When I signed up for Hubway in August 2015, I did not anticipate how I would start paying attention to intersection design. In hindsight, at least a minor uptick of interest was inevitable. Knowing how to identify safe intersections tends to come in handy when 'playing car' as I pedal around town.
My post about a traffic intersection in Cambridge back in April reflected this new interest. In thinking over the traffic light pattern at Beacon and Kirkland Streets, I stumbled upon a decent rule of thumb for anyone seeking to improve safety at a stoplight: extend the length of the red light. However, other approaches may work better for different styles of intersection. I recently came across such an example at a traffic signal on the border of Cambridge and Arlington.
The intersection in question is at the meeting of Alewife Brook Parkway and Mass Ave. Each street supports two lanes of traffic in both directions. There is additional lane space for cars preparing a left or right turn. The complexity is eased with specific left or right 'turn only' arrows.
At these traffic lights, the standard pattern is to allow cars facing each other on one street to simultaneously turn left until the arrow goes red. Then, the lights for the same street turn green for cars waiting to go straight or to turn right. Next, the pattern repeats for the other street. Again, the left turns are made first and the cars going straight or turning right go next.
At this particular intersection, however, the order was reversed. Here, cars went straight or turned right first before those waiting to turn left were allowed. When the other street got its turn, this order was repeated.
I'm sure this pattern was not invented in Cambridge (or Arlington) but it was my first-ever exposure to it. It made me wonder why anyone would bother to reverse a well-established traffic pattern. I never heard anyone cite the 'prioritization' of the left turn arrow across two lanes of traffic as a primary factor in a car crash. It never felt dangerous to me when I turned left using such an arrow. Surely, these types of intersections were not considered major traffic issues.
Why fix what isn't broken? The only logical explanation suggests the intersection became safer after the change. Otherwise, the new pattern would be reversed as soon as it became clear the changes were harmful.
I studied the intersection for a short time until I figured it out. The intersection's improved safety came into play if a car made a mistake by running the red light; the new pattern made it less likely a law-abiding car from the other street would accelerate directly in front of it. (1)
Consider a car turning left. In the traditional pattern, the turning car exits the intersection directly in front of the cars waiting just behind the stop line. These waiting cars are the next ones through so, as the light signal changes, all the possible action is condensed into two corners of the intersection. In other words, the cars exiting are leaving the intersection in the very same space the next cars are waiting to accelerate into.
If the car turning left runs the red, the signal will beckon a waiting car into the space the light-running car is turning left into. In this case, the law-abiding driver has the width of the crosswalk to stop in time without getting into a crash.
In the new pattern, the next cars through are on the street the car turning left is entering. These cars are also waiting to go straight (or turn right). However, the stop line where they wait is several car lengths behind where the left-turning car is driving. Even if the left-turning car runs the light and surprises the next drivers through, the chances of a collision are reduced because there is more space between the next cars through and the car running the light while turning left. The action is spaced into four corners of the intersection instead of two. If a law-abiding driver starts moving forward before noticing a car running through a red 'left turn only' arrow, there is half an intersection worth of space to stop without getting into a crash.
By exchanging the order of left turn arrows and standard straight/right green lights, the traffic engineers created a larger safety margin in the event of a driver running the red light. The best part of this method is how the safety margin is increased by shifting the burden of stopping to the cars more likely to stop (those already at rest) and affords them more space to hit the brakes than in the design of the original intersection pattern.
A few weeks later, I recognized the new pattern at another Cambridge intersection. This one is at Mass Ave and Sidney Street in Central Square. Studying the impact at this intersection revealed an additional dimension to the safety aspect I did not consider the first time. Here, it became evident the design is better not just for cars but for pedestrians as well.
I suspect this is because most pedestrians assume they can safely cross an intersection as long as they are walking with traffic. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps pedestrians expect all intersections to mimic those found at major intersections in big cities (which automatically put a walk signal on to align with the direction of traffic). In any event, the end result at this intersection is, once traffic stops on Sidney Street, pedestrians tend to resume their strolls along Mass Ave and start to cross without looking.
The problem is if the left turn arrows come on first, pedestrians are often wandering directly into the path of a turning car. To make matters worse, since the car is using a turn arrow, there is an expectation of an unimpeded driving path. It is also harder for these cars to stop since they are usually picking up speed as they make the left turn.
The new pattern protects pedestrians from making this understandable yet careless mistake. When the flow of traffic on Mass Ave stops, pedestrians will wait at the curb assuming the cars on Sidney Street will go next. When cars turn left from Mass Ave instead, the chances of a pedestrian being in the crosswalk are significantly lower in comparison to the original pattern.
Of course, this intersection (like many others in Cambridge) already relies on the rule of thumb to 'hold the red' I referenced at the start of this post. The signal for pedestrians comes on a couple of seconds before the green light for cars. This is the key to making the new pattern run smoothly. By allowing pedestrians to start crossing first, the potential danger of cars turning right is almost entirely eliminated because a car will see the pedestrians before starting the turn. If the walk signal and the green light came on simultaneously, the result of adjusting the traffic pattern would be a shift rather than a reduction in risk.
So, although there are many safety improvements to be made through improved intersection design and constant reevaluation of accepted patterns, I remain sure the single biggest step forward is to simply hold the red light. Just an extra second or two would be enough at most intersections, I'm sure, to give everyone involved the chance to stop moving, take an extra look, and pass through the intersection once it is safe to do so.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
0. Let's look at the other case: a car about to drive straight...
This case is not as clear cut but the basic principle of having more space to stop applies. In the traditional pattern, the next cars through are waiting to turn left onto the same street the first car is driving on. If a car driving straight runs the red light, the next cars through will either appear directly in front or attempt to turn left onto the same street.
In the new pattern, the next cars through are those turning left onto the cross-street. These cars will cut into the straight-driving car's space. There is not a major change in terms of space here. But there is an advantage, at least for the law-abiding left-turning driver, because the law-breaker is approaching from directly in front. Once the law-breaker crosses the stop line, it becomes obvious that the red light is being run. The left-turning driver can see this and stop (and has half the intersection to do it).
In the traditional pattern, the left-turning driver would have to see the other driver coming in from the left, a relatively unnatural angle compared to looking straight ahead. The danger comes much quicker as well- the law-abiding car would get struck just as soon as the car crosses the stop line.
It occurred to me during this post that, for perhaps the first (and maybe last) time, it would be very helpful if I included an illustration or two in this post. Oh well...
The improvement to safety is less well-defined than the case in the main body of the post. But I think there is a good argument there. Regardless of whether the case in this footnote further improves the intersection, I think the benefits seen from the first example are more than enough to justify changing the traffic pattern.
1. The first draft of this paragraph was a little, er, less balanced...
"The only logical reason I could come up with- as usual- was to protect drivers from their own insatiable greed. In the more common traffic pattern, a car that runs the light while turning left is in the path of the cars on the opposite side waiting to drive forward. Until the full turn is complete, the idiot driver is in danger and temps the law-abiding drivers to demonstrate their understanding of traffic jurisprudence."
How to explain this? Let's see...I'll blame alcohol!
In any event, I think the final version is more, er, concise.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
buying groceries is a riverbank battle
In a post a few months ago, I made a reference to picking a fight. I believe the idea involved how the best way to avoid sure defeat in the river was to make sure the battle happened on the riverbank. A clever image, I suppose (and one that I likely stole from some other source).
Regardless of the quote's origins, I thought about this idea the other day when someone explained how she changed her diet by changing her shopping habits. That's a pretty good example of the idea in action.
I struggled with a similar problem. Snacks never lasted overnight in my apartment. If I bought a big bag of cookies, it was gone within hours of its opening. After several years of trying to control myself- with various levels of success- I simply stopped buying those items.
Regardless of the quote's origins, I thought about this idea the other day when someone explained how she changed her diet by changing her shopping habits. That's a pretty good example of the idea in action.
I struggled with a similar problem. Snacks never lasted overnight in my apartment. If I bought a big bag of cookies, it was gone within hours of its opening. After several years of trying to control myself- with various levels of success- I simply stopped buying those items.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
reading review: the case against sugar
The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes (June 2017)
Taubes's latest book is another well-intended attempt to answer a deceptively simple question- why is obesity so prevalent in modern society? Part of the issue, of course, is the impossibility of answering such a question with the decisiveness required by modern scientific standards. Taubes does the next best thing, I suppose, by simply laying out the case for the reader to consider. As he puts it, the book is written in the manner of a prosecutor laying out an argument before a judge and jury during a hypothetical 'trial' against sugar.
Most of this book is not so much an eye-opener as a head-nodder: I found what he wrote illuminating rather than shocking. He reminds readers how the eight-fold increase in diabetes prevalence within the US coincided with a rise in sugar consumption. The increase was made possible when sugar refining began in the mid-nineteenth century (perhaps the most significant nutritional change to ever occur in human history).
Since then, the way humans have experienced health problems as they age has changed at an unprecedented rate. Sugar as the cause is, again, a hypothesis, but when he cites how immigrant populations to the USA 'catch up' to American lifestyle disease prevalence within two generations or explains why low-sugar yet high-carb diets like those of the traditional Japanese lead to healthy outcomes, it is harder to dismiss the larger suggestion of his work.
Taubes does not explicitly make the case for sugar's addictive properties. However, he points out Coca-Cola's founding purpose: to wean an addicted morphine user off the drug. The idea was to trade an uncontrollable addiction for one more easily managed. This lines up with the experience a friend of mine had while quitting cigarettes on the umpteenth attempt; he simply ate sugar, almost nonstop, for two months.
Of course, all this does not make 'sugar' the answer to the opening question. But it does support the case for sugar being the answer to the question I posed on Wednesday- what will be considered the 'cigarette of our lifetime'? The key properties for the answer are addictiveness and slow-accumulation of harm. Combining what I've read over the years with what I've experienced in my lifetime, I have little remaining doubt that excessive sugar consumption is my answer.
One up: I'm always excited to see an author mirror or echo one of my beliefs. One such feeling I have involves the way medicine will change in my lifetime. I'm pretty certain over the next few decades a highly-personalized 'threshold model' will come to dominate treatment planning.
What do I mean by 'threshold model'? Think about sunburns- the 'dosage' of sunlight resulting in a burn differs for all. Over time, as science better understands the body and the way the outside world impacts it, the type of thinking taking us away from the current 'one size fits all' approach to medicine and instead bringing individual tolerance levels to determine nutritional needs or medical solutions will become the standard of high quality care.
In terms of sugar, if people indeed have unique consumption thresholds, one way we will see this manifest is in delayed disease development. Much like how some burn in the sun after an hour while others can bake for days, folks who eat sugar beyond their threshold might initiate the incubation period for Western diseases ahead of those who stay below their threshold. Such thresholds might turn out to be influenced more heavily by genetics, early childhood, or even womb-environment factors than currently understood.
One down: One of the more ridiculous Onion articles I ever read was titled 'Experts: Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People Away'. The article takes a dig at two generally unstated beliefs, one of which is the obvious (and in this example, race-based) assertion of how people tend to worry about smaller problems closer to home than larger issues impacting communities abroad (1).
The second belief is less direct: the need to defend against infectious outcomes outside our control while doing little to influence the outcomes known to be in our control. Taubes points out how if people became overweight or obese as a result of some infectious disease, the research community would attack the problem in a far different way than it is doing today when it is considered a reflection of individual decision making. Nutrition research has simply not taken on the urgency of disease research, a historical reality I suspect reflects a preference to find new cures while leaving existing solutions under-implemented.
Just saying: I'm not here to sugar-coat (!) anything for you, sweet reader. The reason why I'm writing about all this sugar stuff on my little-read blog is because it remains merely a hypothesis. Such is the state of the science, so to speak, when it comes to the difficult problem of isolating influences on the human body over decades-long periods.
It is simply too difficult using current methods to study nutrition with the robustness required because most diet studies involve two factors that are just as likely to impact the person as the nutrient being studied. The first is a version of the substitution effect: a person who eats less sugar will eat more of something else. So, is the effect from reducing sugar or increasing the replacement?
The second is time. Does a twenty-five year old respond to a diet in the same way a fifty-five year old does? It is unclear (though I suspect it is unlikely). It could also be that different bodies develop 'tolerance' to sugar over time at different rates.
An added factor here is how, though researchers in general are taught to challenge authority and seek truth, in medicine researchers generally give authority an undue weight. From Taubes's point of view, this reality explains some of the field's tendency to start from unproven conclusions as fact instead of seeking to refute those assumptions through experimentation.
Ultimately, Taubes makes a usable conclusion about the matter. The limits of science mean regulation of sugar in a way akin to that of tobacco is unlikely in our lifetimes. This does not excuse readers from gathering information and making the healthiest possible decisions for themselves and their bodies.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Wait, not talking about race?
Trust me, reader, it is killing me not to go more into this. But race is not what this post is about. If I thought of a non-race example, I would have used it here.
While on the topic, might as well share my favorite Onion piece: it is about Boston. Click here for the link.
Taubes's latest book is another well-intended attempt to answer a deceptively simple question- why is obesity so prevalent in modern society? Part of the issue, of course, is the impossibility of answering such a question with the decisiveness required by modern scientific standards. Taubes does the next best thing, I suppose, by simply laying out the case for the reader to consider. As he puts it, the book is written in the manner of a prosecutor laying out an argument before a judge and jury during a hypothetical 'trial' against sugar.
Most of this book is not so much an eye-opener as a head-nodder: I found what he wrote illuminating rather than shocking. He reminds readers how the eight-fold increase in diabetes prevalence within the US coincided with a rise in sugar consumption. The increase was made possible when sugar refining began in the mid-nineteenth century (perhaps the most significant nutritional change to ever occur in human history).
Since then, the way humans have experienced health problems as they age has changed at an unprecedented rate. Sugar as the cause is, again, a hypothesis, but when he cites how immigrant populations to the USA 'catch up' to American lifestyle disease prevalence within two generations or explains why low-sugar yet high-carb diets like those of the traditional Japanese lead to healthy outcomes, it is harder to dismiss the larger suggestion of his work.
Taubes does not explicitly make the case for sugar's addictive properties. However, he points out Coca-Cola's founding purpose: to wean an addicted morphine user off the drug. The idea was to trade an uncontrollable addiction for one more easily managed. This lines up with the experience a friend of mine had while quitting cigarettes on the umpteenth attempt; he simply ate sugar, almost nonstop, for two months.
Of course, all this does not make 'sugar' the answer to the opening question. But it does support the case for sugar being the answer to the question I posed on Wednesday- what will be considered the 'cigarette of our lifetime'? The key properties for the answer are addictiveness and slow-accumulation of harm. Combining what I've read over the years with what I've experienced in my lifetime, I have little remaining doubt that excessive sugar consumption is my answer.
One up: I'm always excited to see an author mirror or echo one of my beliefs. One such feeling I have involves the way medicine will change in my lifetime. I'm pretty certain over the next few decades a highly-personalized 'threshold model' will come to dominate treatment planning.
What do I mean by 'threshold model'? Think about sunburns- the 'dosage' of sunlight resulting in a burn differs for all. Over time, as science better understands the body and the way the outside world impacts it, the type of thinking taking us away from the current 'one size fits all' approach to medicine and instead bringing individual tolerance levels to determine nutritional needs or medical solutions will become the standard of high quality care.
In terms of sugar, if people indeed have unique consumption thresholds, one way we will see this manifest is in delayed disease development. Much like how some burn in the sun after an hour while others can bake for days, folks who eat sugar beyond their threshold might initiate the incubation period for Western diseases ahead of those who stay below their threshold. Such thresholds might turn out to be influenced more heavily by genetics, early childhood, or even womb-environment factors than currently understood.
One down: One of the more ridiculous Onion articles I ever read was titled 'Experts: Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People Away'. The article takes a dig at two generally unstated beliefs, one of which is the obvious (and in this example, race-based) assertion of how people tend to worry about smaller problems closer to home than larger issues impacting communities abroad (1).
