"Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have to-day," she said gravely.
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| Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 | | 1:36 pm |
This will hopefully become onoing
There are a few broad rules that I'm starting to understand can be applied almost anywhere. I'm going to try to share them, maybe along with some implications and specific applications somewhere along the way. Life Lessons: * Everyone is human, we're more similar than different. * Every institution is made of and by people. The rules governing people govern disembodied entities too. Don't hide behind the institution. * Find what works for you. It will be different from other people. That's okay. If you've identified how to be most happy and productive, you'll eventually perform at a high enough level that being weird isn't a problem. * Capture ideas. Nothing should ever live in your head. Bad ideas and waste are not an issue, just put them down somewhere. *Learn from other people. Collective knowledge is always better than a single data point. It can also be wrong, so don't forget the earlier rules. In other news, I feel like I'm always trying to find the balance between production vs. consumption, and self sufficiency vs. interdependency. I think that'll be a worthwhile post when I can wring it from my brain. | | Thursday, December 31st, 2009 | | 8:38 pm |
The Top Ten Topics of the Year
One decade ago, I was confined to the house because the doctors thought that I would catch a cold and die. One year ago I was climbing up a rope twenty five feet in the air while upside down. Funny how things change. Year In Brief: (+) SANCA - Falling in love with a city, realizing what I can accomplish in a short time, finding out that my body isn't always that broken. Falling in love with bodies and realizing I needed to be a clinician for a while. Politics / Dawson - Weird to be thinking of things from when school was in session. Continuing to tutor, even post baccalaureate , has helped solidify my understanding of the world. There is no right and wrong, only different values. I'm learning more about how to work with people whose values conflict with mine without thinking of them as antagonists. Deb - Her classes helped me learn to take care of myself. I've looked a lot into ways to be happier lately, and I still refer back to my notes from her class. She helped me learn to be open to new ideas and to look for the wisdom in anyone's ideas, however different they may be from my own paradigm. And she helped me further solidify my desire to help people. Obama - Quite frankly, slow as progress has been, I have a hard time not feeling extremely lucky to have been at Oberlin, among friends, during the election of a president who thinks like we do. Which is to say, too much occasionally, and perhaps a bit optimistically. Neurocult - An opportunity to dive head first into the primary literature on cyborgs. Feeding my fetish did teach me the limitations of the field but has better situated me to see what the potential is (and isnt) for any new technology. I learned that, dammit, I can make presentations, and apparently people actually think I know what I'm talking about. Starting to think that being a trusted authority is a pretty important thing to me. Good to know that. Family - Returning home and knowing, thanks to Deb, how better to get along with my family. Learning to communicate more effectively, and teaching this to others. Learning when to let go. Spending time with my father, whose company I value tremendously but who I don't get to spend much quality time with. Friends - This has been a year of learning what friendships really look like. Of learning how to reach out and starting the long road to learning how to accept help. Of revisiting old friends, contacting distant ones, and reestablishing old friendships. It's been wonderful to spar with Miranda and to chill with Michael without needing to have a reason. It's been great to still stay in contact with Amanda and Shawn even with hundreds of miles between us. It's been great to see Anjelica and Aaron again and to see Martin when he's in town. Odd to have always been so afraid of calling someone up without knowing what topics I would talk about. Self reliance - Starting to get my feet, to learn to navigate a city and find new people. I'm figuring out what I like to do and how to find it. For learning the value of walking around a city to feel its pulse and the difficulty when those places are scattered. For learning how to make new friends and how to be less shy. It's a long road ahead, but I'm getting better at it. AYCO - It was a chance to learn just how many kids of circus there are and how much they can butt heads. It was amazing to realize that we are scholars of the field and that college circus is a unique niche. For establishing contacts who I very much want to pursue all around the country. And for seeing old friends from Hampshire and knowing they are truly kindred spirits. Physical Therapy - Finding my calling, and so quickly, is something I couldn't have dared to hope for. After years of wanting to be a doctor, but knowing better, it's great to find something that reconciles so many of my interests in neurology, neuromechanical interfaces, manipulative therapies, and making people feel better. There's some work to be done before I can get into school, but I don't think I've ever looked more forward to an educational program. (-) Why focus on the bad? ------- Thanks for the thoughts on the last post, everyone. It's probably not my last time to visit the topic. | | Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 | | 4:58 pm |
