March 19, 2022
It’s very grey today. I woke up at 8, went for a jog, read Allen Carr’s EasyWay to Quit Smoking until 11 and then walked Harry. I like it when it’s raining. I don’t like it when it’s just grey. I feel that the grey is justified when it’s at least raining.
Yesterday seems foggy. I hardly remember it. I had stayed up late smoking weed the night before, meaning that I felt pretty shitting for most of yesterday. I smoked twice yesterday- once in the afternoon and again in the evening. I was going to smoke again at 9 but I just couldn’t get the joint roller to work. I gave up and didn’t bother. I’m glad about that, because I got a pretty good sleep, not as good as if I hadn’t smoked at all, though.
Around 10:30 I was looking at my monitor downstairs. I was playing around with it, curios to see if it did anything I didn’t know it could do. I saw that the refresh rate was at 60Hz and that there was an option to go up to 75. I selected that and the everything went to shit. The monitor just went black and wouldn’t come on again. I opened the laptop and suddenly the monitor came on again, but whenever I’d close the laptop, the monitor would once again go off. I think I was able to get the monitor back to 60Hz, but it won’t stay on with the Mac closed. I have no fucking idea what happened. I got really fucking frustrated last night. I felt like I’d wasted an entire hour, and I hadn’t even fixed it. I tried again this morning and it still didn’t work. I don’t need to use the computer downstairs right now, so it’s not urgent. I just hate when I spend time on something and it still doesn’t make a difference.
I think there’s a lesson here though. In life, there’s going to constantly be situations like this one- something is not working and it’s really frustrating, but fixing the problem is not urgent. I realize that as shitty as if feels knowing that it’s not working, it might not be as bad as a scenario where I spend the whole day trying to fix it at the expense of spending time on more urgent things. I think I need a system where when an issue arises, I first try to solve it. If after a certain amount of time the issue has not been resolved, I then assess how important resolving the issue really is. If I determine that it is not of major importance, than perhaps I should put off fixing the issue in order to put my time towards more pressing issues.
The thing is, there’s always going to be issues. Each issue varies in importance at that particular time. Obviously the most pressing issues should be dealt with sooner. I guess a key component to the system is a method of determining and assigning importance to different issues.
I guess this is where having a long term goal can be handy. That’s what helped with the website. I had an overarching ‘principle’. The smaller and frequently arising ideas could be held up in contrast with other ideas. The overarching principle could then be used to reveal which idea may be of most value.
A sense of direction.
While walking Harry I started thinking about how much I like my jacket. I started thinking about how many things I own that I truly like. There’s a few of them. My jacket, my AirPods, my MacBook Air, my black pants, my watch, audio interface. I’m sure there’s more. But basically I was thinking how nice it would be if I only owned things I truly loved. It would be nice to remove all the things from my life that are just ‘ok’. I have a lot of stuff, and if I’m going to move to Australia in November, I’d better start getting rid of some things. The things that I can easily get rid off are clothes I no longer wear, wires I don’t use, or broken things.
I love the idea of being able to have everything I need fit into one or two suitcases. I love the idea of being able to go anywhere in the world and have my setup. I don’t mean I want to have no possessions, I just mean that I want the things I own to be so good, that in some cases they can do multiple jobs really well. A laptop is a perfect example. A monitor doesn’t really make sense, except that I still have a MacBook Pro that works fine, but which I can’t sell because the screen is broken. So does it make sense to keep the monitor? I like the idea of having backups. If this laptop breaks or is lost, I still have a backup.
Ideally these are things I’d like to bring to Australia.
- MacBook Air
- MacBook Pro
- Asus Monitor
- Stereo Monitors
- Scarlett Solo
- Rode Mic Arm
- Compressor Mic
- Electric Guitar
- Bluetooth Mouse
- Bluetooth Keyboard
- Canon R
- Canon Rebel T5i
- Minolta x-700
- Camera Accessories (Lens, Microphones)
I think that one ‘principle’ I could start using when it comes to determining what I should own is to ask myself how well it serves the ‘Holy Superfecta’.
The Holy Superfecta consists of Writing, Photography, Videography, and Music. Those are the main things I’d like to devote my time towards, with my website serving as the ‘hub’. Since the pursuit of all four disciplines will produce ‘forms’ of one kind or another, the website serves as a ‘shelf’ where all of the ‘forms’ can be collected and organized by date.
I think ultimately it makes sense to have something going on in one of the 4 disciplines at all times. I guess one of the 5, since the website needs to be able to work properly as envisioned. I don’t know what’s better- taking turns between disciplines, such as one month photography, one mont videography, etc, or doing all of them but in smaller bite sizes. I like the idea of them all growing together. I also think that if an opportunity arises that will require a lot of time on just one, I should still be open to taking that opportunity.
So as of right now, I have zero going on in any of these fields. Great.
I guess I can jot does ideas for each. They don’t need to be huge things like ‘be a professional photographer for a magazine’ and ‘be a professional sitcom writer’.
They can be smaller bite sized things that I could even just do once a week. One day a week is better than zero days a week, plus since I’m focusing on 4 disciplines, that’s 4 days a week in the world of art. Oh and by the way, I want things that involve other people. I’m not talking about doing these things alone in my room. I’ve done that for years now. I still want to keep doing those personal projects, but I also want to have something going on, sorta like how I’m dog walking.
Photography
- Street Photography
- Putting Up Street Art
- Freelance Photography
- Volunteer Photography
- Volunteer Magazine Photographer
- Photography Groups
- Photograph video productions
Videography
- Freelance Videography
- Production Assistant
- Working on Small Sets
Music
- Open Mic Nights
- Volunteer at a Studio
Writing
- Courses
- Stand-Up Comedy
- Thursday Writing Group
If I could be involved in just one thing for each discipline, that would be awesome. That way I’ll have a steady stream of content and practise.