Bigger

I'm doing a lot of good things right now, but I want to go bigger.

I mentioned yesterday that it feels like I'm doing a nose dive that I'll pull up from at the last minute.

Today I somehow feel more strongly that this is true.

What I am doing right now is clearing out a lot of cobwebs in my life. I'm full of them. I need to do a lot of cleaning. My main task right now is coming up with a good way to not forget things that I start - a way of keeping all of my ideas and plans and thoughts and insights in one place so I can look at them and not forget them. I honestly feel that part of the reason I've developed the habit of starting things and putting them aside is that I forget about them.

I'm also working on getting things done quicker and with more momentum; a good companion to knowing where I put all of my ideas. I feel that if I can work on these two things conscientiously and clearly, I'll be able to work with more energy and therefore bigger returns for myself.

Ultimately, I want to know what I want. This will take more work. For the time being, I'm trying to take the first step and know what I'm doing and how I do it. That's how I'll be able to understand myself better and perhaps make changes. If changes are necessary.

Fowl

This afternoon I took a walk, as usual. I got all reminiscy about the past year.

It struck me that I've been living in Albuquerque for 3 months now. 3 months. What have I been doing? I don't feel like I have a whole lot to show for it. This is false in many ways, but I can't escape the feeling that time is slipping away, and I'm not keeping up with it.

When I go for a walk, I end up at the Rio Grande. It's really a wonderful thing to be so close to the river, with its wide swaths of protected wetlands and towering cottonwoods. It struck me that: even if I haven't done much, it's really a valuable thing, to have gone walking along this river for the majority of the past ninety days. If I stop to think about it, it's an amazing force of nature only a couple blocks from my home, and I've really made a connection with it.

This connection paid off tonight, with the fire of the setting sun to the west, the flocks of geese and cranes collecting in the shallow water - even the sound of churchbells ringing from somewhere to the east.

This is a strange, strange, chapter in my life. I feel like some part of me wants to sap out all of my funds and energy in a massive nosedive, only to pull up at the last minute. Let's hope I can actually pull the throttle at the right moment.

I go through phases of buoyant confidence and fear as I move from project to project; hoping that I'm doing the right thing, jumping from computer programming to novel writing to blogging to finances and stocks to self-improvement to furious bouts of accordionism to GTD fanboyism (and I can't ignore my current infatuation with vim). I have faith that, at the root, I'm doing what I need to do, and all my anxiety and confusion is unhelpful but inevitable fluttering as I settle to the bottom of myself.

Here's to resting at the river bank.

Good night, all.

Passive Zip

After a very productive day, I feel somewhat paralyzed at the moment; not really wanting to do one thing or the other.

I've gained a little insight apropos of this situation. It's one that I put into practice earlier today but for some reason I have not looked into for the past hour or so. It's this: that when I feel this way, it usually means there's something I want to do that I am avoiding for some reason. Right now, it's to go outside and burn my pile of personal documents. Burning is what I do in lieu of using a shredder, which I don't have. It's nothing really sensitive or even entirely personal. Perhaps the lack of symbolic meaning makes the task seem less interesting?

I think I'll continue the experiment from this morning. Now that I've typed about it a bit, I think I'll simply go outside and do it. I can't imagine that it's less productive than sitting in my chair wondering what it is I ought to do next.

Good night, all.

Infernal Inventory

A day in which I focus mainly on my shortcomings.

I'm thinking a lot about an article on grit as a defining factor in greatness. I'd like to read more on the topic, but this blog article served as a good introduction: The Future of Self-Improvement, Part I: Grit Is More Important Than Talent :: Articles :: The 99 Percent.

I really do feel that my life suffers from a lack of focus.

I have to say that, objectively, I am very tenacious with my projects, once I "let them in." But I don't let a whole lot in. They remain as ideas, which I might pursue in fits and starts. I'm struggling to find a place for everything and struggling with the cruel, hard fact that I can't find a place for everything. I've got to choose, to commit.

What I've learned in the past couple weeks, though, is that the value of commitment, if total - that is, if your devotion fits the whole space of what you're committing to and you're not leaving any stone unturned or path untrodden in your quest to finish it - it doesn't have to last for a very long time. It could last a very long time, or forever (like with zazen), but it doesn't have to. You might burn through it and be done with it. There is no reason to be worried: if you invest the proper amount of energy into a project, a goal, a practice, you will either satisfy your curiosity for good and leave it be or find something you can be passionate about and take with you. Either way, you're fine.

With that, I go early to bed to rest for I day that I hope feels like it's 10 years long - it's so full of good projects (and excellent naps).

Good night, all.

New Blog

Okay, my new blog is finally up and running in the most basic sense. Here it is:

needfulquestion.wordpress.com

If anyone reading this could subscribe, that would be beautiful.

