Category Archives: Personal

Design Is Cool

I have a degree in design, specifically architecture. I don’t think about design very often, not least because it reminds me of my less than ideal work situation. But every once in a while, that part of my brain that was rigorously trained and developed by grad school will kick back on, and I’ll be fascinated by little details in a way that only a design nerd can understand.

One of the things I love about design is that there’s a reason for everything. If you look close enough, or think hard enough, you should be able to figure out why something is the way it is. And I find that comforting. I have a strong need to know why, to be able to articulate the methods and reasons behind something. I always have, even as a little kid. As such, not knowing why (or not being able to know why) can be a little stressful for me. And there’s so much in life that doesn’t make sense, or doesn’t seem to have a logic that can be understood. Emotions, for example. It’s something I’ve written about before.

And yet, despite all the things that don’t make sense in our world, there is also so much that is designed. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that design is so ubiquitous that we can’t help but take it for granted. Think about your favorite game, for example. Every piece of that experience was (hopefully) carefully crafted in order to elicit a specific response. If you’ve tried Giant Boulder of Death, I’m sorry for the death of your free time. But it, and other free-to-play games like it, can be a great example.

A free-to-play game is just that: free to play. But the developers want you to spend money. As such, there are multiple design decisions made to encourage the player to do so. Sometimes they are subtle, other times… not so much. In Giant Boulder of Death, the clearest example I can think of is the pre-roll spin screen. You get a free spin every 10 minutes, or you can spend gems (the games premium currency). Each spin adds upgrades to your run, like filling up the multiplier bar quicker or reducing the number of boulder-killing spikes on the map. If you don’t have a free spin, it takes a second or two for the “Play now” button to show up, while the “use gems to spin” button is there from the start. It’s very hard to ignore the reflex to push the first button you see, but gems are rare (unless you pay real-world cash for a virtual bag of loot).

Anyway, that didn’t go nearly as deep as I thought it would. In summary: design is cool. I find it comforting when I recognize the logic behind something. I wish more stuff was like that.

The Honeymoon Is Over

The less I think about work, the happier I am.

Now, this may not seem unusual to you. A lot of people don’t like their jobs, or are at least stressed out and annoyed by them. But for me, at least right now, the act of thinking about work actively makes me unhappy.

I noticed it today. I had the day off, and had passed the time with a mixture of reading and gaming, as I usually do. And believe it or not, I actually felt good! Maybe it was not having to get up at 4 in the morning the past few weekends; maybe I was actually well-rested enough. Maybe it was the fact that I was able to do things I wanted (relatively) guilt free. But for the most part, I’ve been in a relatively good mood today.

One of the consequences of that, however, is I realized how much of a not good mood I’ve been in lately. Working early mornings keeps me fairly exhausted, and the schedule shenanigans I’ve been facing lately have me less than thrilled. And I noticed today that as soon as I started thinking about work, my mood started to darken.

When this happened, I reflexively backed away from that train of thought; I didn’t want to mar a good day off with dread of things to come. But intellectually, I found the effect intriguing. Now, I’ve had my share of mind-numbing and boring jobs, but for the most part those haven’t done much more than evoke feelings of apathy in me. I haven’t really had a job that has actively made me dislike it on a deep, visceral level.

And I’m not sure what to do about that. Sure, “get another job,” you may say. But that means exposing myself to the pain and disappointment of rejection, of going in for an interview and not hearing back for almost a month. It means looking at listings for entry-level positions where I meet less that half of the qualifications. I can’t exactly go out to the Job Orchard and pick a Fresh Job off of the Job Tree to put in my Job Wagon to bring back to my Job Garden.

But I’m sick of working retail. I’m sick of waking up before dawn just to go toil away stocking pallets. I’m sick of not being able to hang out with my friends. I’m sick of my schedule changing from week to week. I’m sick of not having my availability honored. I’m sick of having to ask permission to have access to my weekends. I’m sick of having travel plans torpedoed because I’m so low on the totem pole there’s no way I’m going to have any seniority unless someone retires.

At the same time, I’m too principled to just up and quit. I need the money; I make roughly enough money to support myself, and my girlfriend doesn’t make enough to support both of us (to say nothing about student loans). While the stress of hating your job may be better than not having one, it’s not much comfort. I just don’t know what to do. I feel stuck, and searching for a job just feel so futile.

