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We had Session 17 of PUZZLE Book 2 tonight.

During the beginning of the session, we recapped the three separate winter sessions.

Then the action resumed with the party in Carnivale just outside the casino. They had just heard the laughter of the creature known as the Banshee. Jova, the Half-Orc mercenary/hunter, was with them.

The party observed the Banshee at first and exchanged information. Ever tried to see if he could reenter the Casino, but the entrance of the Casino seemed to be strangely missing. The Banshee seemed to take some kind of interest in Jova.

She exclaimed gleefully, "I found him!" She began to slowly draw nearer to Jova and the party, or rather, the space between her and the party seemed to shrink.

She asked Jova, "What is your name?"

The bansee repeatedly asks what Jova's name is.

At this point the party squared off against the Banshee, assuming it was now targeting Jova the same way it had targeted Darastiya. Kyu tells the announced that their objective was to protect Jova and any bystanders. KU-RO moved to stand between Jova and the Banshee. Eross fired.

Vorossus was on all fours. It was alert seemed to be switching between looking at the banshee, Kyu, and Jova.

Eross' bolt hit the Banshee in the shoulder. She shrieked, became sad, and suddenly grew in size.

The banshee said, "I thought... you were going to be nice..." She pauses as if listening to music that only she can hear. The fog expands, and dull brass ramparts rise around them, sealing off the area around the group.

The banshee looked at Eross, grabbed the crossbow bolt. She pulled it through her throat and discarded it.

Small metallic arms came up from the ground and grabbed Eross, pulling him into the earth up to his knees. Dozens of these tiny hands crawled over him.

Ever tried to use his vines to pull Eross, along with the hands, out of the ground. KU-RO used a brilliant beacon on Eross, seemingly disabling the hands. He then pulled Eross towards him.

Both KU-RO and Kyu tried to ascertain if they were in a dream. Octlet's device that detected if they were in a dream was going off. But they figured out that although the area was in a dreamlike state, they were not not actually in a dream.

Not immediately informing him what was going on, Kyu launched a plan to put himself, Eross, and Ever to sleep and then to join Ever. He was going to try to put everyone to sleep with a sleep spell, when KU-RO asked if Eross had any sleepytime bolts. Eross didn't know if he did, and hadn't marked them anyway.

The banshee's gaze kept going around, but mostly fixated on Jova and sometimes Vorossus.

Jova seemed unnerved by the Banshee and confused about what was going on. KU-RO explained some of the plan, and it looked like Jova was still confused. Jova moves Vorossus in front of him and says that he will fight. Whenever Jova and the Banshee make eye contact, the Banshee seems joyful, and asks.

Ever asked KU-RO to ask Jova if he'd seen anything like this. Jova replies that he has no memories of anything like this, but that he does not have many memories in general.

The walls, meanwhile, seemed to be closing in. The banshee looks around and tells them and disappointedly says, "I thought we would be friends..."

The banshee took notice of Ever's golem, exclaiming, "A toy! A toy!"

Ever took out his frog, and the banshee's detached face came to look at the frog.

Eross was about to shoot the face, but Kyu cried out and begged him to stick with the plan. Eross decided to shoot bolts at random at his teammates in hopes that the bolts he chose would be sleepytime bolts. He succeeded in putting the Stranger to sleep. The Stranger began to do his sleep-dancing/jumping. Eross then spent an extra action to put Ever to sleep. He shot the bolt at Ever despite Ever's protests that he should just give him a bolt. Ever managed to stop the bolt from hitting him normally. He scratched himself and fell asleep.

Eross then puts the bag on his head as a hat, damages his head with the tips of the bolts, and falls unconscious.

KU-RO put up a wall of blades between their group and the Banshee. Jova readied his huge doublehanded battle axe. KU-RO told to Jova to "hold here" behind the wall of blades. He then went over to Eross to perform first aid.

Kyu used the Dreamscape Hijack ritual to join the others in the dream. As he casted the ritual, Vorossus moved ever so slightly from in front of Jova to in front of Kyu. The banshee, also, seemed to take notice of Kyu.

Kyu pulled the three of them into Ever's dream. But then he felt like they've woken up. It felt like they are in the same place, although Kyu knew that the dreamscape hijack had succeeded. Even KU-RO saw the others seem to wake up. Only Ever felt like the range of his powers had been enhanced.

The banshee smiled and clapped, having taken notice of the party, saying, "We're going to play a game after all!"

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/273999.html

Yes, I am about to write some cheesy stuff. Prepare yourself.

Life has been good lately. It has been good to me for a while, but only recently have I felt skilled enough to internalize it, to begin to give my own answer.

I make mistakes and have setbacks every day. but I've also do a lot of right things. The memory of my friend gives me determination to move forward my own story. I complain less to myself or to anyone about trouble. I seek fewer chances to postpone or escape or hide or distract myself. I may pursue different activities and goals at times, but my life is one thing.

I wish my friend were here to see this. I wish he were here to share in the future we are all building together. Selfishly, I wanted him to see the stories I could create.

I asked myself before: how many more? How many more friends will be gone before I am ready to share the tales I have been spinning with my days? How many loved ones will never get to see what I want to bring to life?

I hear those questions again daily now, but no longer with fear. I am determined not to wait.

Today, I am neither saint, nor sage, nor warrior nor poet. I'm just a dirty traveler, still not fully used to true hardship, just barely getting started. It doesn't matter if it doesn't look like much now. It doesn't matter if outside circumstances get better or worse. I choose my path by choosing my next step in the right direction. I strive to become more skillful and to transform the ingredients of the present for the future.

I have many memories. I have many moments, many emotions that are part of me. I've passed through many intersections, dead ends. I've seen seasons and ships pass me by. But the decades do not weigh on me. There are so many with fewer years, more hair on their heads, more money in their pockets, more achievements on their biographies who are nearly corpses. When I consider it even for a moment, I have neither envy nor scorn for them. What I have: pride in my friends and family, in my path, in my determination for the future. Life is short, but that is fine. I am young, and I refuse to be any other way. The length of days and nights wax and wane, but they are laden with purpose. The road stretches far into the distance. The story is just beginning.

Current Music: "S-Class Wizard Promotion Trial" - Fairy Tail OST Vol 4. - Yasuharu Takanashi
Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/273897.html

Today I learned my friend Adam passed away.

I met him when I when I was volunteering for an event called Singularity Summit, back in fall of 2009. I'd parked a few blocks uptown of the event venue, the 92nd St Y, in Manhattan. I had a bunch of food for the event. Adam helped me carry a big tray of cookies that a volunteer's grandmother had baked on a whim.

