Lost in Translation

1.

Yesterday, a friend asked me about something I’d come up with in late 2008: the Letter from Next Year. The basic idea is that at the end of the year, you write a letter from the perspective of you, a year from that point, telling the story of the previous year (in other words, the year you’re about to face). Then, you revisit and revise every so often, seeing whether the letter’s still in tune with your values and intentions, and making any changes – to the letter and to your life – that are necessary to keep things going the way you want them to.

You may be aware that at the end of the summer, my site was attacked by “script kiddies” and infected with a PHP script injection that put malicious Javascript on all of the index pages on my site. The only way I could get rid of it for good was to delete everything on the site and start fresh – and because I was down to nothing, I figured it was as good a chance as any to start fresh here. So my Letter from 2009 was no longer on the site. Thankfully, I’d made a backup of my blogs before I deleted them, and so I was able to track down the Letter and repost it. (You can find it in the links at the top of the site, or just click here.)

2.

Of course, half the point of a Letter from Next Year is sitting down at the end of Next Year and seeing how well it meshed with what actually happened. For 2009, I dramatically underestimated the effect that depression would have on me, and there were a few things that I didn’t anticipate at all, such that we’re in quite a different place than I thought we’d be now that 2010 is dawning.

• I never actually launched smalltownchef.com. I still have designs on it, but I haven’t figured out a way to do it that doesn’t a) conflict with any work I’d do on Nourish or b) require me to do much more experimental cooking than Holly generally allows me to do (she has a valid point; on our budget, if I experiment and screw it up, we have that much less to eat on for the rest of the month). Naturally, because I never launched the site, it’s not showing ads and doesn’t have a single reader, much less a 200-person forum or a cookbook-in-progress.
• I left Butler Hill in June when my contract expired. I stopped drawing a regular paycheck from Johns Hopkins on December 11, although I’m still on the books as a casual employee; I’m basically there for emergencies and in case they want to start up another web survey. I never picked up as much contract work as I wanted to, and the contract work I did pick up I tended to foul up in one way or another, whether due to depression, lack of skill, or just plain procrastination.
• Instead of writing, Holly returned to school to get a BA in professional and technical writing. She is writing professionally now, but it’s as a copywriter and marketer, not as a fiction/children’s author. It’ll come, though.
• Alex is in fifth grade, and while he’s doing well academically, he has a lot of social trouble, and we may have to take him out and homeschool him for a while until he gets over some of his anxiety.
• We did not move to the coast; we’re still right here in Richmond, much to our chagrin. Almost all of our friends have moved or are moving, and we’re still here largely to provide continuity for Alex and because Holly is finishing her degree. We do live in a different house; it’s much nicer, but at the same time a little more cramped because it has much less storage space. There is no separate study; Holly and I tend to sequester ourselves in a bedroom when we need space. And we still don’t have a dishwasher.
• To my dismay, I took up none of the exercise activities I wanted to in 2009, and thus have remained roughly the same size. I’ve tried a few times, but it didn’t really stick.
• To my further dismay, I’m not really writing, drawing, or playing music much these days either. I’d like to, but there always seems to be something else on my agenda that I need to do first, and when I do finish the things I have to do, I just want to relax and not deal with Personal Development. Naturally, I am still playing World of Warcraft, but I only have two 80s and one 70+, and I don’t play nearly as much as I thought I would.
• We never took those vacations, and we still can’t afford to fly.
• As for the income… I don’t think we made half of what I projected, and if we manage six figures in 2010 I’ll be astonished.

Oddly, I expected that that would be harder to write than it was. I guess I’ve come to terms with more of this than I thought. (Doesn’t mean I have to continue the patterns in the new year, though.)

3.

