Archive for December, 2008
Noting that I cleared more messages from my “it’s arrived in the meantime” inbox than from my “backlog” inbox, and that I cleared more than half of my backlog, this is… rather encouraging. Home stretch! Okay, okay, I wimped out. I couldn’t get through the entire backlog and I knew there were emails in there I should reply to quickly. I have one more day to get through the last 82 before the script kicks in.
Today: riding through small-town Florida on an electric scooter with brother, pausing together at a key lime pie factory for pie (frozen, dipped in chocolate, on a stick), lime soda, limeade, and then strolling the pier, popping into a longboard shop, and very fresh fried seafood (fishermen arrived when we sat down; the proprietor took the catch they’d brought in, fried it, and served it to us) at a roadside kitchen trailer festooned with pirate gear.
Had some good conversations. Did the aforementioned inbox cleaning. It’s almost 6am now, though – so it looks like the thing I’ve chosen to drop tonight is physical rest. Ah well; tradeoff I chose to make. I can manage a day on 2.5 hours of sleep. I’ve done it… at this point, probably hundreds of times already.
Vacation has, so far, been primarily a question of “so what kind of tired are you going to be today?” (This is an improvement! Being only one kind of tired per day instead of all kinds of tired every day is a big, big difference.)
Bedtime.
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
The night of inbox cleaning draws nigh. (The apparent backslide is because I’ve added my current inbox to the pool, so I won’t be checking email further ’till I’ve dealt with all my personal backlog. I’ll clear my 162-email work backlog in Boston; nearly all of it is from these past few days of vacation, but I’m on vacation, dammit.)
Before I get a round tuitt: From Planet Sugar Labs: a great post from Walter. (One point of disagreement: I’m not convinced that “we know of no better tool for learning than a computer” – that assumes there’s an universal ‘best’ for the broadly defined concept of ‘learning’.)
Today my father decided that he wanted to Go On A (Fishing Charter) Boat and Bring Us Back Dead Animals To Eat. And that we should keep him company, despite nobody else actually liking fishing (in fact, despite most of us actively disliking fishing.) So I spent most of the day trying not to vomit on a pitching deck (I do not easily get motion-sick, so this was impressive) I then napped away the nausea instead of the original plan of romping through mud (in the Everglades), and then consumed (with urging) Way Too Much Fish, my father having caught two (2) for a per-pound cost that… exceeds that of today’s desktop computers. (If anyone in the Chicago area would like to be my father’s fishing buddy, to save the rest of us from similar queasy mornings on Lake MIchigan, please let me know.)
Multiple things have made me think about what it is I want/need/expect (which word best encompasses the similarity of the three?) from… I think the word I am supposed to use here is conventionally “a husband,” or at least “a relationship,” but as many have pointed out nontraditional alternatives (including happy lifelong singleness, with friends) and the prediction (which I agree with) that I’m more likely to go for those, I’ll use the phrase “genotypically differentiated family” to denote the future group of 0+ people, blood/marriage relations or not, I might choose to share living, etc. arrangements with – folks I would merge my life into.
I don’t want something that “allows” me to pursue the calling and the work that I feel drawn to. Permission for that isn’t theirs to give, any more than I need permission to breathe – without one, I’m dead, and without the other, I might as well be.
I don’t need stability. They don’t always have to be there for me*. I do need to know if and when they can’t be. I need to be able to tell them likewise, though given 22 years of past history, once I start caring about someone, I don’t stop. I need my GDF to be okay with me caring about them even if it may temporarily not be reciprocated. (Sometimes I am illogically dumb in terms of resource allocation like that. I know I’m doing it, and choose to do so; it’s fine.)
*though that’s certainly the easiest way to do it, and I can’t say I don’t want that kind of permanence – just that I probably could live without it.
I don’t want someone to run my life, or to subordinate myself to. I’ve seen too many people sacrifice themselves too much to something like that. I already have issues with overabundance of self-sacrifice, so any more help in this department would be very dangerous in a bad bad bad bad way. At least now and for the immediate foreseeable future.
