Dream Signs

I love this gentleman's blog for a zillion reasons, but the core of them is SO well summed up in this latest post, I just had to re-offer it:  

The Quitting Lawyer and the Despondent Millionaire | Mr. Money Mustache.

Excerpt:

The exact same world can seem like an evil or beautiful place, based purely on how you choose to think about it. And paradoxically enough, changing the perspective (and thus the behavior) of enough people can even change the physical reality of the world for the better. That makes “just changing your perspective” into a pretty powerful tool.

My biggest secret to wealth is realizing just how little money it really takes to lead an extremely rich life. But the biggest battle I face in sharing it is the different perspective that is programmed into the modern rich-world consumer: the perspective that simplicity is deprivation, change is scary, and effort is something best paved over with convenience.

That would speak to me anyway, but having fallen into this at-first-unintentional slimming-down of lifestyle myself, I read that and I want to cheer.  And cry.  And cheer some more.

It's been a weird week.  ;) 

To remind you who you're dealing with:

the allusive is my everything
(oh lovely self-slogan, all I need and a t-shirt too)

the illusive makes me sick 
(show 'em or go home, gods; this ain't dice)

and the elusive lifts me up 
(mind is the first floor, no buttons needed)

So remember:  They're not puns,

They're pulled punches.

I'm moving this week, so pardon my invisibility (I'm actually getting a TON done — like the final edits for the Second Edition; finished! …which means that if you'd like to preorder and get the discount, now is a great time, ahem…but most of it isn't visible, unless you happen to be peeking in my windows looking for an accumulation of boxes).  

However, the moving has raised an issue, an opportunity for improvement, that I might not have noticed otherwise:   I have too many clothes.

Not because I love clothes, mind you — I like comfortable, well-fitting clothes that meet the needs of my activities, but beyond that I'm all about the simple, cheap and easy.  However, I did learn to shop the way I think a lot of modern people do:  When you, say, realize you need a pair of pants, you go get one — or two or three — that meet the need you've discovered, and add them to your collection.  Which then means that eventually, even with some regular culling (which I try to do), after years of doing this, you wind up with a huge collection.  Mine filled four garbage bags!  I know I don't wear 75% of them hardly ever, but don't want to throw them out because they're perfectly functional, and I'm used to keeping them.

Well, that's enough of that — I've decided that I like an alternate clothing-system much better:  One decides of an acceptable amount of clothing, and then as things need replacing or one's needs change, clothing is replaced with better items.  Prefer black pants now?  Great, buy 1x black pants and let go of 1x other pair.  The wardrobe may change — and if you're lucky, the quality keeps increasing, as you let go of the least item while obtaining the best you can — but it doesn't grow.  You have a set amount that you need / want, and you stick with that.

So that's my plan — once I'm done with the basic unpacking, I'll decide how much clothing I need, and pare down to that; then, as I upgrade, I'll ditch the least/lowest item to keep the numbers constant.  

(Think I can do it?  Could you?) 

Here's my preliminary stab at a list of what I think I'd like to keep around.  I'm in no way suggesting that everyone should have the same size list here – this is just what I think (initially) might work for me.  And it's not all practical — note the high allowance of knee-socks! — the point is that it's finite.  If this list doubles but I can keep to it, I'll be happy.  (And still have less clothes than I do now…oy.)

PANTS:  5 pair jeans, 2 utility/not-jeans-with-pockets, 2 dress pants, 3 yoga / workout pants, 2 sleep/sweatpants, 1 fleece layer, 2 waterproof/camping pair, 3 technical/underlayers, 1 running shorts

SHIRTS:  7 t-shirts, 3 button-downs, 3 long-sleeves, 2 fleecy/hoodies, 3 workout tops, 2 technical/underlayer, 1 bulky sweater, 2 tank tops/sleepwear

FANCY:  3 dresses, 2 skirts, 2 business jackets, my silk taiji uniform, 1 pair nice pyjamas

UNDERTHINGS:  14 pants, 5 reg bras, 3 workout bras, 2 swimsuits (this category is already in line, I think; this is basically a listing of what I have)

SOCKS:  7 wool, 7 fun knee-highs, 3 cotton, 1 dressy, 2 pair tights

Lulu Blog » Living in a DRM-Free World.

Count me among the authors who feel that DRM did nothing to benefit us, and who're frankly relieved that it's on the way out.

Has the book been torrented?  Yup.  Does this upset me?  HELL no.

Think of it this way:  The Internet is the biggest communications medium in the world.  If you were an author and you went to the biggest public library in existence, where everyone was talking about and handing around books 24/7, and you found that yours hadn't been mentioned or shared at all, what would you think?  That it must suck, right?  

