thenewgreen killed it on Demo Day and the moon blocked the sun. What a day.
https://techcrunch.com/gallery/demo-day-y-combinator/ He did very well.
Congrats and well done thenewgreen! Did they record the demo by any chance, or was it a closed event? I would love to see #sellingwithtng in action.
Having a killer weekend. What's that, you say? It's not a weekend? peon. Work stopped at 3pm Saturday, i rode 15 miles home and listened to fiction. Then I got to the lounge and had two glasses of champagne and a delicious salad with chex mix on it. Then I got on the plane and had Woodford and realized that Lord of War hasn't aged so well and what a fuckin' shame it is that it starred Nicolas Cage instead of John Cusack, who it was most obviously supposed to star. Then I actually got to sleep in my own bed. Then I got to get up, take my daughter to swimming and then buy her a big girl bike. Then I helped my wife make blackberry jelly from blackberries we picked down the street and then take my daughter to coffee. Then we picked up the big girl bike and she got to ride it all around. Then i got to catch up on Game of Thrones and sleep in my own bed again. Then yesterday I got to watch the eclipse through a cereal box, which was rad, and borrowed the neighbor's eclipse glasses, which was rad, and then go visit the kids next door to use their eclipse glasses but they weren't using eclipse glasses they were using sunglasses and had been for the past hour and what the fuck do you do with that considering they're pretty much the closest I've ever gotten to calling CPS but having put a social worker through grad school up here and having met legit babysnatchers within this county system I'm unconvinced that fostering of any kind would be better than what they have so out of sight out of mind and then I got to go to a junkyard and pull parts for my father in law and I realized that it's been so long since I've done that that every car there didn't exist the last time I was in a junkyard so that was weird. Yet somehow I still had to pull a power steering bracket's bracket's bracket off an AMC Straight 6 because Chrysler is THAT FUCKING LAME. At least you don't have to slap the trunk to see if rattlesnakes come out around here. And then i got to go to Moonshine BBQ and have a 4-sampler of local bourbon for $14 and buy a bunch of used books about watches and clocks because unlike LA, where nobody reads, Seattle has a fucking book chain that sells used books and we also bought grocery stand corn and beans from the stand that has raw milk and awesome Syrian halvah and then we went to the butcher and I bought a fuckin' pound of beef jerky and then I got to pick up my kid and help her ride her big girl bike and barbecue some frickin' amazing tarragon chicken sausages with drop biscuits and home-made blackberry jelly and grilled corn and catch up on John Oliver and snake the bathtub drain 12 feet and sleep in my own bed again. And now I'm surrounded by seven HD surveillance cameras I don't have time to install, blasting Israeli remixes of Juno Reactor through my Genelecs and drinking coffee out of a mug my daughter made me and fuckin' A I'm a gonna go running soon and it's gonna be tits. Tonight? Tonight I don't get to sleep in my own bed. Tonight I get to land, take a Lyft to work and then mix until 4am. But that's hours away.
So. My first Pubski. Let's do this already. Books I've been reading American Psycho. I finally watched the movie after it being on my "To Watch" list for approximately oh 17 years, but I saw and enjoyed it, and decided to read the book. To say I'm enjoying it so far is a little so-so. I'm almost halfway through, and I understand why he's so obsessed with what people are wearing and how much they paid for it, but the word "hardbody" makes me roll my eyes every single time I see it, and it's in there A LOT. This may be one of the rare occasions where I actually enjoy the movie more than the book. Next on my list - reread A Song of Ice and Fire. The show is ridiculously good, and I never gave the books much of a chance. keifermiller says that the books are better in this case, so I'll give it a genuine shot this time. Crafting? I've wanted to brew some beer, but I've been a little meh about my homebrew. It all has the same weird off flavor to it, and it's not particularly cost effective. Fun and enjoyable to watch, but an expensive hobby. Knitting has been uninspired, as summer tends to do. There's nothing I want to do less than knit warm things when it's hot out, so that's on hold. I did decide to cross-stitch a piece for my sister-in-law and her fiance for their upcoming marriage. This is by far the biggest thing I've ever done, and my tendency with these sorts of things is to bite off more than I can chew (this project is ~8000 stitches), but since it's only two colors, I think I can manage this. It's been so long since I've done any cross-stitching and it's refreshing. Other Floated down Missouri's Niangua River with my sisters and our friend this past weekend. The last time we went was a pretty shit time. I had to babysit drunk people and the river was low and there was just a whole mess of unpleasantness. This time was SO MUCH MORE FUN. We got storms on Friday night, and that was exciting in tents, but it got the river level up enough on Saturday that we weren't dragging our canoe much of the trip. Everyone had fun but did so responsibly, and I got some ghost pepper beef jerky from Osceola Cheese. My sisters and I have been out there several times now, and this was by far the best. The eclipse was yesterday, and the initial plan for keifermiller and I was to head north of town 90 or so minutes to see totality. Woke up, checked the weather, clouds and rain and general shit weather. I wasn't prepared to drive that far for such disappointment, so we decided to stay in town and see the 99.7% or so eclipse. Clouds. We had clouds from the start of the eclipse (I did see the first few minutes through my potentially dangerous glasses) til it was over. I was pretty bummed about the whole thing, but it wasn't a total loss. At peak eclipse it got so much darker than I imagined it would, and it was still so eerie to see at 1pm. I'm not messing around in 2024.
