Archive for July, 2008
Museum of Science and Industry visit today completely and utterly Kicked Ass. Reasons: (1) The MSI rocks. (2) The company was awesome – Tank, Nikki, and Chris. (3) Whoa, people at the museum are excited about OLPC – to make a long story short, we got invited back to help with a workshop tomorrow. This was completely unplanned. Turns out that sometimes having the chutzpah to introduce yourselves to cool strangers works quite well.
I promised a recap of what I got out of my conversation with Andy, but it’s proven to be hard to verbalize coherently. Behold, a babble of cliches. It’s mostly a list of things I needed to be reminded of.
You can rewire yourself consciously. Not necessarily directly – you’re not a computer. But you can think about how you’re thinking and how you could change things so that you’d think differently, if you want to think differently. You can, at the very least least, modify your environment so that it makes you more of the kind of person you want to become.
Don’t reinvent step 1. Invent step 51. In other words, under many circumstances, a good strategy is this: if the wheel’s been made, model it, learn from it, and then decide how you can improve it.
If you want to be like other people, try doing it. “Oh, I wish I could do X like Y!” Okay, so how does Y do X? What is she thinking? What his he doing and how did he learn? Why does she do that? Can I make my body go through the same motions, make the same words come from my mouth? (Note: this can be awkward. If so, tell other people what you’re trying to do so they know why you’re being ridiculous.) (Other note: I’m somewhat better at hugs now. Not Chandra Little great, but… at least the visible flinching is dialing down.)
Sometimes (often) the right thing to do is to suck it up and be a leader. I’ve been unfair to my team this summer because I – consciously and often – chose to put my finger on my nose and stand back and hope that someone else would step up and Do Stuff. Also, I would do this without saying so. The implementation of such can best be described as letting go of the steering wheel but forgetting to get out of the driver’s seat.
I’m fortunate enough to have awesome teammates who can save our collective asses repeatedly and do fantastic things despite my many failings in this (and other) areas. Only recruit people better than you, right? And I don’t just mean “more skilled.” (Perhaps this is why I teach well – I believe that my students are better than I am, and that my job is to get them to realize that and live up to it – and I also set high standards for myself. Combining the three means that when things work, they far surpass me and I’m incredibly proud and happy about it.)
Anyway, it’s not fair for me to get people excited and have them sign on and then not give them a direction to head in. It’s not fair to leave people hanging (something I have not fixed completely, probably never will fix completely, but am trying to more rapidly asympote towards). I owe it to my team to be a better version of myself than I’ve been. As Nikki put it, “even if you weren’t leading us, we were following you.”
Important: note the phrase “a leader,” not “the leader.” Others can and do step up, but I should too. Also note that leader != boss xor manager. I justify much of my wobbly-spinedness by saying “well, I didn’t want to be a dictator, take too much control, prevent people from doing what they wanted and taking initiative, etc.” – and when I’m in top fooling-myslf form, I can make that argument sound really good – but I’m sure this is just a good cover-up excuse for other more cowardly reasons.
One of them is that It’s kinda lonely up there. Loneliness is an incredibly powerful Kryptonite for me – yes, more so than hugs – and I’m not always strong enough to do what I should do in the face of that. I would rather have friends than admirers. Having friends is such a precious thing that, in its name, I’m willing to hurl myself off pedestals and actively destroy that admiration – all this unconsciously, except for very rare cases of hindsight (like this one). I shouldn’t have to do that, and I shouldn’t do that. One can admire one’s friends. (God knows I do that all the time.) One can simultaneously admire and be frustrated by one’s friends. That’s okay.
Pet rats are awesome. All right, this one’s from Erica. Their little paws tickle! And they’re adorable, and inquisitive, and… oh, would that I could trust myself to be responsible enough to take care of a pet! (Caring for a rat is way more realistic than a beagle puppy, but still beyond my ability to handle right now.)
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
One thing that’s frustrating: feeling unable to defend your friends.
I don’t mind so much if I get picked on or yelled at or… well, whatever. I do mind when the same gets leveled at people I’ve come to care for, even if they don’t ever hear about it or get affected by it or anything (one hopes). It’s even more frustrating when I can’t step in front to counter or block it or take it upon myself without making things worse.
