Final Four: Congratulations to North Carolina. I hope everyone from out of town had fun in St. Louis this weekend. The weather was about perfect.
Moving: After three weekends in a row of moving (Stephanie, then me, then Ryan and Molly), we’re finally done. We spent Sunday cleaning our old house and doing kamikaze dumping of all the trash we had. I have no idea how we managed to accumulate so much crap in two years of living in that place. I’m mostly settled in my new flat, although I still have a bit more unpacking to do and am going furniture shopping with some friends on Saturday. I’m not much of a handyman, but I’m trying to learn. I picked up a set of tools and a power drill over the weekend. I’m going to try to take on a few tasks myself such as fixing a door, installing shelves and towel bars, and maybe I’ll try to take on a weird electrical problem in the kitchen where two outlets don’t seem to be getting enough juice. If I can’t pull it off I’ll call the landlord, but I’d like to learn. After taking several days off work to deal with botched installations of DirecTV and SBC phone service, I’m tired of having someone else do a half-assed job. If anyone is going to do a half-assed job in my apartment, it’s going to be me, dammit.
TiVo: After toying with the idea of building a MythTV or Freevo box, I finally decided to take the lazy way out and got TiVo with my DirecTV. Philosophically I like the freedom and hackability of a solution such as MythTV, but ultimately I went for convenience and practicality. I still may build a media box sometime but right now I don’t have the spare hardware or time.
After a week of using TiVo I’ve realized that it really does change your TV viewing habits. I don’t normally watch too much TV. Particularly since at any given time when I happen to be in the mood to actually watch something, there usually isn’t much showing. With time-shifting, this excuse is obliterated. If I’m in the mood to watch TV, I pull up the list of things it recorded and I have obscenely too many things to watch. It is even automatically recording things I didn’t manually specify based on my ratings I assign shows and my recording habits. I’m somewhat apprehensive about this. I’m afraid I’ll end up watching way too much or feel that somehow I need to watch everything that it has recorded and I’ll become a mindless zombie. I need to exercise some self-discipline and develop a routine so that my life stays somewhat balanced. Even if that means marking specific times in my schedule where I go jogging in the park, or go to a coffee shop to read or write.
I’m curious how other people deal with maintaining a healthy balance and portioning out their time. Does it just come naturally or do you have to work hard at it?
Update: For the purpose of satisfying the curiosity of those who have emailed me asking about the title of this entry:
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.–William Butler Yeats
Tags: Personal
April 5th, 2005 at 10:51 am
I ended up just getting a laptop. Now I can watch TV *and* get work done.
April 5th, 2005 at 11:03 am
Getting Tivo can definately make someone a slave to the set. When I couple of friends of mine got their’s installed, their lives revolved completely around it. They even boasted about being able to watch “American Idol” (barf) and record “American Chopper” at the same time. I kid you not.
I feel that it does take effort to have a healthy and balanced life. Personally, I’m trying to do that myself. It’s definately not easy, at least not at first. But I have found that as I continue to make these changes, I start to see the effect it has on me in the long run. They cease to be something I have to consciously think about but more of a way of life. I feel better when I’m doing the best thing for me. Generally this involves not being reclusive and getting off my ass.
April 5th, 2005 at 11:35 am
By Tivo’ing a show a person can usually save between 10-20 minutes of watching commercials during a typical 30-60 minute show. Watch a couple shows that you like and you have saved yourself 40 minutes of T.V. commercials. It can be hard, like Laura said, to find a balance of the right amount of television to watch, but watching an episode that you really like and saving some time watching it is very appealing and perhaps rewarding to a certain extent.
April 5th, 2005 at 11:47 am
Oh, I definitely love being able to fast forward through commercials, pause to do something else and resume later, and rewind to catch something you missed. I’m not going to ditch the TiVo. I’m just trying to discipline myself to balance watching TV with other stuff I enjoy and my responsibilities.
April 5th, 2005 at 3:05 pm
Yeah, learning to balance the TiVo with actually doing anything else can be a bit of a challange. The big thing I’ve found I have to do is remind myself that I don’t *have* to watch anything. I think we get used to “If there’s something I like on, I have to watch it right now.” Then you get the TiVo, and there’s *always* something you like on. But the key is remembering that if you don’t watch it, it’ll sit there very patiently while you do something else. It’ll wait for you, really.
That said, I’m probably a bad example. I’ve faced the same thing, and I’m not sure I’m winning. How about we get the book discussion group together again to give us something else to do while our TiVos wait?
April 5th, 2005 at 3:13 pm
Good idea, Adam. I’ve been missing the discussion group. It’s been so long I can’t even remember what it was that we were going to read next. Maybe it was Memoirs of a Geisha. I’d almost rather do something else now that it has been so long since I’ve read it.
