pandora_parrot | Entries tagged with life

One of my goals this year is to relax more. I had a lot of drama happen last year. People being passive aggressive and/or irrationally attacking me and stuff like that. You know the list: The animated cat torture incident, the spaghettios incident, etc.

That stuff tends to freak me the fuck out and make me react very, well, irrationally myself.

So this year, I intend to keep calm. These are other people's issues, not mine. If people seem to have a problem, I'll ask about it. If people refuse to communicate with me about their issues, that's their problem to deal with. I am not going to worry about accommodating unspoken requirements for social relationships. I'm not going to try to guess at what I'm doing to upset someone if they seem upset by me. If they then throw a tantrum because I'm not reading their mind and doing what they want, well, I'm going to do my best to ignore it and stay calm.

I intend to have a relaxing and calm drama-free year. Let other people deal with their own damn drama.

Redyed my hair. Used some darker colors this time. Not entirely happy with the way it came out. I'll have to wait for it to fade and not use so much Deep Purple next time. More Blue-haired freak and blue velvet, I think. Maybe use some pink to splash some texture in there.

chirik's hair turned out awesome, as did

viesti's. I haven't been able to see the final results of

foxgrrl's hair, but hers was awesome from what I saw. Very happy with the results.

cheeseboy went with a simple orange, which works for him but doesn't give me much room to play. Heh. Had fun playing with his hair though. All nice and short and stuff.

Last week, I went nuts with climbing, after a month of being a shut in. Turns out that a lot of my problems were hydration related. I've basically spent a month and a half being dehydrated. I find, right now, that I'm drinking intense amounts of water, for me. I drank 3 liters within roughly an hour on Wednesday at climbing and felt incredible. It was like someone had lifted a veil from my eyes. Went climbing again on Friday and felt like I was pretty close to my old abilities again. At least being able to push myself. Then on Sunday,

chirik and I went climbing at Castle Rock. That was a blast. It's so great to be climbing outdoors again.

I've been really pressed for time these past few days, what with getting my life back together after being sick, completing my software project with

viesti, and working on getting back into climbing. I took last night off and went over

viesti's place to play WoW with her and her family, have dinner, and cuddle. Wound up passing out there.

I'm still struggling with this soul crunching depression that keeps threatening to come back to me, but I find that as long as I stay busy, it's harder to fall into it. I really want to go ice skating again some time soon, and get back to a few people that I need to talk to. But one thing at a time. Tonight, I plan to work all night.

I spent much of 2009 reflecting on everything that was happening to me and trying to place it into the story of my life. I think that has a lot to do with just how much was happening to me last year. Much good and bad. LOTS of difficult.

I think 2009 was the year I got back to work on my life. So 2010 is going to be filled with but lots of work. I suppose my resolution this year is to do a lot of stuff. Write software, draw pictures, paint paintings, build flashy-glowy things, climb mountains, ride my bike to new locations, hike all over the place, etc. You know, stuff like that. Just be busy and do a million things.

There are some themes to my posts. Many of them go this way: "I used to have problem X, but I just accomplished some huge step in making X go away/get better! I still have issues with X, but I'm getting better all the time." or some variant thereof.

I'm not entirely sure that these posts are always 100% accurate. I misremember a lot of things. For example, throughout my childhood and high school years, I remember always feeling very lonely. I felt alone and alien. I remember being alone all the time Yet when I look at how many friends I had back then, I get confused. I *did* have friends, even if they weren't exactly the kinds of friends I wanted. In grade school, I had 3-6 friends I hung out with a lot, and in high school, about the same. It's still that way, actually. That just seems to be my number or something. It's like my memory is based on my emotional state, not the factual events that took place.

I look back on many of my posts from 2004 and 2005, and I realize just how childish and immature I was back then. I was hyperactive, overexcited about everything, and convinced that everyone else held the keys to the universe. Every relationship that came my way, I was convinced that we were destined to be together forever. I moved in with people as quickly as I could, wanting to recreate my marriage with my ex-wife or something. I wanted to replace my estranged family. I wanted to find a home.

