blog posts on writer pages for fans rather than in their personal news feeds. This means that friends who want to follow their personal updates and their blog posts need to friend them AND subscribe to their pages.

Here are three reasons why this is bad for most bloggers along with a hefty caveat:

Assumptions about Blog Content

The fear among many bloggers is that their friends and family will get tired of blog posts being pushed in front of them. Perhaps there are ways a blogger could do this poorly, but this kind of thinking assumes that sharing your own writing is somehow wrong.

While pushy blog content or a pushy approach to sharing blog content would be a turn off, I’d like to ask you, “Who do you write for?” There’s probably a good chance that many of your friends and family would benefit by reading your blog. If not, then you may want to rethink your blog rather than changing your sharing plans.

If your blog is sharing something valuable, then you shouldn’t feel bad about sharing it. When your blog is an extension of who you are and what you’re interested in, it belongs on your personal Facebook news feed.

Assumptions about Friends

I tend to assume that my friends and family don’t read my blog, but every month I hear from someone else who has been quietly reading my blog posts or the articles I write for other sites and share on Facebook. While some friends may choose to hide my updates, enough of them have been quietly following my blog through Facebook that I have no intention of separating my blog from my personal Facebook updates any time soon.

I think it’s more helpful to set up a writing page for yourself if you want to keep your professional contacts away from your personal life rather than sparing your friends and family from your blog.

I use my Facebook writers page to share writing industry news and my blog posts. My personal Facebook page is a mix of my personal updates and blog posts.

How We Manage News Feeds

While this move of blog posts away from personal walls to fan pages is rooted in a desire to be considerate to friends and family, I would like to suggest that this separation causes more problems than it solves. If I want to keep in touch with a friend and follow his/her writing, I don’t like the idea of having to subscribe and friend this person so that I’m stuck following both of his/her feeds.

I like the idea of just having one feed for one person. I’ve got hundreds of friends to sift through, and it seems like more of a liability than an advantage.

Another huge wild card that I can’t speak to directly is how Facebook manages what shows up in my news feed. I’ve heard that pages aren’t always prioritized, and I’ve had too many friends write these posts explaining how I can make their fan pages a priority in my news feed. All of this seems far more complicated and annoying than these friends simply sharing their blog posts every day in their personal feeds.

The Caveat about Blog Content

The one exception to this would be if your blog is firmly planted in a narrow niche that your friends would never want to read about. For example, if you blog about website coding, don’t share your blog posts with friends and family.

There may also be some bloggers who would rather not let friends and family know about their writing. They may even use a pseudonym so that no one can discover what they’re writing about.

An Apology

I’m sorry that I’ve become that bossy blogger telling people what to do about social media and their blogs. However, I think the core issue here is one of self-esteem and personal assessment for bloggers.

Far too many bloggers undervalue their writing.

They just assume that sharing their posts with friends and family is annoying or burdensome to them. I think it’s time for bloggers to embrace their value and to boldly share their work with everyone who needs to read it.

If you blog, it’s your job to writing something valuable and to then share it with readers. If you aren’t willing to share it, then you’ve either failed to create something good or you’ve convinced yourself of a lie about the worth of your hard work.

The Benefits of a Limited Social Media Fast

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

During the 40 days of Lent, I decided to fast from social media in a limited sort of way. While I know it’s probably more common to quit these things cold turkey, I didn’t think that 40 days separated from social media would actually provide the benefits I needed for the long term.

The Problem

I was using Twitter and Facebook as sources of constant distraction from my work, family, and spiritual life. I wanted to use social media as a tool to communicate with potential readers, to network with fellow writers, and to keep in touch with friends. Instead I checked them both an unseemly number of times in search of links, conversations, or anything that I could read.

I responded to any mention or post immediately. Links to interesting posts were pursued, and I left comments without thinking about the time they consumed.

Any time I hit a tough spot in my writing, I’d drop by Twitter or Facebook.

I needed to break my dependency on these tools, while learning how to use them in healthy ways. It wasn’t going to help me if I could quit cold turkey for 40 days, learn a few lessons, and then gradually forget them over the following months while rediscovering the lure of social media again.

I needed a practical way forward so that my personal, spiritual, and work times were equally guarded that would last beyond Lent.

