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Daily Journal – Tuesday, 12/26/23

Published by Josh on December 26, 2023

I wrote a bit earlier about the existential weight of fear and the mental anchor that is the ever-present search for safety. It was a balm, but definitely not a cure, for the condition to get some of that out of my head. I suppose we’ll see where we go from here.

Inputs

1: I read a fantastic biographical piece from Lauren Thiesen over at Defector today, about the work to change one’s name, not personally, but outwardly, legally, and officially as the world ties it to documents and databases.

In my time in management, I managed an employee through the work-located aspects of a gender change and learned an awful lot about how the larger world makes such things difficult, on top of all the other inherent difficulties involved. Many people, upon updating their gender identity and shedding a dead name, do so by changing their employer entirely, such is the psychic weight of trying to move a machine that large.

To my employee’s credit, and to the credit of my former employer and their coworkers, it was an experience that went remarkably well. For all the pains involved in the process, my team was incredibly supportive of her and it turned into an opportunity to grow and bond as a group, as people shared their personal experiences with family and friends who’ve undergone gender transitions in their lives. I was, and remain, so proud of all of them, and of my employee herself, for their work through the process.

2: Read through Kottke’s 52 Things list earlier, and some days before, the list it was inspired by, Tom Whitwell’s “52 things I learned in 2023“, which has been running since 2014 and is always a remarkable collection of interesting insights about the world at large, from any number of angles1I mean, by definition, no more than 52 angles, but go with me here.. I actually tried to keep my own list of such things at the start of this year, in inspiration, but it fell off hard. However, rather than bury it in shame, here’s what I had going:

1/12 – Chuck-E-Cheese still used floppy disks to update their animatronic shows through this year (2023) (https://www.tiktok.com/@showbizpizzaman/video/7186009974852586795)

1/16 – By ionizing air using lasers, lightning was able to be directed to hit specific locations. The idea itself stretches back to the 1970s (https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/lasers-used-to-guide-lightning-strikes-to-a-safe-target/)

1/30 – The Texas Two Step is a technique by which a company tries to avoid liability by splitting off a portion of itself liable for legal damages into a different company. Johnson and Johnson failed to accomplish one when defending against lawsuits for asbestos in their baby powder. (https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-01-31-johnson-texas-two-step-bankruptcy/)

2/6 – Chock Full of Nuts is called that because it was the coffee served at a lunch counter called Chock Full of Nuts, whose specialty was a “Nutted Cheese Sandwich” made from raisin bread, cream cheese, and walnuts. The sandwich was chock full of walnuts. Via Adam Conover (https://www.tiktok.com/@adamconover/video/7196808838689885483)

4/1 – Pizza Rolls were invented to capitalize on a wave of American interest in both Chinese and Italian foods, and originally came in pepperoni, sausage, lobster, and shrimp flavors (https://www.snackstack.net/p/pizza-rolls-and-the-meaning-of-midcentury)

I’m gonna see if I can do better this year, and grace you all with a What I Learned in 2024 list that’s actually got 52 items in it.

3: After watching the three NFL games last night2The NFL would conquer the entire calendar if they could. Santa and Jesus are no match for the shield., I officially won one of my fantasy football leagues and made the finals in the other. One more week to go and we’ll see if I can make it to the promised land. Go Team Calvinball!

Projects In Progress

Webapp: Took some time today to try and figure out how to put in a CI/CD workflow via GitHub to the site. It, as most programming exercises go, did not work at first attempt. However! I’ll be working through some additional guides and hope to have a Hello World standing by EOD. So, progress? Kinda?

Notes:

  • 1
    I mean, by definition, no more than 52 angles, but go with me here.
  • 2
    The NFL would conquer the entire calendar if they could. Santa and Jesus are no match for the shield.

Anchors At Weigh

Published by Josh on December 26, 2023

I’ve spent the weeks and months since I lost my job flailing around, my hand unmoored from the side of the pool, reaching frantically to find another side to hold onto, rather than facing my fear to swim. I watch a world of people in the pool, stretching, reaching, gliding through lives of their choosing, and I so want that for myself, and all I keep feeling is the fear of drowning, or the fear of getting lost at sea, rather than the excitement of being, for once, alone out on the great ocean of life, charting a course of my choosing, to whichever port is forward, finding a life while doing the living of it.1Yes, I mix my metaphors. So they’re mixed. I’m made of multitudes.

I’ve found myself with a thing before me that I, intellectually, want to do, and yet keep finding other things to occupy my time rather than face it and do it. And in a conversation with myself this morning, I came to realize that at the foot of it is fear. Fear of it failing, of having done it and it being a poor attempt at something I was not capable, or worse, something I believed done well that was still rejected.