I hurt several people as I crashed through life trying to find my way to this point and beyond. Lovers that moved in with me under the pretense that I knew myself well enough to offer to support them, that I later asked to leave because I found myself unwilling to do so. Long distance lovers that deeply cared for me and spent much of their money and energy on having a relationship with me, but despite my words when we would speak, I never found equivalent energy or money in myself to offer back.

Looking to the future, what do I want? Primarily, I want to be at peace. Peace with myself, peace with the people around me, and peace with the world in general. I want to know myself, in all of my parts, from the deepest darkest reaches of my soul to the blindspots that I still have. I want to stop running from pain and fear and learn to stand with it. I want to learn to be patient and wait for good things to come. I want to know how to be a better citizen of the earth, a better companion to my fellow beings, a better friend to those I care about, and a better partner to those I love.

Biked to work today. It was grueling. More grueling then it hsould have been. I note that my tires were a bit flat and my seat a bit low, but I think the main issue was the fact that I haven't been physically active for 2 weeks.

Tonight I'm going to publish 0.1 of our Arimaa implementation and get to work on designing the PBEM features.

I also need to pay all of the bills I've been avoiding. I'll do that tonight as well.

And at some point in the next week, I need to write my 2009 Retrospective. I've written about a quarter of it so far, but I need to finish it.

I also have an essay on pre-agricultural socitieties that I wrote that I want to finish and share.

Then I plan to start publishing some of my poems. I'm not a frequent writer, and a lot of what I write is crap, but there are a few gems standing out from the collection, and I intend to publish those because, hey, that's kinda cool. I have a friend that's runs a press, so I'm going to use her for some of it. Lulu for others.

If I get any interest, maybe it'll encourage me to start writing more poetry. I do love my poetry.

Coming home to an empty house tonight. For the first time in about a month, I have nothing to do, nowhere to be, no commitments, and nothing calling for my attention. I have the entire night to myself. What shall I do? Play games to relax? Watch some House? Read some books on writing computer games and websites? Work on Arimaa? Call someone to come over? Catch up on some work I want to get done? The night is mine to do with as I please.

I still wish I had someone to come home to.

Maybe I should adopt a cat.

Current Music: Pat Benatar - Invincible | Powered by Last.fm

A sad fact that I have to deal with and own up to is this:

I am an artist at heart. I crave the act of creation. Whether that be creating music, images, sculpture, software, pottery, literature, poetry, hair, or any million numbers of other things. It's why I have been drawn, time and again, to the creative arts throughout my life. It's why the majority of my closest friends are also artists in some medium or other. Musicians and programmers and painters and draw-ers and tailors and poets etc. etc.

The sad fact that I have to own up to is that, really, until about 2007, I have been an artist largely in theory, not in practice. Although I've had moments of creative acts, it's mostly been in the context of school and work. My life has mostly been filled with avoidance and fear, convinced that I am worthless and incapable of anything. It's only around 2007 when I began to turn that around.

I am growing into the artist that I have always been in my heart. I hope that some day I can look back at what I've created and say, "I am an artist in fact" in all the ways that I want to mean that.

Current Music: Elec3 - 40 Amps | Powered by Last.fm

Many people I know seem to have focus.

Some people I know become incredible socialites, always visiting friends and family and throwing parties and events and all that jazz. Others devote significant portions of their lives to the study of spiritual practices, religions and magick and all that jazz. Still others devote their lives to feats of engineering. Writing really cool bits of software and churning out applications and/or games as fast as they can. Others devote their lives to art, painting or drawing or sculpting or whatever. Or perhaps music, working on becoming great pianists or banjo players or something like that. Then there's people that focus on building electronics projects. Or people that focus on making clothes and fabrics and costumes. Or exercise. Or hiking. Or rock climbing. And on and on.

