Recently Historic

Study for Rage Against The Machine, 2015.

Opening this Thursday at Gaffa in the Sydney CBD is Recently Historic: Australian Electronic Arts in Western Sydney #2, featuring recent work by myself and a whole bunch of people I used to go to university with. While a description like that may read like a reclaiming of one's glory days, the broader context ties into research by the show's curator, Monica Brooks, into the Bachelor of Electronic Arts at the University of Western Sydney. Now for what it's worth, I studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts, but that's a whole other story.

Sometimes a good idea is just a good idea.

The New Year is usually a good time to give yourself a series of lofty goals that aren't well-enough defined. In 2015 I've decided to give myself several of these, figuring that surely at least one of them will stick.

One of these goals involves being all milennial and starting to use the blog again. After a couple of years of not updating, coupled with the death of RSS services (or at least Google Reader, I'm sure there are others that people still like), I'm sure there are fewer than ever people to shout into void at, but let's give this a shot.

Other goals are more pragmatic (and apparently really obvious), like "reading more". I could just write this as "use the internet less so you can read more", but I don't think that really addresses the issue. I already know I'm easily distracted; I feel that my aim overall is to better channel these distractions.

In thinking about this, a friend involved in the International Librarians Network pointed me towards this list of ways to build a reading habit. First on the slate is this:

Set times. You should have a few set times during every day when you’ll read for at least 5-10 minutes. These are times that you will read no matter what — triggers that happen each day...

I am terrible at sticking to a routine, and I can usually dismiss advice like this out of hand, but there's something about reading this list at this moment in space and time that is completely resonant for me. So let's see if I can be a little more structured about things, and maybe in 2015 I can get a few more things done. Either that, or I'll see you in another two years.