thinking out loud

a letter i just sent to my mayor and the head of our bureau of transportation

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 06:08:22 GMT

I love my town.

Hello, my beloved elected and appointed leaders!

This is a little long winded but it has a point and I hope it'll make you feel good about yourselves and your work.

I'm a transportation wonk and a full-time cyclist--I ride to work, I ride for transportation, I ride for fun, I took the Portland transportation class at PSU, and I'm an organizer of much bike fun in Portland and in particular the world naked bike ride Portland edition. Thank you for enhancing all of the things I love to do on my bike! You -- yes, you two specifically -- make my life so incredibly great that I bought my first house in Portland after waffling for 12 years in other cities across America that I tried living in. And I love paying my property taxes, and leaf removal fees, and income taxes, and vote for bonds to improve our city--because your leadership so totally jives with my way of thinking. You truly are representing my interests, 100% of the time. You are spending my money wisely. You rock!

And you've done it again. I'm a daily bike commuter over the Broadway bridge from my home in Nopo to downtown, at least one and sometimes two round trips in a day. Whenever the sidewalk is being repaired, I stop taking the Broadway bridge, since the two-way traffic on the sidewalk is dangerous. So, I detour to the Steel, lose 5-10 minutes of my life, and thank the powers that be (and the powers that have been) for having options.

Your arrangement of a first-class treatment of detoured cyclists on the bridge means a lot to me--not just the time saved, which in reality only adds up to maybe a couple of hours during this repair cycle. But that you thought about it, worked with the BTA and Trimet, and made a precedent-setting, politically tough call to defend the safety of the meek in exchange for the inconvenience of the majority...yeah. This is a great example of why I love you and this town.

Sam, I'm going to miss you a lot when you go (and I look forward to seeing what you do next. You'll have a staunch supporter in any forum). Tom, I hope the new mayor keeps you around. You guys deepen my love for Portland and make my life better. Please know that your hard work is *extremely* appreciated.

With love,

me

this isn't supposed to happen to me

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 02:14:26 GMT

my leg swelled up last week after a sore day followed by an intense bike race (in which i still placed last, but had fun. it was the first race for that bike and i am having it reconfigured to be more functional in the next race. but that's beside the point.)

it hasn't unswelled since. magn0lia, masseuse & chiropractor extraordinaire, came over and gave me delivery kinesio-taping service, just as professional as any i ever received from algol_galaxia back in the day, and this helped reduce a fairly significant amount of pain..but the tightness and swelling, i just kept expecting to go away. and it didn't, and it didn't, and i was having trouble walking normally, but it felt ok on the bike as long as i went easy, and i was trying to ignore it, and then magn0lia came by a *second* time and told me in no uncertain terms to go to the doctor, tomorrow, because blood clots might be involved and those things are potentially fatal.

tomorrow turned into two days but I went yesterday and the doctor said "well, it could be a clot, but you're young and have no reason to have one" (provocations typically include: being sedentary, taking a long car or plane trip, medical trauma like a deep cut or surgery, or being trapped in a cast), plus i seemed to get better when i was warmed up from exercising. So he referred me over for a blood test to just make sure i wasn't having a clot.

the tests, i was informed, are 100% accurate if they report a negative. but the false positives are possible and even likely, so all it could tell me is i don't have a clot, which is referred to in the lingo as DVT, Deep Veinous Thrombosis (that's my darkwave my bloody valentine cover band name, by the way). anyway, the test takes overnight to happen, so i get a call this morning, "well, you're not negative. come back in and we'll look with some technology. we can fit you in...in the middle of the afternoon and no other time. but it's essential! come in today!" ok...

so i make a shambles of my afternoon and shamble over to the doctor (ok, i rode my bike, because that's what i do. i shambled to my bike though. recall that i've got an endearing limp...) and i get two sexy nurses, one of whom is a nurse in training, and the other of whom is a sonographer (sez her name tag). they tell me to strip, then daintily put a towel over my junk, and proceed to give my leg an hour-long sonogram from the crotch on down. i've only ever seen a sonogram once, when i was 5, and got to go with mom to look at lil sis kim still in the womb. technology, as far as i can tell, hasn't changed much. she lubed me up, rubbed me with a wand on a cable attached to a screen, and scrutinized something i couldn't see the whole time. her poker face was impeccable and all i was told was that "these things are code red, stat, so we'll have someone read it while you wait." i know these people know when they see a thing--x-ray techs have given away my broken bones before a doc even gets the x-ray more than once. but she was unreadable.

so i dress back up, go wait in a chair too uncomfortable to sleep in in a cell phone dead zone until she comes back out and says the doctor will see me now. this sonographer, her eyes are flat, i can't read 'em at all. i'm still feeling upbeat because there's no way a healthy dude like me would get an unprovoked clot, and chances are it was just a false positive. but the doc marches straight in and says "bummer, man, you gotta clot." he explains briefly that it's unexpected, it's good i came in quickly, and that my chances of getting a pulmonary embolism were really low now that i'd be getting treatment. By the way, that's the potentially fatal clot-consequence, where the clot decides the leg is so last week and moves up to the lungs and effectively suffocates you by blocking the blood from getting to some or all of the lungs. so that sucks, but hey, i'm already on the road to recovery, so whew, right?

i try to stay upbeat as they shuffle me over to the entire wing of the clinic called the "coagulation unit". apparently a fuckton of people take these medications, so many so that the nurse has clearly done this spiel a thousand times as she explains that i'm gonna spend the next 2 weeks injecting my own belly with this one anticoagulant, and then the next 3-6 months taking this other one orally. oh, and while i'm at it, i can't drink, or anyway if i do, i'll probably bleed to death from scratching a mosquito bite, because my blood is gonna be thin as a supermodel from the 90's and won't want to stop bleeding short of cauterization. but hey, at least i'll knock some weight off in the process, probably, since not drinking all summer is likely to help with my first-time-ever over-200# scale visit. sigh.

the good news: i don't have to change my lifestyle, as long as my lifestyle isn't based around taking advil (or drinking), or eating highly variable amounts of green veggies (broccoli, spinach, brussels sprouts). it's not that I can't eat those, it's that I have to eat the same amount every week. and knowing me, that means "none", since i'm terrible at keeping the house stocked with veg or really remembering to eat anything in particular when i'm out. and i get to keep exercising "as much as is comfortable". right now, the leg is so swollen, it's not comfortable to walk, run, bounce, or bike hard. but i can bike gently for now, and according to kdaisy721 who just went through this, i'll be unswelled shortly, like in a week or two.

in the meantime, i gotta go to the doctor a lot and try not to be such a klutz. thank goodness i have awesome insurance--it paid for $854.99 worth of medicine today. fuck our healthcare system, but thank goodness my employer believes in taking care of its team.

give me a hug if you see me. i could use one. now for dinner (and presumably hugs) with a randomly-visiting decibel.

i keep meaning to write...

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 05:54:49 GMT

I have some great examples in my life, with jupiterjuniper leading the charge, but I just don't keep up the way I mean to. And sure, you might argue, forgive yourself for not shouting into a dying breeze that is the death of a once-vibrant community, but actually, this (like everything, at the bottom of it), is about me, not you. I should write, often, for myself. And hey, you guys would get the benefit most of the time, since I don't have a lot of private thoughts (more's the pity, might say several of the folks who long ago stopped listening to whatever self-involved drivel I was spitting out at the time).

But hey, hi, I miss you and I thought xmas night as the family sleeps softly and I'm kinda bored out of my skull would be a good time to write, and also probably go for a walk but I can't really take you along in a useful way, it being dark and me being a poor photo/video-grapher even in the light with good equipment, which I donut possess.

Let's instead review some of my blessings, there's a thing you could enjoy being along for, perhaps?

My family is excellent. My christmas gifts received were generous and thoughtful (yay art, nifty & silly things, and a whole lotta spendin' money); my gifts given, well received. My life is great. I don't know if I've said anything around here but I am loving working for New Relic, whom I've been with for 2 months now and I am still in love and I'm sure everyone who has already heard this is tired of hearing about how excellent my job is, but...man! Come work with us, if you're a developer or designer? Here's a link to our job listings just in case you're maybe looking for work and are awesome. And most of you are pretty awesome =)

I've taken up climbing, I've already skied more times than last year and have a fair amount more lined up, and I'm biking a fair amount despite the winter. I've had luck with the ladies enough that I don't think of dark_knightly unhealthily often and my self-esteem is nearly rebuilt (so much faster than it was after the algol_galaxia debacle, and I wasn't even in love with her). I'm enjoying my visit to Texas, basking in memories and friends with another week to go. I'll be spending more time in San Francisco over the next few months for work, but am gonna make some time for personal as well and enjoy faux-living in the city--i'll get a bike that fits me and my style to tool around on, hang out with my half-dozen friends (and several dozen awesome cow-orkers), and yay!

