remember that early cartoon of the duck with a mallet about to break his computer?

The pandemic has forced many organizations pivot to online training. Facilitators have quickly adjusted their in-person sessions to the age of Zoom. Perhaps, too quickly.

Technology has a reputation for making things efficient. Should I want to message a friend, I pick up a phone and text. They will get the message instantly. Before phones of any kind, my only hope was to mail a letter. Of course, the efficiency isn't always for the better. Social networks have proved, time and time again, to be harmful to mental health. Yet, many of us find ourselves losing time doom scrolling. In my experience with online training and learning through the pandemic, I feel like efficiency is getting in the way.

The school model is based on a factory. Thus, we all get arbitrarily sorted by age, instead of ability. A physical classroom and interaction with a teacher allows for some clarification and one-on-one instruction when time permits. Whereas, online learning has an opportunity to meet us where we are at. Many LMS (Learning Management Systems) allow those of us looking for new skills to go at our own pace. We choose a lesson and work at our own time, not that of the others in the class or the system's expectations. Learning online in this way may work for many, but others may struggle without the valuable interactions of other students. Furthermore, deadlines are often motivators for people.

Mental Health Learning

My experience with online training has come in the form of wellness groups and education. In my case, the courses I did had live instruction and work in an LMS. Through Coursera and Thinkific I watched instructional videos and slideshows. I filled out assignments and quizzes. Live instruction was give by facilitators to a group of us on Zoom. I have been in classes of a dozen people and over twenty. There were breakout groups and class discussions. Every facilitator stuck to a 90 minute rule. The idea of a 90 minute max of online class time seems to be a recommendation to those in the field, but I am unaware of its source.

I did find 90 minutes to be suitable, but facilitators became slaves to the clock. For example, I had a course on crisis intervention that was about 12 individual lessons in the LMS. The live instruction was 10 sessions. The facilitator had 90 minutes to present important material from those 12 chapters, take questions, allow for group discussions, and give us feedback on our work. With only 10 sessions, the facilitator just didn't have time for meaningful discussion and feedback. We could barely accomplish the assignments in the group breakouts. As this took place during the pandemic, our class was the first to try this new online format. So, I do not begrudge the organization or the facilitator.

Efficiency

A simple letter was typed on a typewriter and that was messy. You've got ink to deal with, white-out for mistakes, maybe carbon for copies, envelopes, stamps, and multiple file draws to store copies. Today, we sit down, tap the computer keyboard and hit send. Computers have made things easier. In the early days of computers, I remember getting a call from aunt who had a question about spreadsheets. I had a reputation for liking computers. Thus, I must know how to do a spreadsheet, right? No. That is to say, computers are not a magical solution. A computer is a tool and we must figure out how to use it. Yet, we see the computer, and the internet, as this miraculous answer to our problems. You want to sell those antique roller skates? Put it online. Surely, you'll get an interested party to buy it. You need a logo? Make one on the computer.

In reality, to sell some antique roller skates, you may need to find collectors. Simply screaming into the void that is Facebook may result in absolutely no interest. There's too much out there. You need to spend some time finding the right web communities. Making a logo requires some knowledge of drawing and designing using an application made for that purpose. Likewise, taking a 10 day, 3 hour course and compressing it to a few Zoom meetings and an LMS is not going to be as easy as we think. On paper, it sounds cost-effective and doable. After all, video is just like being there, right?

Much of communication is non-verbal. As a presenter, or teacher, you can look into the audience and see if they are engaged. Did they understand the material? If you see confused faces, people scrambling to take notes, or people on their phones, you may need to spend more or less time on a subject. On Zoom, everyone is compressed into tiny, icon-sized squares. Plus, the presenter gets to see themselves on their screen. How distracting is it to get to critique yourself on the fly? When attending an in-person presentation, you can take cues from the presenter's body language. In the example of time constraints, I may reserve my question for after class since I can visibly see my teacher is eager to move on. Or, I may notice the others in the room are clear on the topic and I want to wait to ask my question in private. These forms of communication are missing online.

