Pig Zen

Amongst the recent uploads on Flickr, I (not surprisingly) found some guy’s vacation pictures.  He and his companion were touring the Swiss Alps.  While I liked the images, they weren’t all that inspired, just snapshots.  Mostly they made me homesick for the thin air and rocky horizons of my former home. I wish I could include one of the images here but he didn’t mark them as being available under Creative Commons.  So, let that be a lesson to you: if you want random bloggers that are perhaps overly IP sensitive to be able to effectively comment on your work, don’t check the “all rights reserved” box.

What was more interesting was that the guy listed his home as being Tokyo.  He was definitely of northern European, i.e. white, descent.  I would imagine that’s a pretty big change from where most northern Europeans usually hang out.  While the guy’s parents could have moved to Japan before he was born and the pachinko parlors and tea rooms of Tokyo could be all he’s ever known, that’s not what first popped into my head.  Is he there temporarily as a student or for work?  Or is he a full-fledged ex-pat?  I’d kind of love to know.

What makes someone eschew their homeland?  Persecution, famine, and pestilence are perfectly sensible things to run from, but most of Europe doesn’t really suffer from those anymore.  My boss is English and California is remarkably less gray and damp than England, so that makes sense to me.  Well, that, and what we do at my job they don’t do on quite the same scale back in his Old Country.  I guess Europeans don’t have the luxury of expansive geography that Americans have, although EU denizens have more options now.

It’s one thing for me to pick up and move within the U.S. since there’s much less hardship and risk involved — I don’t have to apply for difficult papers to get a job in California, and I can always go back.  While I’d love to make an extended visit, semi-permanently crossing an ocean, being forever immersed in a different language, dealing with a different tax system, and doing without shnitzel or pickled herring or proper lunch meat seems like more than a bridge too far.

Still dependent on the writing prompts:

If you woke up ten years younger tomorrow, what would be the first thing you would do?

So this can be read a couple of different ways. I guess I’m thinking about waking up tomorrow and it’s ten years ago. The alternate interpretation, a sort of Big in reverse, would be way too weird. Herself would be scared shitless to wake up next to the 20-year-old me, and she’d die laughing at my hair. My boss would want a scientific explanation for what happened. At least I wouldn’t have to steal any clothes and stay in an by-the-hour motel.

It’s actually a disturbing coincidence, because 10 years ago, I was down in Los Angeles, working a contract job. It was my first time away from home on my own. That was a definite learning experience for me; yes, that’s code for “it didn’t turn out how I thought.” That adventure gave me some confidence in my grown-up skills, my abilities to handle the unexpected. Of course, that ability mostly consists of the same thing they teach little kids in Finding Nemo: “just keep swimming.”

These last ten years have been… well, what most people’s twenties are: learning how to been an independent adult. I can pay my own rent, I still have use of all my body parts, and I don’t have a serious criminal record; so I guess I was pretty successful in learning those lessons. I developed a reasonably useful professional skill set and had more of those learning experiences. I’ve met some wonderful people and been some fun places. I fell in love.

I’ve always said that I don’t regret the choices I’ve made over the years; I wouldn’t be who I am today without everything that came before it. All of the angst I have lately shows I no longer value this version of me as much as I used to, though.

Would I trade what I have now for the promise of something different? I’m glad I don’t have to decide because even with ten extra years under my belt, I still don’t have the tools to choose and believe I chose wisely. I do wish I could tell myself to put a few bucks into some well-placed stocks and to not make that illegal turn, though.

So, I did it.  I wrote something almost every day for a month.  Go me. To do a proper post-mortem, I’d need to re-read everything and see if there’s anything I really like.  In thinking back about it, I’m not sure I’ll find anything I think is great or even good.  I’m not going to lie, it was a quantity and consistency over quality exercise.

In my early days of writing online, I really did turn out more of a diary/journal sort of thing; I wrote about what I did and thought over the day.  When I re-read it those words now, I actually enjoy parts of it and find it worthwhile, but I don’t think I could write that way again. That was six, seven, eight years ago.  A good writer should be able to take any topic and make it worth reading and I don’t think I can do that with my life now.  Sadly, I barely have the will to trudge through the day, let alone having to re-live it, punch it up, and regurgitate it in an engaging fashion at night.  That sounds horrible and soul-sucking.  I imagine it’s true for most people, too.

