Handy Polymath

Some days you're in Close Encounters; other days you're in Jaws.

Wish You Were Here

This place started as a gardening journal of sorts, as I approached my life the way an urban farmer looks at an abandoned lot. Then two things happened; I got into a mental snarl regarding the depth of my pseudonymity which torpedoed many half-written posts, and life exploded in a manner thoroughly encompassing the good, bad and ugly.

I filled out a life stress scale for shits and giggles, and anything over 300 indicates a major crisis with great risk for subsequent health effects. I scored 734, and would have gone higher if you could check items multiple times. I racked up 581 of those points in the last two months.

Though I must say, I hope the current scale has been updated not to speak solely to married het men–there’s no way in hell pregnancy is less stressful than a personal injury or illness. A comfy pregnancy is far better than chronic pain or a debilitating condition, but in my experience an average pregnancy is more to handle than, say, the average bone break.

A New Machine (Part 1)

Three months ago:

worked full time in cubeville
lived in the burbs with my spouse, kid and ancient cat
no school schedule
spouse in unstable job

Today:

dad’s had surgery for a minor bout of cancer
grandma passed on and I spoke at her memorial
started 9 credit hours of physiology and chemistry
quit job in cubeville and worked full two weeks notice
spouse took job four states away
culled, sorted and packed a small house full of stuff
kid started preschool
had a going-away party
moved a U-haul full of appliances to parent’s house
set up camp for kid and I in parent’s stuffed unfinished attic
said goodbye to spouse and cat for 70 days
spent my 13th wedding anniversary on a leaky air mattress with a four-year-old lodged in my armpit

A New Machine (Part 2)

Meanwhile I’ve been trying to salvage this term after spending half of it checked out academically, focusing instead on dismantling my life and cobbling together a series of temporary solutions. For the first time in my various careers as a student, I went to a prof’s office hours and threw myself on her mercy. I felt like a jackass, but I did it, and it seemed to have helped–I know where I stand and what I need to do, instead of flailing in a pit of loathing and self-recrimination.

I got the feeling very few students who come to her like this also sobbingly proclaim, “but I really like chemistry!” It’s this disconnect between interest and achievement that makes struggling harder, even though I know I’m only struggling because I’m making up all that study time I didn’t have earlier in the term. And my life exploded. Objectively I should give myself major credit for actually asking for help–this is a huge uncomfortable step for me even if I need to repeat these classes later. Old habits don’t simply die hard, they die messily with ruptured buboes.

Outside the Wall

This weekend features chemistry, laundry, a trip to the Ohio woodlands to scatter ashes, and–with the accompanying hotel stay–the chance to sleep on a real mattress.

In a little over a month I’ve got a 12 hour road trip to my spouse, my ancient cat, my new home and this new life we’re making out on the east coast.

Tweet This Post

Life is built from sedimentary rock

Effectively, there is no moment of truth. In retrospect there are brief interactions, minute details, and subtle decisions that have an exponential effect on everything that follows–but we move through our days oblivious to these forks and by-ways.

A person can be maudlin about it, and dwell on the fact that any little conversation could also be a goodbye. While true, there’s nothing a person can really do with that knowledge except be present and embrace gratitude as often as possible.

The flip side, though, is that profound changes can begin with a subtle alteration to the daily grind. A difference in perspective, reaction, daily routine or even struggling against an entrenched habit can shake things up enough that the whole system opens wide. What had been worn smooth now has a catch, and it snags something else and the next thing you know dogs and cats aren’t just living together, they’re gentrifying your neighborhood.

Oh, the center holds. You’ve just moved your center is all.

A year ago I loved my family, loathed my job, was fat, in middle-class debt slavery, struggling with post-weaning adjustment and despaired of ever getting back to school. My novel was stuck, I spent 40 hours a week in a fluorescent-lit cube, and 8 hours a week driving back and forth.

As I don’t have an ebook or six-week email course to sell you on, I openly admit that most of this is the same. This is an open lab journal, and I am, have been, and always will be a work in progress. I’m simply pleasantly surprised at how much progress I have to report.

