No Notifications

My latest initiative to re-established fixed sleep and wake times has gotten me up and to my screen a little earlier than I had been.  Some coffee, some dishwashing, retrieve newspaper for my wife, then to the keyboard, after I review the Daily Task List.  I'm perhaps a little ahead of those fixed to their social media.  Check email first most days.  No new messages that I didn't already expect most days.  The usual predictable weekly broadcast from my synagogue on Friday, from subscriptions that maintain, some places that think they can get me to donate.  No messages from any people today, and most days.  With this comes responses to r/Judaism comments I might have made the day before.  None today either.  No notifications on FB this morning.  Zero notifications on Twitter.  All opened and closed quickly.

That generates a lot of time that can be allocated to other things, more enduring things.  Twitter basically offers soundbites from people of public prominence, a chance for the nebbishes that most of us are to tell what we think to somebody who would ignore us in person.  Then again, our nebbish ancestors have been writing letters to the White House since there was a White House.  No reason to ever sign onto Twitter.  Reddit and FB have different purposes.  For Reddit, as for most of what I write, I put my thoughts out there and leave them there for others to read, but don't care what anyone does with them.  I never engage in online conversation, though there is some back and forth from other posters.  I also almost never open a comment that contains a link to another article.  I can search the news myself for what I want to read.

FB offers the most complexity.  When I enrolled in 2009, its lure was the ability to connect to people I once knew forty years before who had lived their adult lives with jobs, families, and hobbies.  That might still be its attraction, though much of that has disappeared.  So have the posts from public figures, most of which find Twitter more useful.  Of the last 20 entries on my feed, three come from people I know, six come from entities to which I subscribe, and 11, or the majority, are from unsolicited sources, quotes, animal pictures, publications to which I do not subscribe.  And the three friends, only on a real remnant of my childhood group, do not require any response.  Not a total wasteland but also not the best way to focus my day.

So No Notifications today from anything that I feel obligated to check.  And that's the best score.