Losing interest in the everyday is what drove me to the essay format I stick with now.  I’m proud of myself that I was able to stick with it for a whole month.  While there’s some truth in what I write, some real feeling, I suppose a lot of this comes across as forced and overwrought.  Maybe that’s the truest part of it.

The pictures were so much harder.  I was okay with writing whatever, proofing it a little, and publishing it, but I have a hell of a time picking out what photo to resize and post.  Herself often had to tell me, “yes, that picture’s fine, just put it up, geesh.”  I look at so many of the pictures I find on Flickr and it breaks my heart that I can’t figure out how to take them myself.

I desperately want to be a better photographer and I’m not sure why I hold my images to so much of a higher standard than my words, especially when there’s luck involved with photography: right place, right time, right light.  A writer is in complete control.  Maybe photography appeals to a different part of my brain than writing does.  Words have to be mapped into images and action but nothing gets lost in translation with a good photograph.

I think it’s important to keep going, although I won’t continue writing on a daily basis.  While the deadline is the only thing that got me writing again, the pressure makes me into a mass-producer rather than a craftsman.  Far more robots than humans ever see these words anyway.

So when it first came out, I was a big fan of Stuff White People Like. It made me laugh and cringe because it poked fun at a demographic truly deserving of it, i.e., mine, and the author’s. And then I read some comments posted on one of the entries, and I haven’t been back since.

While the most referenced social theory on the internet explains what elements are required for this bizarre behavior, I still don’t understand what people get out of swooping in and shitting on others. I think this is more proof that adults are constantly seeking some excuse to act like kids and the internet provides the perfect outlet for all the juvenile vitriol that didn’t manage to escape in those pre-teen years.

I understand that a big part of it, especially on the snarky blogs, is that too many people just don’t know where to draw the line. If saying the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes is funny, making fun of his genitals and his parentage is hi-larious.

Spirited discourse has been around on the net since the beginning. Everything that happens now in web discussion sites happened on Usenet 20 years ago. Except back then, people could actually spell and knew proper sentence structure. The people calling you out regularly knew more than you. Also, it took at least a couple of volleys back and forth before someone claimed to be oppressed and someone else brought up Hitler. Now we just cut to the chase.

On the Stuff White People Like blog, there was a smackdown over something really stupid, and two factions developed: the geeky, obsessive-compulsive faction; and the … well, the “get over it” faction. One of the commenters on the latter side looked at the others and said something like, “see, the regular folks have invaded the Web now, once again reminding you geeks that you’re still second class citizens, forced once again do our homework and watch as we steal your girlfriends”. And that person was right.

Now, most of the people that support you often shout their loud “me, too’s” because they’re members of your cult of personality rather than because they’ve actually thought about what you’ve said and can articulate why they agree with it. They’re only mildly annoying, of course, until their defending you to the hilt starts driving people that have something meaningful to say away. Your choir can be a great ego boost at times but they don’t add much to the all-important signal-to-noise ratio we obsess about.

We want to be surrounded by like-minded folks with a couple eloquent and intelligent members of the loyal opposition thrown in to mix things up and keep us on our toes. That really is what it was like in the early days, and still is when you find a site in its infancy.  Instead, most of the big blogs have turned into the textual equivalent of talk radio: the host might have something interesting to say even if you disagree with it, but it’s not worth wading through all the ditto heads and tangential name-callers.

I have a theory: things are more bearable if one is not trapped into doing them. I’m willing to put up with a lot more if I know I can do just a little bit extra to get out of it. When I’m stuck in a bad situation, I have to deal with both the badness and the fact that I can’t escape. I guess it’s a form of claustrophobia. Just knowing there’s a way out takes some pressure off, even if that way out isn’t feasible.

Lately that way out isn’t quite as obvious to me. I feel stuck in many different ways and I’m tired of it — I’m not used to feeling powerless. I guess I’m a spoiled brat: woe is me, too many things are outside of my control and I don’t like it!

Feeling trapped and powerless is a sort of definition of being in danger, and Psych 101 taught me that triggers the fight-or-flight response. It makes humans act like animals and animals act irrationally. I don’t want to do that; I can hardly rationalize most of what I do when I have a clear head.

I’ve been trying to make rational changes to free myself from this trapped feeling, and to little avail. My patience is wearing thin. Often when people feel trapped, their irrational response puts them in a worse situation than they were in before. That’s the stuff cliches are made of. Nobody wants to be cliche.

I really want to go on a trip. And, to be perfectly honest, not a trip back to the Old Country. I used to kid myself by saying one of the reasons I stayed close to my family was so that I wouldn’t have to spend vacation time to visit them — while I miss them dearly, vacation time should be saved for new adventures, not re-hashing old ones.

