- Two weeks ago the eighth person in my life committed suicide.
- I've debated typing this out, and I've sat here and deleted and rewritten, but hell maybe it will help someone.
You're not making this about you, it is about you. You're experiencing this and that is TOTALLY allowed. Don't feel guilty for that.
- And suicide is like influenza; in the wrong pool of friends, you can usually expect at least one more after and event like this.
Thanks for sharing. A kid from high school killed himself and then a year or so later another. They ran in the same circle.
- if you have that one friend who is always down and depressed and they are suddenly chipper and happy GET INVOLVED NOW.
Good advice. I'd say that if anyone in your life is showing marked behavioral changes, get involved.
I'm glad you shared this and I'm sorry it happened. ---8 times? Fuck that.
- I'm glad you shared this and I'm sorry it happened. ---8 times? Fuck that.
There was a time in my life where I ran with lost souls and damaged minds. Lots of fun when times were good, lots of grand adventures, but having those types of friends comes with a cost. And worth every moment we got to share.
Good morning pubski. On Saturday I ran a 20K run, the longest race I've done and the second furthest I've ever run. I finished in 2:02:00. The first three 5Ks were incredibly consistent, but the fourth was 3 minutes off those times. My knee bothered me a little, but I also think my nutrition was off. I should have had a little more food before the start.
But I finished!
In addition to running a lot of miles, I did hill intervals and "other." For me, hill intervals were running as fast as I could for about a minute uphill and then walking back down. I'd do three or four of these with about a mile jog before and after to warm up and cool down.
Other is just anything to stay active. Hiking, snowshoeing, walking, biking. I'm a fair weather biker, so that hasn't really picked up this year. I'm a huge fan of walking. It's a great way to see the city. I've been tracking where I walk, and I'm working on covering the entire city. There's so much here I never knew existed. The rich areas are really impressive (and how I feel walking through them fascinating/depressing).
One of the things I worked on running was how to manage food. Energy gels used to make me scratch my head in confusion, but they make sense now. Learning how to carry them and how and when to eat them was part of the training.
There are others (including on Hubski) who know way more than me, but so far this is working ok for me. If anyone has suggestions for improvement (should I be lifting weights?), I'm all ears.
Well done! 12.47 miles, for those in the US. That's impressive. What was the course like? Hilly? Flat? Roads? Dirt trails?
Keep at it!
Thanks! The route was a mix of paved roads and paved trails around Lake Monona (Madison, WI). I picked it for my first really big race because it's pretty flat. There are some undeniable hills, but they aren't big or steep. It's a nice course and was well supported.
I'm signed up for the Madison Spring Half Marathon in a couple weeks, and that has a few decent hills on it. That will be a harder run. Then I'm taking it easy for a while. The half marathon is a personal goal, but after that (regardless of whether I finish) I'm taking it down a notch. I'll stick with 5-10Ks for the rest of the summer.
Classes coming to an end today, here's some fun facts I learned this semester:
- Humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than mice are to rats:
- Rats left together with a mouse will kill the mouse and eat its brains.
- Mother mice will eat their young when stressed.
- When left in a cage together, adult mice will fight to establish social dominance. The dominant mouse will then chew the whiskers off of the other mice.
- There are no good mouse models of schizophrenia. However, in one of the few that exists, dominant schizophrenic mice will chew the entirity of the hair off the face of the other mice. Picture
- One behavior of mouse models of autism is overgrooming leading to missing patches of hair. Coincidentally this is a behavior shared among several members of my family.
- Mouse models suck. Seriously. Mice with Alzheimer's mutations do not get Alzheimer's. Mice with Huntington's mutations do not get Huntington's.
- To remedy this, models have been generated with many more severe versions of those genes. For example, the 5XFAD mouse expresses five different copies of familial Alzheimer's mutations including one linked to onset around age 40. Many researchers question the relevance of these overloaded brains to humans.
- Stem cells / brain organoids are great! It's a little telling about the current state of neuroscience that researchers put so much hope into them as the Next Big Thing going forward. But maybe that's just my environment's obsession with technology. It remains to be established how relevant an essentially fetal brain is to adult or aging diseases, but that's not going to stop anyone from trying.