I didn't drink for 45 days straight and I didn't miss it much (except when I was at the bar). I'm still a lush at heart, but I no longer worry about my alcoholism. I haven't even been drunk very many times since I started drinking again--which is actually a pretty stark contrast to where I was before I stopped, so maybe it would forever be a good idea to take some time off in the winter to regulate and examine and clear the old head.

I spent almost 2 months bike camping this year. That was quite excellent. Maybe I'll get to do that again sometime, though not this year. I rode over 10,000 miles all told. I feel great!

Things I didn't get around to doing this year that I meant to:

writing more.

meditating more.

exercising quite enough.

But hey, I forgive me. What are you forgiving yourself for, as this year ends? I'm moving forward in a swoosh of positive and hope you have some of that too.

Maybe I'll do a year in review post later on. But for now, happy day, be well, and hugs!

happiness is

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:22:30 GMT

...really enjoying my job! 7 days in and i like *everyone* that i work with and they are all at least as smart as me. i like our software more and more. i'm becoming useful more quickly than i expected. i'm getting positive feedback.

...successful (repeat scheduled!) first dates that are ended with a hug instead of sex or a kiss

...playing rock band with many friends for 5 hours on sunday evening

...meredith_mccraw visiting in less than 48 hours to go see tmbg!

...a warm cat

...reading way more than usual

...getting enough sleep, and settling into an almost-daily meditation routine

...doing ok without the booze. 8 days, a long rockband session & trips to several bars without falling or jumping off the wagon

...one last bike race for the year next weekend. yeehaw mud!

the quickening

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:41:52 GMT

it's almost 12am when it'll be october 31st and my life will change.

nothing to do with halloween, really. just some things going down tomorrow:

i start a new job at this pretty cool company called new relic. we make software to profile your web app. it's awesome software. i wish i'd had it at several of my previous jobs (nike, respond2). the company is full of brilliant, practical people. they call themselves a startup but have 75 employees and are thoroughly profitable and their revenue is growing far faster than their employee count. they pay well and insist on a 40-hours-like life/work balance. i have been promised that this will be the hardest job i've ever had--i will be engaged fully. i don't think i've ever had a job that really did that to me before. there were periods at most jobs, but it was never sustained. i am ready to try that; this will be a trial by fire of sinking or swimming, wherein i'll figure out whether i can stay in tech for awhile or whether i really need to find another career. in the meantime i plan to put some money in the bank so that i can do whatever i need to do if i do have to escape. but right now, i'm actually kinda excited about joining a cool team, with 2 bosses i like, at a company with a kick ass product that i am not embarassed to sell (see nike, respond2) and am even a little proud of.
i stop drinking tomorrow, the plan being to dry out for a couple months. as [Bad username: mhat's] lady alexis pointed out, it is not a proof of not-being-an-alcoholic to be able to stop, for AA shows that alcoholics can stop. it's the moderation that's a problem, and well, i'm not addressing that for now. but i do wanna see what drying out feels like. and dawningday points out that two months feels different than one month--that is, the clarity changes for at least that long. we'll see a) if i make it that far and b) if i agree. there are already potentials for cheating--rockband night next week (hopefully) and thanksgiving...but, we'll see.
i start writing a novel tomorrow. it's time for NaNoWriMo again. i'm ready, this year. not that i've prepared more, but i have an idea and a desire to do this thing.
i feel better by the day about myself as someone who can be romantically involved. i'm dating again, though i haven't found ms. right yet...and i am still totally damaged goods as risa pointed out to me, but i *feel* less damaged by the day. so that seems positive =)

in strange other news, after being a paid subscriber forever and ever (and buying several other people paid accounts), i finally let my LJ account lapse. i think i've given them enough money for the time being. glad there's still a free mode..

hope you're well!

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 08:57:00 GMT

don't stop believing, says journey. how is that song the only song that's ever made me sob, sobbing out loud for maybe the second time in ever in my life? well, it's about a girl.

she sang that song and did it better than me. i still judge myself based on how i think she feels about me. and lately she's acting like i don't exist, which makes me feel the same way about myself. and then i think that if i hadn't fucking rocked the boat, if i'd just stayed miserable and heartbroken, well, maybe it'd be less bad than being even more miserable and heartbroken now. i didn't sob, before. i just whined.

i was sad before, and frustrated. but now i'm uncertain and worried that i'll never be able to judge myself on my own merits.

the last time i sobbed i had just asked her to move out of my home. which she pretty much took as "please leave my life". funny how something so bad for me is the thing that touched me most deeply in this world. fortunate that i've never lost anyone closer to me, and i'm lucky - there are several.

wish i understood human emotion. or maybe it's better that i don't.

i'll probably delete this in the morning.

the morning response: i won't delete it, i'll just explain it from a different emotional place. it's good to recognize and remember, even the embarassing moments.

i was feeling pretty emo last night. true feelings that i've been wrestling with, but it's not a constant thing--i usually feel pretty good about myself. i do still miss the relationship i poured the most energy in my life into--and by that i mean that i miss the good friendship that was actually usually functional under the dysfunctional romantic relationship. and who knows, she might just still be taking healing time, and she'll act like a friend again, someday. i haven't given up, i just start to grow weary of being the only one trying, months down the road.

though i do sometimes judge myself based on my (probably wrong) perception of what she seems to think about me, i usually judge myself based on what's happening in the moment--the people i AM interacting with. the joy i still facilitate, the change in the world i still effect, the adventures i still enjoy.

so don't worry--rejoice that somewhere in that relationship, i got a real gift--i got feelings back which i'd repressed/buried for 18 years, and with them came some sadness, but more capacity for joy, too. and i know that's good, even when i'm crying hard.

thanks for your support. now, it's boardgame and brunch time!

daily updates

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 19:34:15 GMT

so i've been writing in this community effwritersblock every day this month. the fragment the other day was from it. today is about the world naked bike ride that i helped organize. i probably won't bother reposting anything else in here unless i'm pretty moved by it but if you want more of my writing, there you go.

a fragment

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 04:47:39 GMT

we met at a sleepy party in a friend's immaculate house only a few doors down the street from my own. she showed up late with the host's boyfriend, apologizing for being driven to the party. i jokingly apologized for walking and got a dirty look. but she was too tired to hold a grudge that night, and as she took a ride home from the last person to depart, i dragged myself home too, drained from staying past the limits of my social tendencies to bask in her laugh.

i made the boyfriend pass on a note from me to her, his co-worker. how i'd enjoyed meeting her and wanted to see more of her. she wrote a laughing reply to the note via email and told me she knew who i was. how? she was ran the campus directory and had done some poking. she was interested! i felt the butterflies...they blossomed into something kind of intense and beautiful. but fleeting. we were momentarily great, then good, then awesome, then terrible, then trying to repair, then giving up.

she taught me some incredible life lessons. put her actions where my words were: you can do anything you really try to. she turned me from a recreational cyclist into a biker, a thing to identify as and live and breathe. she taught me how to ride, how to fix my ride, how to fix my body when it broke, how to do it with style and finesse. some of the most valuable applied lessons anyone had ever taught me about living my own life--and she taught entirely by example. and i worshipped her for that.

when we separated, it was an explosion. she'd already absorbed much of my circle of friends and wasn't ready to let go of some people i loved--my best friend, my sister. i had to agree to be not-not friends, a concept i couldn't understand, but the communication was so far broken that i couldn't even figure out how to ask her to explain, really, and so apparently there was to be no more talking. no more eye contact. just an awkward separation and her running out of the room when i came into the party second.

then she taught me another thing, as i rehashed events over and over, in my head, to my 20 closest friends and some distant ones. as i tried to figure out where i'd gone wrong--i'd never in my life lost a friend other than to death, not an ex, not anyone i'd cared about, especially not so deeply, for so many months. i was distraught and grasping, gasping, hoping that she'd make time, take effort, to tell me how i'd failed. how to prevent future tragedy.

