Quitting time

For years I've had a large backlog of blog post drafts to draw on here. I wrote myself new software to deal with them all and make sure I was posting only the highest quality thoughts here, at least of the ones I'd written down.

Right now, as of this second, I have just one entry left in my backlog, and I think it's terrible. I haven't been writing much new for a while now. I've been posting more than I've been writing, anyway, so the number has been rapidly shrinking. I think I passed the threshold of actual quality a little while ago, and started deleting more posts unfinished than I found worthy of posting.

I've been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a couple of months, is what I'm saying, and I think it might be time to call it quits. Bye, guys. It's been ... well, it's been exhausting and, ultimately, pointless, in fact, but it's helped me sometimes.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can't believe I've been doing this for ten years.
PPS - And over 3500 posts, too.

Summarising

I don't summarise well. I always feel like anything I say needs a lot more context to make sense, so I try to add it, either starting a long way before the point I should, or rambling on a long time after the point is clear. When I try to summarise, I go to the end point I'm trying to make, but still feel the urge to fill in more details after the fact.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I feel like I should add more to this.
PPS - But that would demonstrate a stunning lack of self-awareness.

Validation through memorisation

In primary school, I remember a kind of status indicator being the memorisation of song lyrics (at our age, mostly that meant Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer, if I recall). I placed great importance at that time on my memorisation abilities, and now I wonder if I have ever really grown out of that. I attend trivia competitions regularly, though my knowledge is narrow rather than broad. I still take pains to learn song lyrics, not just to be able to sing along, but to be able to impress people by singing along. The urge still happens to me to this day. So I'm really not sure I ever grew out of that need for external validation, and that idea that having an impressive memory is the way to get it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wish I didn't need external validation to feel good about myself.
PPS - It would simplify my life enormously.

I would time-travel back to university

The one time in my life that I might go back and try again would be university. As with most of my life, I never made enough effort to socialise, but with uni there were so many rich opportunities for it that I missed. I could have lived on campus and learned a lot of life lessons that way. I could have spent more time with fellow students if I didn't have to spend an hour each way on the bus, too, and that would put me in (or near) the city by default on weekends, along with every other on-campus student.

Also, knowing what I do now, I would start applying for graduate job positions in the middle of my final year, rather than spend two years unemployed after graduation. Those are my university regrets: I studied too hard and didn't get out enough. I got really good grades, though! ... which left me unemployed for two years after graduating.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That might also have been because I graduated when the .com bubble burst.
PPS - Also, I couldn't have afforded on-campus or even near-campus student housing.

Broken

Occasionally, I refer to myself as "broken", but I don't mean it in the severe way most people seem to perceive it. My mental image is not like a shattered vase, impossible to repair or, even if it were, full of holes and obvious glue lines. It's more like a bruise - a bit damaged, though not too severe, and quite capable of healing.

I think we're all a little bit damaged like that. Nobody's perfect, and nobody gets through life without scars. That's just how it goes. It's nothing to be ashamed of, nor, quite often, anything to even worry about. It's part of the process we all go through to learn how to live. It is my particular scars that make me unique.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, to deal with other people's issues, I need to be at least aware of my own issues.
PPS - Preferably, I'd deal with them completely in that case.

Just be kind

All I want from the world is for everyone to be kind to everyone else - especially to me. This is probably the basis of my pathological attention-seeking behaviour of inciting pity. When people pity you, they treat you kindly. From that point of view, I'd rather have a severe mental illness and be treated kindly for it than to be fully mentally healthy but have any mistakes count very harshly against me.

I want the world to be kind. Can we just do that?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I try to be kind in all circumstances.
PPS - Maybe this isn't the best move, but I prefer the world to be kind.

Comparing paths

Sometimes I compare my life to others, and of course this doesn't go well. The main point is this: I'm not really management material. I probably won't ever be supervising a team or running a project on my own. This feels wrong. It feels like someone at my stage in my career should really be starting to develop those management skills and moving up the ladder. The fact that I am not doing so, nor likely to do so in the future, fills me with shame.

But here's a recent realisation. There's the management track, where you gain a greater altitude and less involvement in the day-to-day work, knowing more and more about people and less and less about the details of how they do what they do. Then there's the craftsmanship track, where you just get better and better at what you do, down at the low levels, until you are well-recognised as skilled and a producer of quality work. When I get upset that I'm not on the management track, I need to remind myself that those guys have chosen to withdraw from one kind of work in order to do an entirely different kind - one in which I have no interest.