I don't remember exactly what we said that morning six and a half years ago. Probably shook hands and introduced ourselves. Probably chatted talked about the event, talked about how we knew everyone involved. Memory is unreliable like that. But I can't get it out of my mind, real or fabricated. How bright that morning was.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/273354.html

I was trying to think of metaphors for society that I can use to explore different ideas about life choices. But none of the things that have come to mind are quite working.

The first image I had when I was thinking yesterday was one of a coral reef. Putting aside the idea of distinct species that mostly feed on each other, I thought it might be nice, because you have a nice contrast between different types of creatures. There are the coral polyps, which cover the main structure of the reef. You have armored crustaceans, elusive octopi, schools of fish, and sharks. I thought that might be a good parallel for different niches people can take in society.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the metaphor doesn't really work.

First, the structure of the coral reef is literally built on the hardened corpses of dead coral polyps. As much as we owe to the people who came before us, that idea is a bit too grim--I think that would be implying that people have to literally die off in order for society to advance, which is not a place I want to go.

I also thought I could put aside the idea of different species killing and feeding off each other, and just replace the predation with cooperation and exchange. That's a pretty big jump alone. What messes it up even more: the entire reef system ultimately gets most of its energy from phytoplankton. Agriculture and natural resources also power the human world, but that's sort of the wrong conceptual level. I don't want the metaphor to focus on the economic or biological flow of energy. I'm more interested in things like social norms and incentives affect individual choices and life trajectories.

Is there a good metaphor? I also thought of using a forest instead a coral reef, but I felt uneasy in similar ways. It was also less evocative than a coral reef, because having water as a medium better emphasizes a space of possibility with three dimensions.

Does the human social world resemble a natural ecosystem at all? If it does, maybe it doesn't make sense to take individual persons as analogous to individual organisms in the ecosystem. Maybe people are themselves like parts exchanged by entities on larger levels of social organization. Or maybe natural analogies for human society just doesn't work.

It makes sense that it doesn't help understanding to map a complex phenomenon onto another complex phenomenon, even if the second one seems more concrete.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/273039.html

A few weekends ago, I ran into a New York Times Op-Ed entitled, "You Don't Need More Free Time" by one of the authors of a study on happiness and free time, [Time as a Network Good:
Evidence from Unemployment and the Standard Workweek][time-as-a-network-good]. The study says that it's the timing of free time, not the amount that matters. At least, that is what matters when they measure the sense of well-being among the unemployed. This matches some other findings from happiness research: spending time with people you like is a major source of happiness.

I can appreciate that last part. I've been unemployed or employed with a non-standard schedule during the past few years. I look forward to picking up Marlon from school or work, even if we aren't planning on doing anything together. In the future, until I have my own family, I look forward to still having roommates that I like. I don't like big parties, and I like having a lot of time to pursue my own interests. But living alone sounds like a breeding spot for depression.

Organizations probably want to know how the structure of the workweek affects the mood of employees. Institutions want to know how it affects the jobless, and if the jobless are happier taking welfare rather than seeking work--and this piece of research says no.

All this gets limited for me, personally, because this research doesn't measure the time dimension. To me, free time means choice. It means a chance to pursue skills. You can use the time to support and improve the lives of others. No one actually has more or less time--instead, different people have different degrees of choice about how to use the time. You can spend the time to feel happier today and maybe tomorrow, or you can invest it. And there are other investments than simply exchanging your hours and days for a wage or salary. Why the false dilemma?

It could be that we're not that great at making choices about how to spend our time. If free time is more choice, could too many choices hurt us? That is a much more complicated, interesting, and less measurable question.

But if we want to navigate life for ourselves, if we seek to find our own way off the clear, well labelled routes, we can't afford to bet against choice. Choice, and thus time is precious to us. With the right bets: time gets experience, time gets skill, time gets opportunity. We can have too much of almost anything else. Time is on our side. As much as you can, keep it healthy, keep it invested wisely, or at least keep it free.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/272670.html

Yesterday, I read this Slate Star Codex article about social class in the US. It responds to a post here here on Livejournal by sideria, which I haven't yet read. I haven't read the two different social class breakdowns the article mentioned, either Michael Church's or Unqualified Reservation's. I have to remain skeptical of the exact breakdowns, but the idea that social class still exists separately from economic class sounds pretty compelling.

I got excited enough about this idea that when you allude grouping people it can make others pretty uncomfortable. And then it can be hard to communicate what you think is valuable, especially if they haven't read or thought about the same things you have. On the drive home from Rutgers, I enthusiastically brought up the idea with Marlon. He became pretty upset partway through the conversation. He hates it when people analyze him or other people based on generalizations, and that sounded like what I was doing. He doesn't like being sequestered into a category or pidgeonholed because of social labels. He doesn't like that done to him, nor does he like doing it to other people, and neither do I. Before I brought up the topic I might have considered my personal context for approaching this topic, and how other people--even people close to me--might come from a very different place that makes the ideas come across as very different, or even offensive.

I've run into a lot of people on the web who feel it is best to speak your mind frankly, come what may. Anything past a bare minimum of diplomacy slows things down too much, and ends up wasting productive discussion time. Some people are going to get offended, others will completely misinterpret what you are saying, and that doesn't matter. Truth matters more than feelings.

This philosophy of communication and discourse doesn't work for me. Communication is difficult because it's a two-way process. You must listen just as much as you talk. Even if you are giving a lecture, it is important to consider the audience. If how you deliver your message just tries to bulldoze over the biases and sensitivities of your audience, you can easily turn a very open minded group into a crowd who can't hear a word of what you're saying. And I have no patience for social commentators who taunt readers with outrageous things, then use the defense of satire to call everyone stupid when those outrageous things are taken seriously.

Good communication is really hard. I'd like to figure out a way to better talk about things like social class, because they could be part of the many hidden patterns that shape how we communicate and interact with each other. There's more to the truth than just blurting it out. Thinking, and then saying what you are thinking is the easy. More important: figuring out how to make it meaningful for your fellow human beings, the people with whom you share this world, the people with whom you will be cooperating with to shape the future.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/272595.html

Snow still covers most of the ground, though it has melted and refrozen into something more like crumbled ice covered by a crunchy crust. It still looks nice from afar. I love the stark colors of winter days--the white and grey of the landscape and the black and brown of bare, dormant trees against the bright blue sky.

As I turned onto the main road of our neighborhood yesterday, I spotted a large, black shape in the middle of the street. I made out the shape of a bird, black feathers, black beak but something seemed odd. Too large, way too large for a crow.

