Wunderlist

I recently started using Wunderlist. I am in love.

I’ve been searching and searching for a really good to-do list program for over a year now – one that would sync to all of my many devices, allow me to organize tasks by importance and theme, and let me cross things off as I completed them. I tried several different apps before deciding that apparently no such program existed. I resorted to post-it notes. I like post-it notes, but they are not at all transportable (unless of course I want to ruin the stickiness of them at which point I may as just be using paper). Post-it notes are also quite easily misplaced. They stick around, but only for so long.

Recently, I stumbled across a list called “iPhone Apps That Will Change Your Life.” I can’t remember exactly where I found it nor can I locate it again, so while I can’t link it to you and share all the wonderful things, I can share this one wonderful, life-saving, amazing thing: Wunderlist.

It does everything I have ever wanted my electronic to-do list to do! It works on my personal Macbook, on my PC for teaching, on my phone, and on the web if I don’t have any of those things with me! It’s a to-do list that follows me everywhere!

Today, for the first time, I finished everything I had planned to accomplish. Why? Because I wanted to get rid of that silly little red bubble with a 5 in it. It stares at me from the bottom of my computer screen and the home page of my phone until slowly but surely it shrinks away to nothing. For the first time this semester, all my reading for my classes this upcoming week is done, all of my assignments due in class this week are completed, my lesson plans are ready to go, and free time has been opened on the schedule for tomorrow. It’s a miracle – a Wunderlist miracle.

It’s a new year. Almost.

I’ve been gone for a while enjoying some time at home over the holidays, but I’m slowly starting to remember that I don’t do well with doing nothing.

Today I received my new iPhone in the mail. It was incredibly exciting, very frustrating to activate, and pretty much just like having my old phone by now. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve moved from the Dark Ages of iPhone times to the future, and it’s great. My apps work correctly. I can tell my phone to text message someone, and it does it. It’s very fun, but in the end, it’s just a phone. I need something to work on, to accomplish.

What does that mean? Well, it means I’ll be spending several days of the next few weeks at Starbucks working on conference papers. Did I mention that my paper was accepted to the NJCEA conference? Yay, me. Moving up in the world of academia. I have to edit, cut down, and prepare my paper for presentation now. I also need to get working on another paper I’m submitting to the Plymouth Medieval Forum. Hooray for me again. Exciting stuff is happening.

It’s nice to remember that every once in a while, especially when being forced to let go of a lot of other things. It’s nice to look forward to what is coming.

Anyway, if I’m gone until the New Year, now you know why.

Happy 2012!

TIL

Today I learned that I need a new phone. I’ve been holding on to my old phone out of mere nostalgia for far too long. It’s time to upgrade.

Lucky for me, the iPhone 4s just came out. Can you say Christmas present?

Also, today I learned  that the human mind is a powerful and mystifying thing.The few last days have been pretty rough for me. At first, it was all I could not to be upset all day. I was sad, but I didn’t want to be sad. I hated being sad. It sucked.

Then, I talked to my mom, and she told me that sometimes we just have to let ourselves be sad. Sometimes, we just have to indulge our emotions for a while; we have to bake some cookies and watch Harry Potter and cry if we want to. Sometimes, we just have to snuggle with our tiny kitten, go out to lunch with friends, and buy ourselves some fresh flowers at the market. At first, I didn’t want to follow my mom’s advice. I didn’t want to give in to my sadness. I just wanted it to disappear.

Then, I realized that it won’t just disappear and that I can’t just ignore it. If I want to move past my sadness, I need to acknowledge it and accept it.

So I did.

I watched a movie and ate a cookie. I went to lunch with some friends and laughed about pumpkin spicing ALL THE THINGS! I let myself cry.

And, you know what? I feel better. Today was not a terrible day. Today felt like any other day. I guess I really did just need to let my mind take some time for itself, to let it recuperate.

I know that I will probably face some more rough days in the future, but I know also that I will be okay, that I will get past it, and that I can still smile.

Today I learned that I am stronger and more independent than I thought. Today I learned that I am growing up. Today I learned a little more about who I am and who I might become.

Today, all in all, was a good day.

More transitions.

I’ve been making the transition from my old Windows PC (Henry) to my new MacBook Air over the past week or so. So far, I’ve been loving everything. There are a couple little things that have stopped me up and frustrated me, but overall, I’m very happy with my decision to make the change to an Apple computer.

