by Jay on September 23, 2011
Surfing around on the internet the other day, I came across a discussion on advice for college freshman moving into dorms for the first time. I’ve been out of college for about seven years now, but I still found it enjoyable to read since it brought back some memories of my years living in dorms.
I noticed that two pieces of advice were brought up over and over again:
- Leave your door open as much as you can. The feeling is that this makes you more accessible and that people will stop in to say hi.
- Say yes to
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by Jay on November 21, 2010
Overall this media consumption diet has been great. I am amazed at the benefits so far.
I think the most noticeable thing is that time has become fairly unimportant to me. I hardly ever look at the clock now. I just don’t feel a need to. The first night we did this C.C. and I went to a bookstore to look at journals, and we were both amazed at how we felt like we had all the time in the world. There wasn’t that slight pulling feeling that you normally have to get back home (the odd thing is…
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by Jay on November 12, 2010
The other day, C.C. and I had a bit of a State of the Union discussion on how our big Escape from the Ordinary is going. A lot was discussed over a few hours, but I think the main theme was that we feel like we can do better. We’ve realized that we’ve become pretty set in our routines and haven’t been pushing ourselves to really take all of this to the next level.
The biggest problem, we came to realize, is our lack of focus. Way too much of our time gets eaten up by distractions that can…
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I justed wanted to make a quick post to share with you something we’ve come across. If you have an account with Bank of America (credit card, checking, savings, etc), they are running a promotion called Museums on Us. For one weekend out of each month you can get into participating museums for free by showing them your credit or ATM card. It seems like a pretty good deal if you already have an account with Bank of America. The free weekend for June is this weekend, June 5th and 6th. You can get more information here http://museums.bankofamerica.com/…
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by Jay on May 24, 2010
I am the type of person that can easily get stuck in routines.
I don’t know why and it is not something that I try to do. Every now and then it dawns on me that I do a lot of things at the same time or in the same way every day. Drive the same way to work, eat lunch at the same time (usually eating mostly the same things), eat dinner at the same time, go to bed at the same time, etc.
Are you like me? Do you tend to get stuck in routines? It…
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I find that a lot of times, whenever I try something new, I always jump forward and plan on it being a huge success. I can’t simply do something just because I enjoy it. It always has to be the next big thing—the idea that’s going to be the making of me. I guess a little optimism doesn’t hurt, but it kind of takes away some of the enjoyment when I’m always looking at things from the perspective of how successful will it be. There’s so much pressure to be successful that I get overwhelmed even before I start. I…
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by Jay on May 3, 2010
Inspiration hits. You want to make changes in your life, and follow the typical process of having a sit down with your self and either mentally or on paper coming up with a list of all the problems you feel you want to work on. At this point you feel motivated and excited about making wholesale changes.
The tendency then is to try and tackle all of those issues and changes all at once. But this can lead to burn out and/or feeling overwhelmed- both of which eventually lead to you likely not making any significant changes at all and…
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Motivation is a wonderful thing. It is the drive can get us moving and get us started working toward the goals we have for ourselves.
The problem with motivation is that it can only take you so far. It is often fleeting and goes in bursts. It is very easy to get excited about something at first and pour a lot of energy into it. But, as time goes on motivation often fades.
I think that a lot of us who are looking to do something unconventional and out of the ordinary can easily get caught in the ebb…
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Part of our plan for escaping our ordinary lives has been to reprioritize the way we spend money (spending less on unnecessary expenses and more on travel/new experiences). This has been especially important right now because of our new job situations. This has meant cutting expenses because we’re not bringing in as much in as we once did.
Cutting expenses can actually be very rewarding and I’d like to write future posts about just that, but I’m going to discuss something that has been an unintended consequence; namely that it ties in perfectly with getting out more and experiencing new…
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by Jay on January 25, 2010
It’s not easy. As some say, nothing that is worth it ever is easy. But I have to admit, this journey so far has been a bit of a struggle. The goal of the Ordinary Escape has been to get out there more and experience life. However, one thing is very clear– old habits die hard.
This is a tough post to write and maybe that is why we haven’t updated the site in a bit. There really hasn’t been much progress to report on. I think that moving to part time at work was a huge step, but unfortunately…
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