On a happier note, sometimes a conversation is worth driving 11 hours to get to.
I spent most of this past weekend with Andy P and his family and friends in Appleton, WI. This usually isn’t a 6-hour drive, but construction on I-294 turned it into such. My sandals came off when I walked through his door, and I spent most of my time at the Pethans’ house blissfully barefoot – racing across pine needles to play disc golf with Andy and his friend Mark, squashing crabapples under our feet.
Andy and his friends in Wisconsin start companies for fun. (They’re still working on the ‘profit’ part.) Their current endeavour is a web design consultancy; earlier in the summer there was an attempt to break into the soft-serve machine business that involved epic overnight adventure to Iowa at the same time the state was being flooded. We went to an eclectic Italian restaurant for dinner and Andy, in his customary gently enthusiastic manner, called me out on a number of things I’d been avoiding most of the summer; I’ll try to write these up more in a separate post.
Later that evening we had some grasshoppers (vanilla ice cream + minty stuff + hazelnutty stuff) and talked until our impending need for unconsciousness outweighed our desire to continue conversations about Uganda and the design of engineering textbooks and low-power computing and life.
The next day I went to Madison to see Erica, a friend from IMSA who is now a grad student in linguistics with an adorable pet rat named Boo. We got some Ethiopian food, rummaged through old cargo pants (me), neckties (her), pageboy hats (me), and Hawaiian shirts (both of us) at a used clothes store (I didn’t get anything, but it remains one of of the few enjoyable clothes-shopping experiences I’ve had so far), and walked through the construction downtown while slurping ridiculously rich, thick, dark chocolate ice cream – so dark it looked nearly pitch black.
Erica and Andy are two (of many) people who remind me of the kind of person I want to be when I’m with them. I should surround myself with people who help me do that.
On the way back I listened to a classical-style solo piano reinterpretation of “Penny Lane” on repeat and think I might be able to start transcribing bits of it down when I next have lots of time at the piano.
Went dancing with Andrew last night and asked people I didn’t know to dance – first time I’ve done that. I’m still not that great a dancer (I can’t turn my brain off enough to be a good follow; I tend to try to anticipate everything instead of allowing my body to react to it) but it… feels good, for the rare and fleeting moments I let go and manage to do something right.
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
The less mentally organized, more pensive, or more frustrated I am, the longer my posts are. I wonder if a wordcount-meter would be a decent reflection of my brain’s status.
Saturday, July 26th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Tuesday: On my way back from picking up a bike trainer from Algonquin, I passed Chris coming in from a phone call. (Yeah, I’ve mentioned this elsewhere.) There was just – something… I can’t describe it very well, but something nice about working there with a friend, quietly, the white van with its door cracked open so soft music would pipe into the nightspace, headlights beaming sharp shadows of bike parts onto the garage door, jimmying tools in a manner they weren’t designed for but worked quite well for anyway – I like night hacking. I like it a lot. When done in a relaxed manner (i.e. for fun, not for impending Deadline of Doom), it gives me a glorious sense of peace and mindspace I don’t often get to enjoy.
Greg would probably call it romantic #2. I don’t think we’ve really solidified the definitions yet, but the #1 kind of romantic is the kind directed at people in exclusive emotional relationships; flowers, hearts, sweeping movie themes coinciding with kiss-laden reconciliations, images of hypothetical shiny-armored white knights, etc. etc. insert things I don’t particularly like here. The #2 kind is romance… I was going to say “about ideas,” or “that you can share with people” (as opposed to being about/directed-at people), but neither is exactly accurate. But things like watching a sunset, or listening to the adagio cantabile of Beethoven’s piano sonata no. 8 (pathetique) after going through its thunderous first movement, or traveling across the world writing letters to friends with a fountain pen, or using your jacket as a pillow on the floor of a friend’s loft – the intake of breath that creates space before the last line of a haiku.
That kind of romance. A headlight-lit driveway workspace has it in droves. I like.