As an author, or really any kind of artist, you get attention and money and rewards for your work when people like it and tell other people about it.  Being that they're talking to each other in the real world, they have a much better idea how much of your work should be shared, and what should be said about it, to interest the person in front of them, than you and a zillion marketers could ever have.  If they think loaning a copy to their friend is the best way to make you a new fan — or that thumbing through it themselves is the best way to determine if they want to be your fan — then who the heck are you to argue?  

It's a sort of Taoist truth of sales:  Let people do their thing, and only intervene when needed.  I intervene, usually by being nice about it, when I run into someone who's borrowed by not bought my book, and almost always they turn into a buyer.  If I intervened by being a jerk, or prevented them from getting ahold of my work in the first place, guess what they'd be?  Yeah, not a fan, for sure.

Fortunately we're not alone, we authors-who-pay-attention; as this article demonstrates, publishers like Tor and distributors like Lulu are catching on that penalizing readers – especially penalizing all readers for something a tiny percentage of them do — is just plain stupid, and a world without DRM is hopefully right around the corner.

*yay*

Here's a great find recommended to me (and all polyphasic sleepers) by one of my co-presenters at Penguicon, the very well-mannered and well-researched Neil Funk.

I've used it for several weeks now and WOW, what a difference.  F.lux runs in the background, and on my machine uses next to no resources and has never caused any conflict or problems.

What it does is adjust the "temperature" of the colors on your screen — making them look less blue and more orange.  You tell it a "daytime" and a "night-time" setting, and it switches them at sunset and sunrise automatically.

Two things:  Bluer light makes your eyes more tired.  And temperature is something that you adjust to remarkably quickly — within a day, I had to try to see the difference; and after a week I turned f.lux off and found the resulting color blinding and unbearable.

My eyes have been less tired by a good measure overall since I got this software, and I'm calling it a great find for polyphasers everywhere!

f.lux: software to make your life better.

I spent a lot of time today pondering what belief in the primacy of the present moment really obligates one to, and what kinds of actions 3D thinking is likely to lead to, especially as one applies it more and more consistently.

In lieu of my actually getting around to the next youtube video, though, I give you this:  David Foster Wallace on what thinking and questioning your defaults (sort of the basic prereq to 3-D) obligates and leads you to.

Plus it has a great title:  This Is Water.

Everything happens in cycles — ebb and flow, wax and wane.  Whatever's good for you now, enjoy it, because it'll change…and whatever's bad for you now, endure it, because it too will change.

Enjoy and endure.

Advice that boils down to those two things being the major attitudes in one's life is, I think, guaranteed to be good.

I have trouble anymore, saying what's good and bad for me, in my "life situation".  Something feels wrong about making that call, and as is always the case lately*, when I get stuck I turn to flipping focus to 3D; and there's never any room there to judge something "good" or "bad".  I know that sounds weird, but there isn't; just like there isn't room in say, mountain-climbing to write a novel.  They're just…not compatible pursuits, 3D and normative judging.  Maybe one day I'll be able to explain why.

Things are nicely crazy though (you know I like them that way), and the end-result-of-the-moment is me sitting at my desk, exhausted after a long hard couple days without much room for naps, sipping scotch and watching Footy** and looking forward to retiring my brain into a silly book until a faceplant sleepcoma takes me for as long as it needs to — I'll happily crash tonight because gods, I need to heal up.  The underwater hockey tournament I planned on, but then I extended it by one game that was even more intense than the tournament and one massive taiji workout and one very tiring seven-hour work meeting that didn't let me nap to recover from any of the above and then I tumbled off my skateboard pretty well and added some scrapes to my already-pretty-banged-up body, and right about then I felt my soul go, "NOPE.  WE DONE, YO."  

Which is really quite a nice place to get to, as long as you can indulge it — it's miserable if you have to keep pushing through, but a downcycle in itself isn't bad, and just like an upcycle, it feels good to go with it, to do what needs to be done; to flow like water.  "Flowing like water" (as the Chinese put it) is extra-important when times are turbulent, and I think it's safe to say they are now — I'm moving in two weeks, just for starters — because pushing or pulling in the wrong direction and at the wrong times can do you so much damage.  Stress kills — not a joke.  Tensing up when you're hit makes you break bones, rip tendons; knowing how to relax and control your movements without unnecessary tension keeps you from breaking in a strong wind.  And other hilariously mixed metaphors.  Sh'up, I'm tired.  ;)

Other recent wisdom, which I don't necessarily have the energy to explain in detail right now, but which could be handy to other students of reality so here you go:

When you think you can't, take deep breaths and allow yourself to have the experience of being at your limit.

Always be as nice as possible about saying things that may make someone angry.  It'll make you more comfortable saying them — because sometimes they need to be said — and also minimize the odds that you'll regret the encounter later.

