August 2004 Archives
Hey everybody... It's my birthday... It's my birthday... It's my birthday...
Going to go to Jack Johnson tonight (it's midnight, so technically it's the next day) -- should be a lot of fun. It's at the Greek, which I absolutely love. The Greek is actually where I saw my first concert as a kid -- my parents took me to a Bread and Roses concert when I was in mid-gradeschool (3rd grade?) Anyhow, Robin Williams MC'd the event as Mork, and it was lots of folk musicians I knew well, such as Peter Paul and Mary, Crosby Stills & Nash, and Simon and Garfunkel actually played together (they had broken up by then). It was all the bands of names. So, I have a special fondness for that place. I saw one of my best friends, Chuck, graduate there. Twice. I've seen Ani Difranco there several times, and the one time I saw Dead Can Dance was there. It's a great place to see a concert, and to spend a day.
So that's what I'm doing tomorrow. I'm excited.
Tonight, however -- I cannot sleep. I'm considering doing some writing, but I don't know if I can focus enough to string a coherent sentence together... I guess that's why I'm blogging instead :).
32 years old is an interesting year. It's one of those divisible by 4 years that makes you assess where you are and what you are doing. 32 years old, have a kid, more debt than I can pay off and another on the way (for those who read Julie's blog -- that's the secret she's been holding on to). I'm still technically young, but I am in the middle of my career. I start to think about things like I don't have an advanced degree, life insurance or savings. I don't have a 10 year plan, a 5 year plan or even a 2 year plan. I don't even know what that means. And yet, I'm happy, I have a house and a job and people I love surround me.
I'm not old enough for a mid-life crisis, and I'm too old for mourning the death of my teen years. I'm right in the middle of it all. I'm the target audience. I'm the demographic. 32. A nice solid age. My favorite age so far. I know I used to chant 17 forever... when I was 17. 32 forever man! 32 forever!
32 forever!
Where will I be in eight years? Do I need an eight-year plan?
Much to my great sadness, the conflict between my parents continues, and I am feeling like I am stuck in a place that is both deeply emotionally involved and yet completely ineffectual. My mother keeps calling me, and trying to ask me for help without asking me. She is petrified that my dad is going to leave HER because of what HE'S done, if she tells me any details. My father is hiding and is acting as if nothing is wrong with me, and in the same breath is threatening my mother not to tell 'the kids' about what he's done. Well guess what dad -- she doesn't have to tell us for us to know.
I need to have a conversation with my parents, both of them in the room, together. I need to tell them how much this is hurting me. It would go something like this:
Mom, Dad. I want you both to know that I love you. I am witness to a situation in your lives that is causing me great pain. I feel pain of compassion for your situation, but I also feel my own pain in relation to your situation. I feel pain when mom calls me on the phone, reaching out for somone to soothe her pains and to solve her problems and to help her reach peace. She asks me for help without asking me. She tells me everything without giving me a single detail. I feel her pain and I am pained by it. I hear that she wants to tell me everything and yet she's afraid that if she does, Dad, you will leave her. She is burdoned by your shame, and is the implement of your secrecy. She calls me because I listen to her, because I love her openly, and because I hold no secrets from her. But the truth is, it isn't me that she wants to be comforted by. It isn't me that she wants to solve her problems. It isn't me that she needs to be told by that everything is going to work out. It's you, Dad. And you are unavailable to her in the same way that you are unavailable to me. I feel pain because I have no ability to make my mother feel any relief from her grief. I feel trapped by her grief. I cannot solve your problems Mom.
