Monthly Archives: December 2009

What I’ve been avoiding…

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of what I call “avoidance activities.” To name a few:

  • Playing The Sims, which is the ultimate example because it allows me to substitute the mundane activities of a virtual life for the mundane activities of my actual life.
  • Rating movies on Flickchart, which pits two movies head-to-head and asks you to choose the better one; I have noticed that once you reach a certain number of movies — for me, it was 600 or so — it only shows the same movies over and over, which makes a pointless exercise even more pointless.
  • Updating and rearranging my themed reading lists on Lists of Bests, an activity I find endlessly engaging, but I could be spending that time doing some actual reading, don’t you know.

I call these “avoidance activities” because they suck away hours of my day, hours when I could have been doing something productive or interesting or working toward one of my goals. Instead, I’m avoiding doing anything at all meaningful with these time wasters.

This year, I want to focus instead on purposeful activities. Some examples:

  • Spend some meaningful time on my friend’s social network IAM Learning Community, setting goals and getting support from the great network there; this is a great network of people all working toward a similar vision using similar tools and a resource that I am not taking advantage of.
  • Blog more. Blogging is a sure-fire way to jump-start my writing engine. I also want to write more meaty blog posts, rather than just tossed off lists of links. My goal is to blog my way to a writing project idea.
  • Remember how to do things just for the pleasure of it. Like writing, especially, but also reading, cooking, gardening — all those things that enrich my life.
  • Spend more time with friends. I made space to spend one-on-one time with many of my friends over the holidays, and each visit left me feeling more energized and happier. I want more, please.
  • Come up with more interesting activities for my son. This will be easier once the weather starts to warm (I truly hate the cold and going out in it), but we are already signed up for a dance class and I am starting a neighborhood playgroup. I also want to reinstate our Saturday family excursions.

In short, I want to waste less of my time and focus more on living my life. It’s not really about accomplishing anything specific so much as about engaging in the process.

I guess you could call this a resolutions post. I don’t like to make resolutions; I prefer to set goals. These are my goals for 2010.

And one prediction: 2010 will be the beginning of a much more positive and affirming decade. The Zero Decade is over, and even though it was a great time in my life, for the world it wasn’t so hot. Time to move forward!

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But the chaos is all so beautiful…

The Cardsharps, c. 1594, by Michelangelo Meris...

Image via Wikipedia

I have always been fascinated by randomness. I am not alone, as shown by the ancient pastimes of gambling and divination. It is our lot as humans to peer into the chaos of the universe and try to discern patterns there. But perhaps a bigger question is whether our lives have some purpose or whether they are the results of a series of random events. Not a comforting question to consider, unless you posit that without randomness, you cannot have free will.

So instead let’s consider writing a story based on a randomly generated plot or theme or even a single word. Let’s start a website or band around a randomly generated name. Let’s decide who goes first (or last) using a randomly ordered list. Or maybe we’ll just do a little random surfing.

But can we really behave randomly and perhaps beat the lottery? Or is there too much order in the universe after all?

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Good reads on my other blogs: December ’09 edition

Here’s what folks are finding interesting to read on my other blogs this month.

My article on Books that Changed Your Life is still very popular. I don’t know if you’ll find anything life-changing in the post, though. I don’t come to any definitive conclusions.

At my newest blog, which collects my notes on the post-apocalypse, check out Artists’ Conceptions of an Empty Earth. The art is very cool.

At my cooking blog, the usual suspects are at the top. People still want to know how to make lasagna, roasted chicken breasts, sorbet and quick tomato sauce for pasta.

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The post-apocalypse fantasy…

Why do we enjoy imagining such a horrific event as the demise of most of humankind? We never seem to tire of books, movies, TV shows and music about the post-apocalypse. While not many of us would like actually experiencing the apocalypse, imagining it is a cathartic fantasy.

Who hasn’t fantasized about starting all over again from a completely clean slate? Walking away from your family, friends and stuff, moving to a new place, perhaps even changing your identity. Just starting from zero. The post-apocalypse is that fantasy writ large. It’s not just you starting over, it’s the whole human race.

Also, the apocalypse provides a neat solution to the overwhelming problems that face us today. Such issues as climate change, overpopulation, scarce resources, poverty, epidemics and never-ending violence are overwhelming to us as individuals, when we feel we can’t do much about these global problems. The apocalypse — usually caused in some way by these problems — is also the universal solution to them. In one fell swoop, the number of people is reduced to a manageable number. No more climate change because no more pollution. And unless they were destroyed in the event, resources become plentiful. Depending on who is killed off, such pervasive problems as violence and even disease might be ended. Humanity gets the chance to start over and not make the same mistakes this time.

Finally, the post-apocalypse is an individual fantasy of the ultimate challenge. What would I do if the world ended and I survived? How would I react? How would I deal with the new problems I would have? Would raising my own food be a better deal than having to go to a soul-sucking job at an office every day? (Perhaps.) It’s the greatest “what if” situation, one we may never get tired of contemplating.

As is the norm, I’m sure that if the apocalypse actually did occur, it would be both nothing like and very similar to what we’ve already imagined it to be.

The Boston Globe also has an article wondering why we are so fascinated with the apocalypse in books and movies. It gives a bit of a retrospective of the apocalypse envisioned in film over the years.

I’m remodeling a bit for the New Year.

But here they are. Does it make it even more obnoxiously cute to tell you that he arranged all the stuffed animals very carefully before sitting down among them to pose for the shot?

Every Thanksgiving we drive up to the mountains of North Carolina for the long weekend. We stay somewhere around Black Mountain. This year, we were in the tiny town of Montreat, which has a Christian college, summer camps, conference center … Continue reading

If you like to see ultra-cute babies attempt to play the piano, click on over. (And yes, the baby is mine, but he is ultra-cute anyway.)

Just to show…

My last post was a little bit gloomy. But I am still looking ahead to the future! And just to show that, I have started a new little blog… an electronic notebook, really, of helpful, inspiring and (dare I say?) fun post-apocalyptic resources. There’s music, art, ideas, so head on over to emptyearth.wordpress.com and check it out.

This is really a little research project I’m working on that may or may not turn into something more. But some of you crazy kids who stop by here might be interested. Who knows?