and on new year's eve, as i told the story (for at least the 30th time) of her and me to a new friend, met in person but friendship created over 2000 miles of internet, she called me. talking to tinyfroglet, asking what to do? how could i talk to her when it always ended in tears? i needed to! but i didn't trust talking. or words. they'd caused the explosion, implosion, and built the moat. she didn't understand. i didn't understand. and tinyfroglet told me not to answer the call. and R texted and said there was no other chance. and tinyfroglet told me, it is NOT YOUR FAULT, IT IS HERS.

and that was a good lesson to learn. sorry to the other 29+ of you i couldn't take that news from. you all helped break down that wall and make me well again.

she's still crazy and i don't care and it's great. and when i think of her i get a little misty eyed--i still want to say thank you for the huge positive change in my life. but that wouldn't work. doesn't, when i try it. i miss her. and, eqaully, i miss the me who believed that every friendship was salvageable.

big sky country

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 03:06:44 GMT

i feel kinda like the last 1.3 years have been a big vacation--i haven't been working regularly (but i have regularly been working irregularly!) for money, and so i've had a lot of time to recharge. strangely, though, a lot of my time was still spent working--working for a few consulting clients that kept me afloat (alongside my mostly-depleted-now savings), volunteering (the PDX world naked bike ride and barcamp portland organizing roles took up about 2 full-time months of my life, put together, and of course i have been volunteering for other stuff like osbridge, the BTA, shift, and whatever else wandered across my plate), and working through a lot of my remaining mental issues with the breakup with shads. so now i'm interviewing for real, salaried, 9-5 jobs. i took the written test to become a portland firefighter and passed--now it's on to the lug-a-hose-up-the-stairs test in a couple months, and then interviews for that. my mind is back on my financial future--something completely boring to me, but my finances are approaching the point where i have to think about it lest the potential for failure become worrisome.

so i'm in montana, taking a vacation from my life! i'd promised my friend heather i'd come visit her in missoula, montana, and i hadn't been in big sky country since july 2007. this trip had been in vague planning for months, since there were a few people who wanted to see heather and a few others who wanted to see montana, but in the end, it was just myself and aaron, whom i didn't know very well, but was assured was a nice fellow. he made a great travelling companion, just as easy to get along with as me! (says me =)).

this entry is feeling pretty uninspired, so let me get onto the good parts so i can at least post it, have written something that i can share with you guys, howbout?

1) train trip into glacier was mostly dark. but the parts that weren't were rather pretty: the gorge out further east than i'd seen it before (only travelled thru it past the dalles in my moving truck, at night, 4 years ago on my way to town). glacier, which was entirely after dawn. and some of eastern montana. we slept a little. cuddled some (i heart cuddles! boy cuddles, rare and elusive, were great and probably disconcerting to the bible group we shared the train with). ate our food, drank our drink. got to know eachother.

2) we arrived in east glacier, deboarded, assembled bikes and bags, ate disappointing huckleberry cobbler, shopped at overpriced tiny grocery where 2 days food cost the same as 1 blah meal including aforementioned cobbler, and then biked. we biked to st mary's. and i recognized it! the same route that alex, shawn, eric, and i did alone during the texas 4000 back in '07. it was neat to revisit! only this time i made it up the hill without much trouble (at a slower pace, loaded with camping gear). and i didn't bomb down so entirely out of control, fearless and immortal, as i had in '07. but that was fine, good even, probably. the first day in this blog-batch is essentially the ride we did.

3) we camped with a bunch of other hiker/biker types at st mary's. and that was good. huckleberry milkshake was better. sleep was epically long--probably 12 hours.

4) we rode over going-to-the-sun road. it was tall, it took us awhile, and we had a blast doing it. we had beer at the top, because goldang it, i had carried it all the way up there, and nobody told us not to. revisited a hike from that same '07 trip up top; there was way less snow--we were a month and a half later in the season!

5) we camped in the yard of aaron's friend sarah in west glacier and met her many housemates, their many guests, and had a great evening. even though sarah was not, in fact, home.

6) we hiked 13 miles on the highline trail, with a rather ridiculous elevation profile, for our "rest day". we saw glaciers! which are on a limited engagement, scheduled to disappear by 2020 entirely from the park. so seeing 3 was excellent. even that one we had to slog several hundred feet straight up to soak in. but there were backrubs, to go with the glacier. so that was ok. we came home to finally find sarah arrived, and she smelled worse than us (probably--i didn't inhale, honest!) since she was 10 days out on a hike and just returned. instead of showering, we went skinny dipping in lake mcdonald under the milky way, saw meteors, talked about life change, and made merry. we slept well.

7) i set off early, due west and south, to get to missoula the next day. my legs were exhausted from hard-ride followed by hard-hike. i still made it about 75 miles before calling in reinforcements--heather came and picked me up, closer to her than to me, but not by much. no way was i pulling a 140mi day on those legs. and there was much rejoicing as she pulled up and we caught up and drove south through a very pretty reservation, and some towns we'd seen in '07 (hi, arlee! you gave us free ice but no free water, as i recall.)

8) missoula has been great. slept in a lot. read a lot. biked a fair bit. spent most of a day at the adventure cycling association for heather's last day of work, and chatted with a bunch of touring cyclists and employees. drank beer. saw the clips of faith thing from new belgium that i somehow missed in portland but which followed me all the way to montana. drank great beer (no, fat tire isn't great. but i had 8 other tasty ones, most of which i'd never even heard of--new belgium brews a lot that they don't otherwise distribute..)

9) ate more great food, drank great beer, rode great bikes, talked life change, in general enjoyed visiting with heather. yeah. this is vacation!

10) tomorrow is further tour du missoula, including more drinking, eating, shopping, laughing, and carrying on, before i have to head north to whitefish to catch a train on monday night.

...and return to my life, which is getting more normal by the day--two interviews in the next week. might be working in as few as 2 weeks. might have to cut back on all that volunteerism. might not get to go on many more trips until the xmas migration back to texas. c'est la vie. it's been good, real good, and i believe i've done it right.

thanks for reading. dunno if i'll post much more, here. i don't...feel it, anymore, somehow. send me a thoughtful emailed question, and you'll probably do better for getting something juicy out of me, these days. my letters will be more interesting than my memoirs =)

peace.

so this is how it ends

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 16:12:42 GMT

...feels more like a whimper than a bang. strangely reminiscent of the last time i disengaged from being in love, in...wow, 1999 or 2000 with shaynabelle. trying to apply the lessons i learned there--stuff like:

continued sexual fantasies do not help with falling out of love (a shame, since the two ladies i've been deeply in love with were extremely sexually attractive to me and were hard to permanently withdraw from the spank bank)
sometimes you really do need more space/time than you want to, to nurture the remaining friendship
new interests take it very poorly when you confess that you are honestly not over the old interest yet. which is a fair way to feel, but i think many people aren't honest about it and they get credit for just keeping quiet while i lose points for being an open book.
she might be hurting, a little, too.

there were fireworks, the good kind and the bad kind, in the during of our relationship and its end. but as her time in the house wound down, she retreated due to the should-have-been-expected miscommunication, which we managed to convince me tearfully was all my fault. i still think it was, but i *feel* like it wasn't. she's such a great debater. i need to take a remedial debate class. and hire someone to walk around with me taking mental notes back to which i would refer during debate, since my mental notepad is completely fucking unreliable.

or i could start dating people that are active communicators. so, you know, we solve problems before they are big problems. that might not be a bad idea and might be something that could *actually* happen in *this* reality =)

so when she finally left, it was just "goodbye, good luck, and i hope we can still be friends". and i cried a little.

thank goodness kdaisy721 is here just now. she helps, as always, quite a lot really. and all of my friends. you guys are great, too. thanks for your ongoing support! i'm already in better shape than i would have expected, and remembering more about the disengagement with shay and how i repeatedly fucked that up (but thank you so much, shay, for being the wonderfully forgiving person you are and still being such a close friend despite my ridonkulous behavior back then!) and trying to disconnect those mental pathways and behavior patterns. and succeeding some. and failing some. and life will go on.

just now, i am going to pick up a mattress to improve the pillow room. yesterday i worked with a group who are living my dream (doing bike tours for a living), which, hey, i would love to be doing too and yay for a first step down that path (thanks, tinyfroglet, for the brainstorm/encouragement that got me there!). i am finalizing plans to paint my entire house (insides) this summer with a new friend (platonic) who is incredibly much "my kind of person", to turn it into a space i love, rather than a community i love in a space i just kinda like. and, pedalpalooza! 5 days out! omg! my life, she is so great. and i believe i shall return to the unequivocal love of life soon enough. so yay!

beginning to worry.

