thehowe_v7.1

During an IM conversation earlier this evening, I made an offhand comment about the world revolving around me. It was a joke, but sometimes I worry if I really am too self-centered.

When I really think about it, the motivation for all of my actions is to make things better for myself. I spend my time doing activities that make me happy, or at least keep me occupied. I often neglect to do things because I don't have enough time, or because I'm just too lazy.

Sure, I have friends. Sure, I care about them. But really, why do I care about them? Why do I even like them? Because being around them makes me happy. Because when they are happy, it makes me happier.

Hell, look at this blog. I spend my free time writing inane posts about me, me, me!

Am I self-centered? Am I selfish? I don't know. There's a pertinent quote that is among my favorites:

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?" -Hillel

I think it sums up my feelings appropriately. If I do not think of myself first, who will? If I only think of myself, what kind of person does that make me?

Over the past 6 months I've started reading some good computer science / programming / software engineering blogs. Looking back over my own posts, I realized recently that my chosen profession is not a topic I have actually ever written about in any detail. A non-zero number of my peers maintain blogs where they talk about all kinds of interesting aspects of the field and projects that interest them. Why don't I do the same?

I've decided that the reason is that, while I do enjoy computer science, I don't love it. At least, not with the passion that some do. Sure, I enjoy the intellectual challenges and puzzles involved with coding. Sure, I can get excited about seemingly bizarre things like "elegant" code. Sure, I can get into long, drawn out debates about coding styles, algorithm design, and the like. But, and this I think is the key difference, at the end of the day I get to a point where I just have to stop. I like it just fine, but I can only take so much of it.

It's because I can only take so much thinking about computer science that I don't write about it, I think. I'm in school; I practically spend all day every day thinking about designing software and the various problems associated with it. In my free time, the times which I post to this blog, the last thing I want to do is think about it some more.

Does that make me a bad code artist? Maybe. Probably. People who have that twenty-four hour passion for all things programming are going to be better than I am, merely by the fact that they spend so much more time thinking about it.

On the other hand, I think that not being so obsessive is going to make me a better person. There are, after all, only 24 hours in a day. By not spending all of them thinking about code, I'll free up brain-time for other interests, making me, I hope, a more well-rounded individual.

• Apple cider on a crisp Fall day
• Finishing a particularly hard problem and/or project
• Spending an afternoon reading good comic books
• Looking at the stars on a cool, clear night away from city lights
• A simple meal of good crusty bread and good sharp cheese after a hard hike
• Canoing in real wilderness with fun people when we're the only ones on the entire lake
• Looking out over the ocean on a gray spring day
• Seeing the mountains appear out of the fog in the distance on a warm summer morning
• Doing things with good friends
• Stories with a happy ending - where the guy gets the girl
• Stories where two bad-ass bad guys are pitted against each other, to the good guy's benefit
• That part in a good story where you know the bad guys are about to get what's coming to them in a big way
• Seeing my parents & brother (after not seeing them for awhile)
• Stories with good humor executed well
• Traveling to fun places & sharing the experience with fun people
• Non-accidental physical contact with a girl whom I am attracted to (even better, with one whom I love)
• Looking at a girl whom I am attracted to (even better, one whom I love)
• Seeing children smile and/or laugh
• Funfetti cake with Funfetti frosting
• My mom's poppyseed bread
• Petting friendly dogs
• Sitting half-awake around the campfire on a brisk morning before sunrise, drinking something hot
• Walking outdoors in brisk and/or bracing weather
• Standing outside in a blizzard with lots of snow already on the ground
• Walking in the woods when it's "frosted" with ice & snow during the winter
• My mom's frosted sugar cookies
• Falling asleep when I'm so exhausted that I can't stay awake another minute
• Memories of Christmas morning, before I stopped believing in Santa Claus
• Sleeping in
• Having absolutely no responsibilities

Note: Anywhere I use the term "story", the point applies equally well to any story-telling method: movie, book, comic book, video game (esp. RPGs), computer game

I quietly added a link to the side navigation menu under the "friends" section a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I should probably mention something here, as the event it refers to is rather momentous. My old old friend, Nikki Wendling, whose family has known my family since before we were born, got engaged. Obviously, congratulations are in order.

As the story goes in my family, my parents didn't decide they wanted to have a kid until they babysat Nikki - so, as I've been told many times, I owe my existence to her. Our families didn't see much of her when we were children - her family moved to Ohio, so typically only once a year or so. Then in the summer of '98 our families started an annual tradition: Canoe trips into Quetico Park in Canada, just north of Minnesota. She, her sister Jess, myself and Troy have become much closer in the years since.

