365 Days of Minor Agony

Day Eighty-five: Delayed sleep-phase syndrome.  Part One.

From the wikipedia entry. 

Day Eighty-four: Word of the day: nosh.

Day Eighty-three: Word of the day: Aphotic!

A good example of a word that, once broken down into its component parts, doesn't sound as impressively archaic. 

Day Eighty-two: On appetition.

Observations: Switching to standard lined paper, rather than the kindergarten-style guided paper, feels good.  There is definitely some sloppiness from not having a top or center line; however, the letters feel less alien to form when it is left to my brain to decide what proportions I desire.   My left hand may still be unfamiliar with the process of mark making, but years of writing on lined paper have definitely trained my brain to understand whatever mental calculations are needed to tell my hand how to make it look correct. 

Unfortunately, the lovely blue pens that I like to use have always bled into the paper to a significant degree.  Now that I have to write at a smaller scale, I've switched to a thin micron that was hiding in my Pens The Are Useless For What I Like Doing drawer. 

Yes.  I really do have this drawer.  It's divided between drawing and writing pens.  I get snippy when it's jostled and the two sides mix.

Crap.  Now I need to make a divider.

Explanation: I came across this word back when I was using the Wikipedia entries on volition and motivation.  It was saved with the intention of continuing the trend, but I was starting to burn out and switched back to short clips.

This is the whole of appetition's entry, and the word itself is one of those that has gone so far out of use that standard spell-check software gets all angry and squiggly at the sight of it.  This alone makes me want to hug the word and play scrabble, if only for the chance to use it. 

Looking back at the volition entry, I can see why it's been swept under the rug.  The need to specify--to divide motivation from volition, for example--already suffers a great deal of overlap, and thus creates confusion.  This confusion was my exact reason for being fascinated by the entries in the first place: the need to break down and define despite the gut understanding of a thing is an interesting dichotomy.  It seems to me that wisdom must stem from an ability to trust ones gut in all matters, but still be able to break that feeling down and analyze it at whatever point analysis become safe and/or necessary. 

I'm also fascinated by this quote regarding Aristotle's division of desires.  I would have expected a greater degree of scorn for the irrational and an elevation of the rational.  This, however, suggests the idea that anything rational is, by nature, so very artificial in construction that such desires can only arise from what one has been taught by an outside source.  By elimination, that says that everything we come to desire though our own through process must be irrational.  Given the rational-good/irrational-bad bias that I've already stated, this reads to me like and exultation of authority and derision regarding the personal viewpoint. Only, this feels counteracted by the language used to describe the rational, which I read as rather negative in nature.

However, trying to look beyond this bias and simply defining "rational" as a process of reason--aka thinking through things-- it takes on a different flavor.  Our bodies know themselves, even when we do not.  We don't have to break anything down in order to understand drives such as hunger, fear, or arousal.  We do not generally have to think to know what we want; though often we do to know why we want it. 

But we don't often know other people, and when we do, it's after a good deal of effort.  So cohesive rationale such as systems of law and religion, or common languages, act as webs that help us tie ourselves to other people with less effort.  We learn to think in similar ways, partially, by inducing similar desires in a set of people.  In doing so, we simulate the innate (irrational or thought-independent) understanding of our own drives by creating a method of making generally accurate assumptions (rational or reasoned-through) about other people.

And this whole breakdown either falls apart, or is strengthened by the concept of automatic empathic accuracy: a case of knowing, without analysis, exactly what another is feeling.  Though, off the top of my head, I can't think of many moments in which I've had such a case occur with a stranger, unless that stranger had remarkable similarities to previous close acquaintances.  Though, such cases, across the friendship board, have become far more common as I've gotten older and gained greater experience with a wider variety of people.  So, perhaps, the earlier breakdown has more to do with building a foundation for understanding.

Day Eighty-one: For the earworm

Explanation: I heard He is We's Kiss It All Better through the selecting power of Pandora, and remembered it because it left me bawling like a heartbroken school girl.  I made the mistake of hitting the thumbs up, and now live in minor terror of being hit upside the head with a weapy stick while I'm working.

My brain appears to be compensating for this weakness by repeating the chorus over and over and over, and thus I'm sharing it with you.

Day Eighty: Satyagraha and a side-by-side comparison.  Also, books.

Observations: The break made a serious impact on my control-to-speed ratio, with this particular exercise taking over an hour to complete.  This is contrasted against the last paragraph, which was written by good ol' Righty in under five minutes, despite being half the length of the rest of the exercise.  What's worse is that I don't see any real difference in legibility level.  One's tense, the other's scrawly; both are going to give people issues unless a primer or analogous experience--such as crazy Aunt Marge's grocery list--has them ready to see words in the loops and points.