It’s hard for me to not bring my work home. I’m trying to learn how to do this, because it’s good for me to have that balance and perspective. I need a GDF that will simultaneously respect that this is is hard while helping me do it. I can’t pretend that aspects of my life do not exist; I need a family that will at least acknowledge that there are things that, in a particular context, I have done my best to put aside for a while.
I need to fight my own battles, and occasionally I’ll stagger back in to rest a while, and I don’t need to fight people in order to get back to the fight, or fussing over wherever I might happen to be bleeding. (‘Course, if I come in yelling for a metaphorical tourniquet because some British comedian has lopped off all four limbs, get me the tourniquet. And find out how I managed to locomote myself inside, because once I recover from the massive blood loss, I’m likely to want to learn that one again.)
I do not think I’ll lose my wanderlust (lakwacha) – the occasional sudden need to roam unfettered on a whim, in solitude. I want something – someone, some people – that I will love enough to stay for, even if the road is calling; something worth giving that up for must be fantastic, because following my wanderlust is the most amazing thing I know right now. This probably sounds silly, but I want a home (and the people who make up a home) because I want something to run away from, and to come back to.
I need a GDF who’ll let me go, and who’ll help me hold myself back when I ask. Sometimes I’ll have to ask them to save me from myself. (In college, used to ask my suitemates to come by in several hours and drag me from my desk, the tutorials I was running, etc. so that I would eat dinner – I knew I would forget. Think of that kind of thing, but… bigger. Though oftentimes it will be small, silly, everyday things like that.)
I need to be able to be contagiously excited – but that’s easy. I can do that around everyone. I need to be able to be tired when I’m with them, and that’s much harder. (It’s why I try to actively dispel the myth of SuperMel. SuperMel has Endless Turbo Button Power. This is not an actual implemented feature in Real Mel; it just looks like it on film.)
Sometimes I just need to fight, and need people to spar against when I can’t get myself to fight a problem, to keep me from fighting myself too much. Sometimes I need to ask people to help destroy a part of me. When I know I need to do something but can’t flat-out do it, I need to be able to stand in front of them for the moments when I’m rational and say “look, I need you to fight me on this, and I’m going to fight back, and once we start fighting I’m probably going to say I hate you, or that you’re hurting me. The first won’t be true; the second might be, but in either case I need you not to listen; keep fighting me and win.” Sometimes I need folks to convince me that a part of me is actually worth saving. That’s even harder.
Sometimes I need someone to take care of. Sometimes I need someone to take care of me. Sometimes I’ll want to be there, but can’t be there, and we’ll need to find a way to cope with that. (Aha. That’s why I train my replacements. I don’t want people to need me, because I know I’ll let them down, so I create other people who can do the things they need so that I’m free again and I don’t let them down. The story fits, anyway… interesting.)
They’re going to have to be okay with me flinching at touch, keeping weird hours, cooking strange (though usually edible) food combinations and eating them loudly, napping in random places (due to aforementioned weird hours – and snoring), being oblivious to high-pitched noises and driven absolutely batty by talk radio, being perfectionistic and occasionally hypocritical, teetering close to burnout half the time, being incredibly geeky, impertinent and nontraditional, stubborn and blunt, utterly ignoring fashion, going through piles and piles of books, compulsively optimizing for seemingly unimportant factors, vanishing in public places (usually towards a library or bookstore), being Ridiculously Hyperactive and distractable by shiny things… the list goes on. (And if they want a house full of beautiful fragile objects that are supposed to remain unbroken, then… we will have to engineer some interesting solutions to that one.) Or at least being okay with having to work with me on fixing those parts of it that they don’t like. (And vice versa. Hey, I don’t plan on ceasing the bluntness.)
