Also, this week is “spring break” for me, meaning that I have six less hours of class time, and a little more breathing room. Yesterday, I received and played with the GPS module for my thesis project, and today I spent some more hours at Steady, researching for “the labs,” revising some xml, and participating in a couple meetings — good stuff. Being at home and seeing the warm weather start to come out has me a little more jolly than normal too…hehe, jolly.

The main reason for writing now (other than time-stamping life again) is to direct attention to this manifesto by Eric Paulos, I came across today. Nice!

1. thatgamecompany.com
2. delicious-monster.com
3. geni.com

Smile capturing is a new idea that might have some traction, but then again, maybe not. In the meantime, below is a partial list of people / topics I’ve been investigating:

Linda Stone – continuous partial attention
Merlin Mann – getting things done
Martin Seligman – positive psychology
Zoran Josipovic – nonduality
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – flow theory for optimal experience
Jenova Chen – flow in games
Johan Huizinga – homo ludens
Nathan Eagle – reality mining
Joseph Beuys – fluxus movement
Guy Ernest Debord – situationists + spectacle
Zak Miller – feel good day
Jane McGonigal – arg’s for social good

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On another note, I installed and played Crayon Physics for the first time today. I also attended a talk by Joshua Spodek about Submedia World. Both were pretty satisfying. Thanks, Syed. Thanks, ITP.

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking around the web for potential employers, designing and migrating things to yeeality.com, and thinking about ideas for the very near future (i.e. thesis, methods of motion class, and 4-in-4). It’s a little stressful, but in a good way. Running, lifting, swimming, sauna, and love have all helped to keep my body feeling right. TED.com and a couple books (Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert and Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (P.S.) by Mihaly Csikszent) have my mind feeling alive as well. O, and Latin America Spanish on Rosetta Stone is still fun. Overall, balance seems to be in hand. It’s real nice.

The ITP winter show is half over, with the second round starting in a matter of hours, to be followed by a major celebration. Fun! GROUP PHOTO

The Big Screens and NIME events were awesome and great opportunities to absorb amazing work and mingle with peers and others from artsy/tech communities. I’ve learned a lot and am getting the chance to generate ideas and design and make a variety of things. Many of the conversations I’ve had over the last months have also been ridiculously engaging and in some cases, enlightening. These have been with talented, inspirational, and “normal” folks, but they’ve also been with myself and my subconscious mind…no ghosts or animals (yet).

So anyway, I could go on in this fashion reporting more positives in other realms of my life outside of ITP, but my initial word choice “should be loving life,” includes a subtle implication that I’m actually not loving life. And the reason for discussing school related business, is that it directly relates to more school, yes and the career direction thereafter, not to mention that I am loving life in the social, home, etc. areas. Since perhaps that didn’t make sense, I’ll get back the little point about not loving life, which is sort of about the stress when analyzing and planning for the future, while considering what’s known from past occurrences, sensations, thoughts… and looking at myself at present. For me, there’s a certain satisfaction, confidence, comfort, and delight that correlate to order and proper preparation. When I was younger, it seemed a lot easier to maintain that state of control, but as people, books, and experiences in general, come and go with time, there’s a residue that accumulates. That residue affects perception and in my case, causes decision making to be more difficult. However, it’s not that I’m unable to say yes or no, this restaurant or that, New York or San Fran, shoes or sneakers, etc. — it’s just that big decisions are becoming more frequent, and with them comes a feeling of being less prepared.

So now I have almost a month before classes begin again. I have many tasks to accomplish in this month: design and build my portfolio website, update my blog and resume, apply to relevant spring internships, decide what is relevant, generate relevant project ideas, plan for a cross-country move. I have a calendar, a brain, a strong work ethic, supportive friends, family, and woman, intention and drive. However, I also have an appreciation for deserved relaxation, distance from stress, and flowing through time without fighting. As this time-stamp ends, I’m going to try to remember without needing to re-read what I’ve written that balance is happiness are individual, subjective realities. I can make mine what I want to a large degree. So, if I should be loving life, hrmm… let me keep loving it, yea? p.s. Dan Gilbert’s relatively new book has probably played at least a little part in this flow of thought. He has a couple talks on TED.