The thing I love most about my new MacBook is its size. I’ve decided to name her Heidi because she’s so skinny. I can carry her all the way to campus, around campus all day, and all the way home without my shoulder cramping even once. It’s glorious. Anyway, I’ve also run into some problems. For instance, my blog updates no longer automatically appear on my Facebook. I’ve read a few suggestions about fixing this issue, but nothing seems to work. Boo. Also, my iCal app keeps giving me an error code when it tries to sync with my google calendar. Second boo. In the long run, these are minor issues, but if anyone has any ideas about how to fix these problems, I’d greatly appreciate the help.

It amazes me how far technology has come over the last several years – even just in my own lifetime. The fact that I have this tiny computer that weighs maybe 2 pounds that can access the Internet from anywhere, sync with all of my other devices, and still look super streamlined and beautiful amazes me. I’ve really been missing all of my friends from Orlando and my family and friends from back home in South Florida recently, but with e-mail, Facebook, and my phone, I can talk to them whenever I want. Yesterday, I was working on a paper for my Shakespeare class and was sorely missing one of my best friend’s input. We used to spend hours in the library (or the Starbucks, depending on how late we’d been studying the night before) bouncing ideas off each other. I’ve been missing that. Most of my friends here in NJ are Diplomacy students and not very much help when it comes to analyzing Shakespeare. Through a Facebook message, an email, and a text, we were able to recreate our study session technologically. How great is that?

I’ve also had friends who hate the idea that new technology enables us to be accessed at any moment, that we can’t stop the deluge of information and demands on our time. I see their point, and remember one friend in particular who decided to give up on Facebook for a while to see how many people would actually in keep in touch with her via phone only. It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure I 100% buy the idea that Facebook, email, and other avenues of social media remove all personal connection from our interactions with others. Sure, I can’t hear my friends’ voices when I talk to them via Facebook messages or texts, but I still share my thoughts, feelings, and emotions with them. Yes, I miss seeing my boyfriend in person every day, but I also smile every time his name pops up on my phone because he’s sent me a text message. I still have a connection to the person behind the technology. Rather than a telephone as the vessel for communication, I have a computer. Is that so bad?

Transitions are a natural part of life. That’s what I’ve learned. Embrace the change.

I suppose this may be a tribute.

I use the word “tribute” lightly here. I never followed the history of Apple Computer or truly understood the impact Steve Jobs had on the world. I probably still don’t, and I don’t mean to jump on a bandwagon and claim that he changed my life. He may have – without my knowing it, but how will I ever tell? People tell me he changed the world, but I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it while it was happening. I live (and always have) in the already changed world.

See? It's a whale.

Sure, I’ve bought his products. I think iPhones are great and text message whales are cute. I’m eagerly awaiting a new MacBook Air in the mail and am excited to own it and call it mine. All of these gadgets are a part of my life and a part of the way I see the world and perhaps I owe that to their creator.

For me, though, it’s been more of an experience by proxy. I had an iPod because that was the coolest thing in a post-Walkman world. I got an iPhone because my brother’s was neat and I was sick of my 1988 flip phone brick. I bought a MacBook because I was tired of dealing with my old laptop and Windows which couldn’t seem to stop complaining. I even watched Pirates of Silicon Valley because my boyfriend said it was good and I was bored. My experience with what Steve Jobs created has been largely second-hand and influenced by those around me, but today as I was surfing the Internet, wasting time, trying to avoid working on the presentation about Shakespeare’s The Tempest I’m supposed to give on Wednesday, I came across a quote from Steve Jobs. The Internet’s been full of them lately, and I have no way of knowing if he actually said this (or if he did, in what context). I simply stumbled across these words and they awakened something within me again.

As most regular readers of this blog know, I have had quite the tumultuous experience in graduate school so far – I’ve left my family completely for the first time, my boyfriend moved to California 3,000 miles away, according to my professors I don’t talk enough in class, I may want a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric rather than Medieval Literature, I’m still terrified no PhD school will take me, I ended up in the middle of a crime scene the other night (That’s a story for another day), and I’m still trying to figure what the heck I want from this life. Sometimes I lose my faith that it will all work out okay.

Then I read this:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

–Steve Jobs

And I realized that I have been doing just that – worrying about what others think of my goals, fearing that my heart has been lying to me, forgetting to trust my own intuition.

I suppose that now I can say Steve Jobs changed my life – or at least words that some Internet site attributed to him did. I also suppose that I’m a little late to jump onto the tribute ship, but, then again, I’m still not sure I would consider this a tribute – perhaps just a thank you, a thank you for saying something (most likely) years ago that inspired someone to record it so that I could read it today. So, thanks for that, Steve Jobs.