A+

The 1 hour of housework... worked. I just straightened up (with Alex's help - thanks babe) and left the mopping for today. Maybe I was okay with leaving it since I was in a lot of pain but whatever the reason, I don't feel bad about the house work.

I have been recording my daytime activities pretty throughly on the hour or so and that is going well. I haven't forgotten to do it or left anything out. At the end of the week, I'll post some highlights and what will be revamped.

Still I ask, Alex where are you on this? I thought we were going to do this together...

Today is the first time that my commitment will be tested. The apartment is a mess. Can I stick to my resolution to do just one hour of cleaning and be okay with either of two scenarios"

1) Everything gets a once over, nothing is very clean but its livable OR
2) One room gets very clean and the others stay sloppy until I can get to them

Hmmm...

Reflecting

I am looking at the commitments I listed and I tried to categorize them. One that I kept coming back to was "Obligatory attendance at SW screenings and stuff". That is the thing that sticks out most in my mind as not giving me very much benefit nor do I enjoy it very much.

I am gong to ditch it.

I will only go attend things that I am interested in. Not that I feel like I should attend, nor will I go only because I feel the need to be there more often. I will take in the offerings as I find them interesting, not because I feel like I should find this interesting or that its important for me to see this. No guilt for not going either.

. . .

Starting on Sunday, I will go on to the third thing. Without Alex. (Babe! You are falling behind!) For one week, I will document what I do every day for my time. I will figure out where I waste time and what I can cut out. But more about that on Sunday.

So I am having a hard time with that commitment list that I made. I don't feel like its complete nor do I feel like I really made much of a commitment to drop anything. If only I could find something to help me figure out all of my commitments. The way I see it is that there has to be stuff I am forgetting because all the things on that list seem too important to cut out yet I need to cut something and there has to be something because I don't spend all my time doing that stuff. Maybe non-obligations count as commitments, say smoking pot...


Alex, where are you on this one?


I have spent so much of my work day trying to figure this out and I am getting nowhere just aggravated that I wasted most of my work day doing this. That seems to be indicative of something more. I think I need to move on.

This one is hard.

2. Evaluate your commitments.
Look at everything you’ve got going on in your life. Everything, from work to home to civic to kids’ activities to hobbies to side businesses to other projects. Think about which of these really gives you value, which ones you love doing. Which of these are in line with the 4-5 most important things you listed above? Drop those that aren’t in line with those things.

• Work - we have multiple commitments at our jobs. List them all.
o RIA
• 40hrs/wk
• manage child assessments
• ads responsibilities
• figuring out technology to small extent
• correspondence
• share study
• only full time employee btw two studies
o SW
• occasionally fill in at office
• direct bymi
• prepare lessons
• set up classes and schedule
• “obligatory” attendance at screenings, meetings, etc
• manage students
• 15 hrs/wk but non-structured
• Side work - some of us free-lance, or do odd jobs to take in money. More commitments.
o Videography
• renting equipment from sw
• set up and shooting
• editing
• dvd production
• trying to get job
• Family - we may play a role as husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter. These roles come with many commitments.
o Live-in Girlfriend
o Daughter
o Sister
o Godmother
o Friend
• Civic - we may volunteer for different organizations, or be a board member or officer on a non-profit organization.
o SW
• helping out at various functions
• Hobbies - perhaps you are a runner or a cyclist, or you build models, or are part of a secret underground comic book organization. These come with - surprise! - commitments.
o making videos
• finish clothing doc
• begin social media doc, sex doc
o scrapbooking
o sewing
o making stuff
o design
• Home - aside from regular family stuff, there’s the stuff you have to do at home.
o chores
o fixing stuff
o laundry
o making dinners
o running errands
• Online - we may be a regular on a forum or mailing list or Google group. These are online communities that come with commitments too.
o myspace
o facebook
o craftster.org
o digs magazine
o email
o online banking / bills
• Car
o cleaning
o repairs
• Social
o hanging out with friends
o bars
o dinners
• School
o looking for grad programs
o writing personal statement
o asking for letters of recommendation
• Self preservation
o girlie baths complete with lotion and crap
o occasional activity mostly guilt from lack of activity


Now take a close look at each thing on the list, and consider: How does this give my life value? How important is it to me? Is it in line with my life priorities and values? How would it affect my life if I dropped out? Does this further my life goals? Edit mercilessly, keeping only those that really mean something to you. Each time you cut a commitment, it may give you a feeling of guilt, because others want you to keep that commitment.

I don't think that is everything that I spend my time doing but I cannot think of anything else. I have no idea what to cut because it all feels so important. I think I will start with:

*Home: I will assign myself one hour a day to clean tops. Anything outside of that hour is off limits. All straightening up. organization or anything else is limited to one hour a day. I will be okay with just getting one task done at a time.

There doesn't seem to be much in there that I fully enjoy and look forward to. As for the guiding principles from last time, I have been think about them over the past week and I feel that they are apt.

And today marks the beginning of simplifying life.

Step 1: Make a list of your top 4 - 5 important things.
What’s most important to you? What do you value most? What 4-5 things do you most want to do in your life? Simplifying starts with these priorities, as you are trying to make room in your life so you have more time for these things.