At this point, I don’t even think I’d be all that picky. It doesn’t have to be Hawaii or Paris or Tokyo; I just want to wake up and not have to see my alarm clock and the pile of laundry that never gets any smaller first thing. I was thinking about this the other day, how my mood is so often set by my surroundings. Being in a strange place sets me on edge enough that I don’t get bogged down by the routine. Consistency can lead to redundancy, and it’s much easier to have some external force mix things up rather than having to do it myself.

What good comes of travel? A big driver for me is food; every place should have something worth trying, and I do my best. Being a wannabe photographer means I’m constantly squinting and searching for a different set of pictures to take. There’s the people, too; there’s nothing like seeing a big haired Texan, or a broad-shouldered Chicagoan, or an aggravated New Yorker in their native environment. The Bay Area is so accepting, or so busy with other things that it doesn’t have time to care, that we don’t have one stereotype that’s useful for generalizations and jokes. Finally, there’s the little differences: stop lights oriented horizontally rather than vertically, pizza shops instead of taquerias, Duane Reed drug stores instead of anything else. The little differences are the salt on any trip.

One of the saddest things that comes from even being a little environmentally conscious is how not friendly airplane travel is. The thought that something that feels so right, so useful, so important, can be wrong and will someday be even less accessible is very disheartening to me. Until then, it’s just another shameful and decadent pleasure, like a red sunset or a bottle of fizzy water from a far off land.

Everyone that has wanderlust dreams of getting in the car or showing up at the airport and just picking a destination and hoping things work out for the best. I’ve been almost seething with jealousy when I read about others’ travels lately. I either need to decide the barriers I’ve put up around taking some time off are either unimportant, or they’re insurmountable enough that I should just let my mind wander for now and hope that my body can follow later.

At least a couple of times a day, something makes me stop and think to myself, “I should write about that.” That happens to every blogger, right? What I’m not so sure about is how many of us forget those inspirations long before words en up on a screen.

I have four (yes, four) different notebooks with which to record sundry ideas as I pass through the day. I have a fancy smartphone with a memo section and an email thingy and I think I can even get a to-do list for it. Hell, if I have time to read the blogging inspiration, I probably have another few minutes to at least outline the damn post. Yet I never do, and then night comes and I have to struggle to throw an idea together or seek out an artificial prompt.

Some of that comes from my desire to keep certain things in certain places. I’m not sure what difference it makes, but while I’ll spend a few stolen minutes here and there to read, I’ve never written a blog entry at work. I also have this constantly overblown faith in my own memory. “That’s brilliant, there’s no way I could forget that!” is always followed by “now what was I supposed to remember again?” Usually within five minutes. I forget more stuff by 9 am than most people do all day. That’s why I try to sleep in until 10.

Maybe I’m self-censoring too. I don’t like most of my writing even though I think it’s important for me to actually do the writing. Since I’m unwilling to invest in myself, I probably wouldn’t bother to write at all without the possibility of an audience. The only reason any of this is here is because I made some sort of commitment to myself to really try at this post-a-day challenge thing even though I’m usually left uneasy and disappointed when I’m finished.

Am I better or worse off for not posting most of the things I think about? What about everyone else? What’s to be had from a cacophony of self-published voices besides dischord and a headache? Maybe it’s the same thing as a grade school orchestra recital: we go through them because everyone deserves to try, and maybe, just maybe, there’s one player who can hit the right note.

Another day, another case of writer’s block. Mind Bump to the rescue again:

Do you spend too much time on the internet? What should you be doing right now instead of blogging?

A particularly fitting question. Herself’s mom came up here yesterday to help with the post-extraction convalescence. I think she thinks we live in squalor. While we don’t have an insect or plague problem, on some level, she may be right.

Most of our living room is filled with boxes that haven’t been touched since the movers dropped them off. I claim there’s a Catch-22; the boxes take up all the room where we might unpack the stuff from them. My years spent studying Murphy’s Law leads me to believe that the minute we dig into them, something will happen that would cause us to move, and I can’t abide wasted effort. Also, the cats like to climb on them. Really, though, it’s that we’re lazy. Really, really lazy.

The armchair psychologist explanation I have for why the boxes sit there is that it’s a battle of who could care less. I think we both believe that it’s mostly the other person’s stuff, and thus the other person should take charge and do the unpacking. We both bring a certain stubbornness to the relationship that resembles the same sort of thinking that brought about the Cold War. It would be impressive if the side effects were something more constructive than a minefield-like array of junk all over the floor.

