For the next six months I want to try to pay attention. Okay a bit of background, I am living in Vienna for the next six months (see the ‘Why Are You Here‘ blog for more details) so my environment is easy enough to be cognizant of,but there is a wee bit more to paying attention but first Vienna.

A City That  Demands Attention

Vienna is a city that demands attention – looking West toward the Hofburg.

Walk through the inner city of Vienna and you see life. The city has not been hollowed out and shifted to the suburbs such as like many North American cities.  A good social safety net also means that the number of street people are few.  The city itself has been reborn since its levelling seventy+ years ago under Allied bombing.  In other words, no matter where you look, there is something to see.

But this is no Disneyland caricature, Vienna is a living city and is proud of its imperial past but also secure in its current republic.  The public buildings are imposing but used everyday for the business of government.  The public art has been on display for decades or centuries and serves to improve the lives of the current and future generations… well on and on – the point is that Vienna is a cool place to pay attention to!

More than Old Buildings – Avoiding New Technology

There is another reason that I want to consciously pay attention for the next six months, the corrupting influence of technology.  Okay, this is not a ‘Luddites Unite – You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Cat Videos‘ post.  My point is that we need to spend less time seeing the world through the camera lens of our smart phone and more enjoying the world’s splendor/horrors with our own eyes.  By taking at least a few minutes a day to look around, walk on an opposite side of the street from the norm or take a different route to work – we can provide a small challenge to our brain to pay attention.  By doing so we can also train our consciousness to look not in the context of a meme, post or headline but in a way that we were meant to – as part of a series of inter-locking communities.

What Matters Gets Photographed

So, here is my plan to actively look about – I will select a single photo a day and post in a running blog for a particular month.  Okay, I get the irony that I may be using a smart phone and technology to do this, but do so suitably harnesses the machine rather than being enslaved by it.  As a bonus, I will get an electronic scrapbook of sorts.  Heck, it might even delay dementia by going back and saying – ‘I remember that image, it is because I crossed to the other side of the street that one day and saw…’ 

Hopefully you enjoy my ‘scrapbook’ and keep an eye out for blogs such as this one: March 2018 – A Photo A Day.