Ellis benefits greatly from interpretation by a disinterested third party. American Psycho is a shit book. Not as shit as Rules of Attraction but pretty shit. If you want a real treat, do Less than Zero. Ellis hates that movie, probably because it has a plot, a protagonist, an antagonist, character development, etc. It also has a set designer who clearly put half the budget through his nose and the other half into neon but there aren't many other movies with both Slayer and Bananarama in the soundtrack.
I think you're supposed to roll your eyes at most of what Bateman says in that book. But I too definitely preferred the movie. For GoT/ASOAIF, I enjoyed the books for the most part, but I'm done with them. GRRM took 5 years from book 3 to 4, and then almost 6 years for the next one. We're now going on 6 years on the next, which means that I basically have to re-read the entire series every time in order to remember what's happened. This is doubly so now that the TV show and the books have diverged. I frankly don't believe he'll finish the series before he dies, and I don't want to get re-invested. Hobbies are good, and basically the point is that they're not cost-effective. But as long as you don't mind spending the money, who cares?
This has been the first year that I have not slacked off much on my knitting/crocheting for the summer, although it is somewhat out of necessity for me at this point. I am not particularly fast with the stitches and have a few projects with deadlines coming up: 2 that are gifts for next week which I finished today, one for next month, and I am already getting requests for Christmas. The other reason is that the work is relaxing and therapeutic when going well and work has been stressful so I have needed the outlet. My plans for seeing totality fell through too, but we got sun and a good percentage here so I got some fun pics, I will post tomorrow when I get them off the camera. 2024 it's on though!
I did knit a couple of baby hats a few weeks ago for my coworkers who are having a baby in October, but that's been the only real FO I've felt like I needed to finish, and baby hats are not much of a time commitment. Every year I think I'm not going to procrastinate any Christmas knitting but I always do. This year I don't plan on doing any, and if any gets done then that's just a bonus. I definitely understand the therapeutic aspect of keeping the hands busy. I've kind of been in a weird funk lately and need to -make- something. With the cross-stitching I get to fulfill that need to create. I've been really enjoying seeing peoples' pictures of the eclipse, so I'm looking forward to seeing yours too! In 2024 Keifer and I are going someplace where we don't have to travel the day of to see totality. Possibly somewhere in Texas, but the path is so open to possibilities that we have some time to plan.
Cross stitching is rad, and I always liked the finished products I made a lot better than things which I had knit. Easier to undo mistakes, and it felt a bit more portable to me. That being said, i really like the physical sensation of knitting. It's mindless in the best way possible, at least when you're only knitting variations on a rectangle, like I do. I had some truly stupendous anxiety during the home stretch of my senior year of college, and was knitting about 2 scarves a day for 2 months. It was a small thing, but knowing that I was actively creating something every day made the bigger problems feel a lot more manageable.
Have you ever tried crochet? Has the ability to mindless like knitting once you get used to it, but also has the ability to easily undo mistakes, as you only have one live stitch at a time (unless you're doing Tunisian). Plus it is, I think, easier to do circular and other shapes with crochet (see the Crochet Coral Reef: http://crochetcoralreef.org/ if you want to be amazed at what can be done with yarn).