The biggest risk that I am personally afraid of is of building your life to count on something that you know won’t always be there. I mean, I know that there will be nights when I won’t call and won’t be home for dinner. Some nights I won’t come home at all. I take a lot of risks, and there’s always the chance (you take this chance with everyone – or at least I’m not acquainted with many immortals) that someday – maybe for a reason you don’t think is worth it – I may not come home ever again.
I’m pretty sure I couldn’t cope with the reverse (recall previous post about deep caring + unstable emotional triggers? Yeah, that.) and would feel pretty lousy over having other people shoulder a risk I’m taking on – it may also make me overthink risks at the wrong time. For instance, mid-BMX-backflip is a bad time to be distracted by thoughts of “but… wait! I could break my neck and leave my family behind!”
I have parts of all these things I’ve mentioned. (Remember my tendency to break things into their functional subcomponents, then source each from a separate supplier?) They are distributed, and it would take a lot for me to want to concentrate more potential bottlenecks/failure-points in one location, with one person (or even one group). Reading back through the above, I’m thinking “why would anyone want to enter into such a bargain?” and I have a lot of admiration for people who do, and I’m not one of them, not now – life-merging is bidirectional, and I do not think that I could honestly sign such a bargain in return. Not now.
I do want to learn how to move towards being able to do it, though. It’s what I’m trying to do with my current relationships with family and friends. Because, you know, maybe that’s all I’m going to get – not in the sense of insufficiency or lesser-ness, but in a way of saying “look, maybe this is what’s going to grow into the rest of my life – maybe there won’t be any dramatic phase-changes.” And that’s okay.
More than okay; I’m very happy now. Unstable and conflicted at times, but those make me happy too. (And, as per a few posts back, it is interesting to see how the ending reads with this paragraph removed.)
Also, they have kitesurfing classes here. I’ve been watching the kitesurfers go at it on the waves. More importantly, there is kitesurfing in Boston… (Not to mention longboards and motorcycle classes, though I will first re-learn how to fall, then wait for spring, then tune up my bike, then dust off my rollerblades, since I think you might actually be able to wear them on the train here – unlike Chicago – if not, it’s to the longboards.)
I suspect “becoming athletic” is one of those things I have to fail multiple times at before I actually make it. I backslide less each time. Something something journey not destination?
Sleepytime!
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
I have strong mental associations between songs and the people who first introduced me to them. One way to give me an easy trigger to remember you by is to show me a song I haven’t heard before but am likely to want to hear again, then give me the means to hear it again. (Also, I enjoy the orchestration of the Leona Lewis version of Run, but Snow Patrol’s video has more fire and less vocal ornamentation, both pluses in my book. Also, I haven’t really listened to Depeche Mode since high school. Anyway. Dreams.)
I’ve slept a long time the last two nights, upwards of 8 hours (read: twice as much as usual). They both featured long and winding dreams with segments that I woke up during, going no, that’s not how it goes. I tried to replay those parts differently, multiple times, and couldn’t change them. (I can almost always slip back into my dreams if I go immediately back to sleep – and I can usually re-run them and re-write the endings if I want to. But not this time.)
Last night’s segment: Film noir style, black and white, some kind of nonviolent underground rebellion against some sort of martial law (it’s a dream; it’s hazy on the details). I’m a second too late to volunteer for something that ends up with the death of the guy (a stranger) who took on the job. I can either possibly finish the job and probably get killed, or I can lie, slink away, leave the job undone, and save my ass. You’d think that I could re-run that dream and find some way to pull it off without getting killed, but I didn’t even get that far. Time after time, I went back to sleep, re-ran that part of the dream, and chose to save my own ass. Not out of concern for someone who’d worry about me, not out of a grasp of the bigger picture in which I’d be more useful spent for some other battle – but because I did not want to die. I dreamt I was a coward. And then I thought, what was I supposed to do? Re-run the dream over again until I died in it instead, and then wake up? Yeah, that would be a great way to start the day.