I will be setting up a more regular posting schedule shortly, and I will be seriously renovating it as time goes on, so stay tuned.

Boiler

The pressure has built up, and steam is beginning to amass at the top...

Suddenly I have a rush to make decisions about my life. Starting classes, where I want to work, all of it. I feel like I need to hammer out a resume, get my life in complete ship-shape for a difficult, busy 6 months or so as I start up again.

I find myself running myself down in subtle ways; old ways, ways I am used to, where I find myself faced with an immediate difficulty, I tell myself I can't do it and then I immediately feel the need to do anything else, distract myself, pace around: anything.

But relief is always much closer. Twice today I pulled myself out of that mood. The first time was by simply lying down and allowing myself to rest for a bit. I was up and at it again after only about 10 minutes.

The second was when I decided to vent all of my feelings and frustrations. I have a lot of fear in me. I was in fact up late last night, simply feeling fear, that sense of being fundamentally unsafe, disconnected from my roots. Does anyone else get that? Why does it only happen at night? My theory is that it's because I push it away during the day, trying to judge myself by arbitrary plans I make up on the spot and struggling to fill up my hours, rather than touching source, sitting down and clearing my vision of all that anxiety and floundering. It's a simple fact that when I don't feel that sense of being connected - and I do feel it directly in my gut - I perform worse and make worse decisions, in addition to enjoying what I do less. I know it's a little more complicated than this, but not by much: I just need to ask myself how I'm feeling and make sure that I acknowledge the answer significantly enough. What enough means depends on the moment.

If only I could remember to do this; make some more progress. I feel like it's time to move on from the plateau of growth I've been hovering at the past three years.

Station-ary

Tonight: a quick check in before I hit the hay. My plan to dive into this new found love of focus has turned back into cycling through a few tasks and never feeling like I'm spending enough time on each one. I am more focused with each one that I usually am, though: I got a lot of CS learning, article writing (a very busy task, I realize, if I want to take it seriously) and violin playing done today. The new blog is almost ready. I continue to tweak it, bit by bit, but I've begun to move my reviews over there. The transfer should be complete tomorrow, and I'll post a link here so all of my teeming fans can bookmark it. Yesterday I had my first session of movement therapy; I still want to be freer, damn it, and talk therapy was not working for me when I last left it as it had in the past. I need to get into my body more. It was an excellent experience - a lot of the work was very subtle - focusing on muscles deep in my abdomen and adjustments to my spine, but it seemed to have a strong effect on me. I look forward to more classes in the future. I'd like to write more about it in the next few days, too, about what it all means and what brought me there. I'm really enjoying my new, more productive self. Maybe the lack of video entertainment has contributed that significantly? I might even say I'm happy right now - were it not for the incredible instability. Or maybe I'm actually comfortable in that instability? That can't be true - not entirely. But maybe I'm finding new strength due to the challenge. Not sure. I only can keep moving. Good night, all.

Formatting...

For the first time, I actually paid attention to blogger's new format. I didn't realize the extent to which they were distinguishing formatted text from html. I apologize, and I hope no one was scared off by the huge blobs of text the past few posts were.

Taking a Breath (NoVideo Day 8)

I've spent the past two days diving into my programming project. Technically, it was two projects - The last two exercises in my programming textbook that I hadn't finished. But the point was not the projects themselves, but to put the work into finishing the textbook itself and to move on to other things.

It was a very rich two days, spent using a rhythm of life I don't normally use. It was an experiment, and it was a success - again, not so much for finishing the projects as much as making it through and learning about myself.

I wanted to see what it was like to completely focus on something until its completion. There is a lot of madness in that, some might initially say. I don't mind, because I tend to miss the mark way in the other direction, the one of false starts, distractions and a general letting of things fall to the wayside. It was a good change of pace for me to commit to 7 - 10 hours a day focusing on one thing.

And the projects were not easy. I am still earning my programming wings, and I made a lot of mistakes that served as a focus for a lot of frustration. A popular thought flashing through my mind during the frustration - that is, periods of restlessness, resistance, wanting to get away, general anxiety - a popular thought was: I'm taking too long. I want this to be over. I have learned how to be patient in a lot of situations, but I see clearly a deep-seated impatience at my core. Maybe it's not best to label it as impatience so much as rejection of what I'm doing. This is the restlessness that drives me to find distractions, to want to get away, to want to do something else.

I noticed something very clearly though, something that this ties into the insights I garnered reading The Ramen King ang I. The thought that precedes the sense of restlessness, wanting to get away? "I can't do this." It's very subtle. It's not a voice in capital letters screaming the thought into my mind. I experience it very subtly, almost on a purely physical level. A very strong feeling: I can't, I can't, I can't. This is "The Voice" from Ramen King. And, yes, it precedes a feeling of anxiety that makes me want to bolt, to avoid what's going on.

