Category: Uncategorized

Board games at pax unplugged, and not much else…

Time for another short flight, after a three day weekend at PAX Unplugged.

My friend was there with her new boyfriend, and he hadn’t played modern board games before, so much of this weekend was spent introducing him to various styles of games.

Friday we started with Azul, a tile drafting and placement game, which I like better than the second iteration, Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra, which I learned at BGG in Dallas. It’s a neat tactical game which has a strong ability to screw your left hand neighbor. I was the subject of some screwage by the new player, who enjoyed that aspect of the game immensely. I did well anyway, as I’m pretty familiar with the game, and I tend to be good at spatial games.

I forget the order of the rest of the day, but we played String Railway Transport, which is a Japan-only release, and a follow up to String Railways, which I’ve not played. I’m a big fan of this one, since it’s a pick up and deliver game without any economics. Each turn is represented by one of the six strings of your color, which you lay down carefully between scattered paper city squares to create routes. Then on your turn you can move cubes based on action points, then collect the cubes to make sets of different colors. I did well, but I never upgraded my train to gain more action points, which was intentional but probably led me to fall short of the win. I was very efficient with my turns, but it wasn’t quite enough.

We played Las Vegas, which is a light dice rolling game that’s easy to learn. It has a lot of table talk and lobbying, which is generally best ignored, but sometimes succeeds in changing someone’s decision. In this game you roll a handful of six sided dice, and then choose a set of them to put on a casino of the same number. So if you roll three threes you have to put all three on the 3 casino spot. Each turn you roll your dice again so there is no long term strategy, just tactical response. Once everyone is out of dice the round ends and the person with the most dice on a given casino wins the highest value scoring card. The second card, if any is taken by the next most dice, etc. The trick is that any ties are discarded, so when two people each have 4 dice and a third person has one, the one wins. This makes for some interesting interplay.

We played Spyrium, without the newbie, which is a worker placement game without any blocking. The placement spots are between the cards in a 3 by 3 array. You place meeples and later remove them to get money or cards in exchange for the money. I liked it better than I remember liking it.

We played On Tour, which is a new route building game. Each player has a personal dry erase board of the United States, with most adjacent states connected by dotted lines. Each turn three cards are drawn, showing regions such as “east” and a state such as Florida. Then two d10 dice are rolled, e.g. 37. Each player decides to put a 37 in one state in an indicated region, and a 73 in another. At the end of the game a route is drawn using only increasing numbers. It’s quite different and pretty fun. It plays any number of players, since it’s essentially a solitaire game, but the base game only comes with 4 boards. They sell more boards, but that quickly drives up the cost. I feel it should come with 6.

We played No Thanks, which is one of my favorite filler games.

We played Qwirkle after dinner, which is sort of like Scrabble with symbols instead of letters. You build out the same way in a common area, scoring points for added tiles similarly, though more simply. Tiles in a row must either be all the same shape or all the same color, with the opposite feature being unique within a string of tiles. It’s also a fun filler, though I think I like Qwirkle Cubes better, which allows rolling the dice on your turn to try for a more useful face.

Sunday three of us played It’s a Wonderful World, a card drafting game which feels a bit like a streamlined 7 Wonders. Cards drafted are either “recycled” for a displayed resource or moved into a production area to have other resources deposited on them. When completely filled they become part of a production engine. One neat feature is that production happens serially with each color going in turn, white, black, green, gold, blue. This means if you build a blue-producing card using a black cube then the blue card will produce later in the round. This is a fun puzzle! There are a couple of other rules but not many. It’s a very solid drafting game with nice art.

We got back with our group of five to play Irish Gauge, a train themed stock game. It looks like an 18xx game, but is much simpler and plays pretty quickly. It’s a lot more like Airlines Europe (or the earlier Union Pacific) than 1830 or Steam.

Last we played Queendomino, which is a more complicated version of Kingdomino. I enjoyed it, but I am more likely to play Kingdomino, since it’s simpler, with the same core mechanism. The complexity added in Queendomino is worse for new players and isn’t clever enough to engage heavier gamers. I lost horribly since I mostly ignored the new mechanisms.

