One-Seam Clutch: March 9th to 13th.

On my Dictionary.com app I can see words people in my area are looking up. Someone on Esplanade East is trying to work out the difference between 'wondering' and 'wandering' (I wonder which one they are doing?). I am taking a wide detour around Nott Street when I go out because someone there has looked up both 'influenza' and 'hives' (eek). Somebody close to HMAS Lonsdale searched 'sociopath'—are they with one? Want to be one? There is someone looking up 'shrug' near the Cricketer's Arms. Maybe they are looking at the one I have for sale on ebay. It'll look great on you sir or ma'am from near the Cricketer's Arms (Antonia Shrug). And kudos to the person in South Melbourne who looked up 'antidisestablishmentarianism'—you took me back to my geeky teenage years in a single word. But, on a darker note, someone just under, or maybe above, the mad, seven level freeway interchange in Docklands has looked up 'retrospective'—should I be concerned? How on earth have we become so familiar with strangers? Apps, especially in combination with Location Services, freak me out a little. Okay, a lot.

Apps can do-anything-we-can-do-better? I bought one into which I am loading photos of all the clothes I own. You can then, as one person commented, choose what you want to wear from bed rather than having to rifle through your actual closet. Two things. One: Is it odd if I do that with my uniform too—'Mmmm, navy skirt or navy pants? With navy polo or navy shirt? Horrible cardi, or no horrible cardi? Let me just see how the outfits work together again. Sounds like a great excuse—another great excuse—to delay getting out of bed. Two: Why is that nightmare trap of a device, the i-Pad, reachable from my bed anyway? If it is, it probably meant I haven't had any sleep because I was a: playing WordWelder, b: playing Angry Birds, c: looking at Pinterest, d: commenting on blogs, or e: all of the above.

And because my brain nearly exploded looking for examples in the AppShop, I just googled 'odd apps' and found the following:

* an app that counts the calories in the photo of the food you just sent it. (I'd make the meal in the photo look smaller by placing fake big things near it to try and trick the app. I know I would.)

* an app that tells you if you are too close to the car in front of you while you are driving. (Is this something to do with phones in cars killing people—surely it is just safer to look at the car in front of you and make some sort of an informed decision. That reasoning and deductive capability is theoretically part of the reason they awarded you a license in the first place.)

* an app that records all the details of where you went and the texts and phone calls you made while on your drunken spree. (Don't know if it is admissable in a court of law, and it certainly won't negate any of the things you said, wrote or did, but at least you'll be aware of them. And hopefully be better equipped to start sorting out the aftermath.)

(Via James Kendrick)

Then googling about them made my brain explode too ....

I think my brain is on a hair trigger. I'll leave app-exploration up to you. Let me know what you find.

Poignantly, what with emotions and brain triggers and the like, Osho is talking about moods. Ten weeks spent learning a new work skill, with the chance that you don't in the end get to be deemed 'competent', 'yet', followed by a couple of weeks of having being deemed so and now trying to actually do it without the training wheels, means moods have been a prominent feature of my immediate past. And there I was wasting all that time when I could have been using 'method to enlightenment' instead of just getting pissed off. And I like this upcoming idea because, for me, it negates the need to actually have anyone else involved in your moods or emotions ('coz that just makes things messy). This method says: When a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in question, but remain centered. That is, moods are all about you. Only you. Emotion wells up, or appears suddenly, and you project it out onto what you believe is its cause. You're angry with someone, or love someone. Or something. The other person or thing becomes the centre, the focus of that emotion. Osho says, instead, follow the emotion back to its source—your center. It is (I think), in this scheme of finding your center, an easy-to-follow roadmap. I feel an affinity with this method. Maybe I use it without realising—although not nearly enough because its always easier to put emotion onto a third person than to see it in your self. Emotion is your reaction to something. Never actually caused by someone else. People can, and do, do awful, and wonderful, things to other people, but no matter what they do, the way we feel is ultimately up to us. Simplistic, sure. Idealistic, I agree. Not always going to be achievable, no argument. But if you can take a moment, when emotion starts to leave you, to look at it, explore it, follow it to its source, then you can see it starts in you not in someone else and so it is yours to control. This isn't exactly what Osho is talking about here. But this has certainly stopped me saying things in anger or hate or disappointment or sadness over the years, things that would have caused more trouble than the relief you think they'll bring. Saying hurtful things doesn't change the way other people treat you, but knowing why you are reacting to the way they treat you makes you stronger.

Ah, if only philosophy and the way we actually ran our lives were highways travelling in the same direction!