I think, somewhere over the last few years, many people have concluded that this country isn't worth saving. We haven't always done it publicly, or noisily. But, secretly, a lot of us sort of gave up.
It shows, too. In any relationship, it shows.
Somewhere along the line, we got more scared about our jobs, and felt like we had less time to worry about that of our neighbor.
At some point, we became more calculating and less trusting -- rationalized by the belief that that's what made individuals successful. Maybe it's even true. But it's not how a nation becomes great.
There are those of you who are itching to say that America never was that great -- that the hagiography of decades past is part of the national delusion that got us into this mess. I'm inclined to agree. However, that's not at all inconsistent with the truth that a belief that we are, or can be, the shining city on the hill actually helps us to be better.
Perhaps most telling, we have someone else to blame. What about our contribution to the failure of the relationship? Blame is more important, easier, more comforting, and a hallmark that the relationship is dying.
And yet I'm strangely hopeful.
Maybe it's historical perspective -- as crappy as we are to each other now, we have only to go back a few years, or decades, or centuries, to reveal how truly shitty humans can be to each other.
It's actually better now, on average. It just doesn't feel that way.
I think in some ways, I understand how conservativism increases with age. As we get older, we remember how things were worse at the beginning of our lives. And yet, there is no sense of pride, or satisfaction, or even the barest sense of hope that comes from that knowledge. There's only the gnawing sense that this should've felt better, and that people keep demanding more, that the battles are often the same ones we fought (or were spectators to) when we were young and stupid and had faith.
I'm not sure where this blog post came from. I'm supposed to be thinking about a humorous speech for Toastmasters. But I think it comes from a slow, steady, and hopefully growing sense that I do have faith in this country, in its peoples and The People. Not much. But enough to keep going, and maybe do a bit more. I am too old to put my faith or reasons in broad ideas. It resides in specific people, in moments, in which the unreachable heights of idealism find their best, beautiful, and beautifully flawed expression.
I don't know whether it's better to thank people for loving me, or to thank them for helping me learn to love this country. Fortunately, there is tremendous overlap. It's for you -- and not a piece of paper, or dead Founding Fathers who, through death, are absent fathers -- that I'll try to remember whenever I start to lose faith, or become too complacent.
The picture of Bobby Kennedy is coming down. Or, at the very least, the pictures of people I know personally have to join him. I work for the living, not for the dead. And that's as pure a faith as I care to have.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Monday, August 19, 2013
What's Different With Online Tutoring (My writing sample for tutor.com)
I forget the prompt, but it has to do with three differences between in-person and online tutoring, and what I will modify in my tutoring style to make certain the student learns effectively. Leaving it here, because it seems somewhat important for me to revisit later.
Both online tutoring and in-person tutoring require the tutor to be knowledgeable, empathetic, and perceptive. However, online tutoring has distinctive properties and challenges. A proficient tutor will be aware of these differences and adapt his or her methods in order to rectify these challenges.
Online tutoring that is chat or voice based lacks the visual feedback that would be available if the tutor were in the same room as the student. Behavioral psychology teaches us that over half of the emotional cues and feedback between two individuals in ordinary conversation are visual. Body language, facial expressions, and gestures provide important information. The situation is even worse with text-based tutoring, as over a third of feedback comes from vocal tone, quality, and speed.
Additionally, online tutoring can be limited by the available software platform used to convey information. Ideally, the platform will provide an opportunity for both the tutor and the student to be able to enter in equations, draw, diagram, and convey other visual information effectively. Even if these requirements are met, this requiers both the tutor and the student to be sufficiently skilled with the interface to be able to communicate effectively.
Finally, online tutoring is potentially vulnerable to a decreased level of commitment for both the tutor and the student. Although we are now more wired than ever, it is still more difficult to establish commitment and emotional connection remotely than with a person that is seen in person. This can make it challenging to initially develop trust. It could even lead to a higher chance that appointments might be missed -- because the other person isn't met directly, they may "feel" less real to the other party, and subconsciously might not be accroded the same level of courtesy and commitment someone in person would experience.
