Consultations with the Internet Fairy

This morning I mentioned to my husband, what a wonderful thing it would be if internet fairies existed. I know various types of social media consultants and advisers are out there but this person would be more like a financial adviser. You would go to her once or twice a year, hopefully under the cover of trees, and learn more about tailored opportunities online for you, perhaps a nudge to change your passwords, check in on your privacy settings, see what policies have changed on sites you use, and either update or delete parts of your web presence no longer the way you want it. Perhaps such fairies exist but I've not heard of them.

Over the past few months, after my email account was broken into and then spoofed, I decided to become much more mindful of my activities online. I also began doing some monitoring of my accounts and putting up fire walls. I consider all this a digital spring cleaning. We all need to delete, add, change, revise, rethink and depending on your purposes, extend what we are involved in on the internet. Whereas millennials seem to think of these issues regularly, those of my generation for the most part do not.

I have what I call enthusiasms. Once swept up in one, it is a constant source of curiosity and inspiration. That is all well and good but sometimes I fall asleep at the wheel on the myriad other things going on. Writers need to multitask. There is so much that we should constantly be doing, in addition to writing that some of our ways of participating in group discussions, meetups, forums and membership sites online, fall by the wayside.The internet affords the opportunity to develop a different type of community. We may or may not meet in person but we can still cultivate online relationships, which for the most part, can flourish over the years.

When I speak about falling asleep at the wheel, I am referring to neglecting my numerous groups, discussion forums, Facebook posts, twitter tweets, websites, blogs and so on. With no such magical fairy person to give me the nudges needed to stay focused on all of these things and my writing, to say nothing of my art, I think I am going to set up a calendar for myself to schedule my participation in the places and spaces where I have committed. Bookmarks are helpful but only if you look at them regularly. Mine is like a laundry list, perhaps that is one of those things that needs to be weeded out through editing.

I'm getting better at the juggling act. I'm not sure if that schedule/calendar idea is actually for me. I enjoy being spontaneous and going with the flow. Still, I have decided to carve out bits of planned time, engage in my various projects and activities, online and off. This grew out of necessity, with three books in development simultaneously and invitations to blog on various tours and websites, there needs to be some sort of organization.

I am about to leave defunct groups. That is on my to-do list for today, as well as deleting some of my lengthy bookmarked websites. I have also started going back to my author website, sprucing it up, adding new pages and fresh information...ah but, where is the internet fairy when I need her? Spring cleaning? I guess late is better than never.