Learning is different for everyone. There is no magic pill we can swallow to know Kung-Fu, Neo. I feel if online courses were effective, we wouldn't need them. After all, why not just learn straight from the textbook? Youtube tutorials are a textbook of sorts. They have all the bias that a book does-- Here's how to do this. As a reader or viewer, you do not get to seek clarification, ask for the information to be presented again in a new way, or question the content. Thus, prerecorded slideshows and videos are only dictating information at us.

These hybrid courses created during the pandemic that are part studying in an LMS and part lecture and discussion need more flexibility. Our expectations and goals when using these methods need to change. The way we use the technology will likely need to change as well. For example, could my live instruction on Zoom simply have been discussion, questions, and interactions with other learners? The facilitator could perhaps have led discussions on the reading materials, rather than going over some of it again. Though, I have been attending another course where the facilitator does give time to answer questions and get input. In that course, the facilitator is also only doing 90 minutes and ends every Zoom saying we are behind. Furthermore, that course has no workbook or LMS. So, will I actually get all the content intended?

Of course, I am not a teacher. I do not believe many of the people leading this sort of learning online are. Teaching is an art form and a profession. Scanning a workbook into a slideshow and recording myself talking is not teaching online. Online learning is different than what is happening during the pandemic. The short explanation is that online learning is designed to be online. What is happening now is an ad-hoc transition from a face-to-face situation to online.

Presenting information in-person gives facilitators a chance to get to know us. Why is that different through a flat image on a screen? How many times have you seen someone's photo avatar on LinkedIn or in a program at a speaking engagement and the real person looks nothing like them? My clothes, hair style, accessories, and facial expressions say something about me. Compressed video the size of a business card doesn't allow for me to be seen on Zoom. If a facilitator has a better idea of who I am, they may understand how to teach me when I am having difficulty. Furthermore, we get to know our classmates. There's a shared sense of belonging in groups. In the movie theater we laugh more at a comedy because others are laughing. At home on the TV, the same comedy does not illicit laughter. Humans are social animals.

There is no doubt the future, pandemic or not, will mean more online learning. We love money more than anything on the planet and online learning looks like it would save us money. Even though we've been thrust into remote learning, why bother to specifically design online learning for schools or mental health organizations, like I am working with? It's good enough as it is, right? Whether you are part of a mental wellness organization, a teacher, an employer, or another group sharing information, we need to have a discussion about the future of learning with this technology. I am all for finding better ways, but let's not let tech companies bully us into terrible learning models. When we wanted better ways to get around with interactive maps the trade-off was giving tech companies our location 24/7. While I may disagree with that on a personal level, we should all be concerned about what we give up if we allow technology a larger role in education than that of a tool.

"There's not enough time in the day." Whether you live paycheck-to-paycheck or comfortably,the demand for your time is ceaseless. Certainly the phrase, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." must be famous last words. Sleep is important and deeply impacted by our mental wellness.

Show Your Work

Many people lucky enough to be working during the pandemic are working from home. While there are some "productivity gurus" who believe the gig economy is a step toward a future where people work when they want to, the reality seems to be that we are working all the time. My old mantra, "you're not enough," has driven me to burnout on many occasions. This "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" shame that has been passed down through generations eradicates sleep. My bed is in the same space as work. So, what's another 10 minutes, an hour or 3 hours of work? In addition to the self-shaming that many of us inflict, we now live in a world where corporate masters are monitoring our work from home with invasive technology. My anxiety loves this idea enough to disrupt my focus, day and night.

Story Problems

Personally, I have had as much work as I have had sleep, which is not a lot. That anxiety I spoke of fires up before I have even applied for work or pitched a story. It is so demoralizing that when I do successfully complete an application or a pitch I feel like Atlas and think Sisyphus is an amateur with his boulder. Mostly, I spend my evenings in bed looking back at the "time I have wasted" being a jobless loser and what a burden I am to myself and those around me. Self comparison pops in to tell me what my successful friends are doing and sadness follows behind to shove me deeper into the abyss. The next morning, devoid of sleep, I lack any self-confidence to find work. If I "pull myself up by my bootstraps," I have difficulty focusing and planning because of the lack of rest.

