It seemed, fittingly, the thing to Read over Reading week.
Serious, relevant, but still light and recreational, tangentially Buddhist.
I am surprised at how a book touted as "philosophy" paid so much attention - positive attention - to "technology." I have a lot invested in technology, as a nascent technologist. So I keep reading.
(I have a lot invested in philosophy, as a human being, so I keep reading.)
Aside: The book itself is a loaner from a technically-minded man who makes his living doing Instrumentation, and my mind smiles when I see "shop talk" in the book. I imagine him reading it and understanding it intuitively. I like the word "instrumentation."
We all struggle to live as people in a world of technology. It's a fight, and how grateful am I that there's a book about how to bring yourself to that conflict. It is, at this rocky point in my education, what I mean by "relevant."
I have 101 days of practicum left to compete for what I want, and 3.5 days to rest and find that fight again.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
It's not working
I mean, I keep managing to write a bit, but... This blog's not working. Or maybe it is, just not how I think or hope.
Meh, the equivocal vagaries of generalized statements are useless to me. I can't write without an image of an audience of some kind, can anyone? ....and the audience - the listener - isn't here any more. I think that's the best way to explain it.
I need to go to bed.
Meh, the equivocal vagaries of generalized statements are useless to me. I can't write without an image of an audience of some kind, can anyone? ....and the audience - the listener - isn't here any more. I think that's the best way to explain it.
I need to go to bed.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Confessional: Everything tastes like blood
Since a couple of people have asked, that's about where I am right now. Flying the Russel's Sign Flag high on both hands and trying to keep the angular stomatitis down to a dull roar.
My preceptor for this rotation in my program sat me down to tell me that she's seen "a decline." I said that things have been chaotic and left it at that. So it's official, now, that my life is affecting my work.
We've been having a bit of a relapse, I'd say, which isn't exactly unexpected, given everything.
Which is unfortunate, I don't want people thinking I've lost almost 30 pounds just by throwing up. You've got to do some starving, have hungry days and get the spins when standing up suddenly and bust your balls at the gym to have muscles like this and lose weight at the same time.
I think I underestimated how distressing stuff has been. Just because you make intellectual sense of things, this doesn't mean jack to your emotions.
I gouged my oropharynx so hard it bled all over my hands and I just kept right on going because it has to get out. What I was stupid enough to binge on cannot stay in, and I don't care. I never thought I would be having these experiences again. Luckily, the poke hole seems to have healed just fine. But what has not recovered is my skill at emptying myself.
What scared me was the possibility of being "bad" at purging more than a potential GI bleed. If I can't purge, if it wears out, I have to compensate some other way. Why the compulsion to escalate? I do my very best not to "stack" symptoms, because I can become very unwell, very quickly. I really wanted to stack compensatory measures together. I mean, if one is unsuccessful, it doesn't count, so it's not really stacking, right?
So it's time to get it together, again.
High levels of anxiety. This expresses itself as a paranoid conviction - intrusive and agitating - that I've got a disease from goofing around with a fling. I very well might have, how can you ever be 100% sure? But the mental distress can be ridiculous and out of proportion. Yes, I use sex inappropriately to advance friendships or relationships and yes I have to learn how to relate to people properly but right now I just need a friend, ok?
A friend uncomplicated by the mire of being an ex.
It's weird. You end a long-term relationship with someone because they've become something you don't recognize anymore. Maybe you don't recognize yourself anymore either. Maybe you've had it wrong the whole time. But then you go your separate ways a little bit and get your bearings, and he looks more like the guy you thought you liked, and sure you know that all the same dumb problems would be there but you doubt, you muse to yourself. You know truly that it's a breakup because it's broken, it's all for the best, really, in the end, even if you both have to go through all this. You have to go through it.
My preceptor for this rotation in my program sat me down to tell me that she's seen "a decline." I said that things have been chaotic and left it at that. So it's official, now, that my life is affecting my work.
We've been having a bit of a relapse, I'd say, which isn't exactly unexpected, given everything.
Which is unfortunate, I don't want people thinking I've lost almost 30 pounds just by throwing up. You've got to do some starving, have hungry days and get the spins when standing up suddenly and bust your balls at the gym to have muscles like this and lose weight at the same time.
I think I underestimated how distressing stuff has been. Just because you make intellectual sense of things, this doesn't mean jack to your emotions.
I gouged my oropharynx so hard it bled all over my hands and I just kept right on going because it has to get out. What I was stupid enough to binge on cannot stay in, and I don't care. I never thought I would be having these experiences again. Luckily, the poke hole seems to have healed just fine. But what has not recovered is my skill at emptying myself.
