the power now can't give you

First off, let me start by saying I love technology-- love it. I love techy gadgets with a weird fervor you might not expect from someone like me.


But technology has us convinced that everything should happen now. And unfortunately, not only is this probably wrong (that it should always happen now) but also that it can. Technology tricks us of it's own merits.


For example, my project of ALL of last night. A simple 4 minute video for the Steamboat Springs kickstarter project. I'm convinced, because technology tells me to expect it now, that it shouldn't take 8 hours to upload a 4 minute video. But it does sometimes, I suppose. (You're killin me, internet. Killin me.)


My real problem is that I don't know how to put technology down (Okay, you caught me, I don't know how to put anything down). I go into a kind of project K-hole that it's almost impossible to come out of until it's complete. Which is great for writing. Great for getting stuff done. Except when you have a job. 


So I ended up still awake and 3AM frustrated beyond belief trying to get this thing up so I could launch the kickstarter project (please donate! even $5!!) Which is what I had hoped to do here this morning. 


But instead, I'm talking about the limits of technology and now. Eckhardt Tolle talks about the power of now. But even though I try not to invalidate the stuff I do get done, everyday, I face the limitations of what I can get done NOW. (Oh, Philosophy of Waiting & Seeing...)


One thing I won't miss about NYC (though I doubt I'll stop feeling this way anywhere else) is the constant feeling  that I should be doing more, that I'm not doing enough, that I'm letting someone down. That unless I spend every minute doing, doing, doing...


I read David Foster Wallace's Kenyon commencement speech everyday. Everyday I have a new favorite part. But many many days, it's this one. Today, it's definitely this one. 

But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.