Three of us played while two rounded up some food from Reading Market. We wanted to be sure they went since the other three of us had been many times in past years. It’s quite a spectacle, and the food is varied and good. It’s along the same lines as the Quincy Market area of Boston.

We ate quickly in one of the hotels, checked out and called a car. I watched some football with my friend before his flight to Seattle and mine to RDU.

Well, I’m back on the ground safely. That’s all for now.

H

Ok I have a beer dilemma.

I was at the Two Roads tap room in the BDL airport, and I got a Road2 Ruin which I always enjoy. Then I had a Two Juicy, another double IPA on tap.

I rated the Two Juicy for the first time and gave it a 4 (out of 5) on Untapped. I have had it before but apparently not rated.

I rated the Two Juicy a 4. Then I went to rate the Road 2 Ruin and I was thinking 3.75, but I had previously rated it a 4.25. dilemma.

Both were really good though

I rated Road 2 Ruin a 4, dropping the score from 4.25

But I like it better than the other, by the end of it. I think it’s that they’re both great, but differ based on mood. Or in this case a pastrami sandwich and horseradish chips.

Fretting over imaginary internet points is a first world problem and a good one to have.

—

My flight was boarding when I arrived at the gate. Since I’m in group FU, I took a seat.

Basic economy again. I don’t like this trend. I get a full size carry on this time though. Which I don’t have.

I have instead a smallish backpack carry on, a 38 liter Red Oxx convertible bag instead. I don’t convert it.

It’s a clamshell design so it’s easy to pack. I can stack my shirts flat at the bottom and button them up around a bundle constructed of the rest of my clothes.

Plus it has room for a couple of board games, if they are smallish, or if there’s only one then medium is ok. Many times I’ve stuffed games into larger games like Russian paper dolls… which are rectangular.

I expect they may still force me to gate check it.

Nope, plane had plenty of room. Groups 7 and 8 went super fast. I’m pretty sure there are not really 9 groups. They just say 7 and 8 to make group 9 feel worse.

It’s 5 or 6 rows forward to the wing exits, for future reference.

I’m not used to flying American. The seats are trying to be fancy, with leatherette and bulbuous cushions in ill-advised places.

Fortunately I have a kick-ass inflatable pillow made by Sea to Summit to use for lumbar support. I inflated it only a little (on the second try) and it helps a ton. I’ve got another like it which goes around my neck. Both are supplely soft, a sort of spandexy nanofleece.

As a result I’m magnificently comfortable, or so I can pretend for 4 and a quarter hours of skybussery.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Being uncrowded as it is, and such is the hope of any groupniner with a largeish backpack or a smallish carry on, my middle seat magically transformed into a window seat, on account of there being no one already sitting in it. Score 1 for seat karma

–

Who made these machines we fly in? By whose hands to we prevail, aloft? Which piece of titanium turbine blade will bump the MTBF statistics a notch. Hopefully somewhere the F else.

Really though we depend on these things, this technology we created. A mud hut is technology and there’s always been rain. And piece of hut is less likely to go through your head at four hundred miles per hour. Ergo, airplanes are safer than mud huts.

The fallacy here is that not all factors are considered. They never can be, so all is fallacy.

The fallacy up there is that we all go out, our light that is our life. Snuffed by shingles. Or staph, or stroke. Or in impossibly bad ways, like being shot two years ago at a country music concert in Las Vegas by an ammosexual fuckwit with a stack of guns and not enough sense. And then taking two years to die. Today.

The truth is, I don’t know her life either. Maybe her injury brought her family together. Life is pretty weird that way. It’s easy to think we know what should be.

Usually we’re right of course. I’m pretty sure everyone who has ever been shot in the history of ever would tell you they’d prefer not-shot, if given the choice any time up to and including time traveling to unshot themselves.

It would be good if we would just, like, stop shooting each other. We have enough flying projectiles without that. I’m looking at you, starboard wing engine.

We’ll save a lot on time machines.

–

This is my new favorite pilot. He gave us all the information we need and then said “this will be my last scheduled announcement”. Praise cheesus.