Today: I should stop using my friends as a shield and a buffer from things and a help with things that I should really suck up and deal with, although the flip side of this is “whoa, I’ve become more vulnerable and less purely self-reliant than usual… activate terror and pride, full reverse thrust!” Thanks to Andrew and Tank and Nikki and Chris who have borne with me being a whiny self-deprecating slacker this past week. It happens once in a while.
I’m grateful for people.
Flared up with being angry again today, multiple times. Not anywhere close to losing my temper (this is exceedingly rare; i think I’ve become restrainedly snappish at people for… maybe a grand total of 5 sentences over the last more-than-decade), but enough to smolder inside my gut in a way that wouldn’t flick out immediately when I turned the “world is good! be happy!” juice on.
I’m going to be cryptic here: I’m frustrated that I get frustrated about the things I get frustrated about. I feel like they’re really not that big a deal and I should be able to live with things and brush them off and recognize that they’ll pass and I should just cave and let them pass and then move on. I feel like a wuss for being so easily set off, and then like a wuss again for swallowing it instead of acting to resolve my frustrations. Ideally, I should either act to clear my frustrations or rewire myself so I don’t have those frustrations in the first place. In reality, it’s not that simple, I’m not brave enough to hurt myself that much, and the incompletely inflicted masochism leads to other people taking on collateral damage, and feh, end whining now.
Good investment for eventual domicile: punching bag, or set of dumbells, or a chin-up bar, or really just something to wrestle against when I get boiled up inside, since tearing in circles around the cul-de-sac isn’t exactly satisfying. I should go further, but don’t actually know what it’s like to bike outside the 3 streets I was allowed to go on as a kid, and going on unfamiliar, unsidewalked routes at night while angry requires a much lower sanity threshold than even I have. I suppose I should learn how to spar, but that necessitates other people, which is not always an option.
I can always boost up my “world is good!” abilities – it’s really helpful to be able to be happy – actually happy, not acting-happy, and enthusiastic about things – under nearly any circumstances. I do tend to overshoot and get hyperactively joyous, so the PID control on Mel-happy could use some tuning.
I’d like to be able to escape to the keyboard more. Self-consciousness at other people hearing me play (crappily) hinders this; other people sleeping when I have free time to play also hinders this, and the piano being in the same room as the television really hinders this. I’d really like either a digital keyboard (weighted, 88-key, headphones-plug-innable, sustain pedal – beyond that, I’ll take whatever I can get) or a lousy upright in an acoustically isolated empty room with a door I can lock.
In any case, I managed to get there before the tube-watchers did this evening, and sightread through a Rachmaninoff cello-piano sonata (the piano bit) which I have to cut down because even with super-modified fingering my hands start hurting from trying to stretch to hit all the notes. Slid through a transcription of bits of a Billy Joel / Ray Charles duet (“Baby Grand”) with nice bendy grace notes and smooshed up chords in the corners. Didn’t really practice anything seriously. Just sightread. I guess I should learn a piece well enough to know a piece again at some point; my discipline is lacking.
Sightreading is something I have been slightly more disciplined about trying to learn – there was a book on sightreading in the library, and I’ve been trying to go through it, and it’s been good for me. First of all, apparently other pianists stutter too – that is, since we’re used to playing a solo instrument, we take extreme liberties with the beat so that we can slow down to wait for our hands to hit the right notes (after severe amounts of hesitation), correct and repeat notes we’ve missed (throwing us further off-tempo), and generally do things that are Not Conducive To Playing With Other People.
Also, sightreading + my tendency to watch my fingers as I play (due to lack of auditory input) = Lots Of Stuttering as I continually hop between watching sheet music and watching hands and losing my place. Obviously sightreading and playing-from-memory are going to need to develop different strategies here. As a first pass, I’m trying to force myself to learn how to sightread by feel, because I can’t depend on auditory input, especially when other musicians start joining the mix. I can only play-by-feel on pieces I know very well, or at least I used to be able to.
