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?
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
A friend of mine makes little creatures. More to the point, she crochets little critters into being. She makes other things, too, like clothes and jewelry, but really it’s the critters you keep coming back for. She also makes little tiny versions of people, usually to order. A couple of years ago, my sister commissioned a pair of little crochet doppelgangers of her and her husband.
This is they.
Carriage horses always make me sad. Whenever I think about horses, I think wide open spaces. I think herds of wild horses, thundering across the plains. I don’t think of bridles and saddles and pulling carriages of fat tourists through a paved park.
It seems like such an undignified way to treat one of the most majestic animals of North America. It’s almost as bad as those people that “train” bears to play hockey by beating them repeatedly until they get it.
It’s never enough just to use an animal for service or nourishment or other true necessities. We have to subjugate it, too. Just to prove we can.
Ugh.
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