Life – Page 6 – Sandbox

The Happy List

October 22, 2014

If you haven’t gone through the archive of A Show with Ze Frank, I highly recommend it. The topics range all over the place, and the tone can vacillate from serious to silly from one episode to the next. There are a lot of times where I feel like he’s struck a chord, and says or shares something that deeply connects with me and my own experiences.

I could keep rambling about that (and maybe I will, sometime), but I actually wanted to share a particular video that I think poses a good question, about what makes us happy. Go ahead and take a minute to watch it, I’ll wait.

I love this concept, and is one I’ve thought about a lot in the past, the notion of the little moments or vignettes of experience that allow you a moment of happy contentment. It’s part of what I try to get at when I talk about the notion of “Festina Lente”. Being present in the moment, not rushed. Attentive. (It’s also one of the things I enjoy about Amélie — savoring the little moments, cultivating alternative pleasures.)

There are a lot of moments I appreciate, but here are a few:

Walking through dry leaves in the fall.
The smell of the woods and the fields after a good summer storm.
Biting into the first apple of the season.
Watching snow and ice melt into the brook on the first warm day of spring.
Watching traffic lights sway in the evening winds in the summer.
Watching a full moon rise over fresh snow.
Cooking and sharing a large meal with people I love. (There are reasons I try to celebrate both Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving!)
Feeling the cool air on my face from the comfort of a warm bed.
Cupping a warm beverage in my hand after being out in the cold, feeling the heat seep into my fingers.

How about you? What are the moments that make you happy when you catch yourself being present for?

Environment to Thrive

July 23, 2014

I mentioned briefly in Reunions and Goals that I’ve been spending some time thinking about what environments I thrive in. It can be a useful exercise — it helps you identify what is working and what isn’t, and hopefully find ways to improve your environment.

“Environment” can mean a number of things, so to be clear, I’m talking mostly about two factors: living environment (the weather and culture in which you live), and working environment (the culture where you work and what you do there).

Let’s dive into the living environment first: I’m an introvert who grew up in the woods of Vermont. I like having green space around me, and the ability to choose my own pace. I’ve lived in cities before, and the ones I’ve done best in were ones that were welcoming, radically inclusive, and not in quite so much of a rush all the time. I pick up on the tension and urgency of the people around me pretty easily, and it leaves me stressed out more than I’d like. I like my seasons to have punctuation: to be seasons and not just a slight variation in the same weather year-round. I’m pretty ambivalent about winter and summer, but spring and autumn are important to me — in particular Autumn. There’s something about the shift in the air, the leaves changing, the sense of culmination. It’s a period of creativity and productivity for me (spring is a period of reflection and renewal), and something I value a lot.

Culturally, I like the weird. Artists, musicians, counter-culture folks, Cacophanists, Burners. I like diners and dives, street art, and people who don’t take themselves too seriously. I like places where there’s camaraderie and community, where what you do or how much you make doesn’t define who you are. I like to be where there is activity and a sense of getting things done, but where watches aren’t wound too tight.

Then there’s the working environment: what makes me feel productive, how do I like to work? I’ve found that I feel most productive and most valuable when I’m in an autonomous role where I can contribute to a larger whole, and help the people, the project, and the organization shine. I like to fill niches and gaps in processes and workflows so others can achieve what they need with a minimum of drama or frustration. I like to help others feel supported and respected, and like to feel supported and respected in return. I don’t want the limelight — if I was suddenly given the option of becoming a CEO, or becoming a COO (or other C-level position that isn’t the public face of the company), I’d choose the latter. I’d rather have the recognition and respect of my peers than to be called out publicly. I like having enough personal space to get my work done and to breathe, but also enough social opportunities to feel connected with my co-workers.