The Plan

I settled on a plan to spend only 30 minutes each day on Twitter and Facebook. To be honest, that seems absurdly long, but in practice the time goes by quickly! I broke it into 3 ten-minute slots. This meant that I needed to make the most of my time online and if I really wanted to interact with people, I needed to space my time out.

This required a decent amount of discipline, since I wanted to think of interesting things to say, but I also wanted to read what other people were sharing. I didn’t have unlimited time to follow blog posts and links.

In addition, effectively tracking your friends on a tool like Tweetdeck, as I do, I needed to leave Tweetdeck open for a while before I could look at it. I hide my menu bar so as to limit the temptation, but I still knew it was there.

The Results

While I certainly missed my sources of distraction, I soon appreciated the limits of my fast. Sometimes I followed links and ended up reading them beyond my time limit, so I had to subtract time from my next 10-minute session. I probably interacted online a lot less to my detriment in some ways, but I also thought a lot more about effectively using my limited time, which is a real benefit.

I’m most grateful that I broke the habit of checking social media first thing in the morning. Instead I spend my early morning time writing fiction, drinking coffee, reading scripture, and praying. My mornings are SO much better without Twitter and Facebook.

Waiting until 11 AM or later for social media really helps me use my most productive times in the most effective ways—both for work and spiritual growth. I never catch myself thinking, “Damn, I wish I’d spent 30 minutes on Twitter this morning instead of praying or editing my novel!”

In addition, HubSpot marketing found that more people are willing to retweet something on Twitter around 11 AM, so I really have no reason to use Twitter before 11 AM. I can share my links and socialize at 11 AM just fine.

Perhaps my biggest problem was that I found new distractions such as checking my e-mail, but even that was a bit easier to resist since it’s much easier to convince myself that no new e-mails have arrived in the past 15 minutes. Twitter guarantees fresh content. In addition, an empty inbox isn’t all that distracting even on my worst day.

Here are some outcomes from my limited fast:

  • I now budget an extra 30 minutes for blog reading and networking.
  • I stick to the 3 ten-minute social media sessions on Tweetdeck and Facebook. I aim for 11 AM, 2 PM, and 5 PM.
  • I try to avoid social media at night. If I want to drop someone a note or need to send a message via Facebook, I can drop in, send the note, and then log off.
  • I allow myself to visit Twitter online if I want to post something, but I can’t do anything else.

How have you dealt with your bad habits in social media? Have you tried sometime different that worked? 

Advertising Fail: Hartford, Connecticut as a Beach Destination

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

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Did you know that Hartford, Connecticut is located along the beach and the women have freakishly long hyper-extending legs???

Is there a neighborhood in Hartford that I’m missing? I mean, I haven’t seen the whole city yet, but I’m pretty sure there’s an advertising intern who needs a geography lesson pronto.

When Does Self-Promotion on Social Media Go Too Far?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

As a writer I’ve been regularly confronting the concept of self-promotion for a solid three years now. With online applications such as Twitter and Facebook many worry that we are not only falling into a nasty pattern of narcissism, but some businesses and sole-proprietor businesses will abuse their networks of family, friends, and acquaintances to make a buck.

I’d like to tackle this from the perspective of a writer. Writers face the tricky matter of essentially “selling” ourselves and our talents of weaving words together. Readers and publishers look for someone with name recognition, and so writers must think of ways they can “make a name for themselves.” If you’re familiar with the biblical story of the tower of Babel, you may recall that the attempt of humanity to do such a thing resulted in their language being garbled by God.

Such a prospect is not necessarily encouraging for writers—especially a Christian writer.

The only way I can see handling this delicate matter of self-promotion in a way that avoids the exploitation of friends, family, and acquaintances is the following:

  1. Only promote what may help them. If I’m hoping they’ll buy my book and I send updates and links their way to that end, then the book I write should be of value to them.
  2. Don’t bombard anyone. I try to only send a manageable number of updates about myself and my work via twitter and facebook. I don’t want anyone to become tired of my endless stream of self-promotion. Everyone has a different limit here, so be cautious.
  3. It’s not all business. Part of keeping in touch with friends and family is adding some color from your own life, sharing pictures and stories that may be funny, interesting, or unusual. Don’t stick to mere work concerns in social media.

I can’t say for sure if I’ve done this perfectly, but as a writer who has to walk this fine line, I find that friends and family generally want to know what I’m up to. Therefore, it’s my job to keep them in the loop without wearing them out with my updates.