Happy Friday, I guess.

Stirring The Coals

I’ve been thinking a bit more about how I’ve been getting screwed over by my employer lately. For better or worse I’m still angry, although I think I probably have a right to be. But what is really upsetting me right now is how my own character and moral fiber seems to have been used against me.

Long story short, I’m a nice person. I try to avoid conflict whenever possible, to the point of sacrificing my own well-being just so things go smoothly. I’m eager to help, and my inherent work ethic compels me to do the best job I can, even if it’s something I’d rather not. As a result, I don’t have much practice saying “no,” or a well-honed ability to stick up for myself.

And what has being nice gotten me? A role as a doormat, apparently. Even when I try to present my case (for example, holding to my availability), I usually end up capitulating anyway. I’m so worry about not offending that in the heat of the moment I end up thinking the way the other person wants me to. I don’t realize that yeah, I really am angry, until it’s far too late to actually do something about it.

And you know what’s even worse? I’ve ended up at a point where I feel bad for even attempting to stick up for myself!

I’ve always been something of an idealist, I’ll admit. I believe in the inherent goodness of people, that they’ll approach a situation as calmly and virtuously as I would. This experience with work lately has been a rude wake-up call, to say the least. I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth my time to give as much energy, to sacrifice as much as I have if the other side isn’t willing to reciprocate.

I’m reminded of something I read online recently, where we’ve ended up in a working environment where the employees most likely to move ahead were the ones most willing to put in unpaid labor. Like the fast food worker who is given three hours worth of tasks to do in the one hour between the store closing and the end of their shift. And I’m sick of it. I’m sick of companies sucking their employees dry without any concessions in return. It’s not that these companies are evil. It’s that they just don’t care. The wants and needs (and rights) of their employees are so below their notice that it’s like a human worrying about what an earthworm thinks. Or Cthulhu worrying about the desires of a cute puppy.

I guess I hadn’t been forced to face this lack of concern before, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it. I just know I really don’t like people taking advantage of my caring, trusting nature. It makes me feel dirty, like trying to do the right thing is the wrong thing to do.

And I’m still angry.

The Needs Of The Business

Oh, how I hate those words. “The needs of the business.” An ever-so-slightly more polite of saying “Screw you peon, your desires don’t matter. Shut up, sit down, and be a good little cog.”

I think of myself as fairly easygoing when it comes to my work schedule. Sure, I ask for the occasional day off, but for the large part I’m there whenever they ask for me. About the only time I’m not available is Wednesday and Thursday evenings because of fighter practices. Those seem like those would be easy enough to get off, right? I mean, sure it’s retail, but those two nights can’t be that common a request, what with people wanting to go out Friday nights or sleep in on the weekends.

So it pisses me right off when I don’t get what little concessions I ask for.

Last week was bad enough. I had to work both Wednesday and Thursday night, thus missing both practices. This week, at least I only have to work Thursday. But I’m starting to get really annoyed with my boss when she’s making me work next Thursday evening as well.

Now having to work Wednesday, I’ll take the blame for that one. When I started working at this job, heavy practice was Thursday night, so I listed only that one as “unavailable.” It’s changed nights since then, and I didn’t bother to update my availability since I’ve been working primarily early mornings. But Thursday? That’s been on record as “unavailable” since the moment I started working there. I’ve had to fight for it in the past, too.

And the salt in the wound, the metaphorical cherry on top of this crap sundae? When I finally take a more hard-line stance with my boss about my availability, I get shot down. Apparently availability becomes nothing more than a guideline when it isn’t done for school. Even better, I’ve apparently sabotaged myself by the few times I’ve taken one for the team and worked even when my availability said I couldn’t.

So I’m more than a little pissed off. My boss at least seemed a bit more apologetic last time, and offered to take it up with the senior manager. Of course, what with me being too nice for my own good, I still have to work next Thursday; she wouldn’t budge. And sure, maybe it’s just a perfect storm of people’s vacation requests and me getting dumped on because I have the least seniority. But that doesn’t make it any less annoying. What little I ask for is apparently still too much.

At least I get to hit things this week.