Mon, 23 May 2011 17:35:58 GMT

the computer is a fantastic tool in my life:

without a calendar in my pocket in the form of a microcomputer (palm pilot, smart phone) i could never effectively live the life i'm trying to live (life goal!)--participant, doer, community builder, fun-lover, socialite. that technology has enabled me for 14 years now!
without a keyboard i'd probably write far, far less--i haven't written anything serious on paper in 6 years (my last burningman trip journal). partly because my hands can't keep up with my head in that medium--i can't write 120wpm or even close, and when i try, my scrawl becomes illegible. partly because i am frustrated by the immutability of the handwritten word--editing is heinous. partly because a computer as a focus gives me some of the tunnel vision i need to cultivate to get in the zone to really feel the flow of prose that is the source of both my best [words :: intended meaning] matches (life goal!) and the most fun (other life goal!). that technology has enabled me for even longer.
without computers as tools and people who need help making them behave as better tools for them, my lifelong total income would hover around $3000--about half and half a summer job at age 15 and pizza delivery for 3 months at age 25. technology is a valuable career skill. 17 years of enablement there.
without social networks, i would have grown up very sheltered and ended up a much different person, and i would be a far worse friend than i am today. or anyway, i would have far fewer friends. i suppose i might treat those few far better, were i not spread so thin. but i like it the way it is. this line item actually wants to be a post of its own, i will remind myself later to do so, for the effect has been so positive since age 15 that i love to bask in its memory.

there are others, of course. i was tired of traditional music media management before the mp3 was invented; i would almost certainly have stopped buying cd's over a decade ago and just be a radio listener with almost no discernable musical taste now. the hobby of computing has scratched a great itch in my brain for a great many years (though that phase in my life is waning). the computer amplifies my intelligence--allowing me to have knowledge at my fingertips that i by all rights shouldn't know via experiential learning--others get that via books, but i keep little in online storage/cache and rely on the internet to fill in the blanks incredibly often. my forgetfulness is not crippling with this prosthetic device!

but here's the worry: computer as entertainment device, boredom alleviator, goof off accessory is overtaking my productive use as primary use. i had one of those flashes of insight that i've been having (or recognizing) more of lately (yay!) about my life: this "tool" is getting harder to use, since i almost compulsively take a break every few minutes to read twitter, or play scrabble. when trying to do "real work" (be that for business or pleasure), the siren song of personal email is frequently too hard to resist.

i guess i have it easy--i check only a handful of sites daily, and most of them don't have enough content to distract me for long. i read my handful of favorite webcomics in no more than 10 minutes on any day--usually just a couple minutes. my livejournal friends page is almost empty these days (i have filtered it down to a level which from which i can fully catch up for missed weeks in an hour or two). twitter can entertain me for around a half-hour per 8 hours of america's-not-sleeping realtime, and is my go-to "waste 15-60 seconds now!" device. but again, even it runs out at some point of constant reloading. scrabble is in theory infinite in its availability, but i do stop finding it fun after some number of games--between 1 and 20. and then i have a refractory period ranging from minutes to a couple of days. so i'm lucky that i don't do reddit, or troll youtube (often, anyway), or have a netflix subscription, or play on the forums anywhere, or even play games, particularly, these days--i wouldn't have to quash many individual habits to get down to an all-business lifestyle. not a lot of different things to cut out. and frankly, the compulsion frequently isn't even that enjoyable. i could probably and should probably try going cold turkey on quitting scrabble for awhile. i stand to regain a fair amount of online productivity.

...or find other distractions. that's what i worry about. that the computer-as-a-productivity-tool era of my life is fundamentally broken. but really i think that i could change, but don't want to. a more insidious addiction.

Wed, 18 May 2011 15:25:47 GMT

my god have my emotions been a roller coaster lately. as i'm certain is clear to the 3 remaining readers of this blog and my twitter stream, i've been having a hard time with my ex. feelings of betrayal, bitterness, sadness, needing space and hating when i have it. completely fucking irrational and pretty unhappy some of the time.

last night some of that came to a head and good thing it did. as usual, both parties were unaware of the feelings of the other and a small scene was made (fortunately, via text message) and caused some of the floodgates of communication to come unplugged and i don't even know if there will be positive results regarding the friendship i want so badly, but at least now we're both more aware of the problem. which was a frequent problem in our romantic relationship as well--"oh, i had no idea i wasn't satisfying your needs...for the last 2 years :/"

so i don't know if that's positive or not, yet, but it was definitely necessary and i feel better for having been through it. (ok, i fibbed, i haven't made it through yet--she told me what she thought, that much is true. i did write the long email about how i feel and how i hope things will go but i am sitting on it for the day to make sure it still says what i want it to say at the end of the day. just like i waited til the sober light of dawn to write it in the first place, rather than writing it from a painful, unhappy place last night. PS: thanks to my cat's 6:20am vomit session for having me up at dawn.)

but this post isn't actually about the past. it's about the future. sitting there last night, in search of every kind of distraction, i realized i need to change. not change my desires (to remain good friends with her; to remain open, loving, in touch with my emotions; to continue to be able to express what i think and feel as often as i want to those i care about), but change my actions.

i think the best parallel to my desires is a story my friend Raj told me once while we were stuck in 5mph traffic coming down from the mountain in colorado for several hours. i could talk for hours about Raj; i in fact have a man-crush on his brain, which is amazing (the brain, not the crush). but the story is simple and he is somewhat irrelevant to this post, so i will carry on to the story: it's about his parents, who had an arranged marriage, and in fact had barely met before they married. yet, he says, they have one of the healthiest relationships he knows of. not because they were or are perfect for one another. but because they chose to put effort into loving one another, and that effort has been tireless, but extremely effective. they did not fall in love. they actively made it so. and it works. and it is strong like titanium, their love. and i was and am fascinated by this phenomenon, as one who only falls into most things in his life (and, is generally pleased with how his life works as he surfs the currents of probability. pleased not to be choosing all the time, but going with the flow, and letting things work. because, everything works if you let it!)

so how is that parallel to anything except the curvature of my brain's myriad unexpected wanderings? well, i am deciding to dig myself out of this pit of despair and be happier. i tweeted that i'd decided to stop being sad and a wise friend said that emotions don't work like that and she's right. but what i can choose to do is be healthier--both in the emotions i choose to wallow in (choose joy!) and overall mental health, which i believe leads to more positive feelings. to this end:

i need to start going to yoga or doing aikido again (i'm thinking yoga, since it's easier to fit into my already overbooked schedule). healthy body sane mind, as some song buried in my playlist says (it's punk/ska...maybe the impossibles or less than jake? don't know and can't be bothered to figure it out just now)
i need to meditate daily, at least on days that i don't have yoga. i only do it for 15 minutes or so but it definitely perks up my day and flushes some toxins out of the ol' brainstream.
i need to write daily. catharsis via typewriter, check!
i need to reread the 4 agreements. i don't actually love this book, but i was reminded of one of its lessons in particular the other day and i need to really accept and start living it: don't take anything personally. anything anyone else does is about them and their feelings and their opinions. act from your own feelings and then be responsible for the results.
might need a lil camping trip, all alone and without technology or intoxicants, to do some deeper meditation and a little mental reset. i've found a likely hole in my schedule next week that i might attack. we'll see how i feel after doing some of the above in the interim!

not sure if you'll see a lot more of me here, or if i'll write in my private journal, or maybe work on a novel or my long-overdue trip journal from the desert. i just read a beautiful piece last night that made me want to write more (this one: http://robinsloan.com/last-beautiful . go read it! it's short and sweet and awesome.) and then i realized that it would be therapeutic. and i need active therapy--because it's none of her fault that i'm still hung up on her and unhappy about it. that's all me. and i have to cope, like a big boy. chase my joy and "live my dreams", as the tiny charm that gogolsbeloved sent me while i was on my first bike tour says. still good advice lo these 4 years later! (and probably 40 years in the future, it still will be good advice.) and it dovetails well with some serendipitous general-purpose advice (not particularly directed at me) just this morning from a friend that i made on that bike tour, on art, and doing it successfully: http://philintheblanks.com/blog/?p=546

so that's where i'm at. where are you, today?

i swear i had something to say...

