A day in the life
“Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”
-Bill Moyers
I am glad to be back writing again after a long hiatus….This is not a regular fare for those of you who have read me in the past…It is simply a laundry list, a sorry set of excuses explaining my absence, and one way to personally reflect on “mundane” events from the last couple of months. I track below one “normal” day’s activities:
–Read RSS, Twitter, NY Times, Facebook updates with coffee–1.0 hours
–Forget to eat breakfast–0 hrs
–Check in on Ms Yue and practice my Yueyinglish–30 min.
Prepare lecture materials for the week on Culture, Writing, Social Media…–1.0 hours
Tweet and Re-Tweet interesting articles about China, Charity, Humor, Inspiration, Good Music and post pics from my i-Phone and relate drivel about what I am up to for the day (zzzzzzzz)….. –1.0 hours
Order in late lunch that I eat cold later while I am working–2 min.
Read and answer all @ and DM Tweets, Email, and FB messages sent my way; try to delete most of the 120 spam mails received overnight–1.0 hours
Speculate on the actual number of Viagara users who buy online–10 sec.
Online meetings with amazing charities to whom I donate time, web work and support–1.5-2.0 hrs
Training and consultation with digital interns in SEO, SEM, PR 2.0, online digital marketing; prepare business proposal for an expat business that will either not pay for, or steal and then outsource to a “good friend who is an SEO expert” –2.0 hrs
Clean my world-view glasses and remember all the good folks; chant “the future is all you can hope to control”–10 min.
Buy some clever domain name (Straight-eye-for-the queer-guy.com) that I will park with the 185 others I own and never use–5 min.
Catch-up on Skype with close friends and collegues–1.0 hours
Lecture on nothing I was prepared to speak about–2.0 hrs
Laugh and walk away when students or colleagues ask the meaning of “multitasking”–0 min
Business Planning, delegation of work with PA and team–1-hrs
Re-explain business planning to the interns who pretended they understood my colloquial English the first time thru–30 min.
Do a BBC Radio Interview on Censorship–45 min.
Wonder if that sound at the door is the Net Nanny–10 sec.
Write 3 letters of recommendation for students past and present–45 min.
Give pep talk to the students for whom I wrote recommendations and tell them it is not necessary to send applications to 65 U.S. colleges for safety–1 min.
Help brainstorm three separate creative projects (non-profit) with artist friends in Washington, SG and Shanghai on Skype and by telephone– 1 hr.
Do Guardian newspaper interview about China Internet/Social Media/Censorship–45 min.
Wonder if I have seen that car outside my house before–10 sec.
Hand code/write SEO/SEM work I am “donating” to a $1,000,000 online company that pays a friend instead of me (he is in danger of losing his house due to a layoff)–30 min.
Media Magazine Interview (sound bite) about Baidu/social media in China–20 min.
Drink 3-5 canned drinks (tea, fruit juice, diet Coke…)–Ongoing
Make organizational plans for free networking event I sponsor in Guangzhou –15 min.
Skim a poetry book while in the, um, library (do not visualize)–confidential 😉
Power nap/meditate–20 min.
Catch fast dinner at a local cafe; watch TED video on i-Phone enroute–45 min.
Openly stare at the 60 year old expat and his 25 year old Chinese mate without a rational thought in my head–seems like days
Watch a re-run and then the news (also a ongoing re-run) while surfing the web for new ideas–hard to do as I have had hearing loss since my twenties (THE MILITARY FRANK, THE MILITARY) and often need closed captions or subtitles (yep, really)–1.5 hrs
Try to reconstruct the plot line of the show I watched (’cause I was surfing at the time) and Google/Yahoo TV news stories that the Chinese censors tried to hide by cutting away to commercials–20 min.
Curse the Great Firewall, Twitter’s Fail whale and the sluggishness of my computer on VPN–Afraid to quantify
Make plans (hotel reservations or prep my spare room) for out of town first and second life guests who graciously drop by and rescue me from myself at least one day a week–10 min.
Scan and answer tweets and retweet valuable or fun information; blow soda thru my nose at great tweets by , , @ and others; marvel at the kindness and wisdom of folks like @, @, @, @, @, @, @d, @, , @, , , @ , @ and scores of online buds–30-40 min.
Plan on how to politely turn down a chance to write chapters for 3 books on China SEO, Internet and Business; write three blog articles in my head and “vow” to put them online; “swear” to begin learning more Chinese; think of guests for radio show (soon to return) with Des Walsh and for Web Wednesday Guangzhou; lament that I have not read a whole book straight thru in 2 years; get back up to take medicine for autoimmune condition that keeps me awake and in pain most nights; create 20 new business ideas I will be able to say in 10 years I thought of first–45 min. (while trying to get to sleep)
Be thankful, really–24/7
I will be rotating the posts I swore I would write 😉 with poetry from my new book: Stone Pillow: New and Collected 1994-2009. The first poetry post will go up tomorrow!
9 responses so far
Wow, I feel like we have a lot of similarities! Although, so far I only have about 5 domains names that I have big plans for and yeah, really soon I’m gonna do something with them, I’m sure!!
I’m glad to hear that others share my paranoia about getting a knock on the door – though I’m not really doing anything nearly interesting enough to warrant that. I wonder if most foreigners in China feel that way too?
And I thought you just sat around talking with that other reprobate Aussie friend of yours on Skype!
How did I leave that out?!!!!
It’ll be nice to see some of the poetry…can’t wait.
Scrabble. You forgot Scrabble.
it’s good to see you allowed yourself some free time over there 😉
miss you man, be well
d
Nice to see you here…
Need to see you in person—sometime before you get arrested in front of the White House for making “noise” 😉
Miss you too my friend…
And I play 3-4 games at a time with journalists and British sharks who cannot spell COLOR right…. 😉
Having trouble getting on the new one with my VPN
I am going to reference one of your works soon…
Thanks Rick, you AARP fossil you 😉