My best friend Paul is the most amazing person I have ever known, without question. He’s a tremendous friend and despite being thousands of miles away, I feel closer to him than many people I’ve known my entire life.

Yesterday he posted a remarkable blog entry about keeping hope and working to make a difference. It touched me, and I think it’ll touch you too if you’ll take the time to read it. A quick excerpt:

I often sit up at night thinking about the amazing things that humanity has accomplished. For every war we’ve ever waged, or genocide committed, or lie we’ve ever told, we’ve done something absolutely astounding. Human beings – nothing but flesh and electricity, mind you – built the Great Pyramids, the World Trade Center. We have walked on the moon, orbited the earth, created moving images that can be transmitted via flickers of light. We have guaranteed most of our children few education, eradicated disease and fought pestilence. For every dream and idea we’ve ever had, we’ve accomplished something in its honor. Every time you step on an airplane, you experience that absolute magic that is the human mind in motion. Think about it – thousands of pounds of steel and aluminum – flying at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour, circling the globe. You can’t tell me that there isn’t magic in that.

And so I’m proposing, that even with all that Schadenfreude out there (that, no, we shouldn’t ignore, it can be fun), we should take time out of every day to look for hope in our lives. Let’s all perform acts of kindness, to strangers and our friends, with the hope that they pass it on. It’s easy to think of this as just a mere Pay It Forward, let’s all cry because Helen Hunt is in love with Kevin Spacey and the little kid will probably die, event – but it should be more than that. We can make it more than that. I promise you, yes, we can.

Thank you, Paul, for truly making my day. Keep the hope alive, you inspire me.

The Washington Post this morning had a lot of interesting news stories. Some of them pissed me off and others made me smile but one really caught my attention. Naturally, it was about twitter.

This evening at Wolf Trap, the National Symphony Orchestra’s conductor Emil de Cou will be tweeting to the audience during the performance. They won’t be tweets like, “Check it out I’m waving my arms in front of a big crowd at Wolf Trap!” but instead things like “In my score Beethoven has printed Nightingale = flute Quail = oboe Cuckoo = clarinet — a mini concerto for woodwind/birds.” And of course anyone can follow the twitter account he’ll use, @NSOatWolfTrap.

I think this is a brilliant experiment. Every day, I feel like I see another example of the incredible ways people can innovate using Twitter. Such a simple technology–140 character messages–that is radically and rapidly altering the way we communicate and experience things such as networking, events, healthcare and now, even music.  By tweeting during the concert the conductor is adding even more depth to an already cultured experience. Instead of simply listening, you have the option of learning.

With tweets about the structural composition of the music, the composer or the conductor’s interpretation of the score, the significance of certain parts or even historical information about a piece, you gain so much more insight into the concert. It becomes about understanding the music, not simply enjoying.

Of course, as the Post article suggests, there will be those that protest. Some will say this takes enjoyment out of the experience, making it too complicated. Others will say the introduction of technology muddies one of the last pure experiences we have in 21st century culture. And of course you’ll have some simply complaining of the light given off by cell phone LCD screens. Needless to say, I disagree with all of these arguments.

First, you can only be so complicated with 140 character strings of text. These tweets will be simple, easy to understand and of course extremely quick to read (the previous two sentences were over 150 characters alone). This isn’t a big enough distraction to detract from the experience, it’ll simply make you think a little more about what you’re hearing. As harsh as it may sound, if this is your argument I think you’re just lazy.

As for technology meddling with the experience–why halt progress? I can virtually guarantee every attendee to the concert will have a cell phone with them, why not make use of it–especially when it’s only in this extremely limited capacity. This isn’t a light show, this doesn’t dumb down the experience whatsoever. It’s complementary and also, completely optional–if you have a problem with it, don’t participate.

Finally, they have already announced there will be a separate seating area for those interested in participating in this little experiment, to ensure LCD backlights don’t affect others in the audience. A perfectly reasonable and effective solution, in my opinion.

I’m eager to see what happens with this and to follow it as it happens. Although I obviously won’t be attending the concert, anyone can follow the tweets simply by following @NSOatWolfTrap.

Found via John Lyle (@johnlyle). This presentation is just a fantastic piece of work–excellent, cited statistics, great points to be made. I really can’t rave about it enough. It’s a quick one to get through (don’t let the number of slides fool you) and I highly recommend flipping through it all.