When in doubt, if you feel like laughing, do it.

Especially at your brain.  Laugh at your brain at every opportunity.

Peace

(is a verb ;)

-PD

*yes, I know I need to say more about this…I've been stewing on another NYE YouTube video too long.  Will fix soon, promise!

**I'm not much for spectating, but holy shit footy.  Think "extreeeeeeme soccer that's maximally fun to watch".  Damn Australia is awesome.

It's six a.m. on day two of Penguicon, and all I can say is "My, my, my." I'll confess to not being much of a con-goer thus far in my life; I've been to a few, but never really grokked why they were worth so much time and effort to some people.

Well, this one has changed ALL that.  This I can see giving up a chunk of your life to do and throw and be part of.  This place is nigh Shangri-La.

It's also been, so far, one of the biggest successes I've had in traveling while polyphasic.  The day before I got here was nuts, and I barely managed my 3 hours before catching my plane yesterday morning (and had had hockey instead of a nap the evening before, yikes); but I caught up on naps in the various airports (Nashville: crappy coffee but really comfy seats!), and then proceeded to run all over the place yesterday, culminating – thanks to the most amazing selection of scotch that I'm pretty sure has ever graced a hotel-party (these blokes named Nathan and Seth…I cannot even begin to fangirl about their scotch collections, and how amazing they were to share like they did!) – in a half-drunken face-plant into my bed at 2am.  I woke up at 5 feeling great, had a long conversation with Inverse Phase (I know right?!), and then wandered around talking to the various groups of hardcorers still awake (there are quite a few!) until the hotel agreed to give me coffee (which was a full hour before breakfast actually starts – they're awesome here, and extra generous to the convention folks on top of it).  

So now I get to sit and enjoy some quiet-time, consume much-needed calories (did quite a bit of swimming yesterday evening), and grab a nap somewhere before the first panel at ten.  LOVELY.

Perhaps figuring out Road Uberman (that magical four-hour cycle of drive + (gas+urine+refreshments+nap) that lets me road-trip pretty much endlessly) was a bigger traveling win in terms of sleep-hacking, but polyphasing at a con is pretty darn magical.  Add to its various pleasant effects the fact that I'm actually here to talk about polyphasic sleep, and voila, it's six a.m. on Saturday and I've already pretty much won this weekend!  (And I haven't even done any of the sleep-panels yet! — Though I have already had several awesome conversation about it with quite a few people.)

Onward!  More winning awaits.

In my stumblings today, I wound up watching this Nova episode on Richard Feynman:

Now, this is partly notable because I'd been pretty sure there wasn't much on Feynman that I hadn't seen or read already. I'm a huge…well, not fan; I don't think there can be a Feynman "fan" since if you know anything about the man, you know he wouldn't have wanted them…but he's one of my favorite modern figures, and a person (or story of a person I guess, since I was just a child when he died) that I've always fervently, grinningly, intensely identified with.

"Why" is an interesting question — I think it's for the same reason that I gravitate towards the other people I do, as well — and why a great many of them are scientists. I would say that it's because they prove that "Interestedness" (a certain breed of Curiosity characterized by openness, acceptance, and enthusiasm for the process of discovery) is a type of reasoning, not at all incompatible with hard logical reasoning — it sits, I think, underneath it, and gives it a totally different character; like the difference between painting on canvas and paper and cloth.  Painting logic on Interestedness is so, so different than painting it on, say, that closed-off, goal-oriented type of Curiosity (Industry, I guess we could call it).  Feynman was a genius in the sense of hard logic, but it wasn't his skills with calculations or experimentation that made him famous or that make him such an enduring figure, in my opinion — it's the depth of his devotion to Interestedness.

Interestedness is a "yes" state; it's Curiosity focused on the Path.  As Feynman says in the video, "You have to understand that every plot, even though there's a high chance of failure as far as the ultimate aim was concerned, would always turn out to be a big adventure…"  Industry, in contrast, is seeking to learn things for a purpose — to make a drug, to start a company, to win a prize, or even to do something really beneficial like cure a disease; Industry isn't always *bad*, but it is always goal-focused and so, in my ever-so-humble opinion, can never achieve the astronomical results that thinking like Feynman's can.

Anyway.  Enjoy the Feynman; it's lovely.  <3

Do you take this human to be your legal/social/emotional partner?

In lovely and in awful,

In hang up and in shut up,

In jump for joy and you'd better sit down?

Through months of grief,

Through nights of enforced insomnia,

Through agony and the ecstasy of its aftermath–

Through ecstasy and the agony of its?