- Neuroscientists are impressive thinkers at very neuro-specialized topics, such as electrophysiology, learning mechanics, behavioral tests, and we've read papers with an extraordinarily methodical number of controls that can reduce a complex system into a clear set of roles for a few genes. Unfortunately, they tend to be not so good (yet) at larger systems-level analyses that involve many proteins acting in concert compared to, say, the fields of cancer or ecology. Hopefully this will change in the next few years.
- Neuroscience has pretty figures:
My guess about why diseases are so hard to model is that all biological systems are self-organizing and thus quite stable (as systems can't really self-organize without navigating some staunch thermodynamic principles). When we want to model a disease, we think we can impose a different order externally, and the body is quite resistant to that change, as there can be redundant systems several times over. So we have to makes "super" versions of genetic mutations to make them the dominant force in the system, which is of course going to be far stronger than the "natural" mutations, because those mutations are a greater or lesser part of a multimodal failure.
I think that brain organoids' main contribution to neuroscience will not be clinical but rather in helping us to understand the underlying organizational structure by which the brain grows (and I'm not disparaging the work even a tiny bit, for the record; this would be no small achievement). The best we can hope for in regenerative medicine is to set up conditions in which the body can recapitulate its own developmental growth program.
- I think that brain organoids' main contribution to neuroscience will not be clinical but rather in helping us to understand the underlying organizational structure by which the brain grows (and I'm not disparaging the work even a tiny bit, for the record; this would be no small achievement).
For our last discussion today, we're going to be talking about this recent schizophrenia GWAS paper. At the end of Monday's class, the teacher took a few minutes to talk about the fundamental challenges to that field of research. Namely that despite the high heritability of the disease (48% for monozygotic vs. 4% for dizygotic), all genetic evidence points to it being a highly polygenic disease.
The best link so far gives only a 20% increase in risk. So either the rest of the genetic risk is complex and due to many interwoven factors, or due to extremely rare mutations. Both of which suck to find and follow up in any animal even remotely mammalian.
His logic for iPSC-derived organoids was that they would capture the exact web of mutations in any given individual. But unless the disease is really rooted in what early development the organoid can capture, this just kicks the can down the road to super-star tissue engineers. But who knows. Alzheimer's organoids get plaques, so maybe schizophrenia organoids will get <insert vague theory of the month on disease etiology>.
- Mouse models suck.
Amen. I am tired of hearing about how much more 'relevant' it is to stick a human tumor in an immuno-compromised mouse's brain, than it is to put a mouse tumor in a normal mouse's brain.
Both models are less-than-ideal for obvious reasons, but I am never going to have a goat brain tumor and a thymectomy.
- - One behavior of mouse models of autism is overgrooming leading to missing patches of hair. Coincidentally this is a behavior shared among several members of my family.
Huh. I wonder if our mouse is autistic, he has severely damaged his leg and will constantly gnaw at it, we got the infection under control but he is now bald there and limps.
I got a new computer at work today that has been uber big-brothered.
I cannot install programs on it without IT doing so on my behalf. I wouldn't be surprised if they keylog. This is what happens when you work at a hospital, and HIPAA fines can demolish the institution. As a researcher, I never have any patient data, but that doesn't matter to our lawyers, or IT.
When they came to take away my old XP computer, they were dissatisfied to see that I had partitioned my harddrive. That is something that I no longer can do.
I can't help but see this as a hostile act, and it has forever soured my opinion of the institution, and made clear their opinion of me.
Also, someone took my stapler.
System administration isn't our wheelhouse anymore, but when it was it went like this:
You get your choice of:
* You get our locked-down canned configuration. It will allow you to do you job, anything you can do in the browser, and use iTunes because we are not heartless. You do not get to install anything else, you do not get to alter any configuration, and if your home directory takes up too much space on our fileserver we will delete things according to our whims and, probably, make fun of your tastes in music and/or pornography. If you have problems we will take care of you; if one of the actual sysadmins is around they'll even be friendly about it, if not, eh, we'll try.
* We give you hardware, you put whatever you want on it. If you have problems that aren't hardware issues, you deal with them yourself. If it's a hardware issue we'll replace it; if your problem affects other people/is a security issue for the company and you can't quickly fix it yourself you get our locked down canned configuration.
This worked well and, while we weren't a bank, we were sitting on a lot of data we would rather not have been sitting on.
I'm going to be in England in a week. That's insane.
Equally insane: I am going to be out of college in two days.
