When I was in college I studied pretty hard and got pretty good grades. I once astonished a roommate by telling him that before every important test, I convinced myself I could afford to fail it. I would say that what I was afraid of wasn't that bad. Only then could I relax and tell myself, "I can do better than failure."
On Monday I'll be in another state, at an important meeting. I'll be the point man for about half of the meeting. I cannot convince myself that I can afford to fail. This isn't just a grade. The stakes are too high.
When I wrote "I can do better than failure" above, I tried to keep writing: 'if I study, I might do better.' Or 'I have nothing to lose by studying.' But I didn't write those things because they didn't make sense. "If", what, or if not then what? "Nothing to lose by studying", as opposed to what? What did I think my alternatives were? Freeze in terror? Run away? Keep thinking about the consequences until I could visualize a tolerable outcome after failure? Keep thinking about my options until I came up with something other than studying that would make the outcome more tolerable? It's strange how the mind works.
Basically I studied, every time. And I'm prepared for Monday. I can make this presentation - not without looking nervous, but I can make it. Wish me luck.
Parkview
8. A ragged chord arose.
7. My scalp tensed as each string came into tune with the others.
6. With his right hand he reached up.
5. He'd plugged it in - the band was on a break - and its sagging strings groaned.
4. There was a blast of noise.
3. He took down the oily rickenbacher from among the memorabilia.
2. The man in the fraying jacket approached the wall of the bar, head down, sidelong.
1. I finished my sandwich and turned to leave.
7. My scalp tensed as each string came into tune with the others.
6. With his right hand he reached up.
5. He'd plugged it in - the band was on a break - and its sagging strings groaned.
4. There was a blast of noise.
3. He took down the oily rickenbacher from among the memorabilia.
2. The man in the fraying jacket approached the wall of the bar, head down, sidelong.
1. I finished my sandwich and turned to leave.
The difference between joy and entertainment
"Positive emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, to inauthenticity, to depression, and, as we age, to the gnawing realization that we are fidgeting until we die."- Martin Seligman
Addiction is, among other things, the attempt to achieve happiness by increasing the number of happy moments in your life. The above quote relates why it doesn't work. Long-term happiness comes from actually doing something that arises from your character and leads to a positive result.
Positive psychology and the win-win game
Along with some friends, I'm currently reading Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman. Upon looking at the jacket after it arrived from Amazon, my first thought was that I've finally become my parents. My mom was about this age when she started reading self-help books. That's how it's marketed, but before I was through the preface, I could see that this was no self-help book. Those books are about subtracting negatives from your life. This one is about adding positives.
In the book's first sentences, Seligman lays the groundwork: "For the last half century psychology has been consumed with a single topic only - mental illness - and has done fairly well with it. [...] But this progress has come at a high cost. Relieving the states that make life miserable, it seems, has made building the states that make life worth living less of a priority." This book is about positive psychology: the study of positive emotions, traits, and institutions.
I say it's about time. The world needs this. If you never stop thinking about broken things - even with the good intentions of fixing them - then all you ever see is broken things, and that's depressing. Eventually you'll lose your motivation to keep fixing.
One way this shows up is in the difference between "win-lose" situations and "win-win" ones. A win-lose game is a competition: you date the hot girl and somebody else doesn't. You get the promotion but not your coworker. Some situations are competitive by nature, but not all are. Sharing your enthusiasm is win-win because you energize the people around you. Helping somebody move into a new house gets the job done and makes you better friends. OK, fine. But the key thing to realize here is that you can choose what to focus your attention on. If you focus on dating the hot new girl, and helping your friend move takes a back seat, you've just chosen to turn somebody into a loser instead of helping someone.
To take it a step further, not only can you choose between win-lose and win-win situations you're presented with, you can actually create win-win situations. Start a how-to site on the web. Run a meetup group to bring together passionate amateurs. Make the world a better place, and you can't help but win.
In the book's first sentences, Seligman lays the groundwork: "For the last half century psychology has been consumed with a single topic only - mental illness - and has done fairly well with it. [...] But this progress has come at a high cost. Relieving the states that make life miserable, it seems, has made building the states that make life worth living less of a priority." This book is about positive psychology: the study of positive emotions, traits, and institutions.
I say it's about time. The world needs this. If you never stop thinking about broken things - even with the good intentions of fixing them - then all you ever see is broken things, and that's depressing. Eventually you'll lose your motivation to keep fixing.