Now, this choice may backfire on me later in my career. Very few companies will want to hire me in a couple of decades as a 50-year-old developer who can't manage a project on his own and can barely mentor anyone else. Still, it's the path I've got, and I enjoy being here. That's what counts.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's the right path for me.
PPS - At least for now.

When the well runs dry

I wonder sometimes why life has to be so hard. It just seems, some days, like the littlest things, like picking up little bits of rubbish around the house, washing dishes, the endless mountain of laundry, is just too much to manage. Those days, I feel like I'm on the verge of a mental breakdown, which is ridiculous, because this is just freaking laundry man. It takes minutes to load the machine and minutes to hang out. How can that get on top of me? So I dig into some reserve and I just get through it.

But I worry that reserve is going to run out one day. One day I'll just curl up on the ground and stop dealing with life because it's so much easier that way. And it is easier, but it's not fair to anyone else. Dig deep, get through that as well.

Days like that, I feel like it's better that I don't have kids. If I can't handle laundry on a bad day, I'm not going to raise a well-adjusted child who knows how to deal with life, am I? If I'm huddled in the corner, rocking back and forth, unable to deal with life as it comes up, let alone in the crisis moments, then no matter how much I might love my hypothetical kids, I'm not going to be doing right by them, am I?

I can picture the parents responding to this, now. "You just get through it, because you have to. You won't know your strength until it's tested, and you'll get it done. You will." I don't know about that. There are moments when I feel myself just detach and start to slip away. Dig deep, pull it back, don't quit on me yet. It would be so easy, though, to stop swimming upstream. To reject the way the world rewards hard work and endurance with a heavier load and just say to hell with it, I'm done. I'm not dealing with your problems any more, world. You can keep the struggle, the constant change, the barely-above-water feeling of existence and shove it deep in whatever dark hole you can find. I'm just done getting through it and surviving. I want to enjoy life, not feel like I'm just barely managing to keep it from crushing me.

Dig deep. Power on. No time for self-pity here. People depend on me. Dig deep and pray that the well won't run dry.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or maybe this is just burn-out.
PPS - I haven't taken any days off in a year.

Improvisation

I don't like improvising as an actor. I never have. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just that I prefer the comfort of knowing there's a script and knowing where the scene is going. Maybe it's lazy, because if nobody else is doing anything too strange, I know how to react to it. Maybe it's fear - since I so often say things the wrong way or baffle people with my words (not by being clever, mind you, just by choosing the strangest, most awkward possible phrasing) I worry that I will derail the whole scene for everyone else and look like an idiot on stage. Or maybe it's a learned response, over years of half-written church skits. When people at a small-to-medium-sized church hear that you like to act, every now and then they'll grab you to be in a skit, which usually involves a vague briefing five minutes before the service telling you to "just stand over there with those people, say some mean things, then fall over when I throw the box." It's the second-most awkward possible form of acting I've ever done, the first being job interviews.

At the same time as feeling awkward and inadequate when improvising, I recognise that it's a pretty big part of the job. If you can't get into the head of a character and at least work close to the script if not completely off the cuff, then you're not much good as an actor. Missing a line is definitely going to derail the whole scene, throw off the other actors and make me look like an idiot.

And, of course, like so many others of my personal flaws, I seem to have only enough self-awareness to recognise it, not to know how to fix it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If I figure that part out, I'll let you know.
PPS - Exposure therapy would probably help.

Safe employment or following your passion

If I had the option, I think I'd rather be writing and acting for my career, rather than working on software. It's not that I don't like software, it's just that the other things appeal to me more and, in the end, I know it is possible for people to make a living doing them. The real question is whether I, personally, could make a living writing and acting. And of course, the longer I wait, and the more time I spend writing software instead of fiction, the more time I'm not spending getting better at my craft. If it takes ten years of dedicated effort to become a sellable writer, and I'm only half-committed to it, then it's going to take me twenty years to get good enough for publishers to notice. The same kind of argument goes for acting.