Some people focus on many things over time, but only one at a time, learning something for a few years, then focusing on something else. Others combine a few things simultaneously, but keep it limited.

At this point in my life, I don't seem to have too much focus, because there are too many things that I want to try out. I've never really had enough of an opportunity to really explore myself and see what I really enjoy. As a child, I was always too busy trying to please my parents and teachers to really explore what mattered to me. So now I'm exploring. I'm trying everything, learning new skills, testing the waters of various things, seeing what works.

I think there are some things that seem to be emerging from the chaos. Drawing, programming, rock climbing, and hiking seem to be pretty important and have stuck around for a year or more, so that seems to be steady for now. Skateboarding and biking seem like they could become important, but it's going to take a while longer before I start to feel more like they are a constant part of my life. Gaming seems to have wandered out of my life for the most part. I'm trying something new on socialization lately to see how that works for me.

To some degree, I'm seeking to find a balance of all of the things that interest me. A balance that works for me, not necessarily equal interest in all things. I want to be social, do art, do coding, etc. and still find time to still try/learn new things. I'm succeeding quite well of late, even if I'm going slower than I might like. Honestly, I like where I'm at right now. In every way I can measure it, especially in the direction that I'm taking it, my life is perfect right now.

How do you learn something new?

I can sometimes find it to be an overwhelming activity, especially if I'm getting into something completely brand new. There's this whole new language that you need to learn, with all these different types of things to categorize and understand. Without someone to help you learn how to do something, it can be quite difficult.

Even if you find someone else to teach you how to do stuff, you're still going to have trouble understanding what people are saying. There's so much terminology to learn and understand. They'll ask you questions about things that you don't have answers to because you don't yet understand the questions they ask!

In flying R/C planes, you've got to understand the difference between elevons, ailerons, elevators, flaps, flaperons, and rudders. If someone tells you to bank, that's different than turning. Pulling up means moving the joystick down. If someone starts talking about angles of attack, coordinate turns, inside and outside loops, and more, you're going to have no idea what they're talking about.

Without going to a class where they list what supplies you need, or finding someone to provide you with such a list who can teach you how to use your supplies, you're going to have to muddle through figuring out what you need to buy to get into something.

In R/C planes, if you go shopping, you'll find yourself confronted with all sorts of different kinds of options. Do you want delta wings, warbirds, biplanes, 3D planes, gliders, trainers, ducted fan planes, indoor planes, scale models...??? Radio? Well, there's 72 Mhz radios, 2.4Ghz radios, IR radios. Where are you flying? What sort of plane are you flying? Oh, you don't have one yet? Well... 2.4Ghz is good... do you want the DSM2 technology, FASST technology, or something else? What sort of receiver do you need? What kind of servos are you driving?

At least if you go to a store, you have a clerk there that might be able to provide some guidance. But if you opt for ebay or craigslist or freecycle or something, you're on your own to figure out what you need and what's appropriate for you. And if you don't even have the language to ask your questions, it may be difficult to get Google to give you the information that you seek at first.

For me, I tend to just gather as much information as I can and muddle my way through the beginning of something. I grab what tools I think I need based on that information and do my best to start learning by doing. I look like an idiot sometimes, and I certainly make a ton of mistakes as I don't even have enough information and language to describe what it is that I'm trying to do most of the time. But, over time, this smoothes out and I eventually learn what I'm doing and how to deal with it. Then I buy tools that are actually appropriate for me, learn specialty tools, and just generally get better at doing what I'm doing.

How do you handle this?

I seem to have a cycle of consumption and creation. I'll go for a few weeks working "creating" my world, and then I'll spend a few weeks "eating" my world. You might come up with other terms for this cycle. Perhaps work vs. play? Nah, that's no good. Perhaps active vs. passive.