What scared me was the possibility of being "bad" at purging more than a potential GI bleed. If I can't purge, if it wears out, I have to compensate some other way. Why the compulsion to escalate? I do my very best not to "stack" symptoms, because I can become very unwell, very quickly. I really wanted to stack compensatory measures together. I mean, if one is unsuccessful, it doesn't count, so it's not really stacking, right?
So it's time to get it together, again.
High levels of anxiety. This expresses itself as a paranoid conviction - intrusive and agitating - that I've got a disease from goofing around with a fling. I very well might have, how can you ever be 100% sure? But the mental distress can be ridiculous and out of proportion. Yes, I use sex inappropriately to advance friendships or relationships and yes I have to learn how to relate to people properly but right now I just need a friend, ok?
A friend uncomplicated by the mire of being an ex.
It's weird. You end a long-term relationship with someone because they've become something you don't recognize anymore. Maybe you don't recognize yourself anymore either. Maybe you've had it wrong the whole time. But then you go your separate ways a little bit and get your bearings, and he looks more like the guy you thought you liked, and sure you know that all the same dumb problems would be there but you doubt, you muse to yourself. You know truly that it's a breakup because it's broken, it's all for the best, really, in the end, even if you both have to go through all this. You have to go through it.
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Sublime
Thirteen pounds to freedom.
At 13.85% body fat by electrical, that's just about right, actually. Funnily, I thought I would be happy if my bf was at 18, but sometimes there are surprises.
I smell a 11 second flyer lap in my future...
At 13.85% body fat by electrical, that's just about right, actually. Funnily, I thought I would be happy if my bf was at 18, but sometimes there are surprises.
I smell a 11 second flyer lap in my future...
Monday, September 05, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Disjecta Membra
While I don't particularly want to fragment and scatter my, er, opus (oeuvre? saga?)... I don't really feel like I can write here anymore. Which isn't to say that I'm stopping writing - don't think I could if I wanted to - but that there's a decision to make. Do I fractionate, amputate? Distill and discard the residuum? Leave a blunt stump?
It's like a benign tumor. "Warts and all" - warts are benign tumors, yes?
Editing for content kind of feels like it would take away from what I've been tinkering with here. "..." is already a bit incriminating, and if I wanted to write nice, ideally I would just go start a new nice-writing franchise, and keep the attitude and profanity here where it belongs. A disadvantage is that I've always liked the comprehensiveness of "..." because it's ALL here , and fragmentation takes that away and puts a hard line between public and private, which mayn't be a beneficial mental exercise for me. (I need to learn to share myself more, not less.)
As a great philosopher once said, "Should I stay or should I go?"
Radical relocation is, by definition, total. Sometimes necessary. (As a great friend once said: "Growth is a reductive process.") Sometimes you leave parts of yourself behind. Free to start again. Some parts would be coming with me, though, too. I'm not sure whether I'm done here or not, has the purpose been served? What am I doing anyways? Is it harmful to want to keep it just because I like it? Is a desire to remain with what is comfortable and sentimental obscuring the view on the best choice?
Truly it would be a good idea to transplant and graft, bring what's good to marry it with the new to grow, leaving this blog as the waste product of progress, an explant. Start a new professional work for the public performance, replace the defective part, start a new whole.
...
It's like a benign tumor. "Warts and all" - warts are benign tumors, yes?
Editing for content kind of feels like it would take away from what I've been tinkering with here. "..." is already a bit incriminating, and if I wanted to write nice, ideally I would just go start a new nice-writing franchise, and keep the attitude and profanity here where it belongs. A disadvantage is that I've always liked the comprehensiveness of "..." because it's ALL here , and fragmentation takes that away and puts a hard line between public and private, which mayn't be a beneficial mental exercise for me. (I need to learn to share myself more, not less.)
As a great philosopher once said, "Should I stay or should I go?"
Radical relocation is, by definition, total. Sometimes necessary. (As a great friend once said: "Growth is a reductive process.") Sometimes you leave parts of yourself behind. Free to start again. Some parts would be coming with me, though, too. I'm not sure whether I'm done here or not, has the purpose been served? What am I doing anyways? Is it harmful to want to keep it just because I like it? Is a desire to remain with what is comfortable and sentimental obscuring the view on the best choice?
Truly it would be a good idea to transplant and graft, bring what's good to marry it with the new to grow, leaving this blog as the waste product of progress, an explant. Start a new professional work for the public performance, replace the defective part, start a new whole.
...
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