Nobody is a harsher critic of me, than myself.

I once picked up Time management for System Administrators. “Great!”, I thought, “a time management book from O’Reilly, must be relevant”. Yet, somehow, it was all obvious, but left out a lot of why’s. There were tips about staying off instant messaging clients and delegating tasks that are disruptive to your focus to others. It was all relatively obvious.

I took a job once, and stated up front that I didn’t want any time wasted with “pats on the back”, but was eager for useful criticism. Perhaps in hindsight it wasn’t the right place to ask for this. I got periodically micromanaged half the time, and ignored the other half when my boss was too busy to notice what I was up to.

It seems to me that the problem is with the bar that is set.

My bar is above average, yet I don’t recognize myself as being stellar. Just above average will do, thanks. This bar does not respond to situational influences. I want to do good in my Pre-Calculus class. It needs more time and attention. It doesn’t matter what else I’m dealing with in life. Other departments at work being a hassle? Skin infections taking up residence? These things do matter. Should they? I’m unsure. This definitely feels like an issue to find some compromise with. That is, without saying “fuck it” and taking off altogether.

I can feel the anxiety develop in my chest from all of it. Why? Because of my arbitrary standards of self-excellence.

I probably do think I’m well above average, but value humility and thus won’t admit it to myself. Which would make all of this effort part of maintaining the charade. “Sure, someone else shouldn’t stretch themselves so thin and enjoy life, but they’re not me!”

I realized today that it’s a terrible idea for me to take a CompSci and a Math class next quarter. Maybe some day I won’t be working full time and I’ll make up for that. The ball is still rolling though.

Yet I have a pile of projects in the garage that I wish I was working on, and I’m more apt to pick them up because they have no deadlines, so they’re more enjoyable than the things I’m doing because I have to or I’ll fail to meet an arbitrary goal built around degrees of aptitude that are presented by society as achievement, but are two dimensional.

Matt has ridden one thousand mile so for this year.

We’re finishing up week seventeen of the year, which means about eighty five work days. This means I’ve ridden about eight hundred and fifty miles so far this year in my commute alone. This doesn’t include the Point83 rides I go on every couple of weeks, weekend rides around the south Seattle neighborhoods and beyond, or anything special like the FHR. It’s just the short ride I make every day that I can easily count. I don’t have a bike computer to keep track of all of this, because it doesn’t fucking matter.

I’m glad it’s nice out and more people are getting back on their bikes. I’m seeing the one or two bikes in my office that refuse to use the bike rack in the garage because they cost more than my truck showing up again. I have to assume there’s more of this in the building, because all the bikes I see in the garage look like they do actually get ridden. All the same, there’s definitely an ideology clash here, that goes beyond if you think the amateurs are the squids or the posengers, (aka the other guys).

In trying to think of the best way to identify the root of this, I’m drawn to thinking about what kind of bike would elicit a “nice!” from someone. For me, it’s pretty hard for someone to buy a new bike that’s going to impress me. It’s not going to have personality. There’s not the love of building it yourself, let alone from parts that already have a history. The bike has no stories to tell other than that of your paycheck, which, perhaps is the story you want it to tell. A part being expensive doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, and I realize that’s deeply rooted in a personal belief that the value of something doesn’t come from it’s fiscal worth.

As it turns out, I’m in no condition to go anything productive except go to sleep for at least 30 minutes, so I’m going to call it a night and do that. But first! It’s thanksgiving in April today.

I’m glad my parents, my friends, and those dear to me are who they are. It doesn’t cross my mind to have them any other way. I’m thrilled that the stubbornest girl in my life also has a giant heart. It’s interesting that I find stubborn to be a positive personality trait. Probably more blue collar hard working ethic backwash. Today was almost terrible. That it wasn’t is simply great.

I’m full of wonderful feelings that materialize as a big grin.

On a side note, I have a super person story to tell that’s really private to tell. I’ve been holding it in out of insecurity and wondering if I’ll find the strength to share it, and how that will come out. Readers, how do you feel about writing publicly about something that makes you feel alienated?

As it turns out, I’ve been too passive. I wish that word could open up and bloom into everything I mean it to. When I kept trying to make a relationship work with Maria, I kept ignoring all the reasons it wouldn’t. The hurt steered me towards trying to make everything better, when I wasn’t giving a lot of thought to what I expected better to be.