Happy Birthday To Me

So today is my birthday. I am now 29 years old. I had planned to do a neat “Where have I come in a year” post, but I feel more like slacking off instead. In other words, when I sat down to write that post, I got distracted and before I knew it it was time to go to work.

Anyway, thank you for all the birthday wishes today. Here’s to another year of dodging the reaper. I’ll leave you with some Arrogant Worms:

Black vs. White

Hopefully, yesterday I managed to communicate some of what’s going through my head in regards to knighthood and the SCA. It’s a complicated ball of thoughts, one which for some reason I reflexively shy away from looking at too closely. After all, one could (and I’m not saying I do) take the uncharitable view that knighthood is “just” a fighting award, reserved for those combatants who achieve a certain level of prowess. After all, isn’t that kind of what a black belt in martial arts is? This train of thought then begs a question:

Why don’t I get hung up about black belts?

After all, that’s another rank that is often idolized in popular culture. For better or worse, being a black belt carries an aura of mystique with it, as if at any moment the black belt could, with the twitch of a finger, flip out and kill everyone. So why don’t I get all flustered at the thought of being a black belt?

Maybe it’s because I am a black belt, and became one at such a young age. I first achieved the rank when I was 11, and was a 3rd degree black belt by the time I stopped practicing Taekwondo. In other words, I’ve been a black belt for most of my life. Now if you want to discuss whether or not a child of that age can “truly understand what it means to be a black belt,” I’ll grant you that that is an important discussion. And while I’m not sure where I fall on that issue (I’d like to think I grew into the position), that’s not the conversation I want to have right now. What interests me now is the differences I perceive between being a black belt and being a knight.

Intellectually, I’m not sure there’s much of a difference. Both ranks can be seen as a level of mastery, or at least mastery of the basics. But culturally, I’ve come to view them as different. Perhaps it’s their position in the rank structure. I came from a fairly westernized martial arts background. My dad’s instructor was Korean, but our school had a fairly typical ranks structure. You started out as a white belt, and then every few months tested for the next rank until you were ready to test for your black belt. As such, you could easily measure your progress. Orange belt? Then you’re just about done with the first tier. Blue? You’re about halfway. Red? Best start preparing hard for that black belt test in your near future.

The SCA, on the other hand, doesn’t have that rigorous structure. You fight, you get better. You play the game, you progress. Eventually, someone notices you and decides you’re ready. You get offered knighthood. At least, that’s what the process looks like while you’re in it. As such, it’s hard to know exactly where you are on the path, which for me means that path can look long right up until the moment it isn’t. Without any clear-cut goals or markers, it lends a certain amount of mystery to the final achievement.

Maybe this is intentional; I don’t know. Much like I don’t know why being a black belt and knighthood hold such different places in my mind. But they do, and maybe this difference is part of the reason. Maybe I just got exposed to being a black belt early enough, I didn’t have time to see it as a Big Thing™. Either way, thinking and writing about it like this does seem to be helping. If nothing else, it helps me clear my mind enough that I (hopefully) won’t be brooding too obviously while at work.

Knight Musings

I’ve been thinking on the nature of knighthood in the SCA a lot recently. Not only along the lines of “What does it take to be a knight?” but also “What does it mean to be a knight?” What experiences I do have of knighthood are from the outside (obviously), and while I’m sure there are many people out there who would be happy to talk with me on the subject, I am at this moment limited to the echo chamber of my own thoughts, as well as the small amount that makes it out and onto this page.

My understanding of knighthood has changed during my time in the SCA, as is inevitable. When I first started playing, I looked to them as masters and instructors, much like the black belts from my days with eastern martial arts. They were the gurus, the keepers of knowledge and experience. And in a way, they represented a goal to be achieved: one day you, too, may achieve this. One day you too may be a knight.

But what I didn’t realize at the time is I was only seeing the end result of a long journey that took place before my time. That these people weren’t always knights; they became them (or were recognized as such, but that’s a different discussion). First impressions are a big thing, after all. If you meet someone who is a knight (or black belt), it can be hard to think of them as anything else, even if they just received the accolade/achieved that rank a little bit before your time.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that for a long time, when I saw the white belt of knighthood I didn’t necessarily see the time and effort it took to get there. I only saw the master, not the master of the basics.