What this breaks down into for a work environment is a place where there is a level of trust within the organization that everyone is doing their part and contributing as best they can, where the goal is to do good work and to do the right thing, and is less about the politics of ego. There should be room to take initiative, and not too much pigeon-holing into a specific role and job description. Intelligence and talent should be highly valued, but not at the cost of kindness. Every job will have days where you’re there because it’s your job and not because you are invested in the work, but the best environments are where that’s the exception, not the rule. The goal is a work place where you neither feel like an imposter, nor the smartest person in the room, where everyone is striving to do their best work and to be better than themselves.

Obviously, the working and living environments are intertwined: without one, the other will feel off or lackluster. Finding a good work-life balance is hard, and goes well beyond whether or not you’re there 30 hours a week or 70 hours a week. It matters more (to me, at least) whether there is enough separation that work does not overwhelm life (and vice versa), but still enough connection where each is complementary to the other.

I’m not there yet: I really enjoy where I’m working, and feel like the work environment is damn close to where I want it to be. I’m less thrilled with my living situation: the Bay is too crowded, too tense and full of people stressed and rushing about, too expensive, too driven by class and money. That’s not to say there aren’t some amazing people and communities in the area, and a lot of the things I look for — I am saying I’ve not been won over yet or found those connections. I really should invest some more energy into giving it a fair shot. The lack of seasons still bothers me, though, and I can’t imagine settling here for the long term. Maybe that’ll change. In the meantime, it’s at least a worthwhile experience, and an opportunity to identify what’s important to me.

Reunions and Goals

July 18, 2014

It’s always fun to have a little time to reset. I’ve spent the past week at Squam Lake, enjoying the swimming, the people, and the house. It’s been a family reunion of families directly related to the property, and so it’s been wonderful to see all of my cousins, many of whom I haven’t seen in years. It did mean I missed Hack Week back at work, but sometimes that’s just the way things happen. It sounds like they’ve been having an awesome time as well.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what’s important to me, and what sort of environment I tend to thrive in. I’ve got a pretty good handle on it overall, but it’s still nice to pause and reflect every so often to see if things have shifted. When I turned 30, I took some time to figure out a two year, five year, and ten year plan. I managed to hit my two year goal largely on time, and I’m feeling pretty good about hitting my five year goal as well. The ten year is still too far out to tell, but I do feel like it’s still obtainable, so that’s good.

My ten year goal is a hammock. More specifically, sipping iced tea or lemonade in a hammock, while reading a book, nestled in a rambling garden outside a house. A significant other is doing what they want to be doing (maybe reading, or playing a game, or gardening, or painting, or whatever they enjoy doing), while the children play.

It may seem weird to think of a specific vision as a goal, but consider it for a moment: to achieve that, I need to be financially stable enough to afford a house and have the time to enjoy it. I need to be in a romantically stable relationship with someone who is interested in similar goals and lifestyle. I need to be emotionally stable enough to enjoy all of these things.

So if that’s where I want to be when I’m 40, how do I get there? Well, my five year goal is my litmus: if I’m starting to have a good handle on the financial, emotional, and romantic areas at the halfway point, I’m likely in good shape to achieve what I’m hoping for (and if not, it’s also a good point to do any course corrections). So, the five year goal is to have had solid progression in my career (in responsibility, pay, and flexibility), to have my personal life together, and to be in a solid relationship that, if not married and having kids, is at least on that path.

My two year goal was to have progressed in my career, where I’d be working for a company I respect and value, with a steady improvement of pay and advancement, and where I could see myself working for another several years. I managed to hit that right around on target (give or take ~6 months).

So… yeah, goals. It’s weird. When I was younger, my goals were things like “become a published author”, “have a gallery show”, “write a graphic novel”, or “design and produce a game.” Those are all still things I want to accomplish, but they didn’t really click as a goal, because while the goals were concrete, the paths were tenuous. My goal now is just an idea, a vision, but the path is clear, and I may end up achieving some of my other aspirations along the way.

Surfacing

April 9, 2014

I’m still here.

