Pleasure Notes

By Generate Design

I love time, how it disappears when I’m having fun and mysteriously lengthens if I’m bored, anxious or sweating profusely in front of a new crush. I don’t actually respect it very often, however. Which is why I love watches. I have a place in my heart for a particular Movado, but until then, I totally did this little cutie, from Generate Design and available in a bunch of different colors.

What color would you choose?

It’s digital, but in all the right ways. The hands and minute marker dot are LED, but in order to make sense of the light, you still have to know how to tell time the old-fashioned way. And if you set your watch like I do, you’ll then have to subtract between five and ten minutes from that. I always set my watches fast. That way, I’m on time… sometimes.

Price: Affordable. Available at Generate Design and other fine contemporary design studios.

I started this blog just two and a half months ago. I was am a complete neophyte in the blogosphere. Truth be told, I didn’t even read blogs before I started my own. I had never heard of Twitter. HTML was just one more acronym for something I didn’t understand. The internet intimidated me. In many ways, it still does. Once I entered this world, however, I quickly immediately fell in love with it. I entered it because I am a writer.

By Guy Ottewell

Yep. I am a writer. I even claim it on my tax forms. But I don’t always claim it in my real life. Why, you ask? Because. Because I’m not on the best-sellers list. Because no one optioned that feature that circulated last year. Because I haven’t been in a writers’ room since before the writers’ strike. Because I currently pay my bills with a “day job.” Because, right now, all I do is blog.

Each one of these arguments is a ridiculous reason to denigrate what I do, but it’s the last one that truly gives me pause. All I do is blog. Now, that’s a doozy.

By Ando Tokutaro

You see, if I devalue my role as a blogger, I am devaluing the role of every other blogger out there. That’s wrong. There are some great ones. While the level of integrity, and quality, of mainstream media seems to be in free fall, the trajectory of bloggers appears to be in the opposite direction. Change is uncomfortable, however, and many people outside the blogosphere would disagree with me. They don’t understand, value, or respect bloggers. I know. I was one of those people. Yet, I have seen the proverbial light.

Don’t worry. I’m not deluding myself into thinking that this blog will change the entire world. But it has changed mine. I rediscovered the pleasure of writing. Out in the “real world,” I spent so much time trying to play the game please my agent catch the latest trend sell my shit, I lost my voice. I forgot that I write… because. Because I love it. Because it keeps me sane. Because I have something to say.

By Johannes Vermeer

Every other blogger has something to say as well. You or I may not like all the voices we stumble across, but the blogosphere deserves as much respect and protection as any other written word arena. Two witty bloggers writers, califmom and Mr. Lady, present this case very well. They were inspired to do so by Don Mills Diva. So was I. She is actually doing something to ensure that bloggers have a seat at the grownups’ table.

Wanna join the crusade?

Engrossing novels, long walks along pine needle-cushioned paths, friendly philosophical debates while caught in doorways – these things bring me pleasure. Widgets, RSS feeds, CSS sheets, HTML, and all other computer-based acronyms – these things make me want to pull my hair out, one deep-rooted follicle at a time. I adopt each new technological advance only after it is tried, true, and passé. As an example, I acquired a digital camera only after the hard-working folks at CVS gave me a blank stare when asked where the Kodak envelopes were in which I could drop my film for developing. It is with deep shock, therefore, that I find myself embracing the blogosphere, tweet world, and “social media” prior to the creation of whatever comes after the web.

Luddite laptop created by Big Time Attic

How did this happen? Ignorance, I tell you. I had no idea that my spontaneous decision mere weeks ago to documenting things that bring me pleasure would thrust me so deeply into the alternate universe of technology. I have spent the waning days of 2008 learning more about FeedBurner, favicons, and FTPs than I ever thought I’d need to know. Ever. The journey has tested me, perhaps made me stronger, and certainly made it easier to subscribe to my blog. And it is not over. As I reflect on what 2009 may bring, I know I have much to learn, and not just about web 2.0. I couldn’t be more excited!

Magic Pill

I’ve always been a magic pill kind of person. I just want to flip a switch or press a button and have what I want, EXACTLY what I want, appear in working fashion before me. Patience is a virtue I misplaced in the process of exiting the womb – except I was delivered by C-section, but you get the picture.

Recently, however, I’ve found myself noticing signposts leading away from the magic pill approach to life. I’m not saying that I plan on diving into any wombs to retrieve an errant virtue. Or anything else, for that matter. I am saying that my intention in the coming months is to rewrite my story, the one about who I am and what I can and cannot do in this amazing life. Perhaps I am not such a Luddite after all. And if that is the case, what else may or may not be true about myself?

So here’s to discarding expectations, and joyfully embracing the unknown in 2009. Let’s be pleasurably surprised by what we reveal of ourselves and what we let ourselves achieve. Happy New Year!