This weekend, I got my plane finished, installed my air conditioner, put up a bunch more decorations, and cleaned up my apartment some more. After that, I feel like I've shifted into a more passive mode. I've been playing Orbiter, watching TV shows, and playing video games the past few days. I imagine that I'll be switching back in the other direction in a few more days, as there are a few projects that are calling to me.

I've got a bunch of projects simmering right now, and a few are definitely calling out to me to put time into. Learning to sew is moving up in interest, as I may have access to a sewing machine a coworker may be selling me. I've got a drawing project I need to put some time into. A couple Burning Man projects to sink some planning/design time into. And a software project that's been sitting on my list for ages that I actually need to get back to and move to the next step with.

Current Music: CaraBear - Glimbit the Slave and Klaus the Warlord | Powered by Last.fm

Friday night, I was the designated driver for an underground rave up in north bay. Wasn't a very good party, but it was certainly satisfying, as I needed a nice relaxing time to unwind from the flurry of work and Burning Man prep I'd been doing for the month prior. Out until 5 AM, driving people around, asleep by 6, slept until noon.

Saturday, I spent hanging out with

viesti, who had just returned from a week long trip to Oregon to visit her family. After lunch, we picked up a piece of plexiglass so that I could install my air conditioner, and we proceeded to install it. We bought a tool to do the cutting on the plexiglass, but unfortunately we didn't know how to use it at first. The first cut was very difficult. It kept breaking off in chunks. And since I was using my hands to do the breaking, I kept scratching my arm up. When one scratch wound up with a deep gouge on my arm and chunks of my flesh on the plexiglass, I resolved to try using a hammer instead. It worked, and our second cut went much better as we figured out more of the tools. My arm was still bleeding Sunday night, so you know it was a really deep gouge.

Saturday evening was spent with

viesti,

dv_girl, and

centauress, airbrushing my R/C plane.

viesti and I made mu-shu, although the lack of soy sauce made it less good than I would have liked, and we proceeded to stay up until 5AM, airbrushing the thing.

dv_girl was very kind to lend me her tools and experience to help me accomplish this. I have plans for more projects that will involve this type of painting, so I definitely am going to need to pick up an airbrush system by Burning Man next year.

I was excited about flying, so woke up at 8:30 AM to get my stuff together, exchange

viesti for

danagrrl, and head out to the flying field. The guys there helped me install the electronics, and I put the plane up for a few test flights. I'm pretty happy with the work, although I definitely see several ways I can improve my efforts for next time.

When I got home from the flying field, I was extremely tired and hungry. I needed food bad. But I was so exhausted from the lack of energy that instead of being able to make food, I just went *THUD* on the couch and passed out.

parmonster came over later in the day to get her hair dyed, and I could barely even talk to her, I was so out of it. The beauty supply store was closed, so we did a raincheck for today, and we went out to dinner. Unfortunately, after dinner, I was still completely exhausted, so she wound up going home early and letting me rest.

My brain was mush by this point, but I didn't want to go to sleep so early, so I spent the evening mindlessly watching Stargate SG-1. I finished my evening by booting up Orbiter and doing what would be my best orbital rendezvous with Mir that i've ever done. I was on my way to the moon with my best transfer orbit ever, when the game crashed and I lost my game state. (No autosaves.) Then I notice that it was 1AM, and decided to finally let my body fall over and go to bed.

Today, I've been totally dragging, I'm so freaking tired. Hopefully, I'll be more functional tomorrow. :)

And that was my weekend!

My TODO list is starting to feel a bit daunting:

Burning Man
- Put away the rest of the Burning Man stuff
- Get my box-o-shelves back to

parmonster
- Wash my car
- Put away all my clothes
- Continue working on proposal/design specifications for Burning Man 2010 art project
- Write up "Things I should change for next Burn"

Home
- Put up the rest of my decorations and knick knacks in the house
- Set up my altar
- Start shopping for more decorative stuff for the house, such as EL wire and more mirrors
- Pay all my bills on Friday
- Sew the buttons back on the coat I was gifted

Drawing
- Work on more figure drawing to try to get my first comic strip complete.
- Work through a few more drawing exercises in my drawing instruction book.

