Now Here's A Real Challenge!

Seriously...It's Not That Hard

Maybe it's the "old school" in me...maybe the first day back to school WAS a bit frustrating...I mean, when a college sophomore cannot work through information on a website to find out ten things, including an email address, of a national group...greeting at Wal-Mart was looking better. Watching an episode of The Simpsons (Safety Salamander episode) helped a bit, but then I was challenged to do nothing for two minutes but look at a picture of the ocean and listen to the waves. I thought, "How hard can that be?" as I read the accompanying article.
The attempt at getting us to slow down and rewire our brains just a bit comes from one Alex, Tew, the guy who in 2005 sponsored the "Million Dollar Homepage" on which he divided his homepage into a million pixels and offered advertisers the opportunity to buy one at $1 each...four months later, he was a million dollars ahead! (yes, I know..."Why didn't I think of that," I hear you say.)
While one would think that spending a contemplative two minutes NOT touching the mouse or the keyboard would be an easy task, a report in the Huffington Post indicated that more than 22% of respondents to its poll COULD NOT LAST TWO MINUTES!
Seriously. In fact, the average time noted by those failing was a mere 58 seconds.
Not that I wasn't distracted: I was. I noticed that I might have to be going to the bathroom sooner rather than later, and I wished I had expanded the screen just a bit since the icons on my desktop were a bit distracting, and watching the time count backwards (there's a "fail" message if you backslide, and the timer starts over) was a bit annoying, but I focused in on the ocean and all the times I'd been there (or the Lake Michigan shoreline) and recalled my peace at simply listening to the waves...and I made the two minutes without fail.
But then, I'm old school.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/01/24/do.nothing/index.html?hpt=Sbin