Encounters with the Universe
Yesterday, between appointments, I grabbed a seat in a busy coffee shop. I noticed a man sitting next to me, oblivious to all around him. He was wearing a headset and writing in a notebook. I'm not one to judge a book too much by its cover, but he seemed to be around 30, pale, blond, and like what Matt Damon would look like in Saving Private Ryan if he gained 60 pounds.
His Zen engagement calendar was also on the table. I said, "Can I disturb you?"
He looked up.
I said, "I love seeing someone writing in a notebook. Can you read me something from the Zen book?"
He said, "It's not a poem book. It's a calendar."
"Can you read me something from your calendar?"
He opened the book and read this:
When you see
plum blossoms
or hear the sound
of a small stone
hitting bamboo,
That is a letter
from the world
of emptiness.I quietly wrote in my journal, then, "Can I disturb you again?" I said, disturbing him. "What does 'trust' mean to you?"
Long pause, then he said, "Trust means that you can relax."
Lil, you are one of the colours that makes the world beautiful.
Coffee, reading your words made my day. thx. I have been turning over some trust issues in my mind, but to the guy, the question must have seemed to come out of nowhere. I really liked his definition. If anyone's interested, I can write a little more about trust, here, later.
Interested.
That is a very potent definition of trust.
On my friend's birthday recently, he asked that we pose questions to him as gifts. He would then ponder them for a time, and get back to us. My question for him was:
What mustn't we do?ok, here goes: Trust or lack of trust underlies all relationships. We quickly, often subconsciously, learn who to trust and how much to trust and in which circumstances to trust. Sometimes we should trust a situation to play out according to expectations, but we don't for various reasons. The primary reason is past experience of disappointment.
In my recent case, I trusted another person enough to leave a situation in his hands, but I didn't trust enough to let go of control. Trust-Control, Trust-Control... If you control too much when others thought they were trusted, it damages relationships. If you trust too early or too much when others need more supervision, it might affect the desired collective goal.
I realized recently that I should have trusted my students more and not interfered helpfully, but I was so full of my own need to interfere, that I didn't examine why I was sticking my neck out. My co-teacher in the situation was saying, "Oh just let them do what they want."
So that was on my mind when I ran into the Zen guy. Indeed, trust is the ability to relax and not feel like you have to control outcomes. thx all who replied eightbitsamurai ButterflyEffect and mk.
Also mk, a question as a birthday present is brilliant. In fact, didn't I write about that briefly here.
since you asked Should means that everything is in place to work out the way you personally set it up. It was your design, everyone is following through -- you should trust people to do what they said they would do.
but you don't for various reasons, so you micromanage and try to influence the outcome.
Maybe you don't even consciously know what those reasons are. You don't even realize that you're not trusting them. At least that's what happened to me.... sorry for being a little bit cryptic.
new but related topic
People often get mad at me for not listening to them. For example, person x (spousal unit) gives me directions to get to the highway after dropping him off. I question the directions. I want to go a different way. He gets personal: "Why don't you just listen to me?"
This is a trust issue. I don't listen to him in this case because he is giving me directions for the way he would go, the way he likes to go, the way he's familiar with. I know that going that way, I'd run into a shitload of traffic and it would take me an extra 10 minutes. Going my way, I'd also run into traffic. It doesn't really matter. Driving sucks -- but I'd rather make my own mistakes (and make my own decisions). This makes him mad.
Underlying it is his feeling of not being trusted. I'd like him to say, "It's not about me. I'm proud you're trying to figure out a good way for you to get to the highway. Thanks for giving me a lift out of your way." But instead I get, "Why don't you ever listen to me?"
Next time he says that, I really have to say, "It's not about your ego or your need to be obeyed and listened to (trusted, respected, adult, the decider, whatever.) I just want to get to the highway in a way that I feel is efficient, even if it isn't. Why does that have to be an issue?"
We're still in the pub, right? Am I venting?
Venting is good, it prevents unexpected explosions (Or should anyway).
Words like 'should' give me grief. I recently(Few months recently) found out that very little of the time do I 'have to' do something. I want to do something really badly, maybe to advance a goal, but I don't have to do anything.
Re: Trust
I'm gonna have to re-visit this one sober. I just wrote and promptly deleted a long diatribe about trust, monkeywrenches and similar, but it's neither here nor there.
I can say this with confidence. The word 'Trust' sucks because there are a lot of different kinds of relationships/responsibilities that are all amalgamated under that word.