Due to the issues listed above, I am particularly aware of the need to modify my own methods of tutoring. Because I can not depend upon nonverbal clues from my online students, I have to spend a bit more time and effort explicitly asking them for feedback and probing their knowledge with related questions. The innoncent but destructive lie of "I get it" when the student doesn't actually understand is more difficult to detect, meaning that I have to more actively require the student to explain concepts back to me, or demonstrate his or her knowledge by solving additional problems that I might generate on the spot.
On the software issue, the only solution is to become intimately familiar with the software interface provided by Tutor.com. I also have additional resources online, whther it is the Online Latex Equation Editor, WolframAlpha (for graphs), or another tool that I've discovered in my years of tutoring.
Finally, to address the commitment issue (both for the student and to adjust for any subconscious bias on my part), I make certain to convey my thoughts, expectations, and my empathy through text. Like any writer worth his or her salt, I have developed an ability to convey emotion as effectively as I can through typed words. I'm not a professional writer. However, I am fortunate enough to have plenty of expereince, training, and interest in writing in order to develop some skill in it. My ability to type relatively quickly will also help the sentiments expressed in the tutoring session seem more geninue. (They are, in fact, genuine, but a delay can make it seem a non-technical missive less spontanous and less trustworthy.)
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Whose Line Is It Anyway: Aisha Tyler and the Challenge of Women in Comedy
Whose Line is it Anyway I'm reminded of the challenge of women in comedy -- not just the challenge of for woman in comedy, but the challenge faced by their male counterparts.
Like it or not, women are treated differently. I'm not completely sure why, but I can speculate. One reason is that we, the audience, expect women to be treated differently. Though collectively women and men are treated more similarly than in the past, there remains a clear difference in expectations by the audience.
Jokes at women's expense are not considered funny, and are often considered rude. (Wife jokes remain an exception.) When's the last time you've seen a commercial that made fun of the stupidity of a woman, versus a man? I'm not complaining about it -- just observing that, by and large, we feel far more comfortable in making (white) men the buffons now than in ridiculing a woman in an advertisement.
Of course, the expectations for what a woman can do comedically are different from what most think men can do. For whatever reasons, when Louis CK talks about how shitty his daughter is, it works. But if a female comic did the same, it seems... different. Is this my (and our collective) gender double-standard? Do I somehow need or require women to be more nurturing, loving, and less funny? I don't know. But I don't think that's the dominant factor here -- it has to do more with how the cast feels they can treat her, and not about our audience expectations.
I could be wrong -- I haven't checked out her comedy, and maybe she's really vulgar. Joe Rogan is hilariously filthy as a stand-up, but usually plays it straight as a TV host. Perhaps Tyler is getting pretty strict guidance from the producers about what is and is not acceptable.
Carol Burnett somehow managed to be really funny. I remember, as a kid, quite dimly, the Carol Burnett show. But she was perhaps helped by the fact that she was the star. Lucille Ball also was funny, though she did keep within the expectations of her time.
In any event, I'm inclined to think that a lot of the chemistry lacking between Aisha Tyler and the rest of the Whose Line Is It Anyway? cast has to do with uncertainty or discomfort about how much the cast can pick on her. They can't call her fat. They can't pan her for a terrible movie she starred in. She is attractive and bright. These old guys probably, if anything, instictively want to protect her, not put her up for ridicule. And even if they did poke fun at her, would it seem fair? Even if, intellectually, we believed she could take it, would we really, on an emotional level, find humor in older men making a joke at her expense?
I haven't even touched on race yet. Could Colin Mochrie or Ryan Stiles really make a joke about her and feel comfortable about it on a racial level? I've seen enough of the old (American) Whose Line Is It, Anyway? to remember a few moments when Drew made some slightly off-color racial jokes with Wayne Brady. To Brady's credit, he managed to play them off as if they weren't a big deal -- and, I'm assuming, they weren't.
We've seen this evolution in TV commercials. At the moment, it's pretty much a given that, if the commercial involves a couple, it's only safe to make fun of the husband. Better yet, it's only safe to make fun of white guys as a bit buffonish. Maybe it's the legacy of Homer Simpson and Al Bundy, which underlined (but did not incite, for that ship had already sailed) the rise of the father as an object of ridicule and humor.