I've been programming most of the week for my thesis. Spent two full working days banging my head against a wall trying to fix a four-level down for loop over a 250k long Python list. Yesterday I decided it was easier to teach myself NumPy and rewrite the entire thing in neat arrays and matrices like I would do if I could use Matlab. I should've used Numpy sooner! My rewrite isn't done yet but the part that I did rewrite is, like, a third of the length and is already faster. Had a conversation today with someone from the regional transport agency. He brought up 'an article he read somewhere about fair transportation and public transport, how it could be distributed better'. I realized he meant my article, he said his public transport department found it very interesting so now I'm planning to go there and discuss my topic and my thesis. It also seems to be the place where big transport decisions are made, so I'm also viewing it as a bit of an unsolicited application.
Had a great time yesterday watching the eclipse! And apparently the blog post featuring my photos and videos is beating all kinds of view records: http://blog.polycor.com/the-day-white-marble-turned-black-photos It's been a really fun summer so far, and it's only gonna get better with burning man next week. I don't think I've ever been more exited. Even had an unexpected bonding moment with this lady that works at the Georgia office yesterday that not only knew what burning man was (that I so far had to explain as going camping at an art festival in the desert to everyone else at the company) but has been at many festivals before and had some great tips to share. Will be in LA the week after that (sept 4th to 12th at least). WHO'S IN TOWN? kleinbl00?
I love how you back-handedly mention Noguchi like he's some modern artist or whatever. Seriously, though. That was like the Citizen Kane of corporate blog posts. Nice job. I'm off the 7th and 8th and will be in LA. I could theoretically do brunch any other day that week. pm me. randomuser insomniasexx zebra2 who am I forgetting?
I didn't write that blog post, should have made this ore clear. It's just my photos on there (that I actually didn't even have time to edit because they were pushing to release super fast). It's Steve the surfer and rock carver from New Jersey that wrote this. That dude is boss and super passionate about everything rock related. He's in charge of all social media and does a great job!
Fukkit I'm into it. "Weeks" are semi-abstract for me anyway and it appears you have a psychological need to drink on Tuesday. Considering you start this shit out at fuckin' 1am anyway it's all rather arbitrary. Just do me a solid and ditch the fuckin' half drunk ale
Last week's Pubski threw the whole solar system through a hole in the time/space continuum. Monday's solar eclipse was an astronomical anomaly directly related to the mis-timed Pubski post. The crazy thing is, for you, it might be Tuesday, August 22nd, 2017. For me though? I'm sitting here, staring at my computer, on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2018 and I have no idea what happened to my whole year. Though from the looks of things, not much has changed during that time.
Dude, Sometimes at work I ask people when they arrived in the area to make conversation and if they answer a specific day like Thursday instead of saying something like 3 days ago I just smile and say cool. I literally never know what day it is. I started a new job yesterday and today my manager asked me to write my hours on the schedule since I couldn't punch in yet. I spent like 5 minutes trying to figure out how to figure out what day it was without having to ask. The worst part was that next weeks schedule was up and I didn't even know what week it was. You're only off by one day, you're doing pretty good in my opinion.
People: I'm tasked with helping two other undergrads get their calculations and theory straight. It pains me to say it, but the contrast between normal and individual track on physics is just staggering. I wouldn't say that it feels like putting someone from AP course into a remedial class, but it's close at times. One knows almost nothing about the group theory so while I was explaining that, the other took those two hours to attempt solving a filtered diffraction problem. Note the 'attempt', it was wrong and he couldn't see why. So there was more explaining to him while the other one was solving group theory problems I left her. Again, not without mistakes but with a depressing lack of rigour. I spent about forty hours in total (last and this week) on helping them and I only feel more and more like an arse. It takes conscious effort to not ask either of them "what were you doing for the past two years?" It's exhausting on every possible level. I have to take my own work to home with me. There's not a single twenty-minute span in time when I can focus on it without them orbiting around. Is that a glimpse into the world of a PhD student? Books: Postwar was depressing. And intriguing. In an unexpected way, it was uplifting. I would even go as far as to say fascinating and worth revisiting. Which brings me to a few questions: How the hell is it even possible for teachers to make history boring?! Are they required to complete something akin to kolinahr before taking a class on their own? The contrast between history in school and history told, apparently, anywhere else is simply mind-boggling. The rest goes slowly, but consistently, forward. Hindered by the stuff I talked about earlier. I might have to go the audiobook route.
