Time capsule: June 3, 1984

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1984 journalWhile cleaning up my home office I came across an old spiral notebook that’s been gathering dust for a long time. I flipped it open to take a look before tossing and discovered a journal I kept during much of 1984, my first year at Learfield. Seems I had the blogging bug way back then. I promise not to make you relive 1984, but I might share an entry from time to time.

June 3, 1984

Left Kennett at 7:45 a.m., arrived Jefferson City at 1:15 p.m. Beautiful day, beautiful drive. Coming over the hill just outside of town, saw the city in among the rolling hills. Beautiful.

Went to the office and visited with Jeff Smith. I’m doing my best to keep a good positive attitude, but I’m scared shitless. I honestly believe there’s no one they could have hired who would be any better at this job than me. Anyone would face the same problems I’ll face and I know that I can handle them. Every instinct tells me this is a genuine milestone in my life. The other path was a kind of defeatism. A ‘giving up’ and setteling for less. This is the time; this is the job; this…is…it.

I had forgotten how nervous I was those first few weeks. And my rah-rah, motivational tape approach to things. It seems a little silly now but I think all that stuff helped get me through a few tough spots. See you at the top!

Nursing home bloggers

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A couple of years ago I wondered if they have Internet access in nursing homes. I thought it made sense back then but now it seems…inevitable. I’m sure there must be nursing homes with net access for residents. But are there people living in nursing homes who are blogging? If so, (and there must be) it would seem to raise some interesting issues.

Most of Barb’s clients are individuals or corporations in the area of “long term care.” And she’s something of an expert in this area, but she really didn’t have ready answers to my questions. Good lawyers seldom do.

Here’s a scenerio: I’m 75 years old and still have most of my marbles but my kids don’t think I should be living alone so we all agree I should move into Sunnyvale Estates where I can get the day-to-day care I need. I have my own room and my one phone-line. Every day I flip open my Thinkpad, log in to my Typepad account, and blog away.

Let’s say I notice a little whiff scotch on the breath of the aide that brings me my lunch (luke-warm hotdog cut into tiny, no-choke bites…and apple sauce). I report it to the administration but they don’t do anything, so I blog it. A reporter for the New York Times happens to be researching a story on nursing homes and finds my blog. (Sound of shit hitting the adult diaper).

Or maybe I’m bed-fast for a while and I start getting a bed sore. So I take a photo with my little digital camera and post it to my blog. Hello!

My question to Barb was: Could the nursing home administration keep me from blogging. Did I give up my first-amendment rights when I moved in? Certainly the other residents have a right to privacy and I couldn’t/shouldn’t violate that with my blogging. But let’s say I stuck pretty much with my life and care in the facility. Can the nursing home stop me? And on what grounds?

I can’t believe this hasn’t come up yet. A Technorati search on “nursing home” lists 53,000+ posts. Looks like there are lots of posts about family members who are in nursing homes but (the few I scanned) didn’t appear to be written by a resident.

One might argue that by the time someone has to move to a nursing home, they are no longer capable of maintaining a blog. I spent a good deal of time in an excellent facility where my father spent the last few years of his life. And many of the residents probably could not have handled the logistics of blogging, even if they knew what it was.

But that was then and this is now. When we boomers move to Sunnyvale, we’re damn sure gonna want net access and we’ll have it with high-speed, state-of-the-art mobile phones. And a few million of us will be bloggers. An enlightened administrator would get out in front of this. Hell, blogging might be better for the residents than bingo. And it might offer other benefits. Why not encourage it. Might even be a good idea to have the Sunnyvale Estates Blog so you can engage in the conversation swirling around you.

[When I moved from Blogger to Typepad, I lost the link to the excellent cartoon site from which image above was linked. If anyone can provide the url, I’d like to add it here.]

Update: Found this AP story over at MSNBC: “Web savvy seniors embrace blogs”

State of “flow” like playing jazz

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For several years now I have found myself in a semi-manic state of mind that, initially, had me concerned. Fortunately, a professional friend recognized what I have been experiencing as “flow,” and gave me a book that explains the concept:

“People enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction. Mr. Csikszentmihalyi (author of Flow) describes flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

People we don’t know

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Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig on traditional media: “We don’t know who your editors are. All our lives we read stuff written by people we don’t know that’s edited by people we don’t know, who might have an agenda.” [News.com article by Charles Cooper]

Why do we readers need to know anything about the people that write and edit the news? Can’t we just take it as a matter of faith (there’s that religion theme again) that they are professional journalists and we can trust what they say and write?

I am not a journalist, and whatever it is I am doing here, it is not journalism. But if you’ve been reading smays.com for a while, you know that. In fact, you know a hell of a lot about me. If I’ve held anything back, it’s been unconscious. Does that make anything I write any more believable? I can’t answer for you but from my perspective the answer is clearly yes. I’ve been reading Dave Winer’s Scripting News for four or five years and the guy has some strong opinions. Anyone who reads that blog knows exactly what they are. It makes it easier for me to evaluate what he writes and reports.

But some would insist I trust and believe what Jason Blair was reporting in the New York Times just because it was the NYT. Oops.