I’m not solely talking about relationships. Take quitting Strategy, another fine example of not drawing boundaries, and not putting my foot down, when other people were being unreasonable and harming me. Looking up again and finding myself in a much better place through no significant effort of my own beyond the storm itself is an awakening.

I can’t think of any justification for the way I’ve been, just fear. I have to put explicit effort into questioning myself. I seem to have two cards to play, trying to be a martyr and trying to be amazingly amiable. Neither are respectable choices. They’re rooted in an over-simplified belief that somehow I’ll fool people into liking me if I do. We’re way beyond that now though.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity. — Albert Einstein

Time moves fast and slow. The morning went fast, with my head deep in solving a string of technical problems. Lunch went horribly slow as my heart twisted with sadness. My knee jerk reaction is to say something or do something to cure it. Instead I’m putting the headphones on, putting my palm on my chest, and telling myself it’ll turn out alright.

Nothing is going to change today. Either there will be time to mend and patch, or there won’t, but it won’t be right now as much as part of me feels like it should be.

I don’t value that many things, which is to say, I don’t hold them dear. I’m not good with the things I do hold dear. Of course, nobody is, it’s just tough. Perhaps I’m too much of a dreamer, and put too much hope in the future. Which is of course ironic because I rarely live in the future. Hope. That’s what it is.

I have hope for love. I don’t mind that it doesn’t always seem practical. Despite my career resting on amazingly obscure technical bits, I regularly slide back and zoom out, and laugh at the complexity that we orchestrate for ourselves.

Yes, it’s amazingly critical and important that the exchange server went down over the weekend and it took everyone a while to notice. I understand all of the justifications, all of the reasoning, all of the constructs. But it’s sunny out there, and love is out there.

I’ve managed my own projects my entire life. I’ve almost always been a lead in the decision making process because I’m the one that understands it. This is a huge part of me.

But beauty can’t be captured by process.

I woke up feeling pretty good, wrote some more, and felt better about things on my mind. The ride into work was wonderful except turning around to put some air in my tire when I got to the end of the alley, been having some trouble with the tubes on the rear wheel of the IRO the last few days. There was some breakage at work over the weekend, which wasn’t a huge deal but “understand this is very serious”, so it was. I’m game to add some custom nagios scripts in a few, but I feel compelled to sum up myself to myself a little more than I did this morning.

Feeling defeated is probably pretty selfish, it’s likely the product of thinking I’ve done everything I could and still lost, which is bullshit. Losing, or feeling like you’re not getting what you want, however broad that concept may be in your head or your heart is always hard, granted. I ‘spose it needs to be identified as how one feels. I tend to think I should watch a movie or do something physical until it goes away, but I think that conquering the fear of loss from saying or doing something stupid is the transcendental next climb in my life is a mountain full of plateaus analogy.

It’s too easy to forget that the common factor in all of your problems is yourself.

There’s some irony in talking to my Mom about relationships, because her response is summarized as “I’m sorry, it’s really hard”.

I wrote more about this, but I feel I missed the point. That’s usually all my mother says, besides a hug and some comforting. Sometimes in a few more words, but she’s right, and that’s exactly how I expect people to be. Maybe because that’s the way my mother has always been?

In the argument against fashion, one has to acknowledge that anti-fashion is fashion. It’s all a choice. And that’s fine. Somewhere along the way I became really, really okay with choice, but in a passive way. That’s fine.

Owning it. I hate when people blather on about something they know nothing about. I don’t like talking about something I haven’t thought about or researched. I don’t want to seem stupid. This is all a character flaw.

Do I want to take back what I said? No, not really. I meant it. Perhaps the context is lost, or was wrong from the start. Maybe I feel differently now.

I hate shopping for specific things I need at brick and mortar when I don’t know exactly what I need. I used to believe this was because I hated when someone who had less of a clue of what I needed tries to help me with a false sense of accuracy. “No, I’m pretty sure sir, that this nut of this Sturmey-Archer hub is not that metric nut you’re pandering to me.” I worry about people judging me still. Still. Still.

It has gotten better on it’s own accord, I’m asking people who I respect more questions. This happened naturally with my admitting how conceited I am.

Okay, really need to get this work done now please sir.

I mentioned talking to my mother about how I’m feeling in an earlier post and worrying about people telling me that I should “just do ….”. My mind is extrapolating, before I forget I must write it.

