Routine comforts us. Routine grounds us. Routine drives those around us completely crazy. I love my routine and tend to get real grouchy when it is disrupted, especially before I have my morning coffee.

You have to understand though, Deborah and I operate an online retail website that requires our constant attention. Without Internet access, we are lost and tend to bump into each other, looking for something to do. We don’t take newspapers anymore, preferring to read our news online, and we don’t have any television enhancements like cable or satellite. That leaves us stuck with a couple channels of Rachel Ray and Kelly Ripa coming in on the rabbit ears. Neither of which do I consider gripping television.

We also read our comics online. The Houston Chronicle offers a great tool that allows users to create a custom comics page from all the comics they carry, and I also frequent Comics.com as another source of giggles. There are also the online only comics, hosted on their creators’ websites. I try to keep this to a minimum, but still have six or seven bookmarked.

Miss Messy Deborah, for something to do, has settled into cleaning her office, but neat-freak that I am, I don’t have that to fall back on. That leaves writing and reading.

I have been reading an old book the last few weeks: Biscuits, Fleas, and Pump Handles by Zig Ziglar. Most of you will know it better by the newer title, See You at the Top. I can understand the title change. It’s hard to promote a motivational book that sounds like a farmer’s almanac.

Request timed out, still shows in the command prompt window beside my writing window. The same words repeated over and over until they seem to stand still in time. When will the familiar replies begin? Soon I hope, because it’s time to start thinking about lunch and I haven’t checked my email since last night before bedtime. Fourteen hours without checking email … it is excruciatingly painful.

Oh, there it is now … never mind!

Christmas sales are over and the After-Christmas sales are underway, but the news is already out for online sales. It’s a good news—bad news story.

Good News

The good news is that online sales increased to $29.5 billion, a 19% increase from last year. I haven’t seen any breakdowns on these figures, but I am interested in the answers to a couple of things.

First, how did the online versions of brick & mortar stores perform—Barnes and Noble, Toys R Us, etc.—against internet marketing giant Amazon? What part of the increase came from established retail chains for this year’s shopping? I haven’t seen those numbers yet. Second, how did Internet-only stores’ online sales compare to sales last year … in volume and percentage?

Internet sales figures increase, but rate slows | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle
When the receipts are tallied from this holiday, American consumers will have spent around $29.5 billion at Internet shops, according to projections published by comScore, a market research firm.

“The growth rates for previous years were clearly much higher,” said Andrew Lipsman, spokesman for comScore. The research firm did not have growth rates before 2003, but Lipsman suspected that they were 25 percent or more.

It also is far higher than the rate of growth in offline sales, according to preliminary projections.

Bad News

It seems that no good news is delivered without some caveat of bad news. The only bad news the press could muster this year was the decrease in the percentage of increase of sales. I know the previous sentence needs diagramming, so let me rephrase the statement.

Sales are up! but not as much up as they were up the year before. Got that? While normal retailers struggle to increase sales each year, online sales climbed by double digits.

I wonder how long this trend can continue? As people get more comfortable with purchasing products from online merchants, I think the growth will continue.

What do you think?

Over the last few days, I’ve had lots of time to think, although being sick isn’t conducive to clear thinking.

Now that I am better, it’s time to review my drug-induced ideas to see which ones are worth exploring further, and which ones I should just drop.

So what did I think about while horizontal? Was it valuable and worthwhile?

Here are some of the overall themes that went through my mind the last few days.

• Blogging—Its transformation over the last five years
• eCommerce—the present and future
• Flags—flying them like kites and on poles
• The Web and Social Media—how it relates to the future of the Web

I’d like to take each of these and share some thoughts over the next few days, and I’d like your feedback—reactions, and ideas as they relate to these topics. It will help me judge the value of my drug induced thinking, and give you a chance to straighten me out.

Fun for everyone. I like it.

The view from my patio chair

The internet and email can be a huge distraction for many people, including me. When I am writing, there is always something that needs researching, then a link leads to another website and there’s a link to an interesting article … An hour later, I can’t even remember what I started out looking for, so I don’t even know if I found it.

Email is just as bad. I went so far as to turn off the notification alerts on all my email accounts, and turned off the sound that signals a new message, but that didn’t work. I would constantly wonder if anything new had shown up. I think this might be a bigger distraction than knowing when something new arrives.

So today I am beginning an experiment. It all started last week when Deborah was called by the local blood center to donate platelets. The process takes about two hours, start to finish. I volunteered to drive her, thinking it would be a good diversion from the usual work pattern. Oh, and I took my laptop … just in case.

Arriving, I discovered the blood center has a very nice lounge area—like a small cafe—with tables and surprisingly comfortable chairs. Seeing this, I had to take advantage of the situation. I grabbed the laptop, booted up, opened up my offline editor (BlogDesk) and started writing. IT WAS AMAZING!

For two hours, I wrote article after article, on differing subjects and themes for several of my websites. In fact, I put together almost a weeks’ worth for Motivation on the Run, plus several for The Daily Flag.

It was hard to keep up with the ideas that were coming faster and faster. I quickly typed in ideas for future articles and at the end of the two hours, I had seven articles in various stages of completion (three were ready to publish).

The euphoria was incredible. I needed to see if I could duplicate that stream of productivity again. The next day, I pulled out the WiFi card and headed for the patio at home, and in one hour wrote several more articles.

Now I’m thinking I’m on to something. Beginning this morning, Monday, I’m going to spend more time on the patio without internet access to test the theory. Can I improve productivity by unplugging?

Want to know the best part? Sitting out there quietly writing, the birds and squirrels soon ignore your presence, and resume their normal activities. The wind talks as it moves though the leaves, calming the thoughts and nerves. This might move beyond productivity and end up as good therapy, too.