And I still do, to a certain extent. But I’ve been forced to reevaluate my mental shorthand, if for no other reason than I’ve seen people get knighted, often people who started fighting around the same time (or even after) I did. Some of them even my friends. I knew these people before they got knighted, and familiarity can go a long way to breaking the spell of idolization (not to take anything away from my friends that have been knighted). It can be hard to think of someone as a symbol when you already know them as a person, after all.

And yet, for all the humanizing of the position that seeing friends knighted has forced me to do, I can’t quite make the connection that this is a thing that could happen to me. On some level, I still see knighthood as something off in the future. Something I would love to attain, and will hopefully do so when the time is right. Not as an… I don’t know. A goal? Something I might be close to achieving?

See, even writing about this is hard for me. Even though I’ve been ostensibly working towards this goal, I still can’t see myself as a knight. Not yet. I know I have so much more to learn, and what I have learned has just reiterated that time and again. After all, if I have so much left to learn, why do I get the feeling I’m on someone’s radar?

I probably need to talk to someone about this; spending all this time in my mental echo chamber isn’t doing me much good.

Crossroads Recap

So Crossroads was this past weekend, and I ended up having a really good time. Having a full weekend off work was a nice change of pace; I even managed to sleep in! Sure, it was only until 7am or so, but it’s all relative. And even if we didn’t end up staying on site, it was fun to hang out with my friends.

I even ended up fighting this weekend. I was slightly surprised, given how exhausted I was going into things. But oddly enough, it was my knight saying I didn’t have to that gave me the energy to gear up and hit my friends with sticks. It’s as if I was able to remember that fighting was something I wanted to do, once I was reminded that it wasn’t something I needed to do.

And as often happens, I’m glad I did fight, because I ended up fighting really well. There was one tournament each day for Heavy and Fencing, and I fought in them all. Saturday I ended up making it to more or less the quarterfinals in each, and Sunday I made it to the semifinals in both. Sometimes you have off days, and sometimes everything just clicks; this weekend was one of the latter, and I haven’t had one of those in a while. I don’t like to brag about myself (and I’m not just using that as some sort of false modesty excuse), but I felt pretty good.

I also got several compliments on my fighting, from several knights I highly respect. Which was great; it was quite encouraging. But it also is kind of intimidating. It means people are noticing me. That I’m no longer just some faceless drone in the fighting ranks. That I might actually be good at this fighting thing.

It made me thing about what I talked about a month ago, on the nature of “mastery” versus “mastery of the basics.” Since I joined the SCA, I’ve dreamed of being a knight. It’s why I started heavy fighting, and although my interests have branched out, it’s still a goal I hold. This weekend, for better or worse, made me realize that (and this is a weird thought) I might be closer to knighthood than I thought.

Maybe that’s just the ego boost from placing well in some tournaments talking. But on the other hand, maybe it’s something I really do have to consider. I’ve often said I’m too nice for my own good. Part of that may be excess humility, a blindness to my own achievements. In fact, you can probably see it in my writing right now: notice how I keep on throwing out qualifiers, coming up with other explanations? It’s an interesting reflex, and one that feels weird to be working through in semi-public on a blog. But writing seems to be the easiest way for me to do so: it gets my ideas out of my head, into the open where they can no longer clog up my musings. It also lets me document my progress, so I can tell whether or not I’m just re-treading worn paths or if I’m actually moving forward.

And really, I’ve been fighting for about ten years. Even in the unstructured training environment that is the SCA, that much time has to get you somewhere, right?

This will require more pondering.

Temporal Disconnect

The temporal disconnect of having a buffer is getting to me again. As I write this, it’s Friday afternoon. I’ve just finished working seven days in a row, staying longer than I expected to for several of those days. I’m tired, burned out, and not feeling like doing much of anything, let alone going to an SCA event over the weekend. By the time this entry gets posted on Monday, I will have managed to sleep in, been to said event, and will presumably be in a much better mood than I am/was on Friday. So what kind of post to I go for? Do I go for an attempt at a happy, well-rested mindset, where I have the brain power to spare to address pertinent issues or subjects that fascinate me? Or do I go for a more morose tone, one that reflects the fatigue of a long work week and the lack of motivation? One wouldn’t be applicable on the day it’s written, while the other wouldn’t be applicable on the day it’s posted.