I feel the pressure in my ears and sinuses at the same time as I feel the pressure of the now-inflated neck pillow squeezing in on my most important vascular system components. Or at least those favored by vampires and villains, as visually viewed on video, Vivian.

One day a Vivian will read this, and to her: Carly Simon says hi

I don’t know any Vivians. In this timeline.

Full face yawning is a thing. Eustachian tubes are one thing, but stretching out your whole fucking face is key to successfully avoiding Schroaderfords Syndrome, which is what makes your head hurt during long flights, and is a thing I just made up. I’m not kidding about the face part though, it’s totally a thing.

I hear it’s the dryness of the air too. My buddy used to bring a humidifier with him on business trips. I thought he was nuts. I still think so. He also turned the heat on in the summer.

–

Not accepting cash is a dick move to people who have shitty credit. Not that I blame the airline. Nothing grosser than having money hands touch food that’s going in your face hole. It’s reasonable risk mitigation. But, yeah, dickish.

I suddenly want to do an rf sweep of this airplane. My data is safe though, I took the free mini pretzels and water. My tray table is the “other airline” photo in anyone else’s marketing materials.

I’m studying for my CISSP, which means I am thinking about risk differently. Semi quantitatively analyzing. Occasionally objectionably overtly avoiding attending against any effort of ego. Id is impishly invasive.

Indeed it in summary involves intense inculcation in internet instruction, interspersed with internet distraction.

–

That’s not all that’s been on my mind. I’ve been having intense dreams which wake me up early. 620, 520, 420 am. What’s weird is remembering them, which I wouldn’t unless writing was wrung from uncaffienated and underconscious neurons. In the second case, that of 520am, it was a nightmare.

–

I dreamed I was in a haunted house. A rotting Victorian hulk, slumping heavily into the withering wheat wafted by a wailing westard wind.

Dark, it was, and cold. Devoid of color, due to disensorous retinal goo.

*English language learners: many of the things I say are not words anyone else will understand. I was going to say they’re not words at all, but once i spray them they stays then.

When the dream began, I wasn’t afeared of ghostery, believing not in apparitions. But among the creaking floorboards, their threats of failure both heard and felt through tenuous toes, stepping slowly and eyes blinking, in an effort to amplify them, I saw shadows move from the corners of my eye

And

everything

stopped.

I awoke in a hospital, modern and bright,

with a competent, pleasant nurse to my side.

She told me I’d been hurt, but I’d be ok,

They preferred to sedate me a bit for my pain.

She left with a smile, and into the frame

a medical GUI, a dosing machine.

It counts down the list of injections she’d set

Then red it turns on the third one down

Overdose it says, then blinks to confirm

I try to call out, but my throat is unable

The first two drugs work on that part

Then through the wall the grim reaper phases

A cloud of grey and black,

Formed but not solid

Ephemerally invulnerable

Opening onyx arms

To pick me up like a child

And I could not scream.

—

—

When I awake from nocturnal brain garbage theater I’m prone to fall back asleep. I’m pretty good at going to sleep actually. I have a lot of practice. Pretty much every day, sometimes more than once. So I sure as shit didn’t want to fall back into that situation, and I knew myself well enough to otherwise engage myself.

So I wrote.

For hours and over breakfast and in the car ride to the place where my friend’s friends were. I’m glad I did.

I’m always glad when I write, it’s just not always easy to untangle from the dopamine spiders to actually get to writing though. Flights are a reprieve.

(*I know I can get wifi, please STFU)

So ok, it’s metagaming. I’m playing with the system, turning the knobs by telling myself that my attention must be affixed as thus. Unplugged but still squinting at a screen.

The Amish may be on to something. Connectedness has definitely evolved us in unexpected ways. Better or worse for the discrete organism, and unpredictability for the collective. We are all one meta-thing. The only known one of those. So, keeping it working is pretty important.

I don’t think hating each other’s differences is healthy. Lots of species died. Most of them. Practically all of them. Even the smart ones, neanderthal, homo allthethings.

#HomoAllTheThings

Hah!