A decade ago, Drew Carey was the perfect whipping boy of sorts. He was a white male, fat, wealthy, had geeky glasses, a great fake-pissed off look, and an attitude that made it clear he was willing to be ridiculous. He even had the middle name Allison! He didn't take himself too seriously. And although not a gifted improviser, he made his relatively amateurish participation doubly hilarious by being adorably self-conscious about his lack of proficiency. It's fun to laugh at him in the same way that it's fun to laugh at Louis CK -- these are guys that look like the guys we could (and did) make fun of growing up. And yet it's fun to laugh with them because they have an underdog aura that makes us cheer when the boy does good.
I don't know what this means for Aisha Tyler and the Whose Line Is It Anyway? cast. She enjoys the skits and the off-color jokes. But she does seem more like an audience member than a quasi-participant. There's no banter. What could they joke about? Youth? That's perhaps a safer bet than anything remotely touching gender or race, but even that could come across as looking chauvinistic -- the old men telling the young woman how the world really is.
Maybe they just don't know each other well enough. They are different generations. Aisha spent some time hosting, which, while not unrelated to sitcom/improv, is a different world. For similar reasons, maybe this is why Joe Rogan wouldn't be a great host for a comedy show, despite his career as a stand-up -- too much time doing other things in television, and hanging out with a social group far different from the improv/stand-up circuit.
It's also worth noting that the first American Whose Line show did start with a British host, later to be replaced by Drew Carey. Maybe every show needs a season or so to test things out and decide what works, and what doesn't.
Anyway, I will try to catch some more of the newer episodes. If I feel like it, maybe I'll tackle more of the differences between the previous and current incarnation, and speculate as to its success.
Like it or not, women are treated differently. I'm not completely sure why, but I can speculate. One reason is that we, the audience, expect women to be treated differently. Though collectively women and men are treated more similarly than in the past, there remains a clear difference in expectations by the audience.
Jokes at women's expense are not considered funny, and are often considered rude. (Wife jokes remain an exception.) When's the last time you've seen a commercial that made fun of the stupidity of a woman, versus a man? I'm not complaining about it -- just observing that, by and large, we feel far more comfortable in making (white) men the buffons now than in ridiculing a woman in an advertisement.
Of course, the expectations for what a woman can do comedically are different from what most think men can do. For whatever reasons, when Louis CK talks about how shitty his daughter is, it works. But if a female comic did the same, it seems... different. Is this my (and our collective) gender double-standard? Do I somehow need or require women to be more nurturing, loving, and less funny? I don't know. But I don't think that's the dominant factor here -- it has to do more with how the cast feels they can treat her, and not about our audience expectations.
I could be wrong -- I haven't checked out her comedy, and maybe she's really vulgar. Joe Rogan is hilariously filthy as a stand-up, but usually plays it straight as a TV host. Perhaps Tyler is getting pretty strict guidance from the producers about what is and is not acceptable.
Carol Burnett somehow managed to be really funny. I remember, as a kid, quite dimly, the Carol Burnett show. But she was perhaps helped by the fact that she was the star. Lucille Ball also was funny, though she did keep within the expectations of her time.
In any event, I'm inclined to think that a lot of the chemistry lacking between Aisha Tyler and the rest of the Whose Line Is It Anyway? cast has to do with uncertainty or discomfort about how much the cast can pick on her. They can't call her fat. They can't pan her for a terrible movie she starred in. She is attractive and bright. These old guys probably, if anything, instictively want to protect her, not put her up for ridicule. And even if they did poke fun at her, would it seem fair? Even if, intellectually, we believed she could take it, would we really, on an emotional level, find humor in older men making a joke at her expense?
I haven't even touched on race yet. Could Colin Mochrie or Ryan Stiles really make a joke about her and feel comfortable about it on a racial level? I've seen enough of the old (American) Whose Line Is It, Anyway? to remember a few moments when Drew made some slightly off-color racial jokes with Wayne Brady. To Brady's credit, he managed to play them off as if they weren't a big deal -- and, I'm assuming, they weren't.
