7 posts tagged “emeraldcity”
I'm at Emerald City, a cafe next door to the Sheridan red-line stop, in the Buena Park/Uptown neighborhood where I live, my first trip out since my unexpectedly traumatic oral surgery last Thursday. And once again, I'm sitting here staring at the "Getting Things Done" action lists I maintain in my Moleskine notebook, noting with some alarm how large they've all gotten since this oral surgery began two and a half weeks ago, difficult to get through because of the time my body needs to recover. (This photo, for example, shows three of my busiest context lists combined on one page -- things to do at home, things to do on my computer, and things to check out online.)
It's true, I think -- that no matter how busy we might actually be while unemployed or self-employed, trying to do the things that will lead to increased paid work, it usually comes off that we're doing almost nothing, besides maybe watching a bunch of weirdo movies and TV shows that have been illegally downloaded. Believe it or not, a good six hours or so of my day each day is usually devoted to the lowly duties of an underemployed freelancer; of offering free spec advice in all kinds of random situations, building up one's portfolio, maintaining one's social networks, responding to a ton of emails each day, trawling the internet each day for new opportunities, spearheading cutting-edge projects that will get you further noticed, ad fucking nauseum. That's what's so frustrating about all this oral surgery right now, is that it's preventing me from getting all this boring daily crap done, the stuff I rarely mention at my blogs but that's as important to freelancers as that time you got arrested by Boston police for a viral marketing campaign you created.
Anyway, the good news is that the worst of it is behind me; this time a week and a half from now, I'll start the hard work of my mouth's reconstruction, with hopefully most of it done by the time Memorial Day and summer roll around at the end of May. For now, though, it's yet another week of soup, pasta and yogurt; another week of Vicodin-induced foggy sociopathic distancing from humanity; another week of dejectedly watching my GTD lists fill up more and more, helpless at this point from getting any of it done. Sigh! It's gotta be done sometime, I guess; now's as good a time as any.
Spotted at Emerald City coffeehouse, Sheridan and Irving Park Road, Chicago -- a coffee device with a curiously Modernist (or Mod) logo attached to it. My 'modar,' in fact (or natural ability to spot Mod things in public) has been in overdrive recently, ever since deciding to base the first wave of my Second Life prefabricated houses off the architectural and design style. It was only 45 years or so, after all, since the height of the style's popularity; there are still lots of original examples to spot in a place like Chicago, not to mention the contemporary companies who have adopted classic Mod ideals.
So as followers of my Second Life adventures know, I had been planning this month to open a new adults-only blog for the environment called "avatar;" but I've now officially decided not to, in that it's harder and harder for me anymore to attend popular events there on my low-end computer, which I'm afraid would keep me out of the adult clubs that would be the heart of "avatar"s content.
So instead, I've started looking again into a business idea I've had for six months now; a prefab building company called "Fabb," which would manufacture space-age ultra-modern homes for a variety of environments (FabbBeach, FabbForest, FabbGoth, etc), using a series of modular units that customers can either mix and match on their own, or buy from us in pre-arranged layouts. (Think IKEA meets Habitrail -- now you've got an idea of my mental picture for the project.) Such a thing could be highly profitable if I do a good enough job; I just did a little research last night, in fact, and learned that it's very common for good starter homes to go for L$1,000 or more, and for large complex structures to sell sometimes for $10,000 (approx. 40 American dollars, or 20 pounds, or 30 euros). If I could get to a place where I had several hundred types of modules available (between layout and color choices), and a plethora of prebuilt homes, I could pretty easily make the same kind of money I had been planning on making through ad sales at "avatar." At the very least, it'd be cool if I could get Fabb to pay for the in-grid costs I have; my membership fees for next year, a land expansion, etc.
Of course, I still have awhile to go before I can start bring in serious money -- I need to become a better builder, for one, and need to learn a lot more about both texturing and scripting. Got any SL classes or destinations for builders you'd recommend? Drop me a line at [ilikejason at gmail.com] and let me know.
