This shot is a photo taken on one of many walks through New Orleans earlier this year. It was a great trip. I often find myself wishing that I were back there. Right now, for instance…
In any case, as usual, to download the wallpaper, just right/control-click on the thumbnail and choose “Save Link/Target As…” Enjoy!
Coming a bit early, here’s another high-res wallpaper. This was taken on a recent trip to NYC, on an afternoon jaunt through Brooklyn.
To download the wallpaper, just right/control-click on the thumbnail and choose “Save Link/Target As…” Enjoy!
what does it mean to lead a more “principled” life? i’ve been taking a class on existential thought this semester, so i suppose i’m qualified to assert that it’s possible that the principles in life we abide by are immaterial and inconsequential. but having never been a person for whom this line of thought resonates, this question lingers for me.
on some level, it’s the word principled that gets us into trouble. principles are arguably arbitrary and absurdly personal. but the truth is that many of us can figure out by which ethos we mean to live our lives. and part of the ethos that governs mine involves being an interesting person (for my own sake) and engaging in passion-inducing passions. but then, what iS passion? to ask the question the way one of my professors might want to hear it, can we ever really become the übermensch, can we ever truly understand ourselves enough? and if it’s what we ought to strive for, well, then, does the ideal human type live a life of passions, of thoughts and of desires, or simply a life led to ascendancy and as attainment, having obtained philosophical success over morality and all that we think and seek to know? 1
we tend to like to box things in, to classify them and categorize them comprehensively. i can imagine that this immediately comes across as a whiny, “the world is too big to fit in a box” argument. but before i say anything, i’ll say that i like the boxing. i’m a person who studies identity politics, so while i recognize some of the catastrophic effects of our socialized tendencies, i also get that life is made easier with shortcuts, and that the process of making and applying them is a time-saver and sometimes socially required. so when we do, i suppose the linguistics and intellectual skipped steps that we engage in have their own merits. part of that entails being able to (borrowing from the political science vernacular) operationalize one’s own definition for terms or concepts that inspire one’s life.
for me, passion is the stuff that gets you out of bed in the morning. it’s the broader category for the ideas that wake you up in the middle of the night. it’s what you find your mind drifting to instead of your work during the day, and it’s what you get an idea about and can’t wait to work on when you get home. so, for me, passion is about application, but most explicitly about action. the stuff you want to do, to be around, to spend time in/with/making.
tons of folks have found ways to incorporate what they are passionate about into their jobs. California’s Bay Area may be the best representation of my generation’s ideas about the potential for the realization of one’s dreams, in as communal a corporate environment to which any city can lay claim. but lately, i’m starting to come around to the idea that my greatest passion in life will probably never be my income-generating occupation, since i’ve realized that my passion seems organized around being a person who has and pursues multiple different passions.
i take photos. i like surfing and the beach and being in the sun. i love cycling. i cook, aggressively and snobbishly. i listen to music CONSTANTLY. i do web and graphic design. i’m learning to play the guitar. i do research. i read about and stay abreast on certain men’s fashions. i organize and file-manage every day. i clean. i read. i eat. i enjoy teaching. i talk about politics, or race relations, or gender norms all the time.
all of these things are things i do or am engaged in frequently enough to know that i like them. individually, someone could easily make the claim that i am passionate about any or all of them. i think that i’m (in different capacities) passionate about all of these things, and others. and i’m starting to feel like what drives my life are the multitude, the mass of recreations, of pursuits, of occupations in terms of which i define myself.
perhaps it is time that i appreciate the limited life i lead. one could make the argument, and i have on several occasions, that a lot of what interests me revolves around stuff, products and the like, things which might constitute expense. not easy to admit for a former socialist, but i accept this about myself. i know a lot about stuff, and some part of me has often felt like this is a leaning to some part of me that is ill-satisfied with my current situation with regards to any aspect of my life. the idea that my subconscious is dissatisfied bothers me.
so, what options do i have, finding myself not up to the snuff of my own convictions? rather than being a person who spends time appreciating and cultivating information about more things, could i not simply decide to change, and be a person who is satisfied by what i have, be one who is knowledgeable and go forth in the study and immersion of the self in ideas and thought? isn’t that the elevated life, the better life, the life with more? or is the answer to this question far simpler than i’ve supposed? perhaps the answer is as simple as, you can have everything, or at least, very near to it. yeah, i want to do some of the things i like more frequently. i want to read more of my books, and i want to read some of them again. i want to finally finish my website. i want to get better at playing the guitar. to achieve any of these things, i would have to slice off time that i spend doing other things (or, more honestly, doing nothing) and devote it instead to the things that encapsulate what i like. i would have to do what i like, and more. maybe it’s as simple as that. maybe that’s what a life of more really is: doing what you like, however much you can. and then, doing it some more.
1 apologies for the insertion of Friedrich’s “hero”, which should be required by no conversation as a underscore. don’t even get me started on how a toned-down Nietzschean reading of Christianity finds Jesus as the übermensch.
rather than posting the sounds of saturday update that i should be doing, i thought it would be better for everyone if i posted this instead. because, you know, hysterical.
I’ve been a person who take photographs with varying degrees of seriousness for the past three-and-a-half years, but as it turn out, it has only recently occurred to me to take a little inspiration from a photographer i’ve admired for a while, and include links to desktop-crops of images that i’m using as such. So, i’ve decided to embark upon a little adventure, and begin queuing up items for release. I’ll be releasing three this week, and then one each Friday thereafter. I’ll be taking quite a few cues from the curated photos over at the faux-tow blawg, so check that site out for more examples or to make requests for wallpapers. email requests to me@knowledgik.net.
Up today, we have a couple of shots from a nature walk I took back in November, and some inspired perspective work I did while on a ranch property in the middle of Florida in October. To download the wallpaper, just right/control-click on the thumbnail and choose “Save Link/Target As…” Enjoy!
side note: can’t believe Bob Marley didn’t make the cut. smh.
i’m working on being less…infrequent here. if i post that, that creates some sort of obtuse but verifiable accountability…right?
*i’m not a scrooge, it’s worth mentioning. all the christmas music we listened to was on…CDs…shudder.
