Won't4GetUNotes

Today I kept myself entertained sane awake interested busy from thinking by making paper lanterns. Sorta – all I really did was burn gas buy stuff at Michael’s. But if putting two tea lights in small bags I poked holes in using a nail counts as making them, I’ll take it.

They’re cute, pretty and I like the flicker of the fake candles. Dig the way this Hipstamatic image makes it look like my curtains are about to burn up. Kidding. No fire. LED all the way. Two per bag. One white, one ivory.

Good vibes only.

Daniel Schmachtenberger talks. His POV collides with Tristan Harris and Center for Humane Technology. I wonder if they’ve talked. So many things overlap.

“History written by the winners turns into a naive progress narrative where the things that won get measured and all the things that get destroyed don’t. Where was the cost externalized?”

“…study some theory of mind, you won’t find a definition of consciousness that does not require the definition of attention as fundamental.”

No not the Taylor Swift album, mine. My midnights have been wide awake, slow, droning and even include the occasional earthquake.

I didn’t feel last nights tiny shake. it was pretty far north plus, different fault lines.

Midnight’s when I wake up if I’m awake. Or when I fall deeper if I’m sleeping. Lately, even TC is snoozing at midnight. And sometimes noon. Maybe it doesn’t matter. But midnights sounds better and more mysterious than middays.

At least today we’re awake and vertical at an AM hour. Not bad. Next thing to try and care about is finding work. Or a golden ticket.

My moms mom used to say god is love. Seems right. I’m not a believer in a god. No way. There is no one coming to save or smote us. We all have to find the love. Stop the fucking hate. Please. Before it’s too late.

Started super small Mr. Tiny Cat (Tiny Blue Catzilla) aka TC.

Less than 18 months and I’m staring down the dark tunnel of another job search. If the anger pinning me down could become a propellant. I sometimes can’t see the in between spaces but right now only the demoralization and inhumane bullshit are punched into focus.

What. The. Fuck. How many times am I gonna have to do this. It’s not a question. It’s an endless proposition. Every time it’s like climbing onto the Wonder Wheel long after it’s been condemned and closed for fun.

The same rickety job applications – Applicant Tracking Systems – that have to be entered into hunks of software that are painful to use, at best and at worst, can cost one some sanity and compassion.

It makes me say oooooo fuuuuck you. To the tune of some catchy, four-on-the-floor pop song. It also sends me into a dark zone in my mind I don’t dare describe.

It ain’t pretty, neither am I and I’ll be damn lucky to find a new way to make money.

I just noticed that idiom and idiot are just one letter different. I’ll go back to that in a minute but for now, I want to capture a few american-isms that don’t make much sense. If you’re talking with someone who isn’t american, don’t use them and if you do, pause to describe what the fuck it means.

For example, today I said “take it with a grain of salt” to someone who is perfectly fluent in English but I could tell that the phrase didn’t land. Same thing with the phrase “take that to the bank”. Because it’s 2023, I can get instant answers to the question of phrase origin.

Take That To The Bank. It’s used when the speaker knows something for sure. According to the interwebs, it was also used in the days when one had to take a paper check to the bank and when Robert Blake was on TV in the 1970’s selling motor oil.

Take It With A Grain Of Salt. That phrase is often used when the speaker means, eh, it’s no big deal. According to Wikipedia, the origin isn’t that bland. It reads:

To take something with a “grain of salt” or “pinch of salt” is an English idiom that suggests to view something, specifically claims that may be misleading or unverified, with skepticism or to not interpret something literally.

Not quite what I thought it meant. I’ll pause on adding others because I want to go back to this idio(m) idio(t) thing.

What up with that?

Of course, like Mr. Portokalos said, the origin is Greek. They come from the same root: “idios” which in ancient Greek meant “of one’s own” or “private”. The original meaning of an idiot was someone not interested in public affairs (considered a key duty in ancient Athens and perhaps a notion we should revive in modern democracies).

ob·sess
/əbˈses/

A couple of odd messages.

