AskHoyle

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  • On the Subject of Airplanes

    Probably that’s what this will be about. I’m as anxious to see how it turns out as you are. Probably moreso.

    Anyway, away I go to Seattle again, to visit friendly faces and places and eat tacos. I’m certain there will be tacos.

    I made it, to the flight, not the tacos, lobster sliders notwithstanding. To go, those, which is a lesser experience, but still I’m the only one on this plane who is eating giant fucking lobster claws hanging out of buttery, well-toasted buns, with a side of steak fries. We’re all on the same flight, but mine’s the best so far.

    (I had to manually enter the apostrophe in the last sentence. (The second one.))

    Or was. Eating lobster. ok? I lied up there. I’m writing this from after the fact. From the future. Not in the present despite the tense. I am on a jet after all, which is pretty futuristic. Flying though the air. Not falling. (Spoilers.) Super earthius. Superterran. Above lesser mortals.

    Canned.

    Centrally located over the wings, where they keep the fuel and engines.

    Which is the heavy part, of course. The heaviest kept with the heaviest, clustering the center of mass over the center of lift.

    These few rows only are full, of the plebes among the superterran social class. And me. Most of the customers crammed in the “Basic” section.

    Is it a caste when it’s not cast? It feels like it, when walking past the squishy seats, but I suppose it’s a choice, to associate with our fellow frugalites. Our temporary social group.

    It would be difficult to maintain a social organism solely of those aloft, excepting, of course, pilots who talk to each other on the airwaves we licensed them. And the flight crew who Downton their flying Abbeys, surely. ( which Google tried to incorrectly apostrophize.) Or so I imagine.

    …Or it’s Abbies. Or Abbiezes.

    Afterward, attend abord another airplane. Serial bottle episodes of suborbital intrigue.

    Except most of the dialogue consists of asking people what kind of chips they would like.

    I couldn’t decide, so I got both. Cheezits and a granola bar. I’m flying to Seattle, I’m pretty sure it’s a local ordinance to always have a granola bar handy. Preferably in some sort of holster or readily accessible pouch.

    I got ice, which is fine, but also increases my risk profile with regard to this trip. Not a lot, but the ice could have mold or something. Probably lower on the list than the tons of fuel jiggling us between itself. On a long flight especially, the heaving fuel tanks are mostly what the engines are carrying through the air, we’re just along for the ride.

    Apparently it’s not turbulence. The captain just called it “unexpected rough air.” I wonder if that’s policy now or just his own phrasing.

    The cheezits were a mistake. 0% Maksa. Dusty crumbly air, hinting that once, long ago, it had been in the same room as cheese.

    It’s unfair to judge them on the cheezeit to buttered lobster scale. Sadly for them, the C2BLS, as it’s known to scientists in the EU, is very punishing to the dry cracker end of the scale. If it were judged among its peers the rectangular orange thing would rise to a fair middle. Or less when the third judge tries putting lobster on them. A Mendoza-line-dwelling cracker among those flights where people eat lobster. Spoiler: I’m the only judge.

    The granola is a Kind bar. I don’t know what kind, because it was dark and the font is small and I couldn’t read it more than I could care what kind it is.

    I’ll report back later.

    This flight is to Minneapolis, which Google remembered how to spell. I’d have gotten close anyway. I’m no Alice Cooper.

    [Edit: I realized after I published this that I totally fucked this up in several ways, but I can’t fix it without fucking it up more. Oops. Such is the nature of my writing. ]

    For those of you who got that reference, you’re awesome for validating my childhood memories by also remembering them. For those of you who didn’t, a Cooper is someone who makes barrels.

    I have a layover (still different from an overlay) there. I don’t have to tell you this because that’s the only reason anyone goes to Minneapolis. (Shout out to my Milwaukee peeps!)

    Just kidding; I literally know nothing and no one there that Alice Cooper didn’t introduce me to.

    Ok, I know a few things, like there’s an airport, for one. And probably lots of very fine people.