The second belief is less direct: the need to defend against infectious outcomes outside our control while doing little to influence the outcomes known to be in our control. Taubes points out how if people became overweight or obese as a result of some infectious disease, the research community would attack the problem in a far different way than it is doing today when it is considered a reflection of individual decision making. Nutrition research has simply not taken on the urgency of disease research, a historical reality I suspect reflects a preference to find new cures while leaving existing solutions under-implemented.
Just saying: I'm not here to sugar-coat (!) anything for you, sweet reader. The reason why I'm writing about all this sugar stuff on my little-read blog is because it remains merely a hypothesis. Such is the state of the science, so to speak, when it comes to the difficult problem of isolating influences on the human body over decades-long periods.
It is simply too difficult using current methods to study nutrition with the robustness required because most diet studies involve two factors that are just as likely to impact the person as the nutrient being studied. The first is a version of the substitution effect: a person who eats less sugar will eat more of something else. So, is the effect from reducing sugar or increasing the replacement?
The second is time. Does a twenty-five year old respond to a diet in the same way a fifty-five year old does? It is unclear (though I suspect it is unlikely). It could also be that different bodies develop 'tolerance' to sugar over time at different rates.
An added factor here is how, though researchers in general are taught to challenge authority and seek truth, in medicine researchers generally give authority an undue weight. From Taubes's point of view, this reality explains some of the field's tendency to start from unproven conclusions as fact instead of seeking to refute those assumptions through experimentation.
Ultimately, Taubes makes a usable conclusion about the matter. The limits of science mean regulation of sugar in a way akin to that of tobacco is unlikely in our lifetimes. This does not excuse readers from gathering information and making the healthiest possible decisions for themselves and their bodies.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Wait, not talking about race?
Trust me, reader, it is killing me not to go more into this. But race is not what this post is about. If I thought of a non-race example, I would have used it here.
While on the topic, might as well share my favorite Onion piece: it is about Boston. Click here for the link.
Friday, August 25, 2017
one-way streets: a (pre) theory
I've started to note a phenomenon of late where, though the question at hand is generally
'unanswerable', the trend is for some people to point one way while no one
points back in the other. I am working on this theory, which for now
I'll call 'the one-way streets' theory, because I think there is
something to it. If everyone feels one way about something and there is
no direct opposition to the idea, it surely indicates a deeper truth
waiting to reveal itself, right?
My two applications of this pre-theory at the moment:
Ichiro Suzuki, a longtime favorite of mine, is another example. All Ichiro seemed to do in his career was slap infield singles, throw out runners with his laser-beam arm, and stretch. I went to a game one time and sat a couple hundred feet away from him. I had a clear view of him stretching throughout the nine innings he stood in right field. Ichiro was rarely injured over almost two decades of elite performance.
I've always been relatively flexible (1). But of course, measuring myself against others is problematic, especially if my peers are all inflexible. Low performers often fool themselves into considering themselves high performers simply by comparing themselves to even lower performers. I might also not be taking into account my own athletic needs. Just as not too many people I know consider running twenty miles a week 'low mileage', what is flexible for my peers might not count as flexible for me.
The evidence against my flexibility was always there whenever I cared to look. I injured my IT band in 2011, a hip-based strength imbalance injury manifesting with a sharp stabbing and pulling sensation through the outside of the knee. Unlike most of my injuries, this was literally impossible to run through. My recovery, still ongoing, has covered many years and involved many false dawns.
I recently added foot pain to my injury list. The Morton's neuroma in my left foot was barely tolerable to run through and showed no signs of abating. On very bad days, it reduced my walking speed to a crawling pace. I tried a lot of different solutions with no success.
Both of these injuries have shown significant recovery progress since I resumed a stretching program in early May. My twice-daily routine is based around three components: regular stretching of major muscle groups, targeted stretching to address specific injuries, and strategic stretching to counteract lifestyle induced stiffness.
The first group is familiar to anyone who took gym class in junior high school. The three age-old leg stretches address the main running muscle groups: calves, quads, and hamstrings.
To deal with the injuries to my hip and foot, I simply found stretches for the hip and foot. Currently, I do a hip-flexor stretch for the left side and stretch my toes and foot around the neuroma injury. Since starting both of these stretches, the pain in these injured areas have steadily subsided (2).
Finally, I looked up stretches designed specifically to mitigate common lifestyle-based tightness. For me, a big one is sitting. I often sit for two hours at a time. I found a yoga pose (with many variations) called 'the pigeon'. This stretch is designed to release the hip and core muscles which often bunch together during prolonged sitting. These stretches do not address any current injury but, again, the idea is preventative. By proactively fighting against my lifestyle's tendency to stiffness, I hope to avoid creating the flexibility imbalances which will manifest unexpectedly through an overuse injury during a future run.
In addition to my current routine, I also have an eye out for muscle groups where stretching one side is more difficult than the other. In these cases, I would only stretch the more difficult (or 'stiffer') side. The idea is to address flexibility imbalances today to prevent future injuries caused or accelerated by running on unevenly working muscles.
Combining the entire routine together gives me a maintenance program I do once in the morning and once in the evening. It keeps pressure off my joints, helps my muscles recover from running, and (much to my surprise) has had therapeutic effects on long-nagging injury problems. It's the best I can do in an area where the consensus on exactly what to do is murky yet the general idea about the best practice points in only one direction.
And so far, the results have been very positive. Other than at least two of the most successful athletes in world history, who knew?
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. So what was it Stephen King said about description?
I do think I was flexible, or at least flexible enough, and I count my lack of injury problems as sufficient evidence. At the other end are examples of those who I never considered flexible. These included basketball teammates who seemed to pull muscles every week or always had trouble making off-balance shots.
These days, I also always note the older folks who have trouble moving around. They all seem to share a lack of flexibility and overcompensate for tight muscles by placing undue stress on their bones, joints, or ligaments.
By the way, there is also less, er, official support for my conclusion. One former basketball coach once remarked that if I were just a little more flexible, I could 'pleasure myself', a remark serving as a fine testament to my overall flexibility and perhaps evidence of my relative superiority to others in this area. Most importantly, though, it serves as a reminder to us all regarding the extent to which humor matters when stating something semi-controversial.
2. Not quite a one-way street, but close...
The key idea was to try a self-massage technique. Like with the examples above, there is a 'one way street' with self-massage: some swear by it and others are indifferent- the notable feature is a lack of direct opponents. The suggestions are, again, traveling one-way.
I used a technique called trigger-point. The idea is to isolate pressure points in the muscle that respond painfully to pressure. The pain level should be a six or seven out of ten; any higher and it is a real injury requiring a doctor, any lower and it is merely soreness. Rubbing or pressing on the point is the key to the technique. The idea is to relieve bunched portions of the muscle by using low-grade pressure from the hands and fingers.
My two applications of this pre-theory at the moment:
1. Stretching
-No one knows how to optimally stretch; no one ever says 'never stretch'
2. Sugar consumption
-No one knows the right amount; no one ever says 'eat only sugar'The stretching piece is really interesting to me. Utilizing a technique I mentioned in my reading review for The Case Against Sugar to make a case for reducing sugar consumption, I looked for top athletes who value stretching and studied their results. Tom Brady, once more, appears on the list. His recent workout routine is getting a lot of attention thanks to its unusual result (keeping a forty-year old man at the top of a profession traditionally limited to far younger players).
Ichiro Suzuki, a longtime favorite of mine, is another example. All Ichiro seemed to do in his career was slap infield singles, throw out runners with his laser-beam arm, and stretch. I went to a game one time and sat a couple hundred feet away from him. I had a clear view of him stretching throughout the nine innings he stood in right field. Ichiro was rarely injured over almost two decades of elite performance.
I've always been relatively flexible (1). But of course, measuring myself against others is problematic, especially if my peers are all inflexible. Low performers often fool themselves into considering themselves high performers simply by comparing themselves to even lower performers. I might also not be taking into account my own athletic needs. Just as not too many people I know consider running twenty miles a week 'low mileage', what is flexible for my peers might not count as flexible for me.
The evidence against my flexibility was always there whenever I cared to look. I injured my IT band in 2011, a hip-based strength imbalance injury manifesting with a sharp stabbing and pulling sensation through the outside of the knee. Unlike most of my injuries, this was literally impossible to run through. My recovery, still ongoing, has covered many years and involved many false dawns.
I recently added foot pain to my injury list. The Morton's neuroma in my left foot was barely tolerable to run through and showed no signs of abating. On very bad days, it reduced my walking speed to a crawling pace. I tried a lot of different solutions with no success.
Both of these injuries have shown significant recovery progress since I resumed a stretching program in early May. My twice-daily routine is based around three components: regular stretching of major muscle groups, targeted stretching to address specific injuries, and strategic stretching to counteract lifestyle induced stiffness.
The first group is familiar to anyone who took gym class in junior high school. The three age-old leg stretches address the main running muscle groups: calves, quads, and hamstrings.
To deal with the injuries to my hip and foot, I simply found stretches for the hip and foot. Currently, I do a hip-flexor stretch for the left side and stretch my toes and foot around the neuroma injury. Since starting both of these stretches, the pain in these injured areas have steadily subsided (2).
Finally, I looked up stretches designed specifically to mitigate common lifestyle-based tightness. For me, a big one is sitting. I often sit for two hours at a time. I found a yoga pose (with many variations) called 'the pigeon'. This stretch is designed to release the hip and core muscles which often bunch together during prolonged sitting. These stretches do not address any current injury but, again, the idea is preventative. By proactively fighting against my lifestyle's tendency to stiffness, I hope to avoid creating the flexibility imbalances which will manifest unexpectedly through an overuse injury during a future run.
In addition to my current routine, I also have an eye out for muscle groups where stretching one side is more difficult than the other. In these cases, I would only stretch the more difficult (or 'stiffer') side. The idea is to address flexibility imbalances today to prevent future injuries caused or accelerated by running on unevenly working muscles.
Combining the entire routine together gives me a maintenance program I do once in the morning and once in the evening. It keeps pressure off my joints, helps my muscles recover from running, and (much to my surprise) has had therapeutic effects on long-nagging injury problems. It's the best I can do in an area where the consensus on exactly what to do is murky yet the general idea about the best practice points in only one direction.
And so far, the results have been very positive. Other than at least two of the most successful athletes in world history, who knew?
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. So what was it Stephen King said about description?
I do think I was flexible, or at least flexible enough, and I count my lack of injury problems as sufficient evidence. At the other end are examples of those who I never considered flexible. These included basketball teammates who seemed to pull muscles every week or always had trouble making off-balance shots.
These days, I also always note the older folks who have trouble moving around. They all seem to share a lack of flexibility and overcompensate for tight muscles by placing undue stress on their bones, joints, or ligaments.
By the way, there is also less, er, official support for my conclusion. One former basketball coach once remarked that if I were just a little more flexible, I could 'pleasure myself', a remark serving as a fine testament to my overall flexibility and perhaps evidence of my relative superiority to others in this area. Most importantly, though, it serves as a reminder to us all regarding the extent to which humor matters when stating something semi-controversial.
2. Not quite a one-way street, but close...
The key idea was to try a self-massage technique. Like with the examples above, there is a 'one way street' with self-massage: some swear by it and others are indifferent- the notable feature is a lack of direct opponents. The suggestions are, again, traveling one-way.
I used a technique called trigger-point. The idea is to isolate pressure points in the muscle that respond painfully to pressure. The pain level should be a six or seven out of ten; any higher and it is a real injury requiring a doctor, any lower and it is merely soreness. Rubbing or pressing on the point is the key to the technique. The idea is to relieve bunched portions of the muscle by using low-grade pressure from the hands and fingers.
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
this generation's cigarettes
One thing I often hear about new technologies, products, or lifestyles is how we might learn someday about the deadly effects of their overuse. In such conversations, the phrase "this generation's cigarettes" is often applied. The idea is that, like with cigarette smoking decades ago, people today will continue on, blissfully unaware of harm, until a stunning revelation will turn the tide of public opinion and ostracize anyone who continues doing the harmful activity.
Of course, there is no consensus winner for this category. If there was, no one would be talking about it (though I might still write about it as if nobody were talking about it). The other day, I Googled the phrase "this generation's cigarettes" just to see where the Good Old Interwebs stood on the matter.
The first hit was an article from The Atlantic about cellphones. The second echoed the same sentiment. The third was a Reddit thread, the top comments including vaping, soda, and pornography. The fourth result returned to cellphones (1).
Of those top hits, only one-third of the third result hinted at what I am almost certain is the correct answer:pornogrphy sugar, via perhaps its most effective delivery vehicle, soda.
My view was undoubtedly strengthened by reading books by Gary Taubes. His Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat were two of the most important books I read in my first couple of years after college. Each book, though sometimes laborious reading, described a basic chain of events he suspected as a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic in modern societies.
First, excessive carbohydrate consumption promotes unnaturally elevated insulin levels as the body attempts to process the high sugar content of the food. If the body is kept in this state over a prolonged time, eventually the body's mechanisms for converting food energy into fuel are permanently disrupted. The results is, among other things, a person primed to put on weight anytime excess carbohydrates are consumed (2).
I must stress how these books were not exactly scientific. Rather, they were an approach to answering questions not easily resolved through established scientific methods. Taubes simply tried to find alternate explanations for some of what he observed in the real world: the way many struggle to control their weight, the increased prevalence of 'adult' disorders in children or infants, the explosion of late-life metabolic diseases in Western cultures. His writing merely described his theories but I found his explanations sensible enough at the time of reading to pay greater attention to matters of nutrition and lifestyle in the following years.
One thing I started to notice was how the advocates of a low-sugar (or no-sugar) lifestyle were not being balanced out by anyone on the opposite end. That is, for each 'avoid sugar' advocate, there was a noticeable absence of an 'eat more sugar' counterpart. The 'pro-sugar' side seemed interested in solely maintaining the status quo. If the attitude toward sugar was to change in the future, the trend seemed to point in only one direction. And like with any one-way street, the options are to stop or go forward. There is no place for turning back.
I was surprised when I first noted this. Surely, given how much money a company selling sugar-based products could make by inspiring even more sugar consumption, there would be hordes of salesmen demanding we eat more sugar. The lack of anyone doing so surprised me. When I later read about how many products hid their added sugar content from consumers, I wondered further: why hide an ingredient unless the producer knows the ingredient is unhealthy?
I also noted the positive results top athletes gained after cutting out sugar. Steve Nash, a professional basketball player, simply stopped eating sugar as he hit his early thirties. Perhaps by coincidence, he extended the elite performance of his career beyond what most experts predicted. Other athletes, like Tom Brady or Novak Djokovic, have seen surprising results after reducing or eliminating sugar intake (indirectly, by adopting diets which happen not to include it).
As the old saying goes, 'reading two books and observing some anecdotal evidence via the ESPN app are good enough for me'. I started my own self-experimentation with sugar reduction during this time between 2011 to 2015. I lost about twenty pounds which, again, I must attribute to a host of factors. But I'm certain reducing sugar intake played some role in the weight loss.
The most notable result of my experiment was how reducing sugar consumption seemed to alter my appetite. I used to eat fairly often, about three to six times a day- snacks, small meals, and big meals. I found no need to do so when I reduced my sugar intake. The idea was reinforced every morning after I ate a high sugar meal or dessert; often, I woke to find my stomach grumbling with hunger. This contrasted with my nonexistent appetite the morning after a vegetable meal.
During this time, I also started fasting. I got into this by accident. Every once in a while, I would stop to think around dinnertime and realize I had yet to eat at all during the day. Prior to my diet change, I never could have made it past lunch. Once I realized I was capable of fasting, I started skipping meals with regularity and was surprised by how much better I felt on these days.
My experience with appetite fluctuations loosely supports Taubes's insight about how the 'calories-in, calories-out' explanation for weight accumulation is notably missing any mention of how hormones and enzymes alter the body's energy processing functions. When I think back to infancy and puberty, my biggest periods of weight gain, I identify not an excess of calories consumed but a sudden surge of new growth hormones. And to get back into the sports examples, athletes busted for performance-enhancing drugs seem to always stimulate their muscular growth through hormone-altering substances.
