Author: Aaron

I have once again been having thoughts about establishing a bit of a schedule here. I know it wasn’t long ago that I ditched that, and it was the right decision for the time, but now that I’m on the other end of that, I can’t help thinking that the lack of a deadline or expected cadence is making it easier to just not do the writing. I also mentioned how I want to write about a bunch of different things, and I still do. I should really start linking to the posts I’m referencing, but not today. I should also really start keeping a list of everything I want to write about, which… actually, I think I might have started. I should find that. And also update it. Anyway, I think not giving myself any deadline at all might be keeping me from making the time to do the things I want to do, which has me rethinking the super free form nature of this. I don’t know, I feel like I’m in the part of every journey, at least all of them I’ve done so far, where I can see that this is a thing that I can do but I’m just in utter awe at how those that are doing it manage. I mean, there is a whole lot of shit that goes into just putting some words on a page. Or screen, whatever. Related, I still haven’t finished that second essay for English Comp.

Hey, side note – What the hell is going on with Miley Cyrus’s voice? Sorry, I’ve got a youtube video on in the background and a commercial just came up. Also, I do not keep up with her or the internet discourse on her. I don’t say that to downplay, but rather, ya’ll can fill me in if I’m missing something here. So now I’m going to be a little snide – did she gargle lava at some point? Has she been smoking a carton a day? Was her singing so intense that it blew out her mid-range the way my brother blew out the bass in his first post-high school car? Can you imagine the show if that happened mid-performance? Either very sad or absolutely incredible. Yeah, you know what? I’m going to choose to believe that one. She sang so magnificently that as if Vocal Icarus she got too close to the sun and something something. Metaphor!

Another thing that I should probably link to but won’t is how I’ve mentioned I’m taking some online classes and that one of them is English Composition I. I really went into this thing thinking it would be an easy win for me, and it super has not been. It’s a self-paced, study-on-your-own/submission driven class, and it only asks for four papers. FOUR ESSAYS is the entire body of work required by this class. I know saying this is really about to put my arrogance on blast, and I know I can be an arrogant prick, but I really thought I’d be looking at a month in this class, tops. And yet I’ve been stuck on the second essay for weeks. The assignments are not long, at least not for an overly verbose dork like me, and they are, though not entirely, pretty dang open ended. These are the types of parameters for papers that my younger self would see as an opportunity to just swoop in and snatch a victory, but my friends, I am not swooping.

In case you missed it (because I won’t link to it), I did complete the first essay. The essay’s parameters were 550-750 words and meant to be a personal narrative with the theme of gratitude. This program offers two attempts for each essay, with a grade and feedback on the first and I think they take the best score of the two. I thought that there were three attempts, so thinking I could burn the second and use that feedback to prepare a near-perfect third, I instead turned in a final that was most definitely below par. I mean, I could (and slightly do) blame my misunderstanding of the submission process, but in truth, I kinda thought that I had it nailed and it would either complete the assignment or just leave some light clean-up work. Like I’d get a high B or low A or something, and only submit the third if it the lost points were grammar, punctuation, or otherwise quick fixes. What actually happened is that following countless rewrites I got super-duper off theme and turned in a final that couldn’t qualify for the biggest chunks of the rubric. Now, it does appear that what I had submitted was otherwise pretty well written, which is nice. Though as much as “nice” helps me cope with my wounded writing pride, it really doesn’t do anything for my grade.

That event did not deter me, in fact it made me that much more determined to rise to the next occasion. However, the open-ended nature of these essays remains, which has really bogged me down. This is usually something that I look forward to, a real chance to just go on and on about whatever bullshit is in my head. I’m a man whom is passionate about many things, some of which I am absurdly passionate about, and I’m sure I could scratch together something quick on virtually any subject. In my younger years, I think that’s exactly what I would have done. I would have picked a current, hot-button issue, collected up talking points like health potions and power-ups in a video game, and then laid them out point by point and wrap up by connecting them with perfect transitions. Let’s ignore how decades of weird video game logic has left me with hangups about using those potions and instead acknowledge the issue that I keep running into in this context – I don’t want to write my assignment about something that I actually care deeply about. It feels flippant and dismissive of the actual situation, and I hate it.

So it took me at least a week just to pick a topic. Oh, right, the parameters – it’s now up to 750-950 words, it’s supposed to be in a persuasive letter. Convince someone of a thing. That’s pretty simple. So I looked up and thought about a bunch of different topics. Most just fully did not interest me, and the ones that did all fell into that space I mentioned before – I’m quite passionate about it and don’t want to just write a couple of ignore-able paragraphs. What I came up with instead is the idea of convincing a close friend to take an online class, which got around that problem, but has a new one. Now it’s flippant from the start. And you know what? I don’t feel great about that, either. I’ve done a fair amount of the pre-writing and I’m pretty sure that I can pull this off, so I’m going to stick with it. But I think I’m going to need to get over this stance.

I keep coming across this notion of writing, one which really fits nicely in my view on work. Actually, I think it might be multiple ideas, but they’ve been swirled together in my head. Let’s see if I can unravel them a smidge. To start, this is a process. To whatever degree anyone can, it is not for me to simple one-shot a paper, or for any of my writing to be simply spewed forth without some struggle. Now to that point add that processes with iteration are easier to find a way through. You treat it as a project, with a beginning, middle, and end. You setup a framework and work your way through, with space left for rework, because the rework isn’t a punishment, it’s refinement. It’s how we get to a better finished product. Add to that another thought, one that I find referenced in the Arts and Sciences, that all works, great and meager, are in conversation with each other. These includes ones own works representing the self, and also the individual pieces representing a time and place, a snapshot of that self of the then, talking with all other pieces of that self from their unique stance in that timespace.

