Someone close to me yesterday said “I really need to get out of the house more often. You have shown me a lot of different spots I didn’t know about.”
This was from someone who has lived in the same city and state their whole lives and I think it was one of the saddest things I heard.
Look, I know I am wired differently than most and have an insatiable desire for something new and different. Random beats repetition for me every time.
Sometimes I have to lose myself to find a new direction and the only way I can do that is by exploring more.
6th St, Pearl District looking towards downtown Tulsa in the snow
I’ve never been what you’d call musically inclined but there have been a lot of influences lately and I decided to try my hand, literally, at this gorgeous ukulele.
After some initial tuning mistakes that are now corrected, I played a total of two chords tonight. Looking forward to a jam session with my very patient muse this weekend.
Time to evaluate my progress for my Groundhog Resolutions, the 10th
annual attempt at creating life-long habits for myself. I’ve discovered
that right after the end of the year holidays I am not mentally or
physically capable of sticking with resolutions for the upcoming new
year. I need a break so I take the whole month of January off to reflect
and plan and start on 2/2 instead of 1/1.
I’ve got one more month (12/12) to wrap all this up until Groundhogs Day 2019.
Fun-
Get another tattoo: Coming soon
More camping: Waiting on warmer weather
More skinny dipping: Think I’ll have to skip that this year
Learn Spanish more fluently: Downloaded the Duolingo app for practice but haven’t used it. Will work with the MissAdventurer
Join a book club: No decent bookclubs around town.
50 Books a year challenge: According to Amazon and the library, I’ve read 46 so far. I’ll share my reading list next month.
Snail mail friend: Fail mail
Volunteer: Who’s got the time?
Fitness-
Kickboxing: The gym offers one class…during the day. One day a week. Fail.
Self-defense: Can’t defend myself. Fail
Yoga: Almost daily. Is it supposed to hurt when I stretch?
More 5 & 10k obstacle course racing: I finished the Warrior Dash again. Next year I want to do a minimum of 3
Consistent training: Working out with Tracy is mutually beneficial. Accountability may be the one thing I needed to maintain this.
Consistent nutritional training: Really been enjoying more meals at home. Eating out is becoming frustrating and disappointing. This is making my decision to eat in easier
Hashing: I’m done for this season. My foot injury sidelined me.
Hiking: I want to explore more but again, foot. Time to hit some light, low elevation trails.
Geocaching: I want to find at least ten more caches before year end. Will I renew my premium membership? Lets find out.
Meditation: Ommm… this has been beneficial but not consistent.
Creative-
Complete my book: I have been enjoying the process so far. It won’t get done this year. There is too much I want to include and that involves more research. Besides…still working on an ending.
Photo essay on a topic I am passionate about: Cold, crisp nights will help me round out my Tulsa After Dark series for the year.
Video log every month: This is so easy and yet it hasn’t been done.
Leave inspirational notes everywhere:
Year in photos album: Cannot wait to see what 2018 memories I’ll have at the EOY.
Shoot more film: Film is a precious commodity. A costly commodity. Sure, the Fuji camera is fun but at almost $1.50 a sheet? I am convinced that I will buy a Canon 35mm soon though. It’ll be cheaper
DAM: I have all the DSLR photos organized into yearly folders. Finally. Now to sort the wheat from the chaff. Oh, and since I shut down Google photos, I need to organize and integrate all these mobile pics from the years too. I just doubled my work!
I just finished the monumental task of deleting all of my accounts. On purpose.
Why should you care about this? No idea. But for me, it is refreshing and liberating. I admit it was rewarding to receive online praise for my photographic work. To see it used on websites, magazines and books is very rewarding. For every day photos, the accolades came and went. Gone are the days when most will leave constructive criticism only to be supplanted by a simple “heart” icon indicating that they liked it. I’m over this.
The rest of social media was updating anyone and everyone about what I was doing. Look at me! I’m witty. I take decent photos. Here’s what I ate and where.
I used to be a charter member of every major social media platform as a beta tester. It was a new frontier to be explored with friends. But no more. Too much superficial. Too divisive. Not fun. Anti-social. No privacy and hacks.
Enough.
I’ve enjoyed meeting people from various social media outlets when we were offline. I am also enjoying meeting and cultivating friendships IRL. We’ll go old school and share a conversation, not a tweet thread. Share experiences as opposed to posts. This is what matters.
I am no longer a member of
Google
Google+
Youtube
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
Gone. It’s over. Done. I officially killed my social media accounts and severed a lot of relationships and a ton of “friends” in all the places I have lived and worldwide. Well, not them, just the online versions of ourselves.
The end of the year is almost here and there are some last minute addendums to be made to my Groundhog Day Resolutions.
NO donuts
NO eating out all the time
NO drinking all the time
Absolutely, positively NO Whataburger
I’ve lost five pounds this week and I need to stay focused to maintain that and other goals/resolutions. I suppose it is time to detonate atomic habits.
I am decommissioning my Misadventures.me website and coming back here to ChrisDenbow.com. It was an attempt at a fresh start but then I realized I didn’t want to go that direction. The web domain expires soon and I am not renewing it. It is for sale if you want it.
The transition is smooth so far but included challenges like transferring my two domain names away from Google as well as my email hosting. Now I have to change my account settings to everyone I do business with as well as friends/family. “Hey, I moved!” Want to connect? Send me email to hello@chrisdenbow.website