I picked out Taubes's most recent book, The Case Against Sugar, just a couple of months ago. I was not sure if the book would be more of the same. In hindsight, I think I read it at the perfect time for me. My grocery shopping and workout routines were pretty fixed and I was perfectly happy with my approach to both. At the same time, I was seeking out more information than ever on a scattering of nutritional topics including optimal muscle recovery, the effects of fasting, and the impact of sunlight on mood. I was primed, so to speak, to learn more about healthy living and use any new information to reconsider my daily habits. I'll write more about some of these details in my reading review on Sunday.
Until then, thanks for reading.
Tim
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. But what was I expecting?
The other results in the top ten were about variations of cigarettes. I suspect this result was influenced by using the word 'cigarettes' in the search term.
Notably missing was sitting, the conjecture I hear every once in a while. I'm not very convinced by the arguments and I tend to almost automatically roll my eyes anytime I hear discussion about 'the dangers' of sitting.
Though I understand sitting is not necessarily the healthiest of all pursuits, I think the analogy to sitting is careless. Humans have been sitting for a long, long time, mostly because a lot of things we do are simply better accomplished by sitting. Human have not stood around with flaming sticks dangling from their lips because this does not optimize performance in any field.
To put it another way, I do not think the effects of prolonged sitting compare well with the lung cancers, throat problems, or diseased mouths lifelong cigarette smokers were tricked into inflicting upon themselves.
2. Life changing?
Not quite. Like I've done recently with books about writing, I took Taubes's work and wove them into a larger chorus of nutrition voices I was reading at the time. I did, however, get away from some of my basic principles I carried with me out of college: a preference to eat small meals more frequently, 'carbo-loading' before workouts, and buying pasta or bread.
Of course, there is no consensus winner for this category. If there was, no one would be talking about it (though I might still write about it as if nobody were talking about it). The other day, I Googled the phrase "this generation's cigarettes" just to see where the Good Old Interwebs stood on the matter.
The first hit was an article from The Atlantic about cellphones. The second echoed the same sentiment. The third was a Reddit thread, the top comments including vaping, soda, and pornography. The fourth result returned to cellphones (1).
Of those top hits, only one-third of the third result hinted at what I am almost certain is the correct answer:
My view was undoubtedly strengthened by reading books by Gary Taubes. His Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat were two of the most important books I read in my first couple of years after college. Each book, though sometimes laborious reading, described a basic chain of events he suspected as a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic in modern societies.
First, excessive carbohydrate consumption promotes unnaturally elevated insulin levels as the body attempts to process the high sugar content of the food. If the body is kept in this state over a prolonged time, eventually the body's mechanisms for converting food energy into fuel are permanently disrupted. The results is, among other things, a person primed to put on weight anytime excess carbohydrates are consumed (2).
I must stress how these books were not exactly scientific. Rather, they were an approach to answering questions not easily resolved through established scientific methods. Taubes simply tried to find alternate explanations for some of what he observed in the real world: the way many struggle to control their weight, the increased prevalence of 'adult' disorders in children or infants, the explosion of late-life metabolic diseases in Western cultures. His writing merely described his theories but I found his explanations sensible enough at the time of reading to pay greater attention to matters of nutrition and lifestyle in the following years.
One thing I started to notice was how the advocates of a low-sugar (or no-sugar) lifestyle were not being balanced out by anyone on the opposite end. That is, for each 'avoid sugar' advocate, there was a noticeable absence of an 'eat more sugar' counterpart. The 'pro-sugar' side seemed interested in solely maintaining the status quo. If the attitude toward sugar was to change in the future, the trend seemed to point in only one direction. And like with any one-way street, the options are to stop or go forward. There is no place for turning back.
I was surprised when I first noted this. Surely, given how much money a company selling sugar-based products could make by inspiring even more sugar consumption, there would be hordes of salesmen demanding we eat more sugar. The lack of anyone doing so surprised me. When I later read about how many products hid their added sugar content from consumers, I wondered further: why hide an ingredient unless the producer knows the ingredient is unhealthy?
I also noted the positive results top athletes gained after cutting out sugar. Steve Nash, a professional basketball player, simply stopped eating sugar as he hit his early thirties. Perhaps by coincidence, he extended the elite performance of his career beyond what most experts predicted. Other athletes, like Tom Brady or Novak Djokovic, have seen surprising results after reducing or eliminating sugar intake (indirectly, by adopting diets which happen not to include it).
As the old saying goes, 'reading two books and observing some anecdotal evidence via the ESPN app are good enough for me'. I started my own self-experimentation with sugar reduction during this time between 2011 to 2015. I lost about twenty pounds which, again, I must attribute to a host of factors. But I'm certain reducing sugar intake played some role in the weight loss.
The most notable result of my experiment was how reducing sugar consumption seemed to alter my appetite. I used to eat fairly often, about three to six times a day- snacks, small meals, and big meals. I found no need to do so when I reduced my sugar intake. The idea was reinforced every morning after I ate a high sugar meal or dessert; often, I woke to find my stomach grumbling with hunger. This contrasted with my nonexistent appetite the morning after a vegetable meal.
During this time, I also started fasting. I got into this by accident. Every once in a while, I would stop to think around dinnertime and realize I had yet to eat at all during the day. Prior to my diet change, I never could have made it past lunch. Once I realized I was capable of fasting, I started skipping meals with regularity and was surprised by how much better I felt on these days.
My experience with appetite fluctuations loosely supports Taubes's insight about how the 'calories-in, calories-out' explanation for weight accumulation is notably missing any mention of how hormones and enzymes alter the body's energy processing functions. When I think back to infancy and puberty, my biggest periods of weight gain, I identify not an excess of calories consumed but a sudden surge of new growth hormones. And to get back into the sports examples, athletes busted for performance-enhancing drugs seem to always stimulate their muscular growth through hormone-altering substances.
I picked out Taubes's most recent book, The Case Against Sugar, just a couple of months ago. I was not sure if the book would be more of the same. In hindsight, I think I read it at the perfect time for me. My grocery shopping and workout routines were pretty fixed and I was perfectly happy with my approach to both. At the same time, I was seeking out more information than ever on a scattering of nutritional topics including optimal muscle recovery, the effects of fasting, and the impact of sunlight on mood. I was primed, so to speak, to learn more about healthy living and use any new information to reconsider my daily habits. I'll write more about some of these details in my reading review on Sunday.
Until then, thanks for reading.
Tim
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. But what was I expecting?
The other results in the top ten were about variations of cigarettes. I suspect this result was influenced by using the word 'cigarettes' in the search term.
Notably missing was sitting, the conjecture I hear every once in a while. I'm not very convinced by the arguments and I tend to almost automatically roll my eyes anytime I hear discussion about 'the dangers' of sitting.
Though I understand sitting is not necessarily the healthiest of all pursuits, I think the analogy to sitting is careless. Humans have been sitting for a long, long time, mostly because a lot of things we do are simply better accomplished by sitting. Human have not stood around with flaming sticks dangling from their lips because this does not optimize performance in any field.
To put it another way, I do not think the effects of prolonged sitting compare well with the lung cancers, throat problems, or diseased mouths lifelong cigarette smokers were tricked into inflicting upon themselves.
2. Life changing?
Not quite. Like I've done recently with books about writing, I took Taubes's work and wove them into a larger chorus of nutrition voices I was reading at the time. I did, however, get away from some of my basic principles I carried with me out of college: a preference to eat small meals more frequently, 'carbo-loading' before workouts, and buying pasta or bread.
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
let's add some fractions
Remember when I was reviewing feminist books and talking about 'relating across differences' without really explaining what that meant? Yeah, me too. I still don't quite know what I was talking about (though I do believe in the idea, 100%).
I returned to this thought recently when I was talking about adding fractions (a topic I discuss at least once a week, I assure you). Adding fractions is often very easy. If the fractions share common roots- like 2/5 and 1/5- then adding them up is really simple (spoiler alert: 3/5).
But when the fractions come from different foundations, the relationships are not so obvious. How to add 2/3 and 4/5? Uh, 6/8? (Spoiler alert: incorrect.)
The only way to add these is to view the problem with a wider lens. Each fraction must expand its base, so to speak, until common ground is found with the other. Without growth, it is impossible to relate across differences.
Thus, 2/3 becomes 6/15 and 4/5 becomes 12/15. Once that common ground is established, the two can come together (spoiler alert: 18/15).
Does life work in the same way? Not always. But the technique applies in a general way- to relate to those from a different background, be ready to grow and expand. Eventually, you'll get big enough to find what you share with others.
I returned to this thought recently when I was talking about adding fractions (a topic I discuss at least once a week, I assure you). Adding fractions is often very easy. If the fractions share common roots- like 2/5 and 1/5- then adding them up is really simple (spoiler alert: 3/5).
But when the fractions come from different foundations, the relationships are not so obvious. How to add 2/3 and 4/5? Uh, 6/8? (Spoiler alert: incorrect.)
The only way to add these is to view the problem with a wider lens. Each fraction must expand its base, so to speak, until common ground is found with the other. Without growth, it is impossible to relate across differences.
Thus, 2/3 becomes 6/15 and 4/5 becomes 12/15. Once that common ground is established, the two can come together (spoiler alert: 18/15).
Does life work in the same way? Not always. But the technique applies in a general way- to relate to those from a different background, be ready to grow and expand. Eventually, you'll get big enough to find what you share with others.
Sunday, August 20, 2017
reading review: the mother of all questions
The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit (June 2017)
In one of her final essays, Solnit defines a great book as one which lifts people out of their preconceived identities and forces them to extend themselves out into the world. After applying this definition to her collection, I'm ready to conclude The Mother of All Questions was a great book.
One way she accomplishes this is by consistently describing the problems of misogyny in ways an individual can address. Rather than lamenting institutional forces, getting lost in the details of history, or focusing on the actions of specific high-profile individuals, she writes plainly and forcefully about simpler everyday problems a reader can begin addressing immediately. Solnit's solutions to these problems include calling things by their proper names, encouraging witnesses to step forward and speak the truth, and rejecting narratives grouping people into easily-digestible categories.
Silence is one of the ideas Solnit returns to time and again. A person without a voice does not participate in the storytelling process required of a shared humanity. For Solnit, giving another a voice to speak up, be heard, and be counted is among the most important gifts one person can give another.
Perhaps the best way to give a voice is to focus on every artist's most vital task: identifying the truth. There are so many examples of half-truths out there; that domestic violence (often perpetrated by men) is a "women's issue", that movies where women do not speak to each other (unless about men) are 'mainstream films', that women who are paid less for their work (often due to salaries set by men) are being granted 'equal opportunity' in the workplace. At what point will certain colleges (those where women are at a far greater risk of sexual assault than men) admit 'coeducational' is more philosophy than practice at their institutions?
Just by taking the time to describe and name what she sees, Solnit equips readers old and new with the vocabulary to describe the truth and speak on the behalf of the silent. Any person inspired by her writing can do this. Over many hundreds and thousands and millions of readers, these small daily actions will accumulate to push forward the movement towards equality and inclusion she has already contributed so much to through her lifetime of work.
In one of her final essays, Solnit defines a great book as one which lifts people out of their preconceived identities and forces them to extend themselves out into the world. After applying this definition to her collection, I'm ready to conclude The Mother of All Questions was a great book.
One way she accomplishes this is by consistently describing the problems of misogyny in ways an individual can address. Rather than lamenting institutional forces, getting lost in the details of history, or focusing on the actions of specific high-profile individuals, she writes plainly and forcefully about simpler everyday problems a reader can begin addressing immediately. Solnit's solutions to these problems include calling things by their proper names, encouraging witnesses to step forward and speak the truth, and rejecting narratives grouping people into easily-digestible categories.
Silence is one of the ideas Solnit returns to time and again. A person without a voice does not participate in the storytelling process required of a shared humanity. For Solnit, giving another a voice to speak up, be heard, and be counted is among the most important gifts one person can give another.
Perhaps the best way to give a voice is to focus on every artist's most vital task: identifying the truth. There are so many examples of half-truths out there; that domestic violence (often perpetrated by men) is a "women's issue", that movies where women do not speak to each other (unless about men) are 'mainstream films', that women who are paid less for their work (often due to salaries set by men) are being granted 'equal opportunity' in the workplace. At what point will certain colleges (those where women are at a far greater risk of sexual assault than men) admit 'coeducational' is more philosophy than practice at their institutions?
Just by taking the time to describe and name what she sees, Solnit equips readers old and new with the vocabulary to describe the truth and speak on the behalf of the silent. Any person inspired by her writing can do this. Over many hundreds and thousands and millions of readers, these small daily actions will accumulate to push forward the movement towards equality and inclusion she has already contributed so much to through her lifetime of work.
Friday, August 18, 2017
tales of two cities, vol 3: may '16 - june '16
Hi all,
Hubway journal, part three.
Click here for part one.
Click here for part two.
Click here for an idiotic video diversion unrelated to Hubway.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
05/01/2016
Seaport Square - Seaport Blvd. at Boston Wharf (1:29 am)
Charles Circle - Charles St. at Cambridge St. (1:47 am)
My first Hubway ride in a suit! I make this trip after a wedding for one of my current basketball teammates.
I arrived at this wedding apprehensive. I thought my experience would repeat those of the most recent weddings I attended last spring and summer. At those times, I found myself unable to set aside my personal circumstances long enough to fully enjoy myself.
But early on, my friend, the groom, proposed a toast in honor of his late father. I drew strength from his and proceeded to have a tremendous time.
05/01/2016
Central Square at Mass Ave / Essex St (5:33 pm)
Brigham Cir / Huntington Ave (5:55 pm)
Before entering hospice, my mother spent considerable time at hospitals in the Longwood Medical Area. Back then, I often walked or rode the 'T' to the hospital in order to support her during appointments or visit during inpatient stays.
Hubway, I note, is a much faster and more reliable mode of transportation to this area. All the time I could have saved if I'd signed up a year earlier...
05/10/2016
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (7:51 pm)
University Park (8:52 pm)
A common question I get from non-users is what to do when the bike rack is full. It works just like a full laundromat. A rider can wait for something to open up or can just go to the next one.
Hubway allows riders to request extra time in these situations using a touch screen on the rack's kiosk. Sometimes, I link two or three of these full rack time extensions together to go over the thirty minute timer without paying a fine. This is my longest such ride, a single trip where I was on one bike for just over one hour.
For some reason, no one ever asks about how I do my laundry.
05/18/2016
The Esplanade - Beacon St. at Arlington St. (6:53 pm)
Wentworth Institute of Technology (7:10 pm)
Wentworth Institute of Technology (9:25 pm)
Charles St at Beacon St (9:47 pm)
Unemployment finds me seeking new ways to spur my creative juices at just the time when I start to worry about casually spending money. Free Wednesday nights at the MFA prove the perfect intersection of these developments.
One exhibit from 'Megacities Asia' stays with me. This featured a series of birds perched along a ledge, each holding a torn piece of a poem in its beak. The portions of the poem, read alone, were sometimes fragmented and sometimes stood alone. Brought together, the poem described how ideas both completed and in progress come together within a city to give it its full character.
Well, that was my take, anyway. Maybe it was about litter and how the birds were killing themselves by eating it. So stop littering is the message? When I was a kid, littering was just starting to become uncool.
Who knows. Artists.
05/19/2016
Lesley University (6:28 pm)
Alewife Station at Russell Field (6:42 pm)
Mysteriously, some of my friends take up a brief but furious interest in bowling. I'm suddenly inundated with requests to bring my gutter-seeking left arm to the lanes. I discover over a couple such sessions that size twelves are much tighter than expected. I overcome my discomfort by unleashing a torrent of bowling puns.
I'll spare you the details, patient reader.
