Opened up a new photography site. My goal with that is to post one new photo every day with a short caption or story…. it’s more of a challenge to myself than anything else. Then again it might be nice to actually have one place to store photos rather than several.
Check it out: www.citizenmustard.com
All of the creative energy in my life can’t be wrapped up in my work, can it? I mean, I am a creative director by profession, so there is quite a bit of thought that goes into that. But there is still an untapped reserve that I can feel sloshing around in my head after I get home, the trick is finding the motivation to unleash it onto paper, pasteboard or pixelfield.
Writing is another thing altogether. Or blogging, as it were. Running through life at a hundred little jobs per hour, keeping up with housework and bills, and appeasing those who would demand my attention often leaves little time to do anything interesting that is even worth blogging about. What can I even say?
Not very exciting. Side note: why is everybody so interested in what people ate for lunch or dinner? Does anyone really care or do they make it a point to add this question in to their daily repertoire of needless conversation? I had food, enough said. Sheesh.
So I’m left with the sloshing in my head until I can do something good enough to unleash it. I think they call that boredom, but it’s not like I’m bored. Just… lacking initiative.
I’ve always been a fairly skinny person. Bird-chested, lanky, gangly… whatever you want to call it, it’s just never been too much of a priority to build muscle or upper body strength.
After turning 29 last month, I still look like I’m about 24, basically because I’ve never really done anything about it or really felt the need to. I think that my care about my own self image is finally catching up with me, though.
The other day I stumbled upon hundredpushups.com and though to myself, “Now there’s a challenge worth shooting for.” The ultimate goal? Being able to do one hundred consecutive push ups by following a six-week plan.
During my initial test, I was able to do just 19 push ups before collapsing to the ground in disbelief. I would have guessed I could do more than that, but I believe that around 20 in a row is about average. I could be wrong, heh… but I ranked high enough to place myself in the toughest column of daily push up sets. If you take a look at the site, you can see that the workouts are spaced out over six weeks, three days a week, and 5 sets in a day, each increasing in number until at last you are finally able to do 100 in a row by the final test.
Starting on Wednesday, I’ll be keeping track of the sets, tests, and results. Why post about it? I don’t know, accountability I suppose, and it will be interesting to see how much improvement I will be making. I’m hoping to turn it into an obssession… you could do a lot worse than being addicted to push ups.
So we’ll see.
Initial Test: 19
I don’t like the news. I guess I never really did, but the corporate-run media outlets in the country continue to amaze me with their outright scaremongering, dishing out one horrendous story after another concerning the next big thing that we, the public, should all be afraid of.
Apparently, this week we should be afraid of contracting the mutated form of influenza collectively known as Swine Flu. Oddly enough, amidst the media clusterf*ck that is following this developing story, there was something particularly interesting about it. It absolutely does not surprise me that a pandemic communicable disease would spawn from extremely cramped and poorly tended pig and poultry farms.
Who would have thought that our own rampant and demanding consumption would be the cause of such troubles?
Despite all of the media hoopla, this swine flu is at least something that can be contained now that we know what it is, or at least I’m pretty sure it can be. I’m just waiting for the day that some sort of disease, which will stem from overpopulation, eco-pollution, and tainted food or water, will be unwittingly unleashed upon a vast portion of the population. I’m talking Endgame, here… what will the public and the news have to say about that?
I just hope I’m living in some remote cabin subsisting off of my own grown food by then. The slightest possibility of something happening of that level makes me wonder if I shoud just go ahead and plan for that hermitage now or just wait until it happens, like everyone else.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are many things that I do for myself… the thing is that most of those things are completely related to sustenance, such as eating, paying bills, treating myself to well-earned G&T every now and then… and not so much doing something for myself.
I guess what I mean is, it’s been a long time since I’ve taken some time to actually sit down and do something that I truly enjoy, and it almost feels like it’s been so long that I don’t even know what activity might entail.
This thought came to me while rummaging through some old websites, like Flickr and Facebook that have become neglected harbors of all my past creative efforts, collecting dust, like the works of a stranger I used to know. Did you ever create something, only to look upon it months or years later and see it again with fresh eyes? Noticing intricacies that you hadn’t seen before, muttering to yourself, “There’s no way I could have done this…”
And the only reason I feel that way is because of other priorities in my life that I have allowed to encroach on that space, the formerly empty lots of space in my mind. I guess I had a lot more time in the past. And a lot less creative outlets.
But back to the point, I need to find other outlets besides work to escape from the basic reality of work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep, ad infinitum… do something just for myself.