As we expand beyond the self, we find that our pieces have not become but rather always were in conversation with all other pieces, including those of entirely disparate discourse, throughout all of history, well without our active conscience involvement. I feel this way because I am the product of a species that has been trying to learn a better way to exist in the world within which we do already exist. When I write, sketch, or log something in my journal, I am taking a snapshot of how I am at that moment, as is true of when I post something on this blog. But that snapshot of that moment is a product of the life I have lived, here in this world that I live in. So it stands to reason that if I were to write something about the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, I am talking not only of them, no matter how objectively I attempt to approach it, but also about myself, the observer. And I am also talking about the Geo- and Eco-political environment that they exist in now, along with their entire history and how their histories have existed within those previous contexts. Each new piece on the conflict, mine or a professional’s, adds to the discourse, and bends the conversation one way or another by its existence, even if only slightly and if only for the writer. So each of my new pieces is also a snapshot on how I view this, and also reflects back on me to help me refine my next piece.

That’s a very long walk, but I think that what I’m saying is that to write you must write, and no writing is a waste. So I should just write about it, and if my piece is bad, well then at least I’ll have gotten some of my bad writing out of the way. Well, not the Armenian/Azerbaijani conflict – I know precious little about it, and don’t plan on writing anything about it anytime soon.

On that general theme, though, a topic that did come to mind is how I feel about the Kurdish people. Don’t worry, I’m not about to launch into some weird, unexpected racist turn here, in fact I’m probably not going to talk about them much at all, at least not today. I suppose I should make my stance clear, which is that I very much support their autonomy and independence. This is, of course, an extremely dumbed-down and unsophisticated version of my actual thoughts, but you know, I don’t really want to get into right now. I kinda don’t really want to get into it at all, because I’d inevitably feel compelled to talk about complicated aspects of it, including my complex thoughts on diaspora-based governance and also my own personal history with the PKK. Yes, it turns out, I have a personal history with the PKK. Which was mostly good, by the way, but you know, people tend to see liberation movements and terrorists, especially if they can be successfully scapegoated for a hike in gas prices. Multiple times.

However, a good while ago I decided that if I’m going to continue with this whole school thing, then I need to take it seriously. I think that part of taking it seriously means that I’m going to need to treat assignments like this with the same seriousness I would want to read from others. So I think I’ll just have to start taking on topics like that, even though they make me uncomfortable, and it doesn’t matter the why or the how of that discomfort. And if I’m going to do it, I need to make sure I have my shit together about it. And so now I’m looking at some reading material to fill in the parts of that story that I’ve missed, and I’m also trying to get a better handle on the essay format itself. I know that many scholars and experts love the essay, and if I want a professional career where I do stuff that I care about, I’ll need to get better at the format. So I’m also trying to find some examples that scholars and experts consider to be great essays. Look dawg, I’m like Kakashi Hatake – I can copy any master and make it my own.

And with the Naruto reference in hand, this thought is officially over. That’s enough for now, but I really do need to get back around to some of those subjects I keep saying we’ll put a pin in. I think I wanted to talk about fashion? I bought some corduroy pants. I used to hate the material, but I have to admit, I kinda like the pants. Very cozy.

After some deliberations, I’ve decided that I do in fact want to use this personal blog to talk about personal stuff beyond just stuff like fitness updates. Oh, by the way, I have now had several consecutive weight-ins below 250 lbs, which is pretty great. I’m very happy about that. Now I just need to keep up that momentum. I’m still not up to running a full, unbroken mile, but I’ve made it over half a mile, so I’m pretty happy about that, too. As I fill up this blog with more varied work, I’ll start setting up zones arranged by topic and tone or, I don’t know, whatever ends up fitting. But we’re not there yet.

A thing I’ve noticed about myself over the past few years is I’ve gained a strange quirk in my overall mindset, that I’ve gotten so cloistered that I have a deep apprehension to making plans. This is no good. Some of my best work and most of my best experiences came from making plans to do something. I don’t think this is entirely unearned, as I’ve had a few times in my life when my schedule was absolutely jam packed, when there just wasn’t enough time in the day, week, or month to get all of the tasks on my list done. But that’s not now, and that’s not how my life has been in some time. This post isn’t going to be some thought piece on time management, though I suppose it’s another piece of a growing body of evidence that I do need to get better at that. And a big chunk of what I need to improve is the willingness to make plans, and I find joy in the prospect of fulfilling those plans. But let’s put a pin in that.

This last weekend only had one appointment, but it was a good one. I talk about my previous job a lot, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. I worked there for almost 20 years. I learned a lot from the job, and much more from my coworkers and a handful of good managers. This appointment was a lunch with some of those folks. I’m quite grateful for the work that one of my former bosses puts into setting these up, as it’s very nice to see these folks, but there’s more. In recent years, I’ve come to see my time in that job as quite the boon to my personal life. The business of the company is fascinating, and for a time it attracted a wide variety of interesting types, making the company absolutely packed with incredibly smart people. It was quite the boon to find myself situated amongst them, as so many of them helped me along. The power of intelligence and kindness is incredible.

Usually when I show up to a social event of any kind, I try to line up with specific friends and also probably try to grab a seat on the end or a corner or something. On this day, I decided to just go with the flow, and that situated me between one of my favorite former bosses and one of her bosses. The two of them are also lifelong friends, so I felt pretty guilty splitting them up. The unselfish part of me wants to make sure everyone else gets to sit where they want to sit and I’ll sit where ever. The selfish part of me wants to be mostly left alone, which gels with the self-conscience part of me which always feels too big and in the way, hence the finding a corner spot thing. But they had no problem speaking across me, so that seems fine.

The spot I took did turn out to be advantageous. My former boss and, as I believe she coined, “great-grand-boss” – a fantastic term that I fully encourage you to start using – are very quick and compassionate. I feel like I absorbed a massive dose of insightful thoughts just sitting between them. Getting a chance to run a few thoughts by them was also huge, including some strong endorsements of a few of my academic plans.

A thing I think is happening to me right now is that my perception of life is changing. Ah, shit, I am getting into this, aren’t I? No, we’re not getting in deep, just dipping the toe. I feel like I’m finally actively trying to pay attention to the lessons that life and those I’ve shared mine with have been trying to teach me. I’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring those lessons, and that’s been workin’ out great and all, but it does seem like now is a good time to start paying attention. Or maybe I should have started like 20 years ago. You know what? My toe is wet enough and this water is cold, I’m getting back out.

