Failure to pace yourself.
12.2.21 #article #blog #kfo #thisisthenew.me #hardware #holiday #family #computers
I have a series of states that communicate to me where my headspace is.
In blood science (ok, dude), they can analyze the current about of glucose in your body, they can also test to understand what your average glucose level was for about two months. Getting a “workup” of your blood is akin to reading a computer log file.
I love photography. It is a way that I express and also take in the world. Photographs and video are a form of engagement and memory for me. If I’m not obsessively taking pictures it always means I’ve “tightened” up and stopping reaching out to the world.
I tend to load myself up with so much stuff. For a time I can really juggle everything and make it work. I inevitably though begin to mentally and physically wear out.
If we start to think about it in spurts though…Uhm. If we start to think about it in sprints. A computer processor can be greedy and inefficient with power and really crunch a lot of data. A computer processor can also be very economical and reserved. It will process and work well, even sprint(ramp up the processor), to try to chug through a heavy task, but then it will “ramp” down before overheating.
“As a baby someone cares for you. As an “Old” whatever provisions you hurled into the future are what you’re left with.”
If I can’t see to take pictures I’m maxed out. The free space in my mind that allows me to wonder and a imagine like a child, has no room to spread out. This is ok for a time, I guess, in the sense that this temporary sacrifice of part of my headspace is being devoted to crunching a lot of task.
Sprint.
When I would run The Peachtree Road Race I was always so excited. You’re packed in like animals going to slaughter. Everyone in their own colorful, synthetic swirl of moisture wicking fabric. How do you pace yourself at the beginning of an event where thousands of people are directly in front of you and thousands more are behind you. I run like hell. My first mile is thrilling, I barely feel it. My second mile is good about halfway through, then the klaxons start to go off, the adrenaline is gone, the sprint is turning into a unsustainable descent. Once I’m at mile 3 I’ve regulated to my normal pace, the problem here is that I’m only able to sustain that for about another half mile.
At mile 3.5 I’m always in trouble. Every body part in distress is demanding I stop. My heart, not the smartest of organs is just revving away, demanding fuel to continue. If we imagine our body like a hybrid engine. Again, the battery portion of the hybrid is highly efficient, it steps in when the ICE* is less efficient. Sitting at a stop light? Turn the ICE off and just let the battery do the initial work. Once your’e going down the road, the highly efficient ICE is going to go as long as you have fuel in it.
Now, let’s look at a different hybrid engine of sorts. The ICE combination of dinosaur juice and nitrous is a different story. In this instance, the sprint, those first few miles is the engine revved up to its maximum ability, and it is also a tank of nitrous which is being piped right into the combustion chambers, allowing the ICE to produce even more power, this is until the ICE fails catatrosphically cause you’ve stressed it.
You can use your nitrous at the beginning of a race, or at the end of the race, but you only have so much of it, once you run out you can keep going, but you’ve lost that peak power and further more, you’re running on reserves.
I am so excited I live the life of a faster more capable person, for a time. I then spend the rest of my experience beat down and exhausted, until about the end of the journey and this is when the excited is so strong, you proudly do everything you can to overcome your “let’s just survive” mind and you push yourself again. You walk through coal, you break the waves, you straighten your back and proudly do more. This is all going on inside your head, in reality what really happens is you take two or three very enthusiastic strides, go right back to about where you were before. You are more dignified, present, even excited again, the accolades, some part of them really are for you. You’re just making a good show, before your heart attack.
I don’t run the Peachtree anymore. I never figured out how to pace myself. I always die on the hill. Every year my heart (a slow dim witted fell), would muse aloud about our chances, and rattles a little more than it used to.
I can’t stop life.
I can’t stop this ride I’m on. It happens regardless of whether I’m pacing myself or not. I set up all these goals and efforts, to make money, to make moves, to prepare for the time when I won’t be able to work again. It seems like a small period of your life to have to send so many resources to care for things.
“As a baby someone cares for you. As an “Old” whatever provisions you hurled into the future are what you’re left with.”
I have failed more than I’ve succeeded. Life. Life experiences, where does the sprint power go? When do you pace yourself. If everything was Logans Run, your palm glows, you go out at the top of your game, would that be better?
It is winter time and we continue to tear away at the house, while building. What I have accomplished in this project is a feat. Staying in place while on the exterior (and interior), people tear and add to the house at the same time. This is a marathon, it always has been. I gotta stop with all of these sprints.
ICE* Internal Combustion Engine
#Journal #Pilot
11.30.21 #article #blog #kfo #thisisthenew.me #hardware #holiday #family #journal
#triggerwarning
This piece is a mess with no editor to be found…
I’m continuing on with a trickle of discussion about Thanksgiving, then I blather on about computers.
This year there was less. I spent the same budget I usually do, but there was less bought, less cooked. For reference to the exact current events. The recession is picking up steam. Inflation is at 6.25%, shit is not going well if you have money saved. If you’re financing shit, whether it is a mortgage, or say a car-for a decade, you’ll be fine. Hell, these days people are borrowing money to gamble on the stock market, and to buy bitcoins.
