Crackers and creative confidence

Last night while drinking champagne and eating crackers with soft cheese and slices of fresh tomato (topped with ground salt and black pepper), my friend Tonia and I got to chatting about bell-ringers and how they manage to stop those giant bells from tolling past the designated number on any given hour. (Do you know how they do it?)

Creatively inspired by the champagne and the lateness of the hour, we came up with all kinds of theories, ranging from shoving some kind of giant feather duster up in between the clapper* and the inside of the bell, to having a second bell-ringer whose job it was to catch hold of the bell as it swung and then hold it there (perilously, in our imaginings, tilting over the edge of a bell-tower while holding back a giant brass bell with all their apparently-considerable strength). I have my suspicions that our theories would not hold water in a peer-reviewed study, but they filled our evening with laughter. 

And somewhere in the midst of all this my brain, probably once again influenced by the champagne and the late night, made the leap from creative theorising on bell-ringers to creative inspiration in general to Quasimodo and the way jobs that were once intensely private (like bell-ringers in Notre Dame) were now as open to the world as anyone else (thanks to the Internet and in particular social media) to the way many artists are now using this phenomenon to practise in public and build a tribe or community of like-minded supporters around them.

Isn’t the Internet amazing?

And here’s something else we talked about. That everyone Tonia or I had ever known or met had had misgivings about sharing their creative work in public. Our Inner Critics not only make nasty comments that put us down and leave our confidence in tatters… they are also experts at isolating us and making us feel as though we are the only unworthy ones in the room. But the two truths are: 1) none of us is unworthy, and 2) at some time or another, all of us feel unworthy.

I mean, everyone.

• In 1908, Monet destroyed at least 15 of his major works just before they were due to be exhibited in the Durand-Ruel gallery

• Franz Kafka burned 90 percent of his writings and instructed in his Will that the rest was to be burned unread. The only reason we have Kafka's works today is because his friend ignored his wishes

• Billy Joel said of his 1989 hit We Didn’t Start the Fire that “That melody is horrendous. It’s like a mosquito droning. It’s one of the worst melodies I’ve ever written.”

• Woody Allen hated his classic movie Manhattan so much that he begged United Artists not to release it, and even offered to do another movie for free just to stop it from being released

• Harper Lee tossed the manuscript for one of the world's most beloved novels, To Kill a Mockingbird, out the window

• I once read that Picasso had been banned from certain galleries for trying to ‘fix’ his own paintings

The only reason we have these great works today is because the artists ultimately shared their work, despite their misgivings. (Even Kafka refrained from burning that final 10 percent of his work).

I don’t really have a lot more to say about this subject, except to wave my pom-poms and cheer you on. You’ve got this! Don’t hold your beautiful, creative work back, even if it’s not ready yet. Even if it’s not perfect. Let’s all celebrate the process, and build one another up.

End of rant.

* I had to look up 'clapper.' Now my Google history shows "what is the name of the donging bit in a bell?" I wonder what the aliens would think about us if they read our Google histories. 

Oh dear

And I was so smug. And I felt so free! Less than a week after I congratulated myself on being free from Facebook for a whole year, I find myself sucked back into its insidious blue-and-white vortex.

Earlier this week I signed up to a course of study and only after I had committed (and paid) did I learn that the Facebook Group component of the course was essential. Essential if I wanted any feedback whatsoever from the coach or other participants, that is. Which of course I do.

I took the night to think about it, and in the morning I admitted defeat, and dipped my toe back into the Facebook pond. To do it, I created a new email address so that Facebook couldn't access my contacts, and created a private profile under a pseudonym and with a fake birthday.

And yet, within mere seconds of doing this - in fact while it was still all in progress - I received a friend request from someone who knew me. And then a bunch of "people you might know" suggestions of people who I did, indeed, know.

Facebook had insisted on a mobile number for me to confirm details, so I guess this is where that private information came from. I tried to delete the phone number but, so far, without success.

Ugh. Did I tell you how much I hate Facebook?

I'm going to stick with it for the duration of the course I'm doing, which ends just after the New Year, and then I'll be gone again.

But if Facebook tells you I'm around (because it is a creepy stalker piece of software), please know that I'm not ignoring or rejecting you, I'm vigorously ignoring and rejecting Facebook.

Instead, come say hi to me on this blog, or on Instagram (or send me an email or write me a letter). I'd love to be your friend!

ps. In happier news, here is some information on my work in progress, a book about snail-mail! 