I drove closer. I saw the bird pecking on something in the middle of the street. I remembered seeing a badly mangled corpse of a small animal, probably a squirrel, at that spot in the street earlier. A flattened splotch red lined with grey fur. The bird now stood astride this small shape, pecking methodically. As I drove closer, the bird stopped feeding and looked up slightly, but continued to stand there.

Creeping along with my car, I neared to within twenty of feet. Finally, the bird spread its black wings. Slowly, it flew up and made a small circle above the street into a Japanese Maple by the side of the street. I craned my neck to look as I drove past. The bird and another companion sat in the tree. Behind them, the low afternoon sun glanced off the ice of nearby rooftops. The light filled the the speckled weather-stains on my car's window, covering the scene with a hazy, amber glow. I could only make out the the vague outlines of the two. Unmoving, patient, they waited for me to pass. As I rounded the bend in the road, and glanced back again in the mirror one last time, but the pair and the barren tree had already disappeared from view.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/272200.html

"Come on, 'Eivz," said the slightly tinny, disembodied voice of a woman by her right ear. "You said you wanted to do this."

"Mm dmmmn nnnnn," said Avery.

"What?"

Avery turned her head to the side, unburying her face from the pillow. She took a breath. "I said I don't know."

The woman inside the glowing rectangle next to her sighed, brushed her hair away from her glasses, leaned forward, and adjusted her scarf. Dani looks so cool, Avery thought, noting the contrast of her dark hair, red lipstick, black sweater against clean shapes of office furniture, all white.

"Dani, it's like you're my conscience talking to me," Avery said. "It's like I'm video chatting with the angel or fairy." She wished her soul was something like a chic minimalist Brooklyn office. But in all likelihood it was probably more like a bar.

Dani's mouth twitched for a moment, and Avery could tell she wanted to take issue with the jumbled comparison. Maybe why angels would wear black, or if a soul is something you could enter. But Dani managed to keep a placid look.

"Avery, I'm going to get back on subject, okay?" Her voice was slower, softer, sonorous. "When I hear you say you don't want to run this, I feel more worried more than disappointed. I remember you were always courageous person once you had a stake in something. And I remember you telling me something really great when you agreed to help take over. Do you remember?"

"I just didn't want what Andy started to go to crap," Avery mumbled.

"You said," Dani enunciated, as if quoting from an award speech, "'Andy made a place where even strangers can feel like they can build something together. I really want to learn to do that too.' I liked that a lot--when I heard you say that, I felt inspired too." Dani smiled, then and tilted her head slightly. "Is that still something you want to do, Eivz? Not for anyone else, but for yourself?"

Avery planted her face in the pillow and nodded. This is pro Dani, she thought. Six million dollar startup deal Dani, and here I'm a sulking twelve year old girl who doesn't want to go to school. She is literally stepping out of running the world to hold my hand pat me on the head and tell me it will be okay.

"Avery?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll do it," said Avery.

"Great," said Dani. "I feel so happy to hear that. I've taken care of most of the rest of the stuff. But the group just needs someone there, someone to lead them. That's you, Avery! I'll be there with you again next week, but I know you'll do great. And if anything comes up, we can work through it together, okay?"

At five o'clock Avery pulled on her poofy coat, tucked her ears into her knit cap, and stamped twice with each foot to make sure her sneakers were on. A hazy thought coalesced somewhere behind her eyebrows. She froze, but she was too late as usual. She closed her eyes. No good. Blank. Blank. Maybe later.

Avery opened her eyes looked at herself in the mirror near the shoe stand. If Dani is an angel, what am I? Tufts of fine brown hair stuck out from beneath the edge of the wool cap. She looked at her nose, soon to grow embarrassingly pink in the November air. She hunched closer. A pair of pale blue-green eyes blinked back innocently from the other side.

She backed up and patted her poofy jacket, then wool cap with both hands twice.

"I am... a shepherd?" Were shepherds allowed wear bright green caps? No, no good. Avery gave up, and swung her backpack onto her shoulders.

"I'm going, Su-chien!" she shouted back up the stairs. After ten seconds of silence, Avery stepped through the door, leaned back to pull it snugly shut behind her and walked down to join the slate and iodine tint of 35th Avenue. A cold breeze welcomed her outside for the first time today.

"This stop is--36th Street," the nice lady robot voice said from the ceiling. Avery watched the tiles of the station platform fly past, then slowly come to a stop in the opposite window of the subway car.

"Wait," she said aloud suddenly. She swiftly patted the back pocket of the backpack, which was sitting on her lap. She heard the comforting jingle and clatter of her keys. Okay. Then she looked down at her hands. She had forgotten her gloves again. She opened and closed her thin, chilly fingers a few times with regret.

But no. Not that. The hazy thought from before was floating there. She closed her eyes. The thing, something, what was it, the thing, the thing, the what. Yes. No.

And then it was clear, and Avery, hunched over and rested her forehead in her palms. What the hell was I thinking? Dani, wearing all black with red lipstick, in a completely white room, speaking softly and intentionally: she isn't an angel or a conscience or a fairy--she is an _assassin_!

"No, no, what would Andy think," Avery muttered. She imagined him nodding and smiling patiently, with his small, kind eyes, about to say, welll, perhaps...

Oh it killed. Not the criticism, but how little things changed week to week when she read her piece. There was always something weird about a metaphor she used. Or something missing from a character's motivation. And the worst--Andy would never say it himself, so it came from everyone else:

I just don't see where the story is going.

I don't feel like anything happened.

I don't know what you're trying to say with the story.

I wonder if you could think about allowing the plot to advance.

What's the point? There's no point, and it's going nowhere.

"This is a Manhattan Bound... Q-train," said the cheerful man robot voice.

Avery sat upright and caught the time, 5:15, on the screen of another passenger's enormous phablet as they snuggled up to a pole in the middle of the car. At least I'm on time. But how will I do this?

"Just follow the outline in the site we looked at," Dani had said, soothingly. And now sweet loving assassin Dani was going off to charm some unwitting venture capitalists.

And all I have to do is unlock the Hong Kong school alumni association room in Chinatown, Avery thought, then read off the script. Then I wait while people read their stuff. Then I wait while they discuss and offer criticism. Then--partners? I forget. Andy's format was always much more fluid, but Dani made a good point that maybe it'd be better to follow a script for a few weeks.

Avery unzipped her backpack and sifted through the jumble. The pens and markers had gotten out of the pencil bag again. She gathered them up and zipped the bag close again. The zipper was loose, so history would certainly repeat.

"I am a shepherd," Avery muttered. "She-P-H-A-rd. No, wait. E-R-D. Or A-R-D? Shit."