    I think

    Google assistant on Android needs Gboard. I tried to set a reminder, but it wouldn’t without WiFi. Ok Google, report a bug. I was going to type that into their bug reporting interface. But there isn’t one. Also the keyboard is literally the worst. It would be nice if Google would use the keyboard from this new startup I heard of called Google. It’s on the app store, er, I mean the “Play Store”. Stupid name, Google. (P.s. hire me)

    I’ve spent a lot of time making a lot of money for other people, in exchange for not dying. Literally that is where we are as a society. We are letting people die of diabetes and other preventable diseases because they can’t prove to someone they have surplus value. The self sufficient are driven off the land. Where they built the airport. I learned that from Alice Cooper while he was standing on a rock.

    Or, they’re driven out of the woods, or their tent on the street, where they need less, but not nothing. Maslow knows why crime grows among those. Your nose knows too, as it turns away from them, so as not to also point your eyes at them. Them that need the most help. Them.

    And I too do, unpoint my nose at them. Because, like you, I’m afraid of them.

    I’m afraid of you too. In varying degrees from Manson to Mom. (M2M according to NATO treaty and HIPPA regulations.) Because we’re a terrifying, brutal, blood-soaked species of ape. Apex Apes. Angry finger waggling, forehead wrinkling, capillary busting, teeth baring, weapon inventing apes. Dangerous because also afraid.

    It’s not just you.

    It’s all of you, with your easy to infect social memecosphere. The memosphere. Memes are really what we are. Ideas exchanged. Individuals coopted, reprogrammed to repeat. To consume and produce. From crock pot to crusade.

    It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a symptom of our vulnerability to code drift and descent into fragmentation, each neuron slightly differently timed and tuned. A wave of human in electrical form. An orchestral ocean of organic -ones (and -ines and -amines) squozen on either end by neural oozing.

    You, know, every day stuff.

    And all your stuff has to work right or you’ll die. Even the exoskeleton we’ve built around us, our oxygen pumps, our jet engines, our internet interface, our power. If you can pay for it, of course. If you have enough working stuff to extract more stuff. And you have to have enough stuff that you don’t get arrested for being stuffless while the government decides whether or not your kids get sick because you can’t afford to get out of Flynt.

    Let them drink Coke?

    Taking care of each other is what makes us human. Sharing our ideas to reprogram each other a little. The problem is when the program hurts the host. When the meme is malignant. A twisted-off piece of the overall organism, a ball of bile and bad things, an infection of intellection. A handful of hate.

    Handed at arm’s length, but still taken,

    if often involuntarily,

    imaged in arc-bright advertising light

    Neurons following the program.

    Program.

    Interrupting introspection.

    …

    Landing, will try to post during my layover.

    Share the best bits of yourself with each other, please?

    H

  • Feet

    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

  • The lake

    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

  • Jazz

    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.

  • Habits and Mangoes

    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

  • Returning

    Backwards again, only this time on a train by the name of MARTA. Quick trip across the city, direction not withstanding.
    …
    It’s slightly weird watching people board after and behind you when you’re already on the plane. I normally don’t go for the upgraded seats, since I have tiny legs, but I wanted a window seat and the money man said he’d approve it. I feel pretty justified after yesterday. Also I already read the exit row card, and I think I have the emergency procedures covered if necessary, so I feel good about that. It’s not first class but I’m not complaining. I doubt I’ll ever fly first class. I saw the first class seats on my flight to India and they were nice, but the price difference was insane. I someone told me they would pay me nine thousand dollars to sit in an uncomfortable seat for 18 hours I’d do that every day. In this case it’s thirty bucks, and it’s not my money, so I’m in.
    Landed already. Time passes differently in varied cases, and in this case I had a case of writeus interruptus, on account of a very pleasant conversation with a flight attendant from another airline, heading to Boston to meet friends and enjoy a bachelorette redux. For me this means my night was enriched, and for you this means less writing from me. Such is the nature of things which are bound by human energy. The flight went quickly and smoothly and I learned quite a bit about the airline industry and her experience therein. Also, beaver butt goo.
    Her regrets included staying in uniform, since it prevented her from having a glass of wine. I told her she was in charge if I had to operate the exit door, and fortunately neither of us were called on to affect an evacuation. I had no regrets.
    Today was overall good, in as much as a day can be, marching on as they do indifferent to the various organisms along for the ride. I finished another major milestone in an ongoing project and had a tasty burger, worthy of the affection of Jules Winnfield, whose name I just had to look up. With internet access my writing is different. I’m not sure I like that.
    Anyhoo, it’s driving time, and then sleep time and then work time, so it’s bye time.
    Bye

  • Adventures with a microphone

    Kill. Ing. It.

