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Posts

  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    Ludious wrote: »
    I wish our agency had gone to google instead of contracting out Exchange Servers.

    Yes. We use Exchange. But they don't even let us manage it. They let a contractor handle it. When a new email is requested it can take up to a week to get it created.

    And they went with third party archival via Symantec's email archiving.

    It's just like

    really? You chose the most inefficient route possible?

    It's like your goal was across a bridge and you decided to drive down the riverside, find a group of feral beavers, befriend them, slowly train them over several generations of beavers, get them to build a bridge, light the bridge on fire, swim across, and drown.

    omg

    I love this post

  • Form of Monkey!Form of Monkey! Registered User regular
    Vanguard wrote: »
    Do I need more dice? That is the question...

    Roll a saving throw against needless expenses.

  • descdesc Goretexing to death Registered User regular
    So today I realized my Ph. D is at a standstill, I don't have enough useful content to save it, and I sure as hell don't have the goodwill to expend on saving it, since you don't get to his point because things take a long time to do, you get here because nothing's working and that never changed.

    Or I guess if you holiday in Hawaii for 3 years, but then I presume I'd have more knowledge of volcanoes.

    So, by my estimate, I am done with this, since they're not paying me anymore and there's basically no chance of salvaging this. And it's taking an enormous toll in terms of mental health, motivation and marketable workplace experience.

    ...

    Am I over-reacting to something? I mean I literally don't have enough content for more then 2 results chapters by my count, and the laboratory I'm in is actively getting less well maintained by the day.

    I wish I had cheery advice. I don't even know what you should do when the problem is like this. Usually phd problems are "I'm burned out" and not "shit out of my control does not work."

  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    How does someone address burnout?

    I mean, other than drinking.

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    So, Conrad Black was let out of the pokey.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304746604577383863937811168.html

    Thanks, Roberts Court conservatives, for selling out justice yet again.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • LudiousLudious I just wanted a sandwich A temporally dislocated QuiznosRegistered User regular
    elm for the record I feel really sad for you but I have no practical advice as I am a community college graduate and thus it would be like Chirs Farley in Beverly Hills Ninja advising Roger Gracie on grappling technique.

  • OnTheLastCastleOnTheLastCastle let's keep it haimish for the peripatetic Registered User regular
    TL DR wrote: »
    How does someone address burnout?

    I mean, other than drinking.

    Can you take any time off? Are you burnt out from work or school / both / something else?

    I have a fair handle on what work burnout is like now and am trying to deal with it!

  • InquisitorInquisitor Registered User regular
    Apparently Japan will be shutting down its last active nuclear reactor this weekend, they will be entirely off of nuclear power at that point.

    Seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    So, Conrad Black was let out of the pokey.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304746604577383863937811168.html

    Thanks, Roberts Court conservatives, for selling out justice yet again.

    what is it like to be you

  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User regular
    TL DR wrote: »
    How does someone address burnout?

    I mean, other than drinking.

    Vacation.

    Seriously, you take a week and you stop checking email, stop taking non-essential calls, and go somewhere away from your life. It doesn't have to be expensive, and it doesn't even have to be away from your house, but somewhere away from your usual routine and all the responsibilities attached to it.

    When you get back from that vacation, pick an arbitrary time in the evening and declare it your No Business line in the sand. After that time, you are not allowed to do any business at all - don't answer emails, don't think about tomorrow's tasks.

  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Vanguard wrote: »
    Do I need more dice? That is the question...

    Roll a saving throw against needless expenses.

    I got a 9.

  • OnTheLastCastleOnTheLastCastle let's keep it haimish for the peripatetic Registered User regular
    I have an important business meeting in Boston this morning at nine o'clock! And I forbid you to fly us into some WHISTLESTOP MAINE AIRPORT!!! DO YOU HEAR ME?!!

    he he he

    Wow, best post. I so hope you're quoting the Langoliers.

  • LudiousLudious I just wanted a sandwich A temporally dislocated QuiznosRegistered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Apparently Japan will be shutting down its last active nuclear reactor this weekend, they will be entirely off of nuclear power at that point.

    Seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

    This has been a terrible human tragedy but the long term negative press it's gotten nuclear power, a system we should absolutely be flocking to (why aren't there like 10 reactors in the Nevada desert?) will never be used now is the real tragedy.

    Ludious on
  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User regular
    IMHO one of the greatest ideas Belasco and I came up with was declaring midnight the Close of Business for that day. We don't talk about parenting issues, we don't talk about money or bills or schedules or things we need to do for each other or the kids or work or anything business related at all. No replying to emails, no nothing except stuff tha tmakes us smile or is relaxing and mindless.

  • OnTheLastCastleOnTheLastCastle let's keep it haimish for the peripatetic Registered User regular
    spool32 wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    How does someone address burnout?

    I mean, other than drinking.

    Vacation.

    Seriously, you take a week and you stop checking email, stop taking non-essential calls, and go somewhere away from your life. It doesn't have to be expensive, and it doesn't even have to be away from your house, but somewhere away from your usual routine and all the responsibilities attached to it.

    When you get back from that vacation, pick an arbitrary time in the evening and declare it your No Business line in the sand. After that time, you are not allowed to do any business at all - don't answer emails, don't think about tomorrow's tasks.

    This was actually going to be my advice. And remind yourself frequently that life is impermanent and you aren't your job. Mentally throw up your hands, say fuck it, and have fun at certain points, i.e. every night after 7.

  • WinkyWinky rRegistered User regular
    Are you guys punking me with that Arma zombie mod?

    That looks so absurdly boring.

  • LudiousLudious I just wanted a sandwich A temporally dislocated QuiznosRegistered User regular
    spool32 wrote: »
    IMHO one of the greatest ideas Belasco and I came up with was declaring midnight the Close of Business for that day. We don't talk about parenting issues, we don't talk about money or bills or schedules or things we need to do for each other or the kids or work or anything business related at all. No replying to emails, no nothing except stuff tha tmakes us smile or is relaxing and mindless.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvdYly4A5W0

  • InquisitorInquisitor Registered User regular
    Ludious wrote: »
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Apparently Japan will be shutting down its last active nuclear reactor this weekend, they will be entirely off of nuclear power at that point.

    Seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

    This has been a terrible human tragedy but the long term negative press it's gotten nuclear power, a system we should absolutely be flocking to (why aren't there like 10 reactors in the Nevada desert?) will never be used now is the real tragedy.

    I fully agree. The reaction should be to make nuclear power better and safer, not discard it out of hand.

  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    spool32 wrote: »
    @Thanatos the Houston Dynamo is sucking again. :(

    I think it's the humidity. The ball doesn't fly properly something something physics.

    grrrr
    @spool32 They're definitely not doing great, but they've only played six games this season, and haven't had a home game yet. 2-2-2 is pretty far from the worst record in the league right now.

    Thanatos on
  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Ludious wrote: »
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Apparently Japan will be shutting down its last active nuclear reactor this weekend, they will be entirely off of nuclear power at that point.

    Seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

    This has been a terrible human tragedy but the long term negative press it's gotten nuclear power, a system we should absolutely be flocking to (why aren't there like 10 reactors in the Nevada desert?) will never be used now is the real tragedy.

    I fully agree. The reaction should be to make nuclear power better and safer, not discard it out of hand.

    But guuuuuuuuuuuuuuys, radiations!

    Seriously, fuck the anti nuke crowd. I hope they enjoy their moral superiority when we're fighting over semi trucks full of oil in the Australian desert.

    Lh96QHG.png
  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User regular
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Ludious wrote: »
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Apparently Japan will be shutting down its last active nuclear reactor this weekend, they will be entirely off of nuclear power at that point.

    Seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

    This has been a terrible human tragedy but the long term negative press it's gotten nuclear power, a system we should absolutely be flocking to (why aren't there like 10 reactors in the Nevada desert?) will never be used now is the real tragedy.

    I fully agree. The reaction should be to make nuclear power better and safer, not discard it out of hand.

    Look man. They're lucky Godzilla didn't show up already... asking them to keep tempting fate is pretty selfish.

