Category: Thoughts
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A pebble in the path
Through the Tim Ferris podcast, I learned about Jerry Colonna, who has very inspiring thoughts about life and work. Jerry is popping up in many places with the publication of his book Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up. I’ll be mentioning that book in several upcoming posts. It’s a spectacular work; I listened […]
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Am I preparing to die?
In the last month, particularly, I have been coming to a place of peace and clam about my life. As I was walking through the stacks on the 2nd floor of the library, I felt a slight tug in the muscle of my chest. Nothing more than a muscle contraction, I told myself without any […]
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Reconciling doubt
Despite the bravado displayed by many high-achieving undergraduates, educators recognize the uncertainty that exists in those young minds when faced with subjects outside the students’ realm of comfort. Students unintentionally project a frightful degree of complexity onto any topic. Most people, not just students, throw up these mental roadblocks throughout their lives. We preach the […]
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Reminders on how to live
The first-half of 2019 has been a most difficult year as my personal life transitioned through many changes. I won’t go into all that. On top of that has been my work with a heavy teaching load at the university: co-teaching a journalism course on multimedia storytelling design, co-teaching a neuroscience workshop, and teaching a […]
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The Purpose of Doing
Late afternoon, I sit at my desk, just after class. I glance up at the prints from Buenos Aires that hang on the wall in front of me. More than a decade ago I blogged so regularly. More free time in those days as I explored a premature semi-retirement in my early 40s. Yesterday, on […]
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One sure measure of authenticity
“…we live on the energy of our imagination. Our imagination projects us to fulfill our work, and it’s the one sure measure of authenticity to use your imagination to explore realities.” Martin Sheen Spirituality of Imagination, On Being
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Quiet holidays with The English Patient
For years I spent the Thanksgiving holidays alone. Solitude always has been a great comfort for me, a form of re-energizing. Thanksgiving weekend 1996 stands out and I oddly comeback to it year after year. I usually avoided telling people I was alone on Thanksgiving in order to avoid the awkward invitation to the festivities […]
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Out of the blatantly commercial
Now that I’m back in the non-profit world of libraries and academia my efforts are no longer slanted towards that simple question of survival, “How do I make money?” A salary is a remarkable thing (as is a job with benefits). And that frees up my thinking and efforts. For eight years I lived in […]
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Love Evernote as a research tool
Over the past few months I’ve been using Evernote extensively as a way of organizing thoughts relating to my research. I like that it’s cloud based, so I don’t have to worry about syncing data as I move from computer to table to phone and back again. I like the simplicity of creating notes and […]
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The Role of Design in the Digital Humanities
Having spent most of the last decade in a book design studio I’m fascinated at the ways that an understanding of the historical traditions of printing, typography, and page layout can inform the means by which we structure and present narrative in digital media. Underlying these visual narratives are digital archives. As a librarian also, […]