Fair warning: I’m going to ramble here for a little bit. I used to write my blog as a personal journal, and that slowly shifted into its current state as a semi-neglected platform for interesting quotes, random essays and commentary, and the occasional video. That’s likely what it’s going to continue to be, but sometimes you just need to get back to your roots and have a proper life-update braindump. Continue reading “Surfacing”

Vermonters are Cynical Idealists

October 16, 2011

A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. Ralph Waldo Emerson “Self-Reliance,” 1841

I am definitively biased when it comes to this quote, seeing as I am from Vermont myself: that I agree with Emerson’s summation should go without saying. I do think he was on to something, though: while not necessarily geographically linked, there is absolutely a subset of people who have a predisposition to self-reliance. You know the ones: the folks that are always trying their hand at something new, always have pet projects and things they want to learn or do, because they feel it is worthwhile to know how to do something. The people who, even when they’re hit by setbacks and are on the ropes, they’ve got a smile on their face.

I wouldn’t consider them optimists, nor would I consider them pessimists — frankly the folks I’ve met like this run the gamut on whether the glass is half full or half empty. Instead, I prefer to think of this delightful subset of people as Cynical Idealists. Anyone who has spent any serious amount of time in Vermont will know that the official state pastime is complaining. We’ll complain about the weather, we’ll complain about flatlanders, we’ll complain about that pesky varmint that keeps eating the tomatoes. We’ll complain about the snow, and the mud, and the black flies and the mosquitos. We’ll complain about taxes, complain about the cost of gas or the cost of milk, we’ll definitely complain about the cost of heating the house through the winter. If you have an idea or a plan or a project you want to work on, we’ll go to great lengths to pick it apart until you’re wondering why you ever brought it up in the first place. We’ll complain about damn near anything, given the time and opportunity to do so.

And then, after we’re done complaining, we buckle down and deal with it. We complain about the sudden two foot snowstorm, at the same time we’re digging ourselves out. The ideas and plans that we nitpick, once we’re done poking holes in it, we patch it up and do it. You’ll hear a Vermonter complain all year, point out all the things that are wrong, and then if you ask them “Well, why don’t you just move somewhere else?” the answer will be “Now, why on earth would I want to do that?” This is cynical idealism, plain and simple: we’ll point out all the problems and flaws, and then work towards that ideal anyway. It’s a particular attitude that evolves out of pragmatism (in that there is still a sense of “this needed to be done, so I did it”), but is its own thing (“this SHOULD be done, so I did it”).

It’s not just Vermonters and New Hampshirites that are like this, not by any stretch. I’d say perhaps we just seem to have a higher concentration of them. I wish there were more cynical idealists in the world: there’s something very special, and very useful about the productive naysayer.

Emotional Communication

January 1, 2011

There is no language I know of that exists today that is able to truly convey our emotions, our inner needs. The scope just isn’t there — the best we can do is approximate it. We have words that are supposed to convey meaning, but even then, exactly what meaning is so fluid and amorphous, the true intent and meaning is lost in translation. Think about some of the biggest emotions in our lives. Think about love for a moment. “I love you.” “I love this television show.” “I love this song.” “I love my family.” There are so many valid contexts for the verb “to love.” As far as language is concerned, they are all valid, and we treat them as such socially. But the emotions underneath vary wildly. As human beings, we try to pick up on this additional nuance and emotional intent through body language, through situational awareness, the timbre of the voice, the tension of the moment. All of which rests on the hope that those around us are observant enough to notice, and aware enough to interpret these signals correctly. This is frightening, that so much of our emotional communication and well-being is reliant on others’ ability to perceive our comments in the way we intend. Given that, it is unsurprising that so many people feel isolated and alone.