In high school I’d occasionally play on my dinky electric keyboard while my roommate studied by just running through the piece with the keyboard turned off – if I really knew the piece (I kept up the last few pieces i played in middle school for a while by playing them once a month or so when I passed a piano or got in a keyboard-mood in high school), I could play it with the keyboard off and my eyes closed and still hit all but the gigantic leaps… I’d have people listen through the headphones to check if I was doing okay.
I wish I either played music better or loved it less. The latter is unlikely to ever happen. The former has always been extraordinarily difficult for me to hit past a certain point; music isn’t memorizing muscle movements, but glory, listening is hard. Hard in a way that makes me scared I won’t be able to find a way to fudge past it, and scared that I’ll be left out of being able to do “real music” forever. This is the one thing that would ever make me consider going through surgery or praying fora miracle or whatever the heck other ways there might be to get my ears “fixed.” The ability to participate in music.
Oh! (turns on happy-switch) You can make funny clicking noises by bringing your tongue to the roof of their mouth and sorta snapping it down, apparently. I can’t do it yet. It’s only audible to me when I put on my hearing aids, so I was completely perplexed when I turned them on in the office on Thursday and all of a sudden these SOUNDS were there and oh whoa they’re made by PEOPLE. Huzzah for learning new things!
Book on sketching by Bill Buxton is most excellent, and sketching is something I should do again. I’ll bring a sketchbook this weekend.
I have a fuzzy blanket. I’m going to sleep (yay sleep!) and tonight I watched Batman with Andrew. And tomorrow I’m going to Wisconsin to see Andy and Erica, and that will be most excellent. And I wonder how it’s like to love something enough that you’re okay with people hating you for it – or to have the thing you love hate you, and be okay with that even as it aches like the devil. And tonight I had cheesecake-chocolate ice cream. And books (with theirdizzying trails of intellectual adventure – we’re talking textbooks here) are stacked high in my room, and – oh, I have large amounts of good music stacked beside me, and a place to be verbose, and beds are soft and for sprawling-in, and water feels good on your face.
Can has!
Is happy.
Good night.
Saturday, July 26th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Lyrics from songs I like that I’ve recently come across again and occasionally describe my state of mind
“Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box” (Across the Universe, Keane Er. The Beatles. Yes. Yes. The Beatles.)
“And I can’t stop now/
For no one/
The motion keeps my heart running” (Can’t Stop Now, Keane)
Good thought-provoking blog posts by friends
On the future of education
How to fix the developing world for sixty million dollars
Blog, senior year of high school:
…I’m still not good at music, but I’m slowly starting to play it more. In orchestra, we’re attempting to struggle through a Joplin rag – it’s a cello quartet… we all agreed that a Joplin rag was the coolest cello quartet we had ever seen. It sounds great, too. If we ever learn how to stay together, that is.
I’ve got a keyboard (I’m actually fenced in by it- there’s a Melcave that consists of the desk, computer desk, heater, and keyboard/bed that contains my computer and needs to be climbed into to be accessed) and occasionally play things at night when Sharon’s not listening. I’m a lot less self-conscious than I used to be, but there’s still a little residue of it behind, which I’m attempting to exorcise. I still think I’m an idiot, mostly because it motivates me to try harder not to be an idiot.
I write occasionally, and draw sometimes, but most of my energies go into reading science books or hacking things apart in the workshop with some sort of sharp blade. The rabid thirst for nollij (although rabid may be a misnomer, as rabies makes animals hydrophilic, I think) has intensified a thousandfold. It’s overtaken the desire to sleep, and, on occasion, eat (I’ve read books straight through any semblance of dinner, and then just nuked some oatmeal or had a candy bar afterwards.)
I’m looking forward to college, hopefully at somewhere the people aren’t too sane; currently planning to go into Mech E, which I really think I’ll love (and which my parents are very happy about), but we’ll have to see. I probably ought to learn moderation and how not to always be pushing myself harder and harder- but right now, I’m sixteen and don’t really care about rationality that much.
Present-day Mel: Music is one of those things I keep on coming back to. I like that. I want a Melcave again. And probably, if I’d been smart and playing to my strengths, I would have gone for MechE – but that’s not what the dart hit when I threw it.
