The Practice of Your Life

The Exercise and Pursuit of a Consciously Created Life

Move over email and Twitter, Google Wave is coming

Jun 29
2009

Recently, I was reading “Why Twitter Will Soon Become Obsolete” by Jason Clark .  Very well written and insightful piece that was another reminder of how rapidly change is coming at us.

Jason makes the case that while micro-blogging – the 140 character limit of posts (tweets) that Twitter pioneered – is here to stay, there is no reason to believe that Twitter itself will have the staying power of say a Google, Apple or Microsoft.  The marketplace is littered with the dead and dying business entities that once generated all of the buzz that Twitter now enjoys e.g. Netscape, AOL, Friendster and MySpace to name a few.

But apart from marketplace vagaries that are hard to explain even after they have occurred (read… Continue reading

Mexican Music – Part II

Jun 27
2009

Saw the same guys again (see my original post on Mexican Music on May 8th, 2009.) They were waiting for the train with me at the very end of the subway platform, talking amongst themselves – there were more of them this time – and checking their instruments.

Once again I was engrossed in what I was reading, but I was not in the dour mood I was last time. The train comes and I’m successful in finding a seat on the crowded subway car. Within seconds the guys start playing that same music, and again I find myself smiling. Just amazing: the transformational power of music. And these guys, just like the last time, are only going through the motions, expressionless, but playing well. Earning a… Continue reading

Self-Help Courses as Entertainment

Jun 21
2009

“Taking any course that cannot translate into a practice that you incorporate into your life is like going to a movie.”      Francis Wade

Francis Wade is a fellow philosopher, entrepreneur and a good friend of mine. He said the above quote in a conversation I was having with him about my philosophy of living life as a practice. I was telling him about the book S.H.A.M. – How the Self-Help Movement made America Helpless by Steve Salerno – which highlighted the cultural phenomenon of “there’s something wrong … especially with me, and there’s one thing that can fix it, all I have to do is find it.”

The book SHAM talks about how people go from course to

My First Mac

Jun 14
2009

I’ve finally crossed into the light and got myself a Macbook 13″.  Yet I’m still compelled by the forces of darkness and will be for some time I think.   You see old habits die hard and while I know the Mac is great, the fact is it doesn’t help you make the adjustment to it’s way of doing things and some things I discover are definitely a step backwards.  For example, there are no plug-ins for the Mac on Skype and if you own a blackberry you won’t be happy with the Mac version of the blackberry desktop.

Hence the reason I am still pulled to the “dark” side.  Apple is truly compassionate however as there is no judgment about my continued dance with old habits, and in fact… Continue reading