Fri, 13 May 2011 19:10:59 GMT

i had one of those thoughts, earlier, the kind that makes me want to pick apart my feelings on a topic in public and request the pleasure of your commentary. and then i failed to act upon this urge immediately and like a dream interrupted by the sounds of a cat getting sick, it evaporated in the instant of distraction, action, and reaction. of course i was just reacting to a text message which would have been there 20 seconds later, but i am not any good at prioritizing my time in the heat of a moment. long-term planning i'm great with the optimization ("so, since context switches cost a lot of time and effort, let's do one thing at a time and start with the best cost-value ratio even if it's not the most important task since it'll be done quickly and the feeling of accomplishment can buoy us onwards through the longer harder stuff and ..."). when already working, a clown could come in and ask me to get face-pied for no other purpose than his amusement and i'd probably say "sure!" i am a yes man in that regard, and i am pleased that my friends abuse it only moderately frequently rather than constantly. for i can be snuggling a pretty girl who made a rule that if i leave her side she leaves my life and still be distracted easily by just about anyone asking just about anything.

attention deficit disorderly much?

so let's see, what is new in my world today? a fair list of things:

1) new roommate transition is beginning--the traditional "sharing of the google docs rent/utility cost spreadsheet" took place this morning, and i'm trying to clear out enough room in the various storage locations for john to move in in a few weeks. the "garage" is a big one, because both him and other-recent-addition mark have tons of tools and it would be nifty to give them a place to store as well as use them that isn't inside the house. for though i love screwing inside, sanding, sawing, varnishing, and many other activities just don't seem completely compatible with health and cleanliness.

2) going with former roommate in a few hours to take his cat to get put down. his cat is around pixel's age, which scares me a little, but P seems to be in good health and is certainly as purry and cuddly and grooming herself and healthily hungry/thirsty...but 12 is a long time in cat years. so i'll just cherish whatever i have left. (since she's immortal, my cat, i know in my heart of hearts i have until forever! but what i know in my heart is often not the truth that i will have to someday address with my brain :/)

3) big weekend! let's see:

matt's goodbye-to-portland festival this evening will take us to some iconic locales--the classic-games arcade that serves beer, the food carts, some karaoke at the only place i've really had fun singing (i don't sing in public lightly).
the midnight mystery ride, which i will attend and then come almost straight home from, since..
..i'm racing in a triathlon in the morning. i learned long ago that if i don't take the first step, i never get to the hundredth, and race season is no different. so i'm starting early despite having done 0 swimming or running since my last race, at the end of last summer. i'm not worried about drowning, but it may be a bit of a slog. that's ok, that's about the shape i'm in..
after the tri, my friends are leading another of my favorite sorts of bike rides--pub crawl! this is the "beer century", which i came dramatically close to succeeding at last time (100oz of beer by bike...i think i hit 92 or something in about 6 hours?). this time i'm just gonna hit a bar or two since i have other things!
hangouts with 2 relatively new friends, in separate pieces. movie+consolation snuggles for a recently dumped friend, and drinks and peoplewatching with a brand new friend.
sunday sunday sunday! i'm helping a pal hang a picture. i think i'll spend the rest of the day recovering from my weekend...

oh, and, ramp up to barcamp is in its final week. woo! it'll be fun! come play with us! free food and beer and lots of geeking. and not just computergeeking, either!

whew. for a mostly-unemployed dude, i sure don't have a lot of downtime.

he has a sort of dry wit...

Mon, 09 May 2011 16:38:25 GMT

yesterday i had a beer. but for the 7 days preceding that, i had none. after my post about alcoholism i back-burnered thoughts of illness and addiction because i'd kind of made my peace with the situation--i like drinking but don't believe i'm compelled to do it or anything. and suddenly i had a day where i explicitly didn't feel like drinking, so i didn't. and looking ahead to my week, i had no social obligations that would likely make me feel drinky--no happy hours, no meetings at bars, no parties where i wouldn't know many folks, no dates or dancing. so i took the un-plunge and dried up for a week. and it was good.

i definitely had a productive, hangover-free week. i missed the sauce only slightly--usually when hanging out with others who were drinking and offering me a beer (not realizing that i was on the wagon.) i got shit done i'd been meaning to do for months (but didn't actually end up making a sizable dent in my to-do list or anything). i woke up with at least somewhat less struggle every morning.

and at the end of it all, i only really wanted one beer, to go with a great dinner my roomie and i prepared for eachother. i didn't get drunk or even buzzed, i just enjoyed the flavor (yeah, i drank a good beer.)

so i don't feel as dependent as i had; i will still be taking a longer dry spell in the winter time. and it wasn't hard or bad, but i did find that in company of new people, my shy self came out instead of my fluid, fun and funny self. i'm definitely still a social drinker/drunk, and i'm ok with that. i think i might hold off a little on the antisocial drinking (alone), because it doesn't really give me any benefits, though. so hey, that was informative and functional and not at all scientific which is fine because i am neither rigorous nor double-blind.

and hey, we have some homebrew here to drink! american wheat ale is ready, and the coffee porter just got bottled this week (not drinking beer while bottling beer: some kind of crime for which i'm certain i shall later pay =)) and will be ready at the end of the month.

i don't think i came up with any grand revelations during my undrinking binge. i was perhaps more thoughtful since drinking definitely leads to carelessness (in myself, at least), but i wasn't a deeper thinker. i meditated a few times, which was good, but my mind is roaring since the last meditation i had was the wheels-spinning, coasting-through-nature kind during my tour in february. so maybe my mind's a little calmer but i think i need a meditation routine to do much good--drinking or not. (which could be as simple as doing yoga every day, or doing aikido a few times a week. or sitting on my ass for 15 minutes more days than not, calm and empty. that's the kind i did last week and it was good, if not sustaining in effect.)

it seems to me that i ate similarly (certainly less likely to come home and want second dinner at 1am), however, minus all the empty beer-calories, i seem to have merely maintained my weight (a rare happenstance that i measured my weight at the beginning of the week, but convenient since i measured it again now to find it unchanged)--but i also didn't do a whole lot of extra miles on the bike this week and i ate several extra servings of dessert, since i made the best bread pudding, twice! and ate a lot of it both times. and it's like 90% butter sugar and eggs. so maybe that was a confounding factor. i think i'll probably have to wait for a month+ to see a real difference, and maybe not make the richest thing i've ever cooked twice in a 4-day period.

in conclusion, this half-assed experiment showed that not drinking is kinda good for me. it seemed dramatically great the first two days, but then calmed down to just good.
i'll probably be more inclined to skip it in the future, though clearly not in social circumstances, when it is a net gain.

thanks for your support!

what matters most in a relationship?

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:22:02 GMT

i've long thought it was maybe dedication or devotion, maybe communication or cooperation. and while all of those things are awesome and necessary for me to *enjoy* a relationship (of any kind--from work colleague to lover), i've recently come up against the lowest common denominator in my mind: respect.

what's funny is i didn't accord respect much, er, respect in the past. i mean, i respect humanity and individually almost anyone i have more than one chance interaction with. and aside from occasional verbal blunders wherein i accidentally malign a group (saying "boys want to fix, girls want sympathy" to someone who is transitioning female-to-male being my latest foot-in-mouth snafu--generally i believe this to be true but perhaps indelicately phrased at that moment), i act like it in a fairly non-ambiguous way. are you angry after we interact? that was not my goal. did i screw up? i am truly sorry, it was not my intention. do we disagree? fine, but we can do so without name calling or such intense focus that we can't find something to connect and cooperate on as well, even if it's not politics/green hair/religion/what constitutes good sex. heck, i once upon a time hung out with a dude who sent spam email for a living, and though i totally totally disliked his work (and in fact, my work at the time was largely undoing his work!), once he realized that i wasn't into what he did but also wasn't being a dick about it, we grew to have a rather good relationship based on him teaching me hackeysack and me teaching him basic self-defense. this perhaps hearkens back to one of my life philosophies, stolen from the movie the roadie, "everything works if you let it", but no matter, i respect you enough to not hit you or devolve to ad hominem attacks or anything else uncouth.

