eSoup

How Artists Do The Web Differently

I know that most of us are on the web because this is where our work is, but for a lot of us there is an artistic element to our online aspirations that gets stifled when we follow the herd who tells us all the stuff we should be doing and worrying about technology-wise.

This is why Robert Bruce turned me upside down (in a good way) with his guest post on Problogger called 27 Thoughts On Blogging For The Artist.

He doesn't pull any punches, and his points just made me think and acknowledge--are my activities/ways of approaching the internet leading me closer to or away from what it means to be an artist?

My faves of Robert's thoughts on Art and the Web:

6. If you’re spending more time on Twitter than on your novel/painting/film/poem/play/sculpture, you’re dead.

7. The creation of great art has nothing to do with Community.

9. If you’re the real thing, you’ll be around in 30 years, still working. Most of these services and sites you now admire will not.

13. Aim for Greatness, not the front page of Digg.

15. Though tempting, you’ll never crush your own mediocrity working only four hours a week.

Reuters Interview: Thou Shalt Unplug

I'd like to give a big thank you to Jill Serjeant, journalist for Reuters International Newswire, who interviewed me a few weeks ago and included me in her article about the new movement that is sweeping the tech world--the Secular Sabbath.

A little excerpt:

"Sharon Sarmiento knew it was time to unplug when she realized she was blogging in her dreams and hearing imaginary instant messages.    

For Ariel Meadow Stallings, it was the hours lost while surfing the Internet that left her feeling like she had been in a drunken blackout.

Both women are part of a new grass-roots movement in which tech geeks, Internet addicts, BlackBerry thumbers and compulsive IMers are deciding to wrest back control of their lives by daring to switch off -- if only for a day."

Read the rest of the article...

HowTo Create A Work Schedule That Feels Like A Vacation

  Young spring love 
  Originally uploaded by mormoralice.

The NY Times has come out with a downer of an article siting a few web workers who died due to lifestyle related health complications.

It was implied that the desk potato lifestyle of these folks contributed to their premature demises, but I know of many, many, many virtual workers who have healthy, well-balanced  lifestyles that anyone would be jealous of.

Being healthy is something we are all challenged with, no matter what our jobs are, but we web workers are strategically positioned to create lifestyles that promote an extremely high quality of life. We can work the hours that we want to, we can arrange our day around what we enjoy most, and we are entirely in charge of how we organize our lives so that we have time for playing outdoors, spending quality time with family, and having diverse interests (outside of the computer).

Let's focus on the positive folks, and harken back to last year's Springtime Workday Remix. At this very time last year I told y'all about a seasonal change in schedule that I came up with that made it so that I felt like I was on a continuous vacation. Let's review: