25lines, redux

it feels weird, to not have a master. to be master of the self, the aspiration is to be free of external constraints. at the same time, realizing i was never yoked.

realizing this allows me to re-inject confidence in the self, to remember what it is to be steelheaded.

when we are social, the social norms of the people around us consume us, ensnare us.

it’s a trap!

went to see objectified.

liked it. will watch it again. perhaps even procure the dvd, or the digital variant.

in turn, i find it especially odd to own the helvetica dvd and not watched it.

i wonder if such documentaries inspire me. it did make me think, about things that i haven’t thought in a while. not much new, but it refreshed a lot of old thinking.

lines of thinking that had become stale, in a sense cached from an earlier age that were different after a recompute. a variant of me that has come into being only recently navigates different lines than my past selves.

i’d started on reducing my life and then bringing it back up from scratch, but never with such purpose. with a little more deliberation on my part, i think i can carefully construct an environment that i can be at peace with, without losing the ordered chaos i apparently need to stay connected to myself.

and the poverty of hyperconnectedness revealed itself to me. you only want to connect when you have nothing worthy to say.

thus, emo. thus, talk. thus, poser.

fin.

i have been obsessed for some time with tools of thought.

it’s very simple. i’m outgrowing myself. at younger ages, i used to be able to deftly file away anything in my head, and i could maintain it.

i started to hit overdrive in high school when i started using a palm pilot. i’d also outsource reminders and nagging to my friends around me, sometimes passing people in the hallway in one direction, asking them to remind me to go to the bathroom as i headed in the opposite direction 5 minutes later.

typing this now, i’m even sceptical of myself, wondering how i could possibly forget that i might need to relieve myself. but it was how it was.

my personality hooks have also shifted over time. i’ve gone from trying to be friends with everyone to being a recluse to being almost a hermit to becoming a networking master. i’m still trying to hit that perfect balance between deep, meaningful interactions with people around me and keeping myself surrounded by a diverse portfolio of individuals and social groups.

business connections have skyrocketed, approaching exponential growth, and if you’re reading this and know me well, you know how they compare to my personal interactions. i can’t see pleasure before business happening in my life anytime soon. that’s not the kind of person i am, or want to be.

if it sounds cold, it is. i have a drive to do things that i don’t completely understand, but lately i feel more and more that i don’t need to understand them. i am. i will be. i know my intentions, i know the end.

and the end justifies the means. in my life, it always has. whatever they say about an eye for an eye, that’s the way i think.

it’s finally reached me that i will not be reached. you can try to convince me that i am wrong, but it won’t happen. i can’t convince you that you’re wrong, can i? how can you convince someone that their faith is wrong? that the religion they believe in, the science that they hold so dear, the relationship that has become their life is wrong? you can’t, not really, unless they’ve realized it themselves.

my entire life is one giant leap of faith. at least it was, before i started discussing it with people. i see the future. i can’t explain it to you, and i don’t expect you to believe me. i can feel the multiverse - i touch the vibrations that echo with its existence with my fingers. i don’t expect you to believe me, so don’t expect me to try to explain it any more than i have. it’s a regular occurrence that i tell my parents i see things they cannot see, and since they love me, they accept it. they accept me.

i’m starting to hit a very dangerous point in my life, and i don’t know what is going to happen. i can’t see it.

but i need to do things my way, even if they’re sub-optimal from an objective point of view.

i’ve said before that a general philosophy of mine is that if people in general think my thoughts, ideas, or even actions are a good idea - if they’re able to recognize and understand what is happening, then that is very very Bad.

the more i make people think wtf - the more i’m on my very own golden path.

my new goal in life is to make you think i’ve lost my mind.

lately i’ve been thinking more about social norms. social defaults and personal defaults too.

it’s delicate. very subtle. how, depending on your social group, your society, the general shared consciousness of the people you interface with shapes your world view. there are nuances in the way we speak, think, share - that are shaped by these, but we don’t stop to think about it. conventions in thinking, in how we operate.

the one i’ve been most fascinated by recently is when someone says something, with the expectation that everyone else will agree with them. we inherit these from our upbringing / family / friends / school / insert random environmental factor here.

and more often than not lately, people have been saying such things to me, and i have been saying no, and people have been getting genuinely shocked. or upset? it’s hard to tell. probably both.

i’m not being clear. i will try again later.

i think the worst part of me is hitting that state in which i can’t concentrate.

i’m not yet convinced that i actually can’t concentrate, maybe i’m just telling myself that. but it feels like it’s hard to focus on any one thing, and keep it going. like anything worthwhile is simply not within my grap. i cannot focus, i cannot do, i cannot listen or read.

