Tag: Journal
After 14 days of work in a row, I’m going to enjoy the hell out of this weekend. First up? Dinner, beers and a nap.
I was recently reading an article about a hospice nurse that wrote down conversations with her dying patients and some of the things they wished they had done or would have chosen to do differently. Here are the top five:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
I’ve read another book on life, choices and responsibilities. That we cannot blame others for the choices we make.
Notice how I am not talking about regret, but simply a desire to make a course correction and learn from the past.
One of the more memorable quotes of a very forgettable Star Trek movie:
Damn it, Bones, you’re a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain!
There are some choices and decisions that I would change, sure. I wish I didn’t have to experience some of the resulting trials as a result. I wish my family didn’t have to endure them with me.
But it is those situations that help me learn and grow to become a better person.
Mayday! Mayday!
My body and soul cried out for help as soon as I woke up this morning.
I gorged on fast food last night and it was one too many times in a row.
I fell off the wagon and hit rock bottom nice and hard.
Enough is enough.
I have plenty of parks and trails in the area to enjoy a little bit of walk and roll.
So, I strolled through scenic Woodward park today. Later, I made sure the tires on my bicycle got a fresh coat of dirt on them.
This week I will go trail running with Couch to 5K again.
Aeroboxing, yoga, push ups and situps are back on the menu.
SLEEP.
Also, May is supposedly the month of the bicycle (who makes these up?)
Just got back from the Black Keys concert at the BOK Center. My soul just got rocked and my ears are still ringing. This is a good thing.
A lot of things are in my head and are trying to escape. Either I can’t articulate them or they are incomplete. Frustrating.
Why do people consider getting outside and into nature as “roughing it”?
Here in the city and in the suburbs are chaotic. The traffic, the hassles, the deadlines and the noise are unbearable.
The most enjoyable, peaceful times one can have are outdoors and even away from the city.
One of my favorite memories includes a weekend in a lakeside cabin, a borrowed Hemingway novel and no expectations.
“Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator.” – Mark Twain, Roughing It
Another memory included thin, crisp, clean evenings on a mountain range
Not very rough at all.
…is a true statement.
My in-laws are renting a dumpster and setting it up in their driveway. They are planning on eliminating years of stuff this weekend.
The rest of the family (local and even from out-of-state) are here to help with the purge, or salvage what they think is valuable.
Personally I am in favor of throwing a majority of our “stuff” over the side and celebrate when the waste company takes it away.
The process is almost over.
I’ve been selling/donating books and throwing out old magazines.
I’m saving space and money by going digital.
The Evo has a huge screen but I still have eye strain when reading from it.
My birthday is coming way too soon.
I want/need the new Amazon Kindle Fire tablet.
Still sorting out what is being sold, donated or thrown away from our rented storage unit. I think we shaved off about 20% recently and I am not done yet.
I’m hoping that by simplifying my world I can gain more perspective on what matters most to me.
Eliminating the non-essentials is very liberating.
What is something that you can do without and would be willing to give up?
The three of us enjoyed our local YMCA membership and I just cancelled it. As much as we enjoyed the idea of membership, we haven’t made time to use it.
My intention is to go back to the basics of fitness. I can do push-ups, sit-ups, make use of the dirt trails and maybe even…yoga.
Little DVD had a piece of her toy snap off and asked me to repair it recently. Once the part was snapped back into place she exclaimed that I was “just like Tinkerbell!” I assume she meant that I could fix things as well as that little fairy. But that got me thinking that I do tinker and tweak because I do perform a lot of maintenance on my machines. Sometimes too much.
When a new release of the Ubuntu operating system or when an Windows “upgrade”is released I do quite a bit of tinkering. Sure I could just upgrade and overwrite the obsolete files and programs but I always perform a clean install so I can determine what software is more productive and lean. I want a fast, responsive laptop.
Now is the perfect time to assess what software I want, need or to get rid of. Do I really need two image processing software or can I increase my knowledge of the best one and use it exclusively? Can I uninstall the pre-loaded media player for the one of my choice?
The same approach goes with my digital files. If I haven’t touched them in six months, then they are uploaded to my offsite server, zipped up and archived on an external hard drive. It would be even better if I can just go ahead and delete the ones I don’t need at all.
Media files make up a majority of my hard drive space…for now. My music can be purchased online and sync wirelessly to my devices. I need to take advantage of this and regain my 3GB of hard drive space. Photos are a big part of what I do and enjoy so there will always be the personal and client images there. After all this time I still do not have a workflow in place. Inexcusable.
Website content, social media, RSS feeds, bookmarks all go into one folder and distributed as needed.
Maintaining your computer’s health goes a long way to ensure you will have it a long time. There are plenty of utilities and diagnostics to run on a weekly basis.
As your digital needs evolve so will your workflow and maintenance. If you are like me and enjoy the tinkering and tweaking I think you will appreciate the benefits of a finely tuned and organized machine.
Yawning is typically linked to tiredness, but a group of researchers from Princeton and the University of Arizona have found it may simply be a means to regulate brain temperature.
My brain must overheat a lot.