Unfortunately, most students haven't been taught mathematics well at any point in their lives. The week before the fall semester starts I teach an algebra review class to incoming freshmen, and I'm amazed at how poor some of their math skills are (for example, confused why 1/x + 1/y is not 1/(x + y), or reducing (5 + x) / (5 + y) to x / y). It's a travesty that students can get this far in life without really understanding what's going on, but I don't think it's all their fault either. Fortunately, they have you! Better late than never, as they say. So here's my advice on teaching mathematical rigor to people: 1. Be as excited as you can be. Rigorous argument is not necessarily the most enthralling of things, but people pick up on whether you care about something and that can make a big difference in their opinion of the topic. 2. Be patient. You've, perhaps subconsciously, spent years developing the understanding you have of the subject; they have not. That can change, but it won't happen right away. 3. Ask them questions. Building connections between ideas might come naturally to you, but it does not to everyone. Try to nudge them to see relationships between things, even if you/they don't fully explore that relationship and why it exists right away. Walk them through your process of seeing why a solution is right or wrong. 4. Think about what guides your intuition for problems and explain what you can of that process.
This is so important. My precalc instructor was boring AF and I remember none of it. My DiffEQ instructor got so carried away that the prof next door would come over and tell him to stop banging on the chalkboard. As a result, I think DiffEQ is the fundamental magic that makes the world go 'round.1. Be as excited as you can be. Rigorous argument is not necessarily the most enthralling of things, but people pick up on whether you care about something and that can make a big difference in their opinion of the topic.
It's funny because mine was math so pure that the final was "Imagine a function that does xxxxxxxxxxx. What would happen if A) yyyy? B) zzzz? C) ppp ddd qqq?" No numbers. Fuckin' essay-style with roll-your-own functions and derivation. It was eye-poppingly hardcore. The rate of attrition in that class was such that 15% of the people who started it finished it. I got a 25% on the one assignment he gave all quarter and immediately asked him what I could do to resurrect my grade. he said "relax! You were in the top 20%!" When all of us were heads down and desperate on that final he said "if you take it home and study I will give you an A." Fuckin' A I'll bet I could teach Diff EQ even now and it's been 20 years. That class was goddamn amazing.
Maybe it was my professor - he was basically like "here's a Laplace and this is how you calculate a Wronskian so go do that now okthxbai". He never explained why things were done that way properly, so I had to resort to fucking Khan Academy more than once to understand what was happening.
Thanks. I'm trying. Believe me, I'm doing my best here. I've been tutoring people for quite a while and I agree with all that you've said. I'm excited, doing what I can to be patient and try to prompt them where and what questions one should ask. There's some improvement already. It's just tiring. But there is a massive problem where I don't know if I can give them a boost: my track was thrown into the deep water from the start. From the day one, I was solving problems that were too hard for me by design. I once described to you what I was doing as a freshman: Tackling problems on your own, without having to be prompted, takes years of practice and some mental independence. I can give them the gist, and I will, but it's an entirely different way of thinking about tasks. Sorry for being on a Star Trek reference binge, but this whole assignment feels to me like Kobayashi Maru test. The teacher must experience futility and yet remain optimistic. Do note that I have never said I'm giving up on them. It just seems like no matter what I do it feels half-arsed and exhausting.
Yep, it is exahusting especially if, like me, you're an introvert and any kind of interaction with people takes energy. On top of that, it's unlikely that you'll really see the fruits of your work -- the foundation you build with them now won't really begin to show until they build on it in higher-level classes (and maybe even projects/work after they graduate). Since I stuck around at the same university for undergrad and grad school, I've had the pleasure of running into senior students that I tutored or taught when they were freshmen and having them tell me just how much they benefited from my efforts. That's one of the best feelings in the world. So, keep at it! Things may seem futile now, but in the (very) long run they will be better people because of you.
Do they not teach the trick to expand 5x to xxxxx? I still use that whenever I'm in doubt. A few years ago I tutored high school kids in math and physics and I wholly agree with your points. I had a few strategies that worked well depending on the kind of student. One was to break a problem into its smallest constituents, to ask basic questions about those problems (which they usually got right) and to then assemble it into a bigger picture. Another is to attack a problem like you're Sherlock: what do we have here, and what do you know about problems that look like this? In my opinion, getting a student from doing math to understanding math is by asking the why question again and again and patiently teaching them the underlying fundamental principles.
