Comments (0)

By mike, 10 January 2010 4:10 am

I’m thirty thousand feet in the air, en route to New York, as I write this. Amazing how I can be hurtling through the sky in a metal tube, typing my thoughts into a computer smaller than hardcover book, beaming them through space to sit on a persistent global network of computers, and the only thing I can think is

Could the wifi be any slower?

—

The shot above was taken while on a karaoke outing with some coworkers the day before last. We had a private room and a lot to drink — the perfect recipe for fun karaoke times.

Comments (0)

By mike, 4 January 2010 1:21 am

I’ve heard that Christmas was originally a Christian co-opting of older winter festivals, many of which celebrated the cycle of death and rebirth as the seasons passed from Winter into Spring.

Fitting, then, to cast your tree to the curb during the first week of the new year. Fitting, though no less sad. Especially this year, as the tree was purchased rather late in the game. Somewhere around December 20th or 21st, if I’m not mistaken.

The poor fella barely stuck around more than two weeks.

Still, much as it saddens us to see another tree go to The Great Beyond, this has never been a “plastic tree” household. I’ve been trying to convince my mom to replace the rotting cherry tree on the front lawn with an evergreen. Then she could just dress it every Christmas and not have to slaughter an innocent tree.

Please, won’t someone think about the saplings.

Comments (0)

By mike, 3 January 2010 5:36 am

So I’m a good day or so into the ‘cleanse’ and it’s going well so far. It’s actually a little scary how much more time I have in the day, just from cutting out twitter, facebook, and other “distraction” websites. Used to be, if I had downtime I’d just fire up Chrome and idly surf back and forth between sites. Lately, however, I fire up Chrome, realize there’s really nowhere else to go, close my laptop, and go do something productive. Or fire up Lightroom and work on some photos.

In a way, it’s kind of sad how easily I can develop productivity bad habits just from sheer repetition. I spend so much of my workday filling up the downtime with “distraction” websites that I continue the behavior at home. And if I ever wanna get to the levels that I do, I have to use my time more constructively. Cutting out these distractions helps a lot.

Not to mention the human connection. Without twitter and text, I’m actually calling people again. I’ve made more calls in the last three days than I had all December. It’s kinda cool, actually. I’d gotten to the point where I never called anyone. It was always just text. I kinda like going the opposite route.

As it turns out, there are some that think the whole “cleanse” thing is kinda stupid. I guess I can see that. Generally, cleanses are associated with releasing toxins and poisons from the body.  This is just communication.  May as well give up talking for a week.

If I was talking so much that it was getting in the way of other things, I just might.

In the end, though, I don’t really mind. People will think what they will. Ultimately, if I think it’s helping, thats all that really matters.

Comments (0)

By mike, 1 January 2010 7:06 pm

The other day, John Mayer (yes, that John Mayer) put forth a challenge for people to go on a “Digital Cleanse.” In short, it’s an online enema, the goal of which to ‘defragment’ our brains from all the inundation of little bits of chatter we’re filling it with constantly.

I decided to take him up on it, but not before modifying it a little. My brain can indeed stand to be defragmented, but it needs a little more work than that. Lately I’d found myself being even shorter of attention when working than normal. I would try to get through processing a batch of photos and barely five minutes would go by before I’d alt-tab out and check my email, or Facebook, or Twitter, or any other number of time-wasters that usually catch my eye.

There was no need for these distractions. I wasn’t going there with purpose. I was just doing it because I was bored. I was right in the middle of doing something, and the second my attention wandered, I’d fire up my browser and fritter away ten minutes for every five minutes I had spent working. I didn’t just need a defrag, I needed a low-level defrag.

These are the basic guidelines to Mayer’s “Digital Cleanse”

• no texting
• no tweeting
• no emailing from phone
• no social networking
• no entertainment/gossip sites

While this tends to capture the spirit of the cleanse, some of these things don’t really apply to me, and it misses a few of my own specific time sinks. Here, then, is my modified list of rules that I hope to adhere to for the next week:

• no texts, except to reply with “ok” — there’s no point in returning a text with a phone call just to say “okay.”
• no tweets, except when publicizing a new blog post — my tweet announcements are where most of my traffic comes from, sad as that is
• no email from phone
• no social networking and no online forums, except photography-related ones — I need to curb the browsing that wastes my time and increase the browsing that feeds the mind
• no blog surfing, except photography-related ones — I don’t really browse entertainment or gossip sites, but I read the hell out of Gizmodo, Engadget, io9, and Lifehacker. All four will be put on hold for the next week. I’ll read only photoblogs and photography resources.

Already it feels like an almost gargantuan task, but that only further cements how important it is that I do this and succeed. I never make phone calls anymore. I can’t work on something for more than a few minutes without my mind wandering. Given a choice between reading a book and idly surfing, I choose the latter. These are all very bad habits I need to break.

Hopefully, by the end of the cleanse I won’t just dive right back into the same old bad habits. Hopefully I’ll learn a little temperance and be a little more conscientious about how I spend my time.

And if not, hey — I can always run another defrag.

Comments (0)

By mike, 9 December 2009 11:03 pm

Spotted in a shoe store window in midtown. I’ve seen a lot of Christmas decorations in my time, but this has got to be one of the more macabre ones to date. It reminds me of those witch doctors’ shrunken heads you’d see in cartoons and comics. The only things that are missing are lifeless eyes and sewn-shut lips.

—

I fly out to San Francisco on Saturday. Hard to believe I’ve been living in New York for almost four months now. Time has a funny way of sneaking past you. It’s been an interesting four months, that’s for sure. I don’t know if I feel like a New Yorker yet, but that might partly be due to the fact that I don’t really spend much time in Manhattan. I’ve always equated Manhattan and Brooklyn with New York, and not living in either has me not feeling 100% New Yorkerly. Which is entirely silly, of course. Every borough is just as New Yorkerly as the next (even Staten Island), but there it is.

In any case, I’m looking forward to my flight back. It’ll be weird being in San Francisco as a visitor for the first time in eight years. Maybe I’ll finally get around to riding a trolley.

Probably not.