Even though 2009 didn’t shape up nearly like I thought it would, I still think Letters from Next Year are a good idea. They’re more pliable than resolutions, and they’re more forgiving of slip-ups and failures – and since you’re walking into them with the idea that you’ll be altering them regularly to make sure they’re still in line with your values and goals, they’re more useful than resolutions, which are yardsticks both to measure and to rap your knuckles. Letters from Next Year are also inherently optimistic; they’re the best-case scenario of what you want to happen, so they’re more useful for keeping hopes up.

Therein lies the problem: I don’t actually know what I want 2010 to look like, at this point. So much is in flux that I could end up anywhere, and I have no idea which direction I want to face. I’m going to have to think on this year’s letter for a while. Hopefully I’ll have it up by the end of the week. In the meantime, if this has inspired you to write your own letters, please link or post them here in the comments. I’m dearly curious to find out what you want your 2010 to look like.

About two weeks ago I signed up for Freak Revolution. Freak Revolution is basically about a bunch of misfits changing the world, and not being judged for who they are in the process. “The world will not be changed by those who fit in” is the title of the manifesto (I think; it’s what’s on the cover, anyway). It’s a good cause and a good bunch of people, and I figured I might benefit from being a member and other members might benefit from my presence. I filled out the application and Pace and Kyeli, who organized Freak Revoluton, approved my application and invited me to hang out and introduce myself.

I haven’t been back to the site since.

It has nothing to do with whether or not I want to be part of the site, part of the movement. I do. And it has nothing to do with any of the people who are in Freak Revolution; some of my favorite people – Naomi, Havi, Seth (I feel like I should call him “Mr. Godin, sir”, although I think that defeats the purpose) – are part of Freak Revolution.

I just feel insufficiently like a freak.

It’s a strange thing to say, especially since I’ve largely been an outcast – whether or not it was self-imposed, whether or not it stemmed from my own social anxieties and depression – for most of my life. But it was never because I was weird. It was because I was a recluse and horrible in social situations – not Asperger’s so much as crippling shyness – and so I pretty much defaulted to introvert and outcast, because the other option was extroversion and life of the party.

I’m not the second-best practitioner in the world of a branch of yoga that turns your brain into a delicious, salty pretzel. I don’t forget to wear a shirt to an impromptu video-conference. I’m just me. I’m not weird at all. I’m not really much of anything. I have depression and social anxiety and a degree in Classical Studies from which the only fruit harvested is the subtag of this blog (Radices cocta simul illo cupisne?, and according to my generally-prevailing philosophy, that tells you just about everything you need to know about me.

But I’m tired of boiling myself down to nothing, like a hard-boiled egg forgotten on the stove. So tonight I’m going to list five weird things about me, and maybe that will give me the nerve to go talk to the people at Freak Revolution. Here they are (the weird things, not the people), in no particular order:

1. The pets outnumber us three to one. I don’t mean fish, either. We have lots of animals in this house. They’re generally free-range, too, although most of the dogs sleep in crates at night.
2. I have a degree with which I do not ever intend to do anything. I started college in 1997 intending to be a professor, left in 1999 to raise a family (this stemmed from a birth-control failure; readers, do not fool yourself into thinking that any method has a 100% success rate), and came back in 2005 to finish my degree. At that point I had two years left, and I could either finish in Classical Studies and get my degree in two years, or find a major that actually appealed to the 2005 me and take 3-4 years to finish. I chose the route that got me the degree, and graduated in 2007 with a BA in Classical Studies. Now I have eight years of Latin and three of Greek, plus countless hours studying ancient architecture, art, literature, and culture, and I have no real desire to ever put it to professional use.
3. I would rather help others than help myself. I put off getting things for myself in favor of other people getting what they want. I help with no expectation of recompense, and am always surprised when people want to pay me back. It’s not a self-sacrifice thing, or a holier-than-thou thing – one of the things that really recharges me is making other people happy, so I do it as much as I can, even when it means I don’t get something else that I want.
4. I used Apple’s GarageBand to create a fifteen-minute “song” of a thunderstorm. It helps me relax and concentrate.
5. I really want to write music for aquariums, planetariums, and zoos. I loved the National Aquarium, the Science Center, and the Zoo in Baltimore when I was growing up, especially the music they used to enhance the experience. I’d love to be one of the people writing that music. It ties in to another of my lifelong goals – to design theme parks and other educational/entertainment venues.