certainly i do not always get this respect reflected back at me, for instance when i'm riding my bike legally in the middle of an auto lane since there is not enough room for me+car in said lane (this is legal in texas and oregon--ride "as far to the right as is practical and not hazardous", to paraphrase the legalese), and someone in a car behind me is shouting at me to get off the road and passing me unsafely (say, around a blind corner, with inches to spare, at high speed, while shouting and looking at me instead of watching the road. funny how often that all happens in one go. where i mean funny uh-oh, not funny ha-ha). those people i do scream at, usually something like "you just threatened my life." that kind of thing is about as disrespectful a thing i can think of to experience, so i lose a lot of my zen nature when it happens and feel not in the least bad about being angry and derogatory to the actor, particularly since they never even hear my insults. but that's rare, and certainly i will not threaten them (or their protective metal cage) back--i'm not a guy who whips out my u-lock and starts pounding on windows or anything. so while i do not respect them at that moment, neither do i let me disrespect sink to the same level as theirs and even if there is no positive result, at least i didn't make their day memorably worse.

there's also the case of someone like bill-gates-as-microsoft-ceo or george-bush-as-president, where someone is driving an aspect of my life (acting in my name, be it as leader of my country or leader of my industry) in a way that i feel is so totally wrongheaded i just can't find much common ground. and while i was writing that, i realize i can still summon some respect for those guys--gates made it easy once he turned into a huge philanthropist, and bush, well, i have a great (liberal) friend who was an aide of his while governor of texas, and even she has good things to say about him. not total losses, respectwise--i can find things to respect in their lives. fortunately i never met total scum like charles manson or someone who kills kittens in their spare time, i guess?

so, i feel like a respectful person. and maybe i get more respect back as a result. but when i feel disrespected, more than when i feel unliked or unappreciated...if the person who i'm in conflict with can at least offer some respect for me doing what i feel is right...we can carry on in our lives without having to avoid one another. if not...well, not so much. and that was part of what got between me and shads. i don't think she doesn't respect me. but she did some stuff that i felt was disrespectful and didn't really apologize until i prompted for it. in balance, she's mostly respectful, but wasn't in some important areas that got lost for a little while, and so i had to tone down our relationship from "close friends" to "friends that could build something good, again". we'll see how it goes..

what do you think is most important in a relationship? i realize i got a little heady there, but maybe you have something more like "humor", or "does not have an intolerable odor". tell me!

it gets better.

Tue, 03 May 2011 16:46:37 GMT

so i'm in a rather better mood this week than last. thanks to the trifecta of her forgiving me enough that i think we will remain friends, the passage of time, and the support of my awesome friends. thanks, everyone who reached out to me--it was a lot of tears and a lot of struggle to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but i'm gonna make it, and i've been doing a decent impression of my usual happy-go-lucky self for the past few days.

i even somewhere decided this would be a good week to drink less and that turned into none and i haven't really missed it much for the past couple of days. of course, i picked a week in which the only happy hour is a meeting i accidentally scheduled in an alcohol-free workplace (well, it was intentionally scheduled, but accidentally alcohol-free =)), so the temptation will be small.

one "job of my dreams" didn't pan out this week--i went in for an interview the day before the guy whose job i was applying for decided not to leave after all. can't blame him, it seems like a pretty sweet gig at a very sweet university--enough so that i was considering committing to an 11-mile, minimum 40-minute (timed while really hustling) commute for the rest of my days (yeah, this was the kind of job one settles into for life). and that's for the best--i can definitely afford to make it through the end of pedalpalooza without really being financially worried, and the *other* job of my dreams (more challenging, pays better, still for a good university) is taking some time to get its ducks in a row. but i feel good about that one, not least because the guy creating said job asked for my resume to build it off of. i am very fortunate to be in a place where i can wait around awhile for the right opportunity, and in the meantime, the two huge events i'm co-organizing will finish up and i can go back to *not* having meetings more nights of the week than not.

(on a related note, i hope you'll consider attending barcamp portland 5 on 20-21may, and the world's largest naked bike ride. both are free and fun! if you're not in portland, it is quite likely that both of those events have a local (probably free) equivalent for you: check out http://www.worldnakedbikeride.org and http://barcamp.org for more info.)

there's something to that saying about idle hands, as applied to the mind--staying busy is definitely keeping the keel evener as i heal. so there's that.

have a beautiful day, friends.

the hardest thing

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 07:37:28 GMT

what is the hardest thing you've ever done?

for me it was telling dark_knightly that i couldn't live with her. one moment, harder than 5 years of earning my black belt? totally. she asked me to "keep it off the internet" but i don't think she meant here; i think she meant twitter and facebook, where she still lives. here is a ghost town and since i still live in it, i can own it. right? well, i'll wait for more complaints before i react. you and she can think me weak; i think myself opportunistic. sadly, i've never felt as though i owned my own voice to speak freely. sad, yeah? well, i'm not sad about it, but you could choose to be in my stead. or you could choose to give me a hug i so thoroughly need.

jupiterjuniper said this today:

being Misunderstood. no matter how minute the situation--being talked down to by a stranger, being misread by a close friend--i have the capacity for such profound sadness, and without the tools to dig myself out of it. to clarify. to make sense of it, make sense of me.

yeah. i can't dig myself out. i drank a lot, trying. didn't help--dulled the senses though. so there's that?

the older i get, though bold and brazen and opinionated, i have learned to truly honor my meekness, my sensitivity, and calm in general. which is not the same as being a wallflower, or being walked over. it is about quiet, not silence; it is about listening to the space between words. attracted as i am to the opposite, this feels really significant to me. to Go Quietly, Gently.

she speaks to my digital persona!</i>

for some reason, i think of the delicacy of andy warhol.

though my soul is screaming with sadness, and my being shot through with poignance, i can think of nothing more to say. it may have already been said. show it to me?

misfires at the ceasefire, crossfire, on fire

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:40:11 GMT

submitted for your perusal, some random points:

for what is probably the first time in my life, i picked up a girl at a bar last weekend. granted, we were both part of a stupendously awesome "cease fire" pub crawl put on by the alter egos society, and we were both dressed in ridiculous superhero costumes. so at least we knew we were fishing in a likeminded pool? anyway, we went back to her place where she took me up to her room, flashed me, and passed out hard. she does not remember coming home.

so being the gentleman i am, i turned her over so i could snuggle her clothed bits and passed out as well. the next morning she woke up hungover and dashed off to work. i don't think we'll talk again, since i found out later that she was just trying to swipe me from a perceived rival. but i felt sexy for about 16 hours before i found that out, yay?

o, work. trying to finish up with a consulting client but finding little traction from them or from my motivation. wondering if that motivation will ever turn up, wrinkled after a run through the wash in a pocket, or hidden under that pair of shoes i haven't worn in a year. but now things are picking up--i'll be interviewing next tuesday at reed for a position i think i'd like. it'll be a pay and responsibility cut, but i think i can enjoy it. and i can definitely enjoy a solid 9-5-nothing-more-expected job with great benefits like being back at a college in an environment where people are excited about learning! and i have some other prospects lined up--maybe a gig at ohsu doing heavy cluster stuff, and recruiters are banging down my door for less desirable but immediately available stuff. and then my ridiculous tax return makes money a non-issue for awhile. so i guess the crossfire is between working and not? i'm not really sure. but i am feeling torn, after almost a year of not-really-working. not torn between goofing off more and working, but between giving up on finding something better and taking what's there and building my rainy day fund back up so i can go crazy again and stop working in a few months or years or decades. hmm.

i am not actually currently on fire. i do feel a little burned out, though. on the dating scene, on the volunteering scene, on even my standard goof-offs. i've owed you a trip journal from my desert journey for over a month. i'm not doing my best work at my volunteer obligations. oh well.

here's hoping...tomorrow's a new day. yeah, that must be it.