Which brings us to another tool we have to try and communicate: if language does not have the tools to describe an emotion directly (not in a meaningful way, anyway), then it can at least describe them indirectly. Think about music, or books, or film, or photographs, or paintings, or any number of forms of art. The classic question of “What is art?” is easily defined to me: work intended to convey an emotional or personal response to someone. It’s an imperfect tool — there will inevitably be a lot of people who don’t “get” it. It’s not a fault of the artist, or of the viewer — they simply lack the shared context to invoke a response. A photograph of a weathered fence post in a field may not speak to some, but for others it can invoke a personal memory of visiting their grandparents on the farm, or strike a chord more metaphorically, describing for a moment the feeling of isolation that the viewer may be feeling or have felt. Put simply: art describes emotions.

Personally, I tend to draw from media sources to describe a range of emotions and personal thoughts pretty often. I’ve been doing so all week with video clips and songs and quotes, and this is hardly the first time, and I’m not remotely the only one — for every random silly link blog of goofy stuff out on the web, there is also a curated blog of someone trying to point at something in the hopes of getting their message across, and communicate something they feel is important to those around them. I post videos and quotes and songs and images to create a pastiche of who I am and how I’m feeling. (I’d be interested to see what interpretations people draw from the entries posted this past week.) Of course, I’m always afraid that I’m a bit of a Hector the Collector character when I do so, but if even one person gets and appreciates what’s shared, it’s worth it.

Friday the 13th, 2007

April 13, 2007

While considered bad luck by many, I’ve not really found Friday the 13th to be particularly different from any other given Friday… arguably, I’ve had better luck on them than worse (which I suppose goes with my general experience with “luck”… find a 4 leaf clover, fall and skin your knee… walk under a ladder, find a quarter on the sidewalk. Don’t even get me started on my jade pendant). I slept in today, though not as late as some of the past few days, and overall I’m feeling alright.

In my daily spate of rss feeds and blogs, the inestimable Warren Ellis pointed out a fantastic post on M John Harrison’s blog, that’s worth quoting:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

I’m not sure that I entirely agree: while worldbuilding should be by no means the primary function of the story, taking the time to hammer out a core basis for the setting of your story I think can be really rewarding. I must admit that I’m a bit biased in this, in that I like thinking about the esoteric and random elements surrounding a story — how a given civilization functions, the history and struggle that caused that particular world to be formed. It’s easy to become myopic when doing this, absolutely, to start thinking about how a particular tribe in Uganda handles the dry season when your story has nothing to do with that and that knowledge will never even be mentioned. But if you are mindful of this, mindful of the lure of avoiding the story by fleshing out the world (yet another form of procrastination, seductive in its psuedo-productivity), then that elaboration can help tighten and expand your story.

That’s my opinion anyway, and I don’t exactly have any award winning publications to back it up. Unlike M John Harrison.

I kind of agree with him in some ways, though. As soon as the worldbuilding becomes even translucent (let alone opaque), you’ve bored most readers… worldbuilding should be for your own edification and cohesion as the writer. Its role in the story itself should be transparent. (I believe it was Silverberg, and I’m paraphrasing, who commented that Heinlein was one of the few others who managed to ladel on pages of exposition without boring the reader.) I do definitely agree with Mr. Harrison’s thoughts about writing, which he expounds upon here:

The notebook stage is the last time anything of mine sees paper until publication. I like to do lots of operations. Fountain pens and refurbished 1930 Underwood portables don’t cut it; digital management is the appropriate choice. Have you ever noticed how every male novelist you meet at a literary festival wears a linen jacket and is called Tim ? Tim prefers an antique Watermans, maybe his dad owned it. It keeps him pure and returns him to the sinewy prose of the giants who came before us all.

I don’t have any writing pattern. I hate being professional. I don’t write according to a schedule or an output plan; I don’t begin at the beginning and write to the end. Or rather: if I do any of those things I usually have to bin the results. Writing should be fun — absorbing, transporting, intense, whatever. It should ambush you. It should be up there with sex, drugs and irresponsible driving. It shouldn’t have anything to do with research or require a degree in finding out about lipstick colours in 1943. I can’t do it if I’m bored or depressed or feeling unconfident. Once it’s working, I can write anywhere — I’ve done stuff while hanging off an abseil rope on a sea cliff or a highrise building — but not under any conditions. If I’m sitting at my desk I hate to be cold, I hate anyone’s noise except my own. But I like working on a train.