My pants are bigger than is healthy, and the financial situation is similar. The novel is in better shape, though neglected for now. The job takes up the same time but the lighting and the emotional atmosphere are better.

The positive differences are few, but profound. I no longer look at my kid and have to hide desperation and frustration. I’m no longer pent up like veal trying to shut off my brain 24/7. Each day I’m materially closer to what I want, I’m on the right track, and I can relax and enjoy things despite not having time to breathe some days.

I’m anxious about the future, worried about scheduling next term in with work, concerned about being the sole paycheck right now and whether we’ll have a house next year, and I really need to catch up with this term’s math.

The thing is, I am happy.

“When Alexis Arguello gave Boom Boom a beating
Seven weeks later he was back in the ring
Some have the speed and the right combinations
If you can’t take the punches, it don’t mean a thing”
–Warren Zevon, “Boom Boom Mancini”

There’s a short list of traits I can point to that have served me extremely well. Some of them are native to my personality, like stubborn perseverance and a logical bent. Others are the result of conscious study, like not taking failure as a final answer. Fragile new skills like applying the power of aggregate futzing, are far from instinctual traits, and therefore they take a moment to kick in. Considering the work and aggravation involved in changing a habit, a trait, or an ingrained response, only a conscious appreciation of what’s at stake will keep a person on track.

It’s easier to scramble back onto the wagon when you know that your rest in the mud will soon be interrupted by the next wagon bearing down on you. Going fetal with your arms around your head is not an option. What do you do then? Roll onto your feet and try another tack.

So it’s been a while since the last update but I’ve been busy. Unlike your average apologetic blogger I won’t wax hysteric about how crazy it’s been and how I’ve had no time to write. I won’t ever waste your time with that, or with filler posts when I’m low on content.

I’m back to catch you up on the results since my last post.

Learning to Fight Hamster-style

I’ve gone from swimming 100 meters with clicking shoulders and feeling like I’m dying, to swimming a full kilometer without clicks and feeling spent but good afterward. My new driver’s license documents the vast improvement I’ve achieved in my shoulders in the last three years, which no longer slope up and forward to my chin, but spread out lateral and level and even with each other. I’ve started shedding some of the padding I’d acquired since breaking my foot last November. And for the first time since I sprouted this stupendous rack at age thirteen, my midback is no longer the bane of my posture.

Trudging up the Mountains to the Temple

I’ve applied as a post-bachelor to Wayne State, much earlier than I had planned in the Science Upgrade It turns out I may qualify for loan aid, and if I can eliminate the headache of transfer equivalencies then hell yeah. This doesn’t change the fall semester of math and chem at two other community colleges, paid for and starting in two weeks–but those are cheap, mainly online, and simply ramp me up to college level anyway. Partner is also considering school of some stripe, a mental retooling for the new economy we’re all expecting to come off backorder one day.

Right now we’re like Roadrunner, walking across air because we’re too focused to look down.

It Takes Years to Become Batman, yo

In other news, we got the beater car back. It now starts with a bottle opener (partner’s key) and the Leatherman large screwdriver tool (my key). Grandmother is having more lucid intervals, which totally rocks. Mom is dyspeptic and will likely have her gallbladder yanked soon, but our muddling through is infamous and so we keep on truckin’.

So there’s the update. Currently on the docket:

* finishing my review of beginning algebra, before intermediate algebra begins
* getting the second chapter chemistry under my belt before class begins
* revising the Science Upgrade plan: no longer a personal document, but a vital part of my financial aid application
* sharing birthday cake with the kiddo, who is three today

I hope to finish her present by this weekend, which is technically late. But after 43 weeks of pregnancy and 48 hours of labor, I think taking a few extra days to make something for her is simply par for the course.

In the words of Gilda Radner’s Roseanna Roseannadanna, It’s always something. The thing I’m working on is to choose a different response to obstacles as they appear. Do not stop, do not bang your head against them, just get on with the business of going around them.

Oh it is on.

In the recent past this type of response struck me as foolish and contrary. The proper response to a setback is frustration and anger and an impending sense of doom–it’s a setback, eh? Thing is, for all the whinging anxiety I’ve slogged through in dealing with this or that crappy setback, none of it has done a damned bit of good in getting me out of those holes.

