LINDA PARKER books

Art and science come together in this very Zen moment in advertising. Forget it is an ad. Just enjoy and be amazed….

Five Consequences of a Life Out of Balance

“If you are working more than fifty-five hours a week, you are working too much. You may be able to work more than this for a season, but it is not sustainable. If you persist in working this much—or more—something will eventually break…” says Michael Hyatt.

I encourage you to click the link above and read what he has to say, and to follow this man regularly. He is a scholar of social media, publishing, and life. Especially life.

The following excerpt is from Q Blog, and a post titled: “Ten Most Significant Cultural Trends of the Last Decade” written by Andy Crouch. Follow the link and read the post in entirety… very much worth your time.

The Self Shot

When movie directors in the 2030s are trying to convey in a single glance that their scene is set in the 2000s, they will use the self shot—the self-portrait shot from a digital camera or cell phone held by one hand extended away from the subject. We look out at our own hand, perhaps squeezing another friend into the frame, composing our face in a smile or a laugh. We are shooting ourselves.

The visual presentation of the self accelerated in the 2000s. Previous generations saw themselves most often in mirrors. But mirrors do not show us what others see—they show us a mirror image with right and left reversed. The difference is subtle but real, and symbolic of a deeper reality. Now most 20-year-olds have seen thousands of images of themselves as others see them. In the 2000s we learned to shape and groom our image for public consumption. Body modification—augmentation, reduction, smoothing, straightening, whitening, tanning, not to mention tattooing—became normative. The closing years of the decade gave us the word “manscaping.” Enough said.

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

—Mark Twain

A few weeks before Christmas, a 7 hour conference was held (droned on) in London. Dedicated to the topic of “things that are boring,” the Boring 2010 event attracted some 200 attendees who listened as 20 speakers addressed either the topic of boredom or a topic that was boring.

Reading about this conference reminded me of the stigma sometimes attached to boredom. In my family, I remember as a child ‘getting the message’ that boredom was a character flaw, one that reflected an inability to find or create self-entertainment. I grew up believing that people who felt bored were in fact, boring people. Perhaps just not as clever as they should be…

As an adult, I have come to appreciate boredom. It represents a time when one has nothing pressing, no demands, deadlines, or urgencies. In order to truly be bored, a person would have to be trauma-free, with no worries bearing down on them. No major appliance breakdown, sick family member, unpaid bill, or irate neighbor to otherwise occupy your thoughts …  simply a test pattern/screen saver (pick your generation) that plays out in our heads while nothing of any significance occupies our thoughts.

Sigh, I am going to strive for more periods of boredom in 2011.

Laugh at my idea of winter if you want to, but right now it is 52 degrees outside and I have put on a double layer of socks. There is no antifreeze inside of me.