We've seen this evolution in TV commercials. At the moment, it's pretty much a given that, if the commercial involves a couple, it's only safe to make fun of the husband. Better yet, it's only safe to make fun of white guys as a bit buffonish. Maybe it's the legacy of Homer Simpson and Al Bundy, which underlined (but did not incite, for that ship had already sailed) the rise of the father as an object of ridicule and humor.
A decade ago, Drew Carey was the perfect whipping boy of sorts. He was a white male, fat, wealthy, had geeky glasses, a great fake-pissed off look, and an attitude that made it clear he was willing to be ridiculous. He even had the middle name Allison! He didn't take himself too seriously. And although not a gifted improviser, he made his relatively amateurish participation doubly hilarious by being adorably self-conscious about his lack of proficiency. It's fun to laugh at him in the same way that it's fun to laugh at Louis CK -- these are guys that look like the guys we could (and did) make fun of growing up. And yet it's fun to laugh with them because they have an underdog aura that makes us cheer when the boy does good.
I don't know what this means for Aisha Tyler and the Whose Line Is It Anyway? cast. She enjoys the skits and the off-color jokes. But she does seem more like an audience member than a quasi-participant. There's no banter. What could they joke about? Youth? That's perhaps a safer bet than anything remotely touching gender or race, but even that could come across as looking chauvinistic -- the old men telling the young woman how the world really is.
Maybe they just don't know each other well enough. They are different generations. Aisha spent some time hosting, which, while not unrelated to sitcom/improv, is a different world. For similar reasons, maybe this is why Joe Rogan wouldn't be a great host for a comedy show, despite his career as a stand-up -- too much time doing other things in television, and hanging out with a social group far different from the improv/stand-up circuit.
It's also worth noting that the first American Whose Line show did start with a British host, later to be replaced by Drew Carey. Maybe every show needs a season or so to test things out and decide what works, and what doesn't.
Anyway, I will try to catch some more of the newer episodes. If I feel like it, maybe I'll tackle more of the differences between the previous and current incarnation, and speculate as to its success.
Arete
I bake only one thing: pineapple upside-down cake. It's not quite from scratch -- it's based off a yellow cake mix. But by all accounts it's pretty good. (It is sugar and butter.)
I have made this cake over a hundred times. The recipe comes from a kindly churchwoman, Joanne, who once advised me that most cooks find ways to make it easy on themselves. Although accoplished at making things "from scratch", Joanne is a practical person who doesn't value the artificiality inherent in a cultlike worship of authenticity.
Even then, failure is possible, and should be expected.
I have made this cake over a hundred times. The recipe comes from a kindly churchwoman, Joanne, who once advised me that most cooks find ways to make it easy on themselves. Although accoplished at making things "from scratch", Joanne is a practical person who doesn't value the artificiality inherent in a cultlike worship of authenticity.
Today, after making it successfully and error-free for, say, the last 60 times, I botched it.
While moving the pan onto the oven grate, I accidentally splashed a tiny bit of batter into the bottom of the oven. Perhaps because I'm a somewhat inexperienced cook, I didn't realize how quickly this would turn into a terrible situation. (My mother, who is presumably far more proficient in cooking, saw this and also didn't think anything of it.) I set the timer ( to precisely 34 minutes, as experience suggested), and went to go work on some email.
After about ten minutes, my mother alerted me that smoke was coming out of the oven.
I opened the oven, and was rewarded with a faceful of the worst smoke I had ever experienced in my life. It burned my eyeballs, and reeked like burning plastic. The smoke detector went off, crippling a third sense. After flailing, baking sheet in hand, to shut off the beeping, I fumbled with the vent switch.
The cake was tossed, and now I have to scrub the bottom of the oven. If I'm impatient or inattentive, I can look forward to injuring my sense of touch as well. If that happens, I might say fuck it, and eat some of the nasty half-cooked mess that was going to be my hundred-something pineapple upside-down cake.
I'm not mourning the failure; hell, it's just a cake. The church people will have to put up with a store-bought, substandard substitute.
But it did remind me that, even after a successful track record of doing something incredibly well, it is possible to have a failure.