A lot is in that word, conscious, subconscious, even drunk or unconscious. We trust in different ways, and you can specify how you trust people in each relationship.
Pick up The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - it's a workplace training book -- but I can see its relevance in any team including romantic teams. Absence of trust is the first dysfunction.
- If anyone's interested, I can write a little more about trust, here, later.
Yes, please.
It was more the title than the song itself that made me post. That said, I own so much Future Sound Of London that it's categorized as a genre in my iTunes. They did "live shows" where they'd plug into a radio station from their studio via ISDN and then basically jam. According to iTunes I have two and a half days of live shows, one concert alone lasting nine hours.
This track is from Environments Five, the last of five albums that sound pretty much just like this.
So my band is playing at this show:
Pretty big deal for us. Opening for three well-known bands (one of the later time slots, not a shitty 11 am one) and we'll be playing for the biggest crowd we've ever had. We're also scrambling to put together merch and such things so that we can come out ahead on costs.
I know some of you suckers are in SoCal. If you have a marginal interest in any of these bands come check it out. If you get tickets contact me, I can hook it up.
Sounds like an enviable position - the position to plausibly choose life over money, I mean. You don't sound crazy, you sound rational.
It sounds like your employer is generous and values you. It sounds like you value your employer, they're just a drag on your life at the moment. Since you're thinking of quitting anyway, you have nothing to lose in going to them and asking to part-time it/part-remote it for six months in order to stave off burnout. It's been my experience that modification is always easier for all parties than burning it down and starting all over again - consider, if you took off your employer would be in a pickle, too.
Approach the conversation from "I want to feel fulfilled but I feel responsible to my work here and want to ensure that I can provide for this organization long-term and I'm starting to burn out, can you help me reclaim my mojo" standpoint instead of a "take this job and shove it" standpoint. Frankly, if you drop to part-time for a finite period of time (end-game TBD) you save them a bunch on employment taxes etc. and there may be incentives for them if you're working remotely. I'll bet you can drastically improve your situation without having to grenade anyone's org chart.
This just showed up in my youtube feed, and it seemed applicable to your life situation. Hopefully you find some value in it.
To those who partook in yesterdays festivities, myself included, happy hangover.
Accepted a job offer, just sent the confirmation email this morning actually. Looks like I'll be living in the Detroit area for the foreseeable future. Graduation at the beginning of May, take two weeks for some kind of vacation and then it's go time. (I can't tell if apartment hunting is awesome or terrible.)
I'm practicing my ass off for Carnegie this week, considering we have two rehearsals before we leave for New York. That may or may not be a tiny bit influenced by the movie Whiplash, which I watched for the first time this weekend. ( The Whiplash soundtrack is awesome too )
Best to you at Carnegie. I'm practicing up for my grad recital at the beginning of April. I heard some recordings of myself in the hall, and it sounds Okay. Certainly much better than I thought it would.
It is becoming very difficult for me not to use these Pubskis as an excuse to vent, despite the fact that things are going largely great.
Starting a new business is stressful as fuck, particularly when it includes six figures of startup costs, a thousand mile relocation, three regulatory bodies, four different kinds of insurance, corporate reorganization and a social media stealth campaign. I'm now learning SEO and it makes me feel dirty.
It's sure gonna be something when it's done, though.
ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NOTE I started fixing the bike. It will be ridable soon.
Looked at my student loan debt the other day. Bad Idea.
On the bright side it's...bright...out again. Except it snowed again overnight so fuck everything about that and I'm starting to get sick because the weather keeps going from 20°F to 50°F over the course of a day or two.
More exciting and less negative post coming later today.
Almost done changing all of the .png CSS sprites to svg. Your circledots should look crisper this morning.
Thanks to insomniasexx for putting in much of the effort here.
Starting on a new funky update tomorrow.
EDIT: I also made the linking behavior in the feed more predictable. It used to swap the feed for the post page on an external link.
I wondered about that trade-off. But if it increased comments, it wasn't by a noticeable amount. I figured it was best to go with the design strategy of not breaking expected behavior. I actually liked the behavior, but it would even strike me as odd sometimes after going elsewhere on the web.
Hey, Lil just posted a post regarding this change. I just commented on it with one way we could set it up to make everyone happy. Maybe check it out and let us know your thoughts. I do know that tng loved this behavior even more than me. It seems like there are quite a few people who became familiar with it and loved it.