For that is the fear I’ve most faced in the reaching, these past months. I know who I am, of what I am capable, of what I have accomplished and could do again. And in presenting that self to the world, I’m continually given the glimpse of the backs of shoulders, of turned heads, or nearly worse, of interest I’m certain wasn’t feigned, but that sours in the seeing into “not you, not now, not for us.” I’ve chosen a life of small rejections, of quick cuts at my confidence, slices through my self-perception that make me doubt who I know myself to be, to have been, to be able to be again. Chose this, instead of different risks. Different lonely lakes away from the faces and voices I know.

Every decade of my life has had an unsettling of itself. The first decade ended in a disillusion of a relationship and a fractured family. The second with my own fractured relationship and an upheaval and removal to a new land, hundreds of miles away, and towards, a new future. The third, with a final transition into a professional life, a dedication to an organization and a structured life of confined goals and the security of certain certainties. The fourth, with death and death and death and death. Of family, of position, of a path upon which I thought I’d been set. Of the ballasts that held me firmly upright, or at least kept a keel in me, kept the water from flooding over the sides.

Sitting in the rubble of a life, one has the urge to try and rebuild a familiar form. Structure what came before from the pieces that remain. But there are other shapes, other ways, should one have the courage to assemble them and the drive to do the building. Fear is a useful thing at times, but only if one needs safety more than they need to have what safe allows: the space to live a life worth having lived it. As it is said, the port is safe, in the time of storms, when the seas shake and shudder, when wakes turn to waves. But ships were not made to live in ports, hands not made to clutch stiff-knuckled in gripping at the sides. They were made to sail, to swim, to live a life unmoored.

Notes:

  • 1
    Yes, I mix my metaphors. So they’re mixed. I’m made of multitudes.

Daily Journal – Monday, 12/25/23

Published by Josh on December 25, 2023

Merry Christmas!

Decided not to take today off to keep the Monday-Friday schedule going. I’ve found that a regular schedule really helps me to achieve consistency, for a number of reasons, including that my brain is weird that way.

Also, after some thinking, I’ve decided to lump the What I Blank sections into one larger Inputs section, since it was starting to stretch to force a Listen To in at times when it wasn’t as prevalent or notable. Instead, you’re getting 3 or so Inputs, from various sensory sources.

Inputs

1: Spent some time last night skeeting1I don’t like it either, but that’s what the community has decided to call the Bluesky version of tweeting, so, that’s what you get. through my favorite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. It’s a yearly tradition of my own making which I moved over to Bluesky this year after the general fall and crumbling of Twitter.

Feel free to give that thread a readthrough if you’d like my general thoughts. Also because I can’t imbed Bluesky messages here yet, I don’t think. Plus, Bluesky hasn’t reinvented threading yet.

2: Watched the new ep of Summoning Salt’s speedrunning series on The History of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out World Records. Speedrunning is one of those weird internet things that was sort of a thing in an analog world, but became a much larger community and constituency with the advent of live-streaming, recording, and digital interactivity. A high score on a physical machine was a bragging right in one arcade or pizza parlor. A high score in the networked era is a constant fight for ephemeral renown.

Speedrunning has grown to encompass multiple yearly conventions that raise millions for charities, research and expose hundreds of interesting faults and cracks in video games, and bring lasting life to games released decades ago. We’ve come a long way from Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell.

3: Ended up making a Beef Wellington for Christmas dinner again this year. Last year was definitely a better effort, but I can recommend the method from Joshua Weissman’s video. It’s a recipe that seems daunting in name but really comes down to proper mise and some small, stepped preparations that result in a day-of cooking experience that only involves some egg wash, some flaky salt, and some time in the oven. Just be sure to have a proper thermometer, and be sure you’re buying actual prosciutto and not, as somebody managed to, prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella sticks.2Me. That someone was me. It was not pretty.

Projects In Progress

Not a lot of progress today on things, outside some general reading and learning of tangential things. I did do a bit of noodling on some various stories I’ve been collecting notes for, with some plot points that might help things flesh themselves out into actual stories and not just interesting ideas without movement.

One of the things I need to get better at is the development of characters who live naturally in stories I’m looking to tell. Developing the people who are the engines of plots is something I generally struggle with at first, and improving there is one of the larger opportunities I see in myself and my growth as a fiction writer.

Notes:

  • 1
    I don’t like it either, but that’s what the community has decided to call the Bluesky version of tweeting, so, that’s what you get.
  • 2
    Me. That someone was me. It was not pretty.