–

Anyway I hope whoever is working security on automatic injection interfaces is good at their job. And I could recommend a compensating control.

Avoidance is one way to mitigate risk. The decision that the possible gain isn’t worth the expanse, followed by the walk away. Sometimes that’s for the best, when not-cliff-diving. Then again you have to weigh that perilous plummet against the unlived experience of not having ever been cliff diving.

I’ve been cliff diving. In high school a bunch of us went to a quarry, and there was a tree platform there we jumped from high over the already profound precipice. The water wasn’t like pavement, it was like ooblek or however you spell it. Non Newtonian. Hard.

Though, I expect it compares favorably to tandem landings under a reserve chute. Someone told me a story about that this weekend, but I’ve forgotten who. I spoke to a lot of people this weekend, but I’m also bad at that.

At remembering conversations, as to what was said by who when. Whom? Grammatically corect while inharmoniously incorrect. Language languishes without textual twists and metered merriment.

–

We, this thing, this collective of all knowledge running on imperfect hardware with no standardization, we are one by our language.

Of many, though, we are. Each of us resonates in a particular way across the four dimensions of meat space. Engaging others. Inducing others to harmonize, ideally. Stirring around in the pot of humanity, making waves of thought and action.

All at different amplitudes across ages. Some echo eons, as our Khan’s, both wrathful and, also quite wrathful.

More though by kindness of deed and dote.

These, while nameless to the Khanquored, are not so among friends.

–

It takes literally no effort to not be a dick to people. Some of them really work at deserving it though, but aside from them, meaning during most human interactions, it’s really not hard.

But being friendly is hard. It takes energy, and lots of it. Being outgoing is laborious. Much labor is laudable, so this alone isn’t enough to contraindicate it. In fact I highly recommend it, when enough spoons are left over from elsewise stressors.

Still, connection makes us us. It is the glue and twine that loops our lives in little loci, with added over-arcing flight paths and route maps. We’re hyper connected and it’s a dangerous internet out there. We define our lives indelibly, subject only to the failures of memory, digital and neural. And fashion.

The organism moves on, from grumpy cat to yelling at cat. To whatever meme is in fashion five minutes from now when you read this. Or five millennia.

That’s the fuck of it all really. Small bits of writing endure. More now, thanks to the decline in fashion of book burning. One good EMP though and it could vanish. A pattern dissolved, dispersed, diffused, defused. After all, I’m flying in a metal tube in the air, my patterns are pretty vulnerable to rapid unexpected disassembly.

But read is different.

Writing read is writing transmitted. A thought compressed, chopped to bits, checksummed and CRCd, copied achronally. Careless of eternity, while carried at C. Or at sea, enbottled post-quill. Which one has the best chance of survival? The meme in the bottle or in the air? Which will end awash and unnoticed, pattern scattered?

But when received the purpose is fulfilled, ears itch with new knowledge. Fingers twitch and scratch ideas into objects. Eyes open to new views, valuing varied vistas.

Which is pretty much just views in Spanish, but doesn’t mean quite the same thing in English.

I took Spanish in high school, so I’m not qualified to discuss etymology here. Not that I ever am, whatever language I’m presently abusing. Or anywhere else either, for example Spain.

Yeah that haiku again. I forget from last time, but the moment happened again. Happens always. When the plane’s tenor changes, engines relaxing, wings pitching forward ever so slightly. That’s what a haiku is. A moment.

Fun fact: everything is in this moment. Or that one.

No, that one.

Look, If you keep trying to grab one you’ll never catch it.

–

We spend our lives walking backwards. The future is behind us. Another language taught me that. We see only our past, as it quickly recedes from us, losing focus in the wash. We’re profoundly unprepared for our future, so much that we don’t recognize it when it arrives. Once we can describe it we’ve already fallen out of reach, unable to touch it.

Now, though, is the thing we can touch, Xeno notwithstanding. But only if we’re looking around us instead of behind.

Landing for serious now.