The more controversial a subject, the more abstractly it is taught. The more recent a subject, the less it is taught. Armenian genocide was 100 years ago and the quickest way to start a gunfight in Glendale, CA is to say it never happened out loud. Judt writes about the Yugoslavian conflict in Postwar and says, in no uncertain terms, that it's the Serbians' fault. Try that in high school and you're making the national papers. I mean, here it is, 150 years after it happened, and we've got people being murdered over whether or not confederate monuments are consolation trophies for losing slavers or commemorations of the noble sacrifices of a proud antebellum culture. The personal cosmology of most humans organizes history into "who are villains" and "who are heroes" and teaching history is extraordinarily boring when you're making every possible effort not to aid and abet that effort. And if you aid and abet that effort you get fired.How the hell is it even possible for teachers to make history boring?!
I am also surprised by how much I'm enjoying reading this one. Usually, the audiobooks I read are 8-12 hours long and anything above that feels like a slog. I'm glad Judt writes as well as his phenomenal longread on Belgium that nobody read here: Postwar reminds me a lot of what a breeze Destiny Disrupted was, so if you haven't read that one I quite recommend it. It has a bit more name calling than Postwar but it also has a conversational tone throughout.
Destiny Disrupted is Fred McFriendly's Fun Facts about Founding Friendly Factions compared to Said's Orientalism. Ansary takes the viewpoint "man, you white people sure have fucked up Islamic history" while Said is basically "and you did it deliberately because you crackers be racist." The problem is Said nails it. You cannot get through that book without some deep introspection. I now feel guilty for liking Kipling.
For the geography majors, Orientalism is required reading. If I did more courses back then I would've already read it, but as of now it's on my reading list. By the by, would you recommend something like Zinn's A People's History to me? Is it comparable to Postwar? I dropped history halfway through high school so U.S. history was never covered. I'm not sure if Zinn it would be a good introduction.
Zinn is fast and easy reading. It will give you a perspective on US history that American kids don't get very often.
OK, real Wednesday Pubski: CRUNCHTIME After a fabulous summer of travelling, camping, and putting on a one-woman show, it's crunchtime. I have till Monday to get a version of my course book ready for copying. THE SHOW The show was so much fun. It's wonderful making people laugh - even if they are laughing about horrific things. And, ahem, it's on video so steve you don't have to read the script. I'll send you the link. 50 people crowded into my backyard. 3 of my recent students came and 3 students from previous years - actually drove an hour down the highway and got here by 6:00 p.m. for curtain time. I have no idea what else to say, except that I just contributed $100 to hubski as my birthday present to hubski. (It gives the word contribute that I am seeing at the bottom of the page a different meaning.)
Is it your birthday today? Happy (possibly belated or early) birthday!
This week I am basically a pipetting monkey. Preparing my samples for single cell sequencing. Probably the most important (and most expensive) experiment in my thesis. The results will basically decide my next two years and I hope that the results are good. I also attempted this with 70 cells a few months ago just to find out that its all junk (because of RNA degradation). I troubleshooted everything and optimized some things and until not it is looking fine. Lets hope I am not cross-contaminating my samples and I am not amplifying some bacteria... It has been the material for many dreams and nightmares for the past months and I guess it will not stop any time soon. Apart from that I am running, climbing and trying to enjoy the rest of the summer. Temperatures are already heading downwards and my head started to play Alex Clare and Imogen Heap every morning. Probably triggered by the way the air smells.
Well, I wanted a change in work and it seems the universe provided - my entire department was transferred to marketing. I've always thought of what I do as a sort of marketing, so it's a good thing, but it's surreal to just have things like this happen. My new big boss likes stats and I don't have any, but she seemed really impressed that I built my entire job and the training program from scratch, so that's cool.