I’m not mad about it — I don’t bear any significant ill will over the pile as it’s as much my fault as hers, although I do swear to myself every time I stub my toe or crunch something as I make my way to the balcony door.  It’s just there, a sort of monument to tenacity. I like monuments, they offer a sense of history. I wouldn’t necessarily miss it if it were to go away, though.

So, instead of writing this story about the boxes in the living room, I should be doing something about it. That, in the end, is often what blogging is all about.

Last night I was bored and antsy, so after I finally ate dinner at around 10:00, I went out and took some pictures.  When it comes to low light, I kind of suck — my hands shake.  Yet, last night, I took pictures at 1/8th, 1/6th, even 1/4th of a second, and they’re sharp.  Really!  I can hardly believe it myself, except I have evidence on my screen.

Today, I went on a bit of a walk.  It was a sunny, cloudless day here in the Bay Area.  A couple of planes and a bird passed above my head, and I looked up and tried to shoot them.  As those damn kids on the internet say, EPIC FAIL.  At 1/80 and 1/100, the only thing visible in the pictures is that I can’t hold still.

So, why the suckage this afternoon and the steadyness last night?  There is a technical reason: today’s lens has almost four times the focal length, and I was holding the camera up vs. at eye level.  Of course, being awash in afternoon sunlight, I should have just kicked up the shutter speed.  I was overconfident from yesterday and unable to see that my images were blurry because the sun was washing out the LCD display.  And maybe suffering from a touch of sunstroke.

When I first got a digital camera, there were two things I loved: being able to shoot at different ISO speeds with the twist of a knob, and instant feedback.  Right away I was able to see if something turned out okay and I could tweak as necessary.  I hated waiting for prints to come back or to get time in the darkroom.  Of course that instant feedback meant instant critique as well.

Digital photography is great in so many ways, and awful in just about as many.  On a $15 bit of silicon and metal, I can store 20 rolls worth of pictures, and I don’t have to pay anything to get them printed.  Conversely, I have 20 times as many images to hate when I proof them.

Another night of writer’s block.  Here is today’s writing prompt:

If you got into your car and drove until you ran out of gas, where would you find yourself? Could you live there?

So, right now, the car has about half a tank of gas.  It’s also also sort of temperamental when it comes to fuel economy, so that means maybe 140 to 180 miles.  As the bird flies, that’s pretty far.

The circle is at a 150-mile radius.  Using actual on-the-road directions, in 180 miles, I could get to Fresno, Point Arenas, Mendocino, Paso Robles, Orland up I-5, Blue Canyon out along I-80 towards Tahoe, or almost to San Simeon along highway 1.  Could I live in those places?  It’s theoretically possible.

Would I want to?  Nothing in the Central Valley, thanks; it’s damn hot in Fresno this time of year.  In the little towns along I-80?  I’ve never really spent any time there except in the car, but from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t really appeal to me.  I’ve never been north on I-5 past Sacramento, but I don’t have a lot of hope.

So, along the coast then?  I’ve never been near Mendocino, but the stories sure make it sound good.  The coast to the south might be harder; that part of highway 1 south of Big Sur is really rugged and is prone to fires.  Very beautiful, though.

Since I’m a geek, I can work from just about anywhere with reliable power and high speed internet access.  That also means my job can be done by people anywhere in the world with those things, like places without an astronomical cost of living and lots of labor and environmental laws.  I try not to think about that too much.

With the exception of Fresno, all these towns are pretty small. I’m afraid I might get a little stir crazy after a while.  I have a three Chinese restaurant rule: there must be a minimum number of places to get take-away within a certain radius.  For a while after high school, I lived with my aunt and uncle in small-town New England.  That’s when I came up with the rule.  Californians love to corrupt all varieties of Asian food, though, so that may not be a problem.

Personally, I’ve always been a suburbanite.  The closest I’ve ever been to living in the heart of a big city was when I stayed in my friend’s spare room for a couple of months while I was doing some work in Los Angeles.  She lived hood-adjacent, the ATM offered up six different languages, and my car got stolen.

I love maps, so this was a fun exercise for me, even if it did keep me from meeting my publishing deadline for tonight.  They’re always full of possibility.  I kind of wish I knew more about cartography and GIS.  Maybe someday I’ll learn more, in my Copious Spare Time.