Category: writing

Still Alive…

What things in your own life have you found yourself taking the easy route by collecting stuff instead of time and energy? For me it’s been writing and illustration. I’ve collected piles of stuff that should be used to better my craft but have still yet to put the effort into it.

What happened?!  My last post was months ago and since then the world has become a different place entirely.   New President, new Economy, new Job,  new Year.  Let’s take those in order:  I’m hopeful, but not too much.  I’m grateful I have a job and thinking about what positive experiences I can have in a down economy.  I’m excited about it and looking forward to working hard.  New year’s are much like the ones before them, except I’m older.

I’m back at the Capitol working in the Speaker’s Office as a legislative consultant for the Democratic Caucus.  I’m also been appointed to a city commission here in Davis.  The Historical Resources Commission reviews the historical assets of the city and reviews petitions to change and alter them before they go to the city council.  This is the first time I’ve actively pursued civic duty and it’ll be interesting to see how the city’s commissions work and interact with the city council and community.

As I have the time I’ll be making some changes to the site, updating the various sections in an attempt to give the site a more centralized theme and purpose.  Since my interests are so eclectic, you can still expect to see peculiar posts here at times.  Don’t get your expectations up, this is going to happen slowly.  I’m pretty busy with work and living my life.  Anyway on to the actual reason for this post:  Dilettantism!

I’ve commented multiple times over on Gamestooge about music rhythm games, Wii Music, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band, and how they don’t help people learn how to play or appreciate music more.  If anything introducing these games to children and young adults will distract them from learning the skills necessary to play music and/or turn them off to the difficulty inherent in the task as the games will difficult are easy enough to master and memorize while learning piano, guitar, drums, any instrument really is a difficult endeavor.  I’ve been having trouble putting these thoughts into words but I’ve found a great article by Rob Horning about the very same topic that is worth the read.  The problem as he sees it and the one that I completely missed is that in our consumerist world is that we’ve largely replaced mastering of a topic or area with collecting stuff regarding it!  We’ve replaced personal accomplishment with personal collections.  Instead of learning the ins and outs of music, we just collect music.  Instead of absorbing and mastering philosophy, or history, or calligraphy, or anything, we buy things that are about them and then point to these collections of stuff as a sign of our mastery/expertise without ever having to invest the time and energy that is necessary to actually master them.

Just a thought.  What do you think?  Are these just games?  Or indicators of a decline in our culture’s ability to commit?  What things in your own life have you found yourself taking the easy route by collecting stuff instead of time and energy?  For me it’s been writing and illustration.  I’ve collected piles of stuff that should be used to better my craft but have still yet to put the effort into it.

Getting back to Thinking – Part 1 – Time

Help you find some time

Remember when you were a child? Well skip a few years ahead, I can’t remember much of my childhood at all. Remember when you were a teenager? Remember all the thoughts you had?  All the thoughts you thought, all the moral, ethical, philosophical quandaries you deliberated with yourself in your head? All of the things you solved. You solved a lot and you shared it with your friends, and together you solved a great deal more!  When you took your thoughts to another adult though, one older than you, they were disregarded. Superficially investigated and then thrown away… why?  When I was a teenager I didn’t know why and it seemed awfully unfair… then I graduated from high school, got into college, began working and guess what? I stopped having those thoughts, I stopped being torn by ethical dilemmas and philosophical debates with myself and I stopped sharing with my peers.

I think I know why and how that happened, I think I know why “grown-ups” and adults don’t listen to teens.  It isn’t because we know any better, or have valuable life lessons, or whatever bullshit you were given or are now giving out. No, its because I don’t, and most other adults don’t, think anymore!  We simply don’t have the time… we’re too busy working, or pursuing our careers, or work on ourselves, or trying to relax, you can insert whatever it is you do, or see your peers doing.  When was the last time you didn’t have to worry about anything and could just think…

Been quite awhile hasn’t it?

