Another peaceful morning on the deck

**Disclosure- This post is a little off the wall. I pretty much started writing whatever came to mind, so it isn’t necessarily going to flow very well. You’ve been warned.

It’s amazing what time can do for a person. Having graduated over a month ago and still on the hunt for a job, I’ve had a lot of ‘free time’ to do some other things. The majority of that free time has been spent getting ready for the baby, but I try to make time for some other plans as well.

Every week or so, I’ve made it a routine to go to Bongo Java and do my #Trust30 writing on one of my off days. Sadly, I have been falling a bit behind on them and have been writing multiple posts a day. Other than that though, I find it to be a fresh and invigorating change of venue. Sitting back enjoying the music while I feast on a Salmon Plate (best thing on the menu) and an iced Mochahontas, I also find the time to do my writing, whether it be on paper or laptop. People watching is also an enjoyable past time while I spend my hour or two there, imagining some new idea that more than likely will remain that; an idea.

The past few days, I’ve been looking at out finances, trying to figure out how to pay down debt and where to trim costs. I’ve scaled back Netflix, cancelled my Evernote Premium membership, looked at getting only the e-version of the paper (if at all) and am now looking at cutting cable altogether. For what we pay, we don’t really watch all that much TV to begin with. If I cut us down to the bare minimum or go to OTA HDTV, am I really missing out? Maybe ESPN, but other than that, all the things we watch are either on Netflix or AppleTV. If Boxee can get there game together and make a deal with Hulu, then I will definitely be purchasing one and cutting the cord.

Not being in school anymore has afforded me the opportunity to begin reading what I enjoy again. This week alone I have finished off 3 books that I began reading last semester. Without the requirement of ‘pointless’ reading, I now have all the time in the world. It’s a good feeling to be reading for enjoyment or self improvement again. At least I can take those instructional books in stride now. Gotta work on the skills in the off season.

In this world that we live in, we are constantly connected. Whether that is a good or bad thing is a mixed bag, but as of late, I’ve been less connected. Ever since I had my Palm Treo 650, I was in love with the fact that I could get email out in the wild and not have to be tied to a desktop computer. Every time you got a message, you’d get a notification, and an interruption in routine would ensue. Fast forward 5 or 6 years and we now have the iPhone. Texts, tweets, email, notifications, calls, voicemails; it’s a wonder our phones don’t go dead more often. I always had Push notifications turned on because I ‘needed’ to know what was happening, when it happened, immediately if not yesterday. So how in his uber-connected world have I disconnected? I turned off the ‘Push’. So simple. I get emails now only when ‘I’ check for them. Surprisingly, it seems to have affected my social networking as well. I’m not checkin Twitter or Facebook nearly as much as I used to. Having my iPad packed up to leave for the hospital, I have been consuming less media in general from it and moving to other outlets and devices. My Kindle, which I have barely used in a few months, is what I have been doing all that aforementioned reading on. I have been listening to TED talks during my commute and have been catching up on all the latest podcasts that I used to subscribe to. It’s not that I’m consuming less media, I’m just consuming it in another manner. Funny how that seems to have worked.

In my battle to de-clutter my life, I had been selling DVD’s and books to Amazon. After upgrading to the iPhone4, my wife and I had 2 useless phones for the most part. I, being the ultimate repurposer, wanted to keep them thinking that they wouldn’t have much value. After mulling it over for awhile, I decided to list them on eBay…..and my 1G iPod Touch, my old 3G iPod Nano, 4G iPod Photo, and the list goes on. Needless to say, everything sold but 1 item, which I’m going to relist, and that has basically added up to almost a months salary for me. Yeah commerce! It really goes to show that one man’s junk is another’s treasure. But why stop there! Next I’m going to try and sell my old camera, Griffin Powermate, etc, etc, etc.

So perhaps this down time has been good for me. I haven’t done any editing, but I have taken care of something else that’s more important; myself.