I had my house show last night, and it was absolutely beautiful. All of my closest college friends were there, and I played the best set I have in years. Some of it really hit close to home for my ex, and we just kind of stood and held each other for about a minute after the set. After that, people just kept going up and playing music or reading poems or whatever for a few hours. It was a really good end to my 4 years here, and I am so happy I decided to put it together. Maybe video will surface of it?
I would have a hard time saying that I am "good" right now, but that is mostly by choice. I am going headfirst into a lot of the darker parts of myself, and taking a really hard look at a lot of things that I have been ignoring for a while. I am working through most of them, and I am making progress, but there's still always some residual funk that hangs around when I do that. I think it is for the best, though.
Tattoooooooooooooooooo! One of my best friends gave me this stick and poke the other night, and I'm happy with how it turned out. It's something I've wanted for a while. It's an interactive fiction command, and means "examine self". It's a nice, if nerdy, way to remind me to care for and think about myself. For a while, I kept something like a diary, and every entry started with ">x self", and then listed my "stats" for the day. It's weird, but it was the only way that I could actually think about how I was doing.
- I am going headfirst into a lot of the darker parts of myself, and taking a really hard look at a lot of things that I have been ignoring for a while.
Hubski logo: "What can be learned?" Sounds like you're on it!
I went to the doctor for my heart last week too. I have SVT. I woke up with my heart racing on Friday and after a half day at work trying to get it to calm down with the methods I've used in the past I finally went to the doctor. My heart rate was 200 bpm and my blood pressure was like 144/112. They gave me some clonidine and I finally got it to stop by increasing the pressure in my chest. Shit sucks and now I'm about flat broke. Stupid Supreme Court.
I can usually stop it by increasing the pressure in my chest, taking a deep breath and bending over. That's what I ended up doing on Friday. When the doctor let me leave my blood pressure was like 124/76. I feel fine. But every once in a while it doesn't cooperate and this time I went to the doctor and got some medicine and information.
So I've been in the mind section of the hospotal for a littel bit more than two weeks now. It feel like time i here is standing still while everyone else is moving on.
I have never wanted to stop time so much like I want now. Or fastforward.
But I can't. So instead I'm receiving a foster family and only God knows when.
And... I know I'll look back on this thinging it was har tiny Ronja, but you did it
But it is just SO HARD.
It will be over before you know it, I promise. Time never cooperates but it always moves forward.
Stay strong, because you know that it will get better.
Thank you. Hubski is a welcome place of perspective, and right now I really need that.
System system system SYSTEM System
I've never said the word 'system' more often than in the last week. I'm doing two quite interesting design courses from the mechanical engineering faculty. One project has us design a secure and individualized baggage reclaim system, while the other is designing an automatic barge vessel (system). Getting down to the nitty gritty technical and logic of systems is a skill I rarely get the opportunity to practice. Especially not in such a comprehensive and detailed design project. Glad I chose these courses.
Also, I bought some British pounds for my trip to London this weekend. Looking forward to that!
I've kind of given up on even thinking about anything romantic and accepting that finding the kind of person I want isn't realistic. The kind of person I want? Someone who would rather listen to LUH than Radiohead, read Kundera as opposed to the Mindy Calling book, go to a park for sunset instead of staying in. The solitude is good and I feel more sure of myself and what I am doing, and feel as though this is the way things should be. Sharing is not a necessity, and if that means an ample amount of time to myself then so be it. Filling that "void", for lack of a better word (it's not really a void), doesn't matter if it's not what I'm looking for. The issue could lie in this manifesting in a lack of desire to continue building existing and new friendships. It wouldn't surprise me if I move in that direction.
kleinbl00 has me reading Kundera, speaking of the above, and I'm about halfway into it. For better or worse I see myself in Ludvik, there are a couple of parellels in my life to his, labor camps notwithstanding. Not sure what to make of that yet.
Listen up, Grasshopper.
"Love" is not about finding the "kind of person you want" it's about finding someone who revises your requirements. The person you will love will or will not read Mindy Kaling. Either way, you will forgive her. The person you love will convince you to stay in when you want to go to the sunset and convince you to go to the sunset when you want to stay in.
Love is about buttressing our identities, not about defining ourselves by our choices and our tastes. Love makes solitude effortless and sharing an assumption. Love is not additive or subtractive, it is multiplicative. Therefore, we must not be zeroes when we operate.