I'm quitting Facebook

I've decided to quit Facebook. This time next week, I will delete my Facebook profile, which also means my public page will come down at the same time.

If you are my friend on Facebook, and especially if you have made the effort to "like" or "follow" or whatever the terminology is these days my public page, I want to thank you for your support and the sense of community you have given me over the past eight years.

Thank you, thank you! I'm not unaware that your support has been a huge part of bringing readership and community to this blog: Facebook is far and away the biggest referrer of traffic to my blog, and I know that in freeing myself from what feel like the "shackles" of this particular social media platform, I will also be losing a lot of valuable support from the people who help make this blog a happy place for me. I wish there was a way to do it differently, but you can't have a public Facebook page without also having a private profile, so when I close the latter down, the former will go too.

Once upon a time, Facebook was a wonderful way to stay in touch with the people I love, who live all over the world. Often it was the ONLY reliable way. Email addresses change, phone numbers change, but Facebook profiles rarely do so we didn't lose touch.

Since those days, though, I feel as though Facebook has become such a negative influence in my life.

Over time, Facebook has taken it upon itself to decide whose updates I see and whose I don't, so I can no longer REALLY stay in touch with what all my friends near and far are doing, only the friends whose statuses and shared links get the most interaction (you guys are great too, but it's like only talking to the most popular people at your own birthday party: I like my quiet and shy and geeky friends too!). And when I like or follow a page or business, Facebook decides whether or not I get to see updates from them, too, so all the events and innovations and deals and campaigns I signed up to see frequently get missed.

Facebook does, however, make sure I see frighteningly-accurate advertisements. For example if I research a particular brand of audio equipment for a work article, the next time I log in to Facebook, competitor brands of the same technology will just-so-happen to be advertised in the side bar, as Facebook trawls my browser history and uses it to "target" what I see.

Facebook constantly changes up and jeopardises my privacy (this move was particularly annoying for me in avoiding a stalker-type person) and the ownership of my content (for example read 1. underneath "Sharing Your Content and Information," here), and even thinks itself entitled to conduct social experiments on me and my friends, without our permission.

But the worst of my falling out of like with Facebook is not down to Facebook's behaviour, but to my own.

I resent the time I spend on Facebook, but I use it anyway. I don't want to log in but, when I do, I'm drawn into its rabbit-hole of links and photos and videos and shared content and wind up clicking through to articles that aren't edifying and don't add anything particularly positive to my life, and insist on reading them when I should be spending time with my family. The other day I was sitting in the playroom with the children, and caught myself being terse with Scout ("YES Scout, what do you WANT?") when she "Hey Mummy hey Mummy hey Mummy"-ed me, because I was annoyed that I had had to read the same paragraph three times. It was a paragraph in an article I hadn't known existed five minutes earlier, about some celebrities I wasn't particularly interested in, but somehow here I was so desperate to read what was said and join in the comment thread relating to whatever mild controversy the story was recounting, that I ignored and then grumbled at my own children.

I'm time-poor and yet I waste my own precious time AND the time of my family on something I don't enjoy, and that's crazy. So I'm quitting.

I really hope that you and I can find ways to stay in touch and that I can keep drawing inspiration from you. We managed before social media, right? I am hoping (possibly naively) that we can do it again. So if you would like to stick around with me, I would LOVE that. The personal connections and creative inspiration found on Facebook were what drew me to it in the first place, and my love of friendship and community and creativity certainly hasn't changed, only the forum through which I hope to find those things. So if you want to stay in touch, here's how ...

* The best way is right here: I will keep this blog going, and it's a mix of personal stories from our lives, food I like to eat, places I like to go, my snail-mail and other creative projects, and a celebration of other artistic people and projects. There's a "subscribe" button on the right-hand side of this page that signs you up to receive email notifications whenever there is a new post

* You can find me on Instagram at @naomibulger

* You can send me an email at nabulger (at) gmail (dot) com

* We can write to each other the old-fashioned way! My postal address is:

Naomi Bulger PO Box 469 Carlton North Vic 3054 Australia

So that's it. Goodbye Facebook, and hello freedom. I must admit, I CAN'T WAIT until next week, when I can hit "disable my account." Already the decision to do this has lifted a weight from my shoulders.

What about you. Have you ever considered quitting Facebook? Have you already done it? What are your experiences of social media? I do realise that not everyone dislikes it as much as me, and for many people, it is a wonderful, social place. How do you keep it positive?