Let me begin by pointing you to this excellent article on the Huffington Post by Kari Henley, titled “Are You Obsessed With Being Busy?” For me, the answer is a loud and clear, YES.

Hi, my name is Alex and I am addicted to being busy.

My favorite line in the article puts it perfectly:

I struggle with being busy vs. being burned out on a regular basis. I like to drive fast, eat fast, read fast, type fast and can multi-task with the best of them. When I finally do stop, I often walk around in circles, trying to figure out what to ‘do’ with myself! Sound familiar?

All too much. I’m busy. And so is almost every single person I know. We all complain about it from time to time but deep in our hearts I’m pretty sure we all really love it. We do it to ourselves, after all–between new technologies, social media, our jobs and living our lives outside of work and the Internet, we’ve got a lot going on.

Just today I led our weekly team meeting and my presentation focused–as it often does–on Twitter. First, we discussed how to fit Twitter into your schedule, particularly from a work perspective as a busy public relations professional. It’s not easy. For some, it may not be possible. And for others, they might not even want to try. But for my generation, I see this coming very naturally to us.

We have been raised to multitask. America is still one of the hardest and longest working countries in the world and, although our economy may be changing rapidly, our work ethic seems intact. From a personal perspective, I have been trained to balance all of the traditional tasks in communication, while also balancing a valid social media and online presence AND still maintaining at least some semblance of a personal life.

From the moment I wake up I begin multitasking, and that’s become a way of life for me. Here’s a very basic example of some of my day-to-day activities:

• Wake up, make breakfast while listening to the news on CNN, while getting dressed.
• Eat breakfast while checking twitter, e-mail and reading the newspaper.
• Check blogs, twitter and listen to music on my way to work.
• TweetDeck is open all day at work and I usually work on multiple projects simultaneously.
• I make dinner while catching up on MSM news, washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen as I go along.
• I watch an episode or two of “Mad Men” while running at the gym, sometimes while texting friends to make plans for the evening.
• I’ll listen to music, check my e-mail one final time, set my calendar for the next day and read before finally heading to bed.

Also, I don’t like sleeping. This “busy” mindset has gotten me to the point where, to be honest, I feel like sleeping is boring and kind of a waste of time. I learn so much and take in so much information every minute of every day, that those 5-7 hours I spend asleep at night just seem hugely unproductive.

In her article, Henley suggests “downshifting” from time to time to relax. In other words, taking things down a notch and letting loose from some of those things that keep us so “busy.” I agree, I think it’s good to do this sometimes. But it’s hard. On the occasions I do take the night off from work, housework, social media, etc. I’m undoubtedly going to be hanging out with friends. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, hanging out with my friends is hardly “downshifting.”

It will be interesting to see how our busy lives evolve in the coming years, especially with the absolute onslaught of social media coming our way. Will we burn out, and get sick of it all? Or will we take it all on, as much as we can bear before we crack? Will we continue to fear that thin line between work and the personal, or will social media bridge that divide? These are just a few of the myriad of questions surrounding the advent of technologies like Twitter and Facebook. I’ll be around for a while–I can’t wait to see the answers.

This is a new beginning. For those of you who visit my blog frequently (or even infrequently), you’ll notice a lot has changed since the last time you might have seen it. My old blog can still be found here, although it will not be updated. I have some new goals for my blog. I want this to be:

• a hub for my online and social media presence
• a place to showcase my writing and commentary, not a place simply for sharing videos and links (although I’ll use them plenty to accompany my writing, no doubt!)
• a gallery for any photography, video or creative design I produce
• a record of major personal events in my life–such as my upcoming study abroad semester in Copenhagen, Denmark

You’ll notice I’ve still got a ways to go. The design is still very rough–it will be constantly evolving. The layout is by no means permanent. And for that matter, my new hosting service (squarespace) is not permanent either–I have a two week trial, after which I’ll determine if it’s worth the money (and if I have the money).

This will be very different from my old tumblog. My twitter and facebook accounts will now be my primary venues for sharing links, short news stories and various content from the web. Only the things that I can truly write about–and feel strongly enough about–will likely make it onto this blog in the form of an entry. My goal is to post at least once or twice a day, maybe with some commentary on morning news stories (as I have in the past) or with a more creative post I manage to come up with.

But that’s enough introduction, you get the idea. My first real post will be up sometime in the next 24 hours or so, and you’ll continue to see the design evolve and get a little more creative. Thanks for visiting, check back soon.