Tag Archives: anxiety

Solving the World’s Problems

January 27, 2012 By in leisure, personal Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

I’m in Baltimore right now, having spent 9 hours in transit from San Jose (the closest airport to my mountain lair). Here’s what I love best about travel: everyone approaches it a little differently. Some folks are infrequent travelers who dress up and act like the airport itself is an adventure. Some folks are more frequent travelers and so see the journey as secondary to the destination. For me, travel is stressful because it forces me into society where I may, at any moment, have to interact with strangers.

What would be the ultimate mode of transport? Of course, a private jet would be ultimate, but nowadays the sorts of people who are privileged enough to have such accommodations are vilified. To be sure, a private jet is hardly the most ecologically sound mode of travel. The amount of resources used to carry a single person to and from a destination are absolutely out of all proportion.

I might suggest, then, a mode of personal travel for the extravagantly rich that would be non-polluting, sufficiently opulent, and have the added benefit of solving the increasing problems of both unemployment and obesity. The Greeks had a ship called the trireme, which employed three rowers per oar to speed the ship through the waters. Let us imagine, then, a craft that combines the form of a trireme – a long bodied craft with men supplying motive power – with the mechanical advances of the steam engine – gears that convert the turbine-turning power of steam into the locomotive power supplied to the wheels.

I believe that the mechanics of locomotion would be easily adapted to the mechanics of rowing. A set of three cars – sleeping, baggage and dining – could certainly be pulled by 60 rowers (10 “oars” on each side of what would otherwise be the engine car). Using the existing rail system, if each rower were paid a fair wage, would likely be no more extravagant than the current cost of maintaining a private jet and crew. There would be no fuel costs, no need to maintain the expensive motor workings of an engine, no expensive insurance, since rail travel is less fraught with peril than air travel. To be sure, travel would not be quite as expedient between places, but is that so terrible? Modern life moves at a pace that I personally find unhealthy. People need time to relax, to ruminate, to reflect. Perhaps if travel were a bit less immediate and convenient, people would make more of an occasion of it. Perhaps they might dress up, perhaps they might be more conscious of their impression on their fellow travelers, and perhaps travel might be what it once was. And then, perhaps, they might leave me alone.

Fault Lines

January 23, 2012 By in personal, practical advice Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

When you encounter a problem, how important is it to you to establish fault?

For instance, if you are walking down the street and you see a piece of trash on the sidewalk, do you ask of anyone nearby whether it’s theirs? How about if you’re at home and someone leaves a piece of trash on the floor? Do you act differently in one place versus another? Why?

If you are at work and a problem arises, do you first establish who’s to blame, or do you first fix the problem?

There are good reasons for establishing who’s at fault when things go wrong.

  1. If the same person makes the same mistake repeatedly, they should either be educated (if they don’t realize they’re doing the wrong thing) or fired (if they do, but they don’t care).
  2. If many people are making the same mistake, your policies should either be more widely known or changed.
  3. If the mistake is something that only a single person can undo, such as an incorrectly sent email.

There is one very good reason to avoid establishing fault. It’s no use if the only reason you’re establishing fault is to cover your own ass. Sadly, though, this seems to me to be the number one reason that anyone bothers to get to the bottom of any problem.

All of this is really just me thinking hard about a current situation where something has gone wrong, and I’m searching for the person responsible. I’m trying to drill down and question my own motives because I don’t want this to turn into something negative, when I know that it doesn’t have to be. If handled properly, this could be a great learning experience for everyone involved.

Let’s see if I’m that good.

Taking the Stigma Out of It

January 20, 2012 By in personal, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I was out at a public gathering with the Pirate, and I saw a person wearing a zip-front sweatshirt with writing on it. The sweatshirt was unzipped and open so that part of the writing was obscured, and I realized that I was openly staring at this person’s chest in an effort to make sense of the writing. Upon noticing my staring, the person zipped the sweatshirt, my curiosity was satisfied and the episode ended.