1) Doing work I enjoy
2) Spending time with those I love
3) Learning something everyday
4) Making things
5) Accepting myself

{not listed in order of importance}

1) Live simply
2) Love myself
3) Love others
4) Do something meaningful
5) Learn things that interest me

Personal Space 2.0

I noticed when I was on the shuttle in San Jose taking me from the rental car facility to the terminal that many people were choosing to stand rather than take the empty seats that were clearly available around me. Now, while there were doubtless many factors contributing to this phenomenon, one that particularly got me thinking: perhaps it was because, while the seat to my left was empty, my elbow was kind of overflowing into the "space" of that seat, and a similar thing was happening on the left side of the empty seat, as another man was in that seat. So I started thinking about personal space.

Specifically, I found myself asking the question: Has the American concept of personal space changed in recent years (say, in the last half-century)? I believe that it has, and even if it hasn't, that it will. Then I started to think about the influence technology must have on these kinds of concepts. Since technology greatly influences how we define our day to day experiences, it must have an impact on our interactions with other people and therefore, on our feelings and beliefs about personal space. What is the increased prevalence of technology in our culture doing to our notion of personal space? I wondered.

Clearly, there are two basic options; technology either expands our need for personal space (causing us to require more in public situations) or shrinks it (causing it to need less personal space to feel comfortable). I thought of some arguments for each option.

One reason to think our personal space is shrinking is not so much related to technology as it is to an increasing population. As more people populate the Earth, cities become by necessity more crowded. Everything is packed in closer. The trends even over the last few centuries have been toward a more "individualistic" lifestyle: there is less emphasis on doing things communally, and greater emphasis on a smaller, "self-serving" lifestyle (the montages in Fight Club demonstrate how prevalent this is in air travel). As this occurs, newer generations become more used to dealing with less space, and so they need less.

Another reason for the shrinkage is the increased abundance of personal digital devices (iPods, laptops, PDAs, cell phones). With these devices gaining popularity and being used by more classes of people, space does not need to be limited to the physical realm. These devices create virtual space, which allows the users (read: cyborgs?) to actually expand their personal space while needed less physical space. An extension of this argument might be that people are using their computers to do more. No longer is the personal computer used just for sending the occasional email, researching a topic for school, typing an essay, playing solitaire and watching pretty screensavers. Today people live most of their lives on their computers. This is due to cheaper PCs available, widely available internet connections, and social success requiring computer literacy. People are living the majority of their social lives online. They can create an entire other (replacement?) life online, they can book flights, go shopping, chat with friends, get a degree, create a stock portfolio, and even work online. It would seem all of these advances lead to less of a need for physical personal space (would the brain treat virtual personal space the same way and in that case, is this actually causing an overall increased need for space?).

However, along with these developments in technology and culture comes the plight of the digital age: the problem of choice. With so much now readily available at our fingertips, we are having a crisis nearly every day about what to choose to do. Which social network should I belong to? How long should I spend researching the best deal on a product before buying it?

This of course paralyzes most people (maybe our children's children will be different, having grown up with it), and causes a general decrease in self-confidence. No longer does "the other" define who we are: we see less and less emphasis on group membership, be it ethnic or social otherwise, and more emphasis on individualism. You get to decide every day what kind of person you want to be, and in which direction you want to take your life. You no longer have to earn a belonging to a social group; with social networking online, you can decide exactly which groups you belong to. The problem with this, of course, is that group mentality depends on exclusivity and inclusivity. If there is no criteria by which to determine inclusion in a group, then there is no group. What was called a "group" is now just an ad-hoc collection of individuals, and whatever membership criteria was created can change at a moment's notice.

Our family ancestry and lineage used to determine the line of work we would go into, or whom we would marry. These days we have more "freedom" of choosing these things, and our culture's mantra seems to be "be whatever you want to be." Again, this freedom paradoxically paralyzes us. My argument would be that this decreased confidence in ourselves makes us paranoid and, when combined with increased fear-mongering from the governments and goading from advertisements and corporations, creates a greater need for personal space. We don't feel comfortable closing any doors, wanting to make sure we maximize the amount of choices we have at any given time. This carries over to our sense of space: we don't feel comfortable with less space, wanting to make sure we maximize our possible physical "paths" at any given time. In other words, we are becoming more claustrophobic.

But given these arguments, doesn't the aforementioned prevalence of digital devices satisfy our increased need for personal space? I believe the answer is becoming yes. Think of how many people quickly and easily get turned on by the newest space-creating gadgets and software. Think of how readily they spend their money on them. They crave the wonder and excitement, yes. Until recently I believe that's mostly what they craved (and they believed these devices would also make their lives easier, as though that were a principle of physics toward which everything converged). In the past decade or so, however, I believe that it is the need to augment personal space that keeps people coming back.

I think we are in a period of change right now. I think our progeny's generations will be comfortable with the amount of choice they have; they will have to learn to deal with it to survive. So they won't purchase these devices so much for the need of personal space. Of course, it's also possible that our legacy to them will be this almost genetic need for more space, so they will have a biological need for these devices.

A biological need for electronic devices? I think at that point, we will no longer be talking about homo sapiens. This will be the first true generation of homo technologicus, the first real cyborgs. That's what we're evolving into, and that's what our children will become.