There's this assumption amongst the lonelyhearts of early adulthood that love is "filling the void." Those who are happy in love are those who have tended to their own voids as you are doing. We do not "complete" each other. We stack.
My wife's taste in music sucks. I think in the past ten years she's bought a Norah Jones CD, and maybe an Iron & Wine. THAT'S IT. Over a thirteen year relationship I have determined that she fundamentally dislikes music that includes "bass" and "drums." Early on, I told her that she was perfect except for her taste in music. She laughed at me and said "I can buy my music at Fred Meyer. You're the one that needs to buy obscure, out-of-print German bands that howl at each other." She's right. And she won't come to my concerts, and that's fine because everything else matters so much more.
"Love" will challenge your ideas about love, and you'll love it. But you're right, and you're on the right track.
You have to be up for the challenge, and that starts within.
I disagree, to an extent about the choices and tastes aspect of this. The choices and tastes of a person are a defining part of their identify. I do not believe, for instance, that the person shooting guns and listening to pop country and the person sitting in a coffee shop listening to Sam Beam are romantically compatible people. Therefore, how a person defines themselves directly relates to the pool of people available to them for identity buttressing. If I'm aware of my identity, and therefore aware of the scope of the previous sentence, is that not a good way to temper expectations?
Like I said, void was due to a lack of other words to use, I don't feel much of a void right now. But I also have no interest in love or being close to anybody.
It is not and I will tell you why.
When I was your age I walked around in a Schott Perfecto airbrushed with a Skinny Puppy logo on it. I had holes in my ears spaced to fit electronics components. I had a chinese assault rifle in my dorm room and at least three designs for at least three morbidly embarrassing tattoos that I fortunately never went through with.
When my wife was your age she had hair down to her ass and was an avid chamber music performer. Her principle interests were Renfair and needlepoint and she wore a college sweatshirt everywhere. She had never eaten sushi, considered butterscotch schnapps to be her cocktail of choice and rebelled against her parents by attending - gasp! - EndFest. Yet we hung out, were friends, and flirted. She met two of my extremely spooky girlfriends and I was friends with the potato she dated, and then married.
But we got along pretty goddamn well. My wife is fond of saying "we weren't ready for each other back then."
"Opposites attract" is most likely the single most common romance trope. I'd look it up but I'm in a hurry (and there's enough biochemists on this site to fact-check me faster than I can say "o-chem") but I've heard from several different places that the pheromones we're attracted to come from people with moderate genetic drift from ourselves. Biologically, we're looking for diversity, but also compatibility.
The science of attraction is far from settled. Both Match.com and eHarmony.com use variations of Meyers-Briggs in their questionnaires; the funny thing is that Match.com pairs opposites while eHarmony pairs equals. This is probably why eHarmony was favored by older people while Match was favored by younger - our personalities and behaviors when we're young are more malleable.
Far more importantly, however, is research conducted by Dan Ariely that determined that speed dating is far better at finding a lasting companion than any sort of online questionnaire, and that speed dating with shared experience trumps everything. Simply putting two people on computers and making them look at abstract shapes with a chat window does a better job of finding partners than swiping right. It's not about who we are, it's not about what we want, it's about how we interact with each other.
You have to be certain in yourself before you can be confident in your interactions. This, I believe, is why young people flailing about looking for identity have a hard time at romance while the self-assured pricks who know precisely who they are tend to clean up.
Who you are matters fuckall. How you share it is everything.
Yeah, I've read that Ariely book and think online dating and dating apps are a complete crock of shit designed solely to keep people using them. Success doesn't matter, give the user the tools to have just enough success that creates a story that draws in more people, whole you leave the rest tugging at strings trying to figure why it's not working for them.
Your last sentence is really kind of upsetting. If only because I don't want to share who I am. I don't care.
These may be the two most important sentences on the internet.
The fact is - speaking from MUCH personal experience - that you won't "find someone" until you stop looking. And I don't mean the whiny, self-pitying, "nobody loves me so I'm not going outside anymore" version of "not looking."
You will pass through that stage. Then you will come out the other side, and have genuinely given up entirely.
Then you will be someone that other people find attractive, because you aren't using them as a battery to power your sad little existence. You will be a source of power and energy and that is attractive.
And that's when they will find you. You gotta be whole and not-needy before someone is gonna want you in a healthy and loving way. It'll happen. Eventually.
- The choices and tastes of a person are a defining part of their identify. I do not believe, for instance, that the person shooting guns and listening to pop country and the person sitting in a coffee shop listening to Sam Beam are romantically capatible people.
No.
Taste is what one finds pleasing, and there are many reasons why one might prefer country to classical, say, or vice versa (upbringing, genetics, etc). They have nothing whatever to do with identity. If you're defining yourself by your taste in music, art, whatever, then you, my friend, are leading an exceedingly shallow existence (my apologies for being so blunt).
There is definitely a lot to be gained by having similar interests insofar are you will enjoy doing stuff together, which I think is important (such that one needs to be friends with their partner, first and foremost, to be anything else). But some interests will converge and some diverge, and there's nothing wrong with that, unless you're looking for an accessory and not a partner.
My wife, for example, is an amazing person. She is a beautiful piano player, and is a highly talented and successful artist, all qualities you might be attracted to. BUT, she also enjoys laying on the couch and watching The Kardashians and King of Queens. I can't be in a room where Kim Kardashian is on TV, so guess what? I leave. I don't see it as an existential threat. KoQ I find absolutely terrible and trivial, but it doesn't inspire the level of disgust in me than does reality TV generally and Kardashians in particular. But that just shows she's human. No one has high minded ideals all the time. I play hockey and occasionally even get in fights like a high school kid while doing so. Those are things she probably finds childish and low brow about me. These things make us more human.
I still don't know how much I buy into that. How can what a person enjoys, what they do as a hobby, what their tastes are, how are those things not a part of their identity? Is there not a tie between these things and deeper aspects of a person? (To which I say: yes)
The identity is the sum of its parts and to simply ignore facets of if just doesn't feel right.
I don't think it's so much what you do/like but how you share that with somebody. Sometimes she'll do things she doesn't necessarily enjoy just to see you enjoy yourself and sometimes you'll do the same for her. I don't give a shit about guns but I love talking to my SO about them because I liked seeing how passionate he is. It's not necessarily the topic or activity you find interesting but the person in front of you.
Not necessarily, but there are certain topics I have zero tolerance for, and guns are a great example of that. If you own guns, support the gun industry and lobbying, then I flat out do not want to be intimate with you. As a person in front of me I have very little interest in you (see: judgmental comment in reply to bb).
Granted, I have a family member who was killed due to gun violence, so that's an extreme example.
Oh I don't live in America and we don't really support how you guys do things. To be blunt thought you will likely have to work on the quick to judge thing you've seemingly got going on. You'll never like everything about a person and if you did you would probably get bored of them. A partner should be somebody who you can grow with and that's not really gonna happen when someone is exactly like you. Also if you are with them for being like you you won't like when they inevitably grow to be a different at different times from you.
I think (hope) what you're trying to say is that there are people who are sensitive to the world around them and people who aren't, and that you prefer the former, no? If so, I agree with you.
However, the specifics are irrelevant. Only the most superficial aspects of one's being can be summed up in the way you suggest. Do you only relate to people who, say, have similar political or religious beliefs as you? Make the same amount of money as you? Eat the same kind of food as you? All of these things are skin deep at their deepest, and none is an example of a character trait any more than being white, black, Asian, or Latino is. Judging a book by its cover is bad enough. Judging a person by theirs...
I think I have too many trust issues to not be a judgmental person.
Made breakfast muffins and took a picture with my new iphone. I managed to email the picture but can't quite figure out how to upload it to here. I'll have another muffin while I go back and read kb's instructions.
Yummy, big, fluffy, not-too-sweet, full of blueberries and raspberries.
Otherwise, took my car into the garage around the corner: the driver windshield wiper was strong, consistent, co-operative; the passenger wiper was intermittant and when it did respond to the on switch, it flopped up and down like a fish on the dock - yes, kind of like my marriage.
ok, I'll shut-the-fuck-up about all that. It's gone from surreal to tragic.
I mailed a postcard to flagamuffin this morning. It's hard to believe, but he actually has a real-world existence. The postcard should get to him in about three months (thenewgreen).
Still riding, our POS bike breaks on average once a day. But that's ok: easy and cheap fixes all the time. It's a bike that was built to break. I'm surprised my mom hasn't said a word about us buying a motorbike. Maybe the fact that she found out through the vlogs 1 week later made her realize why I don't tell her about these things...?