I think the thing that I’m learning from this experience is that I need to stop trying to find rest time. I worry about how that comes across, like one of those hustle-dweebs saying some garbage like “earn your rest time”. I don’t mean it like that, but rather, it very much feels like my balance of doing and resting has been frustrated, and many of my current struggles are tied to my own attempt to push back against that. I have felt this before, and for different situations. I felt it hardest in one of those times when I was far too busy, but busy with one focus of work that shut out all of my other desires. I’m on the opposite end of that, where I have all the time in the world but am trying very hard to make the most of how I use that time. Damnit, I’m in the pool again!

Alright, let me just say this bit and then take off for the evening. I think something I”m starting to understand about myself is that I do like filling up my time, but only if it’s with stuff that I care about. The breadth of things that I care about is still huge, and it will likely still be too busy, but if I can change up my life and find a career where I can mostly focus my working efforts onto things I care about, then I don’t think I’ll feel so quickly and so thoroughly burned out at the end of any given week or day. So I’m trying to also pay attention to what people are actually saying about different career paths, because I’d really like to fill up my time with a steady pace of overlapping projects.

That didn’t turn out to be all that personal, I suppose. No real details there, though I do want to come back to the past couple of weekends. I’ve got some thoughts on some games I’ve played, some thoughts on my pursuit of opening up new or improving existing friendships, and my usual fitness and academic updates. If I can muster the courage for it, I may even try to get into my romantic status, or rather lack there of and so on. But that’s enough for today.

I had a pretty good weekend. Maybe a handful of unforced errors, but nothing terrible, I think.

I want to really get into the details of what made my weekend so good, and I’ve written up multiple versions of a post about it. But I keep trashing the post, because it gets a bit too personal. I’m finding myself writing things I hadn’t thought of, or least hadn’t risen to the top of my conciseness, and I feel like it’s revealing too much. For my part, this has been one of the fun parts of reading other people’s blogs. But to be honest, when I first started this back up, I kind of envisioned it as a different type of blog, something closer to the type that became much more popular, the type that really isn’t what blog start out to be. Popular blogs these days aren’t a person’s personal journal anymore. The modern popular blog type that closest to that original style is something like a Travel Log, but even that has more focus on the doing and less focus on the living.

I don’t now, I didn’t set out to analyze blogs today, so maybe I’m off there. Anyway, I’ve been holding out on posting because I got busy and then I got stuck in a cycle of writing and then deciding that I didn’t want to post what I wrote. I haven’t decided, still, just how much I want to put out there. Nothing crazy happened, to be clear. I’m just not sure I want to dig into my thoughts and feelings like that. I guess we’ll see, but for the meantime, I guess I did get some writing practice in.

Speaking of which, I’ll give an actual update of sorts today. I’ve previously mentioned that I’m taking an English Composition class and that I did poorly on the first assignment. I’m not stuck on the second assignment, and it’s bumming me out.

I feel a lot more up to writing this one, so it’s not that. The assignment is to write a persuasive letter. It is a letter format, and it being a letter who’s intended audience, however fictional it may be, is someone you know. I don’t think it literally says that in the assignment, but that seems to be allowed if not implicated. Furthermore, I feel that the practice from the first assignment and the advice I’ve received during and since has really set me up to nail this. But the key advice that the instructor is clearly trying to hammer down is that it should be something you are passionate about. I’m passionate about many things, but they are things that I either really don’t want to put out there in a school assignment or that would need much longer than the 900ish word limit would allow.

The suggestions I find when I search online are almost all politics. I am rather passionate about politics, but I’m a bit of a lefty and I’m worried about anything I write in the space right now. I wouldn’t worry about putting those thoughts here on my stupid blog, but I do worry about putting them on a paper that I’ll be graded on. I also worry that in the format available, I’ll feel too penned in and end up truncating my real points down to garbage, and instead advance points that I don’t really care about.

The example that comes to mind is the minimum age. When I come across people talking about it, people tend to fall into two camps. The first is what many consider a sort of Libertarian view, though the term Libertarian doesn’t seem to mean what it’s supposed to. These days I find the average person calling themselves a Libertarian is just a type of Republican who’s clever enough to realize that MAGA people are dickwads. So they’re against the minimum wage because they’ve been convinced by the real Capitalists that actually it’s good that people can be paid under a living wage for a full time job. At least they have a job, right? God, they love that one. And the other side really only has the living wage argument. Not that it’s a bad argument, it should win every time, but when your opponents say they believe in the dignity of labor but don’t actually believe it, then any argument on the material condition of the laborer will always lose. They are the party that claims facts don’t have feelings, then get in their feelings and lie to your face. You’ve got to stop expecting reasonable arguments to work on unreasonable people.

But my view is actually also against the minimum wage, though not the concept of one, and also not in the short term. Mine isn’t a crazy or unpopular view, I don’t think, but it doesn’t get talked about in this way. We do need a minimum wage, but as a short term solution to bridge us to the long term one. I’m in the USA where we do have a minimum wage, but it’s terribly outdated in that it doesn’t really address the problem. I haven’t gone through all of the data, but I get the feeling that it never really did. I’m also in Maryland where, generally if not always, people tend to be paid above the minimum wage, and that we still have poverty should be a clue that this solution isn’t a panacea.

And this is where I start to get into trouble. What I want to talk about next is actual stats, go through the histories of labor and payment, and give a recap of American’s relationship with labor overall. Maybe sprinkle in some passages from The Jungle or whatever. But then I’d pivot to my ideas, which are fairly simple, though they would take some explaining. Well, maybe this is a good subject for a future paper, actually, but not for this one.

Actually, yeah, this little bitch session has been helpful. I won’t be writing about the minimum wage in this paper, but maybe I don’t feel so weird about a similar topic. Let me take another read through a few before I get going on it.

As I wrap up, I do want to acknowledge how often I stop myself short on getting into a topic and then quickly paper over it with a “well maybe another time” type of dismissive wave. I’m planning to follow up on a few of those. I’ve already putting together something for a recent brushed-off topic on my wardrobe refresh, so that’ll probably pop up sooner or later. I suppose we can add my thoughts on labor to that as well. But that’s it for today. Keep on keepin’ on?

Yeah, that’s not gunna be the sign-off.