R/C
- Design paint job for my new SuperFly R/C airplane that should arrive some time next week.
- Buy spray paint for the SuperFly R/C
- Build SuperFly R/C airplane. (includes buying tools/supplies to do so.)
- Call Ike about getting my Typhoon 3D back from him.
- Fix up my Typhoon 3D.
- Charge my airplane batteries for flying on Sunday

Current Music: Orbital - Lush Walk About [Peel Sessions] | Powered by Last.fm

Well... with the help of my friends, I managed to move in to my apartment. I am now fully unpacked and everything is organized.

Casaulties:
My nice, pretty, expensive go board now has a dent in it. :( Right on the top, too. :(
My couch, which a friend got out of the trash for me, would not fit into the apartment, so I destroyed it with a crowbar and sledge hammer.
My files box got bent up a bit, but no big.

Next is the decoration phase, as I have a bunch of stuff to put up all throughout the apartment. And I have to go out and buy a few things.

But it is really nice to have a home again.

Okay, after several weeks of taking breaks and being careful with LJ, and I think I finally found a compromise to some of the discomfort I've been feeling about LJ. As such, I've taken the necessary steps, and things seem to be working out very well. I'm very glad that I made the changes that I made. :)

Anyways, I'm back on LJ here, and will be posting, but I will no longer be posting some of my more private thoughts. I'm going to focus on sharing bits of my life here, thoughts I have on things, and some more public musings on who I am and what's going on with me. Just less/none of the uber-sensitive private stuff.

Thanks for reading!

Current Music: Infected Mushroom - Blue Muppet | Powered by Last.fm

The inexorable march of time stumbles forward, slowly consuming the days and months of my life.
Patience is the only method by which anything can be achieved. Patience, perseverance, and focus. Be too broad, or expect results too quickly, and you fail.

( Read more... )

I'm using a program called "Synergy" to share my mouse and keyboard between my PC and Mac. I basically just move my mouse from screen to screen, just as if I were using multiple monitors on a single machine. The results are just awesome. I'm sitting there at my home computer, three monitors glowing at my face, and clacking away at my Model M keyboard that I absolutely adore. *Clackity clackity clack.* It fits some sort of awesome aesthetic of mine or something. I'm using a similar setup at work, with my work laptop hooked to two monitors, my mac acting like a third, and all three screens using an external mouse and keyboard hooked to my PC laptop.

So... I've only had the Mac for a few days, but already I absolutely adore it. It is simply an incredible computing device. All of the design decisions feel deliberate and clean. Like someone was actually considering the user experience when designing the OS. Things make sense and are clearly defined. I love it. I love all the little things on this, like the fact that the power cord uses a magnet to connect to the system, to make it trip-safe. Or the fact that it uses a single key for the functionality of backspace and delete. Then there's the million different ways you can use the multi-touch trackpad, which just make me giddy. This computer is the *easiest to use* computer I have ever had in my life. They've cut out a LOT of crap and have just left everything simple and straightforward.

I particularly love the dashboard. On windows, I have all these status widgets built into my Firefox browser. Weather, Twitter, email, etc. It drives me nuts when I'm not using the web and I have to load the browser to check the weather. I love being able to just hit F12 to open the dashboard and see my status on everything I'm working with.

There's still a lot of software I plan to buy for this thing, like MS Office, Adobe Flash and Photoshop, and much more. But for now, I'm so very happy with this machine. And I've already been getting a lot of use out of it. While at the Yule party on Saturday, I was able to spend a bunch of time working on my programming project. I also had my entire music collection with me and was able to play DJ for everyone.

So... I guess I drank the kool-aid. I'm just a few days into using this thing, and already I'm a convert. I'm even considering not dual-booting windows, as the only reason to do that is to play some of my games.

