Listening to the epic mix of winter 2004/2005. Reading old wiki posts. Feeling generally dead inside. Well, creatively dead. I'm starting to wonder if programming is just not my medium. I feel so tired, trying to get somewhere. Not even sure where. I write good code, that's clear, but there's something missing. The exploration process is leaving me empty.

It's not like when i was making these mixes. It's not like when I was steeped in the experience of New York city. It's not even like my forays into system administration. A big part of me is worrying that it has to do with getting older. But I don't want to believe that. It doesn't seem right. I still really believe that's a cultural problem more than anything else. So .. what? What do I do? I don't know.

I'm just not inspired. And that's really sad. I feel a little dead. :-/

Groggy. Purposely did not do a morning page yesterday. Today, I fly back to SF for a few days of work. Will miss the Beans. :-(

I'm mostly done with my product getting released on monday and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Been focussing a lot on usability. Of course, already focussed a lot on reliability. The windows version has SSH flake out a lot, but I think that's because of the flakey network in the VM. I permanently lose connectivity fairly often have to completely shutdown the VM system to get it back. Just rebooting the VM itself doesn't help.

Looking forward to doing some work on the plan. No in-flight entertainment, so trying to work on the plane seems like the way to go. Might try the wifi if it's not ridiculously overpriced and see how that goes. Otherwise, I have some podcasts to listen to. Hmm, probably should make sure I have enough left on the pod.

More self-reflection. Negativity. Lack of excitement for "new" things. View of "new" things as not new. Etc. I need to tone it down and re-find my passion for the world. I've been very interested in the internal. Blazing a path of discovery down that road and now the external has been dull. Not sure why. Maybe that's just how it is. You can only be so passionate about so many things at a time? Nah. That's BS. A tainting, perhaps? Eh. I dunno. I dunno. Perhaps the root and reason aren't important but releasing that which I hold is. Yeah. Need to breathe and flow. Stop stifling things.

Had a lot of trouble getting a photo this morning. Actually, I didn't really get one. Took the one that was most interesting and did some Preview.app work on it until it was more pleasing. It made me think about the elements a lot, so it was definitely a successful exercise. Played with contrast, cropping, and rotated the image a lot.

Pretty darn tired this morning. I worked 12+ hours yesterday and only got 5 hours of sleep since the cat wanted me awake petting her. :-/

Project deadline is today and I'm trying to make sure I have the error handling I want. It's been an interesting process going from an experiment to the minimal product. Went from a collection of functions to 3 classes. This pattern of process seems to happen a lot for me. Perhaps it's a Python thing. I'm really glad I'm not forced into creating classes from the get go. It's always unclear what the object's data representation will be until you have something fleshed out. At that point I begin to see functions form groups based on the data they are working with and, voilà, a class is born.

That paragraph is a contender for posting to a real blog.

Anyway, a ton to do before people start waking up.

Almost got sucked into other things this morning after I managed to get a photo taken. Focus was scattered. Fighting the grogginess with a hot beverage.

Yesterday read part of a NY Magazine article: Why parents hate parenting. Gist was that  study after study has shown that people with kids are usually unhappier than people without kids. The more kids you have, the unhappier you are. The older you are when you have kids the unhappier you are. What it boiled down to was the best you could hope for was being as happy as someone without kids, but odds weren't good.

So, this brings up a lot about how I feel about having kids. Sure, I like to romanticize about teaching my kid new things, raising them, molding them, discovering cool stuff with them, doing better than my parents did, etc. I'm sure most people who want kids think about this. But, I suspect those are the fleeting moments. There is discipline and mis-communication and rebellion to contend with. You're signing an 18+ yr rental agreement. Life as you know it is ever-changed, and those youthful years are forever gone. Will I be a shell of self at the end? Calcified in my ways? Too old for such a radical change as the kids leaving home to contend well with it?

Another way I think about kids is pretty cold. I think of them as my future caretaker. When it comes down to it, unless I make it rich — and there is nothing indicating that's going to happen — I'll have to hope my kids will help me out. Not just financially, of course, but emotionally; which being rich probably won't help with. I see my dad struggling with this last part right now. He's got enough money to take care of himself, but he's really screwed the pooch on a lot of his familial relations. It's a rough sauce.

Having kids is such a final decision. I'm not sure anything in my life comes close to comparison. When you have a kid, that decision is made. What happens if you realize it was a bad move a few years later? There really is no recourse. It's a far more serious commitment than anything else I'll likely face. I'm finding it quite overwhelming. These decisions basically need to be made soon given other commitments coming up.

I'm grateful that S&R are having their baby soon. That's a serious petri dish for me to watch. I suspect their experiences are going to have a lot of influence over my life.

A couple of light dots in this image. Like dust specs on the negative or paper when I went to print. Working with the crude tool that is Preview.app, I had to just leave it. To think that Preview.app is crude; the time it would have taken me to get this in the darkroom isn't even funny. Especially since I never did color!