    I had my big client meeting today, after months of preparation. Our last one wasn’t good, but this one went well largely due to hard work by our team. I knew I was going to present the slides, but what I didn’t fully anticipate was the size of the audience. I’m generally ok in small groups but I get really nervous if I feel like I’m “on stage” or even thinking about being there.
    So, there I was in the gaping maw of the 40 person conference desk, in front of giant screens with slides I’d revised twenty times clutching a microphone to my chest and trying to act like I’ve done any of it before. I did an internal dry run last Friday and it was awkward and horrible. And I was nervous as hell.
    Just before I walked up though I pondered what my chances were of being eaten by a puma, and decided I’d be ok.
    And I was. [Spoiler: not puma-eaten]
    Sure I was still nervous and my voice wavered a couple times, and when I handed off the microphone it was a slippery mess, but I did it anyway. I answered some questions, dealt with some curve balls and when I sat down our company was in a far better position than when I had started. Great success.
    Afterwards one of the client’s engineers asked me for some time. He said I’d been recommended, and asked if I could work my magic on his team too. We sat down in front of our screens and hashed out a couple of problems, and he went home feeling like we are on the right track. Another huge win.
    At the moment I’m doing my nudist Mr. Rogers routine in the hotel, taking a break from my clothes before I head out to dinner. I don’t have a sweater to change into, but the mindset is the same I think. A fabrical gear shift, a reset of the mind, a leaving behind of the past, a rebirth into a new moment. I don’t ascribe to the mechanics of reincarnation, in the traditional sense, but I’m fully in board with the idea of rebirth into opportunity. Each day, and indeed each moment is a chance to decide again who we would be, so that we may do what we must to get there. To construct ourselves intentionally. To become by deciding to be. To make, with effort often, a new organism unbound by prior definitions. To be someone who is pretty OK at presenting to a group, and didn’t even drop the microphone once. Try changing your socks.
    Off to find calories to keep my brain meat running.
    H

