#doing things different

Fuel Happiness and Success: Do Something Stupid (that You Love) on the Side

From Fast Company a profound piece on the designer Tobias van Schneider.

Tobias provides sage advice on trusting your creative instincts, doing what you love, and trying the new. And his story can inspire anyone to see that there are so many ways to achieve your personal and professional dreams and passions.

As Fast Company says,”Today, he designs and builds new products for Spotify in New York,…

I've been working with computers for a while now, focusing mainly on backend components and local client code written mainly in Java or C++.  The web is obviously an important platform to be proficient in and to that means I wanted to build a new website for myself from scratch.

I have an existing website which is built on Wordpress.  This has served me well, but I was wondering how easy it would be to build a dynamic web page that would allow me to post custom content to it easily, but only have to manage the basic frontend files (i.e. HTML, CSS, and Javascript) and not have to manage any of the backend storage.  There's obviously a large number of different social platforms that content can be created and stored on (e.g. Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and Tumblr).  I've chosen tumblr for the main content because it offers a distilled and distinct set of content types and very little limits on them without being overly complicated.  Twitter is to limiting and I don't like it.  Facebook is really only good for sharing and not content creation.  Google+ has some nice features and I'm looking at that platform to enhance my comment system among other things, at a later date.

The main idea is this.  I can compose and share all my content on various sites, be it Twitter, Google+, or Tumblr and then my website will utilize their various APIs to fetch that information on demand and render my web pages.  To this end I get an insanely cheap website, which requires virtually zero (<10 MB) disk storage and the only thing I have to ensure I keep backed up is the code for the website.  Since I'll be pushing all my code into a repository on Github, and redundancy should also be taken care of for me there as well, but I'll also have local backups just in case of a catastrophic Skynet release.

I tend to have a "uniform"--that is a t-shirt and either jeans or jean shorts. I tend to wear clothes from only a few brands. I'm not a brand snob as much as a serial shopper. I go to the same stores for my clothes--Target, Walmart, Ross or Old Navy. That's it. But now that I'm an amateur fashion blogger I want to be more original. I think wearing skirts during the week is a good way to start, but I need to be creative and wear jewelry. Or fix my hair in something other than down or in a ponytail. I know neither of those things are "fashion" really, but little things mean the most.   

I want to keep track of the brands I wear on this challenge and see which ones I repeat the most. I bet Walmart, Target, and Old Navy tops the list. I'm definitely a prep--at least in terms of fashion. I like simplicity and crispness. I like polka dots and horizontal lines. I like argyle and plaid. I like plainness. 

I was taking a new way home the other day and starting thinking. This is good. As I am looking at the scenery, I get to see something different, which produced a sub-feeling of enjoyment from seeing the mountains.

On another separate day, I was taking a different way home. Same start, and same end points. After living in the area on and off for the last 19 years, I saw a new eatery, and a business that caters to some of my projects supplies that I require time to time. This was great, a closer place for the same items. Another sub-result in completing the same task.

So where am I going with this? Well, I think that just because theres a quick easy way from point A to point B in any event. Once the basics are understood, thinking and making a conscious decision to try something new is an important exercise we should never stop doing. Others things will come along, not only in finding those new ways to get from point A to point B, but those new paths, keys, doors, and options, etc., have a way of presenting themselves when you make the effort of taking that extra step.

I personally believe that this also keeps the blinders off the mind, and keeps it thinking and making new connections. When you get stuck in the routing of going to work and then coming home same way day after day, the same way day after day, the same way day after day, the same way day after day, the same way day after day, you get lost, those where your five days this week.

Once your at this point, I think it starts slowing infecting other aspects of your life as well. Comfortable is OK to a point, as long as you still have awareness, but complacent, shuts down the brain and the individual.