It's been a while since I've worn new shoes. Are my feet growing? Or is this 'size-inflation' a new Nike conspiracy?
I've struggled of late with intermittent pain in my leftmost toes (pins and needles, I'm tempted to say, but that would be a lie, not a pun). It feels like each step places my foot directly onto a marble. The equal tightness in my left and right bowling shoes rules out swelling, though. Thankfully, this also likely rules out a stress fracture.
Unfortunately, if this were an episode of House, we would only be at the second commercial break. It always took about twenty minutes of ruling out potential causes before we got anywhere closer to the actual issue. (I suppose right about now would come the weekly lupus joke.)
We might also be at the point for one of the good doctor's petulant antics, a point where this already-tenuous analogy officially breaks down. There is not a second to spare for me. I'm petulant from minute one at bowling.
Maybe my soles are expanding, after all these years. It's about time. We'll investigate that one, right after these messages.
05/24/2016
Charles Circle - Charles St. at Cambridge St. (10:12 am)
Boston Public Library - 700 Boylston St. (10:23 am)
05/26/2016
Charles Circle - Charles St. at Cambridge St. (12:59 pm)
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (1:22 pm)
05/31/2016
Boston Public Library - 700 Boylston St. (12:22 pm)
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (12:46 pm)
The opening of the new computer center at the Boston Public Library sees a shift in emphasis of my library trips. I now go there first, whenever possible, to take advantage of their superior technology. When it comes to the critical computer related tasks in my life such as job hunting, blog proofreading, or soccer highlight viewing, the main Boston branch is tough to beat.
Trips to the Cambridge Library now happen in the afternoon. Sometimes, I go direct from the Boston Public Library. Other times, I do so from my apartment. Rare is the day where I need to go to both but rare too, is the day when my schedule presents decent alternate activities.
06/04/2016
Davis Square (1:55 am)
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (2:14 am)
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (2:15 am)
Charles Circle - Charles St. at Cambridge St. (2:29 am)
Tonight's exertions involve more bowling, this time to celebrate a birthday for a former colleague. My feet continue to pose problems. Earlier in the day, foot pain caused me to stop a run after ten minutes. This is my first stoppage during a run since my IT band injury in 2011. I guess it was strike three for me. I decide not to bother squeezing into bowling shoes for this one.
I'm in better touch with a handful of my former colleagues now than I was at any point in the past year. They, unlike everyone else in my life, know exactly what losing my job means. I'm grateful for their support and their willingness to serve as references in my job search.
It mirrors the situation of last summer. My friends and family who knew my mother provided a different kind of support compared to those who only understood my loss from an abstract perspective. I sometimes forgot back then that some of my friends and family lost, too, and that I might need to support them at times. But it was a hard thing to keep in mind as I worked through my own suffering.
For the first time, I recognize that I have not supported my former colleagues, those who were also hurt when I lost my job. My natural inclination prevents me from reaching out and again, it was a thought I lost sight of as I struggled to work through my own feelings. I see tonight that I'm not ready to do it yet, either, despite my increasing understanding of how I could- or should- help.
On the late-night ride home, I wonder if I learned anything at all in the past year. I come up with a lot and hope to remember it all. I decide along the way to start calling a friend who lives out of town, once a week, and try to actually become better at keeping in touch rather than paying it ongoing lip service.
06/13/2016
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (2:35 pm)
Danehy Park (2:57 pm)
Danehy Park (6:24 pm)
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (6:51 pm)
After a couple of false starts, a number of shorter shifts, and an unshakable sense of trepidation, I take on a temporary weekly hospice shift. It is on Monday afternoons. I'm filling in for a volunteer whose mother just died.
I met her during a prior month's group meeting. I learned more about the role in those ten minutes- her sharing her grief, the other experienced volunteers offering their support, me sitting dumbly in place- than I did during my entire month of training for the role.
06/19/2016
Faneuil Hall - Union St. at North St. (12:29 am)
Seaport Hotel (12:43 am)
Seaport Hotel (12:44 am)
Boston Public Library - 700 Boylston St. (1:07 am)
Boston Public Library - 700 Boylston St. (1:09 am)
Lesley University (1:36 am)
Lesley University (1:37 am)
Davis Square (1:46 am)
Davis Square (1:48 am)
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (2:05 am)
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (2:06 am)
Charles Circle - Charles St. at Cambridge St. (2:22 am)
I'm out of town on this day but, as I make my way home to Boston, I hear that some of my former colleagues are out and about downtown. Again, the occasion is a birthday. I make my way over but learn my 'beach attire' is not going to meet the minimum entrance requirements stated by the dress code.
That's too bad. I'm out and about now, unfortunately, and therefore wired for action. The only logical move is a midnight Hubway joyride.
06/23/2016
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (6:06 pm)
Seaport Hotel (6:38 pm)
Inman Square is unusually crowded on this night. Initially, I assume there is some event taking place in the square. When I notice the police tape, I realize what's happened.
Later on, I'll learn a fellow rider was struck just past noon. The immediate cause of the crash was an open car door. I'm unsure if the door caused an impact or merely prompted an instinctive reaction to avoid the obstacle. Either way, the rider ended up in the path of a truck.
The quick explanations lead to predictable but irrelevant follow-up questions about blame. I'm sure mind-numbing discussions about how to best open a car door took place all over Cambridge in the ensuing weeks.
Why people wait until a loss to talk about certain things is beyond me; realizing they will continue to do so rather despite such conversations never leading to needed changes leaves me shaken up on this summer night.
Hubway journal, part three.
Click here for part one.
Click here for part two.
Click here for an idiotic video diversion unrelated to Hubway.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
05/01/2016
Seaport Square - Seaport Blvd. at Boston Wharf (1:29 am)
Charles Circle - Charles St. at Cambridge St. (1:47 am)
My first Hubway ride in a suit! I make this trip after a wedding for one of my current basketball teammates.
I arrived at this wedding apprehensive. I thought my experience would repeat those of the most recent weddings I attended last spring and summer. At those times, I found myself unable to set aside my personal circumstances long enough to fully enjoy myself.
But early on, my friend, the groom, proposed a toast in honor of his late father. I drew strength from his and proceeded to have a tremendous time.
05/01/2016
Central Square at Mass Ave / Essex St (5:33 pm)
Brigham Cir / Huntington Ave (5:55 pm)
Before entering hospice, my mother spent considerable time at hospitals in the Longwood Medical Area. Back then, I often walked or rode the 'T' to the hospital in order to support her during appointments or visit during inpatient stays.
Hubway, I note, is a much faster and more reliable mode of transportation to this area. All the time I could have saved if I'd signed up a year earlier...
05/10/2016
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (7:51 pm)
University Park (8:52 pm)
A common question I get from non-users is what to do when the bike rack is full. It works just like a full laundromat. A rider can wait for something to open up or can just go to the next one.
Hubway allows riders to request extra time in these situations using a touch screen on the rack's kiosk. Sometimes, I link two or three of these full rack time extensions together to go over the thirty minute timer without paying a fine. This is my longest such ride, a single trip where I was on one bike for just over one hour.
For some reason, no one ever asks about how I do my laundry.
05/18/2016
The Esplanade - Beacon St. at Arlington St. (6:53 pm)
Wentworth Institute of Technology (7:10 pm)
Wentworth Institute of Technology (9:25 pm)
Charles St at Beacon St (9:47 pm)
Unemployment finds me seeking new ways to spur my creative juices at just the time when I start to worry about casually spending money. Free Wednesday nights at the MFA prove the perfect intersection of these developments.
One exhibit from 'Megacities Asia' stays with me. This featured a series of birds perched along a ledge, each holding a torn piece of a poem in its beak. The portions of the poem, read alone, were sometimes fragmented and sometimes stood alone. Brought together, the poem described how ideas both completed and in progress come together within a city to give it its full character.
Well, that was my take, anyway. Maybe it was about litter and how the birds were killing themselves by eating it. So stop littering is the message? When I was a kid, littering was just starting to become uncool.
Who knows. Artists.
05/19/2016
Lesley University (6:28 pm)
Alewife Station at Russell Field (6:42 pm)
Mysteriously, some of my friends take up a brief but furious interest in bowling. I'm suddenly inundated with requests to bring my gutter-seeking left arm to the lanes. I discover over a couple such sessions that size twelves are much tighter than expected. I overcome my discomfort by unleashing a torrent of bowling puns.
I'll spare you the details, patient reader.
It's been a while since I've worn new shoes. Are my feet growing? Or is this 'size-inflation' a new Nike conspiracy?
I've struggled of late with intermittent pain in my leftmost toes (pins and needles, I'm tempted to say, but that would be a lie, not a pun). It feels like each step places my foot directly onto a marble. The equal tightness in my left and right bowling shoes rules out swelling, though. Thankfully, this also likely rules out a stress fracture.
Unfortunately, if this were an episode of House, we would only be at the second commercial break. It always took about twenty minutes of ruling out potential causes before we got anywhere closer to the actual issue. (I suppose right about now would come the weekly lupus joke.)
We might also be at the point for one of the good doctor's petulant antics, a point where this already-tenuous analogy officially breaks down. There is not a second to spare for me. I'm petulant from minute one at bowling.
Maybe my soles are expanding, after all these years. It's about time. We'll investigate that one, right after these messages.
05/24/2016
Charles Circle - Charles St. at Cambridge St. (10:12 am)
Boston Public Library - 700 Boylston St. (10:23 am)
05/26/2016
Charles Circle - Charles St. at Cambridge St. (12:59 pm)
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (1:22 pm)
05/31/2016
Boston Public Library - 700 Boylston St. (12:22 pm)
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (12:46 pm)
The opening of the new computer center at the Boston Public Library sees a shift in emphasis of my library trips. I now go there first, whenever possible, to take advantage of their superior technology. When it comes to the critical computer related tasks in my life such as job hunting, blog proofreading, or soccer highlight viewing, the main Boston branch is tough to beat.
Trips to the Cambridge Library now happen in the afternoon. Sometimes, I go direct from the Boston Public Library. Other times, I do so from my apartment. Rare is the day where I need to go to both but rare too, is the day when my schedule presents decent alternate activities.
06/04/2016
Davis Square (1:55 am)
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (2:14 am)
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (2:15 am)
Charles Circle - Charles St. at Cambridge St. (2:29 am)
Tonight's exertions involve more bowling, this time to celebrate a birthday for a former colleague. My feet continue to pose problems. Earlier in the day, foot pain caused me to stop a run after ten minutes. This is my first stoppage during a run since my IT band injury in 2011. I guess it was strike three for me. I decide not to bother squeezing into bowling shoes for this one.
I'm in better touch with a handful of my former colleagues now than I was at any point in the past year. They, unlike everyone else in my life, know exactly what losing my job means. I'm grateful for their support and their willingness to serve as references in my job search.
It mirrors the situation of last summer. My friends and family who knew my mother provided a different kind of support compared to those who only understood my loss from an abstract perspective. I sometimes forgot back then that some of my friends and family lost, too, and that I might need to support them at times. But it was a hard thing to keep in mind as I worked through my own suffering.
For the first time, I recognize that I have not supported my former colleagues, those who were also hurt when I lost my job. My natural inclination prevents me from reaching out and again, it was a thought I lost sight of as I struggled to work through my own feelings. I see tonight that I'm not ready to do it yet, either, despite my increasing understanding of how I could- or should- help.
On the late-night ride home, I wonder if I learned anything at all in the past year. I come up with a lot and hope to remember it all. I decide along the way to start calling a friend who lives out of town, once a week, and try to actually become better at keeping in touch rather than paying it ongoing lip service.
06/13/2016
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (2:35 pm)
Danehy Park (2:57 pm)
Danehy Park (6:24 pm)
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (6:51 pm)
After a couple of false starts, a number of shorter shifts, and an unshakable sense of trepidation, I take on a temporary weekly hospice shift. It is on Monday afternoons. I'm filling in for a volunteer whose mother just died.
I met her during a prior month's group meeting. I learned more about the role in those ten minutes- her sharing her grief, the other experienced volunteers offering their support, me sitting dumbly in place- than I did during my entire month of training for the role.
06/19/2016
Faneuil Hall - Union St. at North St. (12:29 am)
Seaport Hotel (12:43 am)
Seaport Hotel (12:44 am)
Boston Public Library - 700 Boylston St. (1:07 am)
Boston Public Library - 700 Boylston St. (1:09 am)
Lesley University (1:36 am)
Lesley University (1:37 am)
Davis Square (1:46 am)
Davis Square (1:48 am)
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (2:05 am)
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (2:06 am)
Charles Circle - Charles St. at Cambridge St. (2:22 am)
I'm out of town on this day but, as I make my way home to Boston, I hear that some of my former colleagues are out and about downtown. Again, the occasion is a birthday. I make my way over but learn my 'beach attire' is not going to meet the minimum entrance requirements stated by the dress code.
That's too bad. I'm out and about now, unfortunately, and therefore wired for action. The only logical move is a midnight Hubway joyride.
06/23/2016
Inman Square at Vellucci Plaza / Hampshire St (6:06 pm)
Seaport Hotel (6:38 pm)
Inman Square is unusually crowded on this night. Initially, I assume there is some event taking place in the square. When I notice the police tape, I realize what's happened.
Later on, I'll learn a fellow rider was struck just past noon. The immediate cause of the crash was an open car door. I'm unsure if the door caused an impact or merely prompted an instinctive reaction to avoid the obstacle. Either way, the rider ended up in the path of a truck.
The quick explanations lead to predictable but irrelevant follow-up questions about blame. I'm sure mind-numbing discussions about how to best open a car door took place all over Cambridge in the ensuing weeks.
Why people wait until a loss to talk about certain things is beyond me; realizing they will continue to do so rather despite such conversations never leading to needed changes leaves me shaken up on this summer night.
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
just a quick thought today- i gotta pokemon go
Last summer, I ranted and raved about wildlife safety in the context of the nesting swans at the Public Garden. Well, today I admit: I was wrong. I was wrong! The swans were nice all last year, nothing happened, and because of their good behavior, they were invited back for an encore performance this year (1).
When I first noted the return of the swans this past spring, I wondered if they would recognize the park. Although it has been a few months, the space is more or less unchanged from what it was back then. People were lounging about or strolling slowly along the paths. The trees were starting to show green and the recently planted tulips added dashes of color throughout the space. If I were one of those swans, I thought, I would feel like I had returned home.
There was only one thing off about the scene. I struggled to immediately place my finger on it...but then...it dawned on me...
Pokemon!
The only thing different about the scene from a year ago was the absence of Pokemon Go enthusiasts. Back then, they overran one section of the park the game designers had designated as a Top Secret Special Nerd Zone or something. I would walk through the park and step through, around, or over the masses of humanity focused on snaring their fifth Jigglypuff of the hour (2).
It was a strange experience to suddenly have this large crowd to walk in. From the time I was laid off in January, I had been walking more or less unobstructed through the park. All of a sudden, this game started and my life became more crowded.
Back then, I spent a lot of time on my walks thinking about what to do. A book about creative work prompted this thinking. It suggested I reflect on my childhood and determine what I gravitated to.
Early on, I found this task difficult. Part of the problem was the original Pokemon game. I realized I enjoyed playing so much as a ten-year-old that I didn't have time to 'gravitate' toward anything else. The deeper I dug into my recollections, the more frustrated I became. Instead of discovering deep truths about what I gravitated to naturally, I encountered distraction after distraction which likely prevented me from doing so. I recalled all the video games I played. I remembered an awful lot of (or 'a lot of awful') comedy shows on TV (3). One year, I watched professional wrestling!
Part of my frustration, I think, came out of unmet expectations. I thought back to childhood expecting to discover untapped sources of inspiration. But instead of finding evidence of my budding creative genius, I discovered an idiot clutching his Game Boy or drooling in front of network FOX at eight o'clock on weeknights.
