Day Twenty-Seven: Speech to Text...

For today's novel experience I am currently trying to use a speech-to-text program to write my blog post.  So I am sitting here, wearing a headset and talking into a microphone, looking rather ridiculous so that I can share this experience with you, my dear reader.  I have no idea how useful this will be to me in terms of my blog.  As I look at the many, many errors popping up here I'm unclear whether or not the editing process will eliminate any time saved!  However, I've been meaning to try this technology out for my private practice for a very long time.  Nothing like a commitment to having multiple novel experiences to move this to the top of my to do list!

There's an additional reason I chose this as my novel experience for the day.  Yesterday's moonrise has really left me thinking about the impact of technology on our lives...  for better or for worse!  As more time passes, I continue to be struck by how profound an experience the moonrise really was...  In my life, I have spent countless evenings and untold hours in front of the television while the moon has risen outside of my window night after night.  When I recount the most important and memorable moments in my life, exactly NONE of them have happened in front of my television.  I have been entertained, distracted, amused, and educated by television programming, but I have never had an experience that has come close to being as important as the moments when I am actually participating and experiencing my life.  Yet, night after night I have chosen the television over the countless other activities available to me.  

As a result, I find that I am a little bit annoyed with myself for this decision and the time that I have lost that might have been better spent doing other things.  Today, not only am I feuding with my television but I have been feeling quite disenchanted with technology in general.  In some ways, this is unfair and more than a little silly.  My life has benefited from technology in untold ways for as long as I can remember.  Like anything else, technology is a tool, that when used properly can enhance one's life, but when used too much or in harmful ways can be a detriment to individuals and society at large.  So to remind myself of the benefits of technology, I decided that today was the day to load my speech to text software and get back in touch with my techie geek side!

So here I am, trying out a tool that potentially cuts down on the amount of time I will spend writing progress notes, reports, emails, blogs, articles, etc and in theory will allow me to spend more time interacting with my family and experiencing my life.  It can allow me to hold my sleeping baby in my arms while writing this blog or communicating with other family and friends by email.  This is the positive side of technology...  

That is, if I can actually get this program to work!  So far, my laptop has protested having this loaded on, the program has frozen, and the dictation has rebelled from being used directly in blogger...  Add to this the fact that the program will need to learn my voice over time in order to be accurate and so far this whole experience has been an exercise in frustration!  That being said, let's try a little experiment, shall we?

At the time of my son's birth, I was using a quote-a-day calender from the Dalai Lama and I have since had the quote for his birthday hanging above my desk.  I am going to read this quote and leave the results as is.  Let's see if the words and meaning can survive speech to text!  Here we go:

"insight from the Dalai Lama if a person has never encountered love toward himself or herself from any quarter it is a very sad thing but it separately to meet even one person will show unconditional love and acceptance and compassion if he knows that he is an object someone else's affection and love is bound to have an impact will be appreciated because there is a steed in himself this active level start catalyzer-that"

Vs.

"Insight from the Dalai Lama - If a person has never encountered love toward himself or herself from any quarter, it is a very sad thing.  But if that person can meet even one person who will show unconditional love - simply acceptance and compassion - if he knows that he is an object someone else's affection and love, it is bound to have an impact, and this will be appreciated.  Because there is a seed in himself, this act of love will start to catalyse or ripen that seed."

I suppose it's a start!  Like most novel experiences, the first attempt is bound to be less than perfect and needs to be repeated for any sort of mastery to occur.  So, dear reader, the jury is still out on the usefulness of this program, but I am reminded that technology does have its place.  So, on that note, I will wish everyone, and the steed inside of them, a very good night!

Day One - Auspicious Beginnings!

It all started with trashy TV night... I suppose this is not the most glamorous way to receive life-altering messages from the universe, however there is no way to sugar coat the truth here. My best friend, Angela and I were curled up on the couch, eating Ben and Jerry's directly from the carton, and were watching... well... OK... we were watching a reality television show about a Playboy bunny.

Let me redeem myself for a moment by letting you know that in my normal life I don't even have a subscription to cable, let alone a reality television addiction. My husband and I cancelled our service after the birth of our son, and it's been almost two years since we've had easy access to this quality of television programming. However, there I was at our mutual friend's house taking advantage of her premium cable subscription while she was out of town doing work for her educational nonprofit in an economically disadvantaged country. She was saving the world, we were watching trashy television.

In much the same way that people read Playboy for the articles, it was the storyline that captured our interest and kept us watching. One of the characters was having panic attacks and subsequently decided to comparison shop for a psychotherapist. I just happen to be a psychotherapist who specializes in treating panic attacks, (among other things), so we settled in to see what these therapists would say and do. While we were critiquing our colleagues, a brief shift of the camera caught a sign hanging up in one of the therapist's offices that stated, "What would you do if you were guaranteed not to fail?" And without realizing it at the time, this question led to a line of thinking and chain of events that has culminated in the launching of this project and blog.

What would you do if you were guaranteed not to fail? This question stuck with me for days... I statused about it on Facebook... I had conversations about it with family and friends... I posted it on my business page... and I thought about how I would answer it for myself. I knew what I would do if I was guaranteed success. Answering this question was the easy part for me. It was the question that logically followed that started to haunt me: WHY THE HECK DO YOU NEED TO BE GUARANTEED SUCCESS TO GIVE IT A TRY?

So here I sit, launching the Novel Experience Experiment. For a variety of psychological and personal reasons that I'm sure I'll get into in the future, I am taking on the challenge of exposing myself to, (at least), one brand new experience a day for the next year and will be documenting my activities on this blog. (And, by the way, creating this blog for the sake of blogging rather than business, is the first of 365 novel experiences I will be having!) I look forward to the challenges ahead and hope that you will consider joining me on this journey!