Jan 13 11
Destiny is a thing to be achieved.
"Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be acheived."
— William Jennings Bryan, my great-great-grandfather.
Jan 11 11
Year in Cities, 2010
My yearly retrospective. These are cities I spent the night in during the year 2010. You can also see lists for 2009, 2008 and 2007. Asterisks indicate cities I spent non-consecutive nights in.
You can also see this in map form, somewhat, at my Family 2010 World Map.
- January
- Maho Bay, St John, USVI* (pictures)
- Brooklyn, NY*
- February
- Red Hook, St Thomas, USVI
- Maho Bay, St John, USVI*
- Bangkok, Thailand (pictures)
- Chiang Mai, Thailand
- Chiang Mai Highlands, Thailand (Trek)
- Chiang Rai, Thailand
- Luang Prabang, Laos
- March
- Koh Samui, Thailand
- Logan, UT*
- April
- May
- Allentown, PA (Father-Uncle-Son Road Trip V. pictures.)
- Strasburg, PA
- Gettysburg, PA
- Front Royal, VA
- Charlottesville, VA
- Blowing Rock, NC
- Asheville, NC
- Pigeon Forge, TN
- June
- East Hampton, NY
- Bovina, NY
- July
- Jersey Shore, NJ
- Maipú, Chile
- Santiago, Chile
- Reñaca, Chile
- Great Barrington, MA*
- August
- St Louis, MO
- Montauk, NY (pictures)
- September
- Montauk, NY
- Great Barrington, MA* (pictures.)
- October
- Binghamton, NY (Nat'l Mini-golf championship. pictures )
- Seattle, WA (Visit Jenna. pictures)
- Key West, FL
- Manhattan, NY*
- Fort Lauderdale, FL*
- November
- December
- Maho Bay, St John, USVI* (pictures)
On June 4th, 1976, the Sex Pistols played their first gig at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall. There's a book written about it called The Gig That Changed the World. You can read an interview with the author here.
The reenactment from 24-Hour Party People:
Jun 3 10
Day 3 of the Monkey Mind
I increased my meditation time from 5 minutes on Monday to 7 on Tuesday and 10 last night, and so far I still haven't gotten bored.
On Tuesday I picked up a meditation candle (just a normal candle, really) and have been staring at it to help focus my meditation. Last night an interesting thing started happening after about 5 minutes or so. If I held my head still and didn't blink, after a little bit of time the periphery of my vision would start to darken, and it was like being in a tunnel looking only at the candle. I could only hold onto it for a second or two. My guess is that this effect has more to do with suppressing my saccadic eye movement than anything mystical, but it's fun to see how long I can hold onto it. Excepting of course that merely noticing when I go into tunnel-vision is an interruption of my clear mind and the goal here is to let go of things, not hold onto them.
Inspired by the article on distraction that I linked to yesterday, I've also picked up Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, which was cited in it.
Jun 1 10
Thing a Week: Meditation
This week I'm going to try meditating every day.
I read AJ Jacobs's article about unitasking and the focus-destroying properties of multi-tasking last week. It reminded me that I have been wanting to try meditation.
Last night's meditation: 5 minutes. Notes: That went much faster than I thought it would (meaning I didn't get bored), but my mind still wandered like crazy after a couple minutes. Today I'll push it a little.
I'll include some more thoughts here as the week goes by.