Around this time of deep personal reflection, the Pokemon Go craze kicked into full gear. I talked to a friend about the game and we ended up comparing our childhood experiences of Pokemon. After a short while, he pointed out to me how I did not play the game properly in any sense. The goal of Pokemon is to catch all the Pokemon. My method was to handpick the six I wanted from the start and ignore the rest. Even as a fifth grader, the challenge of frugally building a team with an optimal balance of strengths and weaknesses appealed to me at some fundamental level (4).
The way I played Pokemon was loosely related to what serious gamers refer to as 'Metagaming'. At the risk of oversimplifying, metagaming is using out-of-game information to play the game itself (5). I think I was doing the opposite: using the game's information to play something outside the game (Meta-living?). Instead of coloring within the lines of the game's parameters, I was using the game as a means to explore my interests by defining challenges on my own terms and finding creative ways to overcome them.
When my friend pointed out my spectacular failure to play Pokemon properly, I noticed how I sought out video games with a built-in challenge of building teams. I enjoyed arcade-style games like NBA Jam, fighting games like Mortal Kombat, or shooter games like Goldeneye, but the games I spent the most time on were sports simulations offering game modes for wannabe coaches, managers, or owners. In these games, I enjoyed the challenge of planning for the long-term through investing, optimizing, and managing.
Other examples came from outside video games. When I started a fantasy football league in junior high, I invented a set of rules to ensure continuity over multiple seasons. Unlike the other leagues in my school, teams in my league built year on year instead of starting over from scratch each summer. It is no coincidence that my favorite book was Moneyball, Michael Lewis's account of how to build a baseball roster using data analytics.
Lewis, in his recently released book The Undoing Project, points out that how people do something is often more important than what they do. For most people, what they do is dictated as much by circumstance as it is by self-determination. But the way people approach the same activities day after day is usually influenced by personality and inborn traits. I thought this was a very thoughtful insight. When I compare my experiences from childhood against it, I see the idea in action.
But I don't think its quite so simple. There are certain environments or situations overwhelming enough to shove aside a person's natural inclinations. I'm reminded here of a favorite essay from Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs about video games. In this essay, Klosterman writes about how his six-year old niece comes up with all sorts of backstories for her dolls: where they went to college, what friends they had, what their favorite colors were, and so on. But when playing The Sims (a life-simulating computer game where players directly control characters in a virtual world) she made no attempt to flesh out backstories for her characters.
It's not immediately obvious why this is. Maybe the game tapped into a desire to explore every bell and whistle in a novel world. To do this properly, Klosterman's niece needed to fully immerse herself in doing so. Once she learned everything, it's possible she would have resumed her storytelling ways.
But I suspect her natural creative impulse (or perhaps an innate curiosity about the lives of other people) was stifled by the overwhelming sensory stimulation of the computer game. Her immersion into learning the controls and general distraction provided by Mortimer's inane conversations prevented her from doing the creative work required to conjure up backstories for her digital toys.
For me, the problem with Pokemon Go is the full immersion it demands of its players. Instead of thinking about the game, a player is asked only to respond to the stimulation of the virtual environment. Some gamers shut themselves out so completely from the world around them that they have wandered into traffic, offended others with their behavior at sacred sites, or run over pedestrians in their cars while playing the game.
If I were introduced to Pokemon through this most recent edition, I do not think I would have imposed my own personality to define success on my own terms. Instead, I fear the glittering novelty of the game world and the rewards on offer for the fully immersed player would have stifled my creative instincts, tuned me out from the outside world, and made my experience of the game less rewarding overall.
My experience with Pokemon as a child was positive because the game never distracted me from continuing to explore what I found interesting. As it turned out, the game was just another area to which I applied my instincts and nurtured my skills. The game was never so absorbing as to force me into exchanging my own sense of creativity for maximum points, rewards, or 'likes' earned on social media. The lack of public leaderboards tracking top performance prevented me from becoming aware of the game's strictly defined parameters of success.
I did not start this post with any ideas about the negative side of video games. My general feeling toward video games is positive. I've learned quite a bit from playing these in the past and I do not believe things have changed all that much since. With the way games are evolving, I bet people learn more from today's games than I ever could have hoped to from those of yesteryear.
As video gaming shifts toward the model shown by Pokemon Go, however, I suspect the elements of inspiration and creativity I once drew from the game will become more difficult for gamers to find. At a point, too much stimulation forces the mind to use up all its attention on just navigating the environment. When people need to calm down, they don't go to a club with flashing strobe lights; they go to a pond where little kids terrorize pigeons (6).
The challenge for those designing tomorrow's video games is to stimulate without overwhelming. It seems like an impossible task. Pokemon Go, despite all of my poo-pooing in this post, set all kinds of revenue records. A game sells by stimulating, perhaps evidenced by how the best-selling Lego sets on Amazon overwhelmingly favor specific models over generic bricks (most of which have been discontinued by the manufacturer, as well). It is hard to understand the value of building blocks when all we ever get to see is the finished structure.
The right amount of stimulation is probably seen back where this whole essay started. When I walk through the Public Garden, the trees and the flowers and the people and even those swans force me to pay some attention. But not too much. If there was too much to distract me, I would not have the mental space to think and ponder. It would be hard to generate even the simplest ideas. Eventually, I fear I would lose the ability to do so.
That feels like around the right target for a video game: stimulating enough to pay attention to the virtual world, not quite enough to take up all the gamer's mental space. Otherwise, the game's cognitive benefits are lost as the fine line between distraction and stimulation is crossed.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Hah! As if...
I was wrong last year but I know I was right. Having nesting swans in the Public Garden is a terrible idea. Terrible, terrible. Look into their eyes- these birds are pure evil.
That said, the swans were just as good this year. I recently saw tourists posing to take pictures with them.
2. I'm surprised the swans made it all year...
If the swans went berserk like I predicted, the most likely target would have been one of these Pokemon Go players. It probably would have started with a gamer on their phone absent-mindedly stomping a swan egg flat or something.
One thing I noted about the Pokemon Go thing was how it made (some) cell phone users aware of how they looked while on their phone: exactly like one of the gamers they were making fun. Some doors, once opened, never close.
3. You just got prank'd!
Thanks to Youtube, I did not need to settle for just remembering the shows- I could actually watch clips or entire episodes.
4. More Pokemon talk...
I'm sure others did different things with the game, too. One hugely popular variation of the game involved building up teams to bring into 'battle' against other players. But the 'catch-all' purpose of the main game was obvious to perhaps everyone except me. I mean, the official slogan of Pokemon was 'Gotta catch em all'!
My strategy helps explain my still-encyclopedic knowledge of the game. To handpick the six characters I wanted at the end, I needed to know a lot about all the characters. And since my memory is very strong, I still retain a useless amount of knowledge about the game.
I used to tell people 'I've forgotten more about Pokemon than you will ever know about anything'. This ridiculous (and often alcohol-fueled) statement was proven false over the past week: I realized I have not forgotten anything about Pokemon. Just over the weekend, I probably rattled off fifty separate sentences filled with game information I had not considered in over fifteen years.
5. Met-a-gamer lately?
Like a meta-anything, it is really hard to explain Metagaming in one sentence. As a prefix, 'meta-' is too 'catch-all' (that expression again!) to lend itself to simple definitions. When I researched metagaming, the huge variation in what constituted examples of the metagame was overwhelming.
The best example of this is Metta World Peace.
6. Although if everyone is already at the pond playing Pokemon Go, maybe these people go somewhere else...?
The other analogy I considered here was how people prefer working in coffee shops instead of bars. The basic activity of having a drink while working is the same. But most find it harder to ignore the greater sensory stimulation often found at a bar.
If I ever blog for a living, I promise to write one post a week from a bar.
When I first noted the return of the swans this past spring, I wondered if they would recognize the park. Although it has been a few months, the space is more or less unchanged from what it was back then. People were lounging about or strolling slowly along the paths. The trees were starting to show green and the recently planted tulips added dashes of color throughout the space. If I were one of those swans, I thought, I would feel like I had returned home.
There was only one thing off about the scene. I struggled to immediately place my finger on it...but then...it dawned on me...
Pokemon!
The only thing different about the scene from a year ago was the absence of Pokemon Go enthusiasts. Back then, they overran one section of the park the game designers had designated as a Top Secret Special Nerd Zone or something. I would walk through the park and step through, around, or over the masses of humanity focused on snaring their fifth Jigglypuff of the hour (2).
It was a strange experience to suddenly have this large crowd to walk in. From the time I was laid off in January, I had been walking more or less unobstructed through the park. All of a sudden, this game started and my life became more crowded.
Back then, I spent a lot of time on my walks thinking about what to do. A book about creative work prompted this thinking. It suggested I reflect on my childhood and determine what I gravitated to.
Early on, I found this task difficult. Part of the problem was the original Pokemon game. I realized I enjoyed playing so much as a ten-year-old that I didn't have time to 'gravitate' toward anything else. The deeper I dug into my recollections, the more frustrated I became. Instead of discovering deep truths about what I gravitated to naturally, I encountered distraction after distraction which likely prevented me from doing so. I recalled all the video games I played. I remembered an awful lot of (or 'a lot of awful') comedy shows on TV (3). One year, I watched professional wrestling!
Part of my frustration, I think, came out of unmet expectations. I thought back to childhood expecting to discover untapped sources of inspiration. But instead of finding evidence of my budding creative genius, I discovered an idiot clutching his Game Boy or drooling in front of network FOX at eight o'clock on weeknights.
Around this time of deep personal reflection, the Pokemon Go craze kicked into full gear. I talked to a friend about the game and we ended up comparing our childhood experiences of Pokemon. After a short while, he pointed out to me how I did not play the game properly in any sense. The goal of Pokemon is to catch all the Pokemon. My method was to handpick the six I wanted from the start and ignore the rest. Even as a fifth grader, the challenge of frugally building a team with an optimal balance of strengths and weaknesses appealed to me at some fundamental level (4).
The way I played Pokemon was loosely related to what serious gamers refer to as 'Metagaming'. At the risk of oversimplifying, metagaming is using out-of-game information to play the game itself (5). I think I was doing the opposite: using the game's information to play something outside the game (Meta-living?). Instead of coloring within the lines of the game's parameters, I was using the game as a means to explore my interests by defining challenges on my own terms and finding creative ways to overcome them.
When my friend pointed out my spectacular failure to play Pokemon properly, I noticed how I sought out video games with a built-in challenge of building teams. I enjoyed arcade-style games like NBA Jam, fighting games like Mortal Kombat, or shooter games like Goldeneye, but the games I spent the most time on were sports simulations offering game modes for wannabe coaches, managers, or owners. In these games, I enjoyed the challenge of planning for the long-term through investing, optimizing, and managing.
Other examples came from outside video games. When I started a fantasy football league in junior high, I invented a set of rules to ensure continuity over multiple seasons. Unlike the other leagues in my school, teams in my league built year on year instead of starting over from scratch each summer. It is no coincidence that my favorite book was Moneyball, Michael Lewis's account of how to build a baseball roster using data analytics.
Lewis, in his recently released book The Undoing Project, points out that how people do something is often more important than what they do. For most people, what they do is dictated as much by circumstance as it is by self-determination. But the way people approach the same activities day after day is usually influenced by personality and inborn traits. I thought this was a very thoughtful insight. When I compare my experiences from childhood against it, I see the idea in action.
But I don't think its quite so simple. There are certain environments or situations overwhelming enough to shove aside a person's natural inclinations. I'm reminded here of a favorite essay from Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs about video games. In this essay, Klosterman writes about how his six-year old niece comes up with all sorts of backstories for her dolls: where they went to college, what friends they had, what their favorite colors were, and so on. But when playing The Sims (a life-simulating computer game where players directly control characters in a virtual world) she made no attempt to flesh out backstories for her characters.
It's not immediately obvious why this is. Maybe the game tapped into a desire to explore every bell and whistle in a novel world. To do this properly, Klosterman's niece needed to fully immerse herself in doing so. Once she learned everything, it's possible she would have resumed her storytelling ways.
But I suspect her natural creative impulse (or perhaps an innate curiosity about the lives of other people) was stifled by the overwhelming sensory stimulation of the computer game. Her immersion into learning the controls and general distraction provided by Mortimer's inane conversations prevented her from doing the creative work required to conjure up backstories for her digital toys.
For me, the problem with Pokemon Go is the full immersion it demands of its players. Instead of thinking about the game, a player is asked only to respond to the stimulation of the virtual environment. Some gamers shut themselves out so completely from the world around them that they have wandered into traffic, offended others with their behavior at sacred sites, or run over pedestrians in their cars while playing the game.
If I were introduced to Pokemon through this most recent edition, I do not think I would have imposed my own personality to define success on my own terms. Instead, I fear the glittering novelty of the game world and the rewards on offer for the fully immersed player would have stifled my creative instincts, tuned me out from the outside world, and made my experience of the game less rewarding overall.
My experience with Pokemon as a child was positive because the game never distracted me from continuing to explore what I found interesting. As it turned out, the game was just another area to which I applied my instincts and nurtured my skills. The game was never so absorbing as to force me into exchanging my own sense of creativity for maximum points, rewards, or 'likes' earned on social media. The lack of public leaderboards tracking top performance prevented me from becoming aware of the game's strictly defined parameters of success.
I did not start this post with any ideas about the negative side of video games. My general feeling toward video games is positive. I've learned quite a bit from playing these in the past and I do not believe things have changed all that much since. With the way games are evolving, I bet people learn more from today's games than I ever could have hoped to from those of yesteryear.
As video gaming shifts toward the model shown by Pokemon Go, however, I suspect the elements of inspiration and creativity I once drew from the game will become more difficult for gamers to find. At a point, too much stimulation forces the mind to use up all its attention on just navigating the environment. When people need to calm down, they don't go to a club with flashing strobe lights; they go to a pond where little kids terrorize pigeons (6).
The challenge for those designing tomorrow's video games is to stimulate without overwhelming. It seems like an impossible task. Pokemon Go, despite all of my poo-pooing in this post, set all kinds of revenue records. A game sells by stimulating, perhaps evidenced by how the best-selling Lego sets on Amazon overwhelmingly favor specific models over generic bricks (most of which have been discontinued by the manufacturer, as well). It is hard to understand the value of building blocks when all we ever get to see is the finished structure.
The right amount of stimulation is probably seen back where this whole essay started. When I walk through the Public Garden, the trees and the flowers and the people and even those swans force me to pay some attention. But not too much. If there was too much to distract me, I would not have the mental space to think and ponder. It would be hard to generate even the simplest ideas. Eventually, I fear I would lose the ability to do so.
That feels like around the right target for a video game: stimulating enough to pay attention to the virtual world, not quite enough to take up all the gamer's mental space. Otherwise, the game's cognitive benefits are lost as the fine line between distraction and stimulation is crossed.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Hah! As if...
I was wrong last year but I know I was right. Having nesting swans in the Public Garden is a terrible idea. Terrible, terrible. Look into their eyes- these birds are pure evil.
That said, the swans were just as good this year. I recently saw tourists posing to take pictures with them.
2. I'm surprised the swans made it all year...
If the swans went berserk like I predicted, the most likely target would have been one of these Pokemon Go players. It probably would have started with a gamer on their phone absent-mindedly stomping a swan egg flat or something.
One thing I noted about the Pokemon Go thing was how it made (some) cell phone users aware of how they looked while on their phone: exactly like one of the gamers they were making fun. Some doors, once opened, never close.
3. You just got prank'd!
Thanks to Youtube, I did not need to settle for just remembering the shows- I could actually watch clips or entire episodes.
4. More Pokemon talk...
I'm sure others did different things with the game, too. One hugely popular variation of the game involved building up teams to bring into 'battle' against other players. But the 'catch-all' purpose of the main game was obvious to perhaps everyone except me. I mean, the official slogan of Pokemon was 'Gotta catch em all'!
My strategy helps explain my still-encyclopedic knowledge of the game. To handpick the six characters I wanted at the end, I needed to know a lot about all the characters. And since my memory is very strong, I still retain a useless amount of knowledge about the game.
