System of a Down (Time)
Saturday's stock photo submission: My cat. I'm betting Adobe doesn't have enough cat photos.
There's nothing more fun than doing something when you should be doing something else.
My problem is that I have so many hobbies that it's hard to pick one to play around with when I'm between meetings, so for the last week, I've been trying a new system. I'm into systems, nowadays. Goals make me feel instantly guilty and failure-fated, while a good system is just something I do, like breathing, and when it accomplishes goals, it's incidental.
My new system is distraction-de-jour, with a weekly rotation:
- Sunday Writing (blog)
- Saturday Photography (stock submissions, calendar dev, portfolio updates)
- Friday Karate (kata)
- Thursday Chess (learn one new opening for black and white each month)
- Wednesday Lady's Choice*
- Tuesday Piano (learn one new song a month)
- Monday D&D (game prep)
*My wife's only weekday off; I do whatever she wants to do, which is usually cleaning and going to the Asian market. We have many sexy adventures like this.
There are ancillary systems at play, too. For example, I'm turning off screens at 10 PM and reading, and I've given up Diet Coke in favor of water -- both part of a system intended to improve sleep. So far, this means I wake up at 3 AM and take a nap later. I tell myself it's system working out the kinks. Is it? I don't know, man. I may need another system to assess it.
The book I'm reading before bed now (and sometimes at 3 AM) is Sapiens by Yuval Harari, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. My favorite passage, so far:
"Our language evolved as a way of gossiping... It is not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison. It's much more important for them to know who in their band hates whom, who is honest, and who is a cheat."
Or, who is unstable enough to over-share on the internet.