After about ten minutes, my mother alerted me that smoke was coming out of the oven.
I opened the oven, and was rewarded with a faceful of the worst smoke I had ever experienced in my life. It burned my eyeballs, and reeked like burning plastic. The smoke detector went off, crippling a third sense. After flailing, baking sheet in hand, to shut off the beeping, I fumbled with the vent switch.
The cake was tossed, and now I have to scrub the bottom of the oven. If I'm impatient or inattentive, I can look forward to injuring my sense of touch as well. If that happens, I might say fuck it, and eat some of the nasty half-cooked mess that was going to be my hundred-something pineapple upside-down cake.
I'm not mourning the failure; hell, it's just a cake. The church people will have to put up with a store-bought, substandard substitute.
But it did remind me that, even after a successful track record of doing something incredibly well, it is possible to have a failure.
This wasn't quite negligence, or overconfidence as my mother so helpfully observed. It was inexperience with this specific type of failure. Maybe a touch of fatigue contributed.
Why does this merit a post? Why does anything? Maybe that cake is life, or work, or anything that we do often enough that we feel like we have this down, and, rightly or wrongly, however insignificantly, becomes a bit of our identity. Even people who enjoy the challenge of pushing their limitations and challenging themselves constantly have things they value and enjoy because they know how to do those things well... special activities that are comforting because they are familiar and mastered. And when those things get screwed up... well, it's unwelcome, and possibly forces us to reexamine the painful, impossibly vast gap between mastery and perfection. If the person is older, maybe it prompts him to think that, just maybe, he is Stevens from Remains of the Day, in denial about the decline of his powers and competence in the twilight years.
Or maybe it's just a damn cake. Mistakes happen, and there may be no more signifcant lesson to take than the vague prescription to "be more careful next time". There is some necessary tension between a pursuit of excellence and a tolerance for human frailty. Jerking back and forth between the two poles is disconcerting; allowing oneself to be pulled in both directions at once is the mental equivalent of drawing and quartering. (Would it be drawing and halving in this case?)
I love how the word arete means both "excellence of any kind" and "a crested mountain ridge formed by glaciers". It's a great metaphor: slow, grinding shaping that, after eons of great force, forms something unnaturally sharp and distinctive. It is natural, but not accidental -- it is slow and deliberate.
Why does this merit a post? Why does anything? Maybe that cake is life, or work, or anything that we do often enough that we feel like we have this down, and, rightly or wrongly, however insignificantly, becomes a bit of our identity. Even people who enjoy the challenge of pushing their limitations and challenging themselves constantly have things they value and enjoy because they know how to do those things well... special activities that are comforting because they are familiar and mastered. And when those things get screwed up... well, it's unwelcome, and possibly forces us to reexamine the painful, impossibly vast gap between mastery and perfection. If the person is older, maybe it prompts him to think that, just maybe, he is Stevens from Remains of the Day, in denial about the decline of his powers and competence in the twilight years.
Or maybe it's just a damn cake. Mistakes happen, and there may be no more signifcant lesson to take than the vague prescription to "be more careful next time". There is some necessary tension between a pursuit of excellence and a tolerance for human frailty. Jerking back and forth between the two poles is disconcerting; allowing oneself to be pulled in both directions at once is the mental equivalent of drawing and quartering. (Would it be drawing and halving in this case?)
I love how the word arete means both "excellence of any kind" and "a crested mountain ridge formed by glaciers". It's a great metaphor: slow, grinding shaping that, after eons of great force, forms something unnaturally sharp and distinctive. It is natural, but not accidental -- it is slow and deliberate.
I have met no true savants. I have met only people who, gifted, even geniuses, have won their excllence through persistent effort, focus, failure, and, perhaps greatest of all, desire. I'm not sure "hard work" is a useful description, but I suppose it applies, given what most people regard as work. If anything, Edison underestimated the importance of "perspiration" with his famous quote on genius.
