Save me from these corporate slugs

Showing H The American Ruling Class, even though she thinks that she has seen most of it.

I tried to not be too prejudice against the people at the party, but I squarely felt like they weren’t contributors, and was reminded by the Goldman Sachs (former?) employee of the aforementioned documentary. Who are my people? Who do I identify with? I want to be someone who builds but I carefully try to weigh where I am.

The internet, the social networks, sent me a piece about how Starship Troopers is really about facism. I barely remember the movie, and bought it recently to follow up on this implication. I haven’t found anyone in my life that cares enough to be excited about figuring this out. I may force it on the willing soon.

Discussion of Heinlein’s book on wikipedia brings up meritocracies and my brain goes into overdrive considering the intersections.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Meade

The fourth bugs me, I would prefer to be out in the woods tonight, away from the fireworks, the parties, the police squads.

Moving forward. Good. Headed that way.

On my way to Eatonville to visit my mother + step-father for a day, I stopped at a feed and seed to pick up some supplies for the chickens. Upon coming home, I crossed some more off my TODO list on my wall. You make money by doing something for someone. You sell poultry feed to people who need it. For a moment, I wondered how anyone else gets poultry feed. Because, in the scope of things, it isn’t an impossible or even difficult feat. But when I think about feats, their breadth, they add up.

I recall M making a harsh comment once about how I enabled her, I made things happen.

That’s what I do. I take care of things for people.

Not that I don’t have books to read, but I noticed a Primo Levi book on the bookcase the other day, and having seen the name in Hindsight, picked it up.

The conviction that life has a purpose is rooted in every fibre of man, it is a property of the human substance. Free men give many names to this purpose and think and talk a lot about its nature. But for us the question is simpler.

Yesterday. A good rest, with a good full day at work. Then an hour or two up on Beacon hill watering the garden and I biked down to GLC for dinner. As I was doting about at home, tending to the chickens, preparing for today, they giddily told me about something silly they had done. I was tired and focused on remembering what needed to be done that evening.

The other night Colin and I went to a party at a friends. The majority of the attendance consisted of trashed parents with their children running around, and a minority of bike mechanics and other bikey people.

I awoke this morning thinking about being an adult. About ball pits (xkcd) and careers. I often feel unable to reconcile my lives, my social circles. Perhaps this is normal.

Awake at 6am, I cleaned and made breakfast. I crossed a bit off my TODO list and napped again for a half hour. A big day ahead. Who to share this with? Even the closest feel at arms length. This is possibly, bizarrely, my doing. Also, I still cannot comprehend the power that M’s name has over my emotions, so often on the edge of my mind and the tip of my tongue. I feel this continues to push me away from other people as well.

A 6:30am flight means I needed to be up at 4am. Going to sleep around 8pm seemed like a great idea, but my body knew something was up and I was awake before midnight. Now it is 3:30am I could really use a couple more hours of sleep but I’ve got to push through at least until I get on the airplane back to Seattle.

I’ve got a geek blog post I’ve really got to write about stuff that came up here at Velocity. I’ve been thinking lately about how to organize blogs as I need to find a place for urban farming and bike projects (non-advocacy). A jokes about building a “bry-pire.” I’ve registered a couple domains to fulfill the need for the farming and bike bits and confgured wordpress and k2 but I’m not done setting up the basic graphics yet. That will be the extent of the graphic design. While I’m still unsure if I should move the tech blog to its own domain or not, I took some time to redesign my home page tonight while lead to a rewrite of my okcupid profile. The latter was particular interesting. First, since I’ve stopped drinking, a huge whole opened up in it. But beyond that something greater has changed such that I didn’t feel I could continue with the incremental updates that I’ve done over the last few years. In the past I could see a sort of trend in edits as life changed and I grew. Yet, something is different, like a facade has fallen, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. It is surely related to J thinking I am more present than I used to be.

I talked to Matthew today for the first time in a bit. He is in Florida working out terms for a job he accepted. His first job ever, which is quite impressive, perhaps in subtle ways. This underscores how much we have to talk about. I’m ready to blame time zone differences for not having time to call him when he’s awake, but really it is a reminder to be more proactive about the use of my time.

Still. I just wrote a short email to M and hit discard. Time. Shift.

There’s a different way of measuring value hidden in here somewhere. I think I’m too tired to discern it.