I don't really have any news lately. Whenever people ask me if there's anything new I just have to shrug. Right now I just work in the pub, look after anyone who needs stuff from my dad's store, and watch lots of old movies (just finished Andrei Rublev and now cracking into 2001: A Space Odyssey). I've actually had a good few extra days at the pub this month - nice to have a bit more pocket money. But I am increasingly starting to feel like I've been at home for too long. I'm not sure what the next move is, but I think leaving this town is a goal in itself. My dad's store is basically a warehouse full of pipe and fittings. Thankfully, it's not kept open - people call and my dad goes down there. He's in the Philippines at the moment so I've taken over; it's mostly fine, but I don't know what anything's actually for because I'm not a plumber, and I don't drive so I've ended up walking out 2 or 3 times some days (30 minute round trip; five minutes in a car). I don't mind doing it but I'm worried this is my dad's way of roping me into helping out at the store. I suppose from his point of view I look like I've given up on life. I wrote a little bit in the book for the first time in weeks. It's been getting a bit ridiculous. But to be fair, I was extremely busy for the late few months, and only now am I having a few free days. Excuses are easy to find, I guess! I was planning on quitting smoking recently (yeah, yeah, we've all heard that), but a guy I know just brought back a few pouches of tobacco for me from Spain, and I've never been the "chuck the fags in the bin" type of quitter. What a terrible state of affairs! I made an absolute hames of repairing my little one-man tent - globs of glue all over it now. Still as long as it's waterproof it doesn't really matter, I'm not exactly trekking to the north pole. Planning to walk across a nearby mountain range soon if the weather permits - it's the largest unoccupied area in Ireland but would only take a couple of days to cross. The question is, do I take the trail in the valley or walk peak to peak and earn myself some views? An ex-girlfriend of mine recently messaged me out of the blue and we exchanged a couple of up-to-speed messages. She said if I ever happen to be in her city to give her a bell and go for a coffee. Now, I wasn't exactly planning on going down there, but I do have some family I've been meaning to visit for ages, so maybe I will happen to go down sometime in September. Or maybe it's best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Haha, I'm tempted now Steve! We'll see about that. It's only a matter of time, after all, before I head to Colorado to buy you a pint.
I've seen something kinda similar happen to students in my research group. When new students come in, they typically get handed a small project that they can contribute to that gets them some experience doing research, their name on a publication, and a bit better idea of what the field is about. If they don't make much progress on coming up with their own project, their advisor pushes them to take the next step on that initial project, and the next, and so on. Even if it's not what the student really wants to be doing, that kind of project makes sure that they don't end up spending a decade getting a PhD. I guess my point is that if your dad is leading you into helping out at the store, you should feel happy that your dad cares about you, but if that's not ultimately what you want to do, you should be taking steps to figure out what it is you do want to do.I don't mind doing it but I'm worried this is my dad's way of roping me into helping out at the store. I suppose from his point of view I look like I've given up on life.
This is both weird and oddly specific, but does anyone happen to have an old (preferably 2016 or earlier; however I'm not too picky nor can I afford to be) page/tear/day-by-day calendar they wouldn't mind shipping to me? So long as you are continental US it shouldn't be cost prohibitive and I am also down to reimburse shipping so long as it's reasonable (aka, talk to me first). Best, best case scenario would be if you have an old page/day-by-day/tear calendar, which is exercise, work-out, or otherwise "being healthy/body focused" in theme. Even if it is a 2017 day by day - if you don't mind losing the last 4 months - please PM and let me know. This is for a cathARTic project and it would just be primo to get an exercise, tear-day-by-day calendar to serve as the base element of collage for one piece of the....thingy. Promise to post photos when it's done in return?
Did I mention last week my mom asked me "Why don't you just date a nice cop" and, well, that discussion culminated in me retorting, "The reason I don't ask your opinion is because I don't want it!" and then storming out - read - fleeing the scene in tears to angrily look up DV statistics, cops vs overall population (and etc)? Ain't they great, moms, I mean?
My hobby has become a lifestyle. I think. Maybe. And it feels like that makes me inaccessible to large swaths of humanity. I think. Maybe.
I SHOULD BE A FALCONER. It's more a "why would you date somebody who runs 5 days a week, goes to the gym 2 days a week, and hikes the remainder (sometimes...)" if you are not a person in a similar vein of life. Especially since I'm not very willing (right now) to give those up. I know I'll be fine, but it's fine within this weird subsection of society, you know? It doesn't feel...normal... Which could lead me into a four paragraph rant about normalization. Lots of thoughts about that lately.
But what if it gets worse! Does this guy run 30 miles a week? Gym is supplemental, not priority. It was a "this is the full picture at this moment" statement. Plus, I really feel like part of a community at this point, so where's the incentive to back down? Injury?