H

I can always tell I’ve had a good weekend by how sore my feet are. From use, anyway, not from smashing, though I am still sore from that too, when last week I “caught” my dropped phone by the corner on a fragile footbone and spent ten minutes alternating between “ow ow ow” and “is that broken?” Neither the foot not the phone were, so, success? But ow. This though is a different kind of sore, from use in pursuit of joy.

---

It started Saturday, when I brought the RV to a house concert in the back yard of my friends’s place. The band was new to me, or almost so, having seen a single video on the YouTube cinematograph. They played on a stage of hay bales and plywood, with Christmas lights and a PA. The few dozen of us were charmed by a hauntingly good fiddle tune, and it wasn’t long before I was compelled to dance. So, sore feet #1 followed, in the form of jumping around to the rhythm section on the uneven turf. The evening progressed wonderfully with bonfire, casual music and pleasant conversation until I crawled into my portable bed up the hill. I awoke to coffee and bacon and more of the excellent conversation. We disassembled the stage so the hay could be returned to the farm, and the plywood could become a future stage before I showered and headed out…

---

To sore feet #2, which was wandering around the Woodstock Fair with friends both new and old. I ate fried things in ball form, crunchy bacon cheddar burger balls, apple fritter balls, crunchy taco balls. Plus a non-ball sandwich of sausage with peppers and onions, and some jerky. Fairs for me are about food and watching people and occasionally vivisected Model T engines. The last of which is pretty unusual, but one of my favorite things to do at the Woodstock Fair. I’m fascinated by machines, especially old ones that are made brutally and heavily. Many of the farm machines are set up to puff and chug and whirr their way through the work of sawing, pumping, ore smashing and generally giving the impression that they could continue to do so after the sun burns out. I’m sure there is plenty of maintenance and restoration involved, not to mention quite a bit of oiling, but the sheer tenacity of these contraptions is staggering. Their flywheels of hundreds of pounds spinning at visually reasonable but constant speeds could be discounted by the casual observer, until said observer gets too close and becomes bits of disassembled meat. There’s a safety rope.

---

I left the RV fridge on DC, which is really just a heating element. I figured I’d be at the fair a few hours and the solar would pick up most of the slack. The battery was down to 34% which is the lowest I’ve had it. Once we found a shady seat we spent a lot of time there (see sore feet). It was nice catching up with my ex and meeting her boyfriend. It was dark by the time I left and the 185 watts had pulled the battery down quite a bit. Fortunately I didn’t need it, and on the drive home it charged to 55, which would have been ok for an overnight, even with heavy use. I plugged it in anyway when I got home, and leveled it going the other way in the driveway, since it doesn’t matter that it’s blocking that car in for a while.

---

This morning I watched a couple of YouTube videos in how to replace the shocks and struts in the RV since it’s pretty squishy and rolly. It looks easy so I ordered the best shocks I could find, figuring the money I save in labor will make up for it. They’re Koni Reds which are adjustable, creating a whole new problem of what setting to use. This is a good problem to have, but reminds me, as often I am, of Buddha’s 83 problems, a parable concerning the endless challenge of life. Essentially that any problem solved is replaced by a new one, such that there are always 83. Of course 83 is an arbitrary number, which is also part of the point, in that there is no sense enumerating them. The 84th problem is wishing you had no problems. Learning to let go of that one is tricky but valuable.

---

So after solving problem 83 and placing the order, I got back to sewing, which is a thing I haven’t mentioned yet, you don’t need to re-read this post. I was replacing the fur on my chipmonk costume, which is not spelled wrong. I needed it for the Renaissance Faire today, and so I spent the first few hours of the day cutting and hand sewing black and white stripes on the back of my monk’s robe. This is the fourth time I have worn it, the first being Halloween 2017 and the others being last year’s Ren faire. I got that done and made it to the fair just as it started raining. I brought an umbrella to keep my ears and tail dry, plus the other in between parts.

---

I worked on sore feet #3 wandering around talking to the vendors. I got a massive cheese steak, probably because I was the last order of the day and they’d have thrown it away otherwise. Picture a giant chipmonk whose goatee and hands were completely covered in melted cheese product. It wasn’t my proudest moment, but at least I didn’t spill any on the costume.