I don’t know if I need to say this, but I worry that I sounded harsh on my friends in my previous post, and that won’t do.

I had most of this written over the weekend and planned to post yesterday, but I’ve kept myself busier than initially expected. I’ve been stewing over whether or not my last post made it seem like I was mad at my friends – I am not. They are the bees knees. No, I’m worried that I want something they may not. That’s pretty normal stuff, I think, but I can also be a bit intense, which might lead someone to say they are interested in the moment when they really aren’t. I’ve done this, and I bet you can relate. You know, you like the guy fine, but you’re not really lookin’ to join their book club? But they just keep talking about it, and they corner you on the way out of the party, and you’re like, “Yeah dude, I’ll think about it.” and they take that as a definite yes. I worry that I’m taking their polite agreement as an enthusiastic engagement. I’d rather not put them in such a crummy position. I don’t know, I have a lot of social anxieties, which I’m sure is coming as a massive surprise to you, dear reader. Also, at the time of my last post, it had just been a few days and everyone is a busy adult, so I was jumping the gun as it was. Well anyway, before I managed to correct myself, one of them did text back, which is very kind considering. Here’s to hoping neither is aware of this little bitch-session webpage of mine. I’ll see about more politely giving them an out next time we hang, or maybe just not mentioning it.

Actually, I still feel a little hung up on my potential carelessness. I know I mentioned ending other friendships, entire friend groups, in fact, and I don’t want that to sound like some frivolous action. Nor do I want to imply that this one remaining group is perpetually on the cut list. It is not. It is a good group, and I’m happy to still be a part of it. It’s more that the group seems to have been experiencing sort of a collective revival, you know, folks in this specific circle getting back together more regularly. It’s a thing and I’m not the only one to have noticed it. I think I just got a little swept up in the idea of this being an area we could collectively enjoy expanding into, and I suppose it still could, but I gotta cool my jets either way. Now the other thing I mentioned is also true, I do think I need to get out and form some new friendships. I do need to find people I can study with, for one. For another, I have a few esoteric hobbies I’m pretty sure none of my friends share. And then there’s the whole romance thing, which… well, I think I might still just not be ready for. But when I am, I’ll need to be able to talk to strangers without seeming like an alien. But you know, anxieties.

This past Saturday is a good example of that, actually. I’m looking at doing a bit of a wardrobe refresh. Well, maybe more than a bit, to be honest. I’ve got a bunch of clothes that I not only don’t ever wear, but can’t really think of a time when I would. Getting rid of those is easy, but then I’m left with mostly t-shirts and jeans. Now, I love me some t-shirts and jeans, and even if I never wear any of those to work, school, or most social outings, there are still plenty of times when I would wear them. That’s not a problem. I mean, some of those are already in piles that will get paired down and donated, for sure. I’ve got a bunch in sizes either too big and hope to never have to wear again, or so small that it’s incredibly unlikely I’ll ever fit them again. In either case, if I do ever fit those sizes again, I’d still be better off shopping for that time rather than wearing these outdated items. However, I do not anticipate an occasion when wearing a graphic tee with “Cougar Hunter” printed above a saucy silhouette will be appropriate.

Actually, this story is not very good, so instead of a full recap, let’s do a short one. I went to a Nordstrom’s Rack (I should look up that spelling, but I won’t). The line for the registers was exactly in the direction I was headed, was super long, and they all seemed to be looking at me. I was certain they couldn’t be, and looked behind myself to see what crazy thing they must have all been looking at. There was nothing, it was just me. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure it was just because they were bored and in line and here’s some motion or whatever. But my dawgs – this was super uncomfortable for me. Especially when I turned back and watched almost all of them immediately moved to their own “Oh, I wasn’t looking at anything” default stances – pretending to look at a locked phone, fumbling through a bag, or surveying the items they were in line for as if they suddenly weren’t sure about them. Ultra-yikes. It took everything in me to just keep going and pretending that I didn’t see them pretending that they weren’t all just watching me. Very unpleasant.

Anyway, I do want to talk about the styles of clothes I’m looking at, but not today. It’s already late, and I’ve got a celebratory creamsicle to smash. Oh, is there something to celebrate? Yes, that’s right, I had almost forgotten – I finally made it under 250 pounds. And no, this one creamsicle will not bust my diet, so get off my nuts already. Cheers!

It’s Friday and I feel like writing about stuff. Not a story or theme, just a bunch of little things.

I still can’t seem to get under 250 and it’s kinda driving me crazy. Yes, this is a weight loss complaint. There are a few possibilities and my guess at the two most likely are on opposite ends of upsetting. One is that I’m still overeating and under exercising. I don’t see how. I’ve been pretty good at tracking my calories, usually coming in below my target. I’ve also been getting that exercise in, rarely skipping, occasionally getting in extra. But whatever, it’s possible, maybe I’m sleep eating. The other likely possibility reads like some hard-internet-ass-cope, that I’m both losing and gaining at the same time. The loss is the fat and the gain is some muscle. Muscle takes more calories to maintain than fat, so that should speed up my weight loss. I don’t know, it really feels like some wishful thinking. My frustration over this is that I don’t know what, if anything, I can do with this knowledge. I’d add more exercise, but I’m still much weaker than I used to be, and I’m not getting any younger. I can cut a few more calories, but that’s it. I’m already hungry all the time.

I turned in my English Comp. personal narrative essay. It was the second attempt and I was still not totally sure about things, and figured another round of teacher feedback would be great. Well, it turns out you only get two attempts on these, so that was it. And that’s not great, because even though my writing seems much improved, I deeply veered off theme with my thesis. So… that’s not great. But I can learn, slow as I may be. So I’m going to roll up some more good advice to approach the next one. The most relevant advice sticking out now is to start with a plan already setup for the topic/theme and write around that. Basically, it’s time to actually work with the tools available. I think that means my plan is to pick my topic, write my theme, and construct an outline around that. The paper is supposed to be a persuasive letter, so another thing that I don’t really have any desire to write about. I read all of the materials available, including examples, and I’ve got nothing. The only things on my mind that I want to persuade anyone of are way too big. My immediate ideas outside of those are all really trite and I just can’t get excited to write about them. Convince someone to read a book? I guess man, I just don’t care. So it seems like I’ll have to just convince myself I care. I don’t love it.