It was, however, remarkably relaxing to--after the long labor of good ol' Lefty--to feel the freedom of writing a block of text with my dominant hand.  I haven't done much non-journal-related writing in the last month, and the relaxation of the mark making was highly enjoyable.  Because I'm both a dork.

Explanations: I've been listening through the audiobooks of the Ender's Saga books by Orson Scott Card.  They're interestingly varied in tone, and the changes to the author's voice, approach, and general mindset feel undeniably clear as I move from section to section. While Ender's Game is definitely the stand-alone masterpiece of the series, I found that books 2-4 were the ones that kept me seeking out tasks to occupy my hands so that I didn't have to turn off the tape.  Something about the long periods of time spent analyzing what it is to be human from an ever-widening series of perspectives as a family tries to grow up together.  Because I'm oh so very much in my late 20s. 

I do, however, have a hard time relating to the later books in the same way. The stories that follow life on earth after the events of Ender's Game have a black-and-white element to some of the key characters which, for me, removes the sympathy that I want to have for all the players. 

Tonight's exercise comes from a section in Shadow of The Hegemon, book 6, in which the word satyagraha is artfully used to express the philosophy of doing whatever it takes to do the right thing, even when great suffering is the inevitable result.  It's not much of a spoiler to say that the motivation of the speaking character is rooted in trying to convince herself to sacrifice her own life if it means removing a destructive force from the world. 

In listening to this passage, I was utterly seduced by the concept as it was presented.  I interpreted it as the ultimate acceptance of responsibility for going through life in a worthy manner.  Of accepting that life is not, and will never be, easy.  That you must sometimes suffer, or simply place yourself in an uncomfortable place, to be true to who you want to be. 

However, when looking up my go-to wikipedia-entry approach for the exercise, I was presented with a very different interpretation of the idea.  Or, a very similar, but highly distinct, original idea from which Mr. Card (Scott Card?  Not sure what all is the last name here) draw his reference.  For, in the book, both violence and a deception were intrinsic to the actions of the characters involved in the scene.  There was a strong implication that you must do whatever it takes to do what is right.  The original concept, however, does not seem to allow for either the use of either harm or lying.

Disclaimer: Granted, I'm basing this off of a wikipedia article and have no extensive knowledge of the history or philosophy surrounding this concept.

Regardless, the discrepancy between the book's use of the term, and the core ideology of the term, was quite jarring, and I must admit to a small sense of betrayal.  As I write this, I'm inclined to credit this feeling to the fact that I never really do shut up; my brain never stops analyzing.  This doesn't allow for many absolutes in life--everything gets broken into shades of gray too often--and an idea that can be universally applied to all situations without seeming to muddy any waters... well, like I said.  Seductive, and therefore inviting emotional commitment.  After all, it was simply referring to what is Right.  It leaves the definition of Right up to the audience. 

In reflection, it's a very thoughtful choice for a character who feels a profound degree of self hatred for the deception and the failure to sacrifice her own life for the Good Of All.  Taking Ghandi's philosophy to heart serves as a deep form of self-flagellation.  A sense of, "I have failed to make the sacrifices because I have placed my desire to live above the good of others.  I cannot make amends for not doing the right thing from the start, but I can strive to be better, even if I must adapt this idea to my situation in a way that violate is very tenets.  If, in adapting it, my suffering is greater than it might otherwise have been, then it is no less than I deserve."

Day Seventy-nine: Paradoxes

Explanation: Have I ever mentioned that I spell explanation wrong every time?  And have to rely on the red squigly to catch me?  The only exception in current memory is when I wrote it in this paragraph.  Because, apparently, thinking about something with a good deal of your attention is a fantastic way to prevent silly mistakes.  Surprise!

I'm blaming the sabbatical on time travel.  To celebrate, here's the introductory paragraph from the wikipedia entry's section on paradoxes.  There's much, much more on that page than I would have seriously thought possible.  It's also all so dull that I refuse to write much more from the entry, unless at a loss for exercise ideas.

Day Seventy-eight: On awesome game gimmicks. 

Observations: Everything I've done to develop writing with my left hand goes to crap if I try to write while standing. 

I've been planning to switch away from my current guides when I reach day 100, as they're probably helping me build bad habits.  This issue with standing merely reinforces my sense of my own intelligence.  Yay my brain.

Explanation: I love me my games, and I love me my MMOs.  After reading reviews, I've been considering trying out Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Unfortunately, despite reviews, I do not love me my non-gaming-genre franchise games.  They just feel... wrong. 