---

On the way home I checked out a river, since it had stopped raining. I scrambled over the rocks and sat a while listening to the waterfalls. I’m going to call that sore feet #4, even though there was more sitting than standing.

---

So, problem 83: had too much fun, send new feet.

H

Life is patterns of repeating repeating repeating, iterating, experimenting, often failing, never lasting.

---

This blade of grass, gone to seed, fulfilling its pattern, failed. The seed dropped from the edge of a tiny cliff, no higher than the spent husks, mere inches from it’s base. This though made the difference, since said seed can’t survive in the sandy substrate below. The lapping lake shore provides water, yes, but with the violence of wind and wave the seed stands no chance of standing. Two inches leeward and it could have joined its parent on the precipice. Two more and it would have been trampled. The waves repeat and repeat. The patterns persist.

---

Across the calm cove a pine perches on its own shore. It propagated, probably; its profound posture promises progeny. But it is dead. Split and stripped of bark. It soaks up the setting sun silently. Its pattern past, its body bare. Waiting only to become adrift wood, a driftwood. Fertilizer. Fungus food. The patterns persist.

---

My pattern too… I command my feet to walk me back to a cold box of calories, full of particular plants and animals. To stuff into a hole; to turn into me. A necessary pattern for all my others. Repeating and repeating.

---

I should visit the lake more often.

H

It’s hard to overstate how much I hate jazz. Especially loud jazz. Right now there are four guys on stage trying to masturbate louder than each other. Star Trek’s Scottie could indiscriminately swap one of them with a randomly chosen jazzer from a different country, where they call them jazzers, and the aural assault would continue unabated with no one the wiser, least of all the drummer. The audience would applaud the avant garde rendition of Loud with a Side of Louder in G minor. So experimental!

I was just here last weekend, then sans jazzers, both times in the van, which is lately warping my sense of space. The van, not the jazz; via a weird haze of disconnectedness. Unmoored. Not adrift, but without a draft, indeterminate of route and sometimes destination. I occupy arbitrary space, in between times I don’t, absent the cyclical circadia of normal navigation. It’s a complex combination with my attempt at digital detoxification.

The moorings of the internet call gently like the calming slap of waves on the hull of a harbored boat. And I have listened less than I expected and more than I’ve wanted.

I’m doing OK with Facebook at least, engaging intentionally, in furtive spurts, trying to hide from my own perception. Next is news, the nexus of knowledge of the temporally tenuous. The implication of information NOW NOW NOW, sooner than soon, in time to react to the threat of the…

Well, OK that’s a pretty big threat isn’t it? That one, that you’re thinking of.

Threats are more dangerous when we can’t do anything about them. Not for what they do but what they do to us while we anticipate them. The worry about them, that’s the damage we do to ourselves. “Stop” I say to myself, and don’t listen. Much.

The jazzers have reinvaded the stage, analogous to some place that has been invaded a lot throughout history. I’m pretending not to have internet again, I’m hoping you pretend I said something clever.

That reminds me, strangely, of a character I played in a RPG once. Damn is it “an RPG” because it’s “an R” because R sounds like ARR which starts with a vowel, even though R isn’t a vowel? Or is it “a RPG” because the R is for Role (… Playing Game). Again I could look this up, or maybe another day I’d remember, or maybe I’m gonna make up my own damn rules, because rules are for followers. And players, when I’m running an RPG. I can even change the rule in mid-paragraph. Boom.

She was a Japanese women in the Crimean War, married to a Russian Colonel, knitting coded troop data into gifts sent home for her family, to regain the honor lost when her father sold opium to her townsfolk. At the start of the session she was reaping the vegetables from her garden in anticipation of escape before the encroaching invaders. When it was too late, and she realized a new regime was in power, she demurely offered “Vegetable?” to her next subject of observation, in service to her emperor, the invader with the gun.

A time traveler arrived an instant before her death, bullet hovering in the air in front of her face, her offer insufficiently ingratiating. On realizing time had stopped, except for her and the yet newer observee. “That’s a nice sword you have… Vegetable?”