We're ahead of schedule because we took the highway a couple times so we're gonna drive to ha long bay :) Then, the plan is to drive to Hanoi, sell the bike ASAP so we can book a tour to Sapa. And then we fly home (with a day in Singapore, a day in Tokyo and a couple hours in Chicago's airport before reaching MTL).
Radler for me, barkeep. The weather is lovely, and a summery beery drink is just the ticket.
Project Re-Plumb The Whole House is basically complete, on time, and within budget. Our plumber did a brilliant job... now I just gotta finish things... like skinning the walls, tiling the bathroom walls and floor, repairing the parts of the ceiling and walls that had to come out to get access to the pipes, etc.
But at least I am able to sleep in my own bed again. Yay!
Found a contractor to finish the bathroom yesterday. He starts next week. So between now and Monday I need to remove/move all the electrical in the bathroom - switches, lights, fan, etc - to their new locations, then build a new suspended ceiling, so the contractor can come in and tile the walls and floor.
The end is in sight.
And my wedding is in exactly two months.
Picked out my Joseph Abboud tuxedo. Black, lightweight, single-button, modified shawl collar.... very classic. Found the "continental" style tie I want to wear. Now I need to find shirt studs, cuff links, and a tie tack (for the center of the continental tie) that match my bride's light blue dress.
I'm kicking ass at work. And that's about all there is to say about that.
And my new motorcycle - a 1981 BMW R100s - is just enchanting. We are getting to know each other, and building a relationship. Her shift linkage came apart the other day on the freeway, but I was able to get back on the road again when a nearby friend brought me the one nut I needed to re-assemble the linkage.
All in all, life is damn fine.
That's all awesome goobster, glad to read it. especially this bit:
- And my wedding is in exactly two months.
- be her before you know it!
This is a warning, soon enough she will consume you and literally annex your body within her evil domion muahaahahahahahha
good catch nowaypablo. -It may not have been a typo. Anyone that's been married knows that you tend to take on the characteristics of your spouse to a degree. He may end up her.
Thanks much, my friend!
Getting married to a professional organizer is ... an experience. She has everything planned down to the last detail, and I'm more of a "let's get a groovy bunch of people together in a room with some good food and liquor and have a party" kinda guy.
But we are both enjoying the process, and looking forward to the results. (I've been married before. She hasn't. So she doesn't have any idea how fast the event will go by. I'm hoping the come-down afterwards isn't too bad...)
- "let's get a groovy bunch of people together in a room with some good food and liquor and have a party" kinda guy.
It does go by quickly! It was a roller coaster of a day for me. Mostly good. My wife was a ball of anxiety though and that SUCKED. But, when it was all done we went to the Ritz Carlton, got on the elevator and standing next to us was Michael Stipe. We figured that this was a good sign. Turns out that so far, so good.
As you know, take time to be present and enjoy the day and each other.
My sweetie can get caught up like your wife, and kinda skim across the surface of things, but I have found ways to anchor her, bring her down into some meaningful interaction, and then let her go chase shiny things again. Afterwards, she remembers the times that we connected on something, and is appreciative for it. It helps the whole event become more than just a blur of momentary connections, but a series of deep moments interspersed with fun craziness.
Hopefully the wedding will be the same!
My wife has a crazy ability to notice the imperfections in things. A crack here, there... It's an amazing quality for a dermatologist to have. Kinda annoying in a fiancée.
Thesis is done and turned in! 2 more finals and then I get to walk but not graduate cuz I gotta take one more class over the summer
Handed in my last college paper yesterday. It was an analysis paper on the use of subtle power throughout Russia, and Nazi Germany. The entire class was very interesting. It looked to redefine how we see power operating in political and social systems throughout history. Lotta Foucault, which was cool.
I think one of my wisdom teeth is starting to come in. I only hope the pain doesn't get to such a degree that I can't attend my graduation. Right now I'm ok.
Once I tie up all my loose ends with school I'm gonna start prepping for my trip to Canada. Lot of exciting things going on!
'Morning Pubski, just popping in for a coffee and a bite to eat on my way to the office, I'll stop by later.
I'm working towards one of my goals that has yet to make it onto the morale menagerie. The 'Take fun more seriously' goal, specifically. Next week I'm going to go sit on a boat, fish and drink good beer with two of my best friends and do little else for a few days.
