Filed under: Uncategorized
Two celebrity bloggers died of heart issues in the last two months, as reported here by the New York Times.
Bloggers with laptops never leave the office, which is great for bosses and horrible for bloggers. The article references a 22 year old blogger named Matt Buchanan who should probably consider stepping away from the computer and eating some green beans or something.
“He says he sleeps about five hours a night and often does not have time to eat proper meals. But he does stay fueled — by regularly consuming a protein supplement mixed into coffee.”
Hmm…death by blogging? Or death by prolonged unhealthy lifestyle?
It seems unlikely that Matt “doesn’t have time” for regular meals. Seriously, he’s sitting at his computer all day. At home. It’s more likely that he’s in the e-zone and his brain can’t slow down long enough to remind him his stomach is starving. Not that I blame him; I definitely get sucked into xtreme! blogging/websiting/photo editing mode. It’s hard to escape once you’re in its grasp.
Still, it’s horrible that these mens’ deaths are being satirized in blog headlines (like mine for example.) Maybe when we 2008ers read enough about technology causing unhealthy strain, we’ll get a $%#& clue and not be tethered to our gadgets.
But I doubt it.
I’m going outside to get some fresh air.
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I spent the day with Donnie for a class assignment. The idea was to document his life from his perspective.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bare your soles, barefoot march, seeds of change
Today we covered Bare Your Soles, a barefoot march to raise awareness of homelessness. The group took off their shoes and marched silently for about a mile. When they arrived at the square, they put the shoes they carried on the courthouse steps to be collected for donation. The marchers were college students, pastors, families, homeless, black, white, old and young.
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About a month ago I spent an evening and a morning with my grandparents. Their daughter and son-in-law live with them and care for them. This was a hard trip for me for two main reasons, I think.
One, I usually just see my grandparents at Thanksgiving, Christmas, the occasional family lunch, etc. I think it’s easy for anyone to fake it for a meal. Or an hour or two. On the days I spent with them, I saw how confused my granddad is, saw him have his face cleaned for him, watched him get dressed under his daughter’s supervision, saw him fall asleep sitting up at 8:30 in the morning just because he was bored.
So I saw the messy, awkward behind the scenes stuff.
I also had to be able to dissociate myself from them as family, and just be a journalist; tell their story. I want to do the careful balancing act of being a journalist and being a human, and this was a good test. It seems kind of backwards, but I think I was better able to honor my aging grandparents by being more of a journalist than a grandson, at least for those 6 or 7 hours.