I made her from random adjectives (female, 43, birth country, profession (con man, adjusted), dishonored, etc. At the end of the game, she betrayed her team, bringing the time travel device to her emperor’s feet and stranding them in the distant past.

Jazzers are jazzing and my friends have arrived, so this one’s getting posted without editing. At least they are all playing the same song.

Boom.

I finished the book on Digital Minimalism, minus the extensive end notes, and started one called Atomic Habits. It’s about how to form habits you want and how to stop those you don’t. Everyone has habits, though we don’t generally notice them unless they cause trouble. That’s because they make our lives easier, at least in the short run, by firing our reward neurons with low effort.

---

Today my reward neurons were bathed in dopamine as my tongue was bathed in a mango “Snowdae” and associated fruity bits. It’s a pile of shaved ice, mildly sweet and mango boba. It’s of very low density, and though it’s the size of a respectable grapefruit it doesn’t feel heavy. It’s fluffy. I could make a habit of it, were it not confined to three locations in the US and 800 elsewhere. Mostly China.

---

The habits I seek are not increased dessert consumption, but high quality entertainment, reading and writing. I’m hoping I can write daily or at least most days. Part of the struggle is feeling like I have something worthwhile to talk about. I don’t ever have a plan when I start writing here, so I probably should get over that part. It’s an excuse, really, a habit my brain uses to avoid work. But I’ve already decided to swim in the river of suck, and not let being sometimes bad or boring get in the way of doing both publicly.

---

I did okay today with avoiding the habit of social media, only checking in to events and messages and avoiding mindless scrolling. But I failed at unnecessary news browsing and ignoring that itchy feeling in my brain that makes my hand reach for my phone. I give myself a B minus for today in the “try to engage with technology intentionally” department. Mostly I was able to put the phone down quickly after I satisfied my craving to know, in a moment of desperation, important information, such as the ingredients in a Mint Julep, despite having no real reason to care. The little box that knows all things is a tempting minx.

---

The habits book is all common sense, which is to say that I can pretend to have known it without ever actually following it. It’s obvious really, and I’ve heard it all before, except for the new parts. I follow the techniques already, at least the important ones. The methods I use in place of the ones that work better are clearly OK…ish. Just because one of my habits is rationalizing past behavior doesn’t mean any of it is my fault. 😉

---

I’ll keep reading.

H

My body is a temple, but it’s a temple of Bacchus. So drink with food, and with that, conversation. My request for the Red Sox game on TV led to a brief discussion of baseball stadia and the abject poverty observable in India. He was marking up a paper on artificial intelligence in financial management before he left. Algorithms trying to beat algorithms at guessing the potential value of companies that largely do nothing. What could go wrong?

---

I’m back at Industry, a gastro pub within walking distance of my hotel in Buckhead. I’m pretty sure I took the same seat I had in February, with it’s carefully shabby welds on a just-so rusted decoration. A corner spot with visibility to three TVs and reasonable zombie defensibility. On the other TV is the Atlanta Braves game happening 30 minutes from here. I briefly considered getting tickets, but I need downtime after travel, and this place hits the spot. Besides, my chosen affiliation is elsewhere.

---

I ended up chatting with a roving nurse until he summoned one of his lady friends to join him. The red Sox won after loading the bases in the 9th and walking in a run, to make it a one run game. It was stressful, but having won I feel fulfillment as though my fretting aided the players. Brains are funny.

---

I ate a Mr T, a turkey feta avocado “burger” with a side of Brussels sprouts. Both were excellent. No ragerts

H

I’ve decided, or realized, that the constant state of low level anxiety created by endless Facebook notifications, incessant news browsing and indefinite connectedness is unsustainability bad for my brain.

I’m an information sponge, by nature. I absorb an unusual portion of facts that I encounter, and retain much of it indefinitely. This has given me huge advantages in my professional career, and I’m fortunate to have a job which exploits that.

I was one of the first smartphone users, an early adopter of PalmOS phones. I carefully curated a functional home page of URLs which functioned much like the apps of today, though without the clutter. For example I had a direct link for the animated gif of the weather radar around Boston. Even though I was limited to dialup speeds I was able to get that piece of information quickly. I had links for the text based versions of local news sites and one for Webster’s online dictionary.