Thanks. After building the hubwheel svg referencing veen's and mike's mathematical descriptions of the logo, I realized that I could easily make a progressive svg badge. Once that occurred to me, it made perfect sense; the wheel up top earns you badges to give away, so it is best represented as a badge. Also, it's nice that the whole thing reflects one notification color.
So I am spending my evening redownloading Morrowind on my new computer. I am finally going through BTB's mod list for the purpose of making Morrowind amazing. I am 1/4 of the way through so far. Dead links abound. I have found all but 2 of the files I have tried so far, however, thanks to Wayback Machine and Modhistory. 1 is apparently gone forever, and the other is behind a login requirement on a forum no longer accepting new accounts. I managed to contact the administrator on Deviantart. Waiting for a response now.
All of this is an overly verbose way of saying that if any of you ever want to mod Morrowind, ask for the files from someone. It takes far too much effort to do it all yourself.
Godspeed.
I'm typically the only wood elf at the House of Earthly Delights in Suran.
But seriously, the last time I played was on an Xbox console, circa '07. Have fun with the mods, I have heard that they're a nice way to learn some basic tricks at a command line. I also heard that about pirating expensive software. Apparently keygen.exe is NOT a thing anymore. That's just what I heard.
The Good: Girlfriend got a job in the area and will be moving here. Long distance sucks (suckage was affirmed to me pre-move by <major synthetic biologist>).
The Bad: Two days of work on the floor after a snapped line on the HPLC.
The Ugly(?): Prescribed a mild anti-depressant for off-label treatment of insomnia. I like being able to sleep, but all categories of downers scare me. Have yet to decide if I'm imagining post-sunrise changes in cognition.
Forgive me if I cover trodden ground, but for me it requires: no caffeine past noon, no eating one hour prior, no screens 30 minutes prior, and reading a paper book.
I agree that a drug is a drug. But prescription ones are usually formulated for consistent effect over a large sample size. You might be able to get by with less.
Trodden ground, also tried: lift less, run more, melatonin (fuck that), use room only for sleep, listen to noise, old books, new books, music, lay on all four sides of body, read fiction / non-fiction, tea.
Side note: I prefer to avoid, but evening coffees have suddenly become a thing in the lives of others around me. Is this a recent trend?
I like the new Go! Team album more than the new Kendrick album as of now.
And one of their older ones (and one of my favorite music videos EVER I should add):
The HM2 OST is amazing too, but too long to have in regular rotation - most likely for intense study sessions.
Last midterm today, then I go home for Spring Break, where I'll get to play the demo of a game that was announced when I was 11 years old holy hell.
Spring Break will be particularly good for me because I've been in even more of a withdrawn mood than usual. I haven't had a full conversation with another person in like two weeks, so. I just a need a week to recharge and be with people I generally like for an extended period of time. I think I'm gonna get a massage, that shit would be niiiice.
lil's Clubski post reminded me how I had been interested in going to a "Black Club" at school, and I did, but eventually left after a couple of sessions. It's hard to explain, but it felt weird going to a club where the one thing we had in common was our skin-color. Also going to a club that was created to put all the people of my race in one place felt just a tiny bit...I dunno, like a cop-out? Maybe a better word is limiting. IT'S HARD TO EXPLAIN, ALRIGHT.
kleinbl00: Operation "Macchiato Mohawk" is unfortunately a no-go. However, Operation "Henshin a Fro Fro" is totally a-go-go, baby.
How are you liking Hotline Miami? I blew my game budget on Cities: Skylines.
It was...a...game? I'm gonna write a review on it, but I dunno if it's worth $15, I beat it in four hours and I'm not that interested in repeating levels for higher scores.
It's way harder than HM1 - I went back to it after beating HM2 and ended up getting A- to A+ on every level in less than an hour.
It makes some interesting comments on videogame violence.
Soundtrack is TOTALLY worth that price, though.
yeah, that soundtrack is pretty much like, 80% of the reason to buy the game.
I've heard people liked the options of the "masks" better in the first game, rather than playing as different characters throughout the story.
Yeah, there's not much in the way of choice, sacrificed for story. A HELLA confusing story, by the way. And the ending is horrendous, but I can't say they didn't warn me.
- This 'movie' you're making...you know how it ends?
I believe there's a pretty big twist at the end. I doubt you'll like it.
In fact, I don't think anyone will...
Maybe you ought to get out before it's too late?
And I didn't listen, haha.