If I set aside the all or nothing thinking and admit that situation cannot happen every day, there is still a challenge with sleep. When I am working so very hard to prove myself to others and burning out, I experience Bedtime Procrastination. Am I too wound up to sleep or do I feel that I am owed more time in the day because I worked so hard? When that study about Bedtime Procrastination hit Chinese social networks, the word "revenge" was added to the beginning of the phrase. Revenge Bedtime Procrastination is staying up past your intended bedtime for some self-care. Me time is important, but so is sleep.

Negative Integers

Depression and anxiety are bedfellows. This is a chicken and egg situation as well-- being anxious could lead me to a depressive state or I could feel anxious about rebooting after a period of depression. One of the stigmas about depression is around sleeping all the time. Sometimes a lack of productivity is seen as a lack of motivation. And even if one isn't sleeping all day, stagnation is discredited by those who do not understand. We are not unmotivated, those of us in depression are frequently stuck. We are frozen from anxiety. The realization of our condition is essential to recovery, but also a hindrance. The weight of the time we lost during our crash is overwhelming. It feeds the depression. It keeps us up at night.

In the same way that the loss of someone close to us can be exhausting, ruminating on your mental health and comparing yourself to others is debilitating. Whether it disrupts sleep with obsessive thoughts, a need to make up for lost time, or revenge bedtime procrastination we despair. Without sleep, we lose even more of the resilience that aids us to live with depression and anxiety. I haven't even touched on medications, many of which affect sleep. You cannot seem to get enough sleep or no sleep at all with many of the SSRI and SNRI meds.

Solve for Why

Some neurologists theorize that our strange dreams are the brain's way of processing the memories of the day. It is possible that we may be moving short-term memories into long-term storage. Without sleep and the dreams do memories get stuck in the short-term space, a place where we are always thinking of them? Trauma has been shown to inhibit the hippocampus from converting memories. This is why flashbacks occur in many people with PTSD, the memory is still as fresh as the day it happened.

Imagine my frustration from lack of sleep being used to shame myself to going to bed early. You are a loser and everyone knows it. Why can't you sleep? What else are you going to do? You are a talentless burden to your family and friends. You should have found a job today. You should have cleaned the house. You should have got your Masters. You should have invested money. You should have died, not your father. You should... It is hard to sleep when a critic with a megaphone can take any of your thoughts and twist them into pain.

There are many ways to improve sleep. Changes in diet, medication, and activities can help. All of those are easier said than done. Meditation has worked in the past. Talk therapy is useful and EMDR therapy can aid in moving those memories to long-term storage. However, I am beginning to think acceptance is also needed. This is a moment of difficulty. Difficulty is part of every human life. May I be kind to myself in this moment and give myself the compassion I need.

#sleep #insomnia #anxiety #depression #Trauma

In the last 15 years I have done my best to have a paperless work flow. It was easy for a video professional. Those times I did need something printed, I would send my files to a local copy shop. Without a home printer, I wasn't buying ink cartridges, fixing paper jams, or wondering why my computer couldn't see the printer. Recently, my partner has been working on her Masters and many of the courses provide articles as the teaching materials, rather than textbooks. Screens are not great for reading. We spend so much time in front of screens, I can understand why my spouse prefers paper. I love my e-ink reader, a very old Kindle, but it is a special kind of hell trying to read a PDF on one of those. So, we decided to get a printer. Now, I feel absolutely filthy.

1980s Hacker Mom

The dream of the future was alive in my youth thanks to my Commodore 64 computer. Buying joysticks, a tape drive, a floppy drive, and a printer for the home was the start of something exciting. We got an Okidata Okimate color printer that was surprisingly inexpensive! That is, compared to the typical black & white printers at the time, which were more focused on small businesses, not hobbyists. Like the printers of today, the Okimate had cyan, magenta, and yellow to print in color. However, all three colors were stitched together on one ribbon in a single cartridge. Perhaps 5 inches of cyan, followed by 5 of magenta, 5 of yellow and repeat. If the Okimate was sitting on magenta, but needed to make green, it would fast forward to yellow and then print cyan over that. Need more green? Skip magenta again. It was wasteful, there's whole parts of the ribbon that had never been used. Get to the end of the cartridge? Sorry, buy a new one.