The night before that: Different storyline. I’m dripping seawater (from an earlier part of the dream) and walking into an orchestra rehearsal in a gymnasium. There’s the feeling that I’m coming back to this after a long time, a sort of “finally!” moment; I’ve missed this for a long time. The piano’s empty (it’s Hector, my former old and absolutely terrible upright – but it’s my piano), rehearsal’s starting, so I sit there and begin to play along, and I’m doing pretty well. A boy about my age comes up in the middle of the song and stands beside the upright as a 16-bar rest begins. I’ve never seen him before. I don’t know how good a player he is. But I want him to have a chance, so I scoot out. “Go ahead.” He slides in wordlessly and picks up, playing… not quite as comfortably as I had been*, but pretty close, and well enough.
*Apparently I play piano better in my dreams – I can play with an ensemble as well as I can normally play alone, where in reality I get substantially worse because I can’t hear the other instruments, and if the conductor says something when I’m not looking (for instance, I’m sightreading my sheet music and they announce we’re going back to measure N) I have no idea that he/she has even spoken, in contrast to normal speech sans background music, where I’ll at least usually know I’ve missed something – orchestral music is fantastic at clogging up the frequencies of speech that I can hear. (Ensemble musicans with normal hearing, imagine donning headphones blasting heavy metal while you’re trying to perform (or worse, learn) Saint Saëns. That’s probably about how much I have to strain to hear most of the instruments and voices around me when I play.) And I really do miss playing with an orchestra, band, quartet, choir… Anyway. Back to the dream.
I walk over to the rack of cellos on the side and pull mine from its case. (Again, my instrument. Not a particularly great cello. But it is mine.) Tune it up, rub rosin into the bow, figure I’ll sit in the cello section and play there; it’s been years, but it’ll come back to me, and I’ll learn well enough to fit in somewhere else. But when I turn to walk out to the cello section, there’s a girl – again, my age, stranger, I don’t know how well she plays (is it that I think I play so badly that anyone else must be better?) – sitting in the seat I’d planned to take, no instrument. “Here, take this,” I say, and hand her mine. She starts to play, pretty hesitantly. Making many mistakes. I’d probably do about as well. She’ll learn, I think, and walk back to stand behind the pianist, where I sightread over his shoulder, my fingers twitching and tapping on my leg. I want to play. But there’s no part for me here now. I’ve given away both of the seats that I could take.
The orchestra plays on, rehearsing the same piece again. I watch the pianist and the cellist, and they’ve gotten a little better since it’s the second time around. “I wish I could learn to be that good,” I say out loud. “I can’t afford [the time or money it would take for lessons] to learn to be that good.” (Despite the fact that it’s, you know, the second time they played that piece, and I could have kept either instrument and done just as well. The orchestra is learning together; it makes no sense for me to think about going off, taking lessons until I can play those pieces perfectly, and then going back in and still having no seat – but hey, my actions aren’t exactly rational in dreams.) A voice comes from behind me. “This is the only way you can afford to learn,” it says, and I know it means I’ll have to take an instrument back from one of them if I want to play at all.
So I turn around and listen to the choir, standing kind of awkwardly in the middle of the orchestra I want to play in, but can’t bring myself to oust somebody else from. And I step back and I find that there’s a camera in my hand (woo, dream discontinuity!) and I’m filming the proceedings – I guess it’s helpful, even though I’d rather be in front of the lens, part of the group I’m now recording.
And that’s where I woke up. It was the middle of the night. No, I tell myself. Go back. Get in there and play. I slip back into the dream, but I still can’t bring myself to take their seat. I wake up again. No. Go back and find another instrument, another chair. I go back. There aren’t any spare instruments that I know how to play, not even chairs. I wake up. No. It’s your bloody dream. You can make more instruments and chairs in your mind if you want. Go back. Rewind. I go back. I can’t. There are no more chairs or instruments. I rewind, replay it; I give up my seats once more, don’t change a thing. I stand there listening to this orchestra of Other People until I wake up again, and this time it’s hours later, morning.
