Writings in the Sand

Other Ways in Which I Cede Control of My Life

It’s time to address the 600 pound email in the room: [REMINDER] Update Your Blog.

I get this reminder daily. Even updating my blog only buys me 24 hours of peace.

It’s been pointed out to me that I don’t have to get this reminder quite as often. I could set the trigger to fire it off monthly. I could even turn it off entirely.

Or so you would think.

The blog reminder is like an alarm clock. Without an alarm, one might sleep all day and miss the school bus, or be late for work. And there’s this little loophole built in. You can hit the snooze button a number of times, allowing you to jolt your brain over and over until it accepts the fact that it’s morning. You can set the alarm to go off half an hour early as a test run to wake you up a little then let you slip back to dreamland before the real alarm goes off. You can set multiple alarms at half-hour intervals to annoy you (and anyone else in the house) awake. I do all of these things - and I set my blog to send a reminder to update daily (probably because there’s no way to set it for more than once per day).

Without a blog reminder, I truly would forget all about the blog. I would start watching television, updating my Facebook, or get lost in YouTube and never find my way out.

The blog reminder and the alarm clock are similar in another way. Eventually, the alarm clock is so irritating it gets sworn at, has a book hurled at it, or it is thrown to the floor. In the same way, the blog reminder annoys me and makes me angry. It’s relentless. I bristle at being told what to do and swear never to blog again. But I don’t turn the reminder off, just as I always set my alarm again for the next day, because I am human and believe that someday, I will develop willpower (I won’t).

But here’s another problem: I did update my blog the other day and the next morning, there was no “[REMINDER] Update Your Blog” email. I felt ignored and lonely.

So, you see, I can’t turn off the reminder. Ever.