Overdose at Christmas
And give it up for lent
My friends are all so cynical
Refuse to keep the faith
We all enjoy the madness cause we know we're gonna fade away
Robbie Williams - Millenium

Early January is the time of New Year resolutions. Yet for some years, I have tried to steer clear of those. Any time is a good time for resolutions, one might say. What me and my fiancée like to every year though, is try and find something that we can give up for Lent - which will start on February 17th this year.

Every year we try to be creative with what we "give up" for a period of 44 days. We do have an unwritten rule that whatever we give up, should not inconvenience our professional life too much and should not deliberately interfere with our day-to-day functioning and general health. We did give up 'alcohol' one year, which some might say would definitely interfere with their "day-to-day" functioning. Giving up meat was quite a challenge as well, but enriched our food experiences by searching for fish alternatives.

This year I am quite early with the 'giving up for Lent' business. The most likely reason for that is that I feel I need to purge my life of some activities that take up too much time. Lent would be a good way of starting that 'purge'.

I am an avid Google Reader user and over the past year my Feed subscriptions have grown in numbers. Keeping track of all these feeds has been taking an increasingly amount of time of my day. Though I like to keep up-to-date with news and technology - having to spent a few hours every day to sort through hundreds of posts has become a little wearisome. So my resolution for Lent (what I am planning to give up) is to clean out most of my Google Reader subscriptions.

As I follow some of these feeds for work, I doubt I will decide to give them all up (and then having to reside to visiting different websites/blogs on a regular basis). But I will promise to give up the most time-consuming ones that I can easily live without for 44 days (and maybe for much longer).

In trying to be more minimalistic about my Google Reader usage (online reading) I am going to have to unsubscribe to the "minimalism" blogs I follow as well. No more "minimalism" blogs in order to pursue minimalism...

Recently I have become somewhat of a minimalist convert. After my partner successfully made me do the "switch" (to Mac) a couple of years ago and after she taught me that "holding on to stuff" not only clutters the apartment but also literally clutters our mind and soul, I have started to appreciate a leaner and cleaner lifestyle.

Less clutter, less things that I keep, less things to keep clean. Less things to move or carry around. Less baggage for the soul. A clear and free mind.

I am trying to follow the same approach in my work and digital life now. A cleaner Mac OS (emptier dock, clean desktop - almost there). A organized mailbox (work, still working on my private mailboxes). These are all little steps that help me focus.

Our lives (and our software and the Internet) are way too cluttered.

These blogs might help you follow a minimalist approach as well:

• Minimal - Minimalism in things
• Minimal Mac - Your Mac, simplified
• Mac Minimalist - Tips & Tricks toward a simpler & more productive Mac

I wrote this post with Writeroom - a Mac application that is designed to help you focus on writing. Amazing. It kind of reminds me of Dougie Howser and the archaic computer he used for writing his journal.

The past few days we have been blessed with an out of town guest staying over. It reminds me of how pleasant it is to:

• Talk to someone older with a lot of life experience;
• who has experienced all these different cultures (Dutch, German, American, Australian) in her life;
• who is so full of life energy;
• with an infectious holistic approach to everything in life;
• and is an excellent Yoga instructor.

So this morning we got to enjoy a private Yoga lesson which brought us to extreme relaxation.

I am also more aware now about how much I enjoy entertaining a house guest. Or at least in the sense that the sharing of food (and other little comforts) really makes me happy. I have my partner to thank for that: I have never before enjoyed food this much in my life. The sharing of food (and looking forward to eating it) has become an increasingly important part of my life. I am definitely on a "seefood" diet...

I consider myself to be quite social yet I do not believe I am a socialist. When someone is in need, there should be help. From family, from firends, from other humans, from society and the government. When someone loses his/her ability to work in an accident, that person should be taken care of. When a rich banker is cut on this multimillion dollar bonus because he screwed up, then screw him (or her). When that same banker can not be blamed for his company screwing up because he/she worked in the one department that was actually not making any bad investments and is still turning a profit (without government involvement), he/she can still say bye bye to his million dollar bonus. Or any bonus whatsoever.

