Last night I spent a few hours with Sarah brainstorming ideas and strategy for her new blog CollegeOutside.com. She has been looking for a way to increase her writing/journalism experience and felt that writing about the outdoors for college students was the best of both worlds. My dream was another process dream. I spent the night subconsciously working through different aspects of her website. I spent a lot of time going through the top menu bar and what topics would be listed on the main page and then what subtopics would be under those. For example the topic could be Sports and then the subtopics would be hiking, rock climbing, kayaking, canoeing, etc.
It’s a very cool concept that’s approaching the topic of outdoor activities in a way that no one else is really doing it; articles written by college students for college students. How do you adventure outside safely and on a budget? As a 20 year old you can’t really afford to buy anything in the Patagonia catalog, so how do you outfit yourself with gear? What gear to I need? What gear is only a nice-to-have? I really think the blog is going to take off very soon and ultimately it’ll be a great resource for college students everywhere. Check out the Website and follow her on twitter @collegeoutside.
Today marks the 31st day of my randomized 5-9 photo blog. I’ve taken on average 10 pictures every night after work until I go to sleep. On the weekends I’ve taken on average one picture per hour. There’s a few instances where I either messed up or missed an alarm but oh well, I won’t get too bent out of shape about it. I think the random aspect of my photos was important because it gave me an unbiased sample size of 336 pictures. I feel that it was a more accurate representation of my daily life as opposed to taking one or two photos per day at a time specified by me (i.e. in a cool place doing something fun, not exactly realistic if I’m trying to look at my natural life). I’m currently wrapping up my excel spreadsheet where I’m placing each of the 336 pictures into their own categories based on what I’m doing, where I’m doing it, and who I’m doing it with. Basically I want to look at my lifestyle and my after work/weekend experience, i.e. my 5-9. The results from this categorization will be the next blog post after these final pictures. But here’s my last set of pictures for this month’s challenge:
I started reading this book this morning and I'm already about 1/4 the way through the book. Pretty interesting stuff, we'll see how much of it will apply to what I'm going to do in November.
For some reason I have a craving for Dunkin Donuts Mint Hot Chocolate and getting rid of all my belongings, I can't imagine why.
I stopped by the Occupy Boston encampment on the way home from work to check out the scene and talk to some of the people staying there. It was an interesting experience; a mix of anarchists, college students, people who work downtown, and 9-11 inside job people.
I overheard someone talking about fabric adhesive and how it was super strong (for winterizing their tents I believe). Conveniently I've been looking for something like that for a project I'm working on. So I talked to the lady for a bit and then took a picture of the bottle so I could remember to pick some up later on.
I was a bit turned off by all the "9-11 was an inside job" signs. I guess that's what happens when you have a grass roots movement, you get all of the people who are trying to serve their own anarchist agendas lumped in with the initial cause itself; corporate greed, especially greed that capitalizes at the walfare of the 99%.
I walked home from South Station and snapped a picture along the way, it's not the greatest quality photo but it's par for the course compared to the rest of the pictures I've taken this month.
Trying to wrap up some of this month's blog stuff at home.
More blog stuff. I'm also exhausted at this point, I still haven't caught up on the sleep I neglected over the weekend.
Blogging and football. I wasn't really watching the game but anytime something awesome happened I caught the replay.
Watching some videos from the "Monday Morning Wakeup Call" online. This video is embedded below because I think it's incredible. I might as well wrap up my month's blog with a sweet YouTube video.
In the next day or two I’ll post my findings from my experience over this past month. I’m looking forward to seeing what a little bit of analysis will tell me about my habits and how I choose to spend my time. In any event, my 100 Item Life Challenge starts today. I’ll be working on another excel spreadsheet to take an inventory of everything I own and start the process of purging all of the things in my life that I don’t need and don’t use. Hopefully it’ll help bring some clarity into what is really important to my life. I think the photo challenge will be a great lead-in to the 100 Item Life Challenge because if I only spend a small percentage of my time at my apartment, but most of the things I own never leave my apartment, then do I really need them at all? This is the type of thinking I’ll be using moving forward. Wish me luck.