There was another dream about a week ago that I wouldn’t change at all, though. I dreamt that I was resting. I will try to have that dream again. And I’ll try not to come back to my computer ’till Tuesday. I need my rest; I need this time away.
Sunday, December 28th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
What I wrote out on the plane, or tried to. In some cases, both.
I wrote the story of the last 10 days, beginning with an unplanned jaunt to Chicago. I wrote about getting a green knit cap with my dad’s gift card from Kohl’s, and how my brother chose the soup buffet I loved (but which he usually dislikes) for dinner, then drove me to the airport, and how he’s grown into a young man whom I love but do not know. I wrote about cold ham sandwiches in the church school’s cafeteria and the neutral ordinariness I’ve fought to escape for years, partly to have something to fight against. How much time it takes to get used to defining yourself in the absence of someone else’s shadow.
I wrote about coming back and sleeping at Mauna Loa, in the warmth of another circle of friends who open to take me in. Being able to help them (I hope) with their business, nap a while, catch the bus to work. Burritos, trips across the city, working in school hallways, long talks with coworkers and friends that left me shaken in a very good way, sitting over the radiator, pulling a sink full of dishes through hot soapy water, making tea. (I was tempted to give everyone tea this year – make a mix of black tea, dried mango and mint, call it hyperactivitea. I decided that the pun was too awful for even me to use*.)
*…though I’m having second thoughts about this now. ;-)
I use my laptop as a portal into another world I choose when I don’t want to be in the world I’m in. Home, with parents angry? Computer. At night, with no one else to talk to in the apartment? Computer. Alternatively, book; it used to be a book for many years before I bought myself my first computer, but books can’t talk back to you, ask you questions, answer yours. It’s just a valid a world as the physical one I choose not to be in for a while. Sometimes you have to go away before you can come back.
I wrote about jackets, an icy trudge from Chuck’s house with Seth and Michael over the Longfellow bridge. About a loud dance club above Central Square where I learned a little about advertising, and about soaking donuts in chai with SJ, and about rebuilding bridges of the metaphorical type. Wrote about Jon Stolk pointing out I’d centered my life around people and how my first reaction to that was oh! what a funny thing. About raspberry lambic and how, when you have a whimpering 5-year-old curled up in your lap, you tour the bathroom to prove to her that there aren’t any slugs or cartoon villains in the shower, then sing ballads on the piano (loudly, so she can hear them through the door) until she’s done shampooing.
I write because I need to know the story that I tell myself about my life. I wrote again about being surprised by hugs, and still not being able to take them gracefully. And look, enough with this already; it’s bloody ridiculous. Maybe I should make a sign and show it to a couple of my friends, something like this:
Hi. I’m trying to get over a phobia of hugs from people that I care about. Do me a favor; give me a hug, and don’t let go until I relax. I’ll probably rescind this request as soon as you attempt it (in fact, as you read this, I am very much regretting showing you this sign); don’t listen. I’ll likely flinch, squirm, stiffen up, begin talking incoherently and rapidly about something else to get my mind off it; you may be kicked, punched, sworn at, and/or subject to other forms of emotional outburst. You may withdraw from participation in this study at any time. If you understand the risks, please initial this disclaimer…
…kind of a lousy favor to ask, isn’t it? “I’m feeling masochistically self-abusive! Kindly allow me the potential of lashing out at you!” Or in fewer words, “Hello! I care about you! May I hurt you, please?” (Or in fewer words, again: “Please break me.”) Then again, it’s the kind of thing I volunteer to be on the flip side of all the time. I would really rather be the punching bag. It’s easier. And I’m more used to it.
I wrote about the difference between running away from something and running towards something else, and whether there was one. About the temptation to try to rest and settle and be happy doing Very Well – and how those temptations might perhaps be right, but that I had decided to ignore them and to keep on climbing blind and trusting my ability to fall, and take the risk of falling badly. How I knew there’s no silver bullet that will automagically make life easier, but how I want one anyway; how wanting and missing and being hungry for something hurts, and how I run sometimes to keep myself from noticing.
