I'm (rarely) tired of using technology

The purpose of my journey out west, in under four words was “building a bigger toolkit”. I can feel it already, half way through my stay in San Francisco. I’m an activist; it’s official. Although I’m not sure that I’m a writer. But my ability to have the greatest impact depends on my communication skills. I am writing this resource guide - the pamphlet for KOTs. It will exist within the next six months, out in the world. What a gratifying thought.

I got a new tool this week, thanks to my colleague Lauren, who is writing a training manual for local and national volunteers to understand and integrate COLAGE’s social justice framework. She is a writer and impresses me on a regular basis. She showed me this program called Scrivener, which is a magical intuitive writing software that allows you to work on multiple documents within a larger document, among other common-sense tools. I downloaded a 30-day trial and started using it this afternoon. It’s sadly only available for Mac OS X Tiger or higher. My nerdy love for this application is almost too much to admit. The most useful feature, in relation to productivity, is the full screen view, which blacks out the rest of your screen and leaves you with a blank page to write on. As yet another easily distracted member of the information age, this feature may change the way I work. Isn’t that what innovative technology is supposed to do? The software is created for writers, so the tutorial kept reminding me that I must be a writer if I’m using the program. Let’s consider it positive reinforcement.

Yay toolkit!