- More creating. Less documenting, less consuming.
- Spend less time filling time, and more time enjoying it.
- Commit 100% to each effort.
- Spend more time on the plan, less time on the scramble.
- Organize. Then find a way to organize the organization.
Classic.
Over the years, I’ve spent way too much time collecting, organizing, archiving, and updating my music collection. As documented copiously on these pages, I’ve moved it from machine to machine, horse-traded MP3’s with friends, ripped CDs from various different sources, and yes, bought a lot of music. I recently brought my backup drive into work and imported the whole thing onto the cavernous hard drive of my work tower, and it’s great to have here.
However, I haven’t listened to any of it since I moved it.
I tend to obsess over songs when they get stuck in my head, and while I have several playlists of old favorites in iTunes, I’ve grown tired of a lot of them after repeat plays. These days, I’m using Spotify to play my current favorites over and over again (current earworm: Days are Gone, by Haim) and foregoing the iTunes collection.
It could be that my current work mode is more segmented; at the previous gig I would have uninterrupted (well, usually) blocks of several hours to work, and a playlist or podcast fit that bill nicely. Now I’m splitting the days up in half-hours, which means I can listen to songs but rarely do I get a full podcast in, which is like watching 15 minutes of your favorite movie every day.
I still believe in owning a copy of the thing that I buy–having the actual CD or MP3 files with no DRM, for example–but it’s nice to be able to search for and play a new song immediately through a streaming service.
I think the other big issue is that I don’t have the main library on my laptop drive. It’s so much easier to make and edit playlists on a primary computer; I rarely get down to the basement to edit things on the server, and for some reason iTunes is puking on all of the songs in its library and refuses to stream them to the AppleTV.
The rise of A.D.H.D. diagnoses and prescriptions for stimulants over the years coincided with a remarkably successful two-decade campaign by pharmaceutical companies to publicize the syndrome and promote the pills to doctors, educators and parents. With the children’s market booming, the industry is now employing similar marketing techniques as it focuses on adult A.D.H.D., which could become even more profitable.
After years of spending hundreds of dollars at chain eyeglass stores, I’m giving this Warby Parker thing a try. I sent away for five try-on pairs of two frame styles, which should be here sometime this week. I’ve seen a lot of hipsters wearing WP frames and they all look big to me–like “I was too young to actually have lived through the 80’s and even though frames were big then I bet they weren’t this big” big. Hopefully they will fit my face and not resemble safety glasses from seventh grade shop class.
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Austin Homebrew has been offering free shipping on beer kits since the spring, and they are drawing that promotion to a close tomorrow. I ordered a pumpkin ale this afternoon so that I can include one of the batches of real pumpkin Mama made before Thanksgiving. I’m so happy with how the Irish Stout aged after four months, I’m going to brew up the pumpkin and sit on it for a long while before bottle conditioning the whole thing and waiting until the fall of 2014 to crack it.
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I’m slowly gathering footage to use while learning how to use Final Cut Pro at work, but I’ve already learned my first painful lesson: I failed to back up about 20 minutes of raw video, moved the project files around, and deleted them without realizing what I’d done due to FCP’s odd file structure. It appears they are gone permanently. Using a mixture of GoPro and DSLR footage I’ve still got something interesting to work with, but I really need more to be able to cut something together.
Update: Found them! FCP is so strange…
I paused to reflect, last night as I leaned into the car to scoop out my sleeping daughter, that this was another part of her childhood that I’m not ready to ever give up. I carefully unbuckle her seatbelt, and through some involuntary muscle memory, she raises both arms slightly so I can pick her up. As I nestle her head into the hollow of my shoulder, she goes limp, and I carry her inside the house, usually right up the stairs, and lay her gently in bed.
So the house next door has been on the market for a couple of months, and as far as we know they didn’t do anything to it other than clean it out before it was listed. A week or two ago, a SOLD card appeared on top of the realtor’s sign out front. The son of the owner stopped by yesterday and I stopped out to speak with him; apparently a realtor from Ellicott City bought the place and the sale will go through in January. Which, to me, sounds like the place is going to get flipped immediately after they put some work into it. However, knowing the asking price and how much work it needs, I don’t see how they’ll be able to make improvements and keep the place affordable for the area.