The rules have been thrown out the window.
There are a lot of bad signs around.
I don’t know how it all goes down… I mean, it hasn’t happened yet.
I also bought an intel Mac. To be clear It is one year since Apple released the M1 processor
Apple in November 2020 released the first Macs with an Arm-based M1 chip, debuting new 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini models. In 2021, Apple added the M1 iMac and the M1 iPad Pro. The M1 chip has received rave reviews for its incredible performance and efficiency, and it is the culmination of more than a decade of Apple's work on chips created for the iPhone and the iPad. ∫source: https://www.macrumors.com/guide/m1/
Previous to buying the MacBook For the sake of full disclosure, I bought the best portable that Apple had to offer, the sixteen inch MacBook Pro. It was a beast. I managed to keep it for 72hours, before sending it back.
I spent months wringing my hands about buying the 16”, then it took three days to realize it wasn’t for me.
#stopreading #gotonext
I’m in a weird place. I want a nice computer. I only every really seek out the computer that fits my needs. I’ve owned score of computers, only bought two, till now.
Computer 1 was an Acer Chromebook(A spitting knockoff of a MBP 15”), not my proudest moment. It served its purpose and drove me into the arms of a VPN, and left me about two streets up from the dark web, where I live now, hidden, sorta…
Computer 2 was the aforementioned 16” MBP. The cost was extraordinary, and thus I spent 6 months building up to buy a computer and kept it for 72 hours.
I don’t care what something costs if I love it, but I want to be knocked out, otherwise I’m very concerned about the costs. I was concerned about the cost to performance ratio. I was not knocked out.
The past always wants to eats its way to the future.
#rightnow #on the nose
I am on the phone with Deja. As this post lives and breathes, we’re in year two of the pandemic. It is going terrible, the worst combination of “back to normal”, meets “we’re not in Kansas anymore”.
Deja and I are also in year two of working at Reach. This experience is great, a beautiful swan song (?), to my life in IT. One last chance maybe to support an organization and get back behind a computer.
I’ve had a good run. I’m tired of working. I hope I was able to get free and I’m reading this post from some shady spot.
People are starting to die.
11.29.21 #article #blog #kfo #thisisthenew.me #hardware #holiday #family
People are starting to die.
I should reach out.
All the dictators are turning into kind old, cat lovers.
It’s all a bunch of bullshit, but they are the people I welcomed into my life. They are my past.
I need to let go of my resentments, before I find myself dancing on graves.
Oh yeah!
Thanksgiving happened. If I want to say anything about thanksgiving it is this…
“Balsamic vinegar will fuck up your gravy.” Go easy.
Your sister is a whore
11.21.21 #article #blog #kfo #thisisthenew.me #hope
I wrote something yesterday, but it just didn’t feel worthy of posting. You gotta have a standard and I didn’t feel it. This is in opposition go just doing it, which is the whole point. I did write something. It was fine.
Today it was fine. Yesterday it was garbage, and today I thought “This is fine, why didn’t I post this?”
There are hangups I am going to have to get around if I want to get on the other side of this…
The devil is in the details....
The remodel is getting serious. I have no breathless desire to document. Each remodel is the same, talking details out with your support network is fatiguing to your support network.
There are so many ways to do everything.
It isn’t fun…
The Girl at the Train Station
11.18.21 #KFO #thisisthenew.me #writing #girl #grl #train #atlanta #marta
The girl at the train station was ageless. I couldn’t tell if she was 14 or 26. She was seasoned with only a feint sense of wariness. She mostly was just making her way.
My memory is foggy on this one. Either I got a bug to walk to the train station for a meeting I had in town. Or it was the time when I left a meeting, hopped a train and made my way back home. Either way, I think I was out on business, and I had my RX with me.
It matters to be consistent
11.18.21 #KFO #thisisthenew.me #writing
Day 2.
The first rule of comeback club is get back to basics. You always want to strip it back down, and it doesn’t hurt to go in the woods, or get a place with no distraction.
Life doesn’t care if you get back to basics. Life isn’t really going to throw a cabin in the woods, or a chalet at you, unless you got the cash and time off for that.
Life isn’t a character though, if anything life is just the measure of your time you spent here.
life | līf |
noun (plural lives | līvz | )
1 the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death: the origins of life.
I know the definition thing is old hat, but bear with me, we are going back to basics.
First and foremost, my desire is to talk to myself, and then talk to you (“you” is officially no one, these days), and that is refreshing. As a child I had myself. Just me mostly. I was not a loner. I had friends, but most of my stimulation came from me, the relationships I did have gave me a break from me. Everyone needs a break from Paul, how much are you going to talk to yourself, or live in your imaginarium?
Wanting to make my second marriage work. Having ten years to be Ted Hughes to Jennifer’s serviceable Sylvia Plath was an effort for both she and I. Public relationships are a good show, but ultimately messy. We knew no better, we were young. I hope we grow to both forgive each other and our perceived wrongs and truly the wrongs we did inflict on each other. No one comes out of a failed marriage clean.
This isn’t what I meant to write, but I’m glad I did.