So there’s this cute cartoon playing at velocity about the different between speed and velocity, the latter having a direction as well as speed. This has an interesting tie into the earlier discussions about direction and Good.

Someone I knew in high school back in Maine and hadn’t seen since was here doing a lightning talk for Google. That’s bizarre, and probably the most significant flashback to another time I’ve had in a while. Fifteen years? He brought up some place I used to work with another guy, and how cool what were doing then was to him. I finally narrowed this down to Panax and Jason. He asked about Jason, and I conveyed that I don’t keep in great touch with him because he’s sort of in another world. Oh well. Crazy happenstance though.

As I sit listening at a table at Velocity conference with eight or so awesome individuals, I smile at the course life has taken.

I met Denny for dinner in San Jose at my favorite restaurant here, Good Karma. He’s a riot. I meet him on a sidewalk near a house I think he’s just been crashing at. He’s got a top-hat with half a plastic alligator head pinned to it, all covering bleached + green dyed dreads, with a pile of ties hanging out of pockets. He walks like nothing else really matters and I have a hard time comparing this “Dennis” to the Denny I first met so many years before as Jim’s (James…) younger brother. We talk about what we’ve been up to. He’s been spending the summer traveling, hanging out with musicians and producers, going from one event to another and rarely going home. When I talk about quitting drinking and moving away from people who aren’t doing anything (producing?) he admits he’s mostly having fun. I defend him and say at least he’s having fun doing new things and that each day is not regrettably a copy of the last. He tells me a story of a trip but can’t remember when it last was, and says it all blurs together. He speaks of how incredible it is to have the resources he has access to.

I finished Unfinished Business and continued to marvel at the convergence with Hindsight, albeit via two different works. Still, I picked up Free Culture immediately, which may mimic this aforementioned trait a bit in regard to The Public Domain. The other day I was reading while watering at BH while waiting for H to come by and thought pretty seriously about what it would feel like to take better stock of my free time.

I was talking to J about quitting drinking, about the costs of alcohol, and in another thread I got talking about living in the present. She connected the two and commented about how much more present she thinks I am now, partially due to being sober. We spoke of the avoided costs of relationships, like Lee Kravitz’ discussion of emotional energy and how every bad interaction saps a little bit of what’s available to you in the course of a day, the stress of dealing with other people is a cost.

On Tuesday I had two waiters refer to me as buddy. Both were hispanic, but one was at a Dennys in Bellevue over breakfast, and another at a late dinner at Original Joe’s in San Jose. Flying to San Jose made me think about coming down on the ‘southbound train’ last summer and thinking of M, of taking responsibility for some feelings that were solely mine to sort through.

Approval? Identity? Theres a concentrated shift toward what I do. It may have always been this way to some degree, but there’s effort behind it now. A less expectant or desiring love.

When people ask me why I don’t drink, I feel as if they’re looking for a story of tragedy. One where I ended up in a hospital or jail, a relationship being torn apart at the hands of alcohol. Upon reflection, this has already happened many times in my life. Some experiences have been at my hand, others I have witnessed. So, I tell them that drinking is too costly. That there is too much to be done to afford it.

I went from reading Hindsight to Unfinished Business. The first was an academic view at retrospect and its place in our lives. The latter a number of stories about loose ends tied up by a successful man who turned fifty-five, lost his job, and realized that too many things had been put aside over the years.

While reading Hindsight and thinking about Good, I was in a period where I was reevaluating the focus of my time. At some point I articulated to myself, or perhaps to someone else out loud, that I’ve long thought about what people would say about me at my death. As I thought more about this, I realized it was a vehicle for introspection regarding my own character, as if through a mirror.

Heartbreak of last year lead to a turning point in the fall of redefining goals. It is overwhelming to try to grasp time anymore. Ultimately, I think that is a sign of success. Hindsight got me thinking about this mirror. My notes have lead to this summary: Good is a direction you can go, not a place that you can be. Thus, I’ve begun to think more about this example of retrospect as a compass that one uses not to get somewhere in particular but to live.

I took today off work as I’m headed to San Jose tonight for the Velocity conference and I have a few important things to get done before I leave. I slept poorly and I woke this morning uneasy with heavy thoughts on my heart, and decided to read for a while first. From Unfinished Business:

From reading his book, I knew that Tony liked to challenge his students at the start of each year by saying, “All of us are going to die — some sooner, some later. After you die, what would you like people to say about you? Your answer to that question,” he’d tell them, “should guide the way you live.”

