Quirkyalone

Dear Quirkyalone: The Laws of Chemistry

Dec 07, 2009 - Written by Onely  |  Filed under: Relationships

Multitasking Dementia

Sep 01, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Featured, Personal Growth, technology

I had no memory of where I parked my car. Why? While I was parking the car, a friend called. Against my better judgment I took the call. I wanted to talk to him, and I found myself so engrossed in the experience of telling him everything that happened with our mutual loved one (who is suffering from cancer) over the last month, that I had apparently no memory of where I parked the car. All I could remember was the sensation of walking over a pedestrian overpass, and looking for the spa, where ironically, I was going to relax.

The theme of the day was multitasking. I blamed multitasking for the incident. I lost my car, but first believed it might be stolen. It’s always fun when those two questions obsessively course through your brain: Did I lose my car or was it stolen? After 30 minutes of scouring for it on foot, I flagged down a cop who amazingly helped me find the car by driving around with me. He was my savior. After thirty more minutes we found it. I gushed, “Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.” I think he thought I was the most tightly wound woman in San Francisco.

Some defenders call it, “continuous partial attention.” I think they are kidding themselves. Just that morning, I found myself unable to stop emailing while listening to an absolutely riveting KQED Forum radio show about our increasing propensity to text, IM, email, and watch videos while doing everything else. The Stanford study expected “heavy media multitaskers” to have special abilities, but instead, but all they found were deficits in their memory, efficiency, attention, and organizational skills, as compared to non-heavy-media multitaskers. HMMs have the illusion of productivity, but the brain’s switching costs, from emailing to IM to video to writing, are too high. The brain can only process one string of information at once.

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This Is Your Brain on Twitter

Mar 10, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Featured, Pop Culture, technology

Note: This piece also appeared on the Huffington Post.

Two weeks ago, on a Friday night around midnight, I was loitering on the sidewalk outside a San Francisco bar with two friends, about to head home but not quite ready to call it a night. A guy standing nearby on the sidewalk told us that that our red, green, and blue jackets, respectively, made us look like the lightbeams that create a color spectrum on television sets and computers. It’s hard to imagine a geekier pick-up line than “You look like RGB!” But that’s what passes for flirtation in 2009 San Francisco in the (waning?) era of web 2.0. He wanted to take a picture of us and upload it to Flickr.

As a writer who also works a product manager in social media, I know the web 2.0 type.

I quickly realized that this web 2.0 boy was part of the Twitter cult, or, as they call themselves, the Twitterati.

The Twitterati are in full effect in San Francisco, Brooklyn, Austin, Portland, and Seattle, where members live their lives as performance art. They exist, therefore they tweet.

Whenever they watch a sunset, eat something delicious, or feel disappointed by a product, they tap out a message on their phones or laptops. Some of them tweet a few times a day, some as many as ten. Or they twitpic, uploading photos. They also seem to believe Twitter is going to revolutionize our lives.

I was looking for a bit more excitement to cap off my evening, and now I had found it. My friends went home and web 2.0 and I hung out on the sidewalk for another hour. First we talked about where we live and what we do, but then, about Twitter! His unself-conscious fervor fascinated me. I played anthropologist, listening to him gush about how Twitter was ushering in a new era of connection that we so desperately needed after the Bush era of fear and division.

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Tagline Mania

Feb 26, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Website

In the spirit of community, transparency, and perhaps out of sheer decision-making desperation, I want to invite you to help me choose a tagline for the new incarnation of this website! A redesign is coming, yes! And with it, a beautiful clean look and a new cast of characters group-blogging with me on all the ins and outs of quirkyaloneness, including politics, pop culture, relationships and quirkytogetherness, and even quirkysluttiness, too.

I’m working on a tagline that is both short and quippy but also connotes the possibility that quirkyalone is a mindset that transcends being single. That is to say, this website should be seen as relevant for people in relationships too who want to maintain their quirkyaloneness while in a couple or even in a marriage. That’s a tough sets of requirements for four to five words. Of course I also want to have some good SEO juice and choosing keywords like “single life” help people who are randomly searching on Google find quirkyalone. So those are some of the considerations.

I’ll list the options so far. Feel free to vote in the comments on your favorites or not so favorites and to suggest your own.

(The existing one)
Quirkyalone
Independent thought on single life and love

Quirkyalone
Alone No More

Quirkyalone
Single Life Together

Quirkyalone
Musings on modern single life

Quirkyalone
Musings on modern single life and love

Quirkyalone
Single life, love, and the pursuit of happiness

Quirkyalone
Singularly awesome