I can't rest on my laurels and say I've figured it all out - I still have my insight. But this has been a good, solid, direct "realizing" of the idea that self-criticism leads to a sense of anxiety and behaviors that center on avoiding that anxiety.

I had the experience yesterday of just continuing to work through it - that was the commitment I had made to myself, anyway - and I found that the idea that "I can't do it" would quickly melt away. I shouldn't get too excited about this idea, but apparently once this thought melts away I can usually do the thing I thought I couldn't do in so much dispatch that it makes me laugh.

I'll leave with an example. I had intended to be finished with everything yesterday by around 3:00 and meet Penelope for dinner a few hours after that. 4:30 rolled around, and I realized there was a huge flaw in my "centerpiece" algorithm - the algorithm that made the whole program work. I make a point of going outside every day, and 4:30 is about the last time I can go out and expect there to be a reasonable amount of daylight left. So I went out walking, trying to figure out what to do. I was thinking of just ending, going to dinner and finishing later. I also thought about the eventual way I would solve the problem. There were two possible ways - one would take me less time but make the program much less efficient, the other would take me more time to code but be more efficient, tighter and therefore more beautiful - a better piece of work. I was leaning toward the former, as time was dragging on, and I was feeling impatient to be done with everything. As I continued walking, I realized that, as sensible as cutting and running can be in many situations, I was trying to excuse myself from working through the problem I had committed to complete. Maybe it would take me into the next day (today), but I was going to do it, damn it, and do it the right way.

I got home and found Penelope was ready to meet. I immediately began to work as we slowly communicated by e-mail. I even suggested that we cancel, because I wasn't ready. But, before I even knew it, it was done. I had solved the flaw in the algorithm in record time and, almost miraculously, it began to function beautifully. I asked for 15 minutes, and, in that time, I finished the last major task swiftly. This one seemed to work miraculously, also. I say miraculously, because I had just spent the past two days or so slogging through mistake after mistake, reworking and debugging for hours. And here I was, working with the most complicated parts of my program - really, the most complicated computations I've ever designed - and they just worked.

I hadn't finished the program by the time we met for dinner, but the major work had been finished. Of course, there was no miracle - I just stopped wasting time and got to work. Or maybe that was the miraculous part?

I'll leave it at that for now. I feel like this post ended up way longer than it needed to be - but I'm going to let it stand. I'd like to really convey how much of a growth experience programming can be - but I'm concerned that it might be boring to other people. Some feedback would be appreciated, of course. At any rate, I think I'm going to tackle this same story from a different perspective on my other blog, once it's up.

Good day, all.

You can do it.

NoVideo - Day 5

Being in the middle of a period of time I need to track frees me from the responsibility of coming up wit titles for my posts - though NoVideo is not the chiefest thing on my mind.

What is the biggest thing I've noticed? I've developed a need to focus on things. Apparently, watching videos, holding that need to watch something else, find the next novelty, tends to encourage an impatience where I am eagerly waiting for the next thing to happen. Without that stimulation in the equation - both its direct manifestation as a flickering image and its indirect influence as a desire or craving - I'm more patient with the things I do throughout the day, more settled.

Also, I have a strong desire to focus on one thing at a time, rather than overburden myself with a dozen contradictory tasks that I can't get done. I don't know if this directly has to do with being more settled - though being more comfortable in each task of the day certainly gets me in the habit of sticking with what I'm doing.

So back I go into my current project, which I will be writing about in detail on my other blog, once I'm finished with the project and once the other blog is properly up, sometime this week.

Beyond that, my life has been pretty still. Discussions with Penelope continue - we have formally decided one week of figuring things out, before making any decisions. The main idea is that we both need to decide what we want to do with our lives - at least a sketch for the next 7 or 8 months - before we can say that continuing the relationship makes sense. This is a tall order, but I'm going to do my best to figure that stuff out. With any luck, I'll be sorting out my thoughts here - a very helpful medium for sorting out my feelings.

In the meantime, nose to the grindstone.

Good working, all.

NoVideo - Day 4

In addition to forgoing video of any kind, I'm also temporarily engaging in Tim Ferriss's slow carb diet from his book, The Four Hour Body. It's a discussion on its own, but, basically, it's a 6-day a week low carb diet with an Eat Anything Day tacked on the end. Today is one of those days. I have realized clearly how connected my overeating habits are with my video habits; and I felt that, somehow, the over-indulging would not be the same without t.v. to watch. Instead, I listened to Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me - a familiar and comfortable radio show that, more than any other show, qualifies as indulgence.

