Today is Ash Wednesday. Though I'm not Catholic, I have gone through the process of fasting from something for Lent as a spiritual exercise many times in my adult life.
Today I logged out of my Facebook account after posting a "see you later" note. Soon after this I got a note asking me if I had given up Facebook for Lent.
The answer is "not really". I just feel pulled in so many different directions right now that I felt like it would be something I could do to simplify my life. I have unfinished hobbies I wouldn't mind picking back up (I just blogged about this a few days ago), things I want to write, exercise I want to do, and family connections I want to attend to. If I can use some of the time I have been spending on Facebook to do some of these things, then it's not really like I'm giving anything up. So I don't think it qualifies as a Lenten sacrifice.
Plus I don't want to hold myself to a 40 day time frame. Maybe in two weeks I will have figured out a way to motivate myself to a daily 15 minutes on the exercise bike, and will have rewritten one of the essays in my notes into a publishable article, and feel like it's OK to try to incorporate Facebook back into my life.
I'll see if removing something from my routine helps me feel like I've got time to be more productive in other ways.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Unfinished Business
It seems like I'm pretty good at unfinising things. Here are a few examples...
1. In 1989 we bought our first house. I had always wanted to build a balsa and tissue model airplane, so I bought one. It looked too hard, so I put it away. The bug to try kept nagging at me, so I bought another one. This one was marked "Easy." It's a Cessna, single wing, simple plane. I got to work on my model, and it went together really well. But before I could finish, the reality of all the things we had to do to fix up our house set in. Then we had our first child.
It's 2012. I covered the wings in 2010. The fuselage of my Cessna sits on top of my dresser. It's just the bare frame, without the tissue paper. It's unfinished.
2. I own at least ten blank books. I purchased each one with the intention of using them as a journal. One of them has three pages of entries, two of those pages are drawings. The other nine or so are unfinished.
3. I love to write with a fountain pen. I use one all the time. I won an art award when I was in middle school for calligraphy. I have always wanted to do calligraphy as a hobby. Every once in a while I get passionate about it. I own at least five calligraphy kits. I found a complete set of Speedball nibs at an antique store and bought them without a second thought. We're talking 30 or 40 nibs. I own more than fifteen dip pens. I have purchased calligraphy paper seemingly by the ream. I own multiple calligraphy books. I have bought calligraphy makers (they have never been used so are probably dried out by now). I have actually "done" (what's the correct verb?) calligraphy three of four times in the past five years. Another project, unfinished.
4. Another art project I always enjoyed was painting with watercolors. Last fall I decided to put some work into it. I bought some watercolor paper on sale at Michaels and a set of paints at Hobby Lobby. I painted two weekends. What I produced looks... I'm not sure how to describe it. Let's just say my paintings don't look like they were done in watercolor. Today I noticed that my paint box has a nice layer of dust forming, another silent example that I have left another hobby unfinished.
5. I dabble in game design. I was quite active in the Michigan game design "scene" in the early 2000s. There are several published designers who would get together infrequently. I attended the Protospiel convention for a number of years. I got some really good feedback on several of my designs. I checked my notes the other day as I moved a box of prototypes from one spot to another in my storage room downstairs. 2004. There are maybe five or six games down there, unfinished.
There are probably more examples. I wanted to wrap this up with something insightful, but can't think of much more to say than this: Thankfully, despite everything that is unfinished, there are many examples of projects I have finished.
1. In 1989 we bought our first house. I had always wanted to build a balsa and tissue model airplane, so I bought one. It looked too hard, so I put it away. The bug to try kept nagging at me, so I bought another one. This one was marked "Easy." It's a Cessna, single wing, simple plane. I got to work on my model, and it went together really well. But before I could finish, the reality of all the things we had to do to fix up our house set in. Then we had our first child.
It's 2012. I covered the wings in 2010. The fuselage of my Cessna sits on top of my dresser. It's just the bare frame, without the tissue paper. It's unfinished.
2. I own at least ten blank books. I purchased each one with the intention of using them as a journal. One of them has three pages of entries, two of those pages are drawings. The other nine or so are unfinished.
3. I love to write with a fountain pen. I use one all the time. I won an art award when I was in middle school for calligraphy. I have always wanted to do calligraphy as a hobby. Every once in a while I get passionate about it. I own at least five calligraphy kits. I found a complete set of Speedball nibs at an antique store and bought them without a second thought. We're talking 30 or 40 nibs. I own more than fifteen dip pens. I have purchased calligraphy paper seemingly by the ream. I own multiple calligraphy books. I have bought calligraphy makers (they have never been used so are probably dried out by now). I have actually "done" (what's the correct verb?) calligraphy three of four times in the past five years. Another project, unfinished.
4. Another art project I always enjoyed was painting with watercolors. Last fall I decided to put some work into it. I bought some watercolor paper on sale at Michaels and a set of paints at Hobby Lobby. I painted two weekends. What I produced looks... I'm not sure how to describe it. Let's just say my paintings don't look like they were done in watercolor. Today I noticed that my paint box has a nice layer of dust forming, another silent example that I have left another hobby unfinished.
5. I dabble in game design. I was quite active in the Michigan game design "scene" in the early 2000s. There are several published designers who would get together infrequently. I attended the Protospiel convention for a number of years. I got some really good feedback on several of my designs. I checked my notes the other day as I moved a box of prototypes from one spot to another in my storage room downstairs. 2004. There are maybe five or six games down there, unfinished.
There are probably more examples. I wanted to wrap this up with something insightful, but can't think of much more to say than this: Thankfully, despite everything that is unfinished, there are many examples of projects I have finished.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
One down...
One of my "year in preview" predictions was that I would be published in a professional journal. I'm pretty pleased that I was able to accomplish this early in the year.
I frequent the blogs on the Crisis Prevention Institute website, and comment there once in a while. A few weeks ago I got an email from someone at CPI asking me if I was interested in expanding on a blog comment I made, turning that into an article for their printed journal "CPI Forum".
It's hard to keep an article to a word limit. It took me two weeks, writing and editing in my spare time, but I managed to submit something near the end of January. A few days later I got a note back that they loved my article and will be using it in their next Forum.
The cool thing is that I had put getting published down as one of my professional goals at work. I was able to achieve goal this in January, nine months before I have my performance appraisal. Now I'm looking for another place to get published, so I can exceed that goal.
I frequent the blogs on the Crisis Prevention Institute website, and comment there once in a while. A few weeks ago I got an email from someone at CPI asking me if I was interested in expanding on a blog comment I made, turning that into an article for their printed journal "CPI Forum".
It's hard to keep an article to a word limit. It took me two weeks, writing and editing in my spare time, but I managed to submit something near the end of January. A few days later I got a note back that they loved my article and will be using it in their next Forum.
The cool thing is that I had put getting published down as one of my professional goals at work. I was able to achieve goal this in January, nine months before I have my performance appraisal. Now I'm looking for another place to get published, so I can exceed that goal.
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