However, after stumbling across the review of the upcoming Legacy system, I gave in completely.  Why?  Because I always, always do this with my characters. 

If the game has a story, and I'm going to replay it a few times (or roll different characters), then I need a reason for my multiple toons to exist in the gaming world together.  Most of the time, they're all sisters, adopted family, or childhood friends.  This goes so far as to dictate appearance choices across multiple playthroughs.  Having an MMO development team implement an important part of my personal role playing experience is just too good to pass up.  The geekout is palpable.

Day Seventy-seven: On prescription medication.

Explanation: Between being diabetic and simply being genetically unlucky, I have a tiny gaggle of prescription medications that I need to keep refilled.  Being unemployed and lacking insurance, I tend to space these out accross the month.  This keeps me from withdrawing a massive percentage of my savings at any one point.  The practice is more for my emotional well-being than for practicality. 

Unfortunately, every now and then, there's a communication glitch with my medication providers, and the refilling process become difficult and stressful.  Sometimes it's my fault, sometimes it's theirs.  The important part is that nobody wins. 

I did this while frustrated by just such a delay.  This is exactly one-half of the various warning labels on my various Boxes of Stuff. 

Day Seventy-six: Best to-the-point quote ever.

From: An independently organized TED talk, given by Peter Saul, called Let's Talk About Dying.  It goes over the changes to death, and quality of life, the have occurred as a result of the reliance on intensive care as a method of prolonging said life.  It then goes on to express worry over the frightening fact that families and patients don't seem to do a very good job of accepting that plans for death need to be made in order to make it a less traumatizing experience, and in order to guarantee the greatest degree of comfort and dignity for those approaching the end of their lives. 

He does a lovely job of retaining the graveness of the subject matter, but also alleviating the seriousness so that an audience is less likely to shut off mid-way through. 

Day Seventy-five: On volition.

Explanation: This is the first paragraph from the wikipedia entry on volition, which popped up on the radar while reading the entry on motivation.  It's one of those words that I can use instinctively.  However, when I had to pin down a clear mental definition, I felt like I might be missing something.

It's like trying to defend the fact that albescent is a word, but not being sure if it means pale, white, or some third similarity.  Either way, you're basically right, but you might not be completely right. 

Day Seventy-four: More on motivation.

Explanation: As almost promised, here's the second half of the introduction to the wikipedia entry on motivation.  Much to my shock and horror, the vast majority of it is one long list-based sentence.  I'm considering contributing for the only reason that I ever contribute to wikis: righteous grammatical fury. 

Grrr: You know, I've been wanting to use this wiki for an exercise for a long time.  Coming home from Southern Graphics, filled with this lovely feeling of wanting to work, it seemed like the perfect time for babble on the subject.  And yet, this is the fourth night straight in which I just haven't been able to talk about it. 

One of my greatest defense mechanisms is to simply stop caring about things.  Granted, there's nothing simple about it, and things never really just go away.  However, it's very much like having a shelf in my head.  When I need it to, stuff goes on the shelf.  It gathers dust, sees little sun, and slowly stops becoming a part of my life. Then, I can take it back down, shrug, and put it somewhere pretty.

Doing this creates the utter end of motivation.  While the wiki feels a bit wander-y in its description of the concept, it does do a good job of hammering in the sense of motivation being a, "This is here, and I feel it needs to be over there, so lets move it" sort of dynamic.  My particular method of dealing with not wanting to move things is to feel, utterly and completely, that I just don't care where things end up. 

Come to think of it, this may be partially manifested in my issues regarding the cleanliness of my apartment. 

Now, my apartments have always been fairly clean.  However, I get... piles.  Art supplies, clothing, receipts and scraps of previously useful paper, previous contents of my bag, toilet paper tubes, socks.  They always have a theme.  They always end up in exactly the same place.  There's always a clear set of pathways between the door, bed, and all other major necessity zones. 

Maybe it's my subconscious finding a natural balance between fruitless caring about a thing and not caring at all.  I can toss things on the floor at my discretion, but there's a specific zone in which the tossing happens so that nothing ever really gets lost.  Not a lot of concern, but nothing close to chaos.

I think that this blog might be part of an analogous process.  It's not important enough for me to seriously stress out about doing an entry every day, but it's also a loose enough structure that I can't really justify writing it off if I've forgotten an exercise.  To truly abandon it would be to invalidate a previous commitment to myself, and I do not want to do that; I do not want to stop caring.  Thus, motivation to continue, even during an exhaustion week.