Blog, freshman year of college:
I love my hall. I love my school. I love the people here, and I want to stay here. I want to come back and teach here. It’s funny. Even if I’m an aromantic, I fall in love with things so readily. Just not in the icky sappy way. But it’s very easy for me to care about things, and very easy for me to see the good side of them, very easy to want to help them and make them a chunk of me. It goes for both people and the things that people make (…vague descriptor, I know… I’m talking about things like projects or classes or buildings or schools.)
I’m not anti-love. I’m just anti-sappy. Aromantic. I’m not going to go gushing out with flowers to everyone, but I’m trying – I’ve always tried – to show it in other ways. I think it’s better if you don’t tell them. If you love something, you shouldn’t have to trumpet it out. People will see, if you really care. It’ll come through.
[Some time later, in the middle of talking about how much I love Olin] …anywhere that can make me feel completely relaxed, accepted, free, and at home within a month, and anywhere people really care about me and push me to do better and help me reach as far as I can – a place that does this is a place I’m willing to throw my entire self into.
More blog, freshman year of college.
Another thing.
I think I shall always be a little bit lonely.
This is okay, though. It’s the way things are. I’ll try to find a way to become more a part of things, but even with the greatest people, and with folks who care about me and vice versa, I’ll never be able to be a part of things like most people are. I’m a bit withdrawn and somewhat aloof. Maybe it’s because of my hearing, maybe it’s because of the way my ears have shaped that part of my personality, maybe it’s my personality in general – but you know what? It’s all right this way. Because I’m still right in there, but I can also see things from a bit off – lets me understand stuff from a different perspective, sometimes get a handle on it better. Maybe I’d rather it be this way. I think I could get in there if I tried. So I guess it’s me not wanting to. Though that’s odd, since companionship is a good thing, and I feel that need for sure on many occasions…
Sometimes I feel that my brain is too analytical. More machine than person, except the person tries to get through so the machine doesn’t work quite right. (Doing math homework, for instance.)
I want to push my brain. I want to strain it as far as I can. I’m not doing that now. I’m nowhere close to doing that now. But I wonder if I’d actually be able to let myself sprint; I like being human too much, I think. I like being part of this world, I like being able to understand it and have it understand me. I doubt I’m even smart enough to push past the point where I’d rise above the average, even if I flogged my brain half to death. I would have liked to be here last year – it sounds like they pushed them something awesome (yes, I am masochistic) in the beginning. While I don’t think I would have lasted longer than anyone else, I would have liked that experience. I’ve never reached my breaking point, even if I feel like I’ve nudged close to it a few times – I would like to break. I want to know exactly where my limits are. Maybe I can push them then.
The last paragraph was rather introspective, which is a good indication it’s time for me to go to bed. (No longer do I need the sunrise to tell me to sleep – I have my Overly-Philosophical Brain-Alarm!)
Other more different post, freshman year of college.
The folks here are already starting to take care of me – actually, we take care of each other a lot. People bring each other tea at night, make each other noodles, instruments and books get handed around, anyone will teach you anything, more or less… it’s awesome. We had hug-huddles today in the field between capture-the-flag games to keep people from getting cold. It’s open. I feel free. I’m not scared of messing up. I learned how to play 12-bar blues on guitar today because of Sean. Do you know how it feels, when you’ve been very inhibited about something for years, how to just have that suddenly go away? I can play music now… I’m not afraid of it any more. This is fun.
Present-day Mel: It can suddenly go away, but the same fear can come creeping back. The story of my life includes a good number of relapses. Timidity in music is a common theme.
Wait… later on in this post it mentions driving my cello and keyboard up to Olin. When did I ever have my cello at Olin? Was it just for a few weeks frosh year? Must have been, because I got my piano – Hector, an upright with a multitude of sores and scratches and wonky-off keys – sophomore year… and I wouldn’t have done that if I had already had a keyboard around. And I suppose I didn’t play my cello on campus enough to warrant keeping it around. And I remember being terrified of sucking too much to even audition for OCO, so I didn’t – and ended up not playing music much at all, save for playing with License Server and several occasions of messing around with sounds.
