I have learned
to walk
without a destination,
except movement,
grateful for the places
unfurling before me.
Where the twisting path
ends,
where I have gone
my distance,
is carefully
limited now.
I rest briefly
then rise and continue
alert for random beauty,
walking forward
till the destination we all encounter
halts me.
An Old Friend’s Gift
Reminiscing through
the weights of time
releases mysteries:
diverging paths shadow
memories of collective beginnings
leading to splintered destinations.
I’ve been working with getting the some of my contacts into a label so I can connect Evite to it for a future party. This led to a couple of important learning experiences.
First, I set up the label and spent over an hour clicking on which contacts I wanted to add. (What can I say – I’m slow, and had some trouble making up my mind.) I was sure there was a way to add all of them at once but previously, I’d added addresses to labels one at a time by dragging them. When I went to hit a button I thought would do that, I lost all of the checks – over an hour’s work gone!
I was surprisingly calm, and left for a scheduled commitment. When I returned home, I went straight to Google and searched for “Add Contacts to Label in gmail” and found instructions, which I read faithfully. Many kept mentioning a button on the “Upper left”. I kept looking. I thought I knew which it was, and started checking off the contacts I wanted again.
Foolishly I spent a bit of time getting a bunch of them checked, then I thought to myself that maybe I should move contacts into the label in bunches, and see if my assumed button actually worked. I didn’t want to spend hours checking all of them off, and once again experiment. I did what I thought the instructions meant, and lost all these checks AGAIN!!!
Lesson 1: Use only two or three checked contacts to try out what I think is the way to load contacts into a label, so as not to waste a huge amount of time checking off, then losing, a large number of checked contacts AGAIN!
I resumed using Google to search for instructions, trying different wording and orders of words. I continued feeling confused and lost with the text instructions. Tried a couple of possibilities with just two or three contacts checked off. Failed and failed again. (I’m of the Baby Boomer generation and print-oriented.) I tend to avoid YouTube, but when one link on my search included a YouTube site, I gave in and went to it.
Lesson 2: A video showing the Contacts screen with verbal instructions is INFINITELY EASIER to understand than just text. Next time, I will go first to YouTube To find our how to do something.
So text, possibly written by people who already know how to do it and don’t know how to give clear descriptions for people who don’t already know how to do it, is not very helpful. The text instructions might work for those who already know how to do it and just need reminding. Or so I think.)
However, now I’m happy because I have my contacts whom I want to invite with Evite in their own label in Google Contacts. And I learned to click on the word, “Apply” or “Done” to make sure my work is saved. I also learned how to do a couple of other useful things from the video as well. 😄
Next challenge: how do I get my mate’s contacts, which he has in Apple Contacts, into my Google Contacts label.
Learning Living 