Most of the time I worked hard to dig myself out, and feeling bad about it only made the work harder. Fear and self-loathing also make it much less likely you’ll see the ropes people try to throw your way to help you up. At some point, I can no longer deny that it’s much better to stop worrying about the crap I can’t fix and get cracking on the crap I can fix.

To treat a setback like I would a car veering into my lane on the freeway: steer around it. Flip it off on the way past, if need be.

I went to the store
to get more
fire
to start the war
–Electric Six

Improvisation requires that you keep playing.

I’ve mapped out my tasks and deadlines for going back to school–first pre-requisites, then grad school. I’m registered for math and chemistry come fall, and am halfway through a review of my pre-algebra book. I’ve reached a place of calm security where I now have all the tools and plans to build this bridge to where I want to be, and now I can get down to the work of placing stones.

Having solved the Big Conundrum, I’ve had the brainpower to get some writing done, nearly finishing a full chapter and some major plotting in two novels. After years, I can go a full day without feeling blocked and scratching frantically at the walls of my cage. Frankly, I’m giddy.

Setback: I am now currently the sole paycheck in the household.

On the plus side, my partner is one of those rare charismatic individuals who knows someone nearly everywhere he goes (including other countries), and who gets job offers from mis-dialed phone calls. This certainly helps in my budding practice of steering around setbacks without freaking out. To balance that ‘pro’ is the very weighty ‘con’ of growing up working poor and having a steamer trunk full of skewed beliefs and concerns about money, jobs and bills.

So yes. I’m approaching this as a chance to build new muscles. Like being evicted is a chance to build muscles by moving a lot of furniture very quickly.

Wasn’t it Aristotle who said, “Fake it ’til you make it?”

Okay, so eviction is a long-term unlikely prospect. Based on previous data on our setbacks as a couple, it’s far more likely this will result in a net gain once the problem is squared away. Yes, even the setbacks that put me on the market, a knowledge worker clerk amongst clerks in a locale with shocking unemployment.

Here I am: breathing, doing math, writing. Steering around the debris in my lane and keeping the car heading where I want to be.

Among other communications, such as coining the word “cosmopolitan”, masturbating in the marketplace, and telling Alexander the Great to step off, philosopher and civilization critic Diogenes is quoted with the following:

“Solvitur ambulando.”

“It is Solved by Walking”

Which is another way of saying the road is paved with experiments. Plan and theorize all you want, but you only find out how the world really works when you get off your ass and interact with it. In the same vein, no plan will never encompass all of the minutia and set-backs that inevitably pop up and derail you. They must be wrestled in real time at the height of their inconvenience, the sharper your focus and the more flexible your approach, the better.

This can easily become a sentence to hard labor at whack-a-mole, flailing at every distraction, constantly refocusing, and constantly being torn away from the prize. There is no plan that will save you from the unrelenting erosion of real life upon your dreams, no binder can protect you no matter how stuffed with details.

So when beginning the journey of a thousands steps, the first thing is to shuffle your dupa off the couch and pick a destination. Then get to walking.

Ditch plans. Think strategies. Think tactically.

Be Dogged in Pursuit of the PT Plan

Diogenes was a Cynic, which comes from the Greek word for ‘dog’ and was a likely descriptor for a guy bent on simple living and brutal honesty. Civilization corrupts our nature, and returning to basics increases both morality and happiness. Dogs scratch where they itch, and they know who their pack is (and isn’t). Dogs have a short list of things they care about.

Where are you headed? Work back from that to find the marks you need to hit when. Enable quick re-aiming by picking one target at a time.

Task: break down the time line for the Science Upgrade and the application tidbits. Know the drop-dead dates, build in a cushion for all hell breaking loose, make it simple to consult, and retire the binder of madness.

What is vital? How do you recognize a distraction vs. a priority? Priorities are only as strong as they are few. Pare down to a bare minimum the number of claims to your attention. Be ruthless. Get used to a different lifestyle.