She pushed the pencil bag to the side, then rummaged past some crumpled papers (previously neatly housed in file folders) and crumpled napkins (previously neatly folded). Spotting a purple corner, she pulled a folder out from the mass. She zipped the backpack closed, lay the folder on top and flipped it open.

In the right pocket was the thick, stapled packet of blank healthcare forms she had printed the other day. On the left pocket was a duplicate packet, unstapled. And in neither pocket was the workshop script. Avery sat hunched over, her eyes roaming helplessly back and forth between the two pockets.

"Stand clear of the closing doors," the friendly robot man said. The doors slid shut, and the Q-train picked up speed, humming and clattering into the darkness towards Manhattan.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/272023.html

After Christmas, but before I really got sick, and spent all day lying in bed (a sleeping bag at the time), I got to see Angela and Christine. We had dinner at Aurelio's, a pretty nice (and I'd say authentic) Mexican restaurant up by the old hospital. After dinner, we took Angela's car back along Witherspoon towards Nassau St. I was worried that Infini-T would be closed for the holiday, but it was open, and there was a parking spot right across from the library. We we went in and a staff member seated us. In the past few years, getting seated and handed menus is a new thing; I still haven't figured out if it's only on special occasions.

While the staff were out of earshot--or maybe they didn't care--Christine and Angela complained about the name Infini-T. Yeah, it's pretty goofy. But I like everything else about the place.

They had seated us towards the middle of the room, close to the counter. After we had ordered, Christine looked over at the pile of games nearby.

"Can we play these games?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, recalling all the conversations with Zarrar or Angela that took place there with chess matches or toppling Jenga towers in the background.

Christine brought over the Jenga box. Angela had never played before. Even I was less familiar with good strategies than I'd initially thought. Fifth grade after school program was farther back than I thought.

In a Jenga set is a bunch of identical oblong, rectangular blocks. Here's the normal way to play: To set up, stack them in layers three wide, each layer's blocks rotated at right angles from each other.

Then the players slide out a block from somewhere except the very top of the stack. In other words, they remove part of the supporting structure and they place it on top of the tower. During that process, if a player knocks over all or part of the tower, they lose.

We weren't keeping track of the score, though. Christine did pretty well. Angela was obviously the newcomer, but she had some surprising turns. After the tower fell over a few times, we tried twitching to a non-standard structure. It ended up being a pretty ill-conceived effort, but by then it was almost time to go.

While we were trying out our custom Jenga format, Christine asked, "If you could go back in time to high school and take different classes, what classes would you take?"

I take speculation like this pretty seriously. Christine does too, but it was easier for her to answer. She'd have taken more Computer Science classes. Back then, she should that since technology changed so quickly, they'd get obsolete really quickly.

But I know that's not true. I don't use QBASIC, and I've hardly ever more than looked at C++ over the past few years, but the CS classes I took in high school really set me for life. Even though anyone can begin to learn to program at any age, my long, long familiarity with programming has given me a permanent advantage. Whenever I want to brush up on my skills, or learn a new skill in programming or tech, my background familiarity gives me an edge.

Angela's turn seemed like it was about to be an ordeal at first, but the block ended coming out easily. She gently placed a block on top of the the custom Jenga temple. Miraculously, it stayed.

My turn next. I nudged an inconspicuous block from the side of the temple. It seemed like a freebee; nothing seemed to be leaning on it. But it was too late--the whole structure was wobbling as I slowly pulled it off. The rule we had settled on was once you touched a block, you had to go ahead and remove it. I had touched and thus was bound to remove the hidden cornerstone of cornerstones.

Two decoratively placed colonnades toppled from the top.

"Um, let's say you don't lose unless more than five blocks fall," offered Christine.

Another block fell.

"You're still in-bounds," Christine said. "It's still possible."

I maneuvered the block slowly and hopefully. Okay. Okay.

In an instant, the whole temple lurched to the side, and Christine caught it before the pile could clatter onto the tabletop and scatter all over.

"Yeah, we'll call it here," she said.

Angela nodded and blew her nose.

"Yup," I said. While you are building, and even when it's done, the nature of the structure may look obvious. But hard to tell what is supporting what unless you actually measure. An inconspicuous, extraneous piece might be some kind of hidden ur-foundation.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/271653.html

Today, I sat in a parked car in lot 101 for a long time today, as I waited for someone in the nearby computer lab to call in an order for fried chicken. They had definitely plowed the lot, but not perfectly clean. It looked like people had left their cars there overnight, maybe before the beginning of the blizzard on Friday. There were small groups here and there clearing snow off and scraping ice off the windshields. Other cars still had their wipers splayed up, waiting patiently for their drivers to brush them clean.

I reclined in the drivers seat and put on a podcast Zach (ledflyd) recommended to me a while back. They had Venkatesh Rao, who has written a bunch of interesting stuff on his blog Ribbonfarm and elsewhere, as a guest on the show. I'd listened to a few minutes a few weeks back. It was great to hear his actual voice. His writings sometimes come across as haughty--especially when I take issue with some part of how he framed things. I mentioned in our chat room that I always read Ribbonfarm in something close to the late Alan Rickman's voice. (This rendition, sadly, will never happen for real.) But on the podcast Venkat just sounded like a smart, relatable guy with an Indian accent.

Listening to the rest of the interview today, I learned about his background. He was groomed to be an elite and followed a pretty conventional career trajectory as a mechanical engineer in India: exclusive school, grad school in the U.S. But he talked about how his kind of defiance in choosing what to read set him on a different intellectual path. People in his circles had strong opinions on what a mechanical engineer ought to read. Apparently, Francis Fukuyama's The End of History was not one of those books!

I can't imagine a collegiate milieu that intellectually proscriptive about reading choices--outside of maybe weird political groups or religious cults. But maybe the present day U.S. is really that different from late-80's/early-90's Delhi IIT.

Venkat said that ignoring what was fashionable among his peers (he put off reading The Lord of the Rings for a long time) and choosing his own readings (often unappreciated things) became an important habit. It led to his ability to draw connections between seemingly distant topics and ideas, and he's been putting that in writing ever since.

As an endnote to that explanation, he said something that I found a bit affirming: while you can't really be a special unique snowflake as an individual, by reading and synthesizing a variety of different sources, you can obtain a unique voice and perspective as a writer.

This makes sense to me: the quality of a person--not only in writing, but generally in life--comes from our connections more than anything. It could be the books we've read, the experiences we've had, the people we know and interact with. It comes from how all these things interact with each other to inform our actions as well as our larger story. To throw in a bit of jargon: it's network effects that dominate, this perspective would say.

I'm not all that obsessed with being unique per se. It's more the other way around: I want to find and do well at the things that (mostly) only I can do.