Except that it didn’t. I wanted to tell the Pirate about it as an illustration of what a social dork I can be, but although I knew the person’s name, I could honestly not tell what gender the person was. The name was no help, as it was one of those slightly unusual names like “Dallas” or “Kennedy” that could go either way. The person’s physiology was no help at all, nor was anything about the person’s manner of speech, expressed interests or abilities, etc. The person’s gender had nothing whatsoever to do with the story, except that I didn’t want to have to say “I was staring at Dallas’ sweatshirt and Dallas realized it and zipped Dallas’ sweatshirt and I was all embarrassed because I realized that Dallas must have seen me staring at Dallas and thought I was some kind of idiot…” because if I told it that way, I would sound like an idiot.

I realize that in today’s society, gender has become a difficult issue. Openly transgendered people have challenged our notions about where in the body gender lies. Gender is no longer a simple shorthand for anything, and most especially not sexual identity, profession, sexual preference, mode of dress, or anything else that when I was a kid could be labeled “boy” or “girl.” But I’ve also realized that gender is only really important to me in two situations, both of which involve intercourse: when I want to sleep with someone (and as a person in a long-term monogamous relationship, that question was resolved a long time ago) and when I want to talk about them.

I talk about people all the time, and it’s difficult when everyone has a different idea about who they are and how they want to be thought about.  Some folks consciously or unconsciously stake their claim – they dress, act, talk in a way that reinforces the gender role they are playing. Some folks try to stake their claim, but meet with less success. Living in Santa Cruz, I also see no end of people who dress in ways that say that they’re just messing with society at large. But all of these people have an idea of themselves and their gender identity that may not be obvious to the casual observer.

So, how do I talk about Dallas and Dallas’ sweatshirt? Let me make this much clear: I like Dallas. Dallas seems like a smart, interesting person with cool hobbies and a lot of things in common with me. Dallas probably knows a lot of good jokes and fun places to hang out and interesting, artistic people. None of those things have anything to do with Dallas’ gender, and chances are that it would take me months, if not years, to get to know Dallas well enough to broach the subject of gender identity. But in the meantime, how do I talk about Dallas?

Which brings me to the subject of “it.” People have tried to solve the issue of gender pronouns in various ways. I understand trying to be inclusve: “Everyone should have brought his or her ticket.” But when you’re only talking about one person, that makes you sound weird. When talking about a single, definite person of indeterminate gender, you can use the kind of tortured constructions that avoid pronouns: “We gave each person a ticket and each person should have it,” but they are just that. Torture for both the speaker and the listener. The worst are the made up pronouns – ze, mir, hum. Those are just silly. And even if they weren’t silly, they’re hard to remember and most people won’t understand what you’re saying anyway. You can use the plural, “Everyone should have brought their ticket,” but it’s grammatically incorrect, and sounds strange when you’re talking about a single person and their actions or possessions.

But what about “it”? People object to using “it” to refer to human beings because we use “it” to refer to things that are not human beings and humans are egotistical and like to be assured of their special, privileged place in the world as the only ones with a language that enshrines their self-awareness. Referring to other human beings whose gender is unclear as “it” seems insensitive and dismissive. Using “it” to refer to someone whose gender is completely beside the point (as in the story of Dallas’ sweatshirt) seems lazy. But how can you be respectful, inclusive, not lazy, etc., when talking about someone that you don’t know? For times like that, I’d like to de-criminalize, as it were, the use of “it” to refer to people whose gender is unknown, unclear or irrelevant. If you want, you can use it to talk about me.

I know Dallas is.

“You should have seen it! Staring at my chest with its big, stupid mouth gawping open! Some people!”

Just Call Me Suckah

January 16, 2012 By in hypertext, writing Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

I talked a little bit about the tendency for service workers to suck up in the post I did about the first day of our cruise. I’ve always known this. When I first got my eyebrow dots, I would go out to restaurants and waiters would fawn over how badass they look. To this day, salespeople (who are always the sort to describe themselves as “people” people) are the most likely to gawp at them, fawn over them, gush over them.