  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    Wait, they don't have any le

  • OrganichuOrganichu poops peesRegistered User, Moderator mod
    sometimes i get really self-conscious about my hobbies. it makes me uncomfortable to really love something, and i think of the stuff that i've stuck with for more than a year or two and i go- is that what i want to be my 'thing'? i guess this is sort of an identity crisis. it is very challenging to decide how you want to be seen... and how you want to see yourself.

  • OnTheLastCastleOnTheLastCastle let's keep it haimish for the peripatetic Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    You guys are all for nuclear power, so I hope you like drinking from toilets to regain 3 hp and get 10 rads.

    *munches on some brahmin jerky*

    OnTheLastCastle on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    Thanks for the advice.

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    desc wrote: »
    So today I realized my Ph. D is at a standstill, I don't have enough useful content to save it, and I sure as hell don't have the goodwill to expend on saving it, since you don't get to his point because things take a long time to do, you get here because nothing's working and that never changed.

    Or I guess if you holiday in Hawaii for 3 years, but then I presume I'd have more knowledge of volcanoes.

    So, by my estimate, I am done with this, since they're not paying me anymore and there's basically no chance of salvaging this. And it's taking an enormous toll in terms of mental health, motivation and marketable workplace experience.

    ...

    Am I over-reacting to something? I mean I literally don't have enough content for more then 2 results chapters by my count, and the laboratory I'm in is actively getting less well maintained by the day.

    I wish I had cheery advice. I don't even know what you should do when the problem is like this. Usually phd problems are "I'm burned out" and not "shit out of my control does not work."

    That actually is a pretty good summary of the problem as well. The issue is "stuff didn't work" and so I was always encouraged to go find something which did. Which was easy - the lab does hydrosilylation and is supposed to be proud of it, it's just it turns out all of that - which took some time to do - is completely irrelevant to my initial goals. And, since it was supposed to be so well understood as to be routine, I don't have comprehensive analysis of it (although, we actually did a pretty good job on all sorts of things of that - it just doesn't fit with anything I was trying to do).

    So at the end of the day, my results, my "story" doesn't make any sense. After year 1, the obvious answer - which I recall suggesting to my supervisor - was that we should take the better understood nanocube synthesis method and see what else we could make with it, since that was well within the bounds of what we could do. But I had set out with intentions of nano-lego, my supervisor wanted nano-lego, and so instead I was encouraged to go after that. The problem though, is that particular goal was based on a whole lot of assumptions which pretty clearly weren't true at that point: you can't get nanocubes off silicon surfaces that easily, the "flatness" probably doesn't matter, in fact the entire underlying silicon construct basically has no influence on the nanocubes beyond being enormously attractive - under van der Waal's forces - to nanocube adsorption (nature hates flat things). And then there's the whole opposition to using fluoresence microscopy for DNA assays. I have no fucking clue why he was so opposed to this, because it is the technique to use for anything involving DNA, you get quantification basically for free, but my last gasp last year was me buying fluorescent DNA on my own credit card just so me and Bulgarian girl would have some. Around that time everyone suddenly got concerned about progress, thesis writing and reviews, so right as I took delivery I was strongly discouraged from further experimentation.

    So yeah, I don't think there's cheery advice to be had, I'm mostly trying to make sure I'm at peace with the decision - I have the unfortunate habit of not letting things go, and I don't want to be 6 months into unemployment, doctorate-less, and still thinking of what I could have done - the evidence against which is mostly that it's not like I wasn't trying to do these things for the 4 years prior.

    electricitylikesme on
  • DynagripDynagrip Break me a million hearts HoustonRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    HerrCron wrote: »
    The problem with 4x games is that their scope is appealing but 80% of the actual gameplay and thus time spent with the game is fucking dreadful meaningless tedium. You only rarely get the chance to do something exciting or fun; they are mostly bureaucracy and administration simulations.

    Interspersed with lovely bouts of genocide.

    at least, that's how I play them.

    (and by them I mean pretty much just Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri)

    Alpha Centauri isn't really a 4X.