Priorities alongside the PT Plan: Be engaged with your family, and provide for them. Pay it forward when possible.

Everything else is a distraction.

Luctor et Emergo: I struggle, but I’ll survive

The solution is elegant, a simple frame that offers a very different perspective. There are drawbacks to be dealt with. Adjusting to lower standards in non-priority areas. Losing the option of camouflaging a lack of progress in high-priority areas with busyness. Getting used to the diligent practice of re-aiming to the target, instead of scurrying back to the drawing board.

This is the year when Everything Changes.

In the words of the spouse, “We’ll muddle through. Famous muddlers.”

Quality Assurance vs. Quantity Ensurance*

I’ve changed tactics recently with regard to ideas.

I used to ruthlessly vet any idea that dared set foot in my brain, attacking it from several angles and then quarantining it until such time as it developed into something actionable, useful, or robust enough to somehow create itself in spite of me.

I’m trying something different. In my aim to learn the practice and rewards of chronic piecemeal effort (Aggregate Futzing, if you will) as opposed to epic feats of effort (Fits of Conan), I’ve taken a new stance on ideas.

Ideas do not have to prove themselves. They are nascent and modular and can be gathered like shiny things, strung into artless necklaces, kept in a row on a windowsill and white glued into preschooler found art.

*I may have coined that word; ‘ensurance’ meaning the guarantee of a ready supply

Relative Denominations of Effort

Fits of Conan are big bucks to spend. They are rare, wearying, dramatic and I used to think the only headspace in which I could produce anything of use or merit.

In comparison, Aggregate Futzing is almost too cheap to meter. It’s doing one thing, which is no big deal even if you don’t feel like it. It’s moving something to a different room, or finding the right cable, or looking up a parameter and noting it for later. Maybe I do a handful of them, if I get into the mood once I’m there. Mainly it’s the practice of setting myself up for success: what are the barriers that keep me from doing this Big Thing? Okay, let’s clear one or two and call it a day.

Eventually, the way is clear and the Big Thing is easy, and no longer a big thing. Strangely, this method takes less time (both invested time and chronological time) than gathering a head of steam and plowing through in a Fit of Conan.

Spending the Coin of the Realm

Fits of Conan are not bad in themselves. When I was locked into the seasonal cycle of nihilistic winters and could only make hay when the sun shone, being able to compress 12 months of thinking and accomplishment into the months between April and September was a highly adaptive skill. Especially considering that the academic year is the opposite of when my brain worked best.

So we don’t do that anymore, my brain and I. What worked then is no longer so useful now. I discovered Aggregate Futzing as a conscious technique when I didn’t plant a garden last year. Instead, I puttered when I happened to be outside with the kid. I showed her bugs and seeds, let her dig in the dirt, and half-assedly planted a few things in pots. In high summer we ate berries, zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, chives, and I had an urban paradise of potted greenery, in the form of a garden I hadn’t realized I’d planted.

Yes, in my mid-thirties I finally realized that there’s a wide range of places a seed can grow, between a huge tilled bed you get a sunburn digging and a sterile envelope you never get around to opening. For instance, stick it in a pot by the door and water it once in a while as you pass by.

The fact that it seems to work for ideas as well is illustrated by this journal, and the little potted experiments described here.

When You Like Ideas, They Like You Back

A slime mold can navigate a 5″x5″ maze in about 8 hours. This requires patience, slow effort, and the unflagging optimism that all life shares: there is food out there and I will find it. A slime mold is pretty much a big weird roving cell, and yet it solves problems and makes its way in the world. Such is the power of Aggregate Futzing. Such is the power of dropping seeds and smart cells and ideas somewhere nutritious and warm, and letting them develop.

So I’ve got things germinating and cooking, fiascoes and flops and fabulous futures, and I’m noticing something about ideas in general. When they’re accepted, given a little something to work with and not expected to amount to anything, they’re free to play and bump into each other. They make friends. They invite the whole neighborhood over for popsicles and running naked through the sprinklers.