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 06:06:10 GMT

the past versus the future

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:27:18 GMT

most days now i feel like all of my "good epic" experiences were in the past. i did all the stuff that kids do and it was awesome and incredible. i'm remembering the time that danny called me up one afternoon and told me jane's addiction was playing in a city 3 hours from us that evening. and wouldn't it be incredible to go see them?

sure, i said--i loved perry farrell's style and his music really speaks to some part of me and yeah it would be great to go but i have like $60 to my name and have to be at work in the morning and how can we get up there and get tickets for that price? these days that would have been just the gas but then, in 1998, it left some money for a ticket but really i can't stand sitting in the back row for a show, i have to be up close and personal or it really isn't worth the price of entry and driving 6 hours to get there is just ridiculous anyway and we can't actually do this, can we?

but he convinced me that we were doing it, found a friend (the kind of girl i would have been facebook friends with and never otherwise seen ever again) to split gas with so we'd have $30/ea to spend on tickets from a scalper (tickets cost about that much for retail) and we got in his car and drove from austin to dallas.

fortunately i knew my way around dallas and so the navigation, at least, was taken care of. we cruised the strip near the fairgrounds, and i recounted many "epic" times there, such as when we dyed my best friend's brother's mohawk green on the hood of the car we'd driven to the amphitheatre in, or my first concert where i lost a good 10% of my hearing and almost got seduced by a 23-year-old woman and saw, then almost tried, drugs for the first time (neither happened, fortunately for my 15-year-old sensibilities). another time my friend had gotten kicked out of this venue for doing something stupid (i can no longer remember exactlywhat) and then climbed back into the place through a dumpster and played it off like nothing had happened until we asked why he smelled so bad...there were good times and strange times but they were all the makings of a hilarious memoir but what have i had to add to that lately? "oh yeah i rode my bike through death valley. but it was february and we had a support vehicle for that part. and it was mostly downhill." (a fun and good story and i'm proud of us but i'm not sure it's epic. at least not completely..)

i guess you can spin things anyway you want but it just seems like the adventures: i don't make em epic like i used to. lately my epic is having a meeting schedule that suggests that my extracurricular activities have become a curriculum with no escape.

anyhow, we talked this scary scalper dude down to the price we needed and got into the show---in the cheap seats. the expensive seats were general admission and we had missed the cutoff by several rows and about 10 vertical feet--we were in the stands, not on the floor. and woe was us, but there was us, and we had to make the best of it. and somehow in the crowd i saw my friend angeli, who lived in dallas, and i shouted her over and she sympathized slightly with our upstairs-ness and said "just jump down here...what are they going to do, kick you out?"

"yes," i thought, and wished her well and sat sadly in the bleachers. and then the band came out, and about 100 folks jumped the wall and ran onto the floor and i looked at danny and we joined the rush and there we were, in the crush of people, squeezing up next to the stage, not close enough to smell him (thank god) but close enough to have this religious sort of experience, a joyful, cathartic, screaming evening of doing-it-right. i still have somewhere a bootleg from that show that i dug up that i could pretend to hear myself screaming on, and the times were great, and left us feeling accomplished before we deflated in the face of having a 3-hour drive back to austin to do at 1am so we could get up in time for class/work.

i wouldn't trade that experience for anything in the world. perry farrell was a terrible solo performer as proved when i got a chance to see him at SxSW 10 years later, and whatever---it wasn't him, in the end...it was what jane's addiction was in the 90's. "ladies and gentlemen...we have more influence over your children than you do." says their opening line (in spanish)...and it wasn't true when i was a child but it was true once i pretended to grow up and getting to experience that live, on a shoestring and a prayer, well, that was epic.

these days, i stay out til 1am playing board games with a couple guys and come home to all the hot half-naked chicks going to bed with fish sticks and decide to type a livejournal post instead of instigating epicness.

and really, i guess i still do epic stuff that will make great stories for my nieces and nephews. but i think, somehow, that the urgency has gone out of my adventures that would leave me feeling honest if i called them epic. instead, they're just reality.

can't really call that a loss or a win. but i miss the old days.

if i should die before i wake...

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:25:11 GMT

yesterday i dropped my tax infos off with my accountant. hopefully his wizardry will mean that uncle sam returns some of my hard-earned money. it seems likely since i only worked for half the year, and then (according to 2010) tried to start a business unsuccessfully--i only got paid a few dollars last year but i spent more than that on tools for the trade. this year is already a far different story. while i was thinking of financial responsibility and got buzzed by a driver on a cellphone in the entirely-too-skinny bike lane on burnside around 82nd,

...i thought about what happens if i were to disappear for whatever reason.

more than half of my "business expenses" are things that will recur until someone cancels service: my server colocation bill and my cellphone bill.

so i started thinking about things SOMEONE should know if i die. and i thought, "hmm, if someone were tasked with figuring out my life from my electronic footprints and a few questions to a few of my better friends...how good a job would they do?" they would certainly find the aforementioned bills in my email; they would figure out who my clients are to tell them i'm off the clock permanently. they would have a list of correspondents to send a ding-dong-the-dude-is-dead email to, if they felt so inclined.

but they wouldn't notice a few recurring paypal payments i make unless they dug way back. they wouldn't be able to get into my paypal account to stop them, even if they did notice. nor my facebook account. nor, unless they were quick about it, my email account (gmail seems to expire unused authentication cookies after a couple weeks.)

so i spent some miles on the bike thinking about putting my passwords (and important web sites in general) in escrow somewhere, and then remembering to update the list when i change passwords... and then i realized that while all of that is stuff that alive me cares about, it's not super important to dead me (well, i guess i'd like to let friends know that i'm gone and invite them to the party--which i want in lieu of a funeral!). but there are some things important to dead me! and it turns out that those are far more interesting, and far harder for someone picking up the pieces after i shuffle off to guess, so i should probably write them down somewhere.

and hey, when i write here, it gets to be a discussion! you guys help me figure stuff out--and thanks for that! hmm, lots of exclamation points in a post pondering my own mortality...odd, isn't it?

so, what's important to a dead fool?

1) throw a party instead of a funeral. my life is a celebration of joy. remember me fondly and all, but i want more laughing than crying to memorialize me. there should probably be a party in portland and a party in austin. celebrate more than me--celebrate what i'm into and don't be heavy-handed about it, but encourage people who gather to carry on my "work" such as it is--joy facilitation in general, community building in specific, and advocacy for social justice.

2) don't sue a well-intentioned agency in my name. it would be tragic if i got hit by a bus. but my family doesn't need a million bucks and trimet doesn't have a million bucks to spare and they provide a very awesome service. let the cops investigate and charge the driver criminally if wrong was done. don't sue PBOT or the city of portland for labelling a bad bike route--i made the decision to ride wherever i was riding. don't sue the dude whose roof i jumped off of--that was me, not him. do pursue criminal charges against an individual whose gross negligence or avarice caused my death, because fuck that guy and make sure he knows he's fucked up and won't do it again.

3) in case my life ends cash-positively, what should happen to the monies? again, my family doesn't need it, so put it toward some cause i'm a fan of. or even better, all the causes. the ACLU, the EFF, bike and active transportation advocacy, bike fun, community building, re-election of sam adams and dennis kucinich, some actually-useful nature conservancy programs...hmm, seems like i should have a longer list of causes.

4) skip the fancy burial, give that money to someone really needy. while i still wish to be drug out into the woods and left, i don't see that happening. but i don't need a platinum coffin and a huge tombstone. if you're going to show your love with dollars, show it to someone who is still alive to appreciate it and know i would have approved.

this is a work in progress, but that's what i thought of yesterday while i rode my bike.

tell me, what messages would you like to be remembered after you die?

the drink

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:03:14 GMT

it was pointed out to me about a week ago that i'm an alcoholic. let's examine the facts:

1) i enjoy drinking and do it almost every day. i have definitely gone more than one month of drinking every day in the past year (not necessarily getting drunk daily, but having a beer or more)
2) i frequently drink to get drunk
3) i regularly drink so much that i feel bad, either during or after. my hangovers are usually tame, but it doesn't matter how you only feel bad, not terrible, when the entire next day becomes a waste--if i could motivate to do anything in that state other than sleep a lot and lay around, i wouldn't consider it to be a problem.
4) i have thousands of pabst cans in my garage that i've collected over the past year and a half (this bespeaks a different problem, that of drinking bad beer. guilty. sigh.)
5) i have thousands of beer bottle caps i've collected over the past 2 years

at least i've figured out that i really should stick to beer for best results?

so i did a little research. a very little. and while i initially embraced my new label, thinking "well, i guess it's true, i drink a fuck of a lot", it turns out that i'm still just a lush. a very thirsty lush, i guess. but, according to the national institute of health, i am neither an alcoholic (physically dependent, unable to function without being drunk) nor an alcohol abuser (one whose drinking leads to social, economic, or health problems). i suspect the social definition is a bit less stringent and that for the purposes of a 12-step program, i could be a member in good standing. but i'm looking at problems, not solutions..

so i'm gonna try some detox next winter, because winter is the time not to drink, what with the increased darkness, seasonal affective depression already going on, and way fewer patio happy hours to miss out on. and certainly, i've quit before for a week or a month before without getting the shakes or dreading sobriety. it will be a healthy exercise.

i'd argue that i have a fairly addictive personality and i should probably be careful with addictive substances, but it seems like this one is not in control of me. however, friends, keep your eyes open and let me know if it does become a problem. because i know about my startling lack of self-awareness, so i might miss it in the early stages. i will attempt to reign in my defensive tendencies and listen to what you have to say. that (being less defensive) is actually a larger life goal i'm already engaged in!

