immersion in humancentered-ness = purge of excess.

the title of this post may seem a bit... um. hypocritical? my goal is that i'm not being hypocritical.

This past week in class, we began a discussion of human-centered design. This discussion will continue for the next 2 years with the intent of teaching my classmates and me how to design for users / viewers / regular people [aka, people who know nothing / a little / a lot about design]. This preliminary discussion was enlightening. Basically, I spent the entire week feeling like I am nothing more than a consumer buying into the ideas of the people that are designing for me.

Let me tell you a little about myself. I have trained myself over the past 10 years of my life to see the world from an objective position. Not objective in the sense of being un-biased, but moreso in the sense that I see the world as an object designed for my viewing pleasure / criticism. Everything that I see, I see as a composition making up a larger composition that exists. I have a strong passion for color, space, shape, dimension, rhythm, balance, etc. Part of this composition of the world [the one that I see], is simplicity... cleanliness... organization... intention. It frustrates me when I see excess... disorder... messiness... randomness. For those of you that know me personally, this explains a bit of my O.C. organizational behavior. I HATE unorganized, unintentional, disorder. Even when it comes to design. Unthoughtfulness kinda makes me crazy. So, I guess this week overwhelmed in the sense that I, along with most others in the world, have completely and totally immersed my life in this chaotic, unorganized, competitive design equation that exists on the screen of a computer. So simple, yet so complicated. I am completely addicted to doing things on a lit-up screen. And what is funny about this is that i absolutely LOVE to do things naturally, but the more I am at a computer, the more I need to be at a computer... You know what I mean? For example, right now I am journaling on a computer that is on the internet. I used to hand-write journal entries. And it used to be something that I loved. I would disconnect from everyone and everything and sit with myself. Now, here I am, on mozilla, publishing my thoughts to the world [and don't forget that I can see my email inbox right now as I write].

I am totally ridiculous. and my life is a damn computer.

I cannot [and at this point, will not] give up my computer. Though, if I were in the ideal situation, I would go 'into the wild' and meditate all day every day. But, I am not going to do that. Though, I would like to limit my usage and only use when I need to. My career mandates that I spend about 75% of my time working digitally. I am going to mandate myself that I actually only spend 75% [maximum] on my lit-up screen. The rest, I must do with my hands. And my free time? Well, that's another story.... I have to figure out how I am going to purge internet surfing, tweeting, gchatting, blogging, facebooking....... so far, no tweeting, gchatting, or facebooking until Friday. I NEED some real physical interaction with human beings... or atleast talking on the phone.

So, I will still continue my weekly blog. But, I just won't be advertising it on facebook... twitter... gchat...

I am now going to paint! Have a wonderful weekend.

Namaste-

Sarah.