Not so fast! As you can imagine printing took a long time back then, so what else are you going to do, but watch? Mom noticed the color skipping behavior of the printer. When a cartridge reached its end, my mother grabbed a number two pencil and rewound the ribbon, much like us old people had to do if a cassette tape malfunctioned. She placed it back in the printer and we tried to print something new. It worked! Occasionally, the printer would attempt to use a color that was previously used the first time around and that would make some colorful glitches.(Maybe this is my first introduction to something I now enjoy, glitch art) Yet, this hack was worth it to a teenager who's most important prints were silly posters for the student council election. This is before the days of spell-check. I remember that poster on which I misspelled intelligent. Ugh.

Offset and Get the Fix

That brief trip down memory lane illustrates how printer manufacturers make money. In the early 2000s printers were dirt cheap. Buy an HP printer for $50! Better yet, buy an Apple computer and we'll throw in a printer for free. The companies do not make money on the hardware. They make money by selling you their proprietary ink cartridges. I remember those $50 printers having replacement ink starting at $30 apiece. Buy 12 of those in a year and you've just purchased 7 printers. Have a color printer? Now you're buying 4 different ink refills.

As consumers took notice of this pusher/drug user model, we started to fight back. Making a mess with syringes people began filling the previously used cartridge with ink. Whole businesses sprung from this and created a 3rd party market. We could get aftermarket ink on the cheap! As technology progressed those disruptive companies manufactured cartridges that looked exactly like the original equipment.

Of course, tech progressed at the printer manufacturers as well. Inexpensive chips could be added to print cartridges in much the same way car keys were chipped. Not an OEM cartridge? Sorry, you cannot print today. To further increase profit printers came with more bells and whistles. All-in-one printer scanners and 'wireless' printers were made to justify a higher price upfront. Ever have success with a wireless printer? Finding them on your network is harder than finding a giant squid in the ocean. No problem touch screens to the rescue. Easily configure your printer on the network, for an added cost of a touch screen.

Tanks for Nothing

In recent years, a few companies like Epson and Canon have taken a note from consumers and created eco or mega tank printers. They do not take cartridges, but have reservoirs for the ink. I was impressed by this innovation because I want to be less wasteful. This looked pretty interesting and excited me. However, I am very cynical. What's the catch? Well, the main benefit for the companies is getting your money upfront. Rather than giving you the typical smaller than normal ink cartridge in the box when you buy the printer, they give the tank printers a 2 year supply. Instead of paying $120 for that all-in-one printer, you pay $400 because you're getting 2 years of ink.

Okay, the working poor at Epson have to pay for their mandatory Disney+ subscription to forget about life. Plus, regular yacht maintenance is not cheap for the CEOs of the printer giants. Either pay for the ink with the purchase of the tank printer, or buy cartridges over the lifetime of another printer? The super tank printer seems slightly better for the environment, so how about I purchase...ERROR 5b00

The next best thing to selling you ink on a regular basis is planned obsolescence. While researching Epson EcoTank and Canon Megatank printers, I found lots of complaints about similar errors. Canons spit out the error above which means that the waste ink absorber pad is full. Inkjet printers can clog easily, so this pad is there to soak up things after a print or during a cleaning. So by maintaining the printer, you are killing it. You cannot replace the pad. You cannot print with the error. Epson has a similar design and gives you a less cryptic message, 'end of life.' Consumers who have called in for service have been told that the repair plus shipping is likely going to cost more than buying a new one. Epson's own site says the following.

Most consumers who are out of warranty elect to replace the printer because replacement of ink pads may not be a good investment for lower-cost printers. In most cases, when this message occurs, the printer's other components also may be near the end of usable life."

What about just making a serviceable ink pad? Again Epson, "Implementing this type of a design would result in more expensive printers. Most users would not benefit from such higher costs because their printers will never reach the Parts End of Life message.

Paper Jam

Today, after researching what printer to purchase, I feel exploited and weary. Epson is completely correct in its assumption people will buy new printers if they receive the planned obsolescence error. Bringing this issue to our governments would likely result in zero interest from politicians. We, the people, do not have the time and energy to fight lobbyists and lawyers. A lawmaker is more likely to send you a new $120 printer, then take your concerns and investigate.

