Look Ahead
This world is full of colours and lights.

One of those photos I've wanted to try for a while and finally did.

I've been doing some thinking lately.
My life needs a change. The way I live that is. A change within.
Get out more, explore more, seize the moments that flutter past.
What were those words so over-used by a popular media of mass production and consumption?
Though in words true to Horatius:

Carpe Diem
quam minimum credula postero.

Seize the day
putting as little trust as possible in tomorrow.

I can't say I've been living a life of plans so far, only seeing as far as my arms can reach, sometimes, though experimentally, while stretching, to see how far they reach. The difference though, is I have never put much thought into my actions, never thought more than two steps past the current, what can happen, what may happen, why, or whether I want it to happen. I live my life by vague rules, rules I've made as I've walked along this path. They serve no purpose than to allow me life.
Time to stop floating and start swimming.

I have news for this blog too. I used to think I'd only want to post when I have something to say. That is, something current, something thought through.
But
I'm going to be posting anything and everything. Who needs a purpose and reason to post to an abandoned, forsaken pointless blog. I'll write, post, vent, anything I have to vent. If I feel like venting.

I admit, I read this blog post first before posting this one:
Write to Done blog

If you haven't seen the movie then you should but here's the theme song played amazingly by Itzhak Perlman:
Grooveshark -> Schindler's List Theme

Labels: agenda, boundaries, flickr, goal, life, photo, purpose, rant, reflections, self-preservation, street photography

No Title
This looked different on my computer while post-processing, paler background. But it's late and I'm tired so I'll just leave it.
Should I have put a frame around this? Something is missing around the corners.
Maybe viewing it large on black is what it needs.

Well I'm posting this because I should be working on other things, I should had worked all of today, instead I locked myself up, preventing myself from doing things I want because I should be working, which I'm not. Clever. Almost done with a year of studying but I'm stalling the last of what I need to do.
Getting on track is no simple task.

In three days I'll be done with my first year of university. All that stands between now and then are two assignments that needs completing, yet I stall. If I finish them now or tomorrow I'll be done now or tomorrow and will be able to officially call myself free from academic commitments for a couple months.

Today was supposed to be an effective day of work. I was supposed to get so much done. What happens is, I lock myself up in my room telling myself; no fun till I'm done, then I sit down in front of the screen with a pile of notes to my left, books to my right. I start reading and writing, two hours goes, I take a break, have an apple, and never get back to work.
So there I was, locked up in my room, "working", but I wasn't, not going to the beach or even having a chat because I should be working, which I wasn't, sitting in the same spot for hours because I was just about to work, which I didn't, doing absolutely nothing of interesting because anything else would be too distracting to my work, which I wasn't doing, and here I sit now talking about working, which I should be doing.
How clever of me. Hindsight's a ~ .

The fact that these are my last pieces of work and will be the signal for a year finished makes it that much harder to focus. The mind is already half a step into another world while the rest hasn't realised the consequences and dangers I am facing with all the delaying and potential late deadlines.

Bring me back to this world, call back reality. Make me feel reality hit me and I might come back.

Labels: academia, boundaries, flickr, goal, life, minimalism, photo, time

London Classic Bus Hire
I took these photos a while back but have simply been far too busy to deal with them. Evidently I found some yesterday night and today afternoon so here they are.

Went rollerblading along the seaside that day for a couple hours. Real nice weather.
PS: Got to love rollerblading.

I think I like this one better large.

I have been a bit over-my-head busy lately and it's mostly my own fault.
Procrastination has never been and will never be a good friend of mine.
I need to start doing things at a more organised and dispersed pace.
Longing for trips to the seaside to feel the warmth on my skin, not just through my eyes, through a double layer of glass.


My list-system is slowly breaking down.
Let me explain; a little after the end of the Christmas vacation this year I decided to start listing things I need to get done, the decision came closely linked to my other organisation decision with an agenda.
It started out as a simple list of all the things I need to get done, ranging from reminding myself to eat the apple before it went bad, to assignments and things I need to get researched. Post-it was my friend and they adorn a strip of my wall. The story goes on; the list evolved, noticing it was disorganised and accepting that not all points were as important as others. So, I divided the list up in three: the "Very important and needs to get done soon" list, a "Get it done some time when you find the time" list, and "Do it some day.." (i.e. unrealistic to think I'll bother to do it anytime soon anyway).
Assignments with deadlines and things to research got the left most spot, apples and union work type things went in the middle, and lastly more future-oriented things in the last.

The list ran a good life, crossing off things more often on the important list, a little less often on the second, and practically never on the last. But as all things needing much effort with me, I stopped giving it the necessary effort required. Summing it up in one word: procrastination. Not only did I start pushing things to the last minute, I also stopped bothering to put up everything I needed to get done. The middle and right-most list have been unchanged for a while and the left-most (most important) list is only occasionally being altered and crossed.