I used to tell people 'I've forgotten more about Pokemon than you will ever know about anything'. This ridiculous (and often alcohol-fueled) statement was proven false over the past week: I realized I have not forgotten anything about Pokemon. Just over the weekend, I probably rattled off fifty separate sentences filled with game information I had not considered in over fifteen years.
5. Met-a-gamer lately?
Like a meta-anything, it is really hard to explain Metagaming in one sentence. As a prefix, 'meta-' is too 'catch-all' (that expression again!) to lend itself to simple definitions. When I researched metagaming, the huge variation in what constituted examples of the metagame was overwhelming.
The best example of this is Metta World Peace.
6. Although if everyone is already at the pond playing Pokemon Go, maybe these people go somewhere else...?
The other analogy I considered here was how people prefer working in coffee shops instead of bars. The basic activity of having a drink while working is the same. But most find it harder to ignore the greater sensory stimulation often found at a bar.
If I ever blog for a living, I promise to write one post a week from a bar.
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
eight hour fasts
I've been on a new diet schedule this summer. Whenever possible, I am going eight hours between meals. In practice, this means I eat twice per day.
At these meals, I eat a lot- probably more than 99% of people eat at any one sitting. But after that, I stop. Once eight hours go by, I'm open to doing the same thing again.
Every once in a while, I'll skip a meal and just eat once per day. Sometimes I make up for it by eating more during the sole meal. At other times, I eat more the day before or the day after.
My logic is not scientific but I think there is something to it. The body clearly thrives when periods of rest alternate with periods of activity. Since the exact way this general truth applies to metabolism remains poorly understood, I'll settle for the simple 'eight hour fast' approach. Who knows? Maybe I'll benefit from allowing my digestive system to rest twice a day for over eight hours.
A machine kept running without rest eventually burns out. The body might not work in exactly the same way. But what's the argument for doing otherwise?
At these meals, I eat a lot- probably more than 99% of people eat at any one sitting. But after that, I stop. Once eight hours go by, I'm open to doing the same thing again.
Every once in a while, I'll skip a meal and just eat once per day. Sometimes I make up for it by eating more during the sole meal. At other times, I eat more the day before or the day after.
My logic is not scientific but I think there is something to it. The body clearly thrives when periods of rest alternate with periods of activity. Since the exact way this general truth applies to metabolism remains poorly understood, I'll settle for the simple 'eight hour fast' approach. Who knows? Maybe I'll benefit from allowing my digestive system to rest twice a day for over eight hours.
A machine kept running without rest eventually burns out. The body might not work in exactly the same way. But what's the argument for doing otherwise?
Sunday, August 13, 2017
reading review: essays in idleness
Essays in Idleness by Yoshida Kenko (July 2017)
Kenko's writings from 1330 and 1332 are collected in this apparently well-known Japanese classic. I initially overlooked this work despite coming across it a number of times over several trips to a used bookstore in Harvard Square. When I finally read the explanation (justification?) for this collection on the front flap- ..."Kenko, as he put it, 'having nothing better to do', turned to his inkstone..."- I realized the wisest move would be to familiarize myself with this long-lost ancestor of TOA.
One up: The collection is an example of a Japanese composition form known as zuihitsu (follow the brush). Kenko takes the reader from one thought to the next while subtly leaving a connecting thread of Buddhist thinking for the careful observer to note in hindsight. He does not limit himself to one topic, however, and opines on various trivial matters in addition to his larger thoughts about life and death.
Here are some of my favorite thoughts from the collection:
*It is a strange feeling to consider the amount of time spent writing.
*It is preferable to be alone if the alternative is a conversation with someone whose opinions you are afraid to contradict.
*Never refer to yourself in the process of addressing or evaluating another's characteristics.
*Unfinished business is, by nature, never going to finish.
*Those who crave novelty in everything possess only superficial knowledge.
*The difficulty of obtaining a good should not bear a relationship to how much it is valued.
*A real criminal commits a crime despite having a fair share of food and clothing.
*It is always nice to get in touch simply because it has been too long.
One down: How can I say anything even semi-negative about the great (great-great-great...) grandfather of this blog? I suppose some of his entries, being about specific people or places of his time, were hard to follow.
Just saying: Death frequently came up in this collection. Kenko's general stance is to accept death's role in life and plan each day with the prospect of death in mind. A person of this mindset will avoid wasting time on the type of foolishness which blots our days into one uninterrupted block of distraction. It also lowers the likelihood of making a common type of mistake: taking too much time to do what should be done right away.
Upon dying, the deceased's possessions remain. These items are indifferent to the owner's death and, if left unaltered, contain the power to transport the living back to familiar memories. The wise die without possessions; if such persons wish to pass an object on to a descendant, the transfer is made while living. Carrying out inheritance duties while living reduces ill-feeling among the survivors and lowers the chance of a future quarrel over a trivial trinket.
At the time of death, a temptation is to infuse the moment with ceremony and read significance into even the most banal comments. These considerations are all harmless unless they distract from the most important thought of all: a person's final hours should pass in peace and without agony. A good death is indifferent to symbolism.
Kenko's writings from 1330 and 1332 are collected in this apparently well-known Japanese classic. I initially overlooked this work despite coming across it a number of times over several trips to a used bookstore in Harvard Square. When I finally read the explanation (justification?) for this collection on the front flap- ..."Kenko, as he put it, 'having nothing better to do', turned to his inkstone..."- I realized the wisest move would be to familiarize myself with this long-lost ancestor of TOA.
One up: The collection is an example of a Japanese composition form known as zuihitsu (follow the brush). Kenko takes the reader from one thought to the next while subtly leaving a connecting thread of Buddhist thinking for the careful observer to note in hindsight. He does not limit himself to one topic, however, and opines on various trivial matters in addition to his larger thoughts about life and death.
Here are some of my favorite thoughts from the collection:
*It is a strange feeling to consider the amount of time spent writing.
*It is preferable to be alone if the alternative is a conversation with someone whose opinions you are afraid to contradict.
*Never refer to yourself in the process of addressing or evaluating another's characteristics.
*Unfinished business is, by nature, never going to finish.
*Those who crave novelty in everything possess only superficial knowledge.
*The difficulty of obtaining a good should not bear a relationship to how much it is valued.
*A real criminal commits a crime despite having a fair share of food and clothing.
*It is always nice to get in touch simply because it has been too long.
One down: How can I say anything even semi-negative about the great (great-great-great...) grandfather of this blog? I suppose some of his entries, being about specific people or places of his time, were hard to follow.
Just saying: Death frequently came up in this collection. Kenko's general stance is to accept death's role in life and plan each day with the prospect of death in mind. A person of this mindset will avoid wasting time on the type of foolishness which blots our days into one uninterrupted block of distraction. It also lowers the likelihood of making a common type of mistake: taking too much time to do what should be done right away.
Upon dying, the deceased's possessions remain. These items are indifferent to the owner's death and, if left unaltered, contain the power to transport the living back to familiar memories. The wise die without possessions; if such persons wish to pass an object on to a descendant, the transfer is made while living. Carrying out inheritance duties while living reduces ill-feeling among the survivors and lowers the chance of a future quarrel over a trivial trinket.
At the time of death, a temptation is to infuse the moment with ceremony and read significance into even the most banal comments. These considerations are all harmless unless they distract from the most important thought of all: a person's final hours should pass in peace and without agony. A good death is indifferent to symbolism.
Friday, August 11, 2017
jurgen klopp
This weekend my favorite soccer team, Liverpool, open their new season against Watford (1). The optimism around the club is significant and the expectation for the season among us fans is an improvement on last season's fourth-place finish.
The main reason for this optimism is the club's manager, Jurgen Klopp. This season will be his third with the club and second full campaign as the boss. When he signed, he boasted a considerable reputation; so far in his tenure, he has only proven how well-deserved all the accolades were. Simply put, he's been as good as billed in every aspect of the job.
The most notable thing I've learned from observing him is the effect of his enthusiasm on the culture of the team. I thought I knew what a positive manager looked like. When Klopp showed up, I realized I was wrong. Klopp is to a positive manager what a kind person is to a nice one.
The idea revisits an old comparison, one which reached me at the core when I first heard it. A nice person does not make anything worse. Such a person is pleasant to be around. Being nice is often more than enough.
But a kind person always tries to make a difference. A kind person can handle a difficult moment or uplift a depressed mood. The kind do so by drawing on their compassion or warmth to understand the other, share in their difficulty, and show them the possibilities in moving forward.
Klopp's enthusiasm works the same way. I've seen 'positive' managers- they clap their hands, shout encouragement, and suggest to the media that the next result will be better. But such managers fall short when the going gets really tough. A team down 2-0 doesn't need a smile or some applause; they need someone whose self-confidence and belief is overwhelming. Only with such an inspiring leader in place can a team regularly harness its power to change the inevitable outcome implied in falling behind.
The positivity, enthusiasm, and passion Klopp exudes during each minute of his workday cannot be faked, taught, or learned. He simply has this quality; other managers do not. Every day during his tenure with Liverpool, he has used it to full effect with his team.
It is a quality worth trying to replicate. It's going to manifest differently for me, I think, because I do not have Klopp's natural exuberance or energy. But there are examples in the past of how my example or communication has inspired or motivated others to increase their own efforts and bring out their best for the team.
The key is to make sure I'm not settling. It is easy to be nice instead of kind or positive rather than enthusiastic. Luckily for me, Liverpool is back in action this weekend. And for the next nine months, I'll get a weekly reminder of what it looks like when a manager is applying the fullness of his gifts to get the most out of his team (2).
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Soccer?
I like soccer. I may have mentioned this in an earlier post or two.
2. Assuming I can see what goes on, of course!
Sometimes, weird things involving glasses happen during the game.
The main reason for this optimism is the club's manager, Jurgen Klopp. This season will be his third with the club and second full campaign as the boss. When he signed, he boasted a considerable reputation; so far in his tenure, he has only proven how well-deserved all the accolades were. Simply put, he's been as good as billed in every aspect of the job.
The most notable thing I've learned from observing him is the effect of his enthusiasm on the culture of the team. I thought I knew what a positive manager looked like. When Klopp showed up, I realized I was wrong. Klopp is to a positive manager what a kind person is to a nice one.
The idea revisits an old comparison, one which reached me at the core when I first heard it. A nice person does not make anything worse. Such a person is pleasant to be around. Being nice is often more than enough.
But a kind person always tries to make a difference. A kind person can handle a difficult moment or uplift a depressed mood. The kind do so by drawing on their compassion or warmth to understand the other, share in their difficulty, and show them the possibilities in moving forward.
Klopp's enthusiasm works the same way. I've seen 'positive' managers- they clap their hands, shout encouragement, and suggest to the media that the next result will be better. But such managers fall short when the going gets really tough. A team down 2-0 doesn't need a smile or some applause; they need someone whose self-confidence and belief is overwhelming. Only with such an inspiring leader in place can a team regularly harness its power to change the inevitable outcome implied in falling behind.
The positivity, enthusiasm, and passion Klopp exudes during each minute of his workday cannot be faked, taught, or learned. He simply has this quality; other managers do not. Every day during his tenure with Liverpool, he has used it to full effect with his team.
It is a quality worth trying to replicate. It's going to manifest differently for me, I think, because I do not have Klopp's natural exuberance or energy. But there are examples in the past of how my example or communication has inspired or motivated others to increase their own efforts and bring out their best for the team.
The key is to make sure I'm not settling. It is easy to be nice instead of kind or positive rather than enthusiastic. Luckily for me, Liverpool is back in action this weekend. And for the next nine months, I'll get a weekly reminder of what it looks like when a manager is applying the fullness of his gifts to get the most out of his team (2).
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Soccer?
I like soccer. I may have mentioned this in an earlier post or two.
2. Assuming I can see what goes on, of course!
Sometimes, weird things involving glasses happen during the game.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
analogies
I like to think my 'reading reviews' avoid making pointless criticisms of another's work. This is especially true regarding something trivial like word choice. That said, dear reader, I made a semi-useless remark in last Sunday's footnotes regarding Sam Quinones's repeated use of a pizza-delivery analogy to describe the speed and efficiency he observed in certain black-tar heroin distribution systems (1).
The comment was very close to an unneeded potshot at an author writing an important book about a serious topic. So why include it in the post? Because I was annoyed with the expression after seeing it six hundred times. I imagine readers around here feel the same anytime I reference Hubway, start a new sentence with the word 'but', or create a footnote for a completely trivial, self-referential comment (2).
My annoyance was a semi-remarkable achievement. It's unusual for me to get annoyed at just about anything unrelated to mosquitoes. So, I've been thinking about this example and trying to understand my own reaction better.
One realization I had is how I get frustrated with analogies more than any other literary device. Given how frequently I make silly analogies, this realization felt hypocritical. I'm the least qualified person to complain about using any sort of comparison. It would be like...ah, never mind.
But I remember many instances over the past few years where I would just roll my eyes at an analogy instead of working with the idea. It's almost like I'm allergic to other people's analogies. If I get exposed to the wrong one, I can't help but react petulantly (3).
The worst type of analogy assumes a false understanding with the audience. To put it a different way, any analogy with an 'out of touch' factor gets my eyes rolling right away. I'm reminded of how often I used to hear sports analogies in my former workplace. Sure, for me, talking about 'keeping my eye on the ball' was generally not a problem- but what about all those colleagues who never watched baseball? I bet their eyes were rolling while I was thinking about how to hit a cost-containment home run.
A close second in this category is a comparison referencing some long-ago or faraway event which I do not believe the speaker has any expertise with. I recently heard a political pundit suggest the correct approach to combating terrorism would draw on the strategic lessons from the Battle of Midway. The Battle of Midway!!! I don't quite remember what I did next. It is possible I suffered some sort of inanity-induced spell of amnesia.
The types of analogies that seem to bother me, in other words, are lazy. They dump the work of comprehension on the listener, reference the in-group to someone outside it, or simply invoke ideas without bothering to explain how they are related.
Why bother making a lazy analogy? I think these happen when a person wants to hide a lack of understanding about the subject under discussion. Since pretending to know about a topic frustrates me, it is no surprise how I throw my hands into the air upon hearing analogies designed to fake expertise.
The missing ingredient in bad communication is often a failure to address the why or the how. Analogies explaining why or how two ideas are related are often the most effective way to describe a new idea. Those failing to do so, however, often push the entire discussion a step backward.
In order to build a house, it is not enough to simply link multiple rooms together. A carpenter must also account for the door frames, hallways, and staircases connecting the separate areas together.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Drink!
First, I do not recommend playing a drinking game where you have even a sip of beer every time the expression 'delivered like pizza' comes up in reference to the opiate delivery techniques described in Dreamland. I think it is Quinones's favorite expression, seeming to come up far more than required, perhaps twenty or thirty times in all, and the overuse of this one metaphor was the first thought that came to mind when I started preparing that post.
2. But in my defense...
Who doesn't like Hubway?
3. It's like buying a sharp knife to sharpen a knife, sort of...
The most bothersome type of analogy to me is one unnecessarily challenging to understand. I think this is fair. If analogies are supposed to serve as shortcuts to understanding, the analogy which extends the time required to understand has failed in its most basic purpose.
The comment was very close to an unneeded potshot at an author writing an important book about a serious topic. So why include it in the post? Because I was annoyed with the expression after seeing it six hundred times. I imagine readers around here feel the same anytime I reference Hubway, start a new sentence with the word 'but', or create a footnote for a completely trivial, self-referential comment (2).
My annoyance was a semi-remarkable achievement. It's unusual for me to get annoyed at just about anything unrelated to mosquitoes. So, I've been thinking about this example and trying to understand my own reaction better.
One realization I had is how I get frustrated with analogies more than any other literary device. Given how frequently I make silly analogies, this realization felt hypocritical. I'm the least qualified person to complain about using any sort of comparison. It would be like...ah, never mind.
