I saw Beauty and the Beast last night, and it moved me more than I expected. It wasn’t the cinematography, the beautifully decorated sets, Emma Watson, or the hopeful story of love that did it for me. If I’d seen the same movie six months ago, I’d still have felt something, but nothing quite as beautiful as what I felt for an entire hour after seeing this movie. I was so inspired that I came home and immediately wrote the outline to this blog post. I felt this warm, beautiful glow in my chest. A peaceful feeling, like the one you feel right before you easily fall asleep after a particularly rewarding and exhausting day’s work. I’ve changed, somehow. The past several months have probably been the most emotionally engaged of my life. Both my brother and sister have noticed it in their own ways and told me as much. But how did it happen?
Emotional writing is different from intellectual writing. As I’ve moved forward in life, I’ve come to acknowledge a fundamental flaw in my writing ability. It’s been there, masked in the imperceptible shadow of my psyche, for at least a decade. This hidden part of myself reared its head as if born from a button I felt compelled to press as the critical clock of my life spun toward midnight. The only regret I have is that I wish I could have done it sooner. I continue to feel tortured by the unbidden consequences of this action, but I would do it over and over again if it could mean that I would feel complete someday. What it has given me is the realization that emotional writing is only effective if the reader emphasizes with a character’s feelings or situation.
I have managed to avoid being high my entire life. I’ve never even been buzzed. Why would I subject myself to this? I’m obviously insane. When I was younger, I typically did what my parents told me to do if I found it rational. “You shouldn’t drink or smoke,” they said. “Okay!” I said back. And that was that for decades. Little did they expect (and much to their dismay), I kept that habit through college and into my professional life. When people asked me why, I typically said it was for health reasons. At my age and with that excuse, I start to wonder if people think I used to be an alcoholic. “Cranberry juice, please!” When I got my wisdom teeth out, they put me on Vicodin. I called my father and asked when I would start to feel high. His response? “Do you feel any pain?” And of course I responded, “No.” He cheekily replied: “Then you’re high!” Nowadays, I like to tell people that I want to experience the world in its entirety, pain and all. Those discomforting signals, I tell them, let you know that you’re dissatisfied with the world and that you need to make a change. Drinking, in my view, was a self-applied control mechanism to make you docile.
I’ve always struggled with the question of which I’d rather do in my career: would I like to always write new code, or am I happy fixing and extending older code (aka maintenance)? Some people may say it’s never that black and white, “Projects usually have sprinklings of both!”. In my career, though, it has typically followed that trend. So what makes the dichotomy between “writing new code” and “maintaining old” so important in my life as a software engineer, and why am I writing about this?
What makes me so passionate about the words I write? Perhaps it’s a little of the perfectionist in me shining through. I want to create the perfect sentence–one that conveys exactly as much as needed to evoke a thought or emotion, but nothing more. Much in the way that Kurt Vonnegut crafts his sentences, I wish to craft my own. But most of all, I see it as an art form. It’s a creative release for me. Like all things, however, it takes more than a single sentence to create a story. Putting them all together in such a way to make us feel something when we read it is where the real artistry comes in.
When people ask you what you believe in, do you immediately go towards political or religious beliefs? For instance, you could say you are pro-life or pro-choice. You could say you believe in high taxes or low taxes. You could also say you believe in God. According to Google, belief is defined thusly:
**belief - “an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists”
After some recent experiences that I’ve had, I find this definition to be somewhat weak. I feel as though the definition needs to be expanded to encompass something that I can only call “true belief”. I would define it as follows:
When I was thirteen, I had your stereotypical “thirteen year-old” experience. Nowadays, they call that the “hasn’t quite finished puberty” but is “owning you and swearing badly on COD4” phase. Back in the 90s, there were these online forums called bulletin-board systems (or BBS). You wouldn’t connect to them through the Internet, but through a modem and a text-based terminal software. On one such BBS was a game called Legend of the Red Dragon. Now, if you’ve never heard of it (which I assume you haven’t), it was a text based multiplayer RPG. The goal was to get strong enough to fight a dragon. Once someone defeated the dragon ten total times, they won the game and everything reset.