I still feel insufficiently weird. Naomi successfully faked being English for six months. Havi tended bar in Israel. I have cats and dogs, and want to make theme parks. Still, I guess it’s better than nothing. Here goes…

Here’s the big secret: I don’t know a goddamned thing.

This isn’t one of those Socratic “The only thing I know is that I know nothing” bits, either. Socrates was talking about logic and reason, and never taking anything for granted – begin everything by accepting that you might be wrong, and go from there. That’s a good goal, and it’ll get you a lot farther than blind dogma, but it’s not what I’m talking about.

No, what I mean is this: I have no idea what I’m talking about. Seriously, I don’t know why you people are reading what I’m writing. I have more than a thousand people (or robots or small dogs with evolutionarily-improbable opposable thumbs) following me on Twitter, and I’m making this up as I go along. I have no business giving anybody advice or speaking on any subject, really, because life has shown me that what I’m really, truly good at is taking a good thing and screwing it up. Seriously, if I’d been born with a silver spoon in my mouth it would have been tarnished by the time the doctor slapped my ass. (Speaking of which, I managed to screw up being born – I got stuck coming out, and the doctors had to push me back in so they could do a C-section. You’d think I would have taken the object lesson more seriously.)

On the other hand -

I suspect that most people in the world feel like this.

I don’t have any proof. I sure as hell don’t know, and there’s an interesting fallacy that makes us feel like other people are like us, so maybe I’m totally wrong, but I have a suspicion that the overwhelming majority of us feel like we’re in the tall grass most of the time. We’ve got a tenuous grasp on whatever it is that we’re supposed to be good at, and we fight and struggle and kick our own asses to live up to the expectations of other people, in part because even the people who feel like they’re falling apart at the seams feel like everyone else has it together.

So maybe I’m not alone in not knowing anything.

And maybe knowing that helps.

Reposted from Twitter:

For the last decade and a half I’ve been dealing with depression. This is not news to anyone who knows me well, but it informs pretty much everything that I do. Even when I’m cheerful I feel like I have a bowling ball in the pit of my stomach. It’s easier to deal with some days than others. For the last few months it’s been almost intolerable. The only things keeping me going are @copygeniusgirl, certain friends, and the knowledge that if I just let go I’d let my son and @copygeniusgirl down. Some days that’s only barely enough, and even on the good days I’m still mired in despair.

“Cheer up” does nothing; neither does “just get over it.” It’s amazingly hard to live with this, especially when I don’t have any kind of treatment for it. Twitter and blogging are my only outlets and lately they haven’t been doing as well at letting me out. I really don’t know what can be done to fix my depression or the pretty much constant emotional (and occasionally physical) pain I’m in because of it. Maybe nothing can. But —

I just wanted to say that out loud, here in the open where everyone can hear it. I’m tired of repressing my feelings for the sake of not offending. For the sake of maybe, possibly, losing readers/friends/clients/whatever because I’m not upbeat. I haven’t talked about it out of fear. And I’m tired of fear, of being MORE miserable because I can’t TALK about being depressed.

You can probably expect more out of me here now that I’ve gotten that out of the way. And to everyone who commented and backed me up – thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

My beloved Macbook stopped working this evening. It was working fine – I stepped away to get clean sheets out of the dryer, while one of the cats walked over the keyboard in my absence – and when I came back, the screen was black and the Caps Lock key was lit and wouldn’t toggle off. I couldn’t do anything but hold the Power button until the computer powered down.

Now it won’t power back up at all. No noise, no fans, no nothin’. I’ve tried resetting the PMU/SMC (remove battery/power, hold Power button 5 seconds, replace and start up), starting without the battery, starting without the power supply… nothing seems to work.