Truly, this is a conundrum for the ages.

Usually, there’s not as much of a disconnect between when I write and when I post. Sure, a day or two may pass, for example when I blog about my experiences at that week’s fighter practice. But I assume what readers I have can deal with that dissonance; it’s not like I’m blogging about hot-off-the-presses news or bleeding-edge technology developments, after all.

Maybe that’s what’s confusing me: I’m once again thinking about this blog from a reader’s perspective, rather than my own writer’s viewpoint. I keep coming back to the question of who I’m actually writing for. I’ll admit I’m enough of a narcissist human that I get a small thrill out of seeing that people have read the things I write. If I didn’t care about that at all, I wouldn’t be sharing my writing, now would I? But I am, so on some level I do care what other people think. But at the same time, I can’t let that dictate what I can and can’t write about (not that I’m saying that happens in the slightest). This blog is supposed to be an outlet, a project that can both be fun and helpful. That’s not to say it isn’t a commitment; I do try very hard to at least post something every day. But there’s a difference between a commitment and an obligation. And the last thing I want is for blogging to become an obligation. That’s where projects go to die.

Hopefully these musings were more fun than scrolling through a hundred copies of “I don’t know what to write today.” But I’d be remiss if I didn’t attempt to address the temporal disconnect. So here we go:

FRIDAY: “Blargh, I’m tired. I need a day off, where I can just sleep in and not even bother getting dressed. Even packing up the car is too much of a chore. I don’t even know if I’m going to have enough energy to fight in any tournaments this weekend, let alone all of them.”

MONDAY (predicted): “Well, I’m feeling a bit more rested. I’m tired, but I ended up having fun at the event. I’m in a pretty good mood, all things considered. Happy Memorial Day!”

…or something.

Burnout, Part 2

So you burned out shortly after going to college, a part of me says. That’s okay, a lot of people are unprepared for the steep learning curve. But it been over a decade since then. Shouldn’t you be over that by now?

Well, internalized voice of condescension, that’s a great question! One I’ve heard many times in various forms throughout the years, both from myself and others. Why don’t we take some time to address it, starting with what it feels like to be burned out.

I will readily admit that burnout is probably different for each person. But for me, burning out meant that all my drive and passion seemed to get sucked out of me. Things had lost their purpose, and I was left wandering aimlessly as a self-identified “good student” who suddenly didn’t like school.

I didn’t know how to deal with this. Nothing in my admittedly limited life experience had prepared me for the rude jolt that college gave me. So at a complete loss, I decided to do more or less nothing. I continued going through the motions: attending classes, turning in assignments, and working my way towards graduation. I changed my major away from hard science and ended up in the foreign language department. Why? Well, I had been studying French since elementary school, and wanted to keep up my skills. It turns out that a French class a quarter over four years is pretty close to a major, so I defaulted to that. I have a French major by default.

Luckily, my school skills were good enough that I don’t think losing drive affected them too much. This was when I discovered that I write a mean first draft. Also when I discovered that I could speed-read whatever section the professor was going to talk about next and still sound reasonably competent. But something had shifted: I was no longer doing my reading and assignments to learn. I was doing them to pass the class. It’s a subtle change, but can make a world of difference.

And these new habits and coping mechanisms have stayed with me ever since. A “new normal,” if you will. All the way through undergrad. All the way through grad school. Even the jobs I’ve had have been more about getting from A to B, rather than accomplishing anything notable or enriching.

I often wonder if I’ve been wasting my time and money, approaching school like this. That same part of me from earlier wonders how things would have been different if I had actually “applied myself” in college and grad school. Would I have learned more? Would I have come out of the experience with something more that a couple fancy pieces of paper and a mountain of debt? Could I ever return to that passion for learning that I had when I was younger?

I don’t know. Contemplating could-have-beens is always a dangerous exercise, doubly so when it’s about you. For me, burning out tore a hole in something, shaking my sense of self to the very foundations. That hole hasn’t really been filled, and I’ve been forced to shore things up around it. An experience like that makes it hard, very hard, to allow yourself to risk being passionate about anything, lest you end up getting hurt again. But life goes on. Somehow, life finds a way.