Do you take this human for now,

Admitting your shared yesterdays

And accepting the unknowability

of your shared tomorrows?  Do you take them

unreservedly without guarantee,

knowing that you may fail or be failed,

that you may change or be changed upon,

that long-term illness, surprise sexual complications, financial devastation, sweeping personality changes

and one of you simply needing a break

are all well within your possible futures?

And more than anything else,

knowing that you cannot, in reality, ever "take"

or "have" or "hold" or in any way own another person –

do you accept the joys and pains

and responsibilities

of this love?

(Me too.  Let's make out.  ;)

Hey all!  I carry a spiffy tin in my always-with-me bag with basic first aid supplies, and it's come in super handy, and others have asked me about how to make one.  The real reason I'm posting this here, though, instead of just telling the people who've asked, is that I just don't think there's any excuse for people to not have basic first-aid supplies on them at all times.  If all you carry is a tiny purse, you can still throw an Altoids Mini cannister in it with at least half of what I list below; and if you have a laptop bag, you can carry twice what I do and add next to no weight.  (Your house and car should have their own kits of course, and those can be bigger and, if you prefer, just storebought; but for a personal kit, I've long found that hand-rolling one is a) way cheaper and b) much more useful, since you can limit it to just the stuff you really need / care about.  Most store-prepared kits contain a lot of things that you, in your daily life, just won't need; and are conversely missing some that you will.)

So let's do it!

PD's Cheap Easy Hand-Rolled First Aid Kit

Supplies:

1.  A tin of suitable size, preferably metal and at least somewhat waterproof.  You'll want to base the specifics of your tin on where you typically are and what you're usually doing…a hardcore hiker may carry an Otterbox; people with small bags may like Altoids containers.  Mine is medium-sized and says "AUNT GERTRUDE'S INFAMOUS INFLATABLE MEATLOAF" on it, which I think explains a lot, don't you?

2.  Once you have a suitable tin, you'll want to decide what you must put in it.  Obviously if you have specific needs, you'll want to work them into your kit — epi pens, allergy pills, etc. — make a list of these before you start, so that you plan adequate space and conditions for those things.  (By "conditions" I mean, do they need to be on top; must they be replaced or replenished often; do they need waterproofing; etc.)

3.  Once you have your "must have" things listed, choose from the below "handy things" that I carry and recommend and add those; some you may not need, or may choose to exclude for space-reasons.  To make this easier, I've put a star (*) next to the ones I consider dead important.  Clever tips for storage and space included, because I love you.  

• duct tape.  Simply take a piece and roll it up into a flattened tube — it can be stored in a "roll of itself" in any size for unrolling and using later, and is — this will shock you — super handy.  ;)  Alternately, and I love having discovered this, wrap a water-bottle, or your med-kit itself, or something else you always carry, in duct-tape; it'll protect the object as well as make for an easily-accessible stash of tape later if you need it.  (Oo!  Just thought of this today…if your tin has an indented bottom, like mine does, stick the flattened roll of duct-tape there!  Super-easy access and uses otherwise unused space.  <3)
• gauze* and a needle*.  I keep these together by wrapping the gause into a little square/flattened tube and securing it with the needle.  
• alcohol wipes* or other sanitizing thingy.  Not optional.
• bandages of some sort for small injuries or to cover blisters (I like waterproof band-aids for this, but that's probably becuase so many of my relevant injuries happen in a pool ;)
• bigger bandages, or butterfly closures, or dressings (I carry a few Tegaderms since they're easy to fit and mostly waterproof)
• your favorite anti-inflammatory* — I recommend ibuprofen, but that's a personal call.  LABEL all drugs that are not in their original containers!!
• any other drug you may need on the fly — for me, Sudafed, since if I'm even a little stuffy and need/want to go swimming/diving, I must have it.  If you play with fire, include a small quantity of aloe or Silvadine, for sure.
• a small tube of super glue* and a small amount of single-ply toilet paper or kleenex* — this is the best combo for securing a deep cut, once the bleeding has stopped, so that you can keep moving/working/doing stuff
• something for "bonks" — muscle and joint injuries, bruises, and generally ouchy things. I like salonpas; biofreeze or arnica are also good.  (Note:  Flying Tiger Cub Balm is actually my favorite-favorite thing for sore muscles / workout-related stuff, but I don't carry it since a) it's bulky and b) I can usually get home when I need it. I also carry a small thing of biofreeze since it's easy to fit and good for giving to people I don't want to cut my salonpas up for.  ;)
• a scalpel-blade* (usually the handle is too big — but I recommend having a real scalpel-handle, blades and a hemostat as part of your home (or bigger kits), because cheap and hella useful).  Wrap this in the gauze, tape it to the bottom of the tin, or secure it in some other way so you don't cut yourself!  I taped two, in their sterile foil packets, to the inside lid of my kit — using waterproof adhesive tape that I can re-use when I remove them.  Takes up NO space.
• at least one condom*.  Besides the obvious reasons to have one (which include possibly being a lifesaver for someone else in a tough spot!), they make a great waterproof barrier or germ-blocker (substituting for gloves if needed); AND they can be used as a tourniquet AND can transport water in a pinch.
• matches or a lighter if there's room (I usually carry them elsewhere, but here is a good spot if you've got the real estate)
• tweezers
• Emergen-C (I use this whenever I miss sleep or get around sick people and need to duct-tape my immune system, so I carry some on me since, well, often when that happens I'm away from home)
• Thera-Flu (or whatever your oh-shit-I'm-really-sick drug is)