  • InquisitorInquisitor Registered User regular
    spool32 wrote: »
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Ludious wrote: »
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Apparently Japan will be shutting down its last active nuclear reactor this weekend, they will be entirely off of nuclear power at that point.

    Seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

    This has been a terrible human tragedy but the long term negative press it's gotten nuclear power, a system we should absolutely be flocking to (why aren't there like 10 reactors in the Nevada desert?) will never be used now is the real tragedy.

    I fully agree. The reaction should be to make nuclear power better and safer, not discard it out of hand.

    Look man. They're lucky Godzilla didn't show up already... asking them to keep tempting fate is pretty selfish.

    Hahaha :)

    Hm, apparently without any of the nuclear power plants they are expected to be about 16.3% short of peak electricity demand in the summer. Man... I am going to be stuck in an apartment in the dead of summer with no electricity, I just know it.

  • OnTheLastCastleOnTheLastCastle let's keep it haimish for the peripatetic Registered User regular
    Organichu wrote: »
    sometimes i get really self-conscious about my hobbies. it makes me uncomfortable to really love something, and i think of the stuff that i've stuck with for more than a year or two and i go- is that what i want to be my 'thing'? i guess this is sort of an identity crisis. it is very challenging to decide how you want to be seen... and how you want to see yourself.

    so tell me, chuseph, what are you most ashamed of? *scribble scribble*

    seriously, for me putting away childish things was not putting away videogames or my love of ewok jokes, but the fear of loving those things in public and being myself.

  • PantsBPantsB Fake Thomas Jefferson Registered User regular
    spool32 wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    How does someone address burnout?

    I mean, other than drinking.

    Vacation.

    Seriously, you take a week and you stop checking email, stop taking non-essential calls, and go somewhere away from your life. It doesn't have to be expensive, and it doesn't even have to be away from your house, but somewhere away from your usual routine and all the responsibilities attached to it.

    When you get back from that vacation, pick an arbitrary time in the evening and declare it your No Business line in the sand. After that time, you are not allowed to do any business at all - don't answer emails, don't think about tomorrow's tasks.

    Much harder to do when the Vice President of your company calls you at 1030 at night (welcome to my Wednesday :() for a 3 hour internal conference call to deal with performance issues.

    I also don't get to make the Google decision, only people who have been with the company since the first Reagan term get to make calls like that

    11793-1.png
    day9gosu.png
    QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
  • WinkyWinky rRegistered User regular
    Organichu wrote: »
    sometimes i get really self-conscious about my hobbies. it makes me uncomfortable to really love something, and i think of the stuff that i've stuck with for more than a year or two and i go- is that what i want to be my 'thing'? i guess this is sort of an identity crisis. it is very challenging to decide how you want to be seen... and how you want to see yourself.

    stopped giving a fuck

    I am pretty awesome and the hobbies I take up are made awesome by the fact that I am doing them

  • GooeyGooey (\/)┌¶─¶┐(\/) pinch pinchRegistered User regular
    You guys are all for nuclear power, so I hope you like drinking from toilets to regain 3 hp and get 10 rads.

    *munches on some brahmin jerky*

    2011-03-11-Get-It-While-The-Getting-Is-Goop.jpg

    919UOwT.png
  • InquisitorInquisitor Registered User regular
    Winky wrote: »
    Organichu wrote: »
    sometimes i get really self-conscious about my hobbies. it makes me uncomfortable to really love something, and i think of the stuff that i've stuck with for more than a year or two and i go- is that what i want to be my 'thing'? i guess this is sort of an identity crisis. it is very challenging to decide how you want to be seen... and how you want to see yourself.

    stopped giving a fuck

    I am pretty awesome and the hobbies I take up are made awesome by the fact that I am doing them

    Well, more like you are just fortunate that your hobbies have an overlap with my hobbies. I made the hobbies awesome, you just get some of the leftover awesome from me, see? <3

  • Form of Monkey!Form of Monkey! Registered User regular
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    spool32 wrote: »
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Ludious wrote: »
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Apparently Japan will be shutting down its last active nuclear reactor this weekend, they will be entirely off of nuclear power at that point.

    Seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

    This has been a terrible human tragedy but the long term negative press it's gotten nuclear power, a system we should absolutely be flocking to (why aren't there like 10 reactors in the Nevada desert?) will never be used now is the real tragedy.

    I fully agree. The reaction should be to make nuclear power better and safer, not discard it out of hand.

    Look man. They're lucky Godzilla didn't show up already... asking them to keep tempting fate is pretty selfish.

    Hahaha :)

    Hm, apparently without any of the nuclear power plants they are expected to be about 16.3% short of peak electricity demand in the summer. Man... I am going to be stuck in an apartment in the dead of summer with no electricity, I just know it.

    Ask long-time Californians about rolling blackouts, and feeling like you live in a third world country despite being the world's fifth largest economy.

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Organichu wrote: »
    sometimes i get really self-conscious about my hobbies. it makes me uncomfortable to really love something, and i think of the stuff that i've stuck with for more than a year or two and i go- is that what i want to be my 'thing'? i guess this is sort of an identity crisis. it is very challenging to decide how you want to be seen... and how you want to see yourself.

    I worry about that too, but you know, these hookers aren't going to hammer their own heads in.

    Lh96QHG.png
  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Organichu wrote: »
    sometimes i get really self-conscious about my hobbies. it makes me uncomfortable to really love something, and i think of the stuff that i've stuck with for more than a year or two and i go- is that what i want to be my 'thing'? i guess this is sort of an identity crisis. it is very challenging to decide how you want to be seen... and how you want to see yourself.

    I often get burned out whenever I make something my "thing". I find it helps to have some things to rotate between should you ever burn out or find yourself too deep. Then again, maybe that's just the ADD talking.

  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    Ludious wrote: »
    I wish our agency had gone to google instead of contracting out Exchange Servers.

    Yes. We use Exchange. But they don't even let us manage it. They let a contractor handle it. When a new email is requested it can take up to a week to get it created.

    And they went with third party archival via Symantec's email archiving.

    It's just like

    really? You chose the most inefficient route possible?

    It's like your goal was across a bridge and you decided to drive down the riverside, find a group of feral beavers, befriend them, slowly train them over several generations of beavers, get them to build a bridge, light the bridge on fire, swim across, and drown.
    Odds are, they could get Hosted Exchange for cheaper, and you can create a new email address in that in about a minute.
    Ludious wrote: »
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Apparently Japan will be shutting down its last active nuclear reactor this weekend, they will be entirely off of nuclear power at that point.

    Seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction.
    This has been a terrible human tragedy but the long term negative press it's gotten nuclear power, a system we should absolutely be flocking to (why aren't there like 10 reactors in the Nevada desert?) will never be used now is the real tragedy.
    It would be one thing if the alternative to nuclear power was magical rainbows and unicorn farts, but it's not; the alternative to nuclear power is coal power, and coal power has sickened and killed way more people than nuclear power ever will.

  • InquisitorInquisitor Registered User regular
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    spool32 wrote: »
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Ludious wrote: »
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Apparently Japan will be shutting down its last active nuclear reactor this weekend, they will be entirely off of nuclear power at that point.

    Seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

    This has been a terrible human tragedy but the long term negative press it's gotten nuclear power, a system we should absolutely be flocking to (why aren't there like 10 reactors in the Nevada desert?) will never be used now is the real tragedy.

    I fully agree. The reaction should be to make nuclear power better and safer, not discard it out of hand.

    Look man. They're lucky Godzilla didn't show up already... asking them to keep tempting fate is pretty selfish.

    Hahaha :)

    Hm, apparently without any of the nuclear power plants they are expected to be about 16.3% short of peak electricity demand in the summer. Man... I am going to be stuck in an apartment in the dead of summer with no electricity, I just know it.

    Ask long-time Californians about rolling blackouts, and feeling like you live in a third world country despite being the world's fifth largest economy.

    Funnily enough, I have lived in California my whole life :)

  • WinkyWinky rRegistered User regular
    desc wrote: »
    So today I realized my Ph. D is at a standstill, I don't have enough useful content to save it, and I sure as hell don't have the goodwill to expend on saving it, since you don't get to his point because things take a long time to do, you get here because nothing's working and that never changed.

