My wife and I saw this short film on PBS last night. It was the 2009 winner of the Doorpost Project, an ongoing independent film project that showcases some really fantastic talent. Powerful message about hope. The world needs more stories like this. If you have problems loading the player below, click THIS LINK.

You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.

This week I’ve taken a few days off from my normal schedule to relax. We had originally planned a vacation to the Gulf, but BP happened. Thanks for that one. Now, my 5-year old daughter is with Grandma and Papa in Indiana, my wife and I have the world to ourselves, and we don’t have to be anywhere except where we want to be. A rare thing indeed these days when schedules rule us, instead of the other way around, and time is never time enough.

Which brings us to “Make Something Cool Friday.” I’d thought it’d be interesting to make something that visualizes my feelings over these past few days off. So I took a watch that I haven’t worn in a year (I rarely where watches) and deconstructed it. I gutted the thing, trashed the cogs and such, but left the shell intact. The result: a wearable reminder of the constraint of time, but also the infinite possibilities that can be found in it if we can let go of convention for a minute or two. Time, too, is a blank slate to write a story on.

Behold the Un-Watch

The amount of connectivity the Internet gives us is mind boggling. Mind. Boggling. I came across this on Hubspot this afternoon, which proves the point:

• 90,000,000,000,000 (that’s trillion with a “T”)…the number of emails sent via the Internet in 2009.
• 500,000,000…active Facebook users.
• 126,000,000…blogs on the web.
• 2,000,000,000…videos viewed on Youtube today.

So, suffice it to say that there is a lot of conversation, noise, and messaging happening right now. Question is, how does one person compete for meaningful attention in a world measured in 1′s and 0′s (lots of ‘em)?