Sounds about right to me. When I’m on a roll, it doesn’t really matter where I am, and if I’m feeling depressed, it’s like pulling teeth to get anything that isn’t simply mopey or angst-ridden out onto the screen or page. I’ve found it easy to get into that rut, and try to be mindful of it, and not letting it overwhelm other things I wish to talk about (if you’ve noticed that my posts sometimes seem varied and veer through topics with remarkable speed, now there’s perhaps a hint as to why… that, or I have the attention span of a goldfish. Maybe a bit of both). With depression, it’s remarkably easy to get stuck on depression and its related trappings, despite the fact that the answer to combatting it is do and be productive and talk about other things.

So, R Stevens linked to SBaGen via Twitter, and I decided to at least find out what the heck he was talking about. Turns out SBaGen is an open source binaural beats generator. If you’re not familiar with the concept, a quick explanation (there are whole books about this, so I definitely recommend looking into it on your own if you’re curious): binaural beats is a method to synchronize and alter your brainwave patterns, ie putting yourself into an alpha or theta (among others) state, for the purposes of meditation, focus, more restful sleep, lucid dreaming, and even (supposedly) out of body experiences. It’s kind of new age-y, but since it’s a free generator, who really cares, it cost you nothing to try it out, and if you decide it’s not worth it, you can delete it easily.

I tried out the Demo, which starts at a 200Hz cycle and slides down to 5Hz over the course of 30 minutes. It’s supposed to theoretically leave you feeling light and energized. I do feel more alert after trying it, though I would like to comment on a few things that happened with it (while I won’t necessarily be posting it on here, I do plan on keeping a journal of my observations as I experiment with this). Notably, a few minutes in, my left thumb abruptly started to feel extremely hot, and my right thumb started to feel cold. Neither was touching anything, and after another few minutes, it largely subsided (which would make sense since different wavelengths are meant to affect you differently, and that frequency changed over that period). Dunno what it all means, but it does leave me curious to find out.

Stacking Saucers

June 28, 2005

It’s currently 75 degrees and raining large, heavy droplets here in Hanover. I’ve spent a fair amount of time the past few days hanging out here, doing a lot of thinking, and a fair bit of talking along with it. It may not all be coagulated enough to put down in written form, but I’m going to give it a shot, because it’s an important subject. Of course, the subject itself is somewhat amorphous, multifaceted, and subject to interpretation. You could call it living an authentic or genuine life, but I prefer calling it living a passionate life.

As some are aware, I define being a geek as being genuinely interested and engaged by a subject. Theater Geeks, Movie Geeks, Anime Geeks, Book Geeks, these are all valid descriptions, but likewise there are Sports Geeks, Fashion Geeks, Social Geeks (not an oxymoron!), and these are just as valid, though we generally give them other names, like “jock”, “fashion maven”, and “socialite”. It all comes down to the same thing, however: being passionate about a subject and having it interest you so much that you learn all you can about it. It becomes a part of your life. You grok your passion.

Everyone has something that they are passionate about. It can vary wildly, and can even be unexpected to those around you. I’ve met people who are fascinated by the process of sewage treatment and water purification in the same way that I might talk about games. You never know what people are passionate about, and that act of wondering is a way that we can connect with others. A case in point; yesterday, I got to rambling about this topic in front of Collis, and randomly asked the girls at a table nearby what they were passionate about. Once they decided I wasn’t a nut-job (or at least a harmless one), the results were quite fascinating. These were people I’d never spoken with before, and yet when asked to talk about their passions, their eyes lit up and the conversation became animated. That passion for a subject is infectious, it becomes interesting to those around you whether they themselves share that passion or not. This is the power of passion.