Today, I had occasion to spend time in the company of a guy who is hoping I’ll hire him as a contractor. Granted, this guy is kind of a high-end contractor who had worked with far cooler people than me, but in this economy a gig is a gig, right? So, I’m in the kitchen talking to this guy, and we start off talking about the project and what it will involve and how much he’s going to do and how much I need to do…you know – all the stuff you talk about when you hire someone to do work for you. Then he starts asking about what I do, and I start telling him about my hypertext novel project. Well, after he tells me about his venture into self-publishing, we start talking about the possibilities of e-readers and what’s next for the paper book and the publishing world, etc., and he’s just going all gooey about the project.

While I’m flattered and happy whenever someone gets excited about the project, it’s just so hard for me to tell. This guy is a creative professional. He makes his living by envisioning possibilities and making them into realities, and those sorts of people are easy to talk to when it comes to sharing artistic vision. On the other hand, I was at a gathering a week or so ago where I was talking about the project to a person who kept saying “Yes, that sounds fascinating,” but had that look on their face that is less a smile than a grimace, and who cut me off in the middle of a sentence to dash off. So…not a fan.

I’m hoping that when the project is done, there’ll be enough people who think it’s cool that it becomes a viable thing. Then again, I’m blessed in that if it doesn’t, I will have lost nothing, and gained everything in the experience. So – I press forward.

Monkey on a Boat: Day 1

January 3, 2012 By in personal Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

I’m a nervous traveler. You don’t really need to know that, except that it will explain why, when I went to bed at 10pm the night before we left, I didn’t fall asleep for nearly an hour, and why I woke up every 15 minutes to make sure I didn’t miss my 2: 45am alarm. I was just thinking of every single thing I had to do when I got up, and of every single thing I should have done but didn’t before I left. And about all those things that might happen, but probably won’t, of things that won’t happen but probably should, of things that should happen but probably not when they need to…I know you’ve been there.

We left at 3am to make the ~6-hour drive from our house to Los Angeles where we could board the ship any time between 11am and 4pm. That’s right. I built in an extra seven hours, during which I would have nothing else to do but imagine what could go wrong later on the trip.

I worried that it might be hard to find the boat, to find parking, to find breakfast close to the dock. It wasn’t. There was really only one boat, and it had Mickey Mouse on the funnel, and you could see it from the freeway. Right in front of that one boat was one giant parking lot with one driveway leading to it. A block away was The Grinder – a sort of Denny’s knockoff with easily the worst food I have ever had ever in my entire life. None of my imagined problems materialized.

Disney Waiting Room #3,124

She's still cheerful because we've only been sitting here for five minutes

Boarding was exactly like getting on any Disney ride. Any time you get onto a Disney ride, the queue is shuttled from one room to another so that you’re always moving, you never see the tail end of the line, and the number of people in any one place never seems to change. And just like at Disney theme parks, every single person: the guy who took our luggage, the guy who directed us through security, the woman who took our picture, the woman who directed us into a giant waiting area, and every one of the eight thousand adrenaline-addicted, polo-shirted employees who roamed the rooms looking for unoccupied children to harrass – every one of them evinced a level of cheer that required shouting.

Please welcome - THE GAZPACHO FAMILY!!!!!!

This is the room you enter when you get on the boat

When we got on the boat, we had to stand in a sort of line because as each family walked through the doors, a man in white livery boomed cheerful things like “Let’s hear you make some noise for THE GAZPACHO FAMILY!!!!!!” or “Welcome back THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY!!!!!!!!!!!!” (and he enunciated each of the exclamation points, I swear). Then a phalanx of other white-liveried individuals applauded with ecstatic grins on their faces. But there are four people in our family, and we don’t have a common last name. Disney really doesn’t have a paradigm for that, and they wouldn’t announce us individually. Instead, they mispronounced both my last name and the Pirate’s last name, and then the manic applause began. This is how I can tell that I’m not cut out to be a celebrity. When faced with the applause of a crowd of people, I have no idea what to do apart from looking around uncomfortably and muttering under my breath.

