The inspiration

I got this idea from Chadwick, who started twittering at 8:36pm every day. I set a little alarm on my iPhone and post whatever I’m doing at that time. Then I ran across Jamie Livingston who took a polaroid every day for almost 20 years (1979-1997), until he died on his 41st birthday. It’s a beautiful project. The twist is to use the constraint of an arbitrary time (8:36pm) to limit the editorializing of our lives (there’s plenty of that in other parts of our internet usage), and to use Flickr, Twitter, and the ubiquity of cell phone cameras to turn this into a project that can be participated in as a group, with people joining whenever they wish.

The description

Every day, at 8:36pm, take a picture of what you are doing.  As boring as it is, no matter how many times you’ve done the same thing at the same time.  Focus on the constraint of capturing a moment of the day, like a clay sample from the bottom of the ocean, and preserving it.  While not a perfect sample of the day, perhaps, it will still represent it sufficiently to connect dots on the scale of a decade.

The goal of this project is to continue it for the rest of our lives.  Missing a day here or there is not as important as continuing the project again and again and again.

The spirit

The spirit of this project is the long-story of life.  The fact that life moves simultaneously on the day-to-day, highly detailed, highly dramatic, arch at the same time that it moves like the slow swell of the ocean.  This project’s spirit is in the slow swell, about how, a slight snapshot of each day, when later taken in the context of decades, will tell a story that the participants aren’t currently aware of.

The objective

The objective is to have as many people as are willing participate in the project, to create a collection of pictures and descriptions of what people were doing at this time of day, and to glean as much additional information in these slices as possible (for example, some phones have geolocation embedded in the photo).

The study

The purpose of this project is to capture a part of our lives that we are too busy to see at the moment.  It is also an exercise in the long-term project… how many things do we strive to continue for the rest of our lives?  How does this affect our perception of time, motivation, and understanding of each other?

The contribution of the project to a well-balanced and healthy life

I want all of my projects to contribute to a well-balanced and healthy life.  I believe that this project helps us accept ourselves a little bit simply by showing us that every minute of our lives contains something valuable.  It contains something worth capturing and preserving.  Also, that as boring as our lives may seem to be sometimes, that there is something different about each moment that we would savor if it were to be lost.

The product

The product is a collection of pictures and descriptions.  I hope to develop 836pm.com into a repository of 8:36pm items from as many people as are interested in participating.  I want to continue to let people join in at any time without feeling like they’re coming to the party late.  This is a lifetime project, after all, and the value of the project can be appreciated no matter when you start.

The shareable element

Yes, there is a shareable element to this project, on several levels.  The tiny shared slices are shared.  The content of the slices is unedited and therefore a different kind of sharing than usual.  And the cumulative result of sharing every day for the rest of our lives also has a bigger impact.  We are sharing the story of our lives before we even know what it is.

Updates

See all 8:36pm project posts…

Imagine eating an orange. To the extent that eating it is enjoyable (rather than repulsive or neutral), I’ve come up with 9 primary ways in which the enjoyment can be processed.  They are cumulative… it’s possible to enjoy it for all 9 reasons at once.  Such an occurrence might be called an Enjoyment Yahtzee.

1. You enjoy it because it distracts you from something less enjoyable (escaping)
2. You enjoy it because it’s the easiest thing to eat at the moment (practical)
3. You enjoy it because it is tasty (pleasing to the senses)
4. You enjoy it because it’s healthy (nourishing to the body)
5. You enjoy it because you’ve never had an orange before (novel)
6. You enjoy it because it puts you in a better mood (mood-altering)
7. You enjoy it because a friend is sharing it with you (socially meaningful)
8. You enjoy it because you think eating an orange makes you look good (ego-validating)
9. You enjoy the orange for what it is (intrinsic)

In rough order of weakest to strongest forms of enjoyment:

Escaping

This is enjoyable by comparison.  Watching television can be enjoyable if you are watching it in order to avoid engaging in an argument, or facing work that you don’t want to do.  It’s the cheapest form of enjoyment.

Practical

The enjoyment of what is simply practical is a pretty shallow form of enjoyment, but it is at hand and that is what is enjoyable about it.  You may want to be an ballerina, but you’re 7’3″ and the star player on your basketball team.  Being an all-star basketball player is enjoyable because it is available to you, it is right there, and it can be taken.  Perhaps a more mundane example would be the enjoyment of eating frugally, making the best of the ingredients you have, rather than daydreaming about that steak at that fancy restaurant that you can’t afford.  There is an enjoyment of living within your means, making lemonade out of lemons, and eating the whole walrus and using all of the bones for your igloo.  It is frugal, it is neat, it is present, and it is self-sustaining.

Pleasing to the senses

Because something is cold, because it is tasty, because it is beautiful, because it sounds good, because it feels good.  Enjoyment of the senses is something that is core to all of our experiences and often labeled as a potentially dangerous form of enjoyment.  It leads to hedonism, pursuit of immediate gratification, etc.  But there is nothing inherently negative about pleasing the senses, unless enjoyment of this particular avenue eclipses all the other kinds of enjoyment.  Eating oranges alone in your closet even after you’re full at the cost of being social, trying new things, and nurishing your body has been the downfall of more than one that I know.

Nourishing to the body

Our body needs certain things to maintain basic function, and luckily it rewards us for satisfying those requirements.  Drinking water when we’re dehydrated, eating the necessary amounts of protein, carbohydrates, and fiber, BREATHING.  All very enjoyable, right?  This level of enjoyment also extends to getting enough sleep, being warm enough, and exercising.  They contribute not only to the strength of our bodies, but to a very clean form of enjoyment.