That’s all pretty straightforward. Where I get all ranty and foaming at the mouth is the question of what we do with those passions. How many people are we surrounded by who are enthralled by a subject or topic or medium, but is never willing to take the step outside the safety net to actually pursue that as a profession? We go to college because that’s what we’re supposed to do. We get jobs that we hate because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Our passions are naysayed as too difficult, unattainable, unlivable, not just by those around us, but by ourselves, because we’re so afraid of stretching ourselves outside of complacency. For the most of us, the annoyance of living in the box is outweighed by the pain and fear of breaking out, and being who we want to be. If you have a passion for writing, be a writer. Write every damn day. Read other writing, read about writing, write stories, your thoughts, how your day went, that dream you had, a story, a poem, write about writing, write about reading. Live it, breathe it, embrace your passion, and it will embrace you. If you’re worried about it not being good enough or that it’s hard, or that there isn’t enough time in the day or that you want to watch your favorite television show or you want to go to that party, then ask yourself why you’re worried, and DO something about it. Afraid of the quality? WRITE MORE. Want to watch that show? Write about it, make it a project. It’s not just writing, either, it’s ANY passion. If you want to make art, bleed ink and paint. Don’t relegate it to a wistful sigh and a hobby, MAKE ART. If you aren’t pursuing your passions, then you deserve any unhappiness you receive.

If you think that’s unfair, then I have to ask what you’re so afraid of that you would deny your passion, your potential for the delusion of safety. That’s not contentment, and it’s certainly not happiness; it’s complacency. It is one thing to let that which does not matter slide. This is not such a case, however. It matters. It’s your passion, it’s your interest, it’s a part of your LIFE, and to deny it, to relegate it to the sidelines is denying a part of yourself. I do not see how that could be driven by anything but fear, or some form of self-destruction. Complacency is the antithesis of passion. Care to see what complacency and fear do? Here’s a social experiment for you to do: sit on a bench on a street and look at people. Look them in the eye, and see the reactions. It doesn’t matter if you’re well dressed or in rags, angry looking or with a smile on your face, nine times out of ten, the other individual will look away. Some can be explained away by conversations or other distractions, but that sort of ratio is simply too large to argue away. (For the record, out of roughly 100 people I tried this with last night, only 3 actually acknowledged the eye contact, all others looked away. Your mileage may vary.)

What drives that sort of behavior, that shrinking away from the possibility of contact or acknowledgment? My belief is that we shrink away from contact because we are afraid of having our world view shaken, of being stretched beyond the bounds of whatever box we’ve chosen for ourselves. To communicate with others inherently holds the potential of being challenged, and that scares people. We mitigate this as much as we can by surrounding ourselves with the like-minded, in classes, conferences, workplaces, social gatherings. How often do we just stop and ask someone on the street how they’re doing, what they’re interested in? Why not? Are we afraid that we might be judged? Why does it matter if we are? It’s just someone on the street, there is no illusory status lost from a conversation not panning out. It is, at worst, a missed chance at enrichment and engagement. You have not LOST anything. Those who talk to strangers live the fullest lives.

Eternal Sunshine of the Waking Mind

November 7, 2004

It’s currently around 12:30am, and I’m sitting on the couch at Uri’s place, staying up all night so I can catch my 6:30am flight in Manchester. We’re watching Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s commentary on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, an absolutely brilliant film that I am the proud recent owner of. It’s interesting just how quickly the movie became one of my favorites.

Uri and I were heading home from Eli’s tonight, and listening to a compilation I made while I was out here, which opens with Beck’s “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime”, a song from the movie soundtrack, which is this beautiful surreal song, and I remarked on how it fit the feeling of the moment, of driving along late at night, with the wind blowing the fallen leaves across the road. Uri commented that it was midnight music, and I found it that the moniker absolutely fit, not just about the song but about the movie as well: it’s a midnight movie. The feeling of the movie feels VERY much (to me) the same feeling of driving down an empty road very late at night (or very early in the morning, depending on your point of view).
Continue reading “Eternal Sunshine of the Waking Mind”