But I remember many instances over the past few years where I would just roll my eyes at an analogy instead of working with the idea. It's almost like I'm allergic to other people's analogies. If I get exposed to the wrong one, I can't help but react petulantly (3).
The worst type of analogy assumes a false understanding with the audience. To put it a different way, any analogy with an 'out of touch' factor gets my eyes rolling right away. I'm reminded of how often I used to hear sports analogies in my former workplace. Sure, for me, talking about 'keeping my eye on the ball' was generally not a problem- but what about all those colleagues who never watched baseball? I bet their eyes were rolling while I was thinking about how to hit a cost-containment home run.
A close second in this category is a comparison referencing some long-ago or faraway event which I do not believe the speaker has any expertise with. I recently heard a political pundit suggest the correct approach to combating terrorism would draw on the strategic lessons from the Battle of Midway. The Battle of Midway!!! I don't quite remember what I did next. It is possible I suffered some sort of inanity-induced spell of amnesia.
The types of analogies that seem to bother me, in other words, are lazy. They dump the work of comprehension on the listener, reference the in-group to someone outside it, or simply invoke ideas without bothering to explain how they are related.
Why bother making a lazy analogy? I think these happen when a person wants to hide a lack of understanding about the subject under discussion. Since pretending to know about a topic frustrates me, it is no surprise how I throw my hands into the air upon hearing analogies designed to fake expertise.
The missing ingredient in bad communication is often a failure to address the why or the how. Analogies explaining why or how two ideas are related are often the most effective way to describe a new idea. Those failing to do so, however, often push the entire discussion a step backward.
In order to build a house, it is not enough to simply link multiple rooms together. A carpenter must also account for the door frames, hallways, and staircases connecting the separate areas together.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Drink!
First, I do not recommend playing a drinking game where you have even a sip of beer every time the expression 'delivered like pizza' comes up in reference to the opiate delivery techniques described in Dreamland. I think it is Quinones's favorite expression, seeming to come up far more than required, perhaps twenty or thirty times in all, and the overuse of this one metaphor was the first thought that came to mind when I started preparing that post.
2. But in my defense...
Who doesn't like Hubway?
3. It's like buying a sharp knife to sharpen a knife, sort of...
The most bothersome type of analogy to me is one unnecessarily challenging to understand. I think this is fair. If analogies are supposed to serve as shortcuts to understanding, the analogy which extends the time required to understand has failed in its most basic purpose.
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
why bother?
Why bother?
Why bother to work hard when no one is watching? Why bother to eat broccoli? Why bother doing the reading? Why bother to stop at a red light? Why bother to write a blog that no one (except very smart and good-looking people like YOU) reads?
Why bother to do anything if the cost exceeds the reward?
It was the defining question during most of my K-12 education. Penmanship. Why bother? The periodic table. Why bother? Running wind sprints in the summer. For what? Even if I overcame my natural laziness, the lack of meaningful outcomes throughout my early years of schooling only served to encourage this 'why bother' mental dialogue anytime I was presented with something unpleasant to do.
My freshman football coach made the best counter-argument possible before our second game. His thought changed my outlook and defined my approach through high school and beyond.
Why bother to play hard in a football game? Football games, he said, come down to four or five plays. The outcomes of these plays determine the winner of the game. The reason why good teams play hard on every play is because no one knows at the start of any play if this is the one that will end up, in hindsight, among those five.
Why bother to work hard when no one is watching? Why bother to eat broccoli? Why bother doing the reading? Why bother to stop at a red light? Why bother to write a blog that no one (except very smart and good-looking people like YOU) reads?
Why bother to do anything if the cost exceeds the reward?
It was the defining question during most of my K-12 education. Penmanship. Why bother? The periodic table. Why bother? Running wind sprints in the summer. For what? Even if I overcame my natural laziness, the lack of meaningful outcomes throughout my early years of schooling only served to encourage this 'why bother' mental dialogue anytime I was presented with something unpleasant to do.
My freshman football coach made the best counter-argument possible before our second game. His thought changed my outlook and defined my approach through high school and beyond.
Why bother to play hard in a football game? Football games, he said, come down to four or five plays. The outcomes of these plays determine the winner of the game. The reason why good teams play hard on every play is because no one knows at the start of any play if this is the one that will end up, in hindsight, among those five.
Sunday, August 6, 2017
reading review: dreamland
Dreamland by Sam Quinones (May 2017)
Dreamland examines the progression of the opiate epidemic over the last two decades. It introduces us to the many groups- including dealers, law enforcement personnel, and victims- impacted by the crisis. Quinones, an author and journalist with significant experience examining the relationship Mexicans have with the United States, takes advantage of his unique understanding in weaving together his account of the crisis.
One up: Dreamland is written with a great deal of empathy for all parties involved in the epidemic. Writing with empathy is challenging enough; to do so with the topic at hand is a major achievement.
The key is Quinones's ability to dig and dig until he finds the motivations underlying an act. A frequent pattern I noticed was an impoverished person initiating a series of events. As these little chains accumulated, the scale of the crisis grew and more communities were impacted.
The very start of the epidemic he describes is rooted in the poverty and hopelessness many young rural Mexicans felt was inevitable were they to remain in the communities they grew up in. People might report being content in poverty, he notes, but this is hardly evidence of a preference to remain impoverished.
He extends the idea when examining how the US healthcare and welfare systems create incentives for the poor to sell pills on the underground market. One example describes how painkillers worth thousands on the street are accessible to Medicaid recipients for just a few dollars. For those seeking a way to bridge the gap between their living expenses and welfare checks, the chance to sell pills at huge markups was not an opportunity to pass up.
Finally, he cites how the loss of community and togetherness accelerated the spread of drug use. For a long time, American towns used public recreation such as parks, swimming pools, and town events to help everyone feel well off regardless of their income or wealth. As these public institutions gave way to profit-seekers, the sense of isolation grew and the disconnected residents were primed to cave in against the promises of escape and pleasure offered by easily accessible drugs.
One down: I mentioned once how Lincoln In The Bardo author George Saunders suggested a (novel?) way of writing a longer piece of fiction- simply write a few shorter pieces and link them together. The comparison he made was to a carpenter who knows how to build one room. If the carpenter repeats this multiples times and builds many rooms, he will one day have the opportunity to connect these rooms into a house.
I saw a little of this method in Dreamland. Quinones is a journalist and a lot of this book is based on his reporting and investigation. Thus, the structure of the book loosely resembled a scrapbook; a story related in one chapter would be followed by a new topic in the following one.
I suspect the format sometimes worked against the author. At times, the changes felt more jarring to me than free flowing. Of course, the sheer volume of people involved here speaks to the far-reaching the impact of the epidemic. I cannot help but feel, though, that a story or two could have made way for a closer look at one of the more compelling characters or stories (1).
Just saying: In describing addiction treatment strategies, Quinones points out how one commonly overlooked step in recovery is repairing damaged neural pathways. For most addicts, a range of thirty to ninety days is required before the brain damage caused by excessive drug usage is fully healed. He later notes how the US healthcare system does a better job fighting disease than it does promoting wellness. Perhaps if drug addiction was considered a disease, the mechanisms for battling addiction would improve.
These two observations reminded me of David Sheff's Clean, a book I read back in May of 2015. Clean starts with a simple premise- addiction is a disease, not a moral failing- and goes on to explore how medical research, the success of particular treatment programs, and various individual success stories are bolstering this idea.
A culture-wide shift to this view of addiction could have significant ramifications for how treatment programs are constructed and how the resources of the healthcare system are deployed. Seeing addiction as a chronic disease, for example, would reframe a relapse as a signal to return to treatment instead of 'proving' how a 'weak-willed' person cannot get his or her life in order. Instead of seeing it as a failure of treatment, it could be seen instead as a naturally occurring part of a 'two steps forward, one step backward' recovery trajectory.
One idea I still remember to this day from Clean is the HALT acronym. Even the strongest-willed people struggle to face down their demons whenever feeling Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. Those in the support system for a recovering addict can contribute by doing what they can to help prevent these moods. It may not seem like much but anything preventing a potential relapse is a big contribution in a battle against addiction.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. What's for dinner? Again?
I wonder if the structure explains the puzzling overuse of the expression 'delivered like pizza' in this book. Quinones turned to this analogy time and again to describe the reliability and efficiency of the heroin delivery system. Perhaps he wrote many of the chapters here as separate pieces, never intending to put them all together into one book.
Or perhaps he just likes pizza. Who knows? I like pizza.
Dreamland examines the progression of the opiate epidemic over the last two decades. It introduces us to the many groups- including dealers, law enforcement personnel, and victims- impacted by the crisis. Quinones, an author and journalist with significant experience examining the relationship Mexicans have with the United States, takes advantage of his unique understanding in weaving together his account of the crisis.
One up: Dreamland is written with a great deal of empathy for all parties involved in the epidemic. Writing with empathy is challenging enough; to do so with the topic at hand is a major achievement.
The key is Quinones's ability to dig and dig until he finds the motivations underlying an act. A frequent pattern I noticed was an impoverished person initiating a series of events. As these little chains accumulated, the scale of the crisis grew and more communities were impacted.
The very start of the epidemic he describes is rooted in the poverty and hopelessness many young rural Mexicans felt was inevitable were they to remain in the communities they grew up in. People might report being content in poverty, he notes, but this is hardly evidence of a preference to remain impoverished.
He extends the idea when examining how the US healthcare and welfare systems create incentives for the poor to sell pills on the underground market. One example describes how painkillers worth thousands on the street are accessible to Medicaid recipients for just a few dollars. For those seeking a way to bridge the gap between their living expenses and welfare checks, the chance to sell pills at huge markups was not an opportunity to pass up.
Finally, he cites how the loss of community and togetherness accelerated the spread of drug use. For a long time, American towns used public recreation such as parks, swimming pools, and town events to help everyone feel well off regardless of their income or wealth. As these public institutions gave way to profit-seekers, the sense of isolation grew and the disconnected residents were primed to cave in against the promises of escape and pleasure offered by easily accessible drugs.
One down: I mentioned once how Lincoln In The Bardo author George Saunders suggested a (novel?) way of writing a longer piece of fiction- simply write a few shorter pieces and link them together. The comparison he made was to a carpenter who knows how to build one room. If the carpenter repeats this multiples times and builds many rooms, he will one day have the opportunity to connect these rooms into a house.
I saw a little of this method in Dreamland. Quinones is a journalist and a lot of this book is based on his reporting and investigation. Thus, the structure of the book loosely resembled a scrapbook; a story related in one chapter would be followed by a new topic in the following one.
I suspect the format sometimes worked against the author. At times, the changes felt more jarring to me than free flowing. Of course, the sheer volume of people involved here speaks to the far-reaching the impact of the epidemic. I cannot help but feel, though, that a story or two could have made way for a closer look at one of the more compelling characters or stories (1).
Just saying: In describing addiction treatment strategies, Quinones points out how one commonly overlooked step in recovery is repairing damaged neural pathways. For most addicts, a range of thirty to ninety days is required before the brain damage caused by excessive drug usage is fully healed. He later notes how the US healthcare system does a better job fighting disease than it does promoting wellness. Perhaps if drug addiction was considered a disease, the mechanisms for battling addiction would improve.
These two observations reminded me of David Sheff's Clean, a book I read back in May of 2015. Clean starts with a simple premise- addiction is a disease, not a moral failing- and goes on to explore how medical research, the success of particular treatment programs, and various individual success stories are bolstering this idea.
A culture-wide shift to this view of addiction could have significant ramifications for how treatment programs are constructed and how the resources of the healthcare system are deployed. Seeing addiction as a chronic disease, for example, would reframe a relapse as a signal to return to treatment instead of 'proving' how a 'weak-willed' person cannot get his or her life in order. Instead of seeing it as a failure of treatment, it could be seen instead as a naturally occurring part of a 'two steps forward, one step backward' recovery trajectory.
One idea I still remember to this day from Clean is the HALT acronym. Even the strongest-willed people struggle to face down their demons whenever feeling Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. Those in the support system for a recovering addict can contribute by doing what they can to help prevent these moods. It may not seem like much but anything preventing a potential relapse is a big contribution in a battle against addiction.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. What's for dinner? Again?
I wonder if the structure explains the puzzling overuse of the expression 'delivered like pizza' in this book. Quinones turned to this analogy time and again to describe the reliability and efficiency of the heroin delivery system. Perhaps he wrote many of the chapters here as separate pieces, never intending to put them all together into one book.
Or perhaps he just likes pizza. Who knows? I like pizza.
Friday, August 4, 2017
just say no
Back
when I was in middle school, the big slogan in drug education was 'just
say no'. Given all the drinking and smoking that I witnessed taking
place in high school, I posit that this slogan came up a little short.
In hindsight, suggesting to teenagers- those most susceptible to peer
pressure, always worrying about fitting in, and hyper-sensitive to
public ridicule- that they could avoid drugs by a strategy of 'just say
no' would be like an anti-poverty program advising the poor to 'just
have more money'.
A better approach might be to encourage kids to avoid tempting situations. That won't solve the problem, of course, but it is harder to give the wrong answer if you avoid hearing the question.
I'm watching the NCAA tournament, college basketball's annual postseason tournament, as I type this sentence (1). I'm reminded of just how many players who come from tough backgrounds credit their immersion into basketball for 'keeping them off the streets'. What they mean by 'streets' in a general sense is difficult situations (though sometimes that does literally include the streets they grew up on). These athletes avoided career-derailing mistakes by using their passion for sport to avoid the places where mistakes were most commonly made.
Ideally, kids would avoid drugs and alcohol until they built up the willpower to define their own limits and make healthy decisions for their bodies. But how to do this best is a difficult question. For me- and let me remind you here, reader, that I have no expertise on the matter- the best approach is to focus on avoiding bad situations over finding the right answers to bad questions.
With this approach, a kid could frame his bad decisions as an error- 'that was a dumb decision to go to that party in the woods with those potheads'- instead of as a character flaw- 'I am too mentally weak to say no'. Again, I could be wrong on this as I am only speaking from experience. But for me, fixing what I consider my bad decision making comes a lot easier than changing what I see as ingrained personality defects.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. No, seriously!
Breaking news: I type without looking at the keyboard.
Also, my apologies for the long lag time in posts. Luckily, there is no news on the blog, ever, but I expect at some point the lag will have an unforeseen yet inexcusable negative impact on something I set to publish a month or two in the future.
A better approach might be to encourage kids to avoid tempting situations. That won't solve the problem, of course, but it is harder to give the wrong answer if you avoid hearing the question.
I'm watching the NCAA tournament, college basketball's annual postseason tournament, as I type this sentence (1). I'm reminded of just how many players who come from tough backgrounds credit their immersion into basketball for 'keeping them off the streets'. What they mean by 'streets' in a general sense is difficult situations (though sometimes that does literally include the streets they grew up on). These athletes avoided career-derailing mistakes by using their passion for sport to avoid the places where mistakes were most commonly made.
Ideally, kids would avoid drugs and alcohol until they built up the willpower to define their own limits and make healthy decisions for their bodies. But how to do this best is a difficult question. For me- and let me remind you here, reader, that I have no expertise on the matter- the best approach is to focus on avoiding bad situations over finding the right answers to bad questions.
With this approach, a kid could frame his bad decisions as an error- 'that was a dumb decision to go to that party in the woods with those potheads'- instead of as a character flaw- 'I am too mentally weak to say no'. Again, I could be wrong on this as I am only speaking from experience. But for me, fixing what I consider my bad decision making comes a lot easier than changing what I see as ingrained personality defects.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. No, seriously!
Breaking news: I type without looking at the keyboard.
Also, my apologies for the long lag time in posts. Luckily, there is no news on the blog, ever, but I expect at some point the lag will have an unforeseen yet inexcusable negative impact on something I set to publish a month or two in the future.
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
madness
Ryonusuke Akutagawa's 'Spinning Gears' is a short story about a writer slowly descending into madness. The title refers to the gears which appear one by one without invitation into his field of vision, spinning continuously until they suddenly disappear (1). Set over just a few days, it describes the protagonist battling severe headaches, trying to keep his field of vision clear, and slowly losing his mind as he interprets the mundane events of his everyday life as signs of a coming death.