How the United States has turned into one of the most socialist countries in the world in less than a year, I still can not understand. Do not blame the Democrats, the Bush administration started this all. Knowing that this form of socialism is of the most unfair kind in the world (Socialism for the rich), can really get my blood boiling.

The Netherlands have always been an outrightly socialist country. Though day-to-day warmth and kindness in the society or sometimes a lot harder to come by. The amount of government interference and rules can literally drive a person crazy. This has left the country in a state where it is more than often considered to be "OK" or excusable to live off other people. Those who know how to "play" the system well enough, - and do not have any moral hesitations in doing so - can get away with living their life in this country without making any effort to stand on their own.

I have learned to be quite tolerant with this kind of behavior. I do not like to see it legitimized though. The TV commercial from one of the health insurance agencies in the Netherlands talks about a guy named Jan Willem Bos. Jan Willem has a job (lucky him) but Jan Willem has a lot of stress. He is scared of losing his job because of the Great Recession. Jan Willem is so stressed that he can not go to work anymore. Jan Willem's boss does not know what to do with that. But that is ok, because Menzis (the health insurer) will take care of that.

Jan Willem gets to ride his bike around the city and sits down reading a newspaper. Jan Willem looks like a loser. To be honest, Jan Willem's behavior makes him a loser. Jan Willem is afraid of losing his job and therefore thinks it is ok to not do his job anymore. Not exactly the appropriate behavior for an employee? Definitely not something that we should be promoting in a TV commerical. Jan Willem should be fired right away. Jan Willem's boss should probably be fired as well because he obviously can not explain to Jan Willem that it is NOT OK to refuse to do your work. Jan Willem should feel lucky that he still has a job. That he lives in a wealthy country and that he probably only has to work 36 hours a week with a zillion holidays. Menzis should be scolded by our government for spreading such harmful propaganda. What if everyone suddenly feels like Jan Willem? And the worst thing about it: in this country Jan Willem can not be fired anymore. Since Jan Willem expressed his fear of being fired and now has mental issues - firing him is virtually impossible. Or at least not without a huge severance pay. I am all about being nice (and social) to each other. But here I have to draw the line. Jan Willem and Menzis have both crossed this line.

In my 'younger' years I used to play a lot of (PC) video games. I must have spent hours playing games like the Settlers or Warcraft. When I grew older, I successfully fought the urge to immerse myself in these games. I also did not keep up with new game releases as frequently anymore. The time was spent well on other things. One thing I have noticed is that a lot of the times when I did play games, I always wanted to finish a game as quickly as possible. Not that I did not want to enjoy the game - I really did. But more that I wanted to experience the game completely, get through it and be done with it. In the case of First Person Shooters I often ended up using cheat codes to finish the game as quick as possible. I was not that interested in being an expert shooter, I just wanted to have finished the story.

A couple of times a year I still have this urge to play a computer game (aside from the occasional Wii-ing that I do). The last couple of times that went something like this: I install a game and start playing it. More and more hours are 'used' up on playing. I get frustrated with how much time this is costing me. I decide this is a waste of my time. The game is deleted from my computer and will not be played again.

Every time this happens (it does not happen a lot), I feel like I have overcome some kind of addiction.

On another note. If I have to choose my all-time favorite game it would probably be Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. Sushi in fishbowl did not end the game well with me. She had to be transferred into that desk lamp and then somehow I could not resist the urge to "Turn on + Lamp".

These early (graphical) adventure games did wonders for my English btw.

In the latest Heroes episode (season 3, episode 17), Noah Bennett uses the phrase morally grey again. Apart from me joking that morally grey would not make a nice wedding color, it also made me wonder what shade of grey it would really be. I actually believe 'morally grey' should not really exist - a contradictio in terminis maybe. Isn't something either 'good' or 'bad' and making any excuses just pulls it in the grey area and therefore admits it was 'bad'? I guess it also depends on what definition you go with.

As for the current state of the world: it seemed that for a lot of people in business and politics 'morally grey' was (and is) their favorite color. Makes you wonder when the day of reckoning is going to come.