Now, GET CREATIVE about space, and fit it all neatly in the tin!  This is kinda fun if you're a system-thinker and if you're not, just get a bigger tin or carry less stuff.  My little Meatloaf tin holds a LOT — almost everything above — plus it's fun to unpack in front of people and watch them go o.O at the clown-car aspect of it.  Make some sacrifices for quantity and usefulness — I took out my biofreeze to add another condom recently; stuff like that — and make sure you go through your kit periodically to add/replace/tweak things (a good time is whenever you run out of something).

…And that's basically it!  Some other hacks that I've run into that might be handy:

• Cover the whole thing in duct-tape, as mentioned above…or sail-canvas, or silicone sheeting, or any other material you often find yourself needing or wanting
• Alternately/ in addition, close or wrap it with a really huge fat rubber-band, a bunch of smaller ones, a tourniquet, a length of paracord or waxed thread, or some other handy fastener
• If you can't pick your tin based on the pocket you want to keep it in, or really like a tin that doesn't fit well anywhere, make a space just for it — use velcro or tape to affix it inside or outside your bag, or sew it it's own pocket.  This is different than carrying sunglasses, and it's awesome for it to have its own permanent location in your gear.
• TELL PEOPLE that you have a medkit on you!   Especially if you're out doing something crazy and they may not know.  I've been asked for mine plenty by people who would have just suffered along if they hadn't seen me showing off my inflatable meatloaf tin.  ;)

…And tell me (and others) here about your clever ideas, mods, and hacks for having a first-aid kit around!

(And a P.S. — regarding "other personal supplies" like a toothbrush, spare contact lenses, etc.  I carry those — a full complement of them actually, since I hate feeling like I *need* to go home just for some personal care thing that I could have easily handled with a little preparation – but I have them in a gallon zip-lock bag, so that when I travel, I just throw that bag from my everyday pack into my luggage and wham, done.  I like having my personal supplies separate from my first-aid ones too, so that if someone needs my medical stuff, I'm not handing them a bag full of tampons and my toothbrush (mm!).  That's all my $0.02 of course; do it however you like!)

1.  A glorious new friend pointed me to Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics….oh my holy entropies.  

2.  And there are multiple other glorious new friends too!  Seriously, the cycles, they burnnn…and also, of course, they really only appear in retrospect.  I can now look at the last two years — all the self-esteem work, the war on social anxiety, and the crazy-difficult divesting of harmful relationships; then the long struggle with loneliness and learning how to not mis-apply those feelings as time-bound judgments of myself; the first steps into having a few casual friends and how conscious I had to be about not reacting to the automatic pain their casualness caused me at first — and it seems not just right, but inevitable that this should happen now:  That the right people and the right things should be there at the right time, when I had done the work and gone through the process of becoming someone who could benefit and benefit from them.  

I always know when I've really managed to surf a good swell in life because my head fills up with images of spinning around (maybe this is what Sufis know) and the phrase KARMA YOGA MOTHERFUCKER!

There's a good and a bad kind of determinism, folks.  (Remind me to either write about this again sometime, or dig up one of the old articles…nah, maybe write it again; it'll be good for me.)  This is unequivocally the good kind, the kind where you create the universe and I'll be damned, it does result in one heck of an apple pie…because it HAD TO, and the mystery it seemed to you because you couldn't see all the steps in-between is okay, really.  All of physics is a bigger computer than you; you don't have to understand it all.  Anyway, you're part of it; you can function correctly without intellectually having every piece in your consciousness, just like a fuel injector doesn't need the specs of the clutch in order to do right by the car.  Intuition is really okay, I promise.

(Besides gleeful cussing, this is the biggest thing that winds up in my head as a result of major Wins At Life:  An overpowering sense that it really is acceptable to go with your guts, as long as you're honest about interpreting what they're saying (which is no joke, to be fair).)

So yes.  Sometimes — and I apologize to Christianity but I swear this is true — all the world requires of you is that you pause a moment and enjoy it.  Really.