glad i could talk through that in a positive way, & thank you for your support.

ups and downs

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:23:00 GMT

longtime readers may recall a tale of 3 capes, as seen by bicycle, from april 2008. saturday i revisited the ride and once again lived to tell the tale. this one was the same route but otherwise almost completely different.

i also failed to make this telling especially riveting. you've been warned =)

i drove to the start point, arriving late and grumpy
i rode almost entirely by myself. i drafted off of a fellow for less than a minute, and otherwise broke my own wind the whole way.
it was kind of cold and rainy for much of the ride
i was on the bike and saddle i've been intending to do long rides on. this was the first time i rode more than about 80 miles in one go on it, though!

i set out with another late arriver, kevin, who'd shown up via the first MAX. wish i'd realized i'd only be 20 minutes late if i did that! glad i didn't realize it since i don't envy him the extra 10+ miles and the having a deadline to get back by lest he be stranded at the far west end of the suburbs on a saturday night with only more miles to put on (after 200 already!) to get home...or an expensive cab fare. there was one fellow behind us, who pulled up as we left, cursing his tardiness audibly...

we began inauspiciously, by missing a turn. auspiciously, we ran into the other end of that missed road soon enough and made sure to run the odometer up to the correct point with an out-and-back on it. math at 6:30am not being my strong point, i overshot by .5 miles and thus began the saga of the unsynchronized odometer. by the end of the ride i was about 3 miles off the distance i knew i'd covered. those 3 "extra" miles were a bit of insult to injury!

within the first 10 miles i dropped kevin and was lucky to see the back 3/4 of the peloton coming off the only out-and-back on the course, a 4-mile hill climb to a checkpoint. so i knew that if i was diligent there was a chance i could catch up to theo, ed, asta, and tomas. i never saw any of them except tomas again, and in fact caught up with precious few people--i was in the back half of the pack all day, and only finished before about 20 of the 62 riders (7 of whom did not finish. or finished first, i guess, by packing it in before the end?)

the story of the last time i did this ride was the company and bonking; this time it was the weather and crazy legs.

my back and legs were sore almost from the get-go, which boded ill--how could i last all day if i hurt so soon? usually i feel great for at least the first few hours. somewhat miserably, i slipped from 3rd-to-last to last place in the group as the route slogged up the highway to the highest point on the ride, at mile 40 or so: the first coast range summit at 1600 feet. having been passed by everyone, i slowed down even further and stopped frequently to stretch and once to try to warm up. it wasn't frigid, just chilly, but my feet had gone numb with a quickness and i stopped at a heated visitor center to try to massage them back to life. taking off the second pair of socks had more effect, it turned out--too cramped in the shoes was exacerbating cold-based problems. sock removal was the trick and at least my feet were alive by the time i reached tillamook, even if my will to continue the ride was sapped (not in the least by seeing two people turn around and head back on the climb to the summit, and being rained on most of the way so far).

in tillamook, i really wanted a hamburger. i settled for a chicken sandwich at the safeway and a quick chat with tomas. mile 60, 1/3 done, but with the steepest familiar climbs ahead. set out with the last folks in tillamook and quickly outpaced them and thus ended my stint as 'last rider out' for the rest of the day. i was still really slow up to pacific city; but then, the climbs make it easy to go slow and take breaks. which i did, and met jeff at a rest point, but then we set out together briefly before i went ahead. good thing, i found out at pacific city, since jeff crashed on the descent, and at least i didn't have to dodge him as he went splat. happy ending is, jeff didn't hurt himself (much) and finished, albeit 2.5 hours after i did...

luckily, there was no rain between tillamook and pacific city (which was mile 100). unluckily, there was a sideways wind-and-rain storm that started while i was in the quickie mart at pacific city. i think everyone else suffered during that blast; i just sat in the store and waited it out for 15 minutes. at which point it stopped and the sun came out again. it rained on and off for the rest of the trip, but never as badly as that again.

i rode out of pacific city back inland alone, but passed a few folks on little nestucca river road, which is clearly a bit uphill. this is where i felt like i was bonking last time; actually, it's just impossible to maintain an average of over 12mph on that stretch going east. at least for me and the others still that far back--i passed a few folks, who never passed me back.

truly, though, the fun part of the ride started just after the fateful spot where i was rescued by jim last time...my legs found new life. quite literally, i rode as hard as i could for the next 75 miles and felt great until i finished the ride. this was the part where i should have passed a lot of folks, but passed only a few--i caught my starting-partner, kevin, and tried to draft off him for a moment but realized i had more in me so i let him draft for awhile until i suddenly realized i was alone...

found tomas about 30 miles from the end and offered to pull him in. the company was appreciated and we made great time. and i fell in love entirely with my small chain ring in front--little used, but good for speeds from 5 to 23, which is about the reasonable range i need unless there's a big downhill or a tailwind on a flat part. so i stayed in it for the last hundred miles or so. which is just way not my style. but it went so well!

if i'd felt as good at the beginning as i did at the end, i would have finished in about theo's time, just under 14 hours. instead it took me around 16 hours, worse than last time, but i felt better at the end than the last time i rode 188 miles--i could have kept going if i'd needed to. i think i'll try a 400k this year =)

my last half was 2 hours faster than my first half; i spent 13 hours pedalling and 3 hours off the bike, and the worst part of the day was actually shivering uncontrollably in the car on the way home. i had fun.

it's all downhill from here

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 18:59:02 GMT

the phrase in the title has often confused me. is it good or bad for things to be all downhill from here? on a bike, or in terms of physics, it's awesome. but when "things go downhill", it's negative. apparently this is a problem other people have had and i found it well addresed here.

like many things in my life, when i'm confused about a thing i can't let it go. it's once i've figured it out that i lose interest. this pattern repeats frequently, particularly in my dating life. "oops, i (think i) figured you out enough that you won't surprise me very much. time to move on." i've never said it that way but i have been called on it, nonetheless, by someone in that position (10 years ago...but i haven't changed much in that dimension anyway). meaning, of course, that i hadn't figured her out, really, but there were other factors there too, so i didn't chase her down. it was for the best, at the time.

this is not thinly veiled implication that i'd figured shads out--indeed, though i had come to understand her, i still never quite expected her. which is maybe fair, since she never expected to end up dating me. she probably figured me out long ago, but hey, that's not hard to do, i'm not a very deep river, and my lack of useful self-awareness continually astonishes people. heck, it would astonish me if i hadn't lived with it for, well, ever.

anyway, this post was intended to be about how i feel now, 2 months after the breakup. and the answer is "fine except when i'm reminded of all the benefits i've lost." i know, you're thinking, she was hot, he misses the sex. actually not true. we weren't particularly sexually compatible, one of our bigger problems really. but anyway sex came to be dreadful--not, the sex was dreadful, but i was full of dread about it and as you can imagine that impacted my pleasure to a not-insignificant degree.

no, the benefits i miss are always having someone to talk to, usually having someone to sleep next to, being on a team (i know, i'm still on your team, and heck, even on hers. i'm just not the MVP anymore.) i don't think it was very codependent because we didn't rely on eachother much--for understanding and acceptance, yeah. but we're both pretty independent people. i just miss snuggling, and the way she smiled when i surprised her with something nice, and the way i could make her wiggle with joy. simple pleasures.

some of those pleasures can be recaptured. after all, we still live together, which is both terrible and awesome. terrible when i feel lonely and the easy antidote is to go spend time with her and her new boyfriend. terrible when i realize she moved on more easily than i did, even though i was the one who wanted to move on. awesome when i can still get a hug when i'm really down, and when i realize that our friendship is going to survive this thing. hopefully it'll end up as strong as it ever was, and we'll laugh about the pain we caused each other someday. but that day isn't here yet.

so you can see..i'm still a little hung up. i still love her. and am trying to move on. i know, i'll make it. i just want to have made it already. then i can really feel happy for her joy without the tinge of jealousy and remorse that sours my mind now. how ironic that i haven't been jealous in 16 years, because i repressed it. but she helped me (and i explicitly asked her for this help! though maybe not in the form it came in..) dig out the poison i'd trapped in my heart and expose it to the sun on a path to healing. and now it hurts a little. but i think it's a healthy pain. that exists, right?

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 10:01:14 GMT

i think that what i miss most is falling asleep with her.