So how do you find these thoughts?  It comes down to time. As a youth, as a teenager you had a lot of time… Time to think thoughts, follow chains of them, reject hypothesis after hypothesis and then synthesize your results from dozens, hundreds, or thousands of little conversations in your head into a cogent (mostly) theory.  All that takes time though, and once you’ve left school, and left home, time becomes a commodity more valuable than gold. So valuable is it now that careerists – those stuck on the corporate or free-lance treadmill are trying to find a way to convert their money back into time! My guess though is that you have a lot of time, you just don’t realize how much of it gets wasted.

First you need to find time then. Where?

Like I said, you probably have mcuh more time than you think you do, you just don’t know how or where you’ve spent it. Here is where something I like to call a time budget comes in.  Just like a normal bugdet, which takes expenses, cash flow, debots and credits a time budget tracks where and how you spend your time.  Keep a time journal for a week, noting how long you spend doing any item, or nothing, after keeping meticulous track of how you spend your time analyze it.  Where are you spending more time than you’d like to?  Where are you wasting time?  How better can you manage it? Once you’ve found areas of improvement, act!  Stop spending so much time in front of a screen (TV, PC, or other).

Once you’ve found the time (and you will!) it’s time to start thinking about what helps you think most!  Which is what the next post on this topic will be about.

Helpful links for finding time:

Finding Time – Stepcase Lifehack

Reclaim your Time – Zen Habits

Finding Time – In Context

A Small Plug

Hey I pimp myself!

for my work, the creative kind.  I have a page at DeviantArt where I’ve posted some photography, short stories, and poetry.  It’s mostly poetry at this point, but hey give it a look and live a comment.

DeviantArt page

I’m sure I’ll be updating here soon…

It’s like the slowfood movement but for your head…

thoughts on cutting out excessive internet consumption

Computers can be such a time-sink. You don’t have any idea how much time you spend in front of the screen until you start documenting it…  Think a food journal but for your digital consumption.  Have I done this? No, I don’t need to, I already know it’s far too much of my time.  I’m thinking of moving all of my writing to an analog system, simply because I can’t overcome the temptation to waste my time looking up random bits of information on wikipedia or metafilter. Worse is the useless task of checking my email or RSS feeds every five to ten minutes.  These endless small chores eat away my time until I have none left to do the things I actually want to do!

I thought that working at a desk, in front of a computer for 8 to 10 hours a day would fulfill my need to use the device, but as soon as I get home I flip open the laptop and start it up to see just what has happened in the last 45 minutes.  I think I, and those like me, need to admit that we have a problem, an unhealthy obsession with the device and the vast information it serves as a portal to.  The constant hovering over my computer in the hopes of catching some small bit of information (99% of the time interesting but useless to me) is keeping me from the deep sources of knowledge, experience, culture, inspiration and wonder that fill my small bedroom.  My addiction keeps me from my friends and loved ones, worst of all, it is keeping me from myself.  I’ve come to believe that the constant search for “self” is largely driven by a small niche of our consumerist culture (the self-help one that leaves you feeling like someone else or no one at all, and the inability to take responsibility for our actions.  I believe that we can improve ourselves but that is a topic for another day though…)  Back on topic.
The Internet is a useful means, a great tool, but only one of many that we should use in our daily lives.  When it becomes an end, when it only serves to keep us enmeshed in it, it is time to step back and reevaluate what it is we are intending…

Best of all though is that the Internet (and computers) doesn’t provide with anything that can’t be obtained in a more “traditional” way.  Friends and family can be contacted with the phone, or better yet, through thoughtful written correspondence.  Research can be done at your local city, county, or university library.  Games can be played on tables and boards.  These slower approaches have been eclipsed by the convenience of the Internet, but at the same time much of the cerebral process, the thoughtfulness of them, has been bypassed as well.

Just a thought anyway… There might be more to it than that, I am going to be moving to a notebook, and not just for idea capture, for writing though. I can’t sit at a the computer without being distracted by the thought of something else going on on-line that I might be missing while I write.  This destroys flow terribly.

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