Also, IT'S FINALLY SPRINGTIME — holy ice-crucibles this was a long winter — so if you've been holding out on a redolent grin from the hammocky parts of your soul, I highly recommend these coming weeks as a time to air it.  

…And that's me, lately.

I KNOW, RIGHT?  ::GRIN::

3.  Lastly, I owe a video something terrible, I know, I know!  I'm sorry!  I even know what this one needs to be about — and that may be part of the problem, along with all the new friends and also the big glut of work that I really financially needed which has me filling every crack of my 20-hour days (when I'm not staying up though naps drinking a bit too much with the new friends, which I've been doing about once a week now, whups but eh, worth it ;) — because I know what I want to talk about with some specificity, I keep putting it off until I can organize my thoughts better, instead of just plopping my butt down in whatever I happen to be wearing and spitting it out.  Hrmf.  Will fix soon, I swear.

Guess what, world?  I'm confirmed for Penguicon, as a speaker on two panels!  One is about sleep hacks in general, and the other about polyphasic sleep specifically, and they are of course both going to be AWESOME.

Penguicon is quiiiite possibly the coolest thing in Michigan and a huge chunk of the rest of the world besides; and I'm fortunate to be homies with a bunch of the people who run it (and now several more of them, like Ed Platt, who — get this — lives right near me in Boston and is running the Sleep Hacks panel at P-Con!).  Check out this incredible video my good friend Scott put together for the con:

Sadly, the book won't be ready by then — it's just 3 weeks away, and proofs from the printer take that long — but I WILL have some materials for pre-ordering and discounts for the con people; and in lieu of copies, I'm bringing a sharpie to sign boobs.

 –Wait, did I say that out loud?  

;)

A true (independent) contractor arrangement requires tons of freedom on the contractor side — for example, they can't tell you where you work from, or what hours — only what they need done and to what standards.

Real "contracting" is also a *negotiated contract* that usually includes things like agreements about how much notice will be given in the case of termination — completely different from that BS they call an "at will" arrangement.

Since the IRS requires that level of freedom if you're paying your own taxes, employers get around this by taxing you as an employee but putting you "on a contract" that you usually get no say in negotiating, which gives them all the benefits of having an employee without you getting any of the benefits of actual employment.

In essence, you're yolked like an employee — required to work times and durations that make job-hunting nearly impossible, chained to one location unless you can beg for some WFH time as a "perk", etc. — except you get the (often) lesser benefits and total lack of job-security that contractors get (and worse IMO, since a real independent contractor can line up other work while they're employed much more easily than someone stuck on 9-5).

Plus you're making employee pay, not contractor pay, which is always higher to compensate for the lack of stability and fringe benefits. Fringe benefits which, of course, are less and less meaningful every year — we're all paying more for health care, getting less (if anything) for bonuses and retirement, and never mind cushy things like transportation, leaves of absence or meals (which may sound luxurious for tech now, but weren't all that uncommon for office-workers decades ago).

And while *technically* your status as a "contractor" lets you terminate your employment at-will, with no notice etc., the professional expectation you work under is that of an employee — if you did just walk and leave everyone hanging, it would reflect very badly on you professionally if it got around.  Whereas, of course, the company gets the full benefit of at-will:  they could lock you out of the building after you leave today for no reason and with no notice, and suffer not a whit. So even where the arrangement is "fair on paper", it's not in reality, because employers have gotten such amazing free reign to cherry-pick which parts of the employee and contractor arrangements they like.

(Whew.  I've wanted to say those things for *years*, and it finally occurred to me that I can now.  And that I'm sick of seeing my friends get screwed, and my home profession gutted by bean-counters.)

Difficulty concentrating today.  

Strange bruises up and down my forearms from spinning (staff-spinning!  Am learning to spin staves and holy hellfire is it awesome).  

I tend to go looking for food when I'm tired.  (Yes, when you're polyphasic you have more chances to sleep, but you also have to miss less of them due to stress before you feel ickyshit.)  Thankfully apples are tasty and make me feel full, so yay lack of nutritional consequences.

I will be carless again for a while, it looks like.  I had gone a year carless, rather enjoying that you can do this in Boston and I'd never done it before, until I bought my last car six months ago.  That car (which darnit, I loved) was totaled in an accident this month, and I won't be able to afford to replace it for a while, so back to carless I go!  To keep it from being depressing, I will treat it as an adventure, a reason to get better at fixing my bike and skateboarding on the very lumpy streets and sidewalks, and an opportunity to learn some more cultural lessons.