Dad, I feel pain because I feel your inability to be available to mom, and to me, and most importantly to yourself. I am in pain because I feel an inability to be real with you -- your deceit and your duplicity is an elephant in the room between us. When I call on the phone and I ask you how you've been, you tell me 'fine', as if you've been cruising along at freeway speeds, open lanes and sunny afternoon. You tell me this when you know full well I'm aware that it's icy road conditions, and you are speeding on bald tires with a bottle of Jack Daniels in your belly, and a deathwish in your head. The evidence is plain on the table that you have not been faithful to mom, and yet you lie to me for no other reason but to save yourself from looking at yourself. You tell mom to keep all of this secret from 'the kids', and you threaten her in the process. This is very painful to me. It is painful that you are so unwilling to admit that you are on the skids. It is painful to me that you cannot be honest with me when all I ask is how you've been. I feel like you do not even tell yourself just how fucked up things are for you. I feel like you are lost to me, even in your life. To me, it is as if you are already dead. I find it impossible to talk to you without feeling the dread of your loss. And thus, I am forced into my own duplicity. To talk to you as if everything is fine with me -- I am telling you now, it is not.
I ask that you both hear me, and you see my pain. I do not want to be between you in your problem. I do not want to be called to solve it, nor do I want to be lied to about it and told that nothing is wrong. I want to be respected and in that respect, I want you to be honest with me and I hope for your own sakes that you can be honest with yourselves, and allow that honesty to feed your agency and allow you to move into directions of resolution. But mostly, I need you to respect me and allow that respect to drive your agency towards honesty and compassion towards me. You cannot keep me from being involved in this -- you have already involved me. You cannot hide the truth from me -- you have already shown me. I am not asking for your details, or your compliance. I do not wish to be your savior or your councilor. In fact, I request specifically that I am not these things. I ask that you allow me to be your son, and in that allow me to love you. I ask you to respect me as a man, and treat me with honesty. If I ask you if you are okay, and you are not -- do not lie to me. If you don't want to tell me the details -- you can say just that. But do not lie to me like a coward afraid of your own feelings and tell me everything is okay. And do not ask me, implicitely or explicitely, to solve your problems. I cannot, and I will not. I will listen to you, and I will feel compassion for you, and I will love you. But I will not be your private investigator, your interrogator, your spy or your thug. You must do your own heavy lifting. If you need an assist, and you ask for it, I will be there to spot you. I will not, however, carry your burdon -- that belongs to you.
I am sad, and I am weary, and I need to be just your son. I wish for you the strength and resolve to find resolution to your issues. I wish for you the self-love to be honest and to allow yourself to be exposed in order to heal.
Know that I love you both, and I will always love you.
Josh
D'arcy Norman: cool. fill up the iPod yet?
skepticalscholar: about 1/4 way
D'arcy Norman: hehe
skepticalscholar: reformatting it for windows eats up memory, evidently
D'arcy Norman: why on earth would you do that ;-)
D'arcy Norman: baby jesus cries.
skepticalscholar: machine at home
skepticalscholar: ahhahaha
skepticalscholar: LOL
skepticalscholar: yeah, I need to get my mac
D'arcy Norman: "so, apparently, putting Canola oil in my Ferrari eats up some performance"
skepticalscholar: ahhah
Tonight Bert and I sifted through three file boxes I keep around called 'nostalgia', and pulled out some amazing, warm, funny, thoughtful, and enlightening tidbits from the last 20 years or so of my life. I have decided the theme of my party -- memorabilia, or in other words -- Josh, this is your life. I am going to be decorating with this stuff all around the house, so you'll all be inflicted (and some of you might even remember) with the letters, postcards, pictures, artworks and other ephimera.
I'm too tired right now to explain in detail, but you'll all have a good time with it, I'm sure.
This morning Julie was out of the house early to drop her car off with the dealers, so Eli and I were left at home to get ready for the day by ourselves. We hung out, I gave Eli an english muffin with of all things, maple syrup (daddies prerogative to give them what they want every once in a while, no matter the sensibility), we ran around and tickled and at one point, I'm on my back, Eli is on top of me, we're both laugh our heads off, and Eli looks directly at me and says 'I want to stay here forever!'
Yeah, me too kid. Me too.