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These days the internet and my usage of it have evolved. Originally the World Wide Web was conceived as a bidirectional exchange, where each user would contribute substantially similarly to their consumption. While I have been active at times on various message boards, I’ve never contributed as much as I intended.

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Partly, I think this was due to a lack of confidence. I didn’t self-identify as a writer, possibly to protect myself from the pain of failing at it. It’s always easier to avoid trying new things and pretend we’d be good if we did. Still it wasn’t an aspiration of mine, and I figured I’d leave that work to the professionals. I was content to consume, and occasionally to regurgitate on my unsuspecting friends. (Gross.)

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Now I am content to fail, or at least not to succeed.

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Of course, your undying adulation will not be ignored, and my objective is not selfless. It’s just that I am no longer content to consume.

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About a decade ago I started getting involved in the Maker Movement. By now I don’t have to explain that term to you, but at the time it was a novelty. I was interested in laser cutting and 3d printing and microcontrollers. And while I’ve made a few cool costumes and things since then I never really prioritized it. I think this was more ill-considered emotional self-preservation. I felt like I was already too late, and I had missed the opportunity to contribute to the community. I was right, I did miss many opportunities, but not because I was too late, but because I was too scared. There is still plenty to be done, as there always will be.

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The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago, but the second best time is today. So, today I’m working on letting go of the fear of failure. It’s not easy for me. I’ve spent a lifetime either being naturally good at things or coming up with excuses why I wasn’t. In school I generally made As on tests but never did my homework or practice and coasted by with middling grades. At the time I was content since I generally learned the material without trying, because of the aforementioned sponge-brain. I’m both fortunate and cursed, because working hard at something has never been a skill of mine. I’m a shitty painter because I go from zero to frustrated in a few minutes and just. Want. The. Damn. Job. Done. I start putting way too much paint on the roller and end up with streaky walls and paint everywhere. I suck at the other kind of painting for the same reason.

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But the real indictment is the other reason I suck at these and many other things. It’s that the impatience isn’t really about the painting being done, it’s about my inability to hold focus long enough to get better. It’s that it’s easier to half-ass a job and live with the result than it is to take responsibility for the outcome and do it right.

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I don’t think I’ll ever be a perfectionist, and I’m ok with that. I expect that “good enough” will always be good enough for me. The perfect is the enemy of the good. I’m content to be a hodge-podger, a duct tape user, a not-quite-straight builder, a hacker. I will not be a fine-furniture-craftsman. I’ll be a tinker, not a tailor. (Nor a spy, as far as you know.) And that’s ok.

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In any pursuit there is effort, and in an effort to affect the desired effect I expect that unless I deflect the object of my mental defect I will leave undone that which I aspire to erect. Excuses therefore must be elided as weaknesses. Fear cannot be in charge, and mindless distraction will not be permitted to fill the gap.

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I’m reclaiming my time.

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The intent, which is where all good things begin, is to spend more of it on the things I care about and less on pushing my dopamine button. I want to spend more time learning deeply. I want to spend more time with friends talking about things that matter. I want to make things the world has never seen, and also to let myself be derivative and imperfect and unimpressive and make stupid shit that is ugly and doesn’t work. I want to entertain myself in ways that don’t make me feel like I’ve eaten a dozen Krispy Kreme glazed donuts afterwards. I want to write more deeply, whether or not anyone reads it.

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I don’t want my headstone to say “Here lies Hoyle, he pressed the Like button 972,428 times.” I want to have mattered, and I will work on being content if it’s just a little.

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So, bringing it back around, I’m going to try to break my addiction to this little black mirror. To use technology with the intent of supporting my values and objectives. To try to notice when it gets in the way. I’ll probably need help. I’ll probably falter and fail. But I hope you’ll soon see a pattern emerge of less frequent but higher quality interactions. I don’t expect to leave social media entirely, but I’m turning the knobs way down, and forcing myself to compensate with more direct interactions and more time spent doing the hard work I’ve always been afraid of.

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Wish me luck.

H