Also, I have a tendency to get drunk on happiness. Inhibitions go away when I’m really, really happy. I want that to happen again so I can, for a while, not freak out over physical contact with other human beings. I wonder if more glorious music with glorious new earbuds with glorious glorious bass will do the trick – I just lay back on my bed tonight and listened to Beethoven and Beethoven and Beethoven and Ray Charles and floated away between the grace notes and WOW.
More from frosh year:
It appears as if I’m not human; Erin said it wasn’t possible to sleep so little and still be so chipper, and then Miks couldn’t find my pressure points at SMAC (Tae Kwon Do) Tuesday. Perhaps I really am The Frosh From Planet X. Though I do hope wherever I come from has a better name than the most commonly used algebra variable.
Parting shot from frosh year of Olin:
I’ll always keep my IMSA friends and the memories we made, and I’ll always be grateful for what the school did for me, but Olin’s my home now, and I think it will be to me what IMSA is to Sharon right now. The years you’d choose to live in forever if you had to pick a time.
Present-day Mel: I think there’ll be better years yet ahead. Life tends to keep getting exponentially better the longer I stay in it, so I’ll be around as long as I can – it’s too interesting now to stop.
Monday, July 21st, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Rollerblading: only fell once! Evanston has brick sidewalks, so this is something of a triumph. I need to become comfortable braking.
Speech therapy (the reason I was rollerblading to Evanston): yeah, I can’t pronounce R’s, okay? (Hence this post title.) I’m not even allowed to practice those because I’d be practicing mistakes… other things to work on include the ‘L’ sound in the middle of words, “dark l’s” at the end of words (as in the word “glottal” or “final”), and “g” sounds at the end of words, which I tend to de-voice. The letter combination ’spr’ at the start of the word presents a problem as well, since I can’t say ‘r’ sounds, can’t hear ‘p’ sounds but do lipread them (and pronounce them) as ‘b’ sounds, and can’t hear ’s’ sounds. (Translation: Instead of saying “spring,” I say “bing.”)
Jazz is awfully nice. I wonder what it’s like to know an instrument so well, and to be comfortable enough playing and making sounds on it to just let loose and play and go with it and see where it sounds, instead of trying to stick with sheet music all the time?
I did get some Beethoven sonatas from the library to sightread, and though my sightreading was atrocious it felt nice to be able to slip into something unfamiliar that wasn’t really unfamiliar. For some reason, I can sightread Beethoven better than nearly any other composer – his music just makes more sense to me, like it’s right to put your fingers in those places, so the piece flows more easily even if it’s my first time through it. (Not sure how many Beethoven pieces remain that I haven’t tried at least once, but this book had a couple I didn’t recognize at all.)
Still confused and angry, but not venting much on that tonight. I don’t have words for it; I need to listen to find out what’s going on, and maybe if they’re amenable to being put into words, I’ll form them out. In a few minutes I should turn off my computer (Nikki’s going to sleep), stop the music, and lie down, look up, and try to listen to the crackling inside for a while.
I wish I could lie on my back in soft, soft grass with a clear night above, watching fireworks explode and rush out the sky to engulf me, and then drift away to uncover a starry sky.
Dumplings. They are delicious. As is apple strudel ice cream.
Thursday, July 17th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
You know what?
The “abandon other people before they abandon you” game sucks, and I refuse to play it.
This is also sometimes to my detriment. It would be way easier if I could.
Happier posts coming tomorrow when I finish making a few things… I’m not actually depressed, I just happen to be writing out the things that I’m confused about, which for the last few days have been somewhat blargh. The happy stuff has been making sense lately, which is awfully nice.
Ooh. Happy thing that makes sense that I can write about – Chris and I made burgundy poached pears today. If you use the wine-sugar mixture you poach the pears in as a substitute for water when making caramel to drizzle over said pears (something Chris, Beth, and myself came up with a few years ago when we first made this recipe), it makes the caramel extra-delicious. I do, however, want to halve the amount of sugar next time… or better yet, use no sugar whatsoever and poach the pears in a mixture of pear wine (apparently Chris says there’s a pear rose wine out there?) and pear mead.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
(Note: Not all references in this post will make sense to all people.)