Not everyone knows this about me, but up until recently I belonged to a secret mystical society called the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Cruxis, or AMORC for short. Not only that, but I belonged to an inner organization called the Traditional Martinist Order, or TMO. About two and a half weeks ago I resigned from the fold, hung up my white cloak and descended back into the world of the profane. I belonged to AMORC since 1995, and TMO since 1999 or 2000. That's a long time to commit to a spiritual practice, only to decide that it no longer works for you. Ironically, I was climbing the ranks in the organization, and was taking on leadership roles when I had the ephiphany that I no longer needed the Order(s). The truth was, I had left the order in some regards about a year ago -- stopped reading my weekly lessons, and stopped any sort of practice. I think I used to be concerned with existential questions a lot more than I am now. I have also been doing Yoga since February, and it's had a profound affect on my outlook on spirituality and self. I don't need a complicated system to get in touch with my inner god(dess). I am not looking for mystical powers or eternal life. I mean -- I'll take them if I can get them, but I don't YEARN for them anymore. I really just want to live each moment of my life with love in my heart and with a smile on my face, and I realized I don't need to be part of an organization to get that. So, I have descended back into the world of the normals and left my secrets behind me. This is not to say I feel the work of the Order is invalid -- it is very much an effective process for those who are seeking and who are dilligent in their practice. It's just -- for me, I never could get past my rational mind in some regards, and for the part of me that lives on the spiritual plane, I am already where I want to be (or at least on the right path). I do feel a twinge of bittersweet leaving so abruptly, and leaving my fellow class leaders in a lurch. They now must scramble to find someone to fill my space for a commitment of no less than three years and up to six. But, I am not ultimately responsible for anyone else's spiritual evolution. I will miss a lot about being in AMORC, but in the end I liken it to scaffolding. Once the building is erected, it's time to kick the structural supports free and let the edifice stand on its own, for it's own glory.
Mostly, I feel free. I am entering a new phase in my life, and I am making all sorts of changes. This is only one of those changes. So, in a word -- I wish the best to my friends that I leave behind, and I welcome the world in my future. Let the light of eternal wisdom always shine upon you.
-- anifen scepticus
It's 1:34 am and I can't seem to get to sleep -- not that I've tried all that hard. I've spent a pretty productively brutal week working on a big project at work, and my brain is both exhausted and running in circles. Right now I'm sitting in my living room, and watching the damned rat that lives behind our chimney crawl into it's little hole outside the window. I know I should call the exterminator -- damned field rats come in from the field behind our house, and take up residence near our fruit trees. The only real way to get rid of them for good would be to chop down the trees, but I don't really want to do that. So, it's time to call in the pros, I suppose, and have them do the dirty work. I've tried trapping myself, with little success. I hate to kill them, but they are totally in my space and they eat the apples right off the tree, and destroy any garden I try to grow. But alas, I only really think about this task when it's late at night and the little buggers are crawling around.
I have spent the better part of this week thinking really way too hard at work. From monday through tomorrow we've had visitors from around the continent at the CDL who in some way are involved in the Pachyderm project -- a big damn ugly thing that is slowly becoming more beautiful. And shock of shocks, there was actual code written today. The project has been alive since last year around this time, and just TODAY we wrote some code. Okay, well there's been a lot that has been going on with the project, from repurposing the old code base (this is a total rehaul of an older application) to extensive designs, and this week was also full of heavy design issues. But finally, I feel like we've broken the hymen and we are finally consummating in code. Today 5 engineers sat around a big table with laptops and hammered away at their keyboards, conversing through IM and in person, breathing in the sweet perfume of dry erase markers, and fending off the prying questions of higher-ups in the joy of finally creating object code. I know that most of the other guys are probably up right now in their hotel rooms continuing the feverish typing and coding. Me? I fucked around on the web all night long, listened to some MP3's and I am blogging. I enjoy programming, but I just don't have the stamina to do it all day long and all night long. I would go insane. I've done it before for Excite, and it drove me insane. And yet -- when the passion grips you, all you want to do is make it all work. Our deadline is October for a beta release, and I know we'll be hard pressed to make that without putting in some late nights, starting yesterday. It was good to start with the group like this, because we'll all have something to carry home with us, the experience of actually working on a project together. This reminds me a great deal of when I was flying out to Colorado repeatedly for Excite, and yet I'm feeling more success on this one.
