Reimagining Myself

Jul 2010

A lesson learned from a boy at the laundromat

Tonight at the laundromat, there was a boy with his mother. To kill time they played a game. The boy was by misfortune always loosing. He got terribly upset every time he lost and started crying in the end, not wanting to play the game anymore. He reminded me a lot of myself when I was younger. I couldn't stand playing a game and losing. Later I discovered the joy of playing without needing to win. Indeed some of my favorite game I do not recall winning (among them Bohnanza and the settler card game). One of the best game nights I've ever spent with friends was playing a game that could not be won at all (100 blank white card). One day this boy will hopefully learn the joy of playing to play, not playing to win.

Transposing this to my recent experience in life makes a lot of sense. I started doing research because I liked research. I went abroad to do more research and learn more because I enjoyed it that much. I got caught in a climate of wanting to succeed and wanting to build up a career. Pursuing the latter only led to frustration and despair. I started to hate research. I've now refocused, re-discovered my joy in doing research. I feel better more relaxed, more motivated and thus will more likely succeed. Whenever I get caught wanting to win, I hope I remember the lesson I learned from the boy at the laundromat: Play to play, not to win.

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Thu, 22 Jul 2010
Why I (finally) decided to blog

I do have private webspace and created a couple of websites, since I started using the internet about 10 years ago. I always liked the possibility to share thoughts and knowledge; the bi-directional nature of the internet always appealed to me. Appart from this, I never really started to blog. I've had personal wikis (hacked with trackback capability) and lately started to use soup as an aggregator of my digital life. Lately, inspired by some blogs I have been reading I feel the urge to share thoughts not easily truncated to 140 characters or into a catchy image. I tried to write some of these on my soup, however I feel soup is way to noisy for longer texts. At least my attention span while looking through feeds is very short and if something is not a catchy phrase or image, I won't stick to it.

I started this blog to have a plattform to elaborate longer on my thoughts; To have a structure my thoughts can cristalize on and to record the change happening in my life right now. I want to keep it simple and minimal (I was inspired by the design of mnmlist) and therefore decided against comments or fancy retweet, give-me-some-money or i-like-this buttons. (Honestly I don't understand the I-like-this movement anyway, I don't care what you like: I care what you care about enough to stand up and talk to me on it). I will not keep this closed though, email me, blog in your own blog about it, if you have things to say. If an interesting discussion arises, I will write it down. I don't do this to be an elitist asshole, I just often get stuck in reading comments after I read blog posts with 99% of them not containing any usable information.

To keep noise low, you will also only find one story on the front page and in the rss feed. If you want more, feel free to browse the archives. My aim is not to lure you into reading my blog for hours and hours until you have reached the end. I'd rather have you reading only one story but reading it focussed, having time and mind to think about and then go on with your life. The latter is so much more important than my ramblings.

So what will I write about? I plan to write on changes in my life: I am currently trying to switch from working 60-80 hours per week to significantly less; I am transitioning to a more minimal way of living; I am giving away many of the things I hoarded before; and finally I try care better for my physical and emotional needs. If you are interested in all this, feel free to subscribe to my feed or check back regularily. I don't plan on writing an article every day but every week would be nice.

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Fri, 09 Jul 2010
About

The Blog:
"Reimagining Myself" is my personal diary on the start of a different life with a different self. It doesn't have comment functionality, however I am eager receiving feedback, just send me emails: mihi@lo-res.org

Myself:
I am known as Michael Bauer or mihi to many people. Born in 1980, I was trivialized in experimental education. Visited medical school in vienna from 1999-2007 and was working as a researcher since then. 2008 I relocated to Boston, MA, working and learning a lot. I am now in transition to life my life somewhere else. How and where is not fully determined.

Impressum:
Since some places demand this: Responsible for this blog is: Michael Bauer
Hoher Markt 8-9/2/23
1010 Wien, Österreich
mihi@lo-res.org

I am not responsible for any external pages linked from this site.

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Fri, 09 Jul 2010
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