Based on the stack he presents I doubt he runs. but mutherfucker when I'm not biking 150 miles a week I'm running six times a week so WTFever. Just because you're exercising doesn't mean you're a special little flower, you're a special little flower because you insist on thinking of yourself as a special little flower. Cut that shit out and you have no worries.
I suck at running so there's nothing special there. But, how do you manage a relationship when most of your free time is spent on...fitness/outdoorsy things, I guess? I mean, I think there's a certain percentage overlap you can have with partner on shared activities and if you're under that, it's not going to work out. That's been the entire point of this complaint. Edit: Really this is a rumination on the what do I want in a relationship comment from last week. Still not clear. Edit edit: Also, if I could bike to work I totally would. Womp. Driving sucks.
Hey skipper: For one month, I want you to try something new. Instead of constantly beseeching the sky with "I have a problem, HOW CAN THIS POSSIBLY WORK OUT!!?!?!?!?!???" I want you to thoughtfully stroke your scruffy chin and think "I have a problem, how can I work this out?" It's not like y'all are conjoined or some shit.
It doesn't feel like a problem, necessarily, though...maybe a mismatch? Or a lack of compatibility?
" it feels like that makes me inaccessible to large swaths of humanity." "why would you date somebody who runs 5 days a week, goes to the gym 2 days a week, and hikes the remainder (sometimes...)" "I mean, I think there's a certain percentage overlap you can have with partner on shared activities and if you're under that, it's not going to work out." See, here's the thing - you go running - in large groups of friends - and then go drinking - in large groups of friends. You go hiking... with large groups of friends. I run alone. And then I shower alone. And for most of my 20s I hiked alone. Yet we both still have friends! You know why I never integrated with the Pacific Northwest's "let's all go running together and drink together and camp together and talk about how special we all are" crew? Because you guys love the smell of your own farts. It's fucking offputting. The rest of us? We put on our shoes and go. And maybe that's why we consider REI and Bass Pro Shops to both be sporting goods stores, and maybe why we consider Ducks Unlimited and Sierra Club to be equivalent nature preservation groups, and maybe why we don't worry about whether or not we can have friends who don't hike. because we aren't secretly looking down on everyone else. So let me phrase this less nicely: Yeah, if you want to be an elitist shithead about it, you're going to have a hard time relating to everybody else. But that's on you, not the rest of the world.
Okay, there's a clause I thought about including in that first quote which I should have included, as it relates to the second. The whole thing makes it feel hard to date somebody who isn't doing these kind of things because of the amount of time it takes. Having those mutual activities seems like a way of mitigating that issue. So, not so much society (though holy shit I recently saw a picture of some folks back home and I am so okay not relating to what's going on there, elitist or not), as much as dating within society. Ducks Unlimited is amazing, had no idea that was a thing! Okay here's a question - do you feel the same about this as you do as, say, coffee? Because I get a similar vibe. Maybe I do these things in groups because the music scene here isn't very open if you're not in Seattle, my friends seems to move every 6-12 months, and if yr not living in Seattle, good luck having close friendships with people in Seattle (oh no - now I've combined talking about running with complaining about the Northwest. What a perfect storm). It's a stability thing in a way.
My thoughts on coffee are hardly secret. Less flippantly, I think the minute it gets exclusionary you start pissing people off. I mean, you're coming from a standpoint that if someone doesn't run just as much as you do then obviously they can't understand you, they can't value the same things you do and they will never be your true soulmate or some shit and jesus, dude, look at yourself. My wife had exercise-induced asthma. Had because I started running with her. She'd do a mile and I'd do two. She'd do one lap and I'd do two. Then she ran with me. Then she had a kid and started a medical practice and now she has time to run maybe once every six months. Hopefully that'll change. But you know what? It's not like it's causing stress in our relationship. My wife doesn't like... bass. The only artist she's shown any enthusiasm about in the past fifteen years is Norah Jones. Me? I'm flying down to LA to see Front 242 and Severed Heads. I don't even need to ask if she wants to go to see Severed Heads. It's a stupid question. But we've been together fifteen fuckin' years. Look at it this way: in four hours I'm gonna get on a plane. I won't see my wife for ten days. During that time, I'll be doing a bunch of shit she isn't doing, she'll be doing a bunch of shit I ain't doing. And we'll circle back September 1st and hang out on the couch and love each other. is there any practical difference between going away to work and going away to run up and down a goddamn hill? No there is not. You're not special. Your hobbies aren't special. What's special is your desire to see your existence as somehow offputting to those who aren't as hard core as you because just like that poof it is.