To continue on writing, I talked about wanting to wrap up some fiction writing and send to a few friends whom had expressed interest. I did that, both of that. I finished the story part, put it in a google doc, and texted the link to my friends. That was Tuesday. It is Friday. They have not replied. And now I remember how I became a lonely hermit.

I used to have a bunch of little friend groups. With my recent problems, I’ve had to end almost all friendships except from this one group that’s mostly made up of close friends from high school. I can’t deal with the others, they just aren’t safe for me anymore. This one is still good, but I think I’m trying to get things out of it that just aren’t there. So I think I now need to do the thing I dream the absolute most, be social with strangers. I need to make new friends, specifically friends that both share my unfulfilled interests and also will participate with me in them.

I’ve got a few projects that I want to undertake, and I’m really thinking about a few of them. Once I think I can turn into a product, and since business is the only thing respected in this shit country, I feel increasingly compelled to do a business. So if I can make this thing and turn it into a product, I can have a business, and that’s that. But the process of turning it into a product means I either have to learn everything from design and manufacturing to finance and marketing. Some of those parts, I actually really do want to learn, and I’m game to learn stuff I don’t care for if it supports the things that I do. I mean, that’s a big part of the school stuff I’m doing right now. But doing so does probably I either need to put the other school stuff on hold, or I need to find more time… and that’s another area that I just don’t have much more to trim.

Looks like I haven’t put in enough work on that brevity problem. I was planning to just do a bunch of little paragraphs, but them paragraphs ain’t lookin’ little. So let’s wrap up for today. I should really make a list of this shit… did I already make a list of this shit?

It sure seems like the population in Florida is going to drop down considerably over the next decade or so. I feel sad for the Floridians that did not vote for this and do not have any means to escape it. What a shit show.

I am currently caught between a number of writing projects, including that college essay I’ve been working on. In the course of a check-in phone call with my Mom last week, she agreed to give my paper a review. She must be pretty bored in her retirement, because she turned that review around in a few hours. The next morning, she gave it another look, and sent me back a second, even more thorough review. Me lacking a cohort, my Mom’s post-retirement boredom is quite the boom.

I’m quite thankful my Mom did give my work a review, because I’m very much in need of the feedback. The feedback provided by the teacher(?) of the course on my first attempt was quite helpful, but I’ve made a lot of changes in my drafts since then. Now I’m working on incorporating both sets of feedback into my work and I keep finding myself stuck in the same half a paragraph and just doing endless rewrites on it. That is not a sustainable process. I’ve got to start looking at other writing techniques. The biggest one I’m both aware of and also not using is The Outline. The course also introduced me to the concept of a “reverse outline”, which I have given a try but don’t think I’ve done correctly. I think I need to take that part of my process more seriously, so maybe that’s something I’ll focus on this week. Or maybe, more likely, I’ll forget and just keep rewriting shit until I give up and roll with the latest version as my second attempt.

I like the idea of an outline and want to use it for my fiction writing, but I gotta be honest… I think I’ve forgotten how to do one. Or maybe I never really knew? I mean, I definitely did this in grade school, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t bad at it. But these days I’m not entirely sure I know what I’m doing. In anything, really, which is sometimes a bit daunting. Odd as it may seem, I actually feel a bit encouraged when recognizing my vast ignorance.

The outline as a tool was last planted in my brain by a friend that is also interested in science fiction writing. Well, I suppose I’m not entirely sure I can count her as a friend just yet. She’s the sister of a friend, but we’ve chatted a fair bit over the past few years, and she’s shared some of her ideas. They’re fascinating and I’m excited to read what she writes. The outline came up because she’s planning on using one to lay out her story before diving into the writing. I’m not sure I’ve quite captured her plan there, so take my recounted with a grain of salt. Anyway, I wonder if it would be rude to ask her to share how she does her outlines.

Along with her is another friend of mine that I’ve known since high school. He’s a great friend, and also someone whom is interested in writing some science fiction. Oh, I guess I’m not entirely sure that his writing interest is actually in this genre, but I seem to recall him mentioning it. Did he? Hmm… Anyway, he’s a much more serious reader than I, and I was delighted to recently find out that writing and the written word more generally are in his top interests. I’d really like to lean on him for my pursuit of poetry, because outside of a few popular poets, I’m really not sure where to start. He, on the other hand, used to write poetry. And his wife backs up his work, so you know, I’d like to see it. I do mostly want to see his work because he’s my friend and I want to see what my friends are up to. But also, yeah, there is poetry that I have liked and while I’m not sure I’ve got poetry writing in me per say, I do think it would help me in all of my writing. It certainly can’t help but improve the lyrics in my shallow music writing. Maybe that’s a class I should line up next. Can I get through some literature and art appreciation more quickly than I’m getting through this English Comp. stuff? I really hope so. Goddamn, this is all taking so very much time.

I think the three of us have all talked about sharing our work with each other, but I don’t know that we’ve really nailed anything down yet. I have personally promised, at least twice now, that I would clean up a story and share it with them… and I haven’t. Just like the essay, I just keep getting stuck on a very small part of it and spinning my wheels on rewrite after rewrite. I guess I don’t mind that as part of the process, but I also feel like I need to put guard rails up around rewrite sessions. Like I need to use the full tool set, not just gesture at the box while dicking around with the same beat up old hammer.

So I’m committed to wrapping up a draft of that this week as well. I had meant to send it out last week and didn’t… not a great look. So I’m going to spend some time on it tonight and if it’s good enough, ship off a draft to them tomorrow. If it’s not done tonight, then I will put all other projects on hold tomorrow until it’s good enough. Then I’ll send over the first volley, ask for feedback, and encourage them to send me theirs.

Well now, that’s starting to feel like a plan. Okay, then it’s settled, that’s what we’re doing. I’ll report back on how that goes later this… hell, I don’t know when, I guess if and when anything comes of it. They, frankly, have day jobs and might be too busy to entertain my bullshit.