Woke up far too early this morning. Only got about 5 hours of sleep or so and it was restless sleep. Kept having some bizarre dream combination of needing to do testing and working at Dunder-Mifflin. It wasn't going well, to say the least. There were fights over the test names and namespaces. Horrible dream. Generally been having restless sleep since I got here. Maybe a few solid nights of sleep, but mostly restless. And I have hives on both my forearms from god knows what. Showed up while we were taking a hike around Beaverdam Lake. WTF!? I haven't had hives since I was kid.

Told Steve I'd be able to finish the project I'm on by the end of the week. I'm getting a bit worried I was being aggressive in that time-estimation. We'll see. He sounded a bit surprised by it when suggested. Worse case scenario is I tell him I need another day, but I'd like to avoid it. The biggest time sink will be Windows testing.

I've been a bit more aware of my emotions lately. I think this writing venue helps put a lens on things and thus makes me more aware later. This is good. Awareness and Communication seem to be key to this. Yesterday I was really overcome by how much I love Bean. Too much Emily Jane white, perhaps. :-)

I keep thinking how easy it would be to decipher who I am from reading this. So much public data out there to correlate with what I say. We haven't even touched the surface of all the issues being raised by this. Most people aren't even aware there's an issue. Though, maybe there's less of one than I think. Maybe the people who stalk would do it regardless of the ease because it's their nature. Maybe this doesn't change much. Still, I can't help but feel uneasy that people put themselves out there and not know it. It's like the debacle with the Google car "accidentally" collecting data packets from wireless networks. Sure, they shouldn't have collected that data, but come on people, you are using a (unencrypted) radio to read your email! How reasonable is it for people to complain? The counterpoint to this is something like heat radiation escaping from your house (grow room) and The Fuzz using devices to look at it and determine a knock on the door. That is invasion of privacy. So, what is the difference? I think, for me, it comes down to intention. Building and using a device for the purpose of gathering information about someone without their knowledge is an invasion of privacy. The Google car was collecting ESSID beacons and happened to pick up some data packets as well. They had no use or care for the data packets, they wanted the ESSIDS correlated with a GPS position. They (I hope) have no intention of using the data packets and should have thrown them away. So, for me, it comes down to: the citizen should not be naïve, but they also shouldn't be surveilled. Let's do what we can to protect ourselves and demand to not be watched.

Alright, that seems like a good stopping point. Now I need to decide whether to turn that thought bubble into a public post.

In a rush. Woke up very late and should definitely be working by now. Getting saved a bit by the EST and that we're trying an experiment tonight of me heading downtown to work in a coffee shop or two for 3 hours or so.

A little off keel. Three days of pure relaxtion and now I'm feeling a bit of anxiety. For some reason I stress on looking good for work. It's a little weird because I got a raise and was told I was one of the most productive engineers in the company. Clearly I'm getting my shit done. But, still, I freak when I'm not online and I think others will be. Much more often than not, I'm totally wrong and people come in much later and no one really notices (i think) that I was there early and I typically feel I need to stay late since everyone else is. Perhaps this is why I am so productive. :-)

Is this a self-confidence thing? Maybe if I believed in myself more I wouldn't worry about these things. On the other hand it did lead to a raise and some praise. So something is being appreciated.

I can feel myself holding my muscles tight. Must breathe and relax.

In general, I have problems being chill. Reminds me of my sister. I feel wrapped up like a ball of twine. Why? Part of this letting go thing. I feel my whole body clench when I'm experiencing something I don't think I should, something "bad". So far have I strayed from what I learned in North Fork. What to do? I have such an aversion to beginning that practice again. Why? To boot, I can't imagine trying to do this project and that practice at the same time. Two morning practices is a lot of time I already feel I don't have.

And time management is a huge problem I've always had. I can't seem to divide my time up right. This also, perhaps, stems from not being able to let go of things. Dunno. Time-boxxing. I need to do a lot more time-boxxing. :-/

Or do I? This whole thing feels forced. Like I need to make some sort of discovery or have an epiphany. Fuck. I'm just spewing some words and took a picture. That's how it is. Okay. Feeling time pressured sucks.

Day two. This is always how it starts out. How many morning pages around the world are like this? How many get past day two? This feels like a vacation thing. I'm not waking up thinking about all the stuff I need to do, how I want to get started on them early, or anything like that. So much harder at other times. Just like meditation. And that's pretty much dead at the moment.

I was thinking of just posting the image since it took a long time to get it. Took a lot of shots while the water was warming and then ended up using a crop from the first shot. Maybe I just need to leave it at the first shot. Take it, and move on. What's the goal with the image? Why am I taking them? So far, it seems like I should and maybe thats good enough. No, there's something else. It captures my surroundings and captures my eye. It's nice to look back and see those things. But if that's the point, then the quality of the shot should be allowed to suffer a bit. What I found this morning was that I ended up time-boxing the photo-shoot. Meaning, as soon as the water was ready, I stopped taking shots. This seemed like the right way to go. Let myself take shots for 10 or 15 minutes and then stop. Go from there. The photo process shouldn't damage the writing process.

