Simple thoughts on the Sabbath

Liz Hunter on the MediaNet site has posted a simple and thought provoking article on the importance of taking a break. She says....

Being frazzled is a badge of honour.  Most of the freelancers I know avoid booking holidays because they fear having to turn down a brilliant job, and they don't rest in the periods in between work because they are out touting for more!

As a freelancer I learnt the hard way that not having a holiday, in case a dream job came up, was a big mistake.

Now I book my summer holiday dates early in January and book and pay for a proper holiday which is a digital fast as well for 2 weeks. I tried one week so as not to take me out for too long but it isn't long enough. I find that I am only just winding down by the end of one week and if there is any significant travel too it really isn't long enough to do what a holiday should do.

My only concession is I check my answer phone every 48 hours and deal with any important calls but then the phone goes off again. My clients know this is what I do, they regularly ask earlier in the year when I am going to be on holiday so they can plan accordingly, and I send a global email out about a week before reminding everyone I will be away and my responses will be limited to checking my answer phone, but no emails, blogs tweets for two weeks.

Liz continues.....

As usual, the Bible has some pretty good advice on how to avoid burnout, and it's very straightforward.Take one day off a week. Really off. Complete downtime, family time, God time. I'm not sure it matters when we take it, just that we do. It should not be something we feel guilty about, as it was made for our good, not the other way around (Mark 2:27), but we can't go too long avoiding something God designed us to need.

As to a sabbath, that is more of a challenge. As a family we take a Jewish sabbath, from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday, as being involved in church as both Sally & I are, means that Sunday is rarely a day of rest! However maintaining a digital fast is more of a challenge, although it does remain an aim. I do love Rob Bell's description of the Sabbath and as we often see on school reports "must try harder!"

Interesting articles in The Guardian today

Following on from discussions at the Church & Media Conference some interesting and relevant articles have appeared in today's Guardian newspaper.

The first is an article from Emily Bell, and it will probably be one of the last she writes before she leaves to work in the US.

Technology giants throw news brands a lifeline - As content costs shrink and technology revenues consolidate, more tie-ins between newsrooms and newsmakers look likely.

This is an interesting article about the way technolgy and more importantly its low cost and easy availability is changing the dynamic of new provision and also the potential move of journalist jobs from media companies to technology companies as they move more and more into content provision.


The next article is all abotut citizen journalism...

Citizen journalism: can small be bountiful? - Hyperlocal news projects that start tiny have a greater chance of success – but many find themselves with more kudos than cash.

It discusses the reliability and trustworthiness of citizen journalism and hyper local news. Interesting reading off the back of our conversations about parish newsletters etc.

Finally moving onto Auntie, there is an interview with Jeremy Hunt

Jeremy Hunt: 'We have a media policy, not a BBC policy'- New culture secretary wants to talk deregulation and innovation in his first interview.

The article starts to explore Hunts attitudes to media and the BBC, we shall see....

Post CMC conference mussings

 #CMN10 #cmn11 Having read @digitalfprint very good notes from the conference and adding to the discussion from folk commenting on the need to stop whingeing and to start engaging like @georgeluke and re-tweeted by @drbexl @gavindrake and @annamdrew and also mine and others suggestions to have digital literacy workshops at the next CMN conference, it has started to strike me that in the light of the comment that everything is moving very quickly except the Christian response should we not starting to would out what we can do to start to engage now rather than wait till next year?

There is of course the excellent MediaLit course but I suppose what I thinking of is starting to experiment and strategise a valid response to bring the Christian response up to speed.

I have just listened to the most recent edition of the Guardian's Tech Weekly podcast that was talking about government IT development in the climate of a 'new government' and saying that no IT company would be expected to roll out a fully developed system that everyone can use reliably from day one. It should be try out a small scale test, iterate, iterate and then scale up. So can we start the process?

If these conversations are already taking place lets link them up, if not lets get them going. Surely an excellent role for the Network?

Discuss.....