As I'm writing I'm realising that all I'm doing is whining. That was a good system and it got things done more efficiently. I'm telling myself I'm too busy right now to resurrect the list yet here I am sitting on blogger. Now that I've confessed I better go restore the list and see whether it can be effective once again.
Maybe it'll pay off with a treat to the beach under the shining sun. I sure need one.

In other news;
Two or three posts ago I had different topics in mind than the ones I ended up with. Those topics ended up as a small .txt list and have been left on my desktop for a while. They were going to enter in this post but my mind had other things in mind.
I'll list them here, expect them to appear in the next post.
- glasses of perception
- foreign-language, public space, and noise
- the unsettling heart
- thanksno

Until then..

Labels: academia, agenda, boundaries, flickr, goal, life, photo, rant, reflections, time

Roadside jog
Perfect day for it too.

As per, request? View Large On Black

I should be focusing on a couple assignments right now but my mind is floating elsewhere so I'll allow it to float away for a while before fetching it back again.

I'll be saving long passages for my actual work so I'll keep this short-esque.

It's May and May Day/International Worker's Day as well as the Norwegian national day (17th May) has recently passed by. Sometimes it is interesting seeing how easily the larger population is stirred into collective movement, even if it is just a general celebration that quite possibly only a portion knows the true meanings behind. I'm reminded of a short story by Shirley Jackson that goes by the title The Lottery. It's a story, if loosely looked upon, that can easily be society today. Ritualistic traditions passed on as nothing more than a tradition. I'm not pointing to the previously mentioned two celebrations, Labour Day and a national day serve their historical purposes and society and the present is simply the accumulation of history so far. There are many things that can be blamed for some of the more unreasonable ones; capitalism, consumerism, socialism, etc. Surely you've noticed the widespread celebration of Christmas in recent years? Even in nations who are not particularly religious. I'm sure some traditions can be justified with logic and proper explanations, but let's face it, that's not the main reason many are still around. When an occasion arrives, what is the more likely immediate thought: "I'm celebrating today because [insert historical meaning]." or "I'm celebrating today because that's what I did last year and all the previous years, but let's not forget, because everyone else is." Take for example the tradition of quiet Sundays. Now I don't know about your country but where I'm from it is as if the country shuts down that very day, every week. The same goes for some international holidays on an international scale. Stock markets slow down certain days for example. Collective movement is a powerful thing. I'm not criticising anything in particular, I am merely expressing a general observation that we all know but may not give enough thought. Culture, traditions, history, are all important, logic is sometimes too.
We're all headed somewhere and won't know how it looks till we're there.

Labels: flickr, globalisation, goal, life, Orwellian, photo, reflections, social awareness, street photography

The Last
moments of light before the darkness of reality forces itself back out.

Should be viewed large on black.

So I've been quite busy with books and the library and all that lately but when things start becoming too monotonous my brain starts becoming heterogeneous. What that means to the space that I call my personal is relocation and silly ideas. It has only been two days since I started my search for another world but so far I have glued (not strong) two small wooden blocks to my work desk so I can prop my laptop up against the wall easier. That isn't much of a change from how I've had it up till now other than now the prop is wood and not white-tack. Taking the laptop down is much easier now. And if you're wondering how I use the keyboard now then Synergy is the answer; one keyboard, one mouse, two komputers.
I've also reorganised everything to the right of my computers, I call it efficiency upgrade.. but that is just to make myself feel that I didn't waste half an hour of my life.
I used to have a laundry bag I was going to make but my fingers were too lazy at first and then too busy to finish that project. The materials are still lying in the bottom right of my wardrobe, right where they were a month ago too. I need that bag quite sorely. Some day, some time.
In five minutes I will start searching for the blogger code to add an "Older Posts" and "Newer Posts" link to my blog.




EDIT: here's a beautiful mspaint demonstration of how my computers are set up.







Speaking of websites, yesterday I put a drafted one together, one of those personal websites, based on the strange design I came up with three posts ago. It's not too bad and definitely need working on. I have a well of other ideas I want to realise into concept ideas some day. I'll try for something less, hmm, simple next time.
Go check it out: http://www.geocities.com/talleyway/index.html
Unfortunately I don't have a personal webspace and am too lazy to go searching for a good free service so I popped it into my existing geocities account. Click away the ad-sidebar when you're there.

Been checking out pixelpost lately. A great photoblogging application for databasing and showcasing photography. Fully customiseable. I'll be working with that a little in the near future.

Tom Clancy's End War is finally out for PC. Can't wait to try it out. Voice recognition warfare. *drool* I haven't bought a game in years but I think this will be next in line if the offline turns out to prove good prospects for online gaming.