It was nice. It was fine. Nothing was lost. Nothing was missed. Any thoughts I had on the way home tonight about how harsh this would be - they all proved completely meaningless. The need to watch something is not a real need. Maybe I will have a desire to watch a certain thing, for the sake of curiosity, novelty, stimulation, a sense of wonder (if it's that type of production) - but it is not a necessity.

After dinner and Wait Wait (and a bottle of wine), I listened to an archived episode of This American Life while lying on my bed and staring at the wall (enjoying something I call the Lascaux Effect - the almost mystical fascination with interior walls lit with warm light - another thing that could be a subject of an entry on its own). Is an NPR addiction rising, with video out of the picture? It's hardly the same thing. I must say, I feel a lot more relaxed after 2 hours of radio glut than I ever would after its visual counterpart. I feel relaxed and ready to do something else: probably read some Sophocles or something else. I can move on; I can get enough sleep, and I feel refreshed.

Good night, all.

NoVideo - Day 3

Yes, I'm starting on day 3, because I didn't get to blogging about it on days 1 or 2.

On Sunday, Penelope said she wanted to break up with me. There are a lot of details, but the main gist is that she feels I am not available. I know that line. I think she's right. I don't feel available to myself, either.

I moped for much of Monday and Tuesday, grieving for the relationship, smarting from the suddenness of it all and considering carefully what went wrong.

I decided that my attachment to video, while not wholly or even mostly responsible for the fracture, was at least partially responsible for it. However, it is very largely responsible for taking up a lot of my time and energy in a time when I need all that I can get. I reflected on how the time and energy that video eats up goes far beyond the actual time spent on it directly. It makes me more lethargic; it makes me focus less on what I'm doing; i'm sure it effects my brain chemistry in a way I couldn't directly explain; it encourages me to overeat; it contributes in an overall neglect of my body; it also contributes in neglect of my feelings. Caring for my feelings is not like caring for my body, where I can pick up the slack later if I ignore it now - no, caring for my feelings takes a lot of consistent work, otherwise I slip back dramatically. I am really, really good at shutting them off, and video is an all-too-easy way to do so. Perhaps the easiest.

I want that time and energy. I want my life. Even if it doesn't solve my problems with Penelope (and I guarantee it will help some), it will at least open up the space and time - the possibility - that I can at least try something instead of letting everything slip away. I can grieve better, if things don't work out; I can understand myself.

So:

Wednesday morning, around 9am, I decided to cut myself off from video. That means no t.v., no movies, no video clips of any kind, and no video games except for the ones I am coding myself (and they are not much of a distraction anyway).

This will be in effect until January 2, 2012. Why January 2? I'm not sure exactly. It was arbitrary. I thought that, somehow, waiting until the day after New Year's was a little bit better.

I won't be going back to normal after that point, though. I'll gradually reintroduce a little bit more until I reach a good equilibrium - in my imagination the end product will be that I will watch movies; full episodes of quality, worthwhile t.v. shows; and play substantial, well-recommended video games. No free, candy-like little snippets - they take so much more from me than the longer, more deliberate offerings. But we'll see how this develops.

Of course, eliminating video from my life is just a tiny step; a tiny step on a long, long staircase that leads to the life I know I have it in me to live. All the inner problems, all the addictive, obsessive behavior; all the discomfort with my emotions and the repression - it won't magically disappear. What's different now is that I feel the full force of myself going into this little task, and I feel like I can really wind up in a place from which to take the tiny second step, and the tiny third step, and so on.

So here I am. I'll try to keep posting about the progress, with all my thoughts and reflections on this process (which seems so miniscule compared to all the thinking and writing about it I'm doing - but I know it's worthwhile) and how it develops.

As for Penelope, that might be the subject of another post. I'll say we're not broken up quite yet; we're still talking and figuring this out.

Good day, all.

Get back on the wrist...

I finally strung together the plumwood beads that this blog is named after. It's been around 2 years that they've been sitting disconnected in a box. Now they're back.

Renovation...

Those who know me well should understand that, up until now, I had three blogs going. This was due to some experiments as to what parts of my life I could incorporate into blogs. As it turns out, both projects that were featured in blogs outside of this one were not meant to be, so I've cancelled both. So I'm going to begin again ... again.

I'm going to keep this blog as a place for personal reflection. I'm going to keep the name Peliens. At some point, I will go through every post and anonymize everyone involved. I would like the freedom to express all my thoughts and the shape of my experiences without the identities of the people involved being known.

If you've been reading lately, you've noticed that I've started writing reviews here. I'm going to remove these from this blog and post them on a new blog fairly soon - to keep more public and more personal things separate. When I do so, I will temporarily post the name of the new blog here, but I will be removing it shortly after to keep the association between the two a little separate - at least until I decide otherwise. Obviously, this is all one big work in progress. I'll keep you all posted.