If I make this cake well, it's because I have done it over hundred times, sometimes bothering to tweak and adjust, even experiment--yet still retaining the sound foundations of the mechancial processes of melting butter and brown sugar, draining pineapple, measuring (or eyeballing) liquids and solids, mixing to a proper consistency, layering the pineapple, pouring the batter, cooking to a time within the three minutes or so window bracketed by states of undercooked and slightly burnt, cooling an appropriate time (during which it continues to cook) and remembering to flip before the sugar and butter cool and congeal, causing it becomes irreversibly stuck within the baking pan.
Even with this, I'm not a cooking genius. I just make a damn good cake. People enjoy the end product, and that's fine by me. But most geniuses I know do, at least on occasion, get frustrated with a culture that sees only where they have arrived, not where they've been, a culture that also seems willing to find fault, or celebrate their failings or weaknesses.
I swear, my mother was slightly happy to see this cake fail. "Usually I'm the one who burns things on the stove." For some reason, it reminds me of a time when she expressed joy when I brought home a C on a 6th grade math test -- I think she was relieved that she had some evidence that I wasn't that different from her.
I swear, my mother was slightly happy to see this cake fail. "Usually I'm the one who burns things on the stove." For some reason, it reminds me of a time when she expressed joy when I brought home a C on a 6th grade math test -- I think she was relieved that she had some evidence that I wasn't that different from her.
It's just a cake. Except it's not. It's life. I need to do something--anything!--professionally in a way that mirrors the process of proficiency and mastery in making this single cake. It's time to let go of what I think (and what others think) I'm "naturally" good at, and just pick something that I care enough about to tolerate years of slow, unsteady (but hopefully, on average, increasing) improvement.
Of course, maybe the cake is more instructive than I think. Had I set out with the goal of actually improving the cake recipe from the beginning, it would've taken maybe only 10 or so tries before it reached the present state of quality. The process would've been slower and filled with more mistakes, but maybe I would've ended up with a better cake sooner.
But that wasn't the goal; a hundred-something cakes ago, all I wanted was something that I could do reasonably well. I suppose, in terms of jobs and relationships, that's okay too. At my heart, despite my scientific training, I'm not much of an empiricist. And as I mentioned before, even the most die-hard empiricist needs things that are safe and predictable.
Of course, maybe the cake is more instructive than I think. Had I set out with the goal of actually improving the cake recipe from the beginning, it would've taken maybe only 10 or so tries before it reached the present state of quality. The process would've been slower and filled with more mistakes, but maybe I would've ended up with a better cake sooner.
But that wasn't the goal; a hundred-something cakes ago, all I wanted was something that I could do reasonably well. I suppose, in terms of jobs and relationships, that's okay too. At my heart, despite my scientific training, I'm not much of an empiricist. And as I mentioned before, even the most die-hard empiricist needs things that are safe and predictable.
Even then, failure is possible, and should be expected.
I have a better sense of what arete demands at 30 than I did at any point in college or grad school. I just hope I'll be able to work half as hard as I think I did during undergrad, when effort, not brilliance, helped me succeed when other, better prepared and brighter people did not.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
A Crisis in Confidence
I'm no longer a scientist.
Oh, I try to be, sometimes, in conversation. I have pretentions toward rationality, and order, and organized thinking.
But let's face it -- I haven't tried to *do* science in years. And that's holding me back whenever I trot out my dilapidated resume, with past glories receding further beyond ken and relevance. I used to joke, "I look great... on paper." I don't joke any more.
Whatever I do -- and who knows? it might be vaguely scientific/engineering related -- I have to retrain. I have to organize my life better. I have to study even when I hate what I'm learning. I suppose this is what "adults" do.
Do adults also live with perpetual senses of inadequacy and anxiety? You know, the sort that isn't easily medicated away? Some of this might be partially treated social anxiety. But some of it is just existential angst, the product of someone who has been comfortable or discomforted enough that he has devoted significant time to thinking about life and significantly less time actually living.
I'm 30 now. That's the boulder now; that's the deadweight. I suppose it replaces other, even more destructive ones. But I'm conscious that I missed some chances -- chances to take intelligent risks, fail, and learn something good from failure. I'm afraid now, not because I've failed -- though I have. But because a part of me feels like I need a success so badly that I can't afford another fuck up.
