(no subject)

I've realised today that my brain deals with information overload by switching off in unexpected ways. When I see something once, I notice it. When I see it three or more times in a day, I entirely obliterate even the first mention. If someone asks me about it, I'll remember, but not be very interested.

I discovered this when I deleted the fifth mention of something I was actually interested in and realised I hadn't followed through and would not follow through and might never read the review I was being told about.

If the mentions come a few days apart and the wording is different for each or I'm being told whole new information about the same thing, I'll remember it all and follow it all. If it's a book or a movie, I might even buy the book or see the movie.

It was quite funny discovering that ten books (nine of which I already own) had migrated right to the bottom of my extensive to-read list, simply because my mind had deleted the information about them by mistake. Most of them are from one or two publishers, too, which makes me doubly sad. I'm not tempted to push them higher, though, for the information dumped into my life has taken the place of the individuality of the books in my mind and I can no longer remember why I wanted to read them. If they're your books, then I'm terribly, terribly sorry.

I'm hoping that eventually the overhype will stop and that the books can reclaim their individuality in my mind. If the worst comes to the worst, the ones I own will be on my sorting shelf and I will say "Oh, I had forgotten about this" and snag them to read when I eventually put those books away.

In an ideal world, emails about books tell me their unique values and don't come more than one every few days. Now I know why I have this ideal: it's quite worrying to discover that I'm forgetting books I wanted to read.

(no subject)

I want to be very sarcastic and say that - for everyone who is idiot enough to bug me about deadlines that are ages away and to worry that I haven't answered them ON MY HIGH HOLY DAYS that I shall write their names down and invent deadlines to bug them about between 23 December and 26 December. Or maybe on Easter Sunday. Except I shan't. I never do.

Instead, I'm just going to remind everyone who reads my blog that we live in a world with many different forms of belief and unbelief and many different traditions of all sorts. If you bug me about on-urgent and non-crucial matters on certain days, then it will take the gloss off those days for me, for I will realise just how little you value my particular background and my private life.

I'm also going to say that giving me a couple more days to reply to emails will sort most things out. And I'm going to say that if you ask me ANYTHING from about an hour before dusk until an hour after on Yom Kippur, I shall not know, for I shall not be reading my email. If you ring during that time for anything that is not a real emergency, I shall understand that you care less than you say you do, for it's the holiest day of the year and I only have the phone on because of the possibility of emergencies.

If my friends and colleagues don't know when my holy days are, I don't bloody well care. I tell everyone which ones matter to me. The dates are publicly available information. Find out. I find out when Easter is, after all, and am forced to listen to musak months before Christmas.

I'm only asking for a few days a year and still do the urgent stuff and go out of my way to fit into everyone else's calendar. I don't ask for seasonal TV or even seasonal present giving. All I ask is for people to AVOID CREATING FALSE DEADLINES ON MY HIGH HOLY DAYS.

For those who have not encountered it before, you have just witnessed Gillian losing her temper.

(no subject)

Drabbit - it's the Days of Awe. Of course it's the Days of Awe.

My apologies to anyone who was hurt by my annoyance just now. It's entirely not the right time of year to lose my temper at all, much less to lose it publicly. While I'm at it, my apologies to anyone who I have hurt this year. I don't mean to hurt people, and I'm very sorry if I have.

I wasn't going to do a public apology like this, for they're not really right. The idea is to sort out problems, not to self-immolate in a generic way. I didn't expect to lose my temper in the last hour of Rosh Hashanah, either, though. I have had provocation, but that's the reason and no excuse. I am really very sorry.