Well, it has begun. After this weekend’s purchase of a Casio G-SHOCK watch, I decided to buy a second watch for a more functional look. This particular model (GWM5610-1) hearkens back to a similar style watch I had in the late 1980s. Solar powered and able to receive time signals from WWVB, this watch is also synchronized with the Atomic clock.
I’m very pleased with how it feels on my wrist and I really like the look of it.
I’ve been thinking of getting rid of my Apple Watch for a while. Before the days of smartwatches, I was a bit of a connoisseur of various watches, many being made by Casio. I was one of the guys in class back in the mid 1980s whose watch would “beep beep” at the top of the hour just as the classroom clock minute hand moved to the “12” on the dial. Several of us had watches that beeped in sync like that, and every morning during homeroom we’d sync our digital watches to the school clock system. I can confidently say I was not alone in that endeavor.
Fast forward 40 years and I’ve grown quite bored with my Apple Watch, it being just an extension of my iPhone and all of its notifications. I’ve been feeling the urge to be less connected to the online chaos and I have always found my Apple Watch a little too “delicate” looking for my tastes.
Earl and I were strolling through Dillard’s yesterday when I noticed they had a fantastic sale on a Casio G-SHOCK watch I’ve had my eye on for a while: the Casio G-SHOCK GW9500. I bought the version with the negative LED display, in a fantastic military green.
The GW9500 feels awesome on my wrist. Features include a built-in compass, barometer, altimeter, and temperature sensors, as well as Atomic Clock sync and solar charging. The display also comes with a backlight. I’ve noticed the negative LED display is a little dimmer than I expected, but it works perfectly fine for my needs.
With all of the health tracking the Apple Watch does, and the gamification of fitness with closing rings, I realized how addicted I had become to seeing those little fitness rings fill up each day with my steps and the like. Akin to “likes” and the equivalent on social media, my Apple Watch was feeding into a dopamine addiction, something super prevalent throughout today’s society.
I’ve been making a serious effort to break free from this kind of addictive behavior, and the Apple Watch fitness rings ended up feeding that tendency in ways I didn’t even realize at the time. I found this very surprising.
When I went on my walk this morning, I was aware that my new watch was not tracking every heart beart, my iPhone was counting the steps, and there would be no “you closed your exercise ring” notification at the end of the endeavor. Admittedly, this made me feel a bit uneasy or “twitchy”, which is the sign for me of an addiction.
I’m really looking forward to enjoying my new Casio G-SHOCK watch. My health efforts shall continue, and perhaps even in a better way, because now I’ll be working out to the effort of how I feel, and not doing just enough to reach a certain number on my watch.
These digital devices can be sneaky little addiction generators. This is something I’m going to pay closer attention to as I continue my quest to be a little more present in the world around me.
I enjoy sharing my creative expressions through writing and photography and making videos. These efforts bring me a lot of happiness and keep me grounded. I enjoy the thought of sharing my positive experiences in this world with others; I have been blessed with the means to do a lot of exploring in this life.
For whatever reason, the YouTube algorithm doesn’t seem to really groove on a middle-aged guy making hiking and storm chasing videos while doing Uncle Arthur gestures for a crude, primitive special effect. It is what it is. I’m not in it for the clicks, I’m in it to share smiles.
I did go ahead and creative an account on “Buy Me A Coffee”. I have no expectations around this, but if you feel so inclined, you can take a look here.
I even created a QR code to be extra edgy.
Truman has been very intent on outside activity lately. He spent a good five minutes keeping an eye on this bird moving about the landscaping in front of my office window. He didn’t even notice me taking a photo.
This photo is blurry, as it is taken out the window of a moving vehicle along State Route 80 as my husband drives us across the open desert from Bisbee to Tucson.
I have a strong affinity for riding in the car on a summer night. It reminds me of family, it reminds me of safety, and it reminds me of happiness. I am genuinely happy in a car at night. Ask my mother; as a baby I wouldn’t sleep until Mom and Dad drove me around the night lit streets in their Volkswagen in 1968.
I’ve written about riding around in the back seat of Dad’s ‘71 Chevelle Heavy Chevy when I was kid.
It’s still so awesome to me.
The night sky over a darkened desert on a summer night is a beauty I can not put into words. Breathtaking? It’s more than that. It makes my soul sing.
These are moments that remind me that it’s a beautiful thing to be alive, despite all the chaos in the world.
Find your happy moments and embrace them. It makes life worth living.
Today’s email from The Daily Stoic is a good reality check.
Corruption. Dysfunction. Wildfires. Measles. War in the Middle East. In Ukraine. Political chaos. Economic instability.
Could it get any worse? Yes, yes it could.
You could be alive in Cato’s time—amidst “the dregs of Romulus,” as Cicero put it. You could be living through the decline and fall, as Marcus Aurelius did. You could have watched Rome burn, as Seneca literally did.
You could be alive when everyone had measles…and tuberculosis and typhus and malaria and yellow fever and God knows what else. Just a few generations ago, the whole world went to war! Millions died in trenches and from disease and starvation. And then—twenty-one years later—they did it again… but worse.
“Look around, look around, how lucky we are to be alive right now,” as the song in Hamilton goes. Right now instead of then. Instead of any other time.
For all the stupidity, for all the disasters, for all the noise and uncertainty—this is actually one of the least bad moments to ever exist.
But the Stoics would also point out: it wouldn’t matter either way. This is when you exist. You don’t get to pick. You don’t get a say.
This moment is your moment.
This brief period is your time on earth.The only thing you have a say over is how you spend it—who you are inside it.
You make your own luck in that sense.
So don’t curse these crazy times.
Make something of them.
While you still can.
ChatGPT used to format raw text into the formatted quote above. Text from today’s daily email from dailystoic.com.
I posted a very simple poll online this morning.
I’m curious as to whether folks are just feeling happy or not. I know there’s degrees of happiness, but in my binary way of thinking I would like to know if folks feel inclined to say “yes” or “no”, with no sliding scale in between, to whether they feel happy or not. The poll is anonymous.
The vibe of the country doesn’t feel particularly happy right now, out in general public and amongst the online folks. Is it a perception? Is it constantly fluctuating? I don’t know. Let’s see what people have to say.
The results should automatically appear on this post when the poll closes in 12 hours from this writing at 5:40 PM Mountain Standard Time / 8:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time.
It is a gorgeous night to enjoy some star gazing, even with lightning on the eastern horizon (lucky New Mexico). My favorite celestial object, the Pleiades, are below the western horizon this time of year, but there’s still plenty to enjoy on a beautiful night like tonight.
Photo taken with my iPhone 16 Pro.
I have become very bored with my iPhone 16 Pro, especially as a device in my creative workflow. It’s handy to have a camera on me at all times, but I feel like I’m taking pictures, instead of taking photos. And honestly, if I was taking pictures while out in public, I wouldn’t mind having some sort of cheap film camera like we used to have back in the day.
I still have my Canon Rebel XS digital camera from 2010. I’ve been snapping photos here and there, using mostly manual settings. There’s something nifty to me about hearing the shutter and such doing their thing, and it lends a little more credibility to my thinking of taking photos instead of pictures.
I snapped a couple of photos around the outside of our home this afternoon. I’m hoping those clouds build into something a little more interesting tonight, but in the meanwhile, here’s a slice of Mother Nature.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 29 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!