it’s “wah wah wah”, but at a whole new level, internally.

part of it might come from the emergence of physical symptoms unilaterally trouncing any higher cognitive attempts of doing anything. thirst. satisfy. cold. satisfy. overheating. satisfy. hunger. satisfy.

it’s scary to think how otherwise sound plans and judgment can be upended.

thirst. bye bye.

when you’re sick, you begin to appreciate the social tapestry that lies in place to ensure you’re not alone.

provided, of course, that you’re not cutting through all of that in your life.

but it’s one of the hardest challenges, when one is feeling oh-so-very soft.

i used to cheat - when i was sick, i’d pick myself up off the floor and switch back to the bed. i’m not retarded, of course beds are more comfortable. here, i thought i didn’t have the same option. the abandoned mattress along the wall had simply become a fixture. a ledge for my projector, and manly shaving things. and after my last nap, i won’t lie. i’m tempted to lay it flat and enjoy squishy softness to sleep on.

but part of me maintains that there’s no reason to go back on myself now. pain builds character.

wah wah wah. shut up, self, and suck it up.

Unconscious flow, triggered physiological responses from bio chemical firings within inducing dulled thought and action in a hive of people, killing off brainwaves like ants, the token refrain of breaktime unburnout the accepted exit from personal responsibility.

Entitlement, vile and ever present, shooing away all wonderment while we sponge up soak up all self absorption we could have in the rings that encircle us the arenas to fight in where we might ignore our opponents by redrawing the lines.

We are prophets of doom, that which we consume, we unequivocably proclaim. That which we perceive makes us who we are, almost as much as that which we allow others to perceive defines us.

Image is indeed everything and Sprite should be ignored on account of water.

Flow. Flow, and all else follows.

i am cursed. i want to do too many things, and thus i do nothing. it’s a stupid state, i’m a sloghead for submitting to the tension in every which direction.

there are many faces, many masks, and none will ever win, but in my heart i am each one.

i am a poet.
i hated english class, never understood the meaning, the bullshit we had to learn. commentaries. i thought it was just a pathetic means to justify a hobby. and in many ways, maybe i still think that’s the case. but at some point, it clicked. and i started to write. around the same time i started listening to underworld in greater depth. i felt freed from the rules and structure of ordinary language. my writing is freeform and unrestricted. i take others words and i make them mine, give them new meaning. when we share a special phrase, you and i, it makes us closer than most people in the world will ever be. not more intimate, but simply closer.

i am a painter.
it started in junior high. mom wanted me to get an A+ in art, and got me extra art materials at home. juniro high was an ice cream social, i spent some of it teaching kids instead of learning. trading in warez. the like. so i started painting. watercolor. again, a freedom i don’t experience with words, of expressing through color. even if i choose to paint the same bullshit landscape sunset or mash colors in whimsical layers i feel fulfilled.

i am a musician.
i never had the discipline or patience when i was younger to practice or sit through lessons. immediate payoff. patience is a virtue i didn’t have time for. i’d play with the keyboard at home, making chords, always playing with patterns and chords and combinations of notes. i’d get yelled at for playing with my sister’s violin. i did a single year of piano, with my year end recital being the pumpkin’s mellon collie and the infinite sadness. brilliant. lately i’ve taken up the bass and other electronic synth toys. i gave up my tenori in an effort to remain cashflow positive, but i miss it dearly. i can hear the music between my ears, but i cannot make it come out my fingers.

i am a writer.
i write here, don’t i? but even so, the narratives play out in my head. at times in my life, i can read the biographer’s passage in describing the scene, the change in emotion, the turning point of my life. i perceive these moments - a phone call here, an IM conversation there, a plane trip to the other coast. there are stories in my life, and there are stories in my head. and there are ideas that simply do not exist in code, or i’d have made them (even though i can be lazy).

i am an engineer.
i build shit. so i pretend, but lately it’s becoming more true. my new work forces me to practice the craft, and soon i will come home and continue. i love computers because they enable me to offload thought. i think with my closest friends, they let me do that as well. things i don’t want to think about, or that i cannot think about alone. i offload computation. my social network is a giant map reduce.

i am a designer.
i think about how things should be, not how they are. i like to play with shapes and forms. i am not really a designer, but the part of me that thinks about how we interface with computers kind of could be one if it really wanted to pretend.

i am an architect.
no i am not, but i used to tease steve before i began to deeply respect his trade.

i am a singer.
no i am not, but they wanted me to for grease put on by my high school musical club.

