What I've Learned So Far

Last year I spelled out my easy approach for coming up with great blog images. Now I’m going back through some old bookmarks and finding some great image sources I’d like to share with you.

Without further ado, let me point you to the awesome Flickr stream of “Stuck in Customs.” The photo above (link) is just the tip of the iceberg, and many of the photos are available for noncommercial use (with proper attribution) via Creative Commons license.

If you come up with some particularly creative uses for these photos (or others from the Creative Commons pool on Flickr), I’d love to know about them.

At the beginning of this year, I set the goal of working out 200 times in 2011. For the sake of catchiness, I’m upping that to 211 workouts. (All going according to plan, I can then do 212 workouts in 2012, and so on.)

So far, so . . . mediocre. Rough math suggests that I should be working out 21 times every 36 days, but in fact I finished only my 19th workout of the year within the past hour. That said, the past week was much better than the preceding ones, and if I maintain my new pace, I’ll catch up to where I should be within the next few weeks.

My daily physique pictures are also telling me that I haven’t been working hard enough, in terms of either exercise and nutrition, so I’m taking that feedback to heart as well.

Once upon a time I thought I might record every workout here, but I just don’t want to spare the time for it, and to be honest I’m afraid of boring the audience. If you have questions about what I’m doing for fitness, by all means please ask them. Otherwise, I expect I’ll just lob in periodic updates like this one.

Photo by Jon Tunnell.

[Somehow the initial version of this post got lost in the ether. Thanks to Bryan Person for pointing out the glitch.]

A few posts ago, I praised my sister’s book-reading and -blogging habits, and said that I would try to follow her lead in reading more books and writing thumbnail reviews of each book I finish. I’m already doing the former, but I’ve decided not to do the latter.

Here’s the thing: if you’ve read this blog for any time, you know that I have trouble with clutter. I’m not one of those Hoarders-style packrats, but I always have too many papers on my desk and too many projects going. That happens because I have a short attention span and lots of ideas, and those two things interact to get me to run after ideas — and launch projects — without considering all the other unfinished business that will now be competing with yet one more piece of busy-ness. With so many unfinished projects lying around, clutter can’t help but ensue.

So here’s a project I’ll nip in the bud. If I write about a book, it will be because I particularly think it’s worth talking about.

And I’ll let you know when my eventual victory over clutter comes.

“It’s nice to have the luxury
of not being overburdened
with a self-image.”

—Mary-Louise Parker in Esquire