Our luggage wasn’t in our room yet (I think it’s delivered by the same house elves that Hogwarts uses), so we went up to the top deck with the really, really loud swimming pools and cafes. Within minutes of boarding, I had a poolside table, a gin and tonic and an order for champagne to be delivered to the room. Thank you, Pirate!

I had booked a mani/pedi for 1pm, so I showed up to the spa. I was the first person to visit the spa, so once again I was assailed with friendly, cheerful greetings to which I had no appropirate response. The mani/pedi was as wonderful as those particular procedures always are, and Cameel, the lovely Jamaican woman who provided the service, and I talked and sang and bonded while she was sloughing off my calluses. When I left, she wanted a hug and told me I was the most fun customer she’d ever had. As did the woman in the gift shop from whom we bought a watch, and Yusef and Lavendra, the two men who have been assigned to wait on us at dinner for the entirety of our stay. What this tells me is that one of the keys to getting a job with Disney is the ability to fake sincere friendship. That’s really the key to getting a job pretty much anyplace, but they’re really, really good at it here. I know it’s an act, but I’m a sucker for it all the same.

Dinner was in the animation-themed restaurant “Animators Palate.” The walls are covered with black and white drawings from various Disney movies, and there are giant paintbrush-shaped columns scattered around the room. The bristles of the brushes are glowing LED things that light up various colors. The paintbrushes hold up what look like giant artist palettes with blotches of paint on them. The paint also lights up in different colors. The friendly waitstaff wore black-and-white vests with drawings of Mickey in various styles. At the end of the meal, the main screens showed an INCREDIBLY LOUD film about how wonderful and magical and fabulous Disney is, and then Mickey Mouse came out, did a hyper little dance, and then the waiters, now all dressed in rainbow-colored vests, danced around as well. Good golly.

By this time, I was barely hanging on. I was dizzy and having a hard time getting excited about any of the upcoming events, mostly because all I could think about was being able to sleep – two and a half hours just isn’t quite enough. The girls, who had both had good nights’ sleep, took off to the various kid activities, and the Pirate and I passed out at about 8:00. So much for kicking off the cruise. We found out later that both girls had been in and out several times while the Pirate and I slept, and we never heard them.

A GUI Problem

December 21, 2011 By in practical advice, writing Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments

While I’m trying to solve the problems of creating the text for the hypertext thing I’m working on, the Pirate is trying to solve the problems of the workspace to create it and the interface that people will use to read it.

I tried using Storyspace, but although I suspect it’ll do the thing I want, I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. I think I’m going to have to call customer service and have a real live human being  walk me through how I would go about creating what I want. It doesn’t help that the documentation is awful. I’m trying to figure out how to connect two nodes together, but it’s all about how those things relate to each other in the first place, and each time they refer to a link or a piece of text or a window, they call it something different.

The problem is, I suspect that I’m devoting all this time to solving the data representation problems solely to get out of doing the writing. I know me. This is exactly the sort of thing I would do.

This is the basic problem of perfectionism: I get myself so freaked out about getting every single detail right that I am immobilized, afraid to even start lest I get started going in entirely the wrong direction. My father has exactly the opposite problem. He takes things on for which he has no qualifications and even less of an idea of how to proceed and just starts doing stuff. It might be the wrong stuff, it might be okay stuff, it might be brilliant stuff, but he adjusts as he goes along, and things turn out however they turn out. Whenever I get into this place where I’m so freaked out about starting off in the wrong direction, I think “What would my dad do?” And then, I normally do something else, because I often disagree with my father just on principle. But at least I’ve committed to a course of action.

My course of action on this particular problem is to leave the programmatic challenges for later and just start writing the text. How will I keep things organized? Remember, I’ve got 6 point of view characters in 3 different locations, each one of whom is operating independently. These three locations are very far apart, so there’s a large time difference, meaning that some characters might be asleep while others are doing things. To make things a little more complicated, any two of these characters might swap places at any time. After two days of talks with the Pirate about things that are both down the road and in the weeds (the future is apparently a kind of shoddy neighborhood), I decided that here and now I’m just going to put the timeline on the x axis of a spreadsheet, the character names on the y axis, color the cells with a color representing any one of the three locations, and then each cell will link out to a text document containing the written text for that scene, thereby capturing POV, location and time in one cell.

