Ripples

25 years

Today it's exactly 25 years ago that I bought my first serious camera: a Pentax MX, with a 50mm f:1.7 standard lens, as usual in those days (see here for the manual with pictures). This marvellous camera served me well for many years. The first 10 years, I only used the 50mm lens. As a consequence, I still feel very comfortable using standard lenses today: using one feels like walking around in a comfortable pair of slippers to me.

In 1990, I added a 28-80mm zoom lens, which from that point became my main lens. Over the years, my interest in photography grew a bit stale. It was only in 1999 that I gave in to the lures of autofocus and autoexposure, buying into the Canon EOS system with an EOS 300 and a 28-105mm zoom. From that point, my interest was rekindled, and I've by now accumulated a decent collection of lenses for my Canon bodies (my main one now being the EOS 30), as well as quite some second hand classic cameras.

But this renewed fascination with photography also gave my trusty old Pentax MX a new lease of life. So much so, that I built up a nice collection of prime lenses for it from the second-hand market (ranging from 28mm to 200mm, plus some extension rings and even a nice bellows for macro work), and added 3 more bodies (a black one among them), just in case the original one should one day run out. This shows how much I still enjoy using this camera. You can go on shooting without batteries. And because of the manual focussing, I never have an out-of-focus shot, which I regularly get with my Canons (but on the other hand, my automatic cameras allow me to get some shots that I'd miss with a manual camera, so there is something good in both worlds).

Just a few days ago I saw another nice MX in one of my favourite photo shop windows. I'm still hesitating, but quite possibly tomorrow will see me with a fifth one in my collection. Just in case, you know...

By the way, for those of you who may wonder: I managed to reach my 25 years of photography without giving in to the siren song of digital. But I'm afraid an EOS 20D is not too far away...

GTD as an eBook at last

It has taken some time, but Getting Things Done is at long last available as an eBook. Given the fact that many GTD fans use a Palm to implement the methodology, this seems to be a good thing. It'll certainly allow me to have the book with me all the time, in case I want to check out something or brush up some aspect of it.

Book Bliss

Reading through my backlog of entries from Steve Pavlina's blog, I keep coming across interesting entries. The one called "Read a Book a Week" again got me thinking. In it he explains how he took on the habit of reading one book a week back in 1992, and the benefits this habit yields.

I've been an avid reading for most of my life. One of my fondest memories is of a two month school vacation when I was about 16 years old, which I spent almost completely sitting in the garden reading SF novels (my favourite genre at the time). Today, I'm still constantly reading books whenever I can, either in paper form of on my Palm (which is great for those situations where it is not practical to take paper books with you, or for when some unforeseen reading time pops up). I don't manage the rhythm of 1 book a week, although in my student days, I once reached 70 books in one year (which paled into insignificance next to a friend who managed 180!). But I read tens of books a year.

I've started reading in the field of personal development around 1996, first with Stephan Rechtschaffen's "Time Shifting". But it really sparked off when I came across Covey's famous "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". And I've devoured quite some books in that area since then. As Pavlina notes, it is worthwhile to keep exposing yourself to new ideas. Even books that are not so good can bring you a good idea or two. And constantly learning more expands your repertoire (to use one of Vera F. Birkenbihl's favourite terms).

But while I fully subscribe to Pavlina's analysis, I have one nagging doubt. I sometimes fear that all this reading is an form of procrastination. As long as you can tell yourself that you're in the process of acquiring knowlegde and insight around certain problems, you have an excuse not to start taking action. "Yes, I know it's time to tackle this problem, but let me first read this one more book that will help me approaching it just that little bit better..."

The challenge lies in starting to act, even knowing that your skill and knowledge can always be improved, but that starting in an imperfect way is better than waiting for the ultimate perfection. Which we all know never comes...

Quantum weight loss

I don't remember how I first came across Steve Pavlina's articles on his Dexterity Software site. But they certainly struck a sympathetic chord with me. I've carried a few on my Palm and re-read them regularly. So I was excited to recently discover that he has taken what seemed to be an important interest for him and developed it into his main business, with a new website sporting a free article section (including some reworked versions of earlier Dexterity articles) and a fascinating blog (which boils down to almost a free article a day!). Go have a look, there is great stuff there!

So these last days, I've been loading tons of his articles and blog entries into my Palm and reading them on the go, whenever I have a spare moment. There is one such blog entry I can relate strongly to: it's called "Making a Quantum Leap". In it he describes how hard personal growth is, and that it requires constant effort and inspiration over a long time, until you at last reach the point where you make a "quantum leap" into a new state of being. He gives the example of trying to lose weight, and here is where it touches my personal experience.