This Korea trip has exhausted me. I had to deal with a lot of crap, crap that honestly hurt opportunities I had to get to know people better, to enjoy being somewhere new and different, away from the old, bad world that swallowed my child-self quick. (If you think that an allusion to a post-apocalyptic poem is a bit extreme, you might be right, but then again, we also probably haven't spoken much about substantive personal matters.)
Dad will be dead soon -- perhaps this year, perhaps this month. I've been preparing for him to die for as long as I can remember; he's been near-death at least 10 times in the last 15 years. But this one might be real. And so this might be the first time I'm really coming to terms with the fact that I'll be losing an excuse for my own failings. I'm not losing a father -- not in the sense that I like to characterize fathers. But I'll be losing a friend, a sometimes-dependent, sometimes-selfish, sometimes-loving entity that has been the Julius Caesar of my life -- absent, but often playing a larger role in the action and denounement than any of the living characters on the stage.
I've gotten lazy, and soft. I've *been* lazy and soft for as long as I can think. That comes from a belief that I'm more fragile than perhaps I am. Besides, one of the advantages of not having a higher sense of self-worth should be a more cavalier attitude toward personal danger and failure, right? So perhaps the right choice is not to try to restore my self-worth; it is to destroy it completley. Time to go sublimate into some cause or faith or group.
Geez, this is self-indulgent tripe. But writing is better than not writing. I'll delete this soon, probably, but I'll leave it up at least as a testament to the collective anxiety and frustration that many people I know are feeling at this time.
Oh, I try to be, sometimes, in conversation. I have pretentions toward rationality, and order, and organized thinking.
But let's face it -- I haven't tried to *do* science in years. And that's holding me back whenever I trot out my dilapidated resume, with past glories receding further beyond ken and relevance. I used to joke, "I look great... on paper." I don't joke any more.
Whatever I do -- and who knows? it might be vaguely scientific/engineering related -- I have to retrain. I have to organize my life better. I have to study even when I hate what I'm learning. I suppose this is what "adults" do.
Do adults also live with perpetual senses of inadequacy and anxiety? You know, the sort that isn't easily medicated away? Some of this might be partially treated social anxiety. But some of it is just existential angst, the product of someone who has been comfortable or discomforted enough that he has devoted significant time to thinking about life and significantly less time actually living.
I'm 30 now. That's the boulder now; that's the deadweight. I suppose it replaces other, even more destructive ones. But I'm conscious that I missed some chances -- chances to take intelligent risks, fail, and learn something good from failure. I'm afraid now, not because I've failed -- though I have. But because a part of me feels like I need a success so badly that I can't afford another fuck up.
This Korea trip has exhausted me. I had to deal with a lot of crap, crap that honestly hurt opportunities I had to get to know people better, to enjoy being somewhere new and different, away from the old, bad world that swallowed my child-self quick. (If you think that an allusion to a post-apocalyptic poem is a bit extreme, you might be right, but then again, we also probably haven't spoken much about substantive personal matters.)
Dad will be dead soon -- perhaps this year, perhaps this month. I've been preparing for him to die for as long as I can remember; he's been near-death at least 10 times in the last 15 years. But this one might be real. And so this might be the first time I'm really coming to terms with the fact that I'll be losing an excuse for my own failings. I'm not losing a father -- not in the sense that I like to characterize fathers. But I'll be losing a friend, a sometimes-dependent, sometimes-selfish, sometimes-loving entity that has been the Julius Caesar of my life -- absent, but often playing a larger role in the action and denounement than any of the living characters on the stage.
I've gotten lazy, and soft. I've *been* lazy and soft for as long as I can think. That comes from a belief that I'm more fragile than perhaps I am. Besides, one of the advantages of not having a higher sense of self-worth should be a more cavalier attitude toward personal danger and failure, right? So perhaps the right choice is not to try to restore my self-worth; it is to destroy it completley. Time to go sublimate into some cause or faith or group.
Geez, this is self-indulgent tripe. But writing is better than not writing. I'll delete this soon, probably, but I'll leave it up at least as a testament to the collective anxiety and frustration that many people I know are feeling at this time.
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