Organizational problem solved. As for the rest of it, later. I’ll sort it out later.

Day 1: The Trip Down

December 7, 2011 By in grad school Tags: , , , Leave a comment

I mostly packed yesterday, hitting up Office Max for a giant cube of sticky notes and a few pads of graph paper. I like taking notes on graph paper because I take outline-style notes, and it makes lining stuff up easier. Yup. That’s exactly how anal I am.

This morning, I frantically searched my email for a confirmation of my hotel reservation, but a simple phone call confirmed that I did have a reservation. The drive was so uneventful as to not even warrant discussion. Mostly, I ate carrots and listened to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for about the fourth time.

I’ve created an entirely new calendar just for school that has all of my class choices on it. What frustrates me is that the schedule declares “Seminar locations are posted at the Residency.” That’s so frustrating, because the really, really anal part of me wants to be able to put a room number on all these classes so I know in advance where I’m going, and so that when I show up tomorrow, I don’t stand rooted in one place staring wildly around myself and freaking out.

I’ve been perusing the Residency Guide (which is the equivalent of the course catalog I got when I was a freshman that dictated what classes would be required to graduate in my major and that I had to hang onto for my entire college career), and it lays out, not just how many of what kinds of classes I’ll need to have, but exactly how many papers, projects, meetings, etc., I’ll have to have to graduate. When you look at the entire thing in one go, it’s a little intimidating.

I can do this. Right? Right??

Grad School Adventure!

December 6, 2011 By in grad school, personal Tags: , , , , 3 Comments

Tomorrow, I leave for grad school. Classes don’t actually start until Thursday, but I’m not 22 anymore and don’t really fancy the idea of driving for six hours and then immediately jumping into things. I’m more of a get there the night before, scope things out, catch up on last-minute reading, have a relaxing soak sort of person.

I’ve been reading like nobody’s business, and as I expected, I didn’t get to all the 57 things I had to read before school started. I’m hoping that, as I did during my undergrad days, I can just keep my mouth shut, take a lot of notes, and hope the teacher doesn’t call on me. Some things never change.

Here’s what I’m nervous about:

  1. I’ll meet my critique group and they’ll all hate my writing – think it’s puerile, silly, unworthy of their time.
  2. I’ll attend the literary pedagogy classes and everyone in them will talk exactly the way the books are written, which is to say that they will be pedantic, boring and full of themselves. It makes the thought of teaching really unpleasant.
  3. I’ll miss my family so much that by the fourth day I’ll be ready to quit and just come home. This is the longest the Pirate and I will have been apart since he moved in with me ten years ago, and I’m afraid I’ll feel lost without him. I’m even more afraid that he’ll be lost without me.
  4. This is actually my biggest and most overriding fear: I won’t learn anything new. That I will have already heard everything that they have to say and I’ll be essentially wasting my time and money.

My current schedule looks pretty full. It’s funny, but low-residency grad school looks an awful lot like attending a writer’s conference. You get the schedule of all the “learning activities,” which are the same as the lectures given during conferences, and you don’t have to sign up for any of them. You just show up when the thing starts.

According to the student guide, students are supposed to attend “at least seven learning activities,” including participating in your assigned workshops. I’ve picked out 24 “learning activities” (that doesn’t include the required stuff like library orientation, mentor meetings, student readings, or new student orientations, of which there seems to be at least one a day), so I’m wondering if perhaps I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. On the other hand, it’s not like each of these is an ongoing class. Each one is, at most, a two-hour lecture. I can’t imagine only doing seven of these things, but then again, I’ve never done this before.

I’m off to start packing. I leave tomorrow morning and make the drive down to Los Angeles. I’ll let you all know how it’s going.