So... I come home from my trip to New York to discover that I have a new roommate and a Macbook. Unfortunately, I am also sans one piece of luggage, the one that contains my toothbrush and pajamas...

Of course, I went out and bought the macbook. It's not like it was waiting for me here. But it was here when I get back, yes. :P

And my roommate is a lot hairier and has more legs than I was expecting.

So what all software do I need to install on this thing?

The laptop, not the roommate.

Current Music: Inkubus Sukkubus - Kiss of Hades | Powered by Last.fm

I went fake rock climbing for the first time today! It's at a place near where I work called Planet Granite. One of my coworkers is a member and goes constantly. It is so much fun! Once I am able to belay other people, I'm definitely going to have to bring some of my friends along. It's so crazy awesome!

I only panicked twice during the climb. The first time was on my first climb. I got about half-way up the wall, and then started to feel scared. My belayer offered to let me fall a little so that I could see how it worked. When I did so, I felt a lot better about the whole thing, and my panic subsided.

The second time was on my last climb of the day. It was my third climb of the day, and by far the most difficult. The climb was rated a 5.6 and was comprised of very small foot and hand-holds, much longer stretches, and moved over two different rock faces, slanted in opposite directions. It's still a pretty easy climb, but for my first time out, that was a hard one! I was almost to the top, stretched out pretty far to grab the tiny hand and foot holds nearby. My right side was on one rock face, and my left side was on the other. Something about that just totally broke my brain and I lost my shit. I was practically crying, I was so terrified. I was only a single step away from the top, too. I think I'm going to make that one my first climb next time, to try to get over that.

Even with the panic attacks, I had an absolute blast. It was so exhilarating to be climbing rock faces 30 feet into the air! It was quite a workout as well. I don't think I've ever even used those muscles before. Well... I have when I've done more minor bits of climbing in the past. However, those climbs were always up much gentler slopes. These climbs were more completely vertical.

Discovered an interesting thing about the way I process vision. My coworker and his friend were trying to show me how to tie the knot, and I discovered that I simply could not understand what he was showing me or talking about. It made no sense to me. But then he guided my hands through the motions, and I figured it out in just a few tries. By the end of the day, I could tie my rope correctly all by myself. Apparently, I can't understand the shapes of things, but I can quite easily grasp the motion of things once I've done it with my own hands. I guess that makes me a kinesthetic learner or something?

Anyways, I had a ball and totally intend to go back many more times.

I'm studying Buddhism, trying to memorize the sequences needed to solve the Rubik's Cube, learning to play the keyboard, studying Go, learning to draw, working on my set game project, learning to cook, and maintaining a fairly active social life and spiritual practice.

I amaze myself with how much I'm able to handle at any one point in time. Of course, I'm not making too much progress on any one thing. I'm just slowly improving this here a little, then that there a little.

Halloween is upon me, and I have no idea what I want to do with myself this evening. I'm thinking about just walking the neighborhoods and looking at all the costumes and decorations. I'm also thinking about finding a party somewhere to go to. Or perhaps just finding a nice comfy hole to crawl into and do some much needed coding on gjset. And then there's going off to commune with the spirits out in the woods.

I'm really not sure.

What are you guys up to tonight? Doing anything interesting?

Water falls from the sky.

We are uncertain about why this is occurring and what it means.

I suspect terrorists.

I have a dim memory of something like this happening back in Cleveland, but that was so long ago, I know not what it was of.

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Pandora Parrot

November 2023

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Page generated Jul. 19th, 2025 09:38 pm

Bird droppings

Something something stuff

Entries tagged with life

Changes to the Joyce communication interface

What's up?

Meta-reflective and looking to the future

Planmaking

Alone

I am an artist.

Balance

Learning something new

Consumption and Creation cycle

Exhaustion

TODO

Moved in

LJ Usage

Time

A new Mac user.

New stuff.

Planet Granite

Too much to do

What are you doing tonight?

Water