As always, news of people in my age group entering the "real world" is a little scary. Nikki's only a little older than I am (1, 2 years? That's horrible that I don't remember.), and the fact that she's engaged is just downright scary. Yeah, sure, people I graduated with are already getting married, but plenty of people I graduated with already had kids when we graduated, so that doesn't mean much. This is Nikki, whom I've known forever, and she's getting married.

Yikes.

I just realized, I'm a misanthrope . The description fits my general beliefs to a T. People are stupid, remember?

On the walk (more like hike) home tonight, I came to a fundamental realization about myself: the unifying attribute of my favorite activities is and always has been their function as a means of escape.

Consider my favorite activities as a child: action figures, dungeons and dragons, comic books, and cartoons. Whilst playing with my action figures I would construct elaborate stories and power struggles. I did not play to model some real-world system (as in "playing house" or whatever it is girls do with their barbies), but instead constructed alternate realities into which I could escape and control. Similarly, dungeons and dragons games with my dad provided escape to an alternate world. Passively, the more obvious examples of comic books and cartoons served the same purpose. I was never and am still not the kind of person that looks for meaningful real-world analogies in my comics and cartoons (and those kinds of people do exist). A good story set in a sufficiently interesting world has always been enough.

Moving into my early teens, my primary interests shifted towards reading. For me, reading has been perhaps my most obvious means of escape throughout my life. The hallmark of a good book in my estimates is one that totally draws me into its world; even in middle school the best books would draw me in so deeply that I would regularly lose track of three or more hours at a time. Many people enjoy reading non-fiction works, or analyzing the underlying messages of their reading. In contrast, I almost always take the world presented to me at face value, and exclusively prefer fictional works - the less like the real world, the better. On the other hand, literary worlds that are not sufficiently complex quickly lose my interest no matter how fantastical they are. All of the top works on my bookshelf (Shannara, Wheel of Time, and others) define incredibly elaborate fantasies that I can escape to for days on end.

I have many interests, so I won't enumerate them all here. Suffice to say, every interest of mine that I can think of is interesting primarily in its function as a means of escape. The logical extension of this realization is that, if I wish to institute any meaningful change in my life, I must present it to myself in the form of a means of escape. This explains why I have been so unsuccessful in adopting an exercise regimen that I can sustain. In high school, I enjoyed swimming because in a sense, when I entered the pool I was escaping to an alternate world where I was physically superior (interestingly, although I swam for a long time I never really enjoyed it until I got good at it). I have never enjoyed running, and now I see why: it is too rooted in the real world. How can I escape while paying attention to my aches and pains and the terrain and the weather and all the other factors that fill my mind when running? Similarly, it explains why I enjoy the comparably arduous tasks of canoing and hiking: they are quite literally escapes from my everyday life.

This is a fundamental realization, and if properly applied could have profound effects. I must consider the matter further.

So there's a story on slashdot about how introverts tend to exhibit more brain activity than extroverts, especially in the frontal lobe, which among other things contributes to judgment, problem solving, sexual behavior, and planning and controlling complex behavior. Okay, so how do you tell which you are? Here's a little help:

• Enjoy time alone
• Consider only deep relationships as friends
• Feel drained after outside activities, even if they were fun
• Good listener
• Appear calm and self-contained
• Think then speak or act

• Like to be in the thick of things
• Relish variety
• Know lots of people, considers lots of people friends
• Enjoy chit-chatting, even to strangers
• Feel stoked after activity
• Speak or act then think OR think while speaking

Gee, I wonder which one I am?

They say one is the loneliest number. I say it's the only one that matters.

...Look out for number one.

Long ago, on a bright spring day,
I passed a little child at play;
And as I passed, in childish glee
She called to me, "Come and play with me!"

But my eyes were fixed on a far-off height
I was fain to climb before the night;
So, half-impatient, I answered, "Nay!
I am too old, too old to play."

Long, long after, in Autumn time
My limbs were grown too old to climb
I passed a child on a pleasant lea,
And I called to her, "Come and play with me!"

But her eyes were fixed on a fairy-book;
And scarce she lifted a wondering look,
As with childish scorn she answered, "Nay!
I am too old, too old to play!"

-Francis William Bourdillon

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them. -Marilyn Ferguson

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. -Ambrose Redmoon

Just some food for thought. And on a totally unrelated note, HA! He finally caved! What happened to "blogs are for nerds," eh Tom? I'm never going to let you live this down, you know.