News News News

I have a bit of a confession to make... I'm kind of addicted to news. At least online news. I'm always checking the news websites - cbc, ctv, cnn, bbc. I'm looking for new things all the time. If I have a lull in whatever I'm doing, I'll check the news. If I get bored, I'll check the news. First, of course, I'll check my email to see if there's anything new there. But if there isn't, then I'll check the news. Over and over again. Maybe I missed something the first time. Maybe there's something new up! it's actually kind of annoying!

In the mornings, I can spend 1/2 hour reading the news. I know that some people read the newspaper, and I can say that is what I am doing as well. But during the day, I'm also checking the news... and my email... and my favourite blogs... I think it might be time to do what others have suggested... just limiting online email/blog/news checks to specific times. You know, check your email twice a day or four times a day. Not every 10 minutes. That's the thing with email, it's always coming in... the door is always open. It's sort of like getting mail, real mail. I know when the letter carrier is coming, usually mid-morning, and I go out and check the mailbox and it's done. But what if the letter carrier came all the time, sometimes with mail, sometimes without mail. I'd be out there every 10 minutes or 1/2 hour checking the mailbox. That seems kind of silly, and yet it's what we do with our email inboxes. We're checking it all the time. Because if someone sends us an email, they often expect that we will get it immediately, and they want a response pretty much immediately too!

Maybe it's time to go on a news/blog/email diet... just check it once in the morning, once at lunch, once in the eveing. And in those moments where I'm feeling bored to try something else... maybe write something... write a blog, write a letter. Do something rather than just sucking in more information... Maybe I'm an info-addict! Maybe we all are info-addicts. Whether it's Twitter or Facebook or whatever... we all seem to be addicted to something in that regard... Maybe it's time to ease up and ease out...

Minimalism

Hmmm... this idea that I came across on the web struck me as interesting. The idea of living with 100 items or less. Can you imagine trying to pare down your possessions to 100 items or less? And yet apparently people are doing this. They are selling their house and their car and most of their possessions and living with less. They are renting apartments, using laundromats, buying Kindle e-book readers, ditching their TV and cablevision. In today's digital world, there are all sorts of ways to downsize. If you have a laptop, you don't need photoalbums or cds or a music player or bookshelves or books. You can have it all digitally. That in and of itself reduces an enormous amount of clutter, much of it sentimental.

I came across the article on http://www.lifehack.org/ where she talks about the 100 items or less lifestyle.(http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/6-easy-tips-for-living-with-100-items-or-less.html).

Then there is a guy named Andrew Hyde who travels a lot as an IT professional and who has gone to 15 items or less (http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/extreme-minimalism-andrew-hyde-and-the-15-item-lifestyle.html). I've travelled to Europe for 4 weeks with a bit more than that. It's true, you can get by with quite little for quite a long time, but I'm not sure I would want to do that for years and years. Mind you... it would free up a lot of financial resources to travel and do the things that I love. Think of the time saved in not having to do home repairs, or dishes or mowing the lawn.... There are possiblities in this...

Fancy Technology

I'm sitting here in Starbucks and well... the guy next to me who just sat down has a very fancy laptop. It actually wants him to press his finger tip onto a sensor pad to unlock the computer! Wow... It is running Windows, I can at least see that much. The screen is also rotatable and flips around so that when it is closed he can use the computer as a tablet. Right now, he is sitting there, using a stylus to write notes into some program, actual handwriting notes.

Hmmm... I think that I'm pretty computer savvy with my little laptop, but I get a sense that there are a lot of things out there that we regular people don't see! Mind you, I'm a bit slow in the area of cell phones and smart phones. I still have just a regular cell phone, while pretty much everybody else seems to have an iPhone or a Blackberry or something similar.

I guess the truth is, whatever we can imagine, well, it might already exist. If it doesn't already exist... it's probably not too far away! Imagine 20 years ago (1991) and how the internet was just getting going and computers were so pathetic. My first computer had a 650 KB RAM and a 40 MB harddrive! Amazing... Nowadays, most smartphones have way more memory than that... With all this technology, it's definitely keep up... or get left behind!

Morning Pages

If you read any sort of meditation or writing or self-help type of stuff, most of them will tell you to journal. Now, when they say to journal, they don't mean necessarily having a coherent, it-has-to-make-sense type of journal. They're talking about just sitting down and writing whatever is there, complete with spelling mistakes and whatever else might come. Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, recommends what she calls Morning Pages. They are 3 pages of long-hand writing to just get it all out on paper. Do it first thing in the morning when you're still groggy and not thinking clearly. Just get it all out of your system, all of the things you need to do today, all of your worries and concerns and fears. Just get it out.