I owe a video to, um, who or whatever I'm doing the videos for.  Better be quick before too much else builds up to talk about, I think.  One thing I'll put here to save myself some time there:  Physical exertion often brings about some degree of 3D; I think that's in part why some people do it, especially the really extreme/scary kinds.  BUT it feels TOTALLY different to do it on purpose, for example when you're swimming six inches from the bottom on your tenth consecutive underwater pool-length with twenty or less seconds to breathe in-between, and there's nobody there to make you keep going all the way to the other wall but you need to if you want to get better, so as a last-ditch effort you reach in and twist…and suddenly you're looking at the bottom of the pool in 3D, and your heart-rate drops and you make it the rest of the way clean and easy as underwater pie.

One other interesting 3D thing:  What you see in 3D, you remember.  Something about that focus writes things really, really clearly into your (or at least my) mind.  I can still count the dirt-grains on the pool-bottom, and that was two days ago.  Hmm!

Had my evals for taiji today.  Am doing okay — fundamentals getting a bit ahead of form, but it's warm out so I'm adding forms-practice in the park some mornings starting next week.  Had an AMAZING experience where the instructor is patiently explaining, explaining, explaining how to switch focus (I KNOW RIGHT) from using muscular force to allowing chi-force (later; that's a book and a half) to drive your movements, and I've heard it before but suddenly I get it, it happens, and the whole physical world goes FLIP HAHA and oh my shit, I feel awesome.  It lasts about thirty seconds, but it was thirty seconds I'd have gladly paid a year's tuition for again and again.  That…well, if 3D is a different dimension of attention, this was the corresponding different dimension of physical control.  (And think about how easy it is to control where your attention is — how little effort it takes to move it — versus how easy it is to control your entire body, and you'll realize why it takes decades to learn this thing.  The analogy is conjecture of course, but I'll stand by it for now.)  

And writing is awesome…I'm 7/10 done with my novella (yup), I think my epic poem about Detroit is finished (yeah I know) and I got an idea for an updated Desiderata-type bit of prose that's only about 1/3 finished but really fun (shut up hehe).  

The key to difficult times is knowing where your keys are.  Mine are in taiji, in writing, and in being able to communicate with people — having contact and conversations, and maybe also some drinking and snogging if I'm lucky.  ;)  So however tricky and tired and expensive and etcetera things are lately, I know that I'm doing okay, because I know what lights to measure by. 

May yours be known and shine bright, too!

Hey all — So, I got several more offers to write a testimonial for the Second Edition of Ubersleep, but only ever got two completed ones.  That's not enough to make the new section worth it, so if there aren't any more I plan to strike it entirely.  I'm not really wedded to the idea anyway, since testimonials are really easy to find online, compared to the other kinds of information I've tried to gather here.  But it did seem like it'd made a nice addition, to have a few well-considered ones.  While two isn't enough though, three seems okay, and for three I'd keep it.

Anyway, I hold in my hands the VERY LAST editable copy before the book goes to print.  If I should happen to get another testimonial (following these guidelines), I'll add it to the last round of edits and there'll be testimonials; if not, the section will be struck.  I won't be disappointed either way — it's up to you!

Oo, it's kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure of publishing, isn't it?  Pick your sections, Internet!  ;)

-PD

…because whatever it is, that's me today.  Everything I touch turns to Broken.

I wrote a long and relevant polyphasic post, and then the site broke — literally; I spent the rest of the day futzing with tech support just to get it working again, and when it did, of course it had saved a "draft" of the post with nothing in it but the title.

And I broke plenty else today, but meh, why go into it.  Not a bad day, over all; just the kind where you have to work hard to not curse and throw things (or to not do it again).

I've also been fighting off a persistent sadness today.  It's uncaused, I think — or rather, it's caused by Psychology; brain-stuff.  I can feel it keep trying to rise up, whenever there's a pause in the action of the day.  But unlike many other days where this has been true, I've been able to be pretty consistent with my application of 3-D focus.  And it keeps working.

Verb-check:  It doesn't *work* work, in the once-and-for-all sense.  I think you can't "be conscious once and for all" any more than you can eat breakfast once and for all — it's part of living, so it takes work as long as you're alive.  (And maybe after; but following Wittgenstein, thereof I remain silent.)  But it *is working*, every time, every second and minute I can keep it on; it does help, and it helps notably and deeply and thoroughly.  So that's worth noting, and worth continuing, even if it's tough to keep trying sometimes, when all you want is A Fix, Dammit.

There is no noun Happiness.  There is only verb-happiness.  Happiness exists in moments — which, rather paradoxically, makes it eternal; but it makes our experiences of it, including the work we do to achieve it, continuous.

Remember Rule One:  Keep Trying.

Even when you could really use a hug and you can't have one, keep trying.  (Or maybe especially then.  There'll be a hug eventually!)

-P

(And that other post, I'll resurrect later.  Sorry!)

Exciting things are happening too fast for me to write them!