One way this shows up is in the difference between "win-lose" situations and "win-win" ones. A win-lose game is a competition: you date the hot girl and somebody else doesn't. You get the promotion but not your coworker. Some situations are competitive by nature, but not all are. Sharing your enthusiasm is win-win because you energize the people around you. Helping somebody move into a new house gets the job done and makes you better friends. OK, fine. But the key thing to realize here is that you can choose what to focus your attention on. If you focus on dating the hot new girl, and helping your friend move takes a back seat, you've just chosen to turn somebody into a loser instead of helping someone.
To take it a step further, not only can you choose between win-lose and win-win situations you're presented with, you can actually create win-win situations. Start a how-to site on the web. Run a meetup group to bring together passionate amateurs. Make the world a better place, and you can't help but win.
An artistic medium is a partner
In "Free Play", Stephen Nachmanovitch points out that making art is like loving a person: the drive to create something goes hand in hand with the limits of the medium and the painful self-discoveries along the way. The tensions and vibrations of a violin, the colors and textures of paint, these are the things that artistic technique turns into expression.
I mentioned the other day that having preferences makes interacting with a medium more like a partnership, where it helps you and responds to you, and less like using a tool that would do the same for anyone. A violin is not a terribly customizable thing, but the choices a musician makes while playing it create a set of limits: key, time, etc. These constraints are the artist's partner in creation. Watch when children play a superhero game: you can fly and I have super strength! Their narrative grows within these constraints.
I'm thinking now of the English language and my partnership with it here on this blog. The range of meanings available within my diction constrain my narrative. For my first couple years doing this, I called it a "creative outlet", not trying to make too much of it to anyone. Now I'm not afraid to call this art. My facility with written English allows me to achieve a certain amount of flow. I'll go one step further: I've been using Microsoft Excel so much, for so long, that I can pretty much do whatever I want in it without thinking about the method - only the desired end result.
That probably sounds ridiculous. But think about your tools. What are you so good at that you work towards a result, not against a technique?
"...Falling in love with our instrument or with our work is much more like falling in love with a person, in that we experience the rapture and delight of the discovery, but then we are saddled with the effort of fulfillment, with love's labors and the hard lessons in which illusions are stripped away, in which we confront diffucult pieces of self-knowledge, in which we have to stretch our physical, emotional, intellectual stamina to the limits, in which our patience and our ability to persevere and transcend ourselves are tested."Nachmanovitch also says that this is exactly why it's easier to love someone else's artwork: at the end of the day you can walk away from it and go home. You are not committed to it, driven by it.
I mentioned the other day that having preferences makes interacting with a medium more like a partnership, where it helps you and responds to you, and less like using a tool that would do the same for anyone. A violin is not a terribly customizable thing, but the choices a musician makes while playing it create a set of limits: key, time, etc. These constraints are the artist's partner in creation. Watch when children play a superhero game: you can fly and I have super strength! Their narrative grows within these constraints.
I'm thinking now of the English language and my partnership with it here on this blog. The range of meanings available within my diction constrain my narrative. For my first couple years doing this, I called it a "creative outlet", not trying to make too much of it to anyone. Now I'm not afraid to call this art. My facility with written English allows me to achieve a certain amount of flow. I'll go one step further: I've been using Microsoft Excel so much, for so long, that I can pretty much do whatever I want in it without thinking about the method - only the desired end result.
That probably sounds ridiculous. But think about your tools. What are you so good at that you work towards a result, not against a technique?
Hipsterism
The idea here is to provide a working definition of my nemesis, the hipster. But first some fun: the other day, Dave Polak somehow got me to dress up as an ironist, ironically. It's self-referential enough to make my head spin.
Dave had been accused on Twitter of being a hipster, which he isn't, but he went with it and held a Hipster Funeral Party at the Happy Dog in Ohio City. Apparently at least one person was convinced he was dead. The party was a good time. Dave set up Hipster Bingo cards so everyone was scanning the bar crowd for facial hair, trucker hats, and classic videogame T-shirts. Happy Dog is one of my after-work stops where I'll get food before moving on to an evening event, and I've never been disappointed there. I ate and drank there from 5:30 to 10:30, listened to two live bands, and somehow my bill was still under $40.
Hipsterism extends far beyond music. The syndrome's main components are (1) professing to have tastes too elevated to enjoy the things most people like; and (2) open disrespect for anyone who lacks (1). This manifests itself as an irony-drenched existence. The webcomic Cat And Girl once made the point that hipster fashion uses the tropes of 1970s males - trucker hats, PBR beer, ringneck tees, etc. Originally, all this was authentic, but when recycled by hipsters, it becomes jeeringly ironic. They'll make fun of any authenticity.
Another manifestation is that hipsters overwhelmingly define themselves negatively. When stating an opinion, it's usually "I dislike X" rather than "I like Y". At its root, this is a fear of standing in favor of something, of having to defend something. It's weakness. This is why I've said that when Cleveland natives trash-talk their own town and expect nothing good to come of it, it's toxic hipster bullshit.