Angry.
No, not angry. Frustrated. Upset.
When I get frustrated and angry and upset, it’s typically (maybe even always) directed inwards, at myself, because I’ve learned that lashing out at other people tends to make them hit you back, which ends with two people who’ve been hit. So you (metaphorically) thrash yourself, which has the same end effect, only without the other person nursing wounds (and maybe a grudge) to boot.
And if they see you’ve already been bashed down pretty well, they likely won’t shoot you down even more, especially if they see the self-inflicted beatdown doesn’t make much of a difference (in that you do exhibit a pain reaction, but you’re fine with it). And in either case, they’re more likely to not be mad.
Sometimes when folks get mad, they go off and get mad at other people afterwards, and the ripple effect of destruction marches forth. If you keep diving in front and trying to be a buffer to absorb that kind of stuff, at least the ripples just bounce around inside you. The self-deprecating overgrown puppy persona is useful to keep that from stabbing in too far.
And then when you stop doing this, the equilibrium is disturbed and you feel guilty because you could go back to that old role and stop it. But if you keep soaking it up, you can’t move on and do better things with yourself. How do you gauge what “better” is? If you row a lifeboat towards the larger, closer group of swimmers and leave a tiny group stranded in the far-off waves (hoping maybe someone else will save them, knowing maybe nobody will) – is it possible to both do the right thing and still have guilty blood on your hands, and to learn to live with that?
Also: I’m a person. I need to learn to become a better one, but this is very different than having to learn to become one in the first place. I do care about people and have relationships with them – maybe not the romantic type that generates things like great-grandchildren, but it’s not like more platonic love ever hurt the world.
I’m fiercely loyal and have this thing for diving in front of someone else’s bullet (usually without letting them know). I’m trying to learn how to duck. I think the compromise I’ll work out is learning to yell at everyone else to duck, waiting to make sure everyone else is down, and then ducking myself, or making the dive if not everyone else gets down in time. (So people, get the hell down.)
Came across a phrase from Cuban culture, which is also strongly family-based – a person who (against the wishes of family) went into social work was described as “a light that projects outside the house, not inside.” It was said as if it were a terrible thing. But if you can shine brighter and reach more people by shining out the window, then – isn’t that a tradeoff that’s worth making? Even if you get yelled at for not shining at all, and can’t find a way to show that you are, but just in a different direction? (I’ve now mangled the metaphor beyond all understanding.)
When I’m with people, I try to actually be with them. I can’t be in more than one place at once, so if I’m not somewhere, it doesn’t mean I don’t care; it means I’m not there because I’m somewhere else and actually being there.
And when I’m with people but not really with them, I try to go away so they’re not troubled by my non-present presence. (This is why I’ll often slip off and become impossible to find, or walk a while ahead, or scoot into the corner with a book.) Sometimes I get tired too. Sometimes I need to rest by myself for a while. I have to recharge by myself until I’m at the level where I can (often with some difficulty) recharge and take comfort in the presence of someone else – an act that’s usually more comforting to the comforter (because they feel needed) than to me (because I’ve already pretty much gotten it worked out, and just need someone to validate and confirm that things are okay now).
To some extent, I link affection and love with possession and the erosion of freedom. If you hug me, it’s great and I appreciate the sentiment, but it also restricts my range of physical motion.
Sometimes when folks complain, I want to turn around and scream god damn it people, do you realize how bloody lucky you are? and at the same time acknowledge they have every right to be pissed at whatever they’re pissed about. I haven’t found a way to do both at the same time yet, so I just do the latter.
So I’m angry now, mad at myself for getting sucked into this story, which allows me to get mad at myself (yes, I’m upset that I’m upset). Mad that I keep falling into this train of thought and have to expend energy clawing myself out, mad because when I become mad I am much less effective at being able to prevent other people from getting mad – mad because I don’t understand and don’t like this way of looking at the world.
