Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. — Ferris Bueller

Spending more time with… me

I like to consider myself a social person… alright, an extremely social person. With a very large network of friends, I often find myself drinking and dining out 3-5 nights a week. So many friends and things to do, so little time.

While I find myself to be extremely fortunate to know such amazing people, this lifestyle is quite a drain on my energy and my wallet. But most unfortunately, it takes away “me time” — which I find to be extremely important for reflection and development.

In 2015, I’ve decided I’m going to begin enjoying more solitude time in order to learn, read, meditate, edit photographs that have been sitting around for years, and essentially work on self-improvement as a whole.

Tonight, I’ve cut away an entire night to relax, re-watch the Lord of the Rings saga, edit photos, and work on my site(s).

Unlike hanging around at home on a weeknight, where I find myself busy cleaning, working, cooking dinner, spending time with my girlfriend, etc… there’s something different — something more calming about staying in and having a quiet night during the weekend, a time typically reserved for social outings (yay societal trends!).

By staying in alone more often I’m going to be able to enjoy the other things I love to do that I rarely participate in. And hell, with the facebookz and twitterz these days, I can take intermittent breaks to still be social!

Beer, tea, and maintaining balance for a healthy lifestyle

If there are two liquids I love, they’re beer and tea. Both are delicious, have unique traits, and offer up unique effects on the human mind and body (relax, I’m a happy drunk).

In 2014 (and previous years) I found myself falling away from tea culture and moving into strictly beer culture. While there’s nothing wrong with that, as a whole, drinking quality craft beer most nights a week gets really expensive. And while I’m a firm believer some types of beer have health benefits (no, seriously), there’s no doubt drinking many consecutive nights of the week isn’t the best idea. I found myself needing a little more balance in order to save my wallet, and my scale.

Over the past few months, I’ve been working my way back into tea culture and splitting up my nights between delicious beer and delicious tea (tonight I made a pot of Youthberry). While quality loose tea can often get expensive, it’s still much less than me buying the quality craft beers (that I love!) all the time. And besides, one of the most important factors of tea are the health benefits. With over 3,000 varieties, they can do wonders for nearly every ailment.

Shoot first, ask questions later

If you talk to any serious photographer, they’ll tell you that regardless of advancements in digital photography and the ability to preview photos in the field, that they shoot as many photos as they can and will review later on a computer. As large as LCD / LED screens on cameras have become, there’s still room for error in the quality of the photo (even while zooming in on the screens). So it’s not uncommon to take dozens of shots of the same subject, even one that’s not in motion or in high light.

I almost never trust the screen, and thus explains the terabytes of photos I have sitting on hard drives. Sure I use Lightroom to catalog and manage them all… but I’m so bad at uploading and reviewing my photos because I’m not a pro who gets paid to shoot. Seriously though, I still have photos from my college graduation in 2009 I haven’t gone through. Even worse, I have photos sitting on memory cards from years ago that I haven’t even uploaded yet (sorry friends!).

In 2015, this is going to change. I take my camera(s) everywhere with me and spend a lot of time photographing. Oddly enough, I spend next to no time at all reviewing aforementioned photos after I depart the scene.

How about you?

Do you have a very social life? Do you find it gets in the way of other things you love? How do you factor everything in and manage your time?

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

… and a cat photo for good measure.