But that’s it for today, one more in the books. I should start working on a sign-off. That would be fun.

I used to complain about not having enough to write about. I now have so much to write about, that I don’t have time to write about it. And I’m not even a busy guy. Okay, well, let’s take this as an excuse to work on my brevity. Let’s start by constraining today’s post to two subjects only, and they will both be on the same theme.

First up is on my fitness. I’ve had a lot of soreness while trying to get back in shape. That’s to be expected, but I’m still going to complain about it. I’m so out of shape and so old and every time I lift, or do calisthenics, or just exist, my whole fuckin’ everything starts to hurt. Do you have any idea how annoying it is after spending just fifteen minutes doing leg exercises to then spend the next three days with your entire thigh-and-ass zone be so sore that you make old-man sounds each and every time you stand up? If you do, then you can come into this club. We’re drinkin’ diet sodas and rubbin’ ourselves down with Tiger Balm. No you may not rub down anyone else. My most recent addition to the “taking way too long to recover” team is my lats. I used to be able to do pull-ups, but this situation has me wondering, was I? They sure didn’t hurt this much then. Now I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been cheating at pull-ups. Have I ever actually engaged my lats before now? What are these dang muscles even doing all day? Apparently nothing. Now that I’ve registered that complaint, this check-in is actually about how… well, lately, it hasn’t been that bad, actually. I’m still getting sore, for sure, but it’s no longer making me rearrange parts of my schedule. My general overall recovery time is way quicker, like the next day is pretty rough if I’ve hit it hard, but then I’m fine.

Okay, the second bit is a follow-up on my slowly developing academic… career? Is that how people refer to this sort of thing? I have so many subtopics to get into about this, and many of those are very much top of mind for me. Today I’m going to focus on that Statistics class that I started. After complaining about not really understanding how the specific course I’m taking is meant to be paced, I’ve kinda started to find my own groove with it. And also, it’s really working for me. It’s working so much that it’s starting to build a bridge between other interests of mine, like the mathy bits of Economics. I got really good at spreadsheets in my last job, and had to do some spreadsheet magic and some math that I can now see was basically some diy amateur statistics. This manifests for me in a pair sad realizations, the first being how bad I must have looked at the very many times I got my diy stats wrong. The second comes from the other side, on just how many things I actually got right but then seeing salaries for jobs where this work is recognized and having to contemplate just how much less, how very much less I made for very similar work. Super cool. But this isn’t meant to end on a downer, and that’s all life in the past anyway. Life in the present has me rather enjoying the Stats class, and once again feeling like this scholastic adventure isn’t going to be another waste of time. I think I can do this thing. But I’ve got to speed up. Maybe I can use some stats knowledge to figure out how to better plan and pace my learning.

Alright, that’s it for today and probably until Monday.

I just realized that I’m very inconsistent with how I title these posts. If I ever start writing a regular thing that matters, I should pay attention to that.

I’ve got a midpoint follow-up on my English Comp class. I made another draft trying to follow the feedback from my first attempt, and came up with way too many words and way to little of what I’m pretty sure it needs. The assignment is something like 550-700 words (I don’t have it open), and I’m at like 1,000. So were last I left off, I was thinking a lot about brevity, you, ’cause I’m about 90% too wordy. I spent some time with friends over the weekend and many of them have experience, and also many of them have interest in writing, language, or both. One is actually a teacher. This is a great asset that I rarely think of.

Well I thought of it this time and asked around. The advice I got from them really built on and fleshed out the feedback from the class. So now I’m thinking of basically cutting all but the most baseline of concepts. The attempt I turned in and the rewrite draft I have now are both covering a really big swath of time, and I had to add a character to explain things. I’m going to keep my main subject, a great boss that I am genuinely appreciative of. I’m also going to keep the basic premise, that she helped me develop my career… it just came to me that another angle could be my overall professionalism, so… so maybe we’ll change that, but that will take some more thought.

Like, maybe I should tighten it down to just one promotion or just one big change. Is that the jam? I gotta tighten up. You know what, I think I can work with this. I’m off to school, catch y’all laters.

Fitness first, and it’s a quick one. I’m not going to make my goal of getting below 250 by the end of August. I’m not bothered, but I am going to shift into a more intense plan for a short stint. Given the state of things, this shouldn’t be much more intense, more like getting back to more accurate measuring and logging of my caloric intake and making sure I’m getting enough exercise in. Thankfully I haven’t gone up in weight, and I have been trending generally lower for this month, so this should be fine. I am in search of some more HIIT routines, preferably those aimed at beginners and olds, and without jumping. But as much as I hate them, burpees have been the most effective exercise by far, so maybe it’s time to just start getting used to them again.

Alright, the rest of this is on how things are going for me academically.

I turned in my first paper for the English Comp. class I started on StraighterLine, and it came back with a pretty bad score. For a moment, I was quite upset at this, but that faded. Given it was top of mind, it didn’t take too much effort to remind myself that this is what I wanted. I did, then, briefly scold myself for having the reaction of a petulant child, but sometimes you’re just gonna feel what you’re gonna feel.

I went into the assignment thinking I didn’t really understand the ask. I’d spent some time looking around the site and the materials provided, which helped quite a bit. But at some point, I just couldn’t find anything that felt like a good foot hold. They did put up some examples, one of which is color-coded, and those gave me enough to get started. But I just kept rewriting everything over and over. I’d write a little, read a little, write some more, go to a different subject, come back and try to re-read the materials, then try and revise what I’d written. I felt like I was just running in circles around a cold pool, stalling, when I really just needed to jump in. So with my best understanding of the assignment, I sent off my first attempt, expecting to learn from the feedback. Of course, in the back of my head, there was always the thought that what I’d turn in was perfect, actually, I’d understood it all along, and I can just be done with this and all other classes. I am being a fair bit flippant, of course. But what came back was definitely worse than I was expecting.

Part of the initial frustration was with what I had taken as conflicting objectives of the assignment. The story needs to be pretty short (550 words) and yet completely develop the story and all characters within it. “You can’t develop characters in under 1000 words, what is this nonsense?”, I’d thought.

