Lifestyle Design With a Difference

Ommwriter and Distraction-free Writing

I’m sorry for the lack of posts during November; work and my social life have conspired to steal time away from me, and I decided that this blog was less of a priority than some of the other things going on in my life. To satisfy some of my ‘get things onto the Internet’-urges, I’ve thrown http://blog.breki.se onto the net. It’s a Tumblr-based weblog where I post some random rants and link to things that I find interesting or otherwise noteworthy.

As some of you are already aware, I’m working on a fantasy series and have gone through several different pieces of software during the course of the past eleven years. My first notes were taken, aptly enough, in Microsoft Windows’ Notepad (back in Windows 95, if I recall correctly), and now writing in OpenOffice and planning in VoodooPad. It’s working out quite well, I think.

Or rather; so I thought. A few days ago, I discovered Ommwriter, and it changed my entire perspective on writing. You see; I’ve always had problems with distractions and jumping from one thing to another while writing. Ommwriter, with it’s minimal layout and Zen-like audio score, does everything possible to remove any distractions you may have. It gives you the text you’re working on and nothing else.

You could argue that it’s the same concept as Writeroom, and you would be right. You would be right in the same way as one is ‘right’ when one claims that McDonalds and Fuddruckers is essentially the same thing. What Writeroom does well, Ommwriter does better.

However, there are a couple of flaws that I feel I have to bring up. For one, there is no formatting. It is, essentially, a more beautiful version of notepad. If I were to want indentation for the first line in every paragraph, a phrase in italics, or something similar, I’m out of luck. Writing a book in this would be impossible due to the extreme amounts of formatting that I would have to do in post-processing. Blog entries also become difficult due to the inability to add links.

What it all boils down to is that Ommwriter is good at one thing – writing text – but it is extremely good at that one thing. Until it gets better at doing other things, I think I’ll continue to write in OpenOffice with Full screen-mode turned on.

Five Brief Suggestions

I don’t have much time today, so I’ll just leave you with five quick, short and simple suggestions that I’ve been thinking about a lot these past few weeks. I hope that you, like me, realize that they’re not even close to being quick, short and simple.

  1. When you’re experiencing something or being in a place you’ve never been, try to avoid letting your mind wander to more familiar vistas. Allow the experience of this new thing engulf you and be as full and vivid as it possibly can. Who knows when you’ll experience it again?
  2. Don’t bother trying to cater to everybody elses tastes and opinions. If you’ve got a specific opinion; stick with it – even if it makes you unpopular.
  3. If you’re ever in doubt about something, just be honest about it – both to yourself and other people. Tell people you’re uncertain or that you have doubts. Over time, this will definately be a better alternative than not saying anything.
  4. In almost every situation, there is a choice between safety and risk. The safe route will usually be easier, less gratifying and have fewer rewards. Try to become more aware of what choices you’re making and when.
  5. If you want to do something, then just do it. Don’t dismiss it as frivolous, stupid, pointless or too difficult. The worst that can happen is that you fail, and most of the time that’s not as serious as you might think.

Please comment on this post if you’ve got opinions on these five suggestions. I’m very curious to hear what people might think.

Values, Prices and Riches

One of the greatest ambitions of most people seems to be the desire to be rich. We want to have enough money to buy ourselves a good life, be happy and not have to endure the drudgery of a 9-5 living. But what is being rich, anyway? When does one start being rich and how does one stay that way?

After giving this some thought, the way I see it is like this. Riches aren’t about having a specific sum of money. You don’t get rich by winning the lottery or by selling your expensive house and moving into a small apartment. None of those sources of money are sustainable. Riches are rather about putting yourself into a situation where you’re constantly living below your means while not having to worry about unexpected costs.

A truly rich person will not have to worry about sudden medical bills or repair costs because he or she will have money set aside in case such an event happens. The rich person will not be spending the extra money every month on down payments, expensive clothes, jewelry or cars. After all, the $19 pair of jeans and the $15 sweater will cover you up just as well as the $500 branded suit. The $9 wristwatch will tell the time just as well as the $1400 one on the ad with George Clooney. Also – buy it in cash; don’t spend money you don’t have yet. I learned that lesson the hard way.

Riches also come from putting your money in perspective, seeing things in terms of their value rather than their price. If a can of Coke costs 10 units of currency and a book costs 200; you can see how they relate to each other. Will twenty cans of Coke or the book give you more value for your money? I’m not arguing that Coke is bad – quite the contrary, I’m still a heavy Coke drinker! – but once you’re done with the 20 cans, they’re over. They are no longer giving you any value. You can’t even sell them to regain some of your costs. The book, however, can be re-read, lent to friends, placed in a bookshelf, sold to others and even gain value if it turns out to be rare at some point in the future.

Once you start to look at things this way, you’ll quickly find that you’re spending money on things when you would be better off spending it elsewhere. Putting so much of your salary on consumables (expensive food, drinks, cigarettes, parties, alcohol, etc) might be a lot of fun while you’re at it but won’t really add any considerable value to your life.

Try it out; write down a couple of things you’ve bought the past couple of days or weeks and see how they compare to each other. See if you can’t figure out a value to currency conversion table for yourself, something like “Ten dollars of price should give me the same value of entertainment/joy/self-improvement as doing activity X”. Later on, if you’re wondering whether or not to buy an energy drink for two dollars, ask yourself if five energy drinks would give the same value as doing activity X which you’ve set as a baseline.

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