On my walk yesterday, I noticed things as usual. A Dunder Mifflin sticker, a few license plates, street signs and flowers. I stopped to smell blooms of all kinds. Said hello to a handful of other humans walking around the neighborhood.

The level of chaos and dysfunction where I work now makes me want to quit without a backup plan. I’ve done it before but I’m trying to stick it out for the money. I know it’s bullshit but I don’t feel like there are many options. It’s a privileged way to live. So I’ll be taking more walks, smelling more flowers, playing and listening to more music.

It’s tiring to have to push against the dead weight of dysfunction. I know 2+2=4 even though some would have you believe 2+2=fucking sneaker.

Yes. It’s that bad. It’s also sad because when dysfunction like this is allowed to exist not to mention fester, the good people constantly leave.

I’m going to look for a way to teach, no fucking boot camp bullshit, community college seems like it’d be a good direction. Huge pay cut. But I like helping students learn and I’ve been told I’m pretty good at it so maybe I’ll be the one leaving next.

I’d say “I hope so” but hope is just another four letter word and it sure as fuck ain’t a strategy or a tactic.

Good luck to humanity. And me.

Corporate is soul crushing. Didn’t have to be this way as we Claremont/Drucker folk well know. Especially publicly traded entities. At this point I’d rather work for a government agency, maybe even back to academia. No money but at least there’s less utter bullshit.

When it comes to building software, especially the stuff we need the most, shit that’s not fucking sexy, a word I despise when applied to tech, we have become so collectively dumb it’s like a bullshit bubble. Will the fucker burst or do we have to have more meltdowns like Southwest and others who have flown under the radar.

Product management is bullshit. Agile is hardly a thing. Scrum is garbage. Yes, I’m generalizing based on decades of experience. And yes, that shit can work when done properly.

Give me back the other (old?!) stuff.

Business analysis. Projects managed and led by expert generalists. Requirements documented – in words – technical, functional, architectural. Annotated wireframes. Working prototypes. Specialists – creative, design, engineering. Teams built on relationships. Culture grows around how work gets done.

Just like Drucker said ‘culture east strategy for breakfast’ but I’d also like to point out that a strategy cannot include hope as a tactic cuz all that does is create an environment without clear direction on how to accomplish much other than have a lotta movement. Might be movement in the right direction but how do you know? Drucker had one for that, too. Work on the right things at the right time. Topics for another day.

Anniversary. I miss you.

I prefer cats to people. Sorry people. Dogs and other animals are ok too. But if I could just focus on saving the kitties, I would.

Like this little girl…I’d take her in a heartbeat. Bolt. A beauty.

TC can handle it.

Starting another year without you. Such a downer. The sun will continue its usual up and down. Apple will continue to make me irritated. And I hope (uh oh there’s that four letter word) at least a few good days are on the horizon.

At least I live here which I don’t take for granted.

I know where the pain in my neck is coming from. I joked in a text to my friend that I had iNeck or an iPhone injury or iHand or whatever. Funny not funny. I used to call the pain in my right arm and shoulder ‘mouse arm’. I don’t do as much visual design as I used to do those aches aren’t as bad anymore. But the neck – and hands – are a different story.

The fine motor skills and specific muscles that allow me to tap tap tap on a thin piece of glass while holding my head at a slight angle are astonishing. And why the fuck am I using them for this? Because it’s here. I’ve fallen into the space of solitude after tidying up living room. I picked up the dusty guitar but realized another pain coming from the big bruise on my arm right where it hits the widest part of the body of the instrument.

I knew I’d I wanted to play, I needed to take out the Taylor. As soon as I held it I wondered when this came into your life. Don, did you have this because of the decade of blood draws and IV’s?

Today nothings wrong with me. Routine blood work. I bruise easily. Not reading into it but it looks nasty and it hurts if it’s being pushed on which this guitar doesn’t do. Thank you.

But back to my neck pain. My iPhone injury. The unintended consequences. For those of us who are fully dexterous, sighted and so inclined, we can really hurt ourselves using all this technology – not just picking on Apple here – it’s a problem on every level. As I sit, about to try to wrap up this weird train of thought I see myself, as a speck of dust in the thing that makes up all of what’s connected. Everything. More than ever. And because of that, awareness, in my conscious state, I have to maintain the ability to be human without this shit. I wonder how long it’ll take before it’s too late and enough humans are more iHuman than not.