This is a pretty big takeaway for me, unspoken in the actual feedback. Yes of course you can develop characters, you just need to write more tightly. But I’m quite verbose, a characteristic which is occasionally quite helpful, but which is clearly not an asset in this situation. I do understand and value the utility of brevity, though I seem to have lost my touch for it. This exercise shows me that I probably don’t value it enough, and I certainly need more practice.

The rest of the frustration comes from the lead up to turning in the first attempt. I’d already made a good number of passes on the essay, tweaking here and there. I’d cut a lot of what I’d viewed as character development, trying instead to focus on the story. I also thought that what I was writing explained what things meant to me, but with the feedback, I can see I really didn’t explain that at all. Its more of a recounting of events, and lacking any human touch to how those events effected me. I also kind of didn’t think that’s what an essay was, and maybe that’s part of what has always bothered me about personal essays. The class is making it clear that I have seen this incorrectly, but I am still having trouble shaking the feeling that the personal, deep, important things in life don’t belong in a 500 word essay. Guess I’ll just have to get over that and give it another go.

You know, a part of the feelings come from thinking that I was doing things right to begin with. That I intrinsically understand the ask, put in the work with my revisions, and so I’m good to go. But that’s silly, it’s like a bad emotional habit I’d picked up from scenarios in grade school and a corporate job that I might now describe as “toxic”. It’s like having to deal with the shithead from work who is absolutely certain that anyone working from home is just slacking off at all times, or at least more so than they did in the physical office. In the office, this is the type of manager that acts like a warden, making sure the gen pop always stays busy, never an idle hand. My experience since the 2020 Lockdowns was finding that many daily tasks were actually easier to complete ahead of schedule when you worked from home, including a fair amount of collaborative work. It would force you to communicate clearly with coworkers, even in iterative work, and you’d end up with better work with fewer hurt feelings. Collaborative sessions that could have either been in person meetings or the dreaded Zoom Call were perhaps a bit more complicated, but thems the breaks.

Anyway, it was good to get the feedback. It also introduced me to at least one bit of grammar or syntax (I guess I’m not sure which this counts as) – the Introductory Comma. I must have heard of this before, though I really can’t recall. The way the website is organized is maybe less intuitive than its administrators might think. Following the feedback, I went looking for a section on the site that covers the topic and didn’t find one. But no matter, we live in the information age and I’m already at a computer, so I found some passages, a wiki article, and plenty of videos to fill in my lack of knowledge.

I also have some unrest regarding my Programming / Computer Science stuff. I’m still on the CS50x class, which I think in-person Harvard students do in like 10 weeks. I’m on the third week’s problem set now, and it has been months since I’ve started this program. I am just dragging behind, and I’d like to speed things up, but even if I dropped everything else, I still don’t think I’d be much quicker. As stupid as it must sound, I kind of feel like I actually need another class, maybe two. Some materials that focus more on the logic and problem solving skills related to the class would really help. All of this does reinforce the utility of my plan to do as much in a self-paced environment as I can. I have some subjects I’m quite good at… I presume, I haven’t really hit one yet, come to think of it. But the subjects I’m not great at are a lot easier to stomach when I don’t have extra stress from external deadlines or missed lectures bouncing around my head. It takes me for-fucking-ever to understand anything, so being able to take my time and really settle into a thought has so far been beneficial. However, I do feel I must challenge myself to increase the pace. Not only do I not, in actuality, have infinite time to do this, I’ve also done some of my best work under some stress and with pretty tight deadlines. Less room to either destructively ruminate or just straight-up slack off. So maybe I could do with a smidge more stress.

Lastly is the Stats class. The way the class is organized in the StraighterLine modules has been a little hard for me to get my head around. When you put things into neat little piles the way this program has, I am inclined to think these little piles are meant to be sifted through in a single session. But these sections are pretty damned long. Do I need to read faster? No, I can’t get myself stunlocked on that again. I read as fast as I read, and that’s just how it is.

That drawback aside, the way some of the individual lessons are structured does seem helpful. It feels like the authors read the same studies and advice on learning that I did, and they have the lessons laid out to pull from as much of that wisdom as they can. Like the end of almost every lesson does a summary of what was in it, and the beginning of almost every lesson has a recap on the last lesson. That’s pretty dope. But not everything works for me, like how every so often they try to introduce some mnemonic to help remember terms or sequences. These have basically never worked for me. I’m sure they work for most people, and them not working for me is just a “me” problem, but I get nothing from these. I think their effectiveness is a big part of that time that half the country lost their dang minds and got pretty angry with Science in general, all because Pluto got re-categorized. You guys, it’s a dead rock that too far away for you to ever even visit, why are you so pissed about this? Well, we all learned that our very educated mother something something pizzas, and if the pizzas ain’t there, then I’m not as smart as I think I am! Rah!

I do remember PEMDAS just fine, which I guess implies I actually can do that type of studying… but I’ve never really grasped why we’re excusing our Dear Aunt Sally or whatever. Also, some of these mnemonics are a real stretch, one I read today is something like “FUFFL”? Can’t be that, but you get the point. What am I suppose to do with FUFFL? Get stuffed.

What I’m hoping is that I’m on the wrong side of a learning curve. I don’t know if that’s actually a thing, but I remember times I’ve had it tough with learning before, and usually there had been a learning hilltop to crest. It’s a real hard climb to get up there, but once on top, the rest of the subject is riding the downhill. This isn’t to say easy, and especially not to say that it never gets tough again. But it’s like when you’re in hill country, cresting that first hill reveals all the other hills, which can be disheartening with the wrong attitude. However, if you know that field of hills is going to stretch out before you the second that crest the first one, you don’t see the field as a monster. You can start to plan how to crest each, and with each you work your way through, you get a little more capable. I’m really hoping something like that starts happening, ’cause I am feeling pretty weak right now.

Lastly I’ve been having more thoughts on how to organize all of this. One thing that really helped in my last job was organizing the work around the intended output. Like, some of the work, you just do. You know the work, you’ve been taught a few tasks, shown how to do it, and you’ve since done it a million times. You don’t even think about it, you just complete it, it’s whatever. Upload this, make that phone call, work out these numbers. But as the complexity of my work increased, more and more the pre-work would become a task unto itself – you’d need to spend time mapping out the work you needed to do before you could do the work itself. Sometimes I’d have to spend a few days or even a week just reading stuff to even get my head around what was being asked of me, what tools were available, or what types of solutions would be acceptable.

