The Only Odd One is Me

Not to stir up any fears, but here we go. That in-the-moment feeling of everyone watching, while everyone else says they are not. Can we be real for a second? If you are not staring at a screen in a crowded place, how observant are you? Do you notice when someone does something, at least innocuous such as tripping on flat ground and then looks around to see if anyone saw? Yeah, sorry, I saw that one. Shall we just share a smile and keep going forward?

The problem is that there are so many non-innocuous situations that anything from dumb to malevolent. Going to this World Life Expectancy site can be a bit eye opening, plenty of malevolence, but plenty of stuff that I could classify as dumb, but really it is just sad. Not sad as in “those people should have seen it coming,” rather maybe it could have been prevented by better/earlier treatment or just better friends. Maybe in my age group the traffic accidents could be helped by smarter cars…

Anyway, there is a point to this: Whatever I am suffering that is not acute AND terminal, there are possibly a few thousand people suffering of the same thing. That is true of post-graduate online masters degrees. Of artfully procrastinating by practicing writing. Of making bad lists with weird sentences. Though that last might be just me at the moment. But there are people suffering, or...  Oh, how odd am I?

I am odd, there are so many things that I am bringing to the front of my mind through biases where I haven’t really met many people that do, or have done, a permutation of different things that I have. This is the deal with permutations, even if someone else has done everything I have, but flipped the order of two events, then by definition we are not the same, because we experienced those two events with different views. Twins can be a prime example.

You are odd as well. I have found out, somewhat too recently, that I have no idea what is going on inside your skull and trying to understand every nuance is impossible and/or maddening. I spend so much time with my wife, yet it is better to have a model than to be “sure” of what she is thinking.

What frustrates me more is how odd I feel in trying to make people understand my thoughts. I think my thoughts are pretty good, the problem lies where your thoughts conflict with mine. Either I am too dismissive because I am too absorbed by my thoughts, or I have already considered it thoroughly and have a ready answer. Though that seems dismissive too because I cannot explain it well enough.

Four years of theater should have made me a better actor, if not in hiding what I think, at least in having the poise to articulate it better. Well no, I get cut-off when I need a moment to speak, but then ramble when someone should just cut me off. Can I have it both ways? Thinking, listening, and responding. How might I even practice that? How can I even find the place to practice that?

I would love to tell stories too, but I would for now settle with schooling on conversation. I have to say that I write better than I did back in this post, the first, from twelve years ago. Even so, I can improve my writing. Better to practice than to pine about not having practiced. Only a recent addition, that, maybe it will stick.

No one is odd in that everyone is odd. Maybe I will find some more odd people that we can be mostly mutually accepting of one another.

Dealing With the Last Few Weeks

This past week was the 15th anniversary of Sept 11th, I will always remember it, mourn those who lost their lives, and wonder what type of world we live in. Although we need to remember we must not dwell on it, but push forward each in our own way. Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

Why am I writing again so soon? Because I need to start chopping on my writing. Not just that but I sort of need to remind myself of happenings and learnings. I wrote weekly updates for NaNoWriMo last November to keep myself on track, but to some degree it was a release, an exercise to see what had gone well and what I had learned. So this is sort of like a diary, but not.

This week I came in to find that the meetings project is not on the Road Map. All the team was moved to other teams and it will probably languish until someone just rewrites it en totale. I don’t think I could have finished on my own and with the sporadic schedule of the intern team that I was “lead” for it was extraordinarily hard to coordinate them. Feelings are mixed, it feels like it is just going to be ignore, but I am also happy to just go to more concrete coding with the bugs and improvements team.

Another great thing is that I have been digging into making the Center for Open Science logo 3D. I’ve been using sketchup which I quite enjoy, it has a very nice learning curve but there are tons of plugins that can nearly match many of the options that much more expensive packages have. The STL files are on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/hc258/. I specifically put the key fob on thingiverse and it’s already had some traffic: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1768831

So between moving at the end of the month and all that entails, what else am I doing this fall? Two classes. I am retaking Computational Photography since I wasn’t happy about a C, if I hadn’t done poorly on one of the assignments or had participated more, then I would have had a B. Now I am shooting for an A. I am also taking Machine Learning again, but this time I come into it with about 3 solid months of applying ML to MandI, the robot.

