11 March 2017

My schedule is a bit of a mess... I'm not creating the time for people....

Games, work, tutoring, AA, eating out by myself - yep.

...but no late-night conversations on the back porch... or dates over a nice meal... or phone calls...

...it's like I'm chasing money and/or experiences instead of sharing and learning from each other.

This irks me, a bit. Yet, I've always had "my head in the books" - those experiences feel more pure and refined and transmitable...

Alas... 1:26 in the morning! Not the best time to change tacks...

11 March 2019

 it's in the dark underbelly of the night that my mind grows sour...

looking at a computer as my only consolation, my only comfort and noting how empty and meaningless my path appears to have become... i type at the computer, hoping to somehow connect with other travelers - both weary and satisfied.

alas! no consolation... no people to converse with... only a cold, hard keyboard in the 2 a.m. silence, louder than a crypt...

part of me desperately wants to quit struggling, to return to old comforts or to draw a final curtain.

Perhaps the best end would be to crawl under the covers and hope that my body's weariness triggers an uneventful sleep; and that dawn will bring the casual companions again, who help distract me from the strange feeling that I'm only being tolerated, at best.

more than likely, though, I will turn on Spotify, and turn on my phone games and retreat into the fantasies that those media dangle before me.

Nathan P's #thetriggering : 9 March 2016

 Hmmf. I'm all for free speech, and open discourse, and such...

Yet I also think we should be aware of the repercussions of our expressed ideas, and be open to the idea that others might take serious offense to our ideas (and I to theirs)...

What might trigger me? Denial of climate change, unwavering acceptance of creationism, racial profiling... Probably a bit more if I dug deeper.

There are a couple of "friends" here on Facebook who I've been tempted to unfriend because their views are so opposite to my own; but censorship and silencing are actions based in fear.

So, this is my little offering for #thetriggering, Nathan, before I go to sleep. I might post some strange memes, after I've had a good nap. I don't have that many at my fingertips, though, so I might just like up the group posts, instead, if I find them amusing?

9 March 2015

 Part of me wanted to crank out a big old rant, when I got home... and I suspect that's fueled by feelings of isolation and frustration. I'm also getting really tired of most of my conversations being "3-minute monologues" - possibly the reason I like my game chats, and writers' group, and such... and even the Poems of the Day - because I'm craving some non-meeting based back-and-forth conversation.

I suppose one of my fears is to die alone and ignored, feeling like no one wanted me in their lives any more.

Thinking about AA, there's certainly been times, from sobriety year 5 on (at least), where I just feel like a pariah, like nobody there wants to associate with me. It's disconcerting. It makes me question if I really belong there. Coming up on year 10, it's made for some rough living these last 5 years.

To be honest, I don't really want to hear people come back and say, "Be of Service! Reach Out to Somebody!" and all those other stock solutions... Yes, they work if you keep at them, but they're not permanent...

OK... I'm starting to rant. It's just frustrating that late-night back-porch conversations seem to have evaporated since I got sober. Maybe Austin's outgrown the small community feel. Quite possibly, I'm not a great conversationalist, who can hold the attention of any size audience. Maybe the world's just gotten much more narcissistic with the preoccupation with selfies and what they're going to say. Maybe it's more of an American problem, and life would be better in India... Maybe I seem one dimensional to most people, without opinions on a wide range of interests - OK, most of the time, especially in offline forums, I don't speak up on a lot of stuff. "What does it matter what color the bloody dress is?"

getting bored with typing. just going to post the above, and see what happens. based on past experience: a couple of likes, one or two comments, and no response offline via phone call, text message, or good old face-to-face conversation...

so be it. speaking into the wind, and I hear one hand clapping.

6 March 2020

 I was trying to get a number sense about 100,000 cases since January...

Assuming the world population is 7 billion (low estimate), then 100,000 / 7 billion = 100 / 7 million = 1 / 70,000.

But, let’s back it up to 100 / 7 million . If Austin is about 1 million people, you could read that as 14 or 15 people in Austin would be “infected”... or you could say 100 people across 7 Austin-sized cities - like 100 people “infected” across central Texas.

Granted, the cases are getting out of containment, so it might be more accurate to estimate with 100,000 cases across China - a population of only 1 billion. But even changing by that factor of 7 puts an even spread as 100 people “infected” in Austin.

Now, have there been more than 100 births in Austin, over the last 2 months? Not entirely a good gauge, because there’s also been more than 100 deaths from other causes, over the last 2 months, in Austin. But, I suspect our birth rates are doing an admirable job of surpassing our death rates.

Still, infection does tend to follow a logistic curve, so we can expect a faster rate of infection before we start to see it slow down. I wonder, “Do we have enough information to accurately predict the growth curve of this virus?”

SXSW Expected 5 March 2015

Waiting for my first SXSW volunteer shift, this year, to get rolling... Looking forward to the next week and a half of movies, music, and more!

1996.. 1998.. 2008.. 2011.. 2012.. 2013.. 2014 - and then there were those years when French House put up the international bands, too!

Maybe I'm a little bit of a SXFan..

5 March 2017

 I went wandering down some old paths, and I got lost in the new growths...?

9Jack Edward Martin, Danielle Nobles and 7 others

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• Jody Bean

  I picked up some former hobbies, but in doing so, I've reduced my involvement in the recovery community. I feel stuck in this limbo, where I'm losing touch with old new friends, and have not made good connections with new new friends?

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  •  · 4y
• Jody Bean

  I seem to remember my natal chart claimed that my life would play out like this: a series of disconnected chapters....

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  •  · 4y
• Jody Bean

  and the pessimist in me is thinking, "No one reads what you're writing any more, so why do you even bother?"

  

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  •  · 4y
• Shawn Bean

  I'll challenge that last statement. I've seen plenty of folks comment on what you write; they've got to read it before they can comment on it.

  The only value in astrology lies in whatever extent it can help us to know more of ourselves. Its "theoretical basis" is absolute bunk; *I* have a greater gravitational influence on you than Mars does (run the numbers, and remember that gravity decreases with the square of the distance). The constellations say more about our pattern recognition capabilities than they do about our personalities. It can still be a useful tool in meditation, but it's a focus, an inspiration. "The stars foretell but they do not compel." Your life plays out as a series of disconnected chapters because that's what *you* see. Other people see things differently. Ask them; I bet you'll be surprised at what they'll tell you.

  Losing touch? Well, I can immediately see three easy answers to that: either get back in touch with some old friends again, or go out and meet some new folks, or just accept that maybe you need a little solitary time, right now. All three answers require a bit of courage, I admit, but none of them require more courage than you've got.

5 March 2018

 that feeling when...

i look upon my life, and i find it empty and wanting - and i question if it's all trivial consumerism...?

also, are my attempts to be "polite and respectful" more self-sabotage, preventing me from clearly expressing my dreams and desires? What rabbit was I chasing, or did I just get stuck in a hole?

Tricky levels of paranoia at play, reinforced when people try to tell me, "You're living life wrong..." because they fear the pain they see in my future..

I write this, knowing, from past posts, that it won't be... beneficial...?

My head takes in the garbage that it swims in, and it creates a model of trashy life. I attempt to be cosmopolitan, yet i am a straw man, with no infrastructure.

I woul study in sclusion, the phrsical world - the beautiful patterns all around us. Yet, fear again - will that put food on the table, and a roof to sleep in? fear again, that the peace corps is just a phatasm, blocked by the hard reality of medication.

I do not want to dwell on problems, yet their study might unveil so much more beyond me - no cut-and-dry single solutions. perhaps a crazily complex system...

and yet...simple solutions keep being shoved under my nose...