Then, once that's done, you can get on with your day and the serious business of real writing (if that's what you want to do). So, I've done morning pages off and on, but they don't seem to always be consistent... or I don't seem to be consistent. In my surfing of the net the other day, I came across another option, which I like a lot. It's called 750 Words (http://750words.com/). Just sign up (you can use your Facebook account for this), and you're good to go. At 250 words/page, the guy figures that 750 words is 3 pages. So, you can just sit and type in 750 words and it'll save it for you (safely and securely). Over time, you get points (always a bonus!) and it will keep track of some stats for you. It's very easy to use and I am liking it a lot! (I think I said that already).

I like the fact that I can do this on the computer. I type way faster than I write long-hand and my fingers can actually keep up with my thoughts. Maybe others are purists about having to write it all on paper, but I like this idea. And so far (2 days into it), it's working for me!

So if you've tried Morning Pages and find yourself struggling with the whole paper thing, give this website a try!

Death of Osama bin Laden

So, he is dead. Killed in a military raid on a mansion in Afghanistan. Shot in the side of the head and apparently not identifiable in the photos of his body. Buried at sea a day later. DNA samples are being sent off to be verified. Interesting. If it is Osama bin Laden, does that mean that the leader of terror is dead? Does that mean terror is dead? Probably not...

There was a book in 2006 called The Starfish and the Spider (http://www.starfishandspider.com/), all about the power of leaderless organizations. The idea is this. If you have an organization like a spider and you cut off a leg... the spider will survive. If you cut off the head, the spider will die. There is a very clear head in a spider-like organization. Get rid of it, and you've killed the organization. But then there is the organization that is more like a starfish. Cut off a leg of a starfish and... the original starfish will grow a new leg... In fact, in the face of predators, a starfish will often shed a leg... and then grow a new one. There is no "head" with a starfish... So in a starfish-like organization, like terror cells, well... you may have cut off a leg but a new one will grow back. There isn't one person who controls things... there are cells that take things on... There is power in a starfish-like organization...

So getting rid of Osama, while it might seem like a victory, isn't really anything like that. But time will tell....

Sun Rising

So, I'm trying something different today... getting on my bike at 5:45 am and riding to Starbucks, then coming home and continuing my day. I usually get up early anyhow, but then end up sitting at home and reading the internet news and frittering away time. So why not try something different. I'll get my bike ride done in the early morning. I get to have my Starbucks when it's still cool out and a hot chocolate seems reasonable (+25 is a bit warm to have a hot chocolate!). Let's see how it works. I'm not sure about the rest of my morning routine but... let's give this a whirl.

This morning, I wondered if I should take my camera along, as the sun was not up yet and sometimes there are some cool shots... but I didn't... and now I'm kicking myself! The sun isn't up yet, but along the horizon, above where it is, there is a column of light rising into the sky. It looks like it might be some variation of a sundog... and I don't have my camera! Sigh... That will teach me... I should always trust my intuition on that sort of thing...

Just googled it as "sun column" and yup... that's exactly what it is... another atmospheric phenomenon, similar to sun dogs and caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere. Cool... never seen one before... But this means that we have ice crystals in our atmosphere in early May... sigh... Still waiting for spring to spring through the door and take the stage with strength!

Creating Space

This week I managed to clear quite a few "long-time" residents off of my to-do list. Some of these things have been languishing there since before last September! This week though, I tackled them and completed them. There is a huge amount of satisfaction in being able to scratch them off my list. It creates a great feeling of space, both psychological and physical. I've had some of these things taking up space in my office, getting pushed from one corner to another. Now, I can clear them out and put them away... A great sensation.

And completing these things, gives me space to complete other things as well. Which is a nice little positive-feedback loop. Much preferable to the other one... the one where I start to let things accumulate... and the more they accumulate, the more other things begin to accumulate. Until finally, I'm drowning in my to-do list and feeling overwhelmed, closed-in, frazzled and overworked. I spend hours just frittering away time because I feel so overwhelmed... which just makes me feel more overwhelmed... Nasty little cycle.

The trick always is to break the cycle. To just start with something... one of the something's that I've been avoiding for so long. Maybe not the biggest something, but it doesn't really matter how big or small it is. All that matters is that I start somewhere. If I start with something small, then I can clear a bit of space and move on to something a bit bigger... Which creats even more space.

It's that little movement of starting... that's where I get stuck. I don't start. I sit there and dither for a while, or do anything and everything but that. I dodge the issue. I side-step it. I push it around on my desk. I organize my desk. I organize everything but the very thing I'm supposed to be organizing. UGH! So, what is that lack of "starting-ness"? I don't know... probably a form of procrastination. It'll be too hard. It'll take too long. It'll be too big. I need to prepare more. I don't have all the information that I need. I don't know what to do with something... All of these things sound a lot like excuses, because they are! I get stuck in my excuses and my justifications... and it sucks me down... Step aside excuses!!