I don't mean I've come out as gay; I mean that for the first time in a week, the weather has gotten tolerable enough again to venture out into the world, which is what I've done. Temperatures today, in fact, are way above what they've recently been -- 40 degrees today (4 C), versus the below-freezing temps we've recently been having -- which of course means we have about a foot of snow all melting at once today, which of course has turned my entire neighborhood into a slushy, semi-frozen pond of black water and consumer waste. Nice! It's always something here, I swear.
I ran out of cigarettes an hour or so ago, which gave me the excuse I needed to get out of the house for a little bit; I didn't go far, just down to Emerald City coffeehouse in my neighborhood (under the Sheridan red-line el stop, seen in the attached photo), but I suppose it's the effort to get out in this weather that counts.
I don't have a lot of pressing things to get done at the cafe today, so have been spending the afternoon instead taking a larger view of things in my life, thinking of the various projects I'd like to accomplish by the end of the year and in what order they'd be best tackled. Such musings, in fact, are a deliberate part of the "Getting Things Done" time-management system invented by David Allen, of which I'm an obsessive religious zealot; and Allen takes an interesting approach to it too, arguing that your long-term and short-term plans shouldn't be seen as two different lists, but rather one list seen from two different viewpoints. Allen compares the process to how we comprehend the earth and our surroundings based on what altitude we're at; how at ground level we're mostly preoccupied with how the immediate surroundings will impact us, while on a plane ride we're seeing the same terrain but with a much better sense of overall perspective, and without any of the pedestrian annoyances around that usually distract us from the bigger picture.
It's true that GTD as a daily process is designed mainly to help you take care of "ground-level" duties; as part of implementing GTD, though, Allen encourages us to occasionally spend some time at 10,000 feet as well, looking at how our current actions will be impacting our lives a year or a decade down the road. It's something I encourage everyone to do, in fact, regardless of whether they're implementing the rest of GTD or not; it's easy to get bogged down in the grinding minutia of our daily lives, I think, and it can be refreshing to occasionally step back and look at where all these small steps are taking you.
Of course, it's important not to linger too long at 10,000 feet either; if you spend all your time with your head in the clouds, after all, you'll never get anything done at ground level. That's what's so great about GTD, after all, especially for all the artistic dreamers of the world, of which I consider myself one -- it teaches us how to convert these lofty ideas into a series of actionable steps, so that we can actually get some of these projects going instead of forever remaining in our brains. That's why I encourage artists to try GTD out as well, on top of the corporate executives it's usually pitched to.
Okay, speaking of which, time for me to go home and get back to work. Farewell, O Cruel Winter! Hello, double radiators and websurfing in my underwear!
Thought I'd finally brave the weather and get out this morning for the first time in four or five days. Here I am down at Emerald City Coffeehouse by the Sheridan red-line stop, wearing my new scarf indoors (a Christmas present from my brother and sister-in-law), like the hipster doofus I am.
I spent all day getting online things done, so before the cold of this evening I thought I'd get out for some coffee and a little face time with the Hoo-Mons. I'm at Emerald City, to be specific, which just happens to be next door to the Sheridan el stop on the red line.
The network of train stops that make up the CTA, maybe 100 or so altogether, make for interesting viewing; the overall system is so old now, and with station improvements happening so randomly over the decades, that no two stations here look entirely alike, nor do most even have a unified design scheme. Take the stop in my neighborhood, for example; how the building's exterior is clearly an ornamental style from the 1920s or '30s, with a modernist glass front added sometime in the '50s or '60s, and a glowing outside sign in the '80s. (And let's not even start with the patchwork of styles found inside the station itself.)
I'm surprised, frankly, that no one yet has done a glossy coffetable book about the various el stops you find throughout the Chicago system; it's certainly a book I'd enjoy owning.