We live in a disposable society. There are no vacuum or television repair businesses. Washers, dryers, and even bicycles make their way to landfills because the cost of repair is far more than replacement. Warranties are lip service more than anything else. When you complete the phone maze to finally get a human, they explain to you that buried in the fine print is a clause that says, "Not today, Sunshine." Instead of manufacturers backing a product with pride, retailers and other companies fill the warranty gap with "extended warranties." Much like the manufacturers, they have their own fine print. Thus, we are left with making another purchase to avoid the headache. The path of least resistance always wins.

There Is No Margin

One last note to add to my research. If we go back to the beginning, printer manufactures create these devices to make a profit. One of the ways companies have found to sustain profits is through subscription. So, HP has created a program where the printer tells HP it is running low and they automatically send you new ink in the mail. They have several monthly payment plans and you can quit to let the useless device collect dust at any time. Sound familiar? This is how Xerox works. The price of their copy machines is beyond affordable for even large businesses. Instead, most lease the machines and pay for the toner and maintenance. As an aside, movie theaters are now stuck in this model thanks to the rise of digital projectors. We live in the age of Subscribe or Die, I guess.

So what could I buy to solve the issue of printing many documents at home in an economical and environmentally friendly way? As I said above, I was weary from the research. I gave up on finding something that would be a useful and worthwhile investment for our future endeavors. Instead, I opted for something that could handle infrequent printing. No clogs in a laser printer. I will bow to my new master, Brother, and be thankful every time I am able to easily find the required toner cartridge. Perhaps I should take bets on how many prints it will be able to make before it reaches the manufactured "end of life" count coded into the machine?

In September I made this grand experiment official, “Let’s see how well I can transition to a job as a writer.” Keeping it real, I recognized that there truly is no such thing as “going viral” or “being discovered.” This goal will take time. I thought I’d give it a year or two. Now, after a few months, my resolve is fading.

December was a month minus my regular client that provided more than 2 years of work. I started editing images for episcura (link not guaranteed to work much longer). Eventually, I was handling the Twitter, Facebook and G+ accounts as well. Two of the three owners had the reigns of the social network accounts as well. They grabbed followers, bought ads and responded to some questions while I posted the day to day content. From there, it spun into me blogging for them.

The company, episcura, has decided to close up shop. While 3D artist do need HDRI and texture images for their work, it is simply too easy to appropriate pictures from a Google image search, rather than pay for quality work. Furthermore, technology advancements continue to make photogrammetry more practical and efficient.

As I mentioned last month, even though I could sense it coming, losing the gig was quite a shock. Thus, I spent much of the month in self-doubt and low confidence. I wanted to double my efforts with my remaining client, but my ego was too bruised to give it my all. December is a holiday month spent with family and friends, but it was feeling shame because I had lost what little income I had. The month is typically a busy month because firms are trying to spend the last of their yearly budget in order to get the same amount renewed for the following year. However with the last week of December a write-off because of Christmas, I felt it would be difficult to find a new client in the 3 weeks left of the year. Perhaps that was the self-doubt talking?

Monthly Summary

Those are some very sad numbers, indeed. I didn’t get a lot of assignments from my remaining client because they were busy with an art opening. I’m somewhat mad at myself for not running with the freedom and pouring some content out on their site. For episcura, I ran with the ball and posted one article a day, sometimes more. I think initiative and confidence go hand and hand, and I was lacking the later. I’ve done freelance for years and clients come and go, but I was really invested in episcura, so I took it personally. The bright spot in the month is a piece I did on a new social network.

Other Income

Paul is always there when I need him. My friend and co-host started publishing our past live shows and kept me busy with show notes and writing updates on our Patreon page. We even got together for a short show and talked about smart watches.

January began with a trip away from the gloom of winter. Hopefully the sunshine will inspire a better report next time.

This speech is absolutely amazing. The full transcript can be found here. I found it thanks to a post by Ben Werdmüller.

#democracy #violence #war #intelligenceservices #encryption #signal #minorities #intolerance #technology