Novel

The first time we experience something we experience it in a way that can’t be replicated by repeated experiencing.  The novel experience is enjoyable because it is connecting things in our brain that have never been connected before: the flavor of squid, the view from a hang-glide, sex for the first time, smoking pot or getting drunk the first time.  They are enjoyable for themselves, true, but there is an additional element of something almost resembling fear, or anxiety, or excitement, that is enjoyable.  More to some than others.

Mood-altering

We are all strongly tied to our moods.  So much so that we defend them as a core, possibly unchangeable, part of our identity.  Getting angry when we feel angry is a basic right of humanity, and we often don’t feel responsible for our anger as much as simply unavoidably angry.  At the same time, we are all obsessive tinkerers of our moods, always trying to lift ourselves into a better mood, or indulging a weak one.  Regulating breathing, drinking caffeine or alcohol, eating something sweet or fatty, shopping, watching television, doing yoga or meditation, exercising, and slamming a fist on a table are all simple mood-altering actions that, in some way, create enjoyment (regardless of their additional strengthening or weakening impacts).  Enjoying something simply for the fact that it indulges or enhances our mood taps into a very powerful aspect of knowing yourself.  Knowing the most effective mood-altering activities, and knowing which moods are impacted positively and effectively (and avoiding the indulgement of harmful emotions) is one of the best studies we can make of ourselves.

Socially meaningful

This is a very interesting and broadly reaching form of enjoyment.  Enjoying something because you’re making money, for example, is a form of socially meaningful enjoyment.  We enjoy money because it has meaning in our culture and gives us power that we didn’t previously have.  Socially meaningful enjoyment also includes that enjoyment of sharing an experience with a loved one.  Doing something becomes more enjoyable if it helps you gain the respect of your peers, friends, family, or even strangers.  A wedding’s enjoyment is largely based on the public enactment of vows, traditions, and symbols that gain the weight of our culture.  Doing a favor, participating in a group, being paid, and receiving credit are all forms of enjoyment that gain their flavor from being socially meaningful.

Ego-validating

The ego loves being validated.  It loves feeling big and fluffy, and that love is expressed in the form of luscious enjoyment whenever something happens to give it a stronger form.  For example, the act of being known for something, like eating the most hot dogs in a 6-minute period.  That in itself is a form of socially meaningful enjoyment, but the next time you’re on stage and the gun fires and you begin stuffing your mouth full of hot dogs as fast as you can, the ego-validating enjoyment of “THIS IS WHO I AM” kicks in and takes it to a new, inwardly facing enjoyment that exists outside of society, outside of the pleasant taste of hot dogs, into a tiny world where only you exist and you are doing what you were meant to do on this planet.  And it is lovely.

Intrinsic

This is the truest form of enjoyment, the kind that perhaps only deities are fully capable of.  The love of something simply for what it is.  Unconditional love.  To appreciate that orange for what it is, you have to be equally okay with losing the orange as eating the orange.  You have to simply want what is best for the orange, and never need recognition for what you are giving the orange with this unconditional love.  This enjoyment of what is intrinsic about the world, a detached but fully engaged perspective, transcends all other enjoyments in its ability to satisfy, because it cannot be touched, has no limits, and lasts forever.  We should all strive to fully enjoy in this manner at least once in our lives.

I love a good morning routine, but I am not very good at implementing them.  Reading Twyla Tharp’s “The Creative Habit” has gotten me motivated again to fight against my slowly later and later morning wake-up routine.

I am going to begin waking up an hour earlier than I otherwise need to, and in that time I’m going to cook breakfast, and attempt at writing 750 words (ala the Artist’s Way’s Morning Pages).  I used to do that and it was great… but then I slowly got caught up in the rest of the day and it slipped away.

Rationale on routine

Part of the reason that I’m so attracted to a morning routine is that I am totally not a morning person.  I am hardly ever tired at night, and my sleepiest hour is 8-9am.  I just do not want to do anything, and can see no reason to fight that.

At the same time, Twyla Tharp has a point.  A routine is a simple trick that allows you to set in stone a mindset or idea without having to justify it to yourself every day.  Her morning routine is to wake up, put on some sweats, and hop in a cab to the gym.  She does the exact same thing every day, using the same words to the cabbie, etc.  This is mostly a game, and the game ends when she’s in the cab.  What she does at the gym is not part of the routine, and that can change from day to day, year to year.  But getting in the cab and directing it is what provides meaning to her routine.  She doesn’t have to step through the whole “do I feel good enough to go to the gym?”, “is the day too busy?” and other excuses because all she really has to do is get into the cab.

It’s a mild form of self-brain-washing.  Routines, for some reason, have strong hooks into our behavior, and if used correctly, you can determine rationale for doing something once, and then hook that rationale into a routine that then continues independently.

I like that.  And I like this book.

I’ll see this next week if this translates into an actual new routine or not.  A little experiment to coincide with the launch of this new blogging space for myself.

Jane is a genius.  I wish I was as focused on the idea of how games make us happier, because I think it’s definitely true.  She’s starting a book on games and is game-ifying the process of writing the book.

She’s starting with the easiest chapter in the spirit of it being “level 1″.  And is using Twitter to send out updates and excerpts in the hopes of getting some real-time feedback.  Being on the right difficulty level and having the right kind of feedback / reward system seems like a great way to take on large projects.

A simple way to game-ify life that I’ve found is to create a Weekly Review.  Each week, you report progress on any given number of short, medium, or long-term goals.  You get a point for each goal that you’ve made progress on.  You can add or remove goals each week, making sure that they are still current and valuable to you.

Something as simple as getting points every week triggers the game-instinct in me, and engages self-competition and a spirit of action and adventure and fun.  Which is what we want out of games and in our life, right?