I’m reading two books that are coming to similar ends, but they are written in completely different formats. Granted, it is a interesting culmination to see these writings and my thoughts converge.

In closing, a quote of Lee Kravitz from Unfinished Business: “As good as my life looked on paper, it was sorely lacking in the one area that puts flesh on meaning: human connectedness.”

When I was in my late teens or so, we used to go around putting loftninjas.org stickers in odd places like in bathrooms on road trips across the country, in places you’d only see if you were shitting. I wondered if people would see them and contact me. No one ever did, but I still hear tale of people who knew about them seeing them randomly on cars around Maine.

As I ponder how to split all of my projects into their own spaces on the internet; blogs, and perhaps social media to follow, I’m thinking about domains. Ry recommended I follow Zed Shaw’s design of a blog + domain per topic.

M used to give me shit about holding on to loftninjas.org stickers. I remember her making comments about when I was going to take the sticker off my truck after we moved to Seattle. It disappeared one day and I assume due to her. Which you know, is pretty lame if that’s the case, but you know the way I am, I moved along. I recall another conversation with her about leaving that behind, that it was a tie to friends that she wanted me to get away from. In retrospect, it looks like that cliche movie plot about being pulled away from your friends to something fancy and losing what matters along the way. Yet, it didn’t end up being like that, not because of her though, but because of where I went.

As I’ve mentioned recently, growth is all that more interesting when you’ve got a number of periods to look back upon and the changes are less subtle. It’s harder to tell what’s the same than what’s different, as I sit in Seattle, listening to the chickens, getting ready to bike to work at a 350+ person company. Dad and his friend John used to say, “Who woulda thunk?”

Yet, on the wall I have a quote, “I’m going to make darn sure the world doesn’t change me.” by Pete Seegar. For everything external that’s changed, what has internally? I have a brief moment of sadness as I’m reminded by feeling so far away from everyone because of how I feel I’m so distant from people lately. Hmm. Work.

Two hours spent reading, crying for most of it, reading two chapters, two stories, of reuniting, hope, tragedy. A third chapter about adventure.

I sometimes think about what I’d hope people would say about me if I died. In terms of recent reading, this catalyzes a retrospective look at the value of my life. Would I want people to describe drunken parties, or how I touched their lives?

I look over at two photos, one of each of my parents. Both are from Lunkasoos. One is of my mother standing on a snowy dock awaiting the plane with baggage and propane tanks. The other is of my father, with his sleeves rolled up standing on a early camp deck there.

I’d only seen him years later when he was worn down by life. Look at him. He’s got his whole life in front of him and I’m not even a glint in his eye.

Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Sometimes I’m sad about the things that never got to happen. Sometimes J and I talk about the love lost, about connection that never got a chance to be.

When what it was was that suddenly,
The music was all gone.
And this man and this woman got cut off,
In the middle of our song.

There’s a flash of optimism in there.

It is fascinating that the chickens will fly up to the edge of their crate, but won’t leave it. I saw one almost go up to the window the other day I suppose. It isn’t that they can’t escape, but that they choose not to.

I named mine Zooey today. She now joins the named ranks of Rosalita, Shortround and Ladyhawk Wolfsbane Brewster.

I feel good about having finished reading Hindsight. I almost went to the shop to work on some bike projects to wake up for a bit. While it is not quite dark out, it is late, and I can’t work on the chicken coop tonight. I turned around once outside to come in and pick up a new book. This week has been straight out and full of enough happenings to think about.

Attention, like hindsight, is therefore a corrective device, a vehicle not so much of detachment but of distance, productive distance, that can allow us to see that which we were unable to see before.

H and I talked at length about self-esteem and approval. Actually, about a great many things. A lot about what I have been talking to J about, which is growth and leaving relationships behind because of it. About my fears of loneliness that derive from this. About people’s recommendations, their fixes being short-sighted, cliche, ultimately frustrating. That experience distances you from others, when they can’t or won’t listen, when they tell you they can’t handle you or that what you are doing is wrong or dumb. When I spoke of what’s changed between M and JR, J asked me what happened between then. I joked about a dozen relationships and she clarified her rhetorical question: personal growth. I admitted as much, in a tone that always reminds me of M, in an “oh, growth.” sort of way.

I’ve changed, for the better. There’s no denying that it has all been worthwhile. And what now? Stop, realign my direction with the Good, and continue on again. And repeat.