I've been very slowly and gradually gaining weight over the years, nothing spectacular, but I ended up somewhere around a maximum of around 90kg (which for my 1m80 represents a BMI of 27.8 or overweight). These last years, I realised that I was getting a bit too heavy and wanted to get rid of some of these overenthousiastic kilograms. But somehow the nice life seemed to prevail and nothing really changed, regardless of some reading and halfhearted efforts.

Until last August, I stumbled on the book "Eat to Live" by Joel Fuhrman in an eReader newsletter, as I recounted here. And suddenly, something clicked. I've adapted my eating habits and started steadily losing weight, quite spectacularly at first. So much so in fact, that after a bit more than 2 months, I reached the BMI upper limit for "healthy" weight (25 or 81kg, see here). And it hasn't stopped. These days I'm hovering just below BMI 24 (between 77 and 78kg), and I have the firm intention to bring it down to 75kg, which I set as my target weight.

I'm confident that I won't backslide and drift back up to my old weight, because somewhere in my head, a switch seems to have been turned. As I always tell people who wonder how I did it, I don't follow any diet, I've just altered my eating habits. These new habits are something I'm quite happy with, I still eat with pleasure and joy. But what I eat is healthy. So there is hardly any temptation to change that. I've made my quantum leap.

Musical memories

I've been reading some books recently about memory and the brain. Something which is often mentioned is that when you're committing information to memory, you don't just store what you want to retain, but the entire context. Therefore, it's easier to remember things if you put yourself in a context that matches the original one as closely as possible.

There is a nice illustration of this principle from my own experience. As I'm addicted to music, it's obviously linked to that.

I've been a Mike Oldfield fan since 1983, when it was the chance discovery of his music (the marvellous double album "Incantations") that slowly drew me from classical music into progressive and other rock. So when in the summer of 1995, we went on vacation to Austria, I obviously took with me a tape recording of his then latest album, "Songs from Distant Earth" (these were pre-mp3, Walkman days). And during our stay, I listened to this album over and over again, mostly while resting in my room.

So since then, whenever I put on the album (as I did again right now to write this entry), I'm immediately transported back to that room in Hotel zur schönen Aussicht in St. Johann. I see the hotel garden, the mountain landscape around it, and all kinds of other memories and sensations come back to me. Quite a powerful experience.

A few years later, in 1997, I had a similar experience with the sublime Camel album "Harbour of Tears", which is now forever linked to Hotel Zugspitze in Lermoos. When I hear that music, I again see that horse across the road in front of my room window...

How not to blog

As you can tell from my posting frequency these last months, it is not always as evident as it may seem to get around to writing an entry on my blog. I might say that I've discovered some quite effective ways not to blog(*). Being too tired, having too many other things to do, lack of inspiration or plain lack of enthousiasm may all come to mind, and apply to differing degrees at different times.

A surprising realisation struck me a few days ago. Most of the time, I actually positively want to blog. I'm sitting at my PC, trying to come up with something to write about, a pursuit at which I miserably fail. Why is that? Well, I noticed that inspiration rarely (or never) comes when I'm sitting down to write. It only works if I know in advance what I'm going to write about. Once I get started, the words normally start to flow, and I can piece together a reasonable entry. But the trick is: I have to know the subject in advance. Ideally, I already thought it through a few times in my mind, and have a reasonable idea of how it's going to turn out. This entry, for example, has been simmering for a few days.

What did go wrong then these last months, that this inspiration seems to be lacking? When I started my blog, this was something new and exciting for me, and I regularly thought about ideas and subjects. But as time goes by, routine sets in. I'm less keen on finding new ideas and pay less attention during the day. And when I do find an idea, often it appears to have already been used before. Or by the time I sit down before my PC screen in the evening, I have completely forgotten what it was.

So what should I do? First of all, I have to start paying attention to the world around me again. Life is full of nice little stories, waiting to be told. The trick is to notice them. Blogging (like journaling) can actually be a great mindfulness exercise, making you much more aware of what goes on in your life, and of your thoughts and feelings about it. And second, when these ideas come, I need to capture them before they're gone, by making a note in my Palm, ot even start to write a first draft as soon as I get a chance.

So now that I know this, all I've got to do is actually apply it. I wonder how long it will be before my next entry...

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(*) To be fair, since January I've been paying more attention again to my Dutch language blog, Squonk's Musical Box, where I essentially write about music. I could write the reviews I do over there on this blog, but I try to cover more subjects here. Maintaining two blogs in parallel obviously also accounts for some of the problem...