Day Seventy-three: Back to motivation. Observations: I need to start doing these exercises early in the morning.  I've enjoyed having them as a wind-down before bed.  However, after the last few weeks, I'm in the mindset of working or playing until I drop, as might be guessed by the persistence of short and very short exercises. 

While I feel like my handwriting is continuing to improve, and will continue to do so at my current pace, and would not noticeably benefit from a slightly longer exercise period, I would enjoy the process more if I wasn't trying to cram it in after dropping has already started.  Right now, for instance, I'm phoning in this entry.  No snark to be had.  My snark is broken.  That's saying something.

Explanation: Going back to the source of my honor babble, this is the first half of the introduction to the Wikipedia article regarding motivation.  I predict that the next few days will involve an exploration of the different terms the wiki is lumping together as part of describing the different sorts of ways we decide to do things. 

Day Seventy-two: Back to Mass Effect 3.

Burbble: I finally found some time to go back to ME3 and continue ending my favorite Shepard's story.  I have to say... the combat feels like filler.  70% of the time I spend playing--and really, really delighting in the game--is sitting and watching the characters talk to each other.

It occurred to me tonight that the characters in the game have an unavoidable sense of being family.  If there's one major change in the method of writing that seems to have occurred between 2 and 3, it's a focus on small moments of emotional intimacy.Talking about friendship, looking after each other's health, and asking for relationship advice. 

And, inevitably, those moments when it's clear that your crew mates are about to run off and willingly die.  Because if they don't, something much worse will happen. 

Day Seventy-one: On honour.

Observations: I did something terrible to my right shoulder last night.  As in "turn over in your sleep, only to wake up to the sound of your own shrieking" type of terrible.  It's mucked up the muscles all over the right side of my body, mainly in my neck and back below my shoulder blade. 

Sadly, writing left handed does not help at all.  I can feel my torso trying to stabilize itself whenever I sit up, and it just can't. Not for very long, at least.  My left arm may not hurt in the same way, but the pain is still really distracting.  Here's hoping this clears up quickly.

On the positive side, the writing was relaxing.  This is the first sizable bit that I've done for a while, and was a nice, meditative sort of exercise.  You know, until my shoulder blade started trying to vibrate in protest. 

Explanation: I came away from SGC with a great deal of energy and a powerful desire to make things.  This was mainly due to a wonderful open portfolio sessions in which I received a great deal of positive feedback, and also made enough money to counteract a good portion of my conference ticket price.  It's one of the few times I've come away with that feeling of, "I can totally do this.  I can totally make it as an artist. Screw you, lingering self doubt."

So, now that I've got a bit to breath, I wanted to do a larger exercise.  A while back, I bookmarked the Wikipedia entry for Motivation and stuck it on the top of my list of places that I go to waste time on the internet.  Because it's a cheesy thing to do, and it means that I don't get to screw around without being reminded that I have things that need doing, and that I'm the only one who cared is I get them done. 

While searching the entry for a nice chunk of text, I discovered a list of reasons regarding which people most feel some form of motivation.  The entry for honor--the need to be loyal to the traditional values of one's clan/ethnic group-- stood out because I'd never really thought of the concept in this way.  Probably because I'm a Caucasian mutt who grew up with very little in the way of highly visible structured cultural family values.  So, I followed the link trail, and thus you get tonight's bit.

I've always thought of myself as a foolishly prideful person.  Unwilling to unintentionally show weakness, unwilling to ask for help outside of dire emergency, far too worried about how I present myself, yadda yadda yadda.  One of the biggest parts of this--and one of my biggest stressors in life--has been the need for financial independence and self sufficiency.  Without these, I can't feel like an adult; more specifically, I can't feel like a person of value. 

It had never occurred to me that this could be called a matter of honor.  I'm not sure if I feel this phraseology makes the "I'm a big girl now" drive sound more of less silly. 

Day Seventy: This one is just pathetic. 

After uploading my vacation exercises, I completely lost the ability to count and failed to realized that I hadn't done that day's own lefty scrawl.

It wasn't until I'd passed out in bed, after about ten hours of playing catch-up with projects, that I suddenly had a doom epiphany and realized I was dropping a day.

And a tiny little voice inside my skull said "fuck it".

And ten minutes later, with a few extra expletives, I got back out of bed, into my ice cold apartment, and wrote down the only thing that I could think of.  The bungled, half-remembered chorus of Evanescence's Call Me When You're Sober that just happened to be annoying the ever-loving crap out of me while I trying to fall asleep. Trying to remember the proper lyrics made my head swirl a bit, so instead of trying, I just wrote the babble that my brain was inventing.