i am an actor.
more than i care to admit here, but it all began with grade 11 shakespeare.

i am a spiritual master.
this saddens me a lot because i am by no means a holy person. yet my spiritual depth is greater than many people i know (which says less about me than it does about them). but i am glad to serve wherever i am found to be useful.

i am a teacher.
i enjoy sharing what i learn. there are lessons that i have learned and there are lessons i have not grasped. but what i know i try to share, at all ages.

i am a dreamer.
i am not afraid to be naive. i am not ashamed to be innocent. for the rest of my life i will aspire to be like a child.

i am a leader.
i am always haunted by images, visions if you will, of what we need to do. not just me, but we. and i try to find people who will listen, who will participate. it’s been difficult, but not impossible. and i am blessed and i am cursed because people seem to listen to me. and i spew inspiration all over the place. some will never listen, not to me, not to anyone. i don’t care about them.

i am a walrus.
i don’t know if i really know that song.

i am a visionary.
i see things most people don’t care to look for. i am not special, others could see what i see if only they tried. but most can’t be bothered.

i am a critic.
in some cases, it’s the only way to truly appreciate - things and people alike.

i am a traveller. no, a wanderer.
home is my bed, and i now sleep on the floor. home is everywhere, anywhere that will have me. i fly from locale to locale to see things. i am limited only by papers and rules and governments. within a place, i am free, but to cross lines, we must be wary.

i am a player.
i play. in many senses, and in many arenas.

i am a surfer.
i’ve only gone once but i’ll be damned if i don’t go again.

i am a student.
i enjoy learning for learning’s sake. i enjoy the sense of wonder it brings me, and the appreciation it affords me. i learn from everyone and everything. i ignore nothing.

i am a hunter.
i enjoy the chase, but i have a habit of releasing my prey.

with all these things, i am the jack of all trades, but i am the master of some.

thought of this email the other day. posting publicly finally.

——
To give everyone a quick summary - my work visa expired yesterday, and as such I had to stop working today, until the new visa comes in. This left me feeling energized, excited, very happy about days off to pursue what I want to do - read, write, code, take pictures - all the things on my “someday / maybe” list that I could do now full-time. That’s the set up - the unedited mail follows.

This probably will not resonate with all / any of you because you may genuinely enjoy your day job, and/or have things in your life that sufficiently provide you with happiness (or at least contentment). Or maybe you don’t find it discordant to dislike what you do for a living in the way I do. In whatever case - that’s awesome, I just felt compelled to share the following, it is how I believe I feel.

——-

man - just like i was almost as happy as when i was leaving [xxxxxxx] yesterday…

i just got the e-mail that’s like i can (and have to) go back to work - and i was like BLEAHHHH (throw up noise) I’m gonna pretend I didn’t get that e-mail and stay at the library for today. yeah. I think that’s a definite decision.

But i found it so interesting how, functionally, today is (if you think about it) just like a saturday or a sunday - but my mental attitude towards the day was VERY different. like weekends are lazy days - I get up, putter around, see who’s up and about or the like. But today, no, today was a day of machista lifestyle. And it still is in theory - but the knowledge that I have to go to work tomorrow gave me a sinking feeling, like… wait - why do I have to do that again? And it’s not dissimilar for how I (and maybe you?) feel on Sundays about Mondays.

(I mean, yeah - great - I get paid, and that’s gonna pay my bills, and the like..but still…)

It makes me wonder if “weekends” are “week’s” “ends” simply because you slog through the week, tired from the day of working at the job that pays the bills, keeps us under a roof, and with food in our belly (speaking of which, sushi is awesome) - but weekends are where we can decompress from the week as a whole. At least that’s our default attitude, because that’s what people around us do. I think that’s what I’ve been doing - like I want to work on stuff on the weekends, but the weekends are also overshadowed by this.. knowledge of impending work again on Monday.

When really, I wonder if really I shouldn’t just take off from work as early as possible on most days - and come here (to the library, which is rather nice, and quiet), followed by starbucks - to do everything I want to do - write, code, think, draw, whatever. Like set up a place outside my home as my sanctuary for me-time, the place that I associate with doing stuff I want to do. That would be brilliant, so I should do that. Ok, glad we cleared up some common sense.

But it was a definite mental change, knowing that I couldn’t come into work today (or so I thought) yesterday made me leave work super up-beat, energetic, optimistic, full of… potential. Yeah, that’s the right word. And today was going so well - and really, I’ve already decided that I’m going to carry out today as planned.

It seems like there were a couple mental states: the one in which I’m used to / stuck in my normal routine here, and one where because of this HUGE change in my every day work cycle, I had the power to change all facets of the routine.

