Streamlining life.

Coffee and conversation, face to face, with friends. 

Nature abhors a vacuum. At least that's the saying I always hear. But I think this applies also (or mostly) to humans. They seems to have the need to fill everything with: a philosophy, a schedule, a tighter schedule, a bucket list, days scheduled in 15 minute intervals, maximum streaming content potential, rabid connectivity (human and electronic...but mostly electronic), movie reservations, restaurant reservations, forum arguments, too many time commitments, and too much need for massive income to support the endless momentum aimed toward filling the time, the space and the social expectations. 

My wife and I went to a new restaurant recently. Neither of us brought our mobile phones with us. The hostess at the restaurant suggested that they would have a table for us in five or ten minutes. Could I give her a telephone number? Why? So we can text you when your table is ready. No phone, can't you just look over about twenty feet, see us and then walk over and tell us the table is ready? Okay, sure. 

Then there was the parking garage that the restaurant uses. You need to use your phone to scan a QR code at the restaurant in order to exit the garage when you are leaving. No phone? No exit! So, of course, we pushed the "help" button and explained that we were in the small minority that evening of phone-less people. Someone somewhere pushed a button and released us from captivity at no cost. 

In some sense the arrival and ubiquity of smart phones has streamlined some things. And eliminated the need for other things all together. You no longer need a camera to take most day-to-day photos. You no longer need "audiophile" equipment to listen to music. You no longer need to buy music on physical media you can generally stream anything you want through your phone. You don't need to have a newspaper physically delivered to your house, you can get it on your phone. Plane tickets and boarding passes? On the phone. Medical test results? Phone. Credit cards? Naw. ApplePay on your phone. Remote control for your camera? Nope, app on the phone. Egg timer? Phone. Encyclopedia Brittanica? Phone. Flashlight? Phone. Check your investments? Phone. Read Michael Johnston's blog? Phone. Want food? Door Dash --- on your phone. Want someone to chew your food for you? .... not just yet.

The phone and its friends, the laptop and the iPad all conspire together, along with A.I., to fill every moment of modern life with tasty, alluring content and convenience. And they are so, so, so addictive. I often see people in moments of panic when they have misplaced their phone and are unable to find it again within seconds. The panic is palpable, extensive, in some sense ( imagined loss of control) terrifying. And the hidden costs of all this "convenience" while mostly hidden, is outrageous. There are hundreds of dollars spent monthly in keeping the connections to your family's cellphones alive. Many apps and streaming services come with never-ending subscription costs. But the real cost is the disconnection with actual, visceral happiness. The content, taking advantage of human nature, has successfully filled for most people whatever empty spaces there were in people's lives. Now they are busy all the time. And it may turn out that the quiet, unscheduled, empty spaces turn out to be the most important part of life --- at least when it comes to real happiness and calm satisfaction. The unscheduled moments. Sitting quietly watching the sunrise. Walking without agenda or end goal; just for the sake of moving and seeing life beyond your usual neighborhood. Meeting up with people just to see what they have to say.

When I go to a restaurant the last thing I want to do is monitor my phone. Or watch my dining companion sneaking peeks at the screen of their phone. I've pretty much stopped going out to see movies because other people's attention spans have been so severely eroded that they need to look at the bright and glittery screens of their phones even more often than they look at the giant screen in front of them that they paid to experience. I am not delighted to see bright flashes of blue screens bounce around a dark auditorium while all the action I paid to see is up on the singular screen. I think we've hit the point where people's screen addictions are harming them. Not just a random person here and there but the majority of our first world population. And no, Karen is not a good enough driver to both navigate a school zone in her Suburban SUV, at speed, while holding a latte in one hand and texting with the other. So, in fact, the always on screen is daily, hourly and minute by minute endangering innocent bystanders' lives.

We as photographers benefit from streamlining life. Cutting out the distractions of contrived convenience and everyday always on life in order to be able to bring more intentionality to the things we photograph. To see with intensity instead of trying to multitask between work, domestic connection and social media. I guess my challenge to everyone would be, Can you disconnect for hours at a time just to really enjoy actual life? To experience uninterrupted satisfaction?

I try to streamline by leaving my phone at home. If I need to bring a phone to pay for Austin's silly, city parking fees (which no longer accept, in most locations, cash or credit cards but can only be accessed online) I buy parking time, turn the phone off and leave it in the car while I run my errands or make photographs. I let my friends and family know that email rules apply, for me, as far as responding to texts is concerned: I'll get back to you by the end of the business day, or, where applicable, in 24 hours. I am not an emergency room doctor or firefighter. I am not ON CALL. You cannot reach me instantaneously, on a whim, "just to check in." You think you are having a medical emergency? Call 911.