What I'm beginning to see is that there are a lot of these things. And a lot of them seem very ordinary first. There are many ways that only I can really help out my brothers, or my friends, or our little community. Visiting grandparents is something lots of people do, but when I visit my grandfather, as his eldest grandchild, that's not something anyone can generically replicate for him. I'm not that special in of myself, but Hollywood would have a hard time. And it's the same the other way around.

The theme we're concerned with here is taking the specific versus taking the universal. When we talk about families and friends, I think it's important to prioritize the specific perspective. When we begin to talk about professions, it makes sense to talk a bit more generally. You can fire and replace an employee but you can't really fire your mom in anything close to a similar way. More depressingly, whether you work as a laborer or a professional, there is a good chance that someone else can do the same job you are doing. Maybe someone out there can do it even better.

Job security issues aside, we ought to take a bigger picture than work for our lives. And replaceability is a feature--if all or even more employees were really irreplaceable, firms would be crashing left and right and even more folk would be too guilty to make career transitions, because everything would explode and stuff. And most of all, on the other side of the you are replaceable coin is humans can learn. You can acquire skills through work and not just blind genetic luck. This is good.

But going back to the idea of networks--I think even if we take a relatively general view, individuals can still be pretty uniquely valuable to their part of the world. But it takes a bit more finesse than simply existing. What people can you connect? What ideas can you synthesize? What can you teach? What can you strengthen and advocate? What kinds of skills, expertise, and experiences can you draw on in order to create? Again, the power comes from the nature and the strength (this is a weighted graph) of what you are connected to--both directly and indirectly.

This way of looking at things makes sense for me because I've always looked at things from a creative point of view. What can you do? What can you make? When I watch or do something purely for enjoyment, I still assume there's a chance it will become part of me, and part of what I do and make in the future.

There are very many cynical counterarguments to this way of looking at things. Maybe a small number people are unique at a general level, but others are fairly generic in their connections. I'd say: that could be a stronger case to focus on variety and uniqueness of connections, but okay. But even more importantly, is uniqueness all that good for an individual? Maybe people are better off feeling content with having relatively generic relationships, interests, careers, so long as those things are happier. Maybe that is because it's very difficult to be both unique in your connections and happy at the same time. Or, you can be interesting but also a pretty shitty person who doesn't do good for the world.

Here's how I'd summarize most of these worries: there's more uncertainty in striving for unique connections. There's more up-front personal risk rejecting well-designed conformity. You might have to think more. You might have to lose a lot, at least at first.

To continue the discussion I am going to switch metaphors.

When you follow a pre-ordained path, you have a fairly clear way to measure success. If the only acceptable career paths are to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or investment banker, it's pretty clear if you've gotten there or not. There may be hellish, hellish waits along the way--I know this well from accounts of my friends' experiences. There are also relative levels of success--are you just the Branch Vice President, or are you VP of Risk Management for the entire regional division? But there is a map and there are roads between the named destinations. It seems reasonable to ask, "When will you arrive?" or to say, "I should be there by now." You might even be able to say, "This is how far away I am right now."

What happens when the map you were given turns out to be wrong? When the roads that were supposed to take you there are under repair, flooded, or jam-packed with traffic? What happens when the roads to take you there don't exist? Or when your destination is shrouded in legend? Or conjecture?

You must learn to navigate by other means.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/271594.html

A few weeks' belated Happy New Year, everyone!

2015 was a year of internal change for me. This year, 2016, I'm hoping will transform this into external change on several important fronts, which I'll come back to later.

As part of that, I'll be writing a lot more here--maybe even more than the past several years combined. Some of this will be thinking aloud about what I'm learning (which may be data science, programming, or Japanese). But I expect a lot of it to be experiments with writing I haven't really attempted in earnest before. I'm excited but also nervous about this. Do I even know how to do this? But I am trying to look at this less from the perspective of product and more from the perspective of practice, or process.

So, welcome friends--new and old--to a new year and a fresh, new undertaking. Who knows what triumphs, tragedies, disappointments, and victories are in store ahead--or what will last and what will now. Let's work to make the best of this new year, the best of this time given to us.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/271354.html

[Originally from my training log on Gaiden Force HQ forums. Since the main part of the post is a reply to my previous posts, I've quoted parts for continuity.]

May 08:

Starting Stats - 2015-05-08Body Composition Weight: 205.4 lbs Estimated Body Fat: 0.30 Strength Back Squat 5R: 285 lbs Standing Press 5R: 90 lbs Bench Press 5R: 150 lbs Deadlift 5R: 275 lbs Chin-Ups: 0

July 19th:

BW 198.0 lbs Squat 325 x 5 x 2 325 x AMRAP = 5 Bench 170 x 5 x 2 170 x 4 (fail) Deadlift 315 x 6

The deadlift was supposed to be 330. Due to a loading error, it ended up only being 315.

I still feel really frustrated with the amount of technical difficulty I had in squat, failure on the last set of bench presses, and the loading error on the deadlift. My squat felt wobbly and at several points, I cheated at the sticking points by leaning forward. It should not have been this bad at these weights. I felt I did well with the bench press, but I messed up on the last set. Attempting another double and then failing only intensified the frustration. Lastly, I really wanted to give 330 a try with the round plates.

But I also want to keep the long term view. Reinforcing frustration will only lead to more frustration/aggression later.

To a large extent, I think the mistakes this workout had to do with adjustments to differences in environment and lack of mental focus. Next time, I will participate less in changing plates. I will also chart out the plate amounts for deadlift and squat beforehand.

Dec 4:

Coming up on age 31. Since summer, I've switched over to a very simple HLM for squat, while continuing alternating bench and press like I did on Starting Strength. The autoregulation scheme I posted above seems way too complicated now.

Here are my current bests from the past month:

Squat 11-30
315 x 5 x 3

Press 11-27
110 x 5 x 3

Bench 11-30
180 x 5 x 3

Deadlift 12-02
325 x 5

I was able to do Press 115 x 5, 3 on 12-2 but that was a big strain.

As you can see, Bench Press has continued to advance, Squat has stayed close to the same, Press has stayed the same, and Deadlift is sort of in a purgatory. I'm considering increasing deadlifting frequency; nowadays I only deadlift around every 5 days or so.

Squat technique has probably improved--I did 315 with a belt but no knee wraps. Last year I was frequently scared to go over 300 without knee wraps. A few weeks ago I told myself that I would use the knee wraps when I do 315, but last time I couldn't be bothered. So I probably won't use them when I match last year's PR.