How do you know whether to take a certain action? If you’re anything like me, then you consider all the evidence and alternatives and then try to decide objectively. If you’re not like me, then you probably think about how you feel at the time and then choose the best feeling option. Unfortunately, neither of these methods are guaranteed to lead to the best decision, even in ideal circumstances. Human beings, it turns out, are a complex grouping of experiences and emotions.
My name is Jacob, and I am a procrastinator.
This sounds like an introduction to an AA meeting doesn’t it? To be frank, I feel as though there should be a support group for people like me. The feeling of denial was overwhelming. You find that you’re very productive at work or on other things in your life and all of a sudden, you’re not a procrastinator. You’ve shown yourself that since you can operate normally in one facet of your life, that’s proof that you don’t have a problem.
What forms the foundation of effort in a creative endeavor?
If I make a creative art, is there an obvious vertical hierarchy of capital goods that went into producing the final product? When a physical structure is erected or a technological marvel crafted, there is an obvious assembly of materials, research and engineering needed to turn imagination into realization. However, it seems as though the foundation of creativity is internalized within the mind, and is more of a horizontal rather than vertical process.
I realized something today. When you’re younger, you know that there will always be time in the future to do things.
- Want to write a book? Don’t have to do it now … Don’t know enough anyway, I’ll do that eventually
- Want to learn how to play an instrument?* You can learn that later on when you’re in a different stage of life.*
- Want to visit other countries? *You’ll do that when you have money and vacation time. *
- Want to get married? You’ll meet someone, you’ll see. It will just happen someday.
- Want to get in shape or build your body? I’ll start that eventually, just not today. Too many video games to play.
- Want to get to know your parents & grandparents better? I’ll talk to them in a year or two, once that stuff becomes important to me.
As children, we put off all the things we are powerless to do because we have a good excuse-we don’t have the money, experience or resources to do them. We put off the things we don’t want to do because we just don’t see the point. And, perhaps most importantly, we realize that we have plenty of time to accomplish any goal we please once we’ve decided what to do with our lives.
It dawned on me as I watched Tron that perhaps the right person was sitting in Encom’s EVP chair all along. Now don’t get me wrong. He was a ruthless, immoral bastard by any sense of the archetype. But consider the following:
It started out with this guy who wrote a couple basic video games. Great, right? Then along comes this guy who steals the video games and sets himself in motion to become an EVP. You know the whole saying, good artists copy, great artists steal, yada yada. Then he invents artificial intelligence.
So, I decided to check this movie out again. Believe it or not, I haven’t seen it since I was fairly young. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I actually saw it.
As it played, I realized that as a child I created several conceptions of the people, scenes and events that exist within the movie. As strange as it sounds, I am somehow able to remember the feelings and understanding I had of the movie when I was young.
I was walking through one of the smallest malls I’ve ever been in today. I was on my way back from picking up a new pair of running shoes when I thought to myself, “What the hell, why not.” I doubled back to the entrance and walked around. I saw the familiar assembly of establishments which define human creativity and culture: Claire’s, Victoria’s Secret, Game Stop, etc. All of those stores were quite expected. What I didn’t expect was the mix of feelings I’d have as I walked past this store called Pottery Barn.
I believe that my mind has been compromised.
Not in any way you could possibly imagine, mind you.
I have done some thinking, and came to the conclusion that I am getting old. I find it more and more difficult to pick up new things—it takes a hell of a lot longer. Maybe this is what neuroplasticity is… it’s the fact that when you’re younger, it feels like the days are longer, meaning you have high neuroplasticity, but when you get older, the days are shorter, meaning it has diminished. Your capability to learn new items has decreased literally because it seems as though you have no time to do it.
I have nothing inspiring to say.
I am still alive today.
My memory seems to be getting worse as time goes on. At times I wonder if this is why time seems to be speeding up for me.
I have an 18 mile run tomorrow. I am determined to make this run work. I’m trying a few new things tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens.
I am installing the armv7 cross compiler for the hp touchpad. I want to try to install a linux remote desktop client called ‘rdesktop’ on the touchpad.