I don't know if this has occurred yet in your geographic local but most businesses I deal with (coffee shops, camera stores, grocery stores, bookstores, etc.) no longer take cash. Your folding, paper money is no longer in vogue. So I carry with me one credit card. It works for everything. I have no affinity cards, no store cards, no duplicate cards, no separate cards for business. Just a credit card. It works everywhere. It's a Visa card. You can tap it. It's all purpose. I pay it off every month, like clockwork. Having one point of payment simplifies accounting and makes it easier for me to keep track of expenses. I don't care about "points" or "cash back" or any other permutation of credit cards which might encourage one to "spend more money to save more money." 

We have cars. We live in Texas. But now that my schedule doesn't include working for clients I try to take the one bus that exists about a half mile from my house and which goes directly into downtown as often as I can. Yes, I can tap my credit card upon entering the bus and pay my fare that way. In a nice way riding the bus in order to go downtown streamlines my street photography process because I don't need to pay attention to traffic, find parking in downtown and pay $20-$40 to park somewhere inconvenient. Yeah, good luck finding a metered space...  I pay a dollar and fifty cents for the bus ride and arrive in downtown unhurried and unmoored from the time clock. Same thing on my return to the neighborhood. 

Another thing I find sadly funny is the way people, in general, vacation. Most working people in our area would tell you that they are scheduled so tightly they barely sleep. Between the demands of corporate jobs, shuttling multiple kids from one activity to the next, shopping, watching football games on TV, staying up late to answer emails from their company's overseas offices and getting everything ready to hit the ground at the same speed the next day they barely have a moment to breathe. So, after half a year of this insanely frenetic activity they feel entitled to a vacation. But rather than finding a nice place to chill out, tune out and relax they bring the same process of daily work life to their vacations. Rushing their families to crowded airports, going from tourist intensive city to another tourist city every day. Never lingering long enough in one place to really know it, much less enjoy it. Tight schedules dictated by airline schedules, the tyranny of hotel check out times, group tours and the whims of restauranteurs who routinely tell the most frenzied tourists that they can accommodate them at the 4:30pm seating or the 11:15pm seating but, sadly, there is nothing in prime time. 

The average tourists come home jet-lagged, sniffling with whatever virus they caught from other tourists on the plane, and so exhausted from the tightly timed break from work that work starts to look relaxing. We don't do that. We pick a place, land there and spend a week or so diving into the experience. Quality of attention instead of quantity of destinations.

Routines are nice. Not making unnecessary decisions is nice. If you live somewhere wonderful it's probably always going to be better than anywhere you go on a trip; especially while on a budget. We've both traveled so much over the years, for work, that the idea of a nice vacation, for me, is trying new restaurants in our city, sitting in a comfortable chair in our lovely house, catching up on reading. But never reading non-fiction!!! Always traveling through an imagined life created by gifted writers. Never reading about how to maximize my efficiency or anything about an interesting battle between nations in 1395. Or about investing. Or about diets. Why make your brain work on stuff it can't possibly enjoy? Why when there is so much valuable fiction to be read?...

I've given up scheduling lunches or coffee get togethers with anyone who is: habitually late. often on their phones. rude to restaurant or coffee shop employees. makes the restaurant check into a complicated spreadsheet of who owes what. Life is too short. I'll also include people who put their phones on the table. Invite others to join us without notifying me about the additions. Chew with their mouths open. Talk too loud. Talk too much.  Life is way too short. 

So, kill your phone. Turn off unnecessary subscriptions. Stop bucket listing your life and just find out the things you really enjoy. Things you'd likely do if you had all the time in the world and no one to listen to you brag about your latest bucket list cross off. Schedule less. Don't feel like you always have to join in. Stop going to Super Bowl parties if you really don't enjoy passively watching football. Don't reflexively respond to every text. Set fewer goals. Sleep in. Drink coffee more slowly. Savor. Walk further. Take a camera with you but don't set goals for your camera, your photography or your "legacy for the future." Not everything you've touched needs to be archived. In fact, the less time you spend archiving all that stuff the happier you'll probably be. Instead of thinking about legacy or how history will treat you spend that time enjoying the present moment. The person in front of you. The food you always wanted to try. The Now-ness of it all.

You can rush through life but it's all going to be over too quickly no matter how you schedule or what you get done. If you streamline out all the stuff you really didn't want to do in the first place you'll have a hell of a lot more time for the things you really did. 

The blog was down because it was getting hammered with hundreds of thousands of pageviews. It seems to be resolved so here we are. But, as a reminder to the people who were "annoyed", the blog exists for my enjoyment as much as yours. When you get "annoyed" because the free content was unavailable for 24 hours it annoys me that you are annoyed. And when it annoys me it all starts to feel like work. Like something that needs to be scheduled and maintained. And when it feels too much like work I'll be happy to switch it to "authors only" and limit access to only one person. Me. 

The blog is here only because people still come here and read it. Say "hello" once in a while so we know you're here and not watching sports on TV instead.