At some point in the summer, I squatted and deadlifted more than than I have recently. There were a lot of resets and repeats due to missed workout since then. Ideally, I'd like to transcribe my workout records and see a graph of top sets over time, but I don't know that I'll get a chance. I'm even supposed to be doing something else right now, but here I am typing this up.

Looking at bodyweight:


On 2014-12-06 (4-day moving average): 208.15 (206.6, 210.2, 208.6, 207.2)
Today, 12-3 (2-day moving average): 194.5 (194.6, 194.4)

I don't know if comparing a 4-day moving average and a 2-day moving average is okay in general, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. In general, I'm maybe 10lbs lighter than I was in May, and definitely more than 10lbs lighter than I was last December.

On the whole, this feels like very slow progress, so when I'm pretty tired (and procrastinating on a lot of work) like today, it's frustrating that a year has gone by, I'm just catching up to 320 squat again, and my weight loss is sort of stalling between 193-195, mostly because I'm not being consistent with cooking for myself. At least it's staying put and only coming back up slowly.

My objective is to lower my weight to 192 and at least keep it under there for the two weeks leading up to Christmas. Key factors will be going back to cooking legumes every day, continuing to take a generous amount of fiber (Metamucil) with every meal, and being consistent with the 16/8 Leangains meal timings.

After New Year's? I don't know what I'll do. Going up this slowly is really really boring, but I'm seeing that at the very least, my main accomplishment has been keeping fat off. My goals in the New Year will probably be dictated by what's going on in the rest of my life. I don't see myself committing to a program that's even more time consuming than the one I'm doing right now, both in and out of the gym.

Just so I have somewhere to record it, even if it's a bit discouraging: this article estimates maximum muscular ripped bodyweight in kg as:

BW (kg) = [height in cm] - 98.5

That's something like 4% BF. I'm 165cm tall, so that puts me at 66.5 kg if I were to focus on getting towards my genetic limits--training consistently for a decade or so. About 146.5lbs. WTH.

From that, I can do a calculation to somewhat bound my current BF% based only on my weight and height.

BF_r = ([weight]-[max muscular weight]*.96)/[weight]
= (88.6-66.5*0.96)/88.6 = .2794 ~= 28%BF

We can improve the bound by including the following assumptions:


10% of mass that would be counted as fat is connective tissue that will be lost along with the fat
0.5kg is glycogen

But it's probably safe to assume water is constant, since the max ripped muscular bodyweight is when pretty dehydrated, and I take my best scale reading of the day when recording my bodyweight. (Usually as far into a fast as possible and before I've drank a significant amount of water.) Assuming contest dehydration is a bit more extreme, then I'll account for 50% of my usual water weight variance, which comes to about 1.5lbs, or 0.68kg. Also, we'll say 2.5kg for the glycogen, since bodybuilders replenish their glycogen after weigh in.

BF_r = ([weight]-[max muscular weight]*0.96 - 0.5 - W_v)*0.9/[weight]
= (88.6-66.5*0.96 - 0.25 - 0.68)*0.9/88.6 = .24206 ~= 0.24

So I'd be 24%BF at my present weight if I were already huge and muscular and close to my generic limit right now. Thus, my actual bodyfat right now is almost certainly above that, unless connective tissue lost along with fat is some crazy amount, like 0.25 of fat weight lost on a cut. I don't know.

I can solve backwards, to be even more depressed:


BF_r = ([weight]-[max muscular weight]*0.96 - 0.5 - W_v)*0.9/[weight]

BF_r/0.9*[weight] = ([weight]-[max muscular weight]*0.96 - 0.5 - W_v)

[weight](BF_r/0.9 - 1) = -[max muscular weight]*0.96 - 0.5 - W_v

[weight] = -([max muscular weight]*0.96 + 0.5 + W_v)/[BF_r/0.9 - 1]
So if I want to be 20% bodyfat, I should weigh at most:

(66.5*0.96 + 0.5 + .68)/(0.2/0.9 - 1 = 83.597 ~= 83.6 kg = 183.9 lbs

That's under 184lbs absolutely freaking jacked as hell in order to be under 20%BF. So even if I'm able to lose another 10lbs in the next year, there's just no way I will be under 20%BF. (Unless, again, I am drastically underestimating how much connective tissue comes/goes with fat.)

Yeah. This makes sense given 85kg is still the third highest weight class in Olympic lifting, and 83kg is 4th highest in USAPL, with national qualifying total at 1252lbs.

None of this quite makes the decision for me. Filipinos, as well as East Asians in general, are at risk for obesity-related diseases at lower amounts of relative bodyfat. So, at 27-29%BF right now, I might still have similar risk as someone of European descent who is 31-33% (and can squat 315 x 5 x 3).

At the same time, do I want to keep putting aside to gain serious strength order to keep losing fat? One thing I've decided is that I'm no longer going to do RFL, because of the amount of stress very fast weight loss imposes on the body, which accelerates things like hair loss. So fat loss will have to be slow one way or another.

I'll think about this and decide come New Year's.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/271067.html

I've been on a pretty decent roll the past couple of days. I got to compile a lot of resources on visualization, and also experienced a bit of a realization about how to and how not to learn things. Today, I began to revert to old patterns (not habits; they're larger in scale than habits) because of two main things:

I went to sleep pretty late, and needed to take Marlon in the morning
I took a rest during the day

The weird thing about this was that I wasn't even planning on doing any visualization/data science learning today. I was supposed to focus on house renovations that have been dragging on.

Being sleep deprived always makes sticking to the plan sort of worrisome. When I got home, before taking my nap, I started reading the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs! I've been meaning to start learning for a while (and actually created a Trello board to keep my place in the lessons) but started reading because I was thinking about functional programming in R.

While I think this is a pretty worthwhile study, I don't think going through SICP or learning Lisp should be my focus. SICP confers a lot of cred for programmers, but at the same time the hardcore stop-and-think nature of the material threatens to stop me in my tracks on any particular day that I don't have a ton of energy. I was actually having a good time reading it on my phone, but when I started trying stuff out in the REPL, I began to see that the tiredness was affecting my lack of focus.

Then, I decided to go ahead and take a rest, to recover my focus and energy. Was that the right move? Should I have switched to doing the bathroom (a task that doesn't require a ton of concentration) instead? I'm still not sure, so let's think this out: ideally, I'd like to make sure I'm getting to sleep on time, which didn't happen. What do I do on days where I'm lacking sleep?

I think that, in the future, a shorter nap and some tea would have sufficed. The habit I'd like to set is revisiting what I had planned for the day. If I'd remembered that I'd planned on doing renovations before getting so caught up in SICP, I think it would have been easier for me to negotiate a strategy earlier on.