I could just quit and focus on writing and acting. That's a scary thought, though, because the amount of money I've made from them, in total, so far in my life, is not enough to buy dinner for two. If our mortgage payments rely on me making money at writing and acting, I predict a rapid descent into despair and homelessness. That might be an irrational fear, but I know the money is a real risk.

I saw Jim Carrey encourage a graduating class to follow their dreams by saying that you can still fail at what you hate, so you might as well do what you love. The trick is, sometimes what you love is a much bigger risk than the other option. That's why they call it the safe choice, the stable career. Sometimes you will lose your job as an accountant or as a software developer, but as a writer and actor, you are defined by unemployment, with brief periods of work. That is a life of never-ending risk and work-seeking, and I get exhausted enough looking for one job every couple of years after my various contracts run out or my employers go through rounds of redundancy.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Unemployment is fun only for about three days.
PPS - Or maybe up to two weeks.

I missed a spot

Yesterday may have been the first weekday in years that I've not posted here. I'm not going to go back and check how long it's been, though. I think, sometimes, in the past, I've even back-dated a post just so that it still looks like I've been diligent. This time, though, I think I'll just leave it.

I've been sick, on and off for the past two weeks or so, and this has been a major disruption to my normal routines, including blogging. The details of my sickness are disgusting, so I won't share. The secondary effects are lots of sleeping and staying home from work. I really hope, this time, I can recover properly and put it behind me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I also haven't been writing or reading much.
PPS - At home, I gravitate more towards YouTube and other internet activities or television.

Does my ideal job even exist?

When I think of the kind of job I would like to do in my 40s or even closer to retirement, I still think of software, fiction and acting. As always, however, I tend to picture a job that doesn't involve any of the things I dislike doing, or that fill me with a sense of dread and disgust. Those would be any sales and marketing activities, and, if I'm being honest, management and leadership, too. I don't want to be a leader. I've never wanted that. And if my mental self-image ever overlaps with smarmy, greasy, sharks-in-suits salespeople (which is obviously a caricature or stereotype) then I'll be very disappointed with my life.

I know everyone has to do things they don't want to, but every now and then, you come across a person who, with a huge smile, says she is exactly where she wants to be and, if they stopped paying her tomorrow, she'd still be doing this job. That's the kind of job I want. Is there a place for me like that? If not, I'll happily take the financial freedom to just retire.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - As would plenty of other people, I'm sure.
PPS - But I asked first, so there.

Self-forgiveness

I find it really hard to forgive myself for mistakes. I make plenty of them, so you'd think I'd have enough experience, but I'm still just as bad at it today as when I started beating myself up about my screw-ups, which was many years ago. "Progress" is managing not to call myself names while I am figuratively punching myself in the guts in the aftermath. That progress is often short-lived. I even get into some meta-self-flagellation about my self-flagellation, this post being a soft example of that.

I think part of it stems from (or is at least related to) my long-standing behaviour of trying to elicit pity as an attention-getting strategy. I would cry at school, I'd tell people how my mother died when I was young, I'd loudly and publicly lament that I'd never had a girlfriend, I'd avoid bringing up people's mistakes about my name or about overlooking me in order to spring it on them much later to maximise their shame and the pity they'd feel for me.

It's pretty pathological behaviour, when you look at it like this. The point, in context, is that seeking pity is now a long-ingrained reflex for me, and tearing myself down is just one step in that process. I need to be low to get pity, and if I'm not low enough, I'll make myself lower.

This does not mesh well with forgiveness, or the problem-solving mindset I have to use for my work. Often there's no solution and nothing to do but accept the loss and move on, trying to do better next time. I never feel like I can just move on without trying to figure out how it all went wrong this time. This leads me to focus obsessively on my mistakes and the costs associated with them, which can be exhausting.

Take a recent example: I had a function to attend after work, and this would have been most easily managed by driving to work that day so I could drive there and drive home at night when it was finished, instead of taking the train as I normally do. I didn't plan my transport and didn't discuss it with my wife until I had already taken the train to work that day. We only have the one car, so if I drive to work, she needs to know that. I could have discussed it in advance, the night before. I could even have tried discussing it that morning, though that wouldn't have been so easy. I leave early, and let's say not everyone in the house is alert in the mornings.