Had some good sex yesterday. Kinda came out of the blue and it could have kept going but I found myself stopping it after it had already been "good enough". I still don't know why i'm doing this, but we talked about my impulses to say no and not wanting to go there for the first time and I think that helped have a good experience yesterday. Getting some of these thoughts out of my skull lightens the mood. It feels so heavy when it's sitting inside, reverberating off the walls. Even now, I feel myself brooding and being a bit heavy with this writing. The first page is light because it's not a commitment, the second page is the first indication of a pattern and suddenly you need to perform.

Reminds me of an anecdote in Bean's Art and Fear book. It talks about a person who decided to start taking dance because she thought she would like it. She did and after a while got fairly good at it. At some point her teacher took notice and asked her to be in a performance. The student's dance then became stifled and difficult. It lost all the qualities that came from just enjoying the experience of doing without judging the product. (Back to the journey and destination confusion?)

This brings up that I'm posting these messages to someone's service. They aren't private like notebook paper in a binder at home. I have to obfuscate names and be purposely hazy about some of the more personal aspects of my life, because I have to assume that someone could read this. This definitely taints the quality of the morning pages and perhaps damages an important aspect of them. For now, these aren't morning pages, these are something else inspired by morning pages. I already break some other rules and re-read paragraphs I've written before. I go in an expand on ideas I only fleetingly mentioned. I clarify points so that later (years from now) when I'm reading I'll understand what I was talking about. I like this a lot as I feel I more fully get thoughts out.

I'm done, but I'll include the following, because it is awesome. From the best dictionary ever (New Oxford American Dictionary) while looking up the word pithy:

THE RIGHT WORDIf you don't like to mince words, you'll make every effort to be concise in both your writing and speaking, which means to remove all superfluous details (: a concise summary of everything that happened).Succinct is very close in meaning to concise, although it emphasizes compression and compactness in addition to brevity (: succinct instructions for what to do in an emergency).If you're laconic, you are brief to the point of being curt, brusque, or even uncommunicative (: his laconic reply left many questions unanswered).Terse can also mean clipped or abrupt (: a terse command), but it usually connotes something that is both concise and polished (: a terse style of writing that was much admired).A pithy statement is not only succinct but full of substance and meaning (: a pithy argument that no one could counter).

What can I learn from the cat? Something about love, I think. The more love she gets, the cleaner she is, the more she talks, the louder she purrs. The more she wants to be with us. I like to think: the happier she is.

What can I learn from my own complicated processes? So much ceremony to get to the destination. So lost can we be in the process that often the destination is never reached. Of course, this evokes — it's the journey, not the destination — which seems off-target in this case. I guess there is a tension here. Continuing the metaphor, perhaps it is the journey that is important, but a journey requires taking steps.

Why do I get entangled in the process? Is it seeking perfection? Editing the photo until just right. No, I think it's more insidious. A cry for order? I think it is deeply related to the trouble I have with letting things go. Releasing the creation, the emotion, to the world, the wild. Is it that I don't want to lose the feeling? That seems more like the darker truth than seeking perfection. The moment is joy of creation and to finish and release is the end of that moment. How fucked is that? However, not all unfinished projects are due this dysfunctional emotional state, many are just a result of failed execution. Unwillingness to hit the last 20% of the first 80%. Great; Zeno's Paradox for getting anything done.

The "fucked" emotional state reminds me of a problem I've been aware of for quite some time. I'll call it: the rapture of potential.

I've always been strongly drawn to ideas that if I do X then I will be better. During college I would go to the used book store and peruse the math and science areas. I'd buy textbooks and popsci books on physics and math with the idea that I'd read it and be able to see into some beautiful part of the universe. My brain was exploding with delight in the things I was talking about with nerdy, psychedelic friends. I certainly can't knock the desire to peer deeper into the universe. But, I never read the books. Never got around to them. Though, I kept buying them. I was enamored by what they represented. By the potential of what would happen if I did read them. The things I'd know and think and see.

Holding onto these joyous emotions seems to be a real problem for actual execution. Even now, I can feel myself enjoying this writing process. I don't want it to end. Something is happening. Words are appearing. Content is being written. To finish is To end. This is a real failure in the light of my buddhist learnings.

There is a counterbalance to all of this which explains why I haven't totally failed in general. Not sure what to call it. I'll describe it instead: When I am tasked with a project by someone who's respect I'd like to earn or keep, I go through hell and back to finish the task and finish it well. I get real loyal to the project and I get real good at breaking things into parts and completing them piecemeal. I just can't seem to do this for myself and my own projects. No one looking down at me making sure I did it. A reflection of my low self-esteem? I want to say "probably", "likely". At least there is a consistency.

If I can learn to manage myself, I think great things could happen. I just need to make sure the motivations are right. Instead of falling into the egotism that partly makes up the pool of social network sites, I need to focus on creating value for myself and sharing that value.

Perhaps this is the genius and OTCZ I need think about: I'm a smart guy with an unconventional approach to solving our problems, but I'm bad about sharing my ideas and being part of a community. Something like that. Worth thinking about and trying to refine.