How I was running out of words and wanted a warm fire and a soft bed and a number things I knew I don’t know how to deal with, and how I also fundamentally wanted to be pushed beyond my limits until I shattered (because of some sort of arrogant youthful self-confidence that I’d be able to repair myself, I assume) and how I fought myself because I needed something to wrestle with and you’re your own safest opponent – both to fight and to destroy. How I do that and run forward and how I’m terrified of everything but try to never act like it and how I can hold (barely, like the surface tension on a glass of water that’s just overfilled) these contradictions and also be happy, and how I always end crazy agonized things I write with a “but I’m happy!” and truly mean it, and what would it mean if one day I chose to leave that sentence out?
So yeah, I got more incoherent as I went along. My handwriting got worse, too. Not everything has to fit into a story; they’re devices that we use to create and convey meaning to others and to ourselves.
And I wrestle with myself in this forum so that I don’t have to do it quite as much in the Other World I live in.
Off to dinner now. Last thing I want to write about before my email clearing sprint: dreams.
Saturday, December 27th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I’m writing first before I read; I’m giving only the most cursory and random glances to email and the like, so far (though Inbox Zero calls for One Last Big Sprint before the new year starts and my “delete things after 1 week” script starts kicking in).
New backpack, socks, and underwear. Utilitarian Christmas presents, though part of me resents writing this list of new property acquired because that’s not the point of Christmas. All the same, they’re simple things that made me warm and happy. (And really, what more do I need?) The best present has been Time By Myself In A Warm Place To Think; my family is wise enough (or tired enough – I’m not sure which) to leave me alone for a little bit this afternoon with my laptop and a sofa.
I nearly spent Christmas wandering Miami alone. The rest of my family was stuck in Chicago due to weather, and I debated the adventuring prospects of spending a good day and a half of wandering a strange city with a backpack of books and no hotel reservation during one of the busiest times of the year. It sounded great! Freedom to roam around and see places, do things, take random buses, meet people, get stories to tell -
And then this little voice in the back of my head – a voice I’m very not used to hearing – piped up. Think, it said. That’s not what you want; it’s what you’d expect yourself to do. Do not… hit… turbocharge… button. I looked. I saw a lonely, tired kid. Who could go flying off to Florida and slap a coating of excitingness! over being lonely and tired and be honestly happy and fantastic for a while, and unbothered by the solitude. It would be easy to tap into that – it’s what I normally would do. The bigger risk would actually be to not go gallivanting off into the tropics. I didn’t know what I would be without a turbo button at that moment. I had a pretty fair idea of what I’d do if I was excited.
So I sat on the airport bus as it circled past the terminal where I was to catch my flight. I spent the evening quietly playing with dogs in front of a fire, disengaged from the conversations happening in the living room next to me, thankful that my aunt and her family and their friends were welcoming me into their Christmas celebrations anyhow. I read about deboning pigs, working the spine free, smothering the meat with herbs and salt, roasting it until the skin crackled; I read about the rise of management as a discipline, I read about Gandhi, I read about the Berlin Wall, I read until my aunt drove me to the airport and I caught my (postponed) flight, talking about Walter Mitty and the splitting of worlds. And then I sat and read some more.
And then I wrote. I don’t know how to be tired, and I don’t know how to be still, or lonely, or sad. I know how to be excited; I know how to be quiet and suck in reams of information, I know how to make my own happiness and curiosity wherever I may happen to be thrown down. I know how to keep my pen moving across a page. I’ll try to type out some of what I wrote later on.