Still, there are a lot of ways I could have done better, and I was well aware of these in advance. I didn't do them or even make an attempt, resulting in some tense exchanges of texts that made me feel like an irresponsible child. That's a recurring feeling here: that of an irresponsible child. It readily feeds into a number of other anxieties and personality issues, too, such as not being good enough to be a father, not being worthy of being a husband, remembering all the poor organisation and problems I have caused at home and so on. It's what makes me feel, most often, that I am not a Real Man, whatever that means. Real Men, says the voice in my head, communicate properly with their wives so they don't have to ask for a lift home at night. Real Men are confident, in control and show a basic life competence far beyond yours, obviously. Self-flagellation. And, in the end, it turned out not even to be a big deal.

Wanting to break out of this cycle is not enough. Knowing how, clearly, is not enough. Suspecting that I might have mild anxiety or depression is not enough, because you can hardly go to the doctor and say "Doc, sometimes I feel like an irresponsible child and that makes me feel bad, is there something wrong with my brain?" I need therapy. I need to do better. I need ... I don't know what else I need. I feel like forgiveness is just enabling my problems, most of the time. It's not that I don't feel I deserve forgiveness, because true forgiveness isn't deserved or earned. What I feel is that I shouldn't get forgiveness because it wouldn't help fix me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm sorry if this is too long and heavy.
PPS - It bothered me, though.

Shopping online

I don't do a lot of my shopping online. This might be weird for someone of my age and technical expertise, but it's been informed by several bad experiences. First, there have been a few times when I've got what I ordered, but it wasn't the right thing. I bought a $199 router from Kogan, paid $9 shipping to get it to me, waited four days for delivery, then had to send it back because I was mistaken about its capabilities. The return shipping and the restocking fee cost me a further $38, so by now I'm out $47 and back to square one. If I had just walked to Dick Smith instead, 5 minutes down the road from my house, I would have had the correct device in my hands immediately. Oh, and I still don't have my money back, more than two weeks later, so there's that, too.

The other thing is that Australia Post delivery drivers don't bother looking for our front door. We live in a townhouse complex with a lot of little twisting roadways and paths, so I understand that it can be hard to find a particular house number, but they don't even try. They get to the mailbox, toss in a "sorry you weren't home" card and sod off again, leaving me to pick up the package from the post office during office hours anyway, or on Saturday morning, which is when I can actually get there. While there's supposed to be parcel pick-up outside those hours, the arrangement where I live is that this is done from the PO Box bunker, and that parcels are not kept there, but inside the shopping centre. Guess whether the PO Box attendant can get to your parcels outside normal shopping hours. Go on. Guess.

So online shopping hasn't exactly sold me. I don't trust the delivery drivers to actually bother delivering, and I don't trust myself to order the correct item without talking to someone about it. Does this make me a shopping luddite? Yeah, probably. So what? It's still working for me, and until online shopping can actually provide me some savings or benefits, I think I might stick with bricks and mortar for now.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do order flowers online now and then from our local florist.
PPS - They regularly misspell our street name, and they abandon flowers on the doorstep, but it does seem to mostly work.

I'm not a fan of horror

I'm not a big fan of horror in general, but I think it's modern horror in general that I have a problem with. See, old-school horror wanted to scare you with monsters or aliens - things that aren't real - and let you get on with your life afterwards. You get a good scare, but you can let it go because it is so clearly fiction that it doesn't really stick with you. Modern horror, on the other hand, wants to be completely plausible, get right down there inside your head and settle in for the rest of your natural life, burning in the impression that, with just a tiny little push, your life could be precisely this horrifying, not even kidding a little bit. Old-school horror wanted to give your heart a little shot of adrenaline. Modern horror wants you to have PTSD. Forever.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Oh, and the authors are really good at it, too.
PPS - I suppose I could desensitise myself, but that seems like a lot of work for a small payoff.

Big finish, jazz hands

Weight: 81.5kg
Distance: 11.32km
Time: 1h:17m:16s
Average speed: 8.79kph

Told you I'd make up for yesterday. Today I went out running on the streets, as I used to do, and I followed my old long route, which I haven't run in quite a while. 10km is no slouch. I'm not that happy with the speed, but the exercise watch had me on "hard" mode, which is its lowest setting. I've also discovered that running on the road is very different to running on a treadmill. I'm convinced that the treadmill does half the work for you. Treadmill momentum is nothing like the real thing. It was harder than I expected, is what I'm saying, but I made it.