Stories like this that feature such chilling images often open themselves up to all kinds of interpretations. It is a natural reaction. And whenever I'm in the process of trying to articulate my thoughts or feelings about a complex work, focusing on a symbol is often a very helpful starting point (2).
For me, the lasting concept left by this short story involved control. The sense of agency we have over a given situation influences the way we react to it and how much effort we exert in trying to improve its outcome.
The idea reminds me of my experiences with sleep deprivation. In my second to last semester of college, I was faced with the most congested schedule of my academic life. If I recall correctly, I was required to prepare for four finals and complete four additional projects over eight days. I also worked in the mail room for two hours each day and worked out on my own to maintain my conditioning levels for basketball practice.
So, I came up with the following schedule. I woke at seven and went to breakfast. From eight to twelve, I studied. Lunch was at noon followed by a half hour nap. At two, I was at work. From four to six was more studying before I went to the gym for my workout. By eight, I was back in the cafeteria. After dinner, I studied until three, taking a break around midnight for a snack.
Adding it all up, I had about four hours of sleep a night plus the nap- less than the recommended amount, let's say. I ran on this schedule for about two weeks. I do not recall ever feeling tired during this stretch, just focused. When my grades came back, I realized that this was the most productive period of my college career.
And yet, as productive as it was to run on half the suggested amount of sleep, I have not seen the same results during my other sleep-deprived stretches. There was the week that I could not figure out how mosquitoes were invading my apartment- the resulting biting and scratching kept me up for hours each night. I've had some general insomnia problems over the years, as well, that have caused my sleep totals to drop into that four hours a night range reminiscent of my crazy exam week.
The distinction between these more recent examples and my exam week schedule is the role I played as a decision maker. In choosing to stay up late to pursue a goal, I took control of my naturally running sleep pattern and made the needed adjustments. I've noted the same effect when I wake up tired after a late night out- when I take responsibility for my decisions, I find getting through the next day to be no issue at all.
It contrasted with those times I was kept awake despite trying to fall asleep. Without a say in the matter, I was overcome during the day with fatigue and found each night a new struggle against frustration and inevitability. Each yawn confirmed my inability to rest properly and each failed attempt to fall asleep only furthered the sense of hopelessness.
The way Akutagawa's protagonist cannot stop the gears from spinning through his field of vision reminded me of these experiences. With no sense of control over the appearance of these gears, he struggled to make healthy decisions for himself. Over the course of the story, his inability to influence even his most basic lens through which he sees the world undermined his will to continue on in the face of his difficulties.
The slide to madness described in 'Spinning Gears' rang true to me because control, whether an illusion or not, gives us the strength needed to navigate difficult times. It creates a narrative arc that explains the past and suggests a path into the uncertain future. It's why I can sleep for four hours one night and feel energized while a similar night of sleep a month later leaves me listless and depressed. Empower someone with a strong sense of agency and they can overcome almost any challenge; depriving them of the same leads to hopelessness and despair.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Sounds familiar...
Longtime readers of the blog will recall that I wrote about another of Akutagawa's short stories, 'Hell Screen', last fall. Both were included in Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories, a title that very pragmatically describes a collection which includes his most well-known work among the eighteen total stories.
2. Each and every one of those symbols to be explored here...
I read this story so long ago that, surely reader, you must be wondering: what took so long?
Outside the usual answers of my problems with a) churning out posts at a sloth-like speed b) general disorganization/chaos with how I organize posts and c) getting distracted by more important things like setting up email subscriptions or writing about The Animorphs, there was also d) I did consider a lot of other angles from which to look at this short story.
One discarded angle involved how knowing the author's story shades a reader's interaction with a work. 'Spinning Gears' is a story that I understand some consider autobiographical. For many, Akutagawa's own suicide in the same year he completed this work (1927) serves as confirmation of the theory. Plus, there are a number of close parallels in the story with known details of the author's life- and not just a shared occupation- that further reinforce the idea.
I either brought this knowledge with me into my initial reading or learned the details by reading the introductory chapter. Either way, I suspect it shaded my first interpretation of the story. For example, I thought it very likely at the time of reading that these spinning gears were something that the author himself battled with quite literally in his struggles with various mental demons.
That led me first to think about the gears as a cause of the author's impending madness and not as a symptom of it, a fairly significant distinction from my point of view given the unfair stigmas associated with those suffering from mental health issues. Recognizing this thought pattern served as a reminder of how easy it is to get sidetracked during the reading process by trying to get too clever and making false connections with the creator and the product.
The link of the gears to industrialization is another obvious one. At the time of publication, Japan was poised in a tense period of waiting between two world wars. It would be no surprise to learn that Akutagawa uses these gears to symbolize the endless drone of mechanization and its effect on a protagonist who was slowly losing his ability to keep up with the requirements of such activity.
Eventually, I read J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, a book that prompted me to think much more deeply about agency than ever before. I have a few posts coming up that will look more closely at this idea.
Stories like this that feature such chilling images often open themselves up to all kinds of interpretations. It is a natural reaction. And whenever I'm in the process of trying to articulate my thoughts or feelings about a complex work, focusing on a symbol is often a very helpful starting point (2).
For me, the lasting concept left by this short story involved control. The sense of agency we have over a given situation influences the way we react to it and how much effort we exert in trying to improve its outcome.
The idea reminds me of my experiences with sleep deprivation. In my second to last semester of college, I was faced with the most congested schedule of my academic life. If I recall correctly, I was required to prepare for four finals and complete four additional projects over eight days. I also worked in the mail room for two hours each day and worked out on my own to maintain my conditioning levels for basketball practice.
So, I came up with the following schedule. I woke at seven and went to breakfast. From eight to twelve, I studied. Lunch was at noon followed by a half hour nap. At two, I was at work. From four to six was more studying before I went to the gym for my workout. By eight, I was back in the cafeteria. After dinner, I studied until three, taking a break around midnight for a snack.
Adding it all up, I had about four hours of sleep a night plus the nap- less than the recommended amount, let's say. I ran on this schedule for about two weeks. I do not recall ever feeling tired during this stretch, just focused. When my grades came back, I realized that this was the most productive period of my college career.
And yet, as productive as it was to run on half the suggested amount of sleep, I have not seen the same results during my other sleep-deprived stretches. There was the week that I could not figure out how mosquitoes were invading my apartment- the resulting biting and scratching kept me up for hours each night. I've had some general insomnia problems over the years, as well, that have caused my sleep totals to drop into that four hours a night range reminiscent of my crazy exam week.
The distinction between these more recent examples and my exam week schedule is the role I played as a decision maker. In choosing to stay up late to pursue a goal, I took control of my naturally running sleep pattern and made the needed adjustments. I've noted the same effect when I wake up tired after a late night out- when I take responsibility for my decisions, I find getting through the next day to be no issue at all.
It contrasted with those times I was kept awake despite trying to fall asleep. Without a say in the matter, I was overcome during the day with fatigue and found each night a new struggle against frustration and inevitability. Each yawn confirmed my inability to rest properly and each failed attempt to fall asleep only furthered the sense of hopelessness.
The way Akutagawa's protagonist cannot stop the gears from spinning through his field of vision reminded me of these experiences. With no sense of control over the appearance of these gears, he struggled to make healthy decisions for himself. Over the course of the story, his inability to influence even his most basic lens through which he sees the world undermined his will to continue on in the face of his difficulties.
The slide to madness described in 'Spinning Gears' rang true to me because control, whether an illusion or not, gives us the strength needed to navigate difficult times. It creates a narrative arc that explains the past and suggests a path into the uncertain future. It's why I can sleep for four hours one night and feel energized while a similar night of sleep a month later leaves me listless and depressed. Empower someone with a strong sense of agency and they can overcome almost any challenge; depriving them of the same leads to hopelessness and despair.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Sounds familiar...
Longtime readers of the blog will recall that I wrote about another of Akutagawa's short stories, 'Hell Screen', last fall. Both were included in Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories, a title that very pragmatically describes a collection which includes his most well-known work among the eighteen total stories.
I read this story so long ago that, surely reader, you must be wondering: what took so long?
Outside the usual answers of my problems with a) churning out posts at a sloth-like speed b) general disorganization/chaos with how I organize posts and c) getting distracted by more important things like setting up email subscriptions or writing about The Animorphs, there was also d) I did consider a lot of other angles from which to look at this short story.
One discarded angle involved how knowing the author's story shades a reader's interaction with a work. 'Spinning Gears' is a story that I understand some consider autobiographical. For many, Akutagawa's own suicide in the same year he completed this work (1927) serves as confirmation of the theory. Plus, there are a number of close parallels in the story with known details of the author's life- and not just a shared occupation- that further reinforce the idea.
I either brought this knowledge with me into my initial reading or learned the details by reading the introductory chapter. Either way, I suspect it shaded my first interpretation of the story. For example, I thought it very likely at the time of reading that these spinning gears were something that the author himself battled with quite literally in his struggles with various mental demons.
That led me first to think about the gears as a cause of the author's impending madness and not as a symptom of it, a fairly significant distinction from my point of view given the unfair stigmas associated with those suffering from mental health issues. Recognizing this thought pattern served as a reminder of how easy it is to get sidetracked during the reading process by trying to get too clever and making false connections with the creator and the product.
The link of the gears to industrialization is another obvious one. At the time of publication, Japan was poised in a tense period of waiting between two world wars. It would be no surprise to learn that Akutagawa uses these gears to symbolize the endless drone of mechanization and its effect on a protagonist who was slowly losing his ability to keep up with the requirements of such activity.
Eventually, I read J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, a book that prompted me to think much more deeply about agency than ever before. I have a few posts coming up that will look more closely at this idea.
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
the toa newsletter - august 2017
Hi,
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned changes to the August posting schedule. Here is how I see it working out.
First, the current Wednesday/Friday/Sunday format will remain as is. Those posts are going well and I'll stick with what's working.
On Tuesdays, I'll post the short snippets I used to include in the 'proper admin' blogs: stories from my wanderings, recurring features, and leftover thoughts from past posts. If things go well on Tuesdays, I'll consider adding more short pieces on the other open days of the week.
And when I say 'short', I'm not messing around. I'm using around three hundred words as a cutoff. Any longer and I'll post it on one of the other three days of the week. Just to give you, excellent reader, an idea of how 'long' this is, I'll include an emoji (the first TOA emoji ever) after the three hundredth word of this post.
I'm also considering adjustments to presentation. My initial thought a year and a half ago was to create separate blogs for different interests, topics, or sides to my personality. Last August, I started The Business Bro blog as the first of these experiments.
It does seem like it also will be the last. The more TOA goes on, the less interested I am in this plan. Each new space (as was the case with recurring features) simply creates more non-writing work for me. As of today, I'm leaning toward getting everything here and having all my work under one roof. But again, that's a thought in process.
Thanks for reading in July.
Tim
*********
Books I'm excited to (probably) read this month...
-The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks
A book often cited as one of the most influential in the field of software project management (¯\_(ツ)_/¯), I've finally decided to check this book out after repeated conversations with recruiters and hiring managers about my 'project management' background.
In general, these conversations seem to go just fine. But on the other hand, still jobless.
Can't hurt to know what I'm bullshitting about!
-Animal Farm by George Orwell
A book which requires no introduction. Children's books about animals never do. This is good because I'm tired and bored at the moment, a combination traditionally resulting in subpar TOA posts.
But one more, just as a bonus...
-Option B by Sheryl Sandberg
About a week or two after my mom died, I found this blog post Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, left on her own site (Facebook). It was the first piece of writing (and perhaps the first thing, period) I responded to since her passing.
I read the post in full each morning for a short while. It served as a useful set of reminders each day as I faced the challenge of coming into work and keeping my focus for the next few hours. As I re-read the post just now for this newsletter and found myself finishing sentences or quoting upcoming phrases like I had just read it yesterday, I finally realized the extent to which Sandberg's post resonated with me two summers ago.
One day, I copied her post into an email draft and read it from there. For whatever reason (probably during a busy morning) I started stripping out the lines which no longer applied. Sometime in late fall, I was down to one line:
'Pervasiveness - this does not have to affect every area of my life; the ability to compartmentalize is healthy.'
The next week, I chucked the email draft. Compartmentalizing, like any remedy, is healthy for a time. But when the time comes to move on, it's best to move on. I sensed it was time to fuse the separate pieces of me back together. From there, I could let the best I brought to my life outside of work start to make me a better worker.
Still, I suspected at the time this book would eventually come out. In a way, I've been waiting almost two years to read this. I'm looking forward to it a great deal.
I might even get around to it in August. Who knows?
In the next month of...True On Average...
1) Another post about a traffic light
2) Another post about a one-way street
3) I succumb to the madness of adding fractions
See you in August!
-July 2017
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned changes to the August posting schedule. Here is how I see it working out.
First, the current Wednesday/Friday/Sunday format will remain as is. Those posts are going well and I'll stick with what's working.
On Tuesdays, I'll post the short snippets I used to include in the 'proper admin' blogs: stories from my wanderings, recurring features, and leftover thoughts from past posts. If things go well on Tuesdays, I'll consider adding more short pieces on the other open days of the week.
And when I say 'short', I'm not messing around. I'm using around three hundred words as a cutoff. Any longer and I'll post it on one of the other three days of the week. Just to give you, excellent reader, an idea of how 'long' this is, I'll include an emoji (the first TOA emoji ever) after the three hundredth word of this post.
I'm also considering adjustments to presentation. My initial thought a year and a half ago was to create separate blogs for different interests, topics, or sides to my personality. Last August, I started The Business Bro blog as the first of these experiments.
It does seem like it also will be the last. The more TOA goes on, the less interested I am in this plan. Each new space (as was the case with recurring features) simply creates more non-writing work for me. As of today, I'm leaning toward getting everything here and having all my work under one roof. But again, that's a thought in process.
Thanks for reading in July.
Tim
*********
Books I'm excited to (probably) read this month...
-The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks
A book often cited as one of the most influential in the field of software project management (¯\_(ツ)_/¯), I've finally decided to check this book out after repeated conversations with recruiters and hiring managers about my 'project management' background.
In general, these conversations seem to go just fine. But on the other hand, still jobless.
Can't hurt to know what I'm bullshitting about!
-Animal Farm by George Orwell
A book which requires no introduction. Children's books about animals never do. This is good because I'm tired and bored at the moment, a combination traditionally resulting in subpar TOA posts.
But one more, just as a bonus...
-Option B by Sheryl Sandberg
About a week or two after my mom died, I found this blog post Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, left on her own site (Facebook). It was the first piece of writing (and perhaps the first thing, period) I responded to since her passing.
I read the post in full each morning for a short while. It served as a useful set of reminders each day as I faced the challenge of coming into work and keeping my focus for the next few hours. As I re-read the post just now for this newsletter and found myself finishing sentences or quoting upcoming phrases like I had just read it yesterday, I finally realized the extent to which Sandberg's post resonated with me two summers ago.
One day, I copied her post into an email draft and read it from there. For whatever reason (probably during a busy morning) I started stripping out the lines which no longer applied. Sometime in late fall, I was down to one line:
'Pervasiveness - this does not have to affect every area of my life; the ability to compartmentalize is healthy.'
The next week, I chucked the email draft. Compartmentalizing, like any remedy, is healthy for a time. But when the time comes to move on, it's best to move on. I sensed it was time to fuse the separate pieces of me back together. From there, I could let the best I brought to my life outside of work start to make me a better worker.
Still, I suspected at the time this book would eventually come out. In a way, I've been waiting almost two years to read this. I'm looking forward to it a great deal.
I might even get around to it in August. Who knows?
In the next month of...True On Average...
1) Another post about a traffic light
2) Another post about a one-way street
3) I succumb to the madness of adding fractions
See you in August!
-July 2017
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