We landed, and I settled in to read an economics book and eat a tuna salad sandwich. I almost went and hopped a random bus. I almost went out to Miami Beach late at night for no apparent reason other than to have something shiny to do, to go looking at the city in the evening. I listened to that little voice again and walked away so I would miss the last bus before I could reconsider my decision (which more than half of me immediately regretted – but I did it anyway). And then yesterday, I didn’t buy a pair of comfy cargo pants my mother disapproved of, to make her happy, and I thought oh! So this is the voice of reason, that’s what it sounds like. It’s still usually inaudible. And I won’t necessarily listen to it next time. But it’s another thing to know.
Saturday, December 27th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
I’m sitting on the edge of my mattress, feet pointed into the narrow space between my bed and the wall, because it’s freezing in the apartment otherwise and practically standing on the heater is the only way I can stay warm (the heat will spread to the rest of my room shortly). I’ve been up for hours, but typing swathed in blankets for most of them – now I’m restless enough to want to move my feet, roam around, stretch my limbs.
The trick to doing the right thing is to make the right thing easy. The catch is that doing so is awfully hard.
I feel like running. I feel like flying. I’m trying to make sure that it’s not shortsighted euphoria – but I’m geared up for the marathon I know I’m likely to have to run (this afternoon: a warm-up sprint). I’m thankful to the folks who’ve got me unstuck from my timesucking, unproductive spiral of self-pity, and hope I can return the favor someday.
And I finally read Greg’s recommendation of The Starfish and the Spider (thanks, Michael!) last night – and went “Oh. Oh wow. So that is what I’m growing into.” And I am proud of what I’m growing up to become. Never satisfied with what I am. But in short, rare spurts, a bit… content – satisfied with that dissatisfaction.
My life has been a series of “ugly duckling sees swans for the first time” moments. I’m starting to reach the points in some of those stories where I look in the water’s reflection and see that maybe, just maybe, I’m that kind of bird as well.
Plenty to do before Christmas comes tomorrow.
Go.
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Someone asked me what I was passionate about, what I was trying to do, and why I was doing what I was doing, and I was immediately able to give them an answer that I believed in, could think of no way of improving, that I liked, and that I was actively working on.
It means I passed the Hamming test today. I am proud of this. Rarely before have I felt such a strong conscious alignment between the things I know, the things I’m doing, and the things I should be doing. (It doesn’t mean they’re easy to do.)
Good times, stirring multiple pots of bubbling curry, stew, frying zucchini, roasting garlic on the stove, and making tea. Full presence in a job that I can do, and finish, and be satisfied by (eating!) at the end. That’s something that doesn’t fill me up forever… it’s far too easy, and a world waits out there to be fed in more ways than my cooking for two can satisfy.
To use a phrase again, though – …and all the same, I wish it were as simple as this always.
Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
If I want to work on hearing-aid related technologies for my EE doctoral work, maybe I should look into the Harvard-MIT Speech, Hearing, Bioscience and Technology (SHBT) program. It seems not uncommon for folks there to go for dual doctorates, but a triple (SHBT, electrical engineering, educational sociology) may be… a bit… much.
Also,
“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.” –T.S. Eliot
Okay. What do I need to do? I have loads of email to reply to – some that need immediate responses, some that really don’t. I’ll take care of the important ones real quick first. Then I’ve got a tech manual to write, an 8.2.1 test plan to work on so that it’s ready to review tomorrow, Activity testing to check in on (notes from the SL meeting have to go out, test sprints have to be followed up on), and… laundry. I want in-unit laundry in my next domicile.
I was going to go climbing with friends tonight, but don’t feel particularly physically awesome today; my immune system’s been fighting off things with various levels of success for the last 2 weeks or so. I want to climb and hang out with them, but it may not be the best thing for me to do. Argh. I’ll knock off emails, take a shower, eat lunch, and then decide.
Even the small things would be easier if I knew I had someone to come home to and collapse on, which is why I think I’ve been pondering the loneliness bit so much lately, but no. It’s not a good idea; it’s just me being lazy. I have to pick myself up when I fall. And yes, part of this is asking for help when it is needed, but only when it is needed. The web of trust of friends and teammates being held up by each other in a circle is… amazing. And the things I have to do are not that big a deal. Seriously. The stuff I have to do? It’s easy.