Mad because in this mentality I can’t save “the world”, or a subset of it I’d be content with, even if I put every ounce of myself into it in such a way that I was destroyed and consumed in the process. Some things – precious few, mind you – are worth giving yourself for, but there’s no point if it won’t make any difference. Sometimes it’s harder to live if you live in such a manner that you allow yourself to actually be alive.
I am, however, a masochist. And life is pretty darn wonderful. And it’s also fun, even in the middle of the sting of it.
Stitching together and sustaining an vision hard enough so that it’s a solid reality that’s always existed – it’s draining work, but well worth it. I think doing a startup is like that, in part. I’m not very good at holding a vision firm enough for other people to walk around in yet. It requires a depth of concentration I’m still raw and wobbly at.
I need to learn better how to let other people pick up the edges of the vision and help hold it up and tack on their own rooms, banners, poles, designs, light fixtures, pour foundations under that castle in the air (floating by dint of sheer mental will and an utter ignorance of gravity’s existence). Holding up that castle makes me out of breath, and shouting takes some oxygen and effort, and I should do it anyway.
(What the hell? I can’t write blunt and direct statements tonight. I’m talking circles and parables around the things I actually want to say.)
I’m tired. I’m going to go to bed. It’s better now, and my eyes and limbs are heavy enough to lie still long enough for my mind to sleep. Maybe I’ll talk with people about this in the morning, or maybe sleep will let it percolate enough through my system that I won’t have to.
I’ll sleep now, and we’ll see when I wake up.
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
Greg Marra has been writing letters back and forth to us from California, forcing me to once again use the archaic method of pen and paper for data input. I have been disturbed to see how awful and painful my handwriting is. By painful I mean painful to read, but also painful to write – I’ve turned into a finger-writer with a cramp-inducing scrawl.
Not good.
Therefore, it is practice time. After a 5-minute search sprint, I decided that I probably couldn’t afford a book and should write in the air instead, progressing to printing out free online worksheets for practice once my letters were smaller than a sheet of paper. Oh man, I can work on my climb-and-slide letters! (i, u, w, and t, apparently.)
Then I realized that printing was silly because I have a tablet laptop. Right. So. There are different kinds of handwriting…
Increased legibility was to be had with italic script, but at the cost of being really confused over how to move the pen, and therefore far slower. What if I just changed the muscle groups I was moving?
Legibility not increased at all. Hand still cramps. Arm very confused. I realize I’m going to need to settle on something and then work on the muscle memory so my arm won’t be confused.
Triumph! (Well… improvement.) Now if I had a drafting table available at all times…
Writing in cursive was just a bad idea. The letters join together, but they don’t flow, and some of them just look weird (does anyone understand where the capital cursive letter ‘Q’ comes from? I never got it). What about printing?
Yeah, that didn’t go over so well either. The whole “lift pen after each stroke” deal is woefully inefficient. And my “hybrid” handwriting is just too inconsistent and messy.
Writing more systematically would make things easier. I should come up with a standard Mel-hand.
All right. Now if I practice doing these letters large and with good posture, and the same way each time (note no loop in the “g,” that the “f” is print style instead of cursive, etc.) I can probably get it to be cleaner and clearer (and straighter and more regularly spaced) and write sans cramps. Still slower than I type and slower than I’d like it to be, but legible… not pretty, but legible.
Onwards!
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Concert #4 attended: Leopold and Loeb on Thursday night. My (IMSA) friend Shreyas is their bassist and also does lead vocals on a good portion of the songs, so it was nifty yet surreal to see him on stage, surrounded by amps and shining lights, yelling into a microphone and doing fan. We had to wait for two other bands (both of which confused me tremendously – one involved a surrealist b&w projection and a theremin) before L&L went on.
And they rocked. I want a CD so i can replay all those catchy licks all the time. (And I want to be able to play drums like Seamus.) As I type this, I have “Stacy By Gaslight” stuck in my head.
I’ll skip the part where we got in trouble for going to the concert afterwards.
I will also add in dim-sum making lessons at Mrs. Lee’s house, lumpia night, and good conversations with Greg. (Well, a good conversation, but one of a string of several.
And then I will sleep.
Sunday, July 13th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