First of all, the Second Edition of the Ubersleep book is nearly there, and I expect to be able to release it in May!  That's right, this May — in just a few weeks!  

(Uh-oh, that's three in a row…hang on, let me get these out of my system:  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

(OK, hopefully that does it for a few paragraphs…)

Ahem.  On top of that, after much futzing with schedules and whatnot, I've decided to take the opportunity afforded by the Second Edition to do some meeting of polyphasers and questions-and-answers as far and wide as I can.  I'm thinking Boston right after launch (since I'm here and all), some more of New England through the summer to give me time to plan, and then a serious road trip — possibly all the way to the West Coast — in the Fall.  We'll see how it goes, money- and interest-wise, but the few speaking engagements I've done so far have been a blast, and I would love the opportunity to do more of them.

Expect more updates on my road-tripping schedule(s) soon, and if there's a place you think I should go — a bookstore or sleep clinic or school or whatever — then please drop me a line so I can add it to my already-awesome list!

(Darnit, the bangs are back.  !!!!!!!!!!!!…yup, I don't think I'm going to run out of them this time…it's too exciting!  Grr.  Sorry, everyone!)

A lovely person I know and am proud to call a good friend says that the key to learning to stop being dissatisfied with your life, to cease always feeling like "the grass is greener on the other side", is to spend as much time as possible WATERING YOUR OWN LAWN.

Not only is this a great idea for a zillion other reasons, but it also produces some unexpected wins that can, I freely admit, be staggering at times.

Internet, I was *supposed* to have at least a dull, if not a downright crappy, St. Patrick's Day.  I figured I'd stave off the crappy by working — and that worked — but then I took a shot at something fun, not necessarily because I was in the mood for it, but because I try to keep "WATER THY OWN LAWN" as a general principal.  And it turned out I had pretty mad fun as a result, and walked away from a day I was mildly dreading thinking win win win.

In honor of the green of freshly-watered lawns, then, here is all the St. Patty's Day you should need until next year.  Enjoy!

(A:  Nothing is truly random.  ;)

Devoting a post to the ton of small wonderful things I've run across this week!

• MyFitnessPal:  I've been looking for a simple app/site to help me track basic calories-in-calories-out forEVER, it seems — and this one finally has everything I need!  Simple interface, comprehensive database of food and exercises, and it's free.  I've found that I do SO much better with an app like this around — without it, I'm liable to either overindulge in high-calorie food because I have no concept of what I've burned off in exercise today; or for the same reason, fall several hundred calories short of anything reasonable and feel like crap.  Tracking takes maybe a total of ten minutes a day, and it keeps me in healthy limits with hardly any other trying at all.  I've really missed it since DailyBurn began to suck, so finding this one is a huge win!
• Remojobo.com:  A simple site just for remote-friendly computer jobs?  YES PLEASE!  I wish it were bigger, but hey, at least someone thought of it finally.
• Twitter Bootstrap:  I've come to love HTML5 anyway, but as someone who's *not a designer* and often called-upon to "just throw up a simple page for…", Twitter Bootstrap has totally saved my bacon.  I can make a clean, simple, and VERY professional-looking site in almost no time, now…it doesn't free me from hiring a designer when one's needed (and why would I want to? the designers I know are pretty awesome), but it is a big improvement for those of us lower on the web-development food-chain who still have to do it sometimes.  (If moving this site wouldn't be such a pain, I'd be considering it — but I have enough to do, heh.)
• The Magic Work Cycle:  I mentioned this briefly before, but hoooooly wow is it awesome.  It's like sticking a firehose into your flagging motivation's tender bits, pulling out a starter pistol, and gesturing meaningfully.  I was having trouble getting "real work" done, what with so much of it and *also* so much else going on, but thanks to this thing (and the helpful website-companion here), I'm getting *crazy* amounts of stuff done, and not feeling overworked at all.  It's very, very simple:  You work 30 minutes, then you play 30 minutes.  Play is anything you wait it to be that isn't work.  The built-in deadlines and context-switching keep you focused, motivated and from getting stuck.  Simple and brilliant = WIN WIN WIN.
• The song "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield:  This is an old song and you've probably heard it — I hadn't, because for decades I couldn't bear music that wasn't in some way angry, and this is the pick-me-up song of the century.  It's goofy and it doesn't care, just like that friend you (hopefully) have who makes everyone feel great and doesn't care if that's not hardcore or "cool".  It's all over YouTube, it breaks the usual popular music laws by having competent and meaningful lyrics, and if you need a smile or a boost, I highly recommend it!

OK, playtime is almost up (seriously, magic work cycle FTW), so I'm outie — OH, but one last thing; I saw a proof of the new cover of the Second Edition!  Hopefully I can post it here soon, but for now I'll just say o.O!