So the practical side in me wants to say that great - I should keep that momentum and chip away at my normal routine - fix it, be upbeat at work, spend less hours AT work, while finishing everything there - spend the least amount of hours possible - and immediately switch balance to my personal-work when I leave. And really, that “self-help” book by that designer guy I read recently talked about how even if you hate your day job, try to focus yourself to take pride in just doing good work period… and that’s something I seem to find difficult.

Don’t really know where I’m going with this - I think we both know what I’m feeling / thinking… maybe it’s stronger compulsion for myself to start going it on my own ASAP - whatever the cost.

Cheers.

… that is all.

It’s easy, or at least preferable, to have a suitable routine. Many people seem to prefer the known and nearly predictable. Others want nothing of the sort and choose to live differently. Keeping busy makes it easy to ignore tomorrow. Small circles. Distractions abound.

Other people are neccesarily distractions. Often encouraging, or discouraging. For many people it’s easy to find others to fuel routine. Think the same, believe the same, live the same, talk the same.

Breaking free of routine is lonely by definition. It’s just how it’s got to be.

at some point i started playing with CRM software to track my social relationships. to save you a wikipedia search, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.

it’s what sales people (who aren’t michael scott) use to remember the little details about [potential] customers and their lives, etc. it’s supposed to help people retain the semblance of casual familiarity with sales people in a monolithic faceless entity reality.

the semblance of casual familiarity. is that what i have with my friends?

the weirdest are putting in todo’s. again, typically these would be “send thank you note” or “send copy of contract” - but it’s been an odd way for me to remember to catch up with some people. if nothing else, it makes it hard to let a relationship slip into the void.

twitter is different though. more on that later.

i started writing here for myself. i wrote because i wanted to write, and i didn’t particularly care who read / what they read / if people even read at all. i wrote because i wanted to write better, and you write better by writing.

but then at some point, i started to grasp the social implications of what we share. that people might search for me on google, the modern oracle of sorts, and find this place. and so i wrote in vague terms, not using names, using familiar aliases. and even then, some aliases led people to find me here, connected to people they care about. or because they sought me out, myself.

now, when i sit to write here, i wonder if i should live in secret anymore. the world has become this place where we share publicly, as the people we are. real. raw. tangibly letting strangers and friends alike into our lives.

but that’s not how i think about my life. most of it is still private. kept only in myself, shared with few, if any. and on the other extreme, always trying to maintain a pristine PR-sanctioned image. with ever present smiles and hauntingly perfect presence.

but the fragmentation of identity isn’t just online. i see it happening in how i speak with people, in person.

i see it in how i perceive myself.

weird.

wrapping up senior year of post-college.

im in the same place i was 4 years ago, but its different.

some would say i should have taken the productive job the first time around, spent time at work that i enjoyed, been productive in an enriching environment like i feel like i am doing now.

but no. failure is the greatest motivator. the danger in submitting myself to the path of failure was that i might never re-emerge.

oh me of little faith.

i learned the way of the analyst.

i learned the way of the manager.

i learned the way of the politician.

and i especially learned the way of bullshit, mastered it.

but for me, the greatest change is that i’ve finally learned to follow myself. i had let others guide, distract, or influence me, leading me astray from my own way.

my way is not your way, and never will be.

i have a spattering of readership again.

i’m not sure who - but welcome, and thank you.

i think this blog charts a very interesting time in my life. i wish i wrote here more often than i did. really, starting spring term of senior year until now - it’s been an interesting story arc in my life if nothing else.

in the beginning, i wrote for the professor.

then i wrote for myself.

then i wrote for the audience.

then i wrote for friends.

and then now, again, i write for myself.

i’m not really sure what i’m doing anymore.

i can see it, i know it, but i can’t keep up with it.

hell, these days i can’t keep up with myself.

like i’m in a perpetual state of leaving myself behind.

the entrails of the snake within casting off more than just my skin.

yeah.

these days, my skin is not my own.

apparently wrote this in june. go figure.

—
Awakening. There is light. More gray, less green today.

Walk in step, spread saccharine joy with my chocolate shirt, flowing and moving frozen in the wind.

Waiting for the light to change, green arrow, white walk man. Cars drive on by, pausing, asking:

who is that chocolate man listening to chocolate song
standing on that corner, over there
dancing uncontrollably.

As they drive on by, in their lovely broken things.

Then I get to work

“The problem with you hackers is you never stop working.”

“That’s what a hacker is.”

“It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you to be unmasked, it can do no other, it will writhe before you in ecstasy.”

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.