So what am I waiting for? Get back out there.
Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
I’ve been talking with several people lately about why people (usually one or both of us in the conversation) won’t do what they’re passionate about. I’m not just talking about things you like; I’m talking about things you can’t live without. Things that, no matter how tired and miserable you are, starting to talk about and work on them makes you light up.
Sometimes it’s because you’re afraid you’ll find out you don’t really love it. Or that you don’t love something else you’ve previously professed to love. Maybe you like it a lot, but that’s not the same. And if you leave what you say you love only to find you don’t love the thing you left it for, what do you love?
I felt this way about art; I used to be “the kid who draws” in high school. I like it, and I’m not bad at realistic black-and-white sketches (here’s an example of Scott; not a good one, but the only sketch of mine I could find online), but I’m not that good and not working on getting better now – and most importantly, I can live without it. There’s a great quote from Uncle Vanya on this: “No, not knowing is better. At least there’s still hope.” (I realize it’s more common to have these feelings about people than about academic disciplines.)
Knowing that you’ll love something more with restricted exposure to it is different – and a good thing to know. I realize I woud loathe abstract mathematics if I had to do it for hours every day for years, which is why I’m not a theoretical mathematician. In small doses, for recreation, I adore it, hunger for it. I feel the same way about flourless chocolate cake. Terrible idea for my daily bread. Glorious special-occasion treat.
Sometimes you know you love something and should be going for it, but choose not to because of other obligations and responsibilities you value more. Sometimes you know you love something and you’re going for it with a long-term plan – but it’s easy to use that rationale as an excuse for avoiding questions you don’t want to know the answers for.
If you know you don’t want to know, and make that conscious choice and are all right with it – and choose the amount you’re going to agonize over not-knowing this thing you’ve chosen not to know – then all right. That’s a decision I may not agree with all the time, but it’s one I can respect. You draw your own boundaries. “I need to whine for 5 minutes about this situation. Cut me off after that.”
Love and passion, choice, uncertainty, control and recklessness, and the idea of knowing. I have been rather philosophical as of late. I step back to wrestle with these things when the going gets tough; dealing with this level of abstraction is easier, and it helps resolve reality into something I can deal with. The ability to go meta is like the “being able to fall safely” of the practice of being aware. It lets me see what’s difficult, what hurts, and what I’m avoiding so that I can not avoid it. Being conscious of what I’m avoiding is a good way to eventually make myself face up to it.
Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Read an email from a friend tonight, responding to an old message I’d sent him from back before I started working for OLPC, when I was still wondering what kinds of first jobs I might find out there.
“Found your message from… wow, six months ago? What’s the latest update [on the job front]… did you find the chaotic environment you were looking for?”
It made me smile.
In other news, Kathy is wonderful. And talking with people is wonderful too. I need to take the time to do that more; I’ve been very happy to see people taking the time for conversations more lately. After a trip to the bakery (me) and gift shopping (him), Chris and I hit the library this afternoon. I now have an inordinate amount of kitchen science, cooking technique, and food writing books. We also have extraordinary quantities of curry, and… too many oranges. I’m not sure how we acquired so many oranges.
I found my boots, too. This after I soaked my feet through wading in mid-calf-high slush piles to get between bakery + library + apartment. But tomorrow is another day, and a day during which my feet are going to be dry. Hot tea, carrot-ginger soup with sour cream, and gloriously nutty black rice.
Finally, another wordle – probably just from the last few posts, but interesting nevertheless. Here’s the old one.
I still write about people. And the only two names there are names of characters in my sci-fi story.
I feel… almost… normal today. It is kind of nice, just for one night. Tomorrow is the start of a long 3-day sprint; I’m glad I’ve rested up before the running.
Sunday, December 21st, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
