Multitasking Has Never looked like this, digital diary

Sunday

• First thing I do upon waking, check cell phone for message from the bf
• He called at 2:30 a.m. and left voicemail
• Listen to the voicemail, feel better
• Get up, turn on desktop pc, check gmail (which has seven different email accounts going into it, so I have work email, freelance email, personal email)
• Turn on MPR’s the Current for music
• Go back to my bed and turn on my laptop
• Google Docs, taking notes for new blog articles

• Writing this article now
• Google Docs (Spreadsheet), balancing check registry
• Twittering all the while
• Added New peeps to join the Knitters Pack in twitter
• Added colleague for a non-profit I am on Board of Directors to twitter
• Tweeting with someone in Seattle about how we neither of us had a good night's sleep
• Adding Rufus Wainwright cd to my itunes library
• Open up Microsoft outlook to sync ipod touch calendar with both Microsoft outlook and google calendar
• Network connection says gDocs isn't saving, so I copy and paste from gDocs to MS Word...annoyed
• I copy “Network connection says gDocs isn't saving, so I copy and paste from gDocs to MS Word...annoyed” and put it into my twitter page as what I’m doing now.
• Now I finally get to doing website work in dreamweaver
• While my laptop loads dreamweaver, I pick up my ipod touch and check my emails, see I have a new twitter following so I check out her profile. I read her last view exchanges, all about breakfast cereal (Captain Crunch purist). Looking for why she’s following me… ah shes in the knit pack, so I start following her. Interesting, she’s from Texas
• Back to the dreamweavering:
• Start by working on www.mncampusallince.org just a couple of quick things, like emailing one of the co-chairs registrations numbers for our annual Spring Dinner (www.mncmapusallaince.org/springdinner) I download it with dreamweaver, open it with MS Access, export it to Excel and then email to Co-chair.
• I check my twitter, message LM, and become her first follower on twitter
• I then decide to check into my Verizon account to see if I can afford to put twitter on my phone so I check my txt messaging bundle. See I don’t have one all of a sudden! (I should have a 500 msg bundle) verizon says I’m going to charged like 50.00 for this month if I don’t add a bundle, but I should have a bundle!
• I call Verizon…
• While on hold I go back to dreamweaver, I switch from Campus Alliance to First Universalist Church website
• I get someone, they say that I still have the 500 text bundle package, and that it must be a glitch in their system. Because of this I decide not to increase my plan or make it so twitter can send my updates to my phone until this month is over and things are sorted out
• Back to the website work
• I think about lunch/breakfast, then look at my bank account online
• I gChat with Kim, she’s back from Rome
• Back to website work
• I get a call on my cell from Katie, we make plans to do lunch
• I’m off…
• On my way to Katie and Travis, I call my mum, we have our daily 2-5 minute conversation that proves I am still alive. Next I call Verizon, and upgrade my txt message plan to unlimited, which as it turns out is only 10/mo more than I have now.
• While out at the restaurant, I discover they have wifi, use my ipod touch to add my cell phone info to twitter
• Now at a coffee shop, I am able to update this list of the day, create some gmail filters to deal with all the twitter emails as well as some newsletter and bill emails so I don’t have to label them manually.
• I check my twitter profile, get a few more things figured out, and discover that a friend of one of my new twitter followers lives in Minneapolis as well. Neat!
• And I’m back to doing website work.
• While working on websites with my green tea in hand, an older couple sits down at another table. The woman asks if her knitting needles clacking will drive me crazy, which is sweet. I tell her no, I love to knit, and then she decides to pump me for information on my laptop, assuming that I know all about the trends in laptops because of my age (which is kind of true in my case). I think though of many of my college friends who basically could use the MS suite and do web browsing and that was the limit. A kind of reverse ageism seems to be recurring where if one is under 25 or maybe under 30, they are assumed to be a tech geek, web savvy, blogger and all around computer tech support center. I wonder how this will impact hiring as people realize that not all young people work well with computers, just like the older generation, there are early adopters, late adopters, those who choose to learn as much as possible, and those who learn what they need to survive and loathe the bloody computers and gizmos that are creating a new world around every person.
• Now I sign off my computer, power of my ipod touch, switch my twitter account from IM mode to phone, and head out of the coffee shop. Now always online, never offline. It seems just the degree of connected fluctuates throughout the day from sleeping with just a cell phone to disturb ones slumber to having a desktop pc playing music from across the room while I am on my bed with my laptop updating websites, my blog, twittering, charging my ipod, and doing work for my no longer strictly 9 to 5 Monday through Friday jobs via email. Finally there is the time between these two extremes that we weave through where we are checking our email once while stuck in traffic, keeping up with txts while on hold at work, and knowing that someone we met once at a conference is eating Thai in Florida. Multitasking as truly taken on a new and constantly growing meaning for the silly great apes of today that thought fire was good idea.