So I find myself with an Etsy store, scribbling lace patterns to prototype, sketching graphics for pen & inks, investigating giclee printers and print on demand companies, learning crochet to implement yet more crafty ideas and writing songs for a novel. And today I wondered if I should maybe send out the first chapter of the other novel, even as I plunge into chapter two. This seems daunting, so I think I’ll write a little on the next things that happen, see if one of my editing circle can take a gander at the beginning, and scope out a few transoms to throw it over.

Do Not Bend, Fold, Spindle or Give a Damn

I found my diploma last night. Stowed in a drawer, still in the “Do Not Bend” mailer it came in. Ten years and a few months old. I knew the sheepskin was somewhere in the house, but I would have sworn this mailer housed an x-ray film.

And I think to myself, “How did I ever think vanity was one of my motives for going to grad school? Seriously?”

Depending on how far afield ones looks in my family tree, I’m either the first or third person to complete a bachelor degree. I have an aunt on one side and an uncle on the other. My dad has an AA and my mom half a BS. My brother and his wife have gone on to their own bachelors in the interim, in the same manner that I did: working part and full time while plugging away at university, married non-traditional students too stubborn to quit.

In short, I earned the hell out of that piece of parchment, and then kept it in the mailer for a decade. Because the journey and the accomplishment are part of me, and the sheepskin is a souvenir to store somewhere cool and dry.

Garnish Is Meant To Be Superficial

So perhaps the little zing of glee I get when I think about adding letters after my name on a business card, or wearing a velvet hood to pick up something I can frame on a wall (a decade later, probably) is nothing remotely big enough to be mistaken for the actual motivation spurring me onward: this is what I find satisfying, this is what I’ve found interesting for years now, this is big enough and wonderful enough to be my playground and my workshop and my contribution.

Physical therapy, rehabilitation, working with folks as a mechanic of the body (and somewhat of the mind) is the best combination of my interests and gifts that I’ve yet found.

My brain has run through a long string of passing fancies and chronic passions. The two things that I have never burned out on are writing and biology. Everything else is an expression of curiosity, or a drive to add another creative skill. At the very bottom, reverberating through all the layers above are these basic truths: I am a writer, and I am fascinated by the miraculous mechanics of people. Everything else is an interesting overflow.

Got My Mind Right, Boss

When I finished the bachelor degree, I had recently decided not to continue on to clinical psychology. This felt like admitting failure at the time, but in retrospect was the point when I started listening to myself and acting accordingly. I had no idea where I was going, only that I wanted to find something I didn’t have to force myself to do. In time, I figured out what that could be. Then I slowly began to believe I could hike over to that playground one day.

That’s when I let myself finally see and confront the doubts I had about myself, my motivations, my reasons for choosing this path. My motivations are not always pure; neither are they as terrible as I’d assumed. Some of them are pure confabulation, randomly-chosen forms to camouflage the real issue at hand: fear. Fear of all sorts of things. Lately I’ve been working up strongman muscles in the dual fields of “scared shitless and doing it anyway”, and “not worthy/ready/prepared but fuck it — failing is learning, right?”.

Plan B, For When You’re From Outer Space

A vocation is not a calling to be a good person, or training for your better angels. A vocation is an opportunity to channel a lot of your true self into something worthwhile, both strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes the demon on your shoulder is a problem child bored out of her fucking gourd. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, your weakness is a strength suffering by being in the wrong context, clashing and sticking like any gear would out of place.

A great deal of my problem these days comes from the context of where I am. I have two methods to deal with this.

Ignore the clash between my context and myself, and anesthetize against the dissonance. Ultimately, the hurty parts will die and drop off. At least that’s the theory. Hasn’t worked yet, and it’s been a decade spent taking a few classes to spice up the daydreams of escape.

Plan B is more painful each day, but is more promising. It means cultivating the dissonance. It means jamming what I want to do into each day’s worth of what I have to do. It means being Bruce Wayne and Batman and Alfred Pennyworth and treating this enterprise like a start-up where I work like a dog but get somewhere because I’ll change tactics, I’ll use a whole utility belt full of skills, I’ll even ask for help, but I won’t give up.