    Or I guess if you holiday in Hawaii for 3 years, but then I presume I'd have more knowledge of volcanoes.

    So, by my estimate, I am done with this, since they're not paying me anymore and there's basically no chance of salvaging this. And it's taking an enormous toll in terms of mental health, motivation and marketable workplace experience.

    ...

    Am I over-reacting to something? I mean I literally don't have enough content for more then 2 results chapters by my count, and the laboratory I'm in is actively getting less well maintained by the day.

    I wish I had cheery advice. I don't even know what you should do when the problem is like this. Usually phd problems are "I'm burned out" and not "shit out of my control does not work."

    That actually is a pretty good summary of the problem as well. The issue is "stuff didn't work" and so I was always encouraged to go find something which did. Which was easy - the lab does hydrosilylation is supposed to be proud of it, it's just it turns out all of that - which took some time to do - is completely irrelevant to my initial goals. And, since it was supposed to be so well understood as to be routine, I don't have comprehensive analysis of (although, we actually did a pretty good job on all sorts of things of that - it just doesn't fit with anything I was trying to do).

    So at the end of the day, my results, my "story" doesn't make any sense. After year 1, the obvious answer - which I recall suggesting to my supervisor - was that we should take the better understood nanocube synthesis method and see what else we could make with it, since that was well within the bounds of what we could do. But I had set out with intentions of nano-lego, my supervisor wanted nano-lego, and so instead I was encouraged to go after that. The problem though, is that particular goal was based on a whole lot of assumptions which pretty clearly weren't true at that point: you can't get nanocubes off silicon surfaces that easily, the "flatness" probably doesn't matter, in fact the entire underlying silicon construct basically has no influence on the nanocubes beyond being enormously attractive - under van der Waal's forces - to nanocube adsorption (nature hates flat things). And then there's the whole opposition to using fluoresence microscopy for DNA assays. I have no fucking clue why he was so opposed to this, because it is the technique to use for anything involving DNA, you get quantification basically for free, but my last gasp last year was me buying fluorescent DNA on my own credit card just so me and Bulgarian girl would have some. Around that time everyone suddenly got concerned about progress, thesis writing and reviews, so right as I took delivery I was strongly discouraged from further experimentation.

    So yeah, I don't think there's cheery advice to be had, I'm mostly trying to make sure I'm at peace with the decision - I have the unfortunate habit of not letting things go, and I don't want to be 6 months into unemployment, doctorate-less, and still thinking of what I could have done - the evidence against which is mostly that it's not like I wasn't trying to do these things for the 4 years prior.

    :(

  • OrganichuOrganichu poops peesRegistered User, Moderator mod
    Organichu wrote: »
    sometimes i get really self-conscious about my hobbies. it makes me uncomfortable to really love something, and i think of the stuff that i've stuck with for more than a year or two and i go- is that what i want to be my 'thing'? i guess this is sort of an identity crisis. it is very challenging to decide how you want to be seen... and how you want to see yourself.

    so tell me, chuseph, what are you most ashamed of? *scribble scribble*

    seriously, for me putting away childish things was not putting away videogames or my love of ewok jokes, but the fear of loving those things in public and being myself.

    well i guess the question becomes- for me- who 'myself' is. these just happen to be the things i've liked for longest. i don't know if they're really 'my things'. do i want to be emotionally tattooed by the stuff i do? maybe a lot of it is just habit by now. maybe i do jiu jitsu or play guitar because they're things i've always done and i'm good at them. people enjoy doing things about which they have a facility. it's affirming to be good at something. but i mean, i could come up with emotional sounding and involved explanations for how music or grappling or whatever makes me feel. and yet i'm sure i could equally enjoy any other number of pursuits. it is sort of like the whole 'is there only one 'soul mate' out there for everyone' thing. and i think the answer to that is an unequivocal no.

    so i feel a little uncomfortable when i invest myself, intellectually, in something i just sort of fell into doing.

This discussion has been closed.