I have to say -- it is utterly astounding to me just how much software costs to create. I mean, really -- it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. Literally, if not more. How does anyone justify it? And when it's done, is it worth the price you paid? I wouldn't buy it.
But, it is my job and I am glad that someone cares enough to pay my salary. It's all a big mind game, and I'm one of the players in the band. But, it's not what I plan on doing forever. I'm already conceiving my exit strategy. I want the computer to become fun again -- not just my job. I want to play here, not work here. Or at least, work less here, and share my time with other more creative activities. Something that doesn't involve a CRT or a plasma screen. Let's try paper.
But, I can't comlain too much. I am paid well, and I have a pretty cool job all things considered. I get paid to sit around with other geeky guys and talk about concepts and think into a box and type letters and make things go. I don't have to take out the trash, or pick berries or file reports, sell widgets I don't give a shit about, or deal with assholes (most of the time). I have it pretty sweet. And yet -- I am not satisfied. Go figure. I'll get there, and I do thank the universe for giving me a job that suits my lazy-ass deadline-motivated problem-solving nature.
V
| Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score | ||
| Category | Your Score | Average |
| Hacklust | 29.25% Has conversations in between massacres | 53.4% |
| Sensitive Roleplaying | 20.25% All the game's your stage | 54.3% |
| GM Experience | 49.28% Puts the players through the wringer | 69.3% |
| Systems Knowledge | 86.58% Played in a couple of campaigns | 90.2% |
| Livin' La Vida Dorka | 34.48% Carries dice in pocket 'just in case' | 62.9% |
| You are 49.02% pure Average Score: 68.6% | ||
Yeah.... I'm a nerd.
My friend Trey came over last night and stayed up all night long hanging out with me, mixing music, talking philosophy and watching adult swim and Groove. I can't quite believe it, but he also outlasted me -- at 4:30am I finally hit a wall and had to crash out. I don't see Trey nearly as often as I should, being that he works in the city, he has a wife and two kids of his own, and he lives in Vallejo, but man -- that should change. I am glad he keeps me on the geekenders list, a mailing list for computer game enthusiasts who like to get together for weekend geek socials and play networked games. I haven't been to one in over a year, but still -- I enjoy the contact with everyone on the list, and it keeps me in touch with Trey. Anyhow, had a great time, and I realize again this is a friendship worth fostering to a level of more involvement than a visit every six months. Here's my hat off to Trey. And, his wife Heather pretty much rocks too.
http://juliusblog.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_juliusblog_archive.html#109156476570482138
Check out the correllations here -- it is completely obvious that the whitehouse is using the terror alerts to distract the public. Using terror to... terrorize its consituency. And yet, do we do anything other than wag our heads in disgust? Is it because we already cound our victory in 2004? Perhaps we should be making a little more noise about this, and bringing it to the streets, and yelling at the press to cover this. Send this link to your local news agencies, see if they'll pick it up. At least write moveon.org and tell them to cover this.
Okay, this just in:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5411741/site/newsweek/
We *have* to do something about this, or else we're gonna be in deep crap.
It's always fun to get a day at home, but it's not a fair trade to have to do it because your boy is sick. Poor Eli is got a pukey tummy and I'm doing my best to keep him comfortable and entertained. Looks like a ful day of TV and snuggles, and hopefully I can keep mostly clean and sorta working.
Okay, just because it's silly...
BTW: there's more evidence of life on Mars:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_microorganisms_040803.html
Just take a read...
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/28/1335239
You know, I'm finally starting to see John Kerry as a president. I watched the DNC, and besides shedding a tear for the fact we can't put Clinton back in office for 4 more years (that man was the smartest, best president we've had in 30+ years), I finally started to hear and see Kerry as a man with a plan. Okay, excluding his stupid story about being born in the west wing - he really had a lot to say that was encouraging, hopeful and on target. Let's put this guy into office. He can't screw it up any worse than the last guy, and he might even get some things right.
Oh, and if you haven't seen this latest from Jib-Jab, check it out:
http://jibjab.com/thisland.html
