"Fire is motion / Work is repetition / This is my document / We are all all we've done / We are all all we've done / We are all all we've done / We are all all defenses."

- Cap'N Jazz, "Oh Messy Life," Analphabetapolothology

Monday, December 20, 2010

take the initiative

i dreamt last night that i discovered an old forgotten live session of Bruce Springsteen's, in which he plays a set of 11-13 songs, with lots of soaring violin and a video of someone hang-gliding or flying an open top plane. lots of blue, yellow and green. and the music, though beautiful and folksy, was less like Bruce and more like The Frames. but it was beautiful and the first song was called "Take The Initiative" and i coveted it as part of my growing Bruce collection.

in the dream i was Bruce's tour assistant, but in the form of Portia de Rossi. the Boss was playing a set and i had to stop him to tell him there was someone trying to bomb his tour bus. the Bruce came right off the stage and tackled the terrorist and beat him with his own (the terrorist's) golf clubs. end of story! Bruce for President!

i then woke up at 8:40, which is kinda early for me, feeling like it was really late and i must be dreaming still, because i felt so well-rested.

---

as part of my new year's resolutions and my birthday-initiated self-reform, i am making a conscious effort to make tv and internet less of a daily habit. i think i've grown too accustomed to frittering away my days with these technological distractions and have grown tired of reaching the end of my day realizing i haven't done anything productive, haven't created anything or bettered myself. the worst and most embarrassing time-suck is Facebook. yesterday, i decided i was going to do it, i was finally going to just delete my account and be done with it. it's super annoying, omnipresent, ever-controlling, and a constant source of anxiety (what are people on the net seeing of me? who is looking at it? is there something that could prove deterrent for future employers?) and yet so many of my friends use it that to delete it makes me worry i'll be left out. gah, the trials and tribulations of our modern existence!

so, as of today (and last night too) i have been limiting my Facebook time to ONCE a day. that means i only get to check it once, and after that i can't until the next day. and, i only get to check my notifications, and i only get to approve friend requests, not go seeking them out on the internet. it probably seems silly and trivial, but i think it will help wean me off of this artificial community and start creating real relationships with people again. and, my hope is that after doing this for weeks, i can get it down to just checking Facebook on fridays, and then after that, maybe i'll get down to just once a month, and then, inşallah, maybe i'll be able to delete it altogether from my life.

i'm also trying to limit my use of the internet and tv to about 5 hours combined, which is actually a LOT of time spent on these machines when you say it out loud, but that should say something about my prior habits. the average american spends 5 hours of the day just watching tv and roughly 250 billion hours per year with the idiot box. i'm trying to shave off a little of that time and make it more meaningful. i guess we'll see how it goes but i'm hoping it makes for a happier and less aimless 2011.

welp, my hour's almost up so i should get going!
-stephan!e


oh, and if you're wondering how much time the average american spends watching tv, these nifty scientific reports proved illuminating:

1 comment:

K. said...

I wish that that Bruce set were real, and also that we had discovered a share love of Springsteen prior to the end of our college years.

I only saw Bruce once, in the winter of 2004, just prior to the Bush v. Kerry Presidential election. He played to a crowd of what felt like hundreds of thousands of people. He got to add one extra song to his set & ended up playing "Thunder Road." Someone transcribed the spoken intro & outro that he gave, you can read it here. My mom and her two sisters see Bruce as a family whenever he comes to Cleveland.

I've been trying to spend less time watching TV and being online, too, though having unfettered access to the internet at work makes it hard to resist. I don't spend much time on facebook, but I hopelessly refresh twitter and tumblr on some days. I've really pushed myself to read more this year and haven't done too shabby (I've read 71 books so far and am hoping to get to 75 before the year is over.)

I hope that things are going well for your out in Syracuse! Will you be home for the holidays? If you ever want to try & meet somewhere in the middle, maybe could spend a day in Buffalo together? I miss seeing you & chatting with you.

P.S. The other day I had the pleasure of eating lunch with Hilary Stevens & she made a salad that reminded me so much of the colorful salads you used to construct at Alexander.