Several years ago a woman in a class I was teaching was checking in on her kids during a break. After talking to one of them she said “yeah they hardly pick up the phone but they’ll turtle around all day with the thing”. She was referring to the way a lot of us hold the device and curl onto it. Turtling. Don’t think anyone considered the consequences of a couple decades of using the body that way.

This is where we are just a month or so from 2024. Don’t become an iHuman. And hey Apple, what the fuck? Thought design was your thing.

My wish for humans is to realize how small we all are. How tiny our precious planet really is and that the air we breathe should not be taken for granted. There is nowhere else for our part of the ecosystem to go. All living creatures will die, ourselves included, so why are we hastening that when all we have is this minuscule and spectacular space hurtling through all space.

It makes me sad. It makes me angry. It’s heartbreaking and utterly infuriating. Tears cloud my vision and spill onto my cheeks when I think about it. It’s almost too much to bear. To witness this insanity where (mostly) old, white men are seemingly hell bent on killing everything and I do mean EVERYTHING. I do not loathe men nor do I fault all of one gender for the destruction. Yes, here comes the but.

But.

For all of history, all of time, the majority of the humans who have brought division, greed, war and fear mongering have overwhelmingly been of one sort.

Hearing a story of how one woman saved a river, a waterfall, a habitat, all creatures and an entire ecosystem that support humanity only reinforces this. Men – likely a very small number – were going to kill this waterfall and everything around it for their own use and profit.

She was likely hated and shunned but the waterfall, powerful and fierce as she must have been, still flows. Today it brings more dollars to many people than it ever would have if it were pent up and used for a few.

When I learn her name, I’ll make sure it gets here.

I wonder where that phrase originated. I’ll look later. But for now I’ll just say that I was a perfect example of a basket case today. I thought it’d be fine but damn, it was not. I was not fine. Awkward, sweaty, red-eyed, disaster. Hopefully my weirdness didn’t make things any harder for anyone else.

You’d tell me to forget about all that. Presence. That’s what it was. That and a damn good reminder that getting away from the IE is one of the best things you ever did.

I wonder about so many things. Why that cemetery? Is your sister nearby? Would you want visitors? Did you see the beautiful box your friend made? Do you know how many people you touched? Did you know we all became kinder because of you? How the hell did you ride all those miles? And not just racing either. A leisurely from Redlands to San Clemente? How the fuck can you – of all the humans on this planet – be gone?

There was some type of bird of prey near your grave sight. It made its presence known while we were there. I heard it’s whistle-like song as soon as I got there. Yes, we started late and it ran long but did you think it’d go any other way? And that bird stuck around the whole time. I didn’t see a nest – or the bird – but it definitely watches over that space.

I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to that part of the state. It isn’t what it once was when the air was clearer and citrus groves dominated the landscape. So much concrete, so many of the same strips of shopping. So many Teslas. So few places to plug them in.

Sometimes I still get so angry that you’re gone. You would say “toes in the sand!” or something like that. Low tide is coming so I’ll walk down to the water again. Find a spot for my toes to burrow. Enjoy it while it’s still here.

I’ve been struggling to figure out which is worse: friend death or friend betrayal and, ultimately, a sort of divorce.

This article was right on time: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/03/why-we-lose-friends-aging-happiness/621305/

A simple sunny Vons flower in a mason jar. perfect.

I met a very interesting Lyft driver in Pennsylvania. His daughter is an artist. I received my copy of one of her pieces today. It’s bright and cheery.

Since moving back, when I go for walks, I hum “it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood” in my head. No matter what the weather. It is always beautiful. Be kind.

Does anyone still call it that? I guess trail mix is where we landed but to me it’s gorp. I wonder who made that up.

I miss being able to share shit like this with you. It’s been almost a year since I last saw you at Lost Creek.

When I get back from this weird ass trip to Cranberry Township, PA I’ll set up time to go get your guitar. Promise.