— Middle [Name] James

A couple of weeks ago I made an entry on this blog declaring that I was going to start writing a post every day. A week later, after missing a couple of posts, I lowered the bar and said I’d make at least one post each week. Guess what? It’s been more than a week since I posted anything.

Blogging is not easy. Sure, it’s easy to log into WordPress and post something. But it’s not easy to be committed to doing that on a regular basis. It’s even more of a challenge to have something relevant to say and give people a reason to want to come back and keep reading.

I’m half wondering if I should just retire this blog and put up a simple “about me” page. I’m reluctant to give up on the domain name, but the fact is I have limited time and a few too many things on the go, balancing my work, family and other interests.

Too many digital distractions

In this digital age I find there are often too many distractions – too many things eating up my time. This last week I unsubscribed from at least 15 email lists. It’s not that I lost interest in the content, I just don’t have time to deal with all the emails I get on a daily basis. RSS is no better – it’s just a different format. Still loaded with more content than I can possibly keep up with.

One of the mailing lists I didn’t unsubscribe from is Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits. In fact, I would say that on a subconscious level a couple of his recent posts about minimizing time spent online had an influence on my decision to cull my email subscriptions.

Simplifying things

The truth is, as much as I find technology interesting and use it frequently, I feel like there’s an overload of information and too many things to try and keep up with. Blogging on a regular basis seems to be one of those things and so I’m removing any obligation to write x number of posts x number of times per week/month/year. I’ll write something when I feel like it. For the time being I’m cutting down on my number of options, in terms of things I can do with my spare time.

I’ll still post things here. It might be words, pictures, or a combination of the two. Photography itself is enough of a hobby to keep me busy. I also want to get back to reading more. Real books. Not digital ones. I aim to cut down on the number of digital distractions, and in this way simplify things a bit.

I might let you know how it goes.

Of course, it goes without saying, I should blog more. Not that there are any expectations, but because there’s so much to write about.

Spent some time down by the lake this morning, or was it this afternoon? Time is blurry. I like it.

It’s drizzling rain today so there aren’t many people out. I stopped at the lake for about 20 minutes. I counted at least 19 swans and there must have been 30 or 40 geese. It was quiet and serene. I daydreamed about living in a lakefront property.

At home I am just trying to figure out a way to organize my home working space. I have quite a number of personal projects to work on, and this small 700 square foot apartment is not ideal. I’m not “working” right now anyway, but I certainly dream of a day soon when I can set up a home-office-studio-workshop. The thought of it got me searching for images of such places and I came across this set by Brad Gillette. Inspiring is an understatement.

Well right now I have a little corner of the living-dining-kitchen room set aside as a workspace.

It works for now and I have no choice until we find a bigger space. For the time being I’m going to focus my efforts on organizing a couple of boxes worth of “work” which means all kinds of things from stuff I wrote, to pictures I took, to storyboards for videos I’m working on, to interactive and web projects I’ve done, songs I’ve written, ideas I’ve had and so on. It’s going to be fun and to keep me on track, I’m going to try and document it here.

I think first up is going to be organizing around 8 years of photos and video.