Camping

Those of you that know me probably wouldn't describe me as an "outdoors person". I've always enjoyed my creature comforts--A/C, hot showers and eating food I don't have to worry about having been dropped in the dirt.

Or at least that's what I told myself.

During the past several months, I've been re-examining my personal philosophies. (I'm sure many of you have had to listen to me rant about one aspect or another of this) I'm trying to make some changes in my life (never stop learning or growing), but I've been running into some brick walls. I've stopped short of several goals, and I can give you reasons why. But most of them are crap. Actually, I'm sure that *all* of them are crap.

They almost always stem from a basic fear of failure. I'm pretty sure that everyone deals with this in one way or another. But now that I've spent some time examining it, I found that it's a big negative force in my life. This fear has stopped me from more things than I'll ever admit to.

So I've been doing a lot of reading on how best to deal with this. One of the ideas I came across (and is relevant to the post) is one from Seneca:

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?"

Although this quote applies to many different situations for me, I took it literally when some friends asked if I wanted to go camping over Easter weekend.

While everyone else packed what seemed to be most of their belongings and we had a couple of huge tents to sleep in, I tried to keep it very simple. (at least for me) Essentially, I took a sleeping bag (with a travel pillow and Thermarest mat--I'm not trying to torture myself), a change of clothes, water bottle and Letters From A Stoic. Oh yeah, and I took my camera, too.


We camped in McKinney Falls State Park. It was a nice and well-maintained park. And while the weather was overcast all weekend, the park wasn't too busy. There were times we could hike for 30 minutes without running into anyone else.


We kept the agenda fairly simple: a little food, hiking, bike-riding, some geocaching and just sitting around the campfire (that we wish we could build, but couldn't because of a burn ban).

We left a day early because of a large storm coming through, but I accomplished what I wanted. Two days of living as simply as I can handle and I didn't die. Nope. No permanent damage. I actually enjoyed the heck out of it. I'm planning to head back to REI to buy a tent and make this a semi-regular thing.

TAL: Live

As a devout NPR and This American Life fan, it was fun to go to a live broadcast of their show.

This last Thursday, Ira Glass and the gang staged a live broadcast of their show to over 400 theaters. I went to a local megaplex and saw TAL on the giant digital screen. It was very cool. (although the 3-story tall head of Ira Glass in high-def was a bit disorienting because I'm used to a disembodied voice on my iPod)

In addition to some of the usual TAL contributors, they had Josh Whedon on to sing a song from his DVD commentary of Dr. Horrible. (yes, even the commentary is done as a musical)

(BTW: Adam, don't watch the YouTube video linked above if you are going to the re-broadcast)

Oh my

Yes, I've been seeing all of the craziness lately. It has not escaped my notice. I just pay less attention to it and have made a conscious decision to not care right now. I've got other stuff going.

But, just to make sure everyone is foaming at the mouth like I am, I present one of the more absurd screenshots I've seen today:

Challenging Assumptions

So, I'm getting settled down for another week in cubicle city. As usual, I put on my headphones into my iPhone and start playing an old Neil Young album I got yesterday. But the volume is really low. I crank up the volume all the way and I can barely hear it.

I sat and tried listening for a bit, but it bugged me that I couldn't hardly make it out. So I gave up and started listening to "Harvest". But that was playing very low as well.

As I took off my headphones to try and figure out what was happening, I realized that (for whatever reason) the iPhone wasn't playing through the headphones. Instead, I was blasting "Sugar Mountain" out of the iPhone speakers for the whole floor to hear.

A good way to start the week--remind me to always challenge my assumptions.


Next: pictures from the weekend camping trip