When I’m upset, I still have some childhood notion that there are answers. As I talk, I come back to myself and remember there aren’t any answers. It’s a hard transition from being young, having questions about everything, and suddenly finding so many questions that don’t seem complicated, but really don’t have answers. It’s nice to say, “Why did that person do that” and get “because their parents didn’t love them enough”, and feel like your question is resolved, but it’s not. Psychology is interesting, but we’re complicated, and I’m fine really with folks being a mystery.

I think when I have a bad day I want to come home to someone who’ll say “aww” and give me a hug. I’m sort of perplexed when I talk to my mother and outside of asking some questions about how I’m feeling, her only statement is “Yeah, it’s hard”, never “You should …”

Which is great really, because I hate it when I’m struggling with an emotional problem and someone tells me that I should walk away or put my foot down or anything that ignores that it’s a problem with how I feel more than a problem with my actions. That reaction completely ignores my feelings. While my heart may dream of non-existent simpleness, my mind is quick to throw out those reactions.

Some time ago there were many accusations that I was trying to be my father, that I was going to turn into my father, that I was acting on his wishes. My reaction was to try to be comforting. This was fucking retarded of me, because it was soulless and empty, and accordingly accomplished nothing of substance. The appropriate reaction would have been “fuck off and die”, or maybe more appropriately, “you’re insane, and I’m leaving”, or perhaps something a bit further down the not-harsh scale. I could likely count on two hands every conversation I’ve ever had with my father where he’s made comment about what I should do, with relations to my feelings being a significantly scarcer commodity. I love my father, but I’m definitely his loudest critic. While my mother surely has more experience to speak from, it’s much less appropriate for her to do as much. I’ve had many shocking conversations with his parents about him that ended with, “We didn’t realize it had gotten that bad”. Gotten? It’s always been that bad, where have you been the last twenty years? I’m losing focus here, the point being that the implication that my parents somehow lead me is pure absurdity. They stepped out of that role many years ago, as they should have.

It’s funny too, and a warning sign that was missed out of my compromise, when that type of person spends so my time asking their own parents what they should do, while I’m asking my father how the Boston Bruins are doing, because that is what is important to him.

But I’m not looking for answers, I’m vocalizing my feelings until they solidify into pieces I can move around and see where they fit, or throw out the cruft. This ends up overflowing at times, as feelings do, and catching other people up in it. Thankfully that doesn’t happen often, only when my feelings come to a dam and pile up while I play The Incredible Machine with my life until it makes sense again.

See, I do fix things. Whoops.

I’d like to start off by saying that I hate conflict. Wait. Do I? See, that was some time ago.

There was a lot of conflict around me when I was young. I didn’t understand it and there were no attempts made to help me understand it. Not that I could of. Somehow my natural reaction ended up being casually stepping around it.

At some point my solution came to be taking the workload on myself and silently fixing the problem when nobody was looking.

What about personal conflict? I seem to have developed being amiable, compromising, and telling people things that I think they want to hear. I suppose these are all viable tools, but I sense a pattern.

More often these days I’m aggravated by listening to people talk and cause conflict myself by calling them out on what they’re saying. I’m still reluctant to do it full on. I worry that they’ll take me for a jerk, even the ones I’m close to. This isn’t set in reality. It’s me a decade ago in high school, building reactions to bullshit social patterns that were common at the time, but set pretty squarely in adolescence.

This is good. A lot has come up and out, although there’s been a bit of backscatter. I suppose that’s inevitable, and while I’d like to point and yell “see!” it’s not what I was thinking it was.

This is all very hard work. I’d rather build a picnic table again, which was yesterday, but I know that’s not getting me anywhere. I know this too will pass, like the tribulations of the past. What a view.

It’s hard sometimes to own my feelings and not fear the repercussions of them. Or maybe it’s very hard for me. I have this expectation of saying I feel some way, or that I want something some way, and being immediately told to fuck off and close the door on my way out.

I talked to my mother a little bit about how I’m feeling, which I’ve narrowed down to defeated. There’s some irony in talking to my Mom about relationships, because her response is summarized as “I’m sorry, it’s really hard”. When you look at what she’s gone through and going through, you empathize with mutual frustration. I don’t bother talking to my father about relationships. Long ago his responses were nailed down to basically be “my heart can’t handle that shit” when he’s sober, and “fucking women” when he’s not. Tori recently chimed in a response to my earlier post, which I haven’t had a chance to respond to yet.