The other day I started wondering about the continuing relevancy of Superman (the DC comic hero, not the Übermensch) as an American cultural icon. Historically, the character was first realized in a 1938 comic magazine immediately following the brunt of the Great Depression. He was seen as having a “strong moral compass,” and as “someone who could fight the crooked politicians and businessmen.” The character in itself is fairly generic, representing the desire for power and vanity typical of the male sex. The genre is paralleled with great monetary effect by a focus on the ‘shounen’ demographic in the Japanese anime and manga industry:
So, it appears that the government is going to shut down tomorrow. Apparently, the powers that be have decided they can’t come to an agreement on how to fund the government for the rest of the year.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that not everyone involved with this situation has thought it through. In the end, life must go on and this country must move forward. However, the pending process seems a bit counter-intuitive as eventually someone will have to back down and compromise. Obviously, we’d save a whole lot of time and money if they just did it now instead of two weeks from now.
My head hurts. Today marks the first time in a long time that I’ve had a migraine with visual aura. Just my luck, I suppose—another in a long line of gifts from my parents. There isn’t a lot you can do in this situation to alleviate the pain other than sleep. I guess there’s probably some medication, or even some spiritual meditation that I could do, but I’m a bit too ignorant for those. I’m also fairly anti-medication unless you absolutely need it. So, what do I choose to do instead? Write. Yup, that’s correct. I choose to write when my head feels like I’ve been listening to loud music all day. Though, I suppose I can’t blame it all on my parents. They say that stress can cause all sorts of problems like migraines and headaches. Well that’s a relief; perhaps I’m not actually defective. If you just figured out via implication that I’m under a bit of stress, then two points for you.
Well, it turns out that Feb. 11 was the big day.
After about 18 days of protests, they finally got what they wanted. Mubarak has stepped down, and given control of the country to the “supreme military council”. However, I find it interesting to note how the regime has acted as we got to this point. What follows below is strictly my own recall of the events as they unfolded over the past two weeks. I want to write my thoughts here so that I can remember them for the future.
I’ve been watching fairly intently the recent protests in Egypt. It seemed (for me) that the earlier uprising in Tunisia was out of the blue. Granted, I don’t exactly pay very close attention to domestic issues inside other countries…
Regardless, I find revolution to be an interesting topic. Given that the U.S. was borne from revolution, its citizens tend to take an extreme interest in similar events around the world. We all decry autocratic regimes and call for revolt at the first sounds of corruption or grievance, and then love to point out conspiracies by those in power at the first sounds of revolution. It’s all great fun.
After watching Obama’s SOTU, I was having a discussion with a friend the other day about regulation. Specifically, I wanted to point out to him that I can understand the argument that regulations can be bad in certain cases.
One of the problems is that regulation is slow to change. It’s meant specifically to handle one set of problems. During the evolution of any system, the regulation continues to only solve that one problem. The only way to fix this is to update the regulation. Here is where it got a bit interesting. I compared writing regulation to writing software.
I might as well pose this question, as it has been on my mind for a while now. Sure, the answer is not necessarily cut and dry. However, there are definitely specific characteristics which could be considered necessary.
Of course, we’ve studied ad infinitum governmental aspects. Countries run by monarchies and despots don’t typically last forever, as our history has shown. Tentatively, it appears that we’re on to something with this (actually age-old) concept of democracy. This aside, however, I come to the real purpose for this post, and that is …
Humility. Some say that it is necessary for enlightenment. I wonder though; many people in this world live very one dimensional lives. They go to work, do their jobs, come home, take care of their children, and repeat the next day. They don’t have any money to live out their dreams. Better yet, they may have in fact belonged to families where superfluous thought wasn’t encouraged.
I don’t necessarily see the acquisition of humility in our society encouraged, but I wonder if it would really even make a difference if it was. I think that the need arises when people undergo some forms of mental exercise which benefit from its presence. We always forget though, that “normal” in our world usually involves leading fairly boring lives, where half of it is spent suffering, and the other half trying to make it better.
A homeless man appears with a very interesting skill. He becomes popular on the web, and his story drives companies to try to recruit him. He claims he has been sober for two years. Two weeks after his rise to fame, and employment by some known organizations, he admits to drinking and goes to rehab.
This makes the people who spoke for him, and were inspired about his story, look weak and naive. It definitely hurts the image of the products he promoted.
I have found that I can sort out my thoughts better if I place them in written format. It is so easy to convey incorrect or mistaken thoughts when using the spoken word. I will use this online journal to state my current thoughts.