Should I have learned a lesson from that? Can I, should I organize my studies around the assignments? I have a bit of a distaste for the Self Help genre, but lately I’ve found myself reading a lot in that realm, particularly as it relates to learning. A common point of focus in those works is on autodidacts, and they imply that self-learners pick areas of study around one big idea they want to know, or a problem they want to solve, something they want to discover, or invention they’ve been trying to build. That’s kind of how I’m looking at the classes that I’m choosing, but maybe I need to extend this thought into the subject itself. Is that how that Stats class is organized? But the checkpoints only have three attempts… should I just plan to burn the first attempt on a likely failing grade? Dawg, I do kinda like that idea. Burn the first one to see just how far from the mark I am, gaining the knowledge of which areas need the most focus? Oh snap, that kinda sounds like something, doesn’t it? Hmm. Gotta sleep on that.

Oh! Last thought on the writing stuff. The course very much did offer a rubric, which I promptly ignored. I can, and will, at least partially blame this on the website’s presentation again. The page was all squished and you couldn’t scroll… I couldn’t read the dang thing! The results and feedback included a version that showed the rubric and my specific place in each measured area. It is also a lot more clear and I can actually read it now. So I’ll check that regularly, and see if I can find better versions of the rubric for future assignments.

I’ve started a Statistics class on StraighterLine and I’m rather excited about it.  I’ve also started another English Composition class.  

I’m using that “class” term pretty loosely.  I’ve been asking folks I know with college experience about their time with it, along with study habits and stuff like that. Every response I’ve received has been interesting, but the most helpful have been those in response to more clear, direct questions. The types of questions that imply a more specific response. I had some friends with slightly more recent college experience than others recount some study strategies, which I found particularly helpful.  A big bonus was how they each reinforced strategies independent of each, and how those line up with research backed advice. One takeaway emphasized in the book “A Mind for Numbers” (by Barbara Okaley) is to personalize things. I tried to take the advice from the book seriously, but I haven’t really been able to do much with it. The examples from the book and that I come across from other sources are always so hokey and goofball. Look, I can be a real goofus, and I’m not going to rag on someone else’s cornball humor. As dark as I can sometimes get, I am more commonly just teetering on a barely funny pun, and when I’m all on my lonesome, I’ll often say them aloud and get a good laugh out of the only audience available: me. But the weird, esoteric wordplay they site just never comes to me while I study, and when I try to force it, it does the opposite of help me remember my studies.

But the advice to personalize does sound good, and hearing from family and friends about their own experiences has shown me that they’ve personalized things without trying to be dad-joke factories. So it is possible, and I can reflect on my own well of knowledge and recognize just how many things I’ve internalized have been so mentally enshrined because they were, in one way or another, personal to me. So that’s something, I think, I can work with.

So that’s one of the pushes for starting yet another English Comp. class.  It isn’t that I think the previous courses were bad, and one of them even earned me a voucher to take a test that could save me a fair chunk of tuition money.  However, I don’t feel like I got out of the experience what I wanted from it.  On the subject of the tuition, yeah, I could probably test out for free and that would be great. However, that specific class is often required by schools that students take their version of the class. This definitely stands to reason, less that they think the class is subpar, but that these classes also teach non-universal language rules, like what you might find in a Style Guide, and that those are the rules you are expected to adhere to when writing in other classes at the same college. So I have to keep in mind the expectation that I might have to retake the it, yet again, but this time at the actual school that I attend. I think there will be classes that I just can’t stomach such a blow, but for at least this one, I really don’t mind. It fits right with one of my goals, which is to actually be a better writer. So if I need to retake this class, I could just lay back in the cut for an easy A if needed, but I plan to juice it for every once of experience and feedback I can get.

This falls under some of the most consistent advice being readily given by professors, teaches, and writing coaches, that the writing process is best done iteratively. I have noticed this in my own writing, that it improves with iteration. I think I’ve been seeing this across my other subjects as well, that while there is definitely some property of diminishing returns, it still stands that at least some amount of repetition is helpful.  My writing speed, though, is another place that I struggle. I have a variety of things that slow me down, and I’m pretty sure that each of those would improve with both practice and feedback.  This class will offer me both, and that will still be true if I do need yet another retake.  Plus, it would better help me set up for the next level classes.  I don’t know, I don’t really have a lot of experience in the world of writing outside of production manuals and business communications.

The Stats class is a biggy for me as well.  Similar to the English Comp. classes, I feel I would benefit from the repetition of practicing on the same basic math skills but from a different angle.  I finally feel that I’ve adequately proved to myself I can understand the Algebra expected at my level, and that’s great.  However, I still feel like I need a lot more practice.  And I really don’t want to spend another two months retreading the same classes and same problems, though I do see exactly that as a likelihood just over the horizon.  Though I don’t know by how much, it iss my understanding that there is a fair amount of Algebra in Stats.  That makes sense, and if so, I could use some more examples to work through.  Hopefully some of those will give me some of that personalization.  I’d love to have that internalized understanding of the operations available to me that Math teachers so regularly demonstrate.  I guess it doesn’t need to be that good, but you know, it’s a pretty good example to shoot for.  

Also similar to the English Comp. study, Stats is a subject that I will almost certainly use.  It’s also something that I enjoy, so I would like to explore it to a good enough understanding that I can mess around with the lessons in my everyday life.  The various tastes of Stats that I’ve had throughout my life have already shown me its value.  It’s always possible that I’ll take another regular Joe desk job, and if I do, I want to be better equipped to really excel at it.  I feel like there were a lot of good people in my corner in my last job, people that I like and respect, and I think excelling at whatever I do next is the minimum I can do to repay the kindness.  Speaking of excelling, I got pretty good at Excel in my last job, but that could use some polishing as well, and I’d love to learn some new tricks.

Anyway, I’ll report back on how things go whenever that’s, I don’t know, something I can do I guess.  But that’s it for today.