Related note, I'm thankful for real good friendships that last, even if you don't get to see someone as much as you'd like. I'll expand on this later after more coffee and a bit of productivity.
EDIT: Who wants to meet up in London?
So, I'm settling into London. Work is going pretty well, the two most senior people in our team have been made to do some other project so the amount of responsibility I have (even as the most junior employee) has suddenly increased a fair bit - which I am excited about! I'm trying to increase the amount of initiative I show - not just solve the problem that is assigned to me, but seek out new problems to solve, prioritise the other ones, etcetera.
I cycled to/from work for the first time, today. There's a lot of traffic but it's possible to avoid most of it by going on quiet roads and bicycle paths. If a junction is too hairy I can always pick my bike up and walk it along the pavement for a bit. I've been cooking my own food for dinner and I'm going to start preparing my own lunch as well - the choices near my office are good but it's better to save money. I've also signed up to a badminton group so hopefully I should meet new people through that and get some more exercise. I played a little bit at university but my friends ended up being more into tennis (some of them still meet up to play it, but I see them around anyway).
I've been trying to make music, but the software on my computer is a fucking hassle and a half. I might lug my MIDI keyboard back here with me next time I visit my parents (I have more desk space in my room than I expected). It's a fucking hassle to find audio production software for Linux that doesn't constantly crash. At least we have a piano though! I should practice more (in fact, I'm going to do that after writing this comment).
So yeah!! I've got most of the things sorted out that adults have to sort out, right? Well. The solitary things that relate to the self. Hobbies, etc. If only I had someone else to share it all with...
An analogy might help... if I am riding my motorcycle down the road, and a car turns in front of me and I hit them and crash, I can react two different ways:
Blame: "That motherfucker turned right in front of me! He broke my arm and destroyed my bike!"
Own It: "Goddamn. I've been in an accident, my arm is broken, and my beautiful bike is destroyed. Was I going too fast? Was my headlight working? Should I have been in the other lane? How could I have avoided this?"
In the first example, there is no resolution. I am completely disempowered to do anything to make my situation better. It will sit in the back of my mind forever and will always be "that asshole that hit me." I have given all the power in the situation to the other person (who is clearly a dick because he ran over me and my motorcycle), and that thorn is now stuck in my brain for ever.
In the second example, I have agency. I am empowered. I can - and will! - answer every single one of those questions. I will learn from the situation. I will become a better rider because I have analyzed the situation and my actions deeply. And it will live on in my mind as "that motorcycle accident I had", rather than letting that other person live in my brain for ever.
So. To answer your question: A world in which you have agency, or power over your situation, is a world that you are the master of. You hold the steering wheel. You are the driving force.
The alternative is to be someone that the world acts on. The world is inexplicable and unpredictable and spiteful and you need to defend yourself against the vagaries that are constantly visited upon you.
Is it just playing word games with yourself in your head? Yes. Essentially. But it works.
Thanks for the elaboration.
I see what you mean, and on my better days I do my best to follow through what I came to call "controlling what you can". Clearly, you can't control the outside world - and we're often dillusional enough to think that we can, thanks to our overblown ego (children are the perfect examples of that) - so do what's in your power to control what you can, which is... you. Your reactions, your perception of things and of yourself...
It's a good way of thinking - just difficult to follow for me at times.
When you own your actions you decide how you feel about them. Own your actions, realize guilt won't get you any farther and will only drag you down, learn from mistakes, apologize to those who deserve it, and move forward guilt free.
It's like realizing being angry at traffic won't make things move any faster, it will just ruin your day. Feeling guilty won't change what happened, it will just keep you from growing. The situation remains but the useless negative emotional state is replaced with something positive.
Koans are profound riddles to test someone's understandings of Buddhist concepts. They have orthodox answers that can be hard to understand because they can be very complex and pretty much require a cultural background in Buddhist philosophy and history, which obviously many people don't.
The Western world interpretation of Koans is a bit more superficial. They're seen as something that's there to help you expand yourself, by finding your own answer with your personal understandings and worldview. You can often come to a deep self discovery through seemingly very simple statements. Because your answer is yours and it has been brought about by personal discovery, it can often feel very profound.
I'm taking the day off today. I just got done watching Heroes of the East on Netflix. The first half of the movie was rough as hell, but the second half turned out to be rather decent. It's a decent time all around as long as you're willing to turn off a few brain cells.