Being a hipster means you're never disappointed, because your expectations are rock bottom. But you're joyless, and a buzzkill to everyone around you.
These, then, are people to avoid. Instead, lead by example. Be authentic, ingenuous, sincere. Seek joy and encourage others to do the same. Never mind the bollocks!
Dave had been accused on Twitter of being a hipster, which he isn't, but he went with it and held a Hipster Funeral Party at the Happy Dog in Ohio City. Apparently at least one person was convinced he was dead. The party was a good time. Dave set up Hipster Bingo cards so everyone was scanning the bar crowd for facial hair, trucker hats, and classic videogame T-shirts. Happy Dog is one of my after-work stops where I'll get food before moving on to an evening event, and I've never been disappointed there. I ate and drank there from 5:30 to 10:30, listened to two live bands, and somehow my bill was still under $40.
Why would Dave deny being a hipster, and why would we go to a bar to make fun of them? Because hipsters make people miserable. They're one of my touchstones for toxic habits. I realize that not everybody gets the scope of the label, though, so here I'll try to explain what I mean.The hipster archetype is Jack Black's character in High Fidelity. He played a record store clerk who openly mocked his customers. Staggeringly judgemental, he would happily tell someone that their favorite band sucks--and exactly why and how they suck--not caring that it hurts them and makes them hate him. Music hipsters claim to be music fans but the truth is that they only like a few albums by a few artists and hate everything else. Nothing is ever good enough for them.
Hipsterism extends far beyond music. The syndrome's main components are (1) professing to have tastes too elevated to enjoy the things most people like; and (2) open disrespect for anyone who lacks (1). This manifests itself as an irony-drenched existence. The webcomic Cat And Girl once made the point that hipster fashion uses the tropes of 1970s males - trucker hats, PBR beer, ringneck tees, etc. Originally, all this was authentic, but when recycled by hipsters, it becomes jeeringly ironic. They'll make fun of any authenticity.
Another manifestation is that hipsters overwhelmingly define themselves negatively. When stating an opinion, it's usually "I dislike X" rather than "I like Y". At its root, this is a fear of standing in favor of something, of having to defend something. It's weakness. This is why I've said that when Cleveland natives trash-talk their own town and expect nothing good to come of it, it's toxic hipster bullshit.
Being a hipster means you're never disappointed, because your expectations are rock bottom. But you're joyless, and a buzzkill to everyone around you.
These, then, are people to avoid. Instead, lead by example. Be authentic, ingenuous, sincere. Seek joy and encourage others to do the same. Never mind the bollocks!
The magic of preferences
One of the basic differences between computers and older technologies is that a computer can remember how you like things to work.
This is a folder of files on one of my Windows computers. Every time I've set up a user account since Windows 98, I've told it all my folders should be presented in "details" view and sorted by date modified. My eyes automatically go to the bottom of the list for the last few things I worked on. Sometimes I change the view, and it's kind enough to stay changed the next time I open the folder.
This is the dashboard of my car. I consider myself lucky that it remembers I like the cruse control on all the time. But why can't it remember what speed I was going if I shut the car off? Why can't it remember that I close all the windows when I'm going faster than 50?
And while we're at it, why do my bank's ATMs keep asking me if I prefer English? I already told them once - do they think I might change my mind? Would an ATM really be the ideal place for me to practice learning a second language?
Something with preferences is customizable: it's yours. I'm not talking about trivial cosmetic mods like skinning a media player application, I'm talking about changing how information is presented to you. Different learning styles are rewarded by different organizational schemes.
In a way, it's like developing a relationship with a vendor or a customer. At first, you're feeling each other out, just guessing what the other person needs you to tell them. After a while, you develop a working process, and it requires a lot less effort to get work done. Having 'preferences' in your interaction with a computer, or a car, or anything, makes it more like a partnership and less like using a tool.
And while we're at it, why do my bank's ATMs keep asking me if I prefer English? I already told them once - do they think I might change my mind? Would an ATM really be the ideal place for me to practice learning a second language?
Something with preferences is customizable: it's yours. I'm not talking about trivial cosmetic mods like skinning a media player application, I'm talking about changing how information is presented to you. Different learning styles are rewarded by different organizational schemes.
In a way, it's like developing a relationship with a vendor or a customer. At first, you're feeling each other out, just guessing what the other person needs you to tell them. After a while, you develop a working process, and it requires a lot less effort to get work done. Having 'preferences' in your interaction with a computer, or a car, or anything, makes it more like a partnership and less like using a tool.
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