I’ve been considering the Space Robot Challenge and recently talked to my brother, of course it would never interfere with homework from Oct. 10 to Dec. 10, right? I think I have most of the vision ideas reasonable, and my brother wants to learn ROS so if nothing else it will just be a solid project to learn new tools with. I am realistic that I don’t think we won’t get to the top 20, but with my experience I think it will at least be a reasonable exercise.

Suffering is Not for the Faint of Heart

In case you haven't read my byline, I am a Christian. It doesn't mean so many of the things that people think it does, sure some of the rumors are true, but really?

Anyway, I would like to broach the topic of suffering. It's a bit scary to look for a definition to back up my thoughts and find that Wikipedia has a pretty in-depth article on suffering. Most of the time suffering is all about physical pain, Sure I have my aches and pains. Many other times suffering is about the mental issues. People are generally focused on their own problems, and many have issues that need help, and need work.

I could talk about what Christians consider suffering, being persecuted for our religion, but I think that there is a suffering that everyone is subject to in life.

This week has been a tough one for our office. Who hasn't had a tough week at work? My previous job had four years with the possibility of losing funding. Our leadership was extremely supportive throughout the whole process, but I was suffering from a few related issues, despite the support. I was tired of the island, near the end, tired of possibility that I wouldn't have a job, and just all the thoughts about where we would go and what we would do.

I did not handle it well, my work certainly suffered and I regret that I could have done more. But how can we do better? Is there a way to suffer joyfully? I would say that the answer is yes and there is a belief system that could definitely help with this. However, if you don't want to listen to that from me, there are still a few things to consider.

First: Are the people causing you suffering really just trying to make your life miserable? This is a really tough question because most people don't want to think about how the people causing suffering could possibly not be doing it intentionally. If the answer is still yes, even after you try to figure it out, then there is another question to ask: Are they trying to make me suffer just to make themselves feel better? If they are you have much deeper problems and should be considering formal action or moving away from the situation. But in both situations you need to be joyful. There is no other way. Not so obviously "fake" happy, because then you are probably going to try to take things, like revenge, into your own hands. That bent means that you are going to do ridiculous, potentially dumb things just to be able to rub their face in it.

Second: Sitting around wondering what a weird exchange means and being crabby about it is not going to do anyone good. Unfortunately I suffered from this malady on Tuesday and have been a bit slow in connecting my recent knowledge about suffering to this situation. I became overly righteous, condemning the action, not realizing that some leaders aren't leading because they are trained leaders, but rather are in the position because they were there.

Some people are born leaders, sure, some people will get training and be good leaders, some will fail and make mistakes that may seem obvious, and then there are those who will never learn but still have more power than they know how to handle. To put a leader in the fourth category right away without any thought to situation, background, training or lack thereof, and experience, is to write them off. It is not recommended as humans are not perfect representations of their own abilities at all times.

In a situation where there can be no mistakes, maybe putting a new leader in the position will solve the problem. That certainly worked well for Abraham Lincoln after how many generals? The problem is when the leader is seen to be failing at many levels and we are suffering because of it. Is there insight we could lend? Experience leading, pointing out concepts and language that might very well cause suffering?

I could go on about leading, having some experience myself, but we need to get back to suffering.

Third: Are we, ourselves prolonging our suffering because we are comfortable? It sounds strange but it is much easier for us to deal with the current discomfort than to try to imagine stepping out and changing something. I am talking positive change, though there may be suffering in it too. Can we help to alleviate suffering? Can we take the demotivation and turn it into motivation and action? Can we ask for help? Can we leave?

The reason I left the last question to last is because I am afraid of some people answering that question with a "yes." But is is a possibility. To focus on the more constructive, grumbling and moving on is one thing, grumbling and never getting over it but prolonging it just to feel better about grumbling? I am guilty. In a previous post I said that I would not complain without result. I have complained all this last week so now it is time for me to push for the positive change. Learning leaders are just human means that people suffer, knowing they are can help us to suffer joyfully and then help to change the climate.

When suffering at a small scale, such as this is, can be done joyfully, then when the true suffering comes we will have better tools to deal with it. Don't be afraid to suffer, just don't wallow in it, please?