  • Dinner at Industry

    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

  • Flight to Atlanta

    Slowly rolling backwards again… That unsettling feeling of airplane mass compressing, of wings bobbing, heavy with fuel. Of the straining motor in the little tug. Its sticky wheels slipping on the wet tarmac. Tar MacAdam, that. The first brand name of roads. A style, a certification, a qualification. An approved method of assembly, specifying layers of differing sizes of rock, smaller rock, and smallest rocks, all covered by tar, when specified as in the above tar-variety. Pre-tar, McAdam’s roads were still the best in the world for carrying carryiages. Carriages. Cars, such as they were and became. But not Countachs. You need tar for them.
    Discovery is beautiful. I’m surrounded by kids on this flight, but for many it’s their first flight, and the cheers and exclamations remind me that, yeah this is pretty awesome. Buddha called this Child’s Mind. Seeing the world for the first time. The things in the world. All the things. New angles on things. Down.
    Our brains’ evolved programming seeks novelty and quickly gets used to anything repeated. Its a defense mechanism, of course. To conserve attention, cerebral blood flow, and calories. To seek efficiency. To save the squeals of wonder for the truly captivating. After all, a puma might hear and eat you.
    It’s interesting when we decide to give attention attention. Lots of people do that for a living. Nothing triggers more squeals of joy from advertisers than the vacant eyes of a consumer pointed at their message.
    Attention is the most coveted and therefore most valuable commodity. It can be extracted directly and remotely from minds through ever more efficient media, with increasingly blinken lights. The popcorn of instant novelty. The pulses of light which don’t stop when they hit your retina. Wiggling your optic nerve, the tail that wags the dog, and keeps it from dozing off. “Tiny danger! Tiny danger! Tiny danger!” The neurons scream in a rhythmic beat. A carefully chosen tune of light and sound. We squint our ears and try to ignore it. It’s a habit.
    It should be, of course, coveted. Or at least valued. Exactly because we seek novelty, connection, conversation, communion.
    A waggle dance communicates danger, but also sweetness, in the flowers to the left left left.
    The berries in the bush by the river which are ready for picking can please many if the birds are bested.
    Four score and seven.
    Communication is what makes us a human organism. A community. A badly distributed hive mind, with a bandwidth deficiency.
    It’s the moderator, the mediator of the moot. The words spit instead of bullets, to stop that other ape from tearing your face off. It is all things with meaning. It gives meaning to all things.
    Without words we wash in oceans of open interpretation. We wrestle with recollection, losing the last light of a murky memory in a morass of muddle. We warn of danger, but the wild waving weaves a wrong warning and we wish we remembered the Neanderthal word for wildebeest.
    The past couple of days I’ve attended to my attention, and unwound my unintended fingers from my phone. Intention overrides recent regulations, though, so I type this text on the object of my objection.
    It’s not the tool, it’s the trifling. The tiny blinkenlight of timely notification. The squeal of corporate joy as my brain is reattached to the pulsing warning. That’s what I’m attempting to unplug from.
    I’m rethinking my perception posture, and passing on passive absorption.
    It’s hard. I’ve reached for my phone five times as often as I expected. I’m not going cold turkey, just lukewarm turkey. I’ll let you know how I smell as the turkey ages. For now it’s totally been worth the effort. It’s easier to find time when we don’t let it all leak between our scrolling fingers.
    My current plan is to limit social media and web “browsing” to a few minutes twice a day. I set a timer.
    It’s been like being on a plane for two days in a double edged way. More time to think, to connect with other minds in longhand, long form and slowly. More time to fight the discomfort of drifting attention. Of boredom.
    I won’t say I’ve “been bored” since I’ve had plenty to do. Reading, writing and role playing are the three Rs of dominant attention so far. I’m not sad about that. And work of course, which has been better. Between conference calls I have a thinkle while I tinkle, digesting words while I expel the waste of digested matter.
    I don’t avoid web USE, just the browsing. The rabbit hole of all knowledge, beckoning like a siren who knows everything and everyone. Also hard.
    Email is allowed too, since I can’t avoid it, and I can interact at my own pace. The Digital Minimalism book I’m reading coaches a full purge of everything digital before letting anything back in 30 days later. I am trying my own path so far, and still reading the book on my Kindle. I don’t know if my approach will stick or not, but it’s been interesting so far.
    Sitting in the airport without the phone was different. I noticed a beautiful couple feeding their little girl pork buns. His style was impeccable, every crease planned, tailored, designed, from his black hat to his red converse sneakers. She was simply but nicely dressed, wearing most of all the smile she showed her daughter, whose curly blonde dandilion afro wiggled as she laughed. I wanted to take their picture but I failed. Not for lack of ability but of asking. Of interacting in a waiting area in any way unexpected. As I thought about the how and when of asking permission, my heart was racing, which is my number one symptom of fear.
    Social rejection can be deadly. Alone we get lost and puma-eaten. The tiny danger of, what, a rude response? No, of puma. Of being the last to eat, of being left out of the fire circle. This is where the fear comes from. That must be the next thing that evolved after language, the fear of sucking at it and getting your face torn off. Or sent through Puma Valley, now that it had a name.
    I shouldn’t have mentioned food, my stomach is listening. 42 minutes to go. Blue chips are tasty but not very filling.
    I do have my headphones on, just to cancel the noise. I’m long forming this post to talk to you, not my planemates. It helps with the pressure of the sound, the mental draining of chatter incompletely heard.
    I shouldn’t have mentioned peeing. 19 minutes to go.
    The ground appears as we descend beneath the duvet covering the Eastern seaboard. The seatback screen trace turns from green to yellow, our path slowly changing future to past. From then to this. Patience, we only get that minute once.
    Someone yawns as the pressure changes. Everyone yawns. Communication. Not all of it is words, but this post is.
    Landed.
    “I want to do it again!” “That was an adventure!”
    H
    .

  • Digital Detox

    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.
    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.
    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.)
    Now I am content to fail, or at least not to succeed.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    I’m reclaiming my time.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    Wish me luck.
    H