Switching to renovations is a pretty difficult calling. I'm pretty eager to learn as much as possible as soon as possible with data visualization. Doing house renovations doesn't bring me any closer to getting a job or contributing to finances. At the same time, the time spent on the work is certainly commutative--the bathroom needs to be done whether I do it now or later. And the effect of having the bathroom done would probably be better than having it hanging while I try to get into learning.

So, there we go. As it stands, it's usually better for me to stick to the regular housework days.

I have to keep telling myself that things will be okay, one way or another. The choices I can make can lead to better or worse outcomes, certainly, but things will be okay in some way even if I make the best choices I can but things don't turn out all that great. It might not be all that great, but it will be okay.

A lot of my "push" style motivation comes from the desire for things not to be a certain way within a certain amount of time. I don't want to be living with my parents several years from now, for instance. Ideally, I don't want to be living here come 2016, as much as I like being close to Marlon and Bryce when he comes home. I'd like to have work prospects before my 31st birthday.

Still, I had a good many similar sentiments last year, and the year before. Although I'd learned as early as 2009 that, "What pushes you forward holds you back" (PJ Eby), the natural way to formulate my aspirations is something along the lines of, "I want to leave this stuff behind". And sometimes that translates into a particular timeframe: "By this time next year, I promise that I will have left these crappy things behind". It sounds pretty good. Saying things that way is specific. It's measurable. It's very time-bound. But is it achievable? Is it realistic?

I even feel that's a bit of a distraction. I don't really like the SMART framework for setting goals anymore--it doesn't result in very good defaults. Instead, goals that I set based on my AJATT experience, or experience derailing on Beeminder are much better. What does that look like? It means looking at what you can do now in the context of the bigger picture.

Here's a nice quote from Mike Bostock, in reply to a Reddit AMA question:

I recommend patience. To become proficient, you will need to master multiple skills: data collection and cleaning, quantitative analysis, visualization design, programming, web development, etc. It’s tempting to want to learn all of these things and do something amazing in a very short time frame—like, say, during a hackathon—but really the best approach is to be diligent and methodical. Keep practicing, keep tinkering with smaller problems, and you will gradually improve. [...] the best thing you can do is to think of small coding problems that you are comfortable solving, and then increasingly ramp up to larger problems as you go. The satisfaction you derive from solving the smaller problems will motivate you to keep going.

In other words, you can have a larger-context goal, like learning to make useful and insightful graphics in D3--and getting a job doing that. But the basis of that is the really specific success spiral.

I think there's probably something like an increasing nonlinear complexity to nailing down specifics of a large solo project where you have to learn along the way. Setting down some specifics can certainly get you moving, and inspire you. If things suck for you now, setting down some specifics to your goal in the future can make you feel like you have more hope, and more control over the future. But when thinking about it, you can really fool yourself about the amount and loci of control. How much control do you have about how long a certain learning process takes?

I think setting goals is actually quite a bit like the data analysis process--there's a requirement for exploration and iteration as you refine your course.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe if NASA sat down and crafted a data science/visualization study regime for me to follow, there would be very little uncertainty. And I guess if I gave myself six years, I could make it more certain that I'd learn this stuff--say, if I were in a PhD program, instead of a once dropped-out student trying to pick this up on his own so someone will pay him for it.

Mike Bostock's quote relates to what Josh Kaufman reminded me about. Here's a bit from his article, "Status Malfunction":

Here’s a different way of thinking about skill: independent of status, picking up a new skill is always a win from a capability standpoint, since the skill opens up new options and opportunities. Some skill in an area is always better than no skill.
From a status perspective, being average is terrible, since it doesn’t differentiate you from others, and doesn’t improve how other people think about you in a meaningful way - if anything, being perceived as average decreases your status in the eyes of some people. From a capability perspective, being average is fantastic, since it lets you accomplish things you otherwise couldn’t do without that average level of skill.
That’s the thing: you can accomplish millions of valuable and meaningful things with skills that are mediocre in every way.

On the way to getting better, you are going to be worse than everyone at some point. Even after a lot of practice, you might still be pretty average. But many times, that doesn't matter as much as you'd like to think. You can still do useful things--and maybe some very useful things, with a combination of skills that might only be useful at best. And from there, you can always improve. Anyway, there's no getting to the expert level without being pretty mediocre.

So, while it may be more exciting to aim for something really impressive during a hackathon, Bostock is right--that has to come from the small things. Persistent practice, with fast feedback, is really the best for skill development. This fits with the framework Kaufman discusses in The First 20 Hours.

I've had to keep repeating these lessons from the past few days. When I go out looking for a job, I don't want to appear like a complete beginner, or just another one of semi-frauds calling themselves "data scientists". The concern that I'll get laughed at, or have nothing to show tends to grab at my attention as I look forward. If left unchecked, it'll affect what I learn and practice. Will I frustrate myself trying to pile on the most hardcore-sounding textbooks and programming frameworks in order to (eventually) show people I actually know what I'm doing? Or will I learn useful things bit by bit?

I also have to remind myself the biggest reason for doing this self study: this is work I can be passionate about. Whatever the hell the experts say, being excited about what I'm doing is the best strategy I have. I think the strings of stops and starts and shown that. Maybe excited is not a strong enough word--unless I can become obsessed about my line of work, there's a huge chance of falling off, of failing once again. Obsession can come from fear or fascination. I have great respect for people go work through dire situations. Yet I'd really prefer a good life--I choose fascination if I have the chance.

So, I've got to regard any kind of self study I'm doing for reassurance--which boils down to signaling--with suspicion. Do I need this? Or am I doing this for some vague sense of street cred?

I think the status malfunction deal also ties into the cultural overvaluing of virtuosity. It's rife in American culture, but probably also within some disciplines. I sympathize with the idea that some people deserve respect because of challenges they ran into during their process--all that up the hill in the snow, both ways sort of stuff.

But why undertake hardship that doesn't contribute significantly to your training, your experience, or the results of your work? If you're going to learn more doing things the hard way, that can be valuable. But if the difficulty of putting in that practice jeopardizes your enthusiasm for the whole project--and your consistent output--you have to make it easier. Take the easy way when you can!

My motto these days is, "Reject virtue! Be pragmatic!"

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/270506.html

I am happy

Current Mood: happy
Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/270074.html

This is probably going to be a bit jargony, but I hope to clarify and build on it later.

Over the years, I've had a lot of trouble getting some kinds of work done. My main failure point: I don't get started soon enough or often enough, until things are pretty dire or it feels impossible to catch up.

Here are some preliminary mental practices I'd like to experiment with. There's a step, I hope, towards avoiding my major points of failure. They integrate ideas from GTD, Mental Contrasting, Tiny Habits, and AJATT.