I’ll send out an email in the next week or two…
April 6th, 2005 at 6:16 pm
I was wondering about the title myself. I like that poem
April 7th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
I don’t really care what you chose to do, I just know who to hang out with now. Thanks for the tip. I’ll be over every night from 5-10. Tivo Time!!!!
Actually, I live on the opposite extream having no viewable channels at all. I have found that if the tv is available for me to watch that is really all I will do. For me, tv is so addictive that I can literally spend hours watching mindless crap in order to avoid doing what needs to be done. I have also found that regardless of having a tv or not, I can still find excuses not to do what needs to be done.
The best thing I have learned is to not think too much about it. If you think, “the dishes need to be done”. Rather than think it, get up and do it. Don’t try to figure out when, or why, or the philisophical consequences of doing the dishes now or later, rather, go in, get your hand wet and begin. Suddenly, before you know it, the dishes are done.
I have found this to be most difficult with exercize and daily devotions. If you think, “I’ll do it later”…You most likely won’t do it. Just get up, and pretend that no thought process needs to proceed the action. Or as Nike so eloquently puts it, “just do it”.
It isn’t easy but it is. When you stop thinking and do the action, it is no longer over your head. Next time you think, I should go to a coffee shop and read and write, MOVE. Don’t think about doing it tomorrow, or what it might look like, or what you might feel, just get in your car and begin the action.
Okay, you can have the soap box back now.
Liz
April 7th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
Hmm. Liz, that is amazing advice and it rings true to my experience. I have a problem with dealing with large and complex problems. For example, when it was two weeks before my moving date and I walked around the house and looked at the absolutely enormous task of organizing and packing and throwing away junk…I got completely overwhelmed and didn’t know where to begin. I struggled with this for a while until finally I just forced myself to stop thinking about the job as a whole and would just focus on one individual task at a time. When I had packed my books I would then move to the next task, and so on. It was much more manageable that way.
But I don’t think I effectively apply that same technique in my daily life. I do just what you are talking about. I sit for five minutes and contemplate doing the dishes or taking out the trash, thinking about what harm will come if I put it off for a while.
Anyway, thanks for your post. Very encouraging.
April 7th, 2005 at 3:19 pm
How true Liz! After you start making things habit (by first making yourself not think about it) I’ve found things also become easier with time. For instance, I was training for the marathon, I didn’t think about it, I just did it. But then I was injured, and I missed having that in my life. I think once you” just do i, you miss it when you can’t, but then it’s hard to get back to “just doing something” once you are able.
April 8th, 2005 at 3:02 am
I agree. Liz made some really good points. Another way of looking at it is how much better you’ll feel once the task is done. Maybe it doesn’t necessarily have to be a task persay but something you’ve been meaning to do, but have never gotten around to it. I’m sure we’re all guilty of that. At least I know I am.
April 8th, 2005 at 6:16 am
“Do not try to wash the dishes, for that is impossible. Instead, realize that there are no dishes.”
April 8th, 2005 at 10:17 am
“…then you will see that it is not the dishes that you are washing, but yourself.”
April 8th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
April 15th, 2005 at 3:13 pm
I gave up tv viewing at home 4 ago. When you only have 3 channels it’s quite easy to do. I do goto the gym and they have tvs which I look at, but usually listening to music too. So, while at the gym I can get a workout, listen to good music, watch some mindless tv off and on, and take in the “scenery”.
I just closed on a house today, and am getting a cable modem, but no cable. I still like watching movies occasionally and am thinking about getting a computer projector….so I could hook up my computer with dvd player or just a shelf-top dvd player to watch movies.
April 15th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
balance.
balance is hard. the thing you need to do is figure out what things you value or want to value in your life. Then figure out the bad/mindless things you do and work on changing/getting rid of them, or start combining activities…Such as exercising with friends, reading during lunch, watching tv and drinking beer with friends while doing laundry, etc.
my fairly balanced schedule looks something like this:
–2-3 times during the work week go workout. Try to go in the morning, and if not, then after work.
–get at least on one bike ride on sat or sun
–read during most lunch breaks
–do stuff with friends at least once or twice a week
–maybe see a movie on the weekend
–sleep at least 7 hours a nite
–do 1-2 church things during the week
–goto church on Sun.
–Booches (famous Columbia burger place) Thursdays for lunch
–maybe do computer stuff for a few hours 1-2 nites a week and a few hours on the weekend.
–do volunteer work a few hours a month
–laundry every few weeks
….that’s about it.
next thing on the balance list is hopefully a relationship with a significant other.