Over the month, I ran a total of 170.7km. That's pretty darn long. It's the equivalent of just over 4 marathons, except for the fact that they make you run a marathon all at once. I'd like to try that some day. But not tomorrow. Tomorrow I rest my legs at last. As an experiment, running every day in January has taught me mostly that I need to rest regularly, that my knees need care, my achilles tendons are always tight and that I can do this. I look forward to challenging myself in other ways through the year.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And I still look forward to a finished bathroom at home.
PPS - It's getting really close, but not there yet.

For a change

Weight: 82.3kg
Distance: About 1.5km. Oh, plus 1km on the exercise bike.
Time: Maybe 10 minutes?
Average speed: A little bit meaningless today.

Let me explain.

Instead of a full 5km run today, I had a personal training session with Debbie and our regular trainer, Jodie. It went pretty well for me, but highlighted the exact narrow focus my January running schedule has had. Getting through cardio? Zero problems. I mean, she had us warm up with 60 seconds on an 11.5% incline and I jogged it easily, even after warming up for a few minutes at a fast pace. We did 1km on the exercise bikes. No problems. We finished on the elliptical, going 150 metres, though not as fast as usual. I kept going a little while afterwards.

But could I do a second set of 10 pushups? No sir, I could not. My noodly arms were definitely not up to the challenge of lifting me off the ground a couple of times in a row. And why should they be? They hardly ever have to do that. They'll be doing more of it in February, I'll tell you that. Plus some other, non-exercise stuff. So, basically, I felt good about the cardio, but kind of inadequate at the strength parts. And a little bit bad about not running a full 5km today, but I still consider myself exercised.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do plan to make up for it tomorrow, on the last day.
PPS - Looking forward to that very much.

It's all uphill from here

Weight: 81.8kg
Distance: 5.49km
Time: 37m:01s
Average speed: 8.90kph

There is no flat, only uphill on level 5, after the first 300 metres. I didn't make it all at the 10kph pace I set for myself, but I only slowed down to a fast walk for about half a kilometre. So I did struggle, but I made it. I wouldn't really have expected so much progress, fitness-wise, during the month. Today's accomplishment might have been aided by the evening timing, though.

I'm very much looking forward to finishing the month strong, but definitely finishing it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Two days to go now.
PPS - I'm also looking forward to adding up all my distances.

Evening running is better for me

Weight: 81.8kg
Distance: 5.52km
Time: 33m:46s
Average speed: 9.81kph

Today was a change in routine - I went for my run in the evening rather than the morning. That felt really good. Crazy good. As if, in the morning, there was no more pressure and my work was finally done. So I think I might be getting over the "run every day" challenge, but now, at this time of writing, I have only 3 days to go, and I am not breaking the chain now. I just wanted to note that it felt good to be able to get the dishes done in the morning the way I normally do.

As for the run itself, I don't know what it is about the evening, but it always feels easier. I turned the speed up to 10.3kph and the changes down in incline surprised me. My breathing came easily and, by the time I was finished, I'd turned the speed all the way up to 11kph. If evening runs are that easy, maybe tomorrow I'll try level 5 on the treadmill program.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I also had a pretty good day at work, so there's that, too.
PPS - I guess it's been a great day all around.

Every day is leg day

Weight: 82.3kg
Distance: 5.52km
Time: 34m:21s
Average speed: 9.64kph

Well, there goes the air conditioning theory of weight variation. I don't know what to think about that any more. It was tough this morning to get out of bed and to the gym, and then I felt very out of breath for a long portion of my 5km. I focused on my breathing, though - two steps in, two steps out - and got back under control by the time I was finished with the inclines. It's looking like we might not quite get our bathroom completed before the end of the month, now, which actually means I might have to keep up my morning gym visits just for the showers. Starting in February, though, I'll definitely mix it up. It won't be all cardio the way I'm doing now.

The biggest physical effect I've noticed over the month so far is in my calves and achilles tendons. They're pretty much sore and tight all the time, regardless of how much stretching I do.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'd prefer to be able to say I've lost weight and gained some leg muscle.
PPS - All I'm sure of so far is that I've gained some cardio fitness.