I’m going to let it sit overnight, but I’ll be honest: I’m not hopeful. If you have any advice, I’d love to hear it; otherwise I’m going to have to salvage the hard drive and – I guess – start hoping for a new one for Christmas.

Pam Slim, the author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, has a new article up on Open Forum: How to Choose a Business to Start. It’s well-written and speaks to my condition. I highly recommend it!

1. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

It’s not just for grade-schoolers anymore. College students – and beyond – ask that of each other, or of themselves, and it’s only half a joke. What do I want to do when I grow up?

The problem is twofold: first, we don’t seem to have figured out when we’re supposed to have grown up; and second, in our mid-twenties, we still don’t know what we want to do. Having lots of options is a great thing. Indecision, well, not so much.

2. “You’re not living up to your potential.”

I’ve read three blog posts in as many days about what Hugh MacLeod calls the Gray Zone, in which you’re “NOT fully alive– when you’re just bum­bling along, half-awake, sleep­wal­king through life”. This is contrasted to the Red Zone, in which you’re “crea­ting something, making art, making love, watching the sun set, wha­te­ver. When all your synap­ses are firing.”

The other blogs didn’t look at it quite the same way. Their Red Zone was succeeding at what you wanted to do; their Gray Zone (Justine even calls it a “gray area”, but the similarity is, I’m sure, accidental) was not succeeding because you didn’t try. (Let’s call the third, trying and not succeeding, the Black Zone, just for sake of reference.) And both of them had similar things to say about the Gray Zone: that it’s comfortable (it is), and that it’s self-perpetuating, because we can sit in the Gray Zone and say “I’d be in the Red Zone if only I applied myself and lived up to my potential.” It lets us say “I’m a winner in waiting”. Because we’ve convinced ourselves that we could be winners if we just tried, we don’t have to try. The potential is good enough.

3. Sum, Ergo Sum.

That’s Latin. (I studied Latin for six years in middle and high school, and for three more in college.) It means “I am, therefore I am.” It also means “just saying ‘I want to be’ or ‘I could be’ isn’t enough”.

It’s easy to underestimate the power that simple declarations can give us. We’re taught from an early age that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”, but the unfortunate converse of that is that we learn that “simple” words can never help us either. It feels right to say that just saying something doesn’t make it so. But it does.

A declaration – I am – is a line in the sand. It’s a demarcation: you have separated yourself from the Gray Zone and “want to be” and “could be”. You might say “I am an artist”, or “I am an accountant”; regardless of what you are, saying that that is what you are gives you the ability to put the force of faith behind it.

Nobody can say that you are not but you.

If you aren’t familiar with it, the Pareto Principle is simple: 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In the context of productivity, that can be read to mean that 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. The thrust of the idea – which has been a productivity darling for a while now – is that you should pare down to the 20% of the effort that’s generating 80% of the results. Sure, you lose 20% of your results, but you gain back 80% of your day.

Here’s the problem with the Pareto Principle: it’s missing a key statement, one it shares (or ought to) with Hofstadter’s Law. “80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes, even when you account for the Pareto Principle.”

In other words, let’s say that it’s true that 20% of your work produces 80% of your results. So you cut out the 80% of the work that’s only producing 20% of the results. Now the earlier 20% is now 100%, and the earlier 80% is also 100%. But doesn’t the Pareto Principle still apply? 20% of that 100% effort produces 80% of those 100% results.

As a wise woman once said, “it’s turtles all the way down.”

Today’s my 30th birthday. New decade, new rules, new me. (Well, new version of me. I’m not throwing everything out.) New blog, too; I’ve decided to purge the archives and start fresh. Pardon the dust – it’s still under construction.

In this kind of post, this is the point where I’d usually say “wish me luck!”. But since I’m moving into the future, instead, I’ll say Luck? Where we’re going, we don’t need luck!

(Title gag courtesy greyseer.)