I’ve done a little private writing too, via email, to special folks, the exercise of all of this has been good. I did get tomorrow’s homework done, and started on Wednesday’s, which was all gnawing at me.

I’ve since speculated that my emotions may be better used if I focused them into situations where people want a friend and there is no expectation of a model around which emotions are traded back and forth. Where there’s no concern for equality because it really is a gift to help someone through a moment in time, upon the completion of which they move along. This thought is far too reactive of me, but there’s some value in it. It’s also probably the reason I should have kids, but that’s futuretalk and rampant speculation.

As time has moved on, while my empathy for folks in general has stayed the same, I’ve become a lot more choosy about people. There are many posts here over the last couple of years about being more at ease with judging people based on how they life, while trying to avoid the dirty pit of prejudice. A while back I made a joke in passing to an ex-girlfriend and she responded with a comment that maybe the problem was the people I was friends with. I became serious and told her that, in fact, the people in my life now are some of the best people I’ve known. The more great and wonderful people I meet, the less interested I am in sitting around and the better I feel about the world.

I felt defeated most of the day. I felt like the world was once again reminding me that who I am doesn’t belong to it. Time, a shower, some coffee, some writing; somewhere in there I moved along. No answers were in there except that I know what I want, and I know that I’ll live if I don’t get it. That is, I suppose, all I can ask of life.

I’ve been taking a Pre-Calculus course at Seattle Central, did I tell you that? There’s a couple reasons for this. One thing that’s always kept me from taking college courses is the requirements for the ones I wanted to take. I’ll be taking the two computer science courses at Seattle Central starting this summer, and pre-calculus is a requirement. I talked to the instructor over email and he’s confident he’ll waive the other requirement, which is some silly “microcomputer applications” class.

This gives me flashbacks of having to take “Computer Literacy” and “Computer Applications” to take “Advanced Computer Applications” in high school, the latter of which was really “Desktop Publishing with Pagemaker”. I caught a bunch of flack from one of the computer literacy instructors and from my uncle who was the computer instructor at the vocational school for doing really poorly on the computer literacy final. In retrospect, whoever thought that testing on keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Word for DOS and which finger’s were supposed to hit which keys should have been flogged. It just alienated me from them anyways, the third teacher was really nice to me and I ended up helping her out in the computer labs quite a bit. Anyhow, there’s a great story about applying to my uncles program and officially getting turned down due to lack of space, but unofficially being turned down because of my “lack of maturity”. Whatever cock muncher.

The plan is to take the two computer science courses that transfer to UW, as well as whatever math I can that transfers, at Seattle Central. Perhaps I’ll take some introduction classes in other subjects, but this is time consuming enough as it is with a full time job and multiple full time hobbies.

The second reason for getting into the computer science courses is to put a little more padding behind my conversations with Adam Jacob about software design. Times like when he pointed me to MVC as an explanation for why Chef did something a certain way (ruby code in the recipe, not in the template) remind me that these things would be more obvious if I knew more of the terminology behind software design.

Also a lack of formal mental process outside of computer science is sometimes missing when talking to some friends, but I doubt I’ll have the time for classes outside math and science in the near future.

Class is funny, as in funny terrible. The class itself is fine, but some of the students stick out like a sore thumb. There’s one who thinks out loud, my biggest complaint of him is when the instructor writes homework problems on the board he starts groaning loudly for every additional problem over ten or so. There are hip kids chatting up the girls, a couple girls announcing very vocally that the class is too hard for them and that they’re dropping it. The teachers handwriting is atrocious, but it’s livable except when you get caught up doing a problem by hand and don’t hear what he is saying to reconcile it with what he is writing. The other day while doing some reading just before class I could hear a couple guys laughing in the study area over my headphones while every one was giving them an evil eye. It’s just amazing how unaware folks get of their surroundings, or their lack of concern/empathy for others.

Hardest part so far was filling out the application for in-state tuition, which was pretty quickly approved once I finally got it all assembled and sent in. I lucked out on a few things, like having a copy of my voter ID card which had the date of registration on it. Not everything had start dates, but I think the pound of other evidence was satisfactory.