I just want to stop by here and say I'm glad I read this exchange between you and ButterflyEffect. I feel like a lot of this could have been said to me or by me, respectively. You make a lot of good points here. I'm not as worried about cutting off whole swathes of humanity; I'm more in a "fuck it, I'm enjoying my life, let's just do this" phase. If I think about it too much, my concern would be how to manage trying to get to know someone better with "no, I can't meet you Friday night because I have to get up early Saturday and run sixteen miles." But that's probably just an excuse for not knowing how to get to know someone better, regardless of what other plans I have.
Let's say that happens. You suggest Tuesday night. She's busy with <different hobby here> and suggests Wednesday. Well, no, you have a group run that night. Saturday? She's out of town with her friends. Okay, how about in two or three weeks? How does that look from the outside? Probably like you're not that interested, right? Unless she understands that running, hiking, whatever is an important but time consuming part of your life. But how can you expect that level of understanding from someone you don't even know yet? (The above is a simulated situation based on true events.)
From the outside? From any side, dude, by saying "I have a group run that night" you're saying "I have a group of friends I would rather hang out with than you and you are not invited." What you're saying is that running is more important than the girl. Which, okay, know your priorities. But stop pretending it's the girl. Stop pretending that a girl as into exercise as you are would be any different because she'll have her own training plan and her own running group and her own routine. A relationship is the additive result of a compromise. You're not willing to compromise. Ergo, you are not in a relationship.
As with WanderingEng, I am also glad that I stumbled onto this interaction here. It made me think about where I am standing and what I am doing. I spend my free time doing similar things as ButterflyEffect with running, climbing, playing poi and hicking. I have been asking myself what kind of partner I want by my side and what you wrote made me rethink my view and maybe generalize it a little more. The best relationships I had were with women that were able to discuss a subject without resorting to being mean, manipulations, or getting too emotional. Even thought we did disagree on some things, there was never the point where this disagreement would be the cause for a breakup. We acknowledged that we have different views and still valued our time together. I haven't had such an interaction in a while now and I wonder when it will come again. I don't know how to summarize that into general terms of what my "perfect partner" would be, but at least it goes away from asking for shared hobbies or having specific views on subjects.
I don't know. I feel like it's a good question, and for the time being I'm ignoring trying to figure it out. Practically speaking I understand having dissimilar hobbies isn't bad, and in a lot of ways it can be good. But how are those hobbies reconciled to something as simple as meeting for coffee to see if you both want to bother working harder? For now, my bags are packed and by the door. I'm off to the Dix Wilderness tomorrow, alone.
Life on meds continues. I'm having to re-learn a lot of mental habits, but it's still been a colossal improvement to quality of life. I'm also better at emotional regulation, which makes sense, but was nonetheless surprising. Day-to-day, I feel like I can get so much more done, and I actually look forward to free time as opposed to a mixture of relief (at not having to work) and dread (that I had to let my brain loose to bounce off the walls). I have a med check-up later this week, so will be curious to see what the psychiatrist thinks. Beyond that, not a whole lot is new. I'm still doing the Greek thing, and have begun to dip by toe in the waters of Coptic. Part of the latter project is to figure out a decent way to learn vocabulary. When I was in middle- and high-school Spanish, I never needed to study. I could just read a vocab list and I'd know 95%+ of the words cold after the first pass. Not so much anymore. Flashcards definitely don't work for me, as I need to learn things as they relate to other things. I've tried doing pictures for the words, and that seems to help, but is time consuming (at least initially). I think the main thing is to practice now, which is something I hope to find good ways to do (considering all I can say now is a few prepositional phrases). One kind of interesting thing is that the I'll write a little more about this later, but I think the iPad Pro is my new favorite of my devices. I can take notes, write (Pages is free and very good overall), draw (Procreate is spectacular), read, and when I'm not feeling productive I can game (the port of Prison Architect for iOS is great) or even color (Pigment is a wonderful way to veg out). College me would've killed for this thing.