As for my twitter-week experience. It started out alright, quite fun to share bits and pieces of my everyday life. But it only took one day to start feeling imposed upon by the intraweb. I found it increasingly harder and harder to keep up the updates as I wanted to share less and less information (apart from it being tedious to announce every bit of my day). It was a little relieving to be able to share some of my personal life even if there might not have been anyone on the receiving end. But Susan Greeenfield would beg to differ. I can see the angle she is coming from. The social community today has morphed to something very different from what it used to be only a decade ago. The constantly shifting economy of knowledge is a very different world as specialisation become the keyword of the century. Technology is growing and the world is shrinking.
Keep up, the times are changing.

Currently rediscovered playlist: Feist - Let It Die

Labels: agenda, annoying points about blogger, bored, bugs, computer, flickr, globalisation, goal, life, personal website, photo, rant, reflections, social awareness, time, Twitter, website

Thorns
that hold us back.

This really should be viewed large on black.

Well then, yesterday was the last day of my twittexperiment (Click here for details).
I'll give a very short and brief summary of my experience of that soon enough. But the general experience was one of giving up my privacy as the private became far too public and becoming far more conscious of my daily routines.

Sometimes the only boundary is reality.
Break free, do what you want, and realise that you still cannot grab the edge.

Labels: boundaries, flickr, goal, life, photo, purpose, rant, reflections, time, Twitter

We construct
It's nice to know that the road is under construction, but I find it a little early to tell the drivers when it's 500 meters away.
Perhaps a little closer. But who am I to talk.
Let the speeding cars do that.

The photo is from the same day as the post on the 15th of February.
Just didn't find time to upload it till now.

So, today I think I'm getting the haircut I've been planning to get for a while now. I'm far too lazy for this sort of stuff.
Still waiting for the day they invent a pause button for hair growth.
Heading out a few minutes after hitting the "post entry" button. I might be a bit late for the opening hours though, I'll see. If today fails I'll have the rest of my life to get the cut anyway.

A good habit I've started developing recently that I think everyone who needs it should get, an agenda. And not just to keep it on the shelf (like I did for two, three months before finally picking it up), but to actually note down events and things that you need-to-do, should-do, should-think-over, plan-to-do, etc.etc.
Up until now I've trusted my memory to keep track of all of this. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you all have amazing memories, neither did I forget appointments and such. But by writing them down everything suddenly becomes much, much clearer. Easier manageable and I am able to become much more time efficient.
Not only can I easily plan things for my "free hours", but I have become a little more conscious over how I spend my days, that way I can spend them on something a little more productive than staring at the computer screen for hours on end.

Society is constantly demanding higher and higher levels of efficiency, we try to save time every single step we take, whether it will be spent staring at a tv screen or actually effectively used doesn't matter anymore. Many have never heard of 'stopping to smell the flowers' anymore even and society is erasing that phrase evermore. So why not conform a little and try to become a little more efficient ourselves.
Though while knowing society's growing efficiency demand, we are able to become aware; awareness is important for change. Therefore, with the agenda that you surely now will go and get (*hint*hint*), start "effectively" planning calm nights of rest, notice when you are busy and when you can sit back with a book or go for a walk to take in all that you didn't have time to when running to your bus or while working frivolously at a project.
We used to just have time to slow down and sit down for an extra breath, now we need to plan it. Follow the waves of change.
Pick up a new hobby if you want, for now you have the time to..

And yet again, here's My Twitter and why you should check it.

Labels: agenda, flickr, globalisation, goal, life, photo, purpose, rant, reflections, social awareness, time, Twitter

My Restless Mess
This is my bed-corner.
Someone get it in order..
I've been having sleep problems lately and haven't made my bed for days.

Maybe I should. I recently did a proper cleaning of my room.. well, more or less, tidying up still looks messy when it comes to my spaces.
If it is true that a person's home is a reflection of the owner, then my life, my..me, is a very messy entity. I try to find order in the little bits; alphabetically organised books on the shelf, nicely folded and stored socks and clothes, lined up tubes of paint, a corner for every mess, but I strive to find balance.

I've been thinking, recently more so; What happens to people who never find a purpose to their life, never any goal, never any preference, those who just 'exist'? Is there a future in that? What is there, in a future?
Those days with no care in this world, where all I had to do was live up to my parents' expectations, my future was decided and I knew which roads to take, I miss those uncomplicated days at times.
People change, this planet changes, the universe changes; the only thing within our power is to savour the moments that we are granted. We all live different lives, but we all share the same time. Time: this arbitrary idea of something flowing.. a human creation.

Lately I've been getting a bit irritated at this aimlessness so I've decided, maybe. I'll start taking note of what I really want to do. Where I'm headed and which turns to take. I don't even know whether I enjoy what I am studying right now, despite finding it an interesting subject.
One step at a time, one rock at a time, some day, I'll travel those several miles up that mountain.

Labels: goal, life, photo, purpose, rant, reflections