Process A - incremental, probabilistic outcomes

1. What is the desired outcome? What does its completion look like?
2. What are intermediate outcomes that raise the chances of achieving the desired outcome?
3. [Recurse]

Process B - next action

1. What is the smallest, most trivial step I can take that will increase the chances of this particular outcome?
2. When and where and how can I perform this next step?

Process C - mental contrasting
(make sure to run processes A&B first)

1. What does the desired outcome look like? Does it seem feasible? (If not, go back to Process A.)
2. What are the obstacles (in the present or near future) to taking action on achieving the desired outcome, and what is the context for these obstacles?
3. What will I do (what is my plan) for when such an obstacle appears?

Process A is a top level thing that can get applied recursively to the branching intermediate outcomes. It can be helpful to run it again to reassess the outcome graph.

Process B gets run on outcomes, starting with the smallest (the "leaves") first.

Process C gets run as next actions from Process B become apparent. But it's especially useful for working towards medium-level outcomes. Process C is essentially the Mental Contrasting technique developed by Oettingen et. al. The literature on mental contrasting says that it works well if the outcomes seem feasible, but that mental contrasting actually reduces motivation if the outcomes seem way too hard, or unfeasible. So it's important to break things down and to make things clear and specific.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/268172.html

I've been following the posts of someone getting treatment for mental illness after a long period of denial. He's doing well, but he still has larger life questions to address. He's felt apathetic towards a lot of things for a while, and has never been isolated socially. He's only close to people outside his immediate family. He's only had one or two interests in his life and is still trying to figure out his ongoing sense of lack of big purpose.

I happened to reflect on myself while reading that: I have my own challenges. My daily life is always thick with anxieties that just don't make sense to other people, even on the good days. I feel weak and small and shamefully misshapen, being aware of that. But in a lot of ways I have a lot of things to live for. Many of my worries are just unpleasant side effects of seeing so many possibilities--things to chase after, things to search for, fight for, train for, ponder over, and dream about. The conflict comes from worrying over too many choices.

I'm very grateful for that good part: I don't think I could ever run out of things to live for. Between 1. promise then disappointment or 2. no possibility--I'll risk the disappointment.

Dum vivimus, vivamus!

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/267304.html

A broken water heater. Eight in the evening. No repair van yet. Eleven o'clock at night. Nope, not a chance. When did it start? Been busted since Tuesday? No, it was Thursday. That is bad enough.

Well, here we go. Time for a shower. A cold, cold shower. First I will shave. With just cold water. Put on a video. Five minutes have passed. Ten minutes have passed. Still planning to go? Turn on some music. Turn on the tap. Now, close the curtain. Still not quite ready. I am already here. So no turning back. Okay, pull the knob. Second pause of hissing. The frozen stream hits.

Thinking of a river. Diving in the night. From a car crash. Falling from the bridge. Hit with a thud. Into the cold waters. Can I make it?

Hands crossed to shoulders. Spin like a pansy. Frantically toss the hair. A few fast exhales. Okay, that is good. Turn off the cold. Wow, I made it.

But wait a minute. It is not over. Time for the shampoo.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/266641.html

Instead of dedicating your life to actualize a concept of what you should be like, ACTUALIZE YOURSELF. The process of maturing does not mean to become a captive of conceptualization. It is to come to the realization of what lies in our innermost selves.

— Bruce Lee, Jeet Kune Do

The hard lesson I've learned the past few years: most impressive things in the world are not all that clean or rigorous underneath. I hear this a lot in inspirational quotes: the moral is supposed to be how far you can get with grit and never giving up on your dreams. This is pretty true. I think it contains a far more important lesson that tinkering and experimentation ends up becoming more important than design and best practices in many cases.

At the same time, how much of feeling like a winner depends on what you choose to undertake? I think that's been another hard lesson. If you're doing stuff that's pretty different, where you don't get positive feedback from society--in the form of rewards, prestige, or acceptance--it could be tough going.

I'm not very good at this. I follow my own set of peculiar interests and methods, but at the same time I've never been able to just not care about what other people think. I have trouble feeling content following along with the community. A lot of my anxieties pop up along these lines. I want to be able to have something to show when they ask why I didn't follow the same pattern that everyone else followed.

Often, my reaction contains a different kind of narrow mindset. I want to assert my own self-image against the criticism of others.

I still need to parse this lesson: you can't win this kind of argument. If you become a teacher, they will ask why you didn't study to become a scientist instead. If you become a scientist, they will ask you why you didn't become a doctor or go into software. If you live in apartment, they'll ask why you aren't putting that money into a house. If you own a house, they'll ask why you haven't quit your day job to play poker and travel SE Asia. If they ask you what you actually want to do, what you actually value, they're usually not really listening. But it's not just other people. We do this to ourselves, too.

I've thought of two things that seem to help with this:

One appreciating the stories of others. Appreciate, and understand, first without the desire to "fix" or "vindicate".

Two is harder for some of us: it's being able to talk about what we actually value. It's something I've struggled with for a long time. It's something I'm working on. In the coming weeks, I hope to become more honest about what matters to me.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/265981.html

I looked out from the window at about four in the afternoon. Already orange, the sunlight struck the lone remain tree across the way at a particular angle. I tried not to ponder if I would remember this sight, or if I would regret stepping outside instead of going about my day. Far away in time in space, would I wish for this moment or other moments again?--I put these thoughts out of my mind, took a deep breath, and looked out for another few moments. Then, I turned away slowly from this ancestor of a future passing dream.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/264853.html

To have happiness, I only need 1. erstwhile freedom from anxiety 2. some time with just one or two people I like. Add more rain, add more cold, but just leave out the worries and we still get a whole different world.

I feel worn out today, hectic the unanchored, unfinished, unfulfilled concerns. But I said I wouldn't forget. I'll make good on that and make it good enough for now.

Crossposts: http://olifhar.livejournal.com/264034.html

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PUZZLE Book 2 Session 17 (immediate recap)

To the Beginning

First Memory of Adam

Faulty natural analogies for human social life

You don't need more free time?

Thoughts on discourse

The Birds

Avery the Couragous. Couregious? A-G-E-ous. (Story Club, Part 1 of n)

Building Blocks (Part 1 of n)

Connections, creation, roads, and destinations

Happy New Year (Belated)

State of the Lifts - Dec 2015

Self Study Thoughts / Goals. Practice and Status Malfunction

Three Word Journal

Ideas for mental practices - three processes for work

Unlimited purposes

cold shower 4

Captive of conceptualization

Pondering attachment

6th Dec

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