I put myself through school once, with stubborn will, resourcefulness and the support of my best friend. I can do it again. Especially when the alternative is the self-lobotomy of the cube.

Knowing what one did wrong before is not the sole requirement for making a better decision in the future.

We shouldn’t have let our first one suffer so long, so much. It was selfish to place our pain at losing a friend over the pain she had every day at the end.

Easy decisions can be corrected like adjusting the level of a picture frame.

I promised I would be a better steward with you. I promised myself, and I promised you.

Difficult calls will always be difficult. All one can do is resolve not to make the same mistake twice.

I’ve denied your pain out of what I thought was guilt; ignoring the inconvenience of what was going on because I didn’t want that to affect my decision. In so doing, I stopped seeing you and feeling what you were dealing with. Because once I saw it and felt it, I knew I had to let you go.

This means that one is consigned to making a variety of mistakes in a conscious effort to learn, gain wisdom, and embrace the practice of engaging with life and not hiding from it.

I could be wrong. I could be denying you weeks or months of enjoying the summer, listening to the birds, smelling the breeze, sleeping in the sun. I could be right. I could be saving you weeks and months of escalating pain.

It’s risky to trade a known fallout for a unknown result. Could be the right thing. Could be even worse. All I know is that I cannot do what I did before.

I do know there’s only a short while left. That the moments when you’re content are becoming few. That you trust me with your life and that means being responsible for the quality of it, and not keeping you in a place where you are suffering. You are my friend, and I am yours.

I had a lovely weekend doing fun stuff. I painted, wrote, cooked and lost myself in projects and play. Today was a frustrating annoying letdown in comparison, simply by having to drive to the cubicle. Now that the Big Anomalous Interesting Task is over, my job has returned to its previous “office lady” mode of creating nothing, developing nothing, only frenetically supporting people who do actual work.

I’m not meant for corporate environments. I hate the fact they own my time and fill it without any regard to what I could actually bring to the table. I hate that I sell so much of my waking time, wasting it in marking the clock and forcing myself to care about trivial bullshit.

I like making things, and making things better. I don’t care about hierarchy or acquisition. I’m a puzzle-solver. I’m a craftsman. Another job is a fool’s errand–I need to get away from the computer and stop being a gear entirely. I need to create for myself a series of shops where I can ply my crafts. A clinic, a writing space, somewhere to paint, and to play the guitar I’ve had for five years and still haven’t learned.

I’m filling out the FAFSA, to see what (if any) financial aid options I have. I hate tax documents and red tape, but I loathe this lifestyle more, so much more; forcing myself every weekday to engage in an endless dribble and flood of boring deadening mindless tasks because why? I’m afraid of tuition loans (both the debt, and also not having the credit to get them). I’m afraid of miscalculating and jeopardizing the house. I’m afraid if I glance too long away as I run on the gerbil wheel of middle-classdom I’ll be flung off.

I’ve been afraid that if I plunge into this, I’ll miss something of my kidlet in the next few years. And instead I’ve been ever-vigilant to keep these swells of despair from her, to shove them down to be present for her. Only now have I gained the courage to acknowledge that process, and add that toll to the books.

I’ve decided to have a midlife crisis in my spare time. It’s a hobby I’m testing out.

Walt Whitman wrote, “I contain multitudes.” This would be a pithy beginning for a project chronicling a person’s renaissance, wouldn’t it?

Here’s a better one:

“I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death. “
–Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Today I wore only pajamas. I cleaned up shit, dabbled in domesticity, broke bread with the two people I love the most, made things, and read. I was loved by family, friends, and pets, and am obviously doing justice to my priorities to have found myself here today.

I now swear to keep on keeping on, while taking more time to savor where I am right now, spending less time fearing and dreading the future.

So here I begin, in a conscious moment where I pause and survey the cloud of moments that surround me: past, potential, the trajectories of my loves as they move through their own stories and I play my part.

What you’ll find here:
plans
strategy
tactics
journals of hard work
epiphanies
breakthroughs
discoveries

What you won’t find (too much of) here:
whining
rationalization

I am happy. I will now concentrate on doing more fun stuff, and being more true to myself.