I'm up quite early on this Sunday morning, but know that the opportunity to write a few words will quickly escape. It's not that I have such a busy work life or have children with demanding social and sports schedules or that I'm a conscientious home owner constantly maintaining my old home. Ok, it's partly because I have a puppy at home (6 months today). It's really because I choose to spend my free time on other things at the moment. Last night I did have some time, but I was rather tired from quite a busy day and didn't really have the concentration required to contribute anything meaningful to this blog. I was going to watch a movie, but couldn't find something that would potentially hold my attention for a couple of hours. I ended up watching a 30 min travel show on HDNet and then going to bed early to start reading The Last Lecture (written by Randy Pausch, out from the library and quickly read by my wife and a book I've heard lots of good things about).
Interruption - Kooper steals coffee traveler lid - I need to take him for a walk...
Most of my free time these days is spent on photography. I've always been a keen photographer, but with the latest digital photography advancements, I'm finding that I take a lot of photos, spending a lot of time fine tuning the images and sharing them online. I'm very pleased with the results I'm getting and feel it's my true artistic calling. I actually described myself as a semi-pro this week. Well, I did this as I was asking for a photo pass for Friday night's concert. Well, semi-pro isn't too far of a stretch when I do hope to make a little money with my photography some day and I'm getting quite a few photos published on various sites these days. BlogTO have now used 5 of my photos and a few shots from this week have been posted to Skyscrapercity's forum. I've even had one photo picked up by a cricket site. Like all photographers, I'm constantly learning as a take 100's of photos a week and really appreciate all the comments I get on Flickr - I'm actually closing in on 10,000 photo views ! Just updated my favourites.
To maximize my time, I do try to do two (or more) things at once. For instance, I've been writing this while "watching" the Liverpool ManU game - however, with with the sound off (Suz has music on) I'm actually missing what appears to be a gripping game (Liverpool just scored, gotta watch now). Actually there are of course a few no-brainer things you can do simultaneously like doing the dishes or flossing while watching TV or doing almost anything while listening to music. But some things are almost impossible, like trying to take photographs while walking your dog or doing anything when your wife is trying to have a conversation.
On a related subject, wondering...do people wait for stuff any more ? It seems we don't have a lot of waiting time these days and consequently less golden opportunities to make the most of this forced down time and catch up on something. The only concrete example I can think of when almost everyone still waits for something is at the airport. Now there's a good time to catch up on your reading, photo editing, blogging or calling an old friend.
From another angle, if you're neglecting your relationships or find yourself talking to yourself more and more, there's nothing better than doing stuff with someone else. Perfect examples for me are concerts (with my wife and friends), playing video games (with my son), doing some photography (with my daughter), going on a walk (with my mom) or playing golf (with my Dad, my son and my friends). For us blokes, these shared activities address most of people needs. We're pretty happy fellas if we've got a bud to hang with. However, the gentler sex appear to require more dedicated talk time. Unfortunately with the personal choices we all have these days, there seem to be fewer activities truly shared by friends, spouses or family and more "alone quality time". But as we've recently added the dog to the family, I now have the proverbial man's best friend, a loyal, eager, non discriminating companion. If only he understood the genius of Quentin Tarantino.
1 comment:
WOW!! You just saved me a couple of hours...no need to write the blog post that had been brewing in my head...you just wrote it for me. Well, maybe not the specifics...but the big picture idea.
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