Is it a generational thing that so many people I know seem so confused about their feelings on relationships and kids? Is it just my social group? Is it entirely a function of our age or is this special because we're the first generation where, reaching this age, we don't have norms to fall back on. We're allowed to question the ideas that have been standard for centuries. Man will be breadwinner. Woman will stay at home and make babies. Man will work solid career. He will not complain but he will not be fulfilled. Woman will have no ambitions. She will sacrifice everything for the kids. She will not complain. They will stagnate and call this comfortable. They will give up on their old dreams and call this mature. I feel like the people I care about know we can do better. We just don't know how. Good mentors are few and far between and we have to be wary of throwing away all things traditional. Just because it was part of the old way and the old way in aggregate was bad, doesnt mean you can replace every individual part with something better. This is the curse of options. The difficulty of rejecting an externally imposed morality or a set of expected behaviors. If we're making it up as we go, not just following the crowd, is there a risk of optimizing? Is this just a weird manifestation of the perfect being the enemy of the good? It's easiest to just buy the ipod that all your friends have. The one that receives the most marketing and is always in your face. And if you never have to think twice about whether there's a competitor with better battery life, or higher sound quality (can your ears tell the difference?), than you never have to second guess yourself. You can say, "I've solved that ipod problem" and be done. You never have to wonder if what you have is good enough. I've often gone without an mp3 player for months because I didn't feel like I was done researching it. And in the end, was I really that much better off? I was certainly worse off while I had nothing. What happens to the first generation burdened with the ability to communicate to anyone, anytime to compare thoughts and stories. What happens to the first generation whose access to information is limitless. What happens to the first generation who doesnt understand why privacy matters or why some things are not to be displayed to the outside world. What fills the void of the conventional life path? Did we all really sign up to be trail blazers? | | Saturday, February 7th, 2009 | | 1:53 am |
Schedule
Taking: Macroeconomics Senior Seminar in Neuroengineering Computational Neuroscience Intro to Somatic Studies Auditing: History of Western Art Extracurriculars: Aerial Rope Tumbling Storytelling SPARK | | Monday, December 29th, 2008 | | 12:46 am |
I just attended two circuses in the last two days. One, Cirque Dreams, just toured on Broadway. The other hired me on to stiltwalk for them before the show from tomorrow until New Year's Eve. I didn't bring my stilts or my costume back with me but I'll decide tomorrow whether to use a pair of borrowed drywall stilts or just finish a pair I'd intended for a friend a while back and adjust the height a bit. The pants I'll make tomorrow morning from fabric intended for aerial silks instruction which "the kids didn't like" so it's apparently mine. And, if I play my cards right, there's a cape with my name on it in the costume shop. This is how life should be. | | Sunday, December 14th, 2008 | | 3:56 pm |
Good Stock
My father just qualified for the Boston Marathon for the first time. He decided that his goal was to be able to run it for his 50th birthday after years of setbacks and decades as a runner. Apparently, he fell flat on his face twenty feet from the finish line after 26.2 miles of running, having simply given all he had. It wasnt an injury or a misstep, just complete depletion of everything his body had to give. He stumbled across the finish line with exactly 52 seconds to spare. Through gusts of wind up to 30 miles an hour, he managed to complete the race at 3:35:07 (8:12 pace) and can say with the utmost confidence that he left it all out on the track. I couldnt be more proud of you, Dad. | | Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 | | 5:35 pm |
Friday's TGIF was great. It was filled with circus, and I spent hours both teaching stilting and learning acrobalance, something I'd been meaning to for years. It was also filled with distractions and, as a result, I left my backpack in Wilder Bowl. Today, it has been returned to me. Most of it at least. My notes, handouts, books, forms and pinkie ball remain along with my nalgene, labcoat, sweats, and ropedart. Ironically, they didn't take any of my prescriptions (not that they're abusable) but did steal my advil and maalox. While leaving my pepcid behind, which, like razor blades these days, is kept locked under glass when it's sold. Of all the amusing things to find missing, they stole my pens and highlighters specifically leaving my nail clippers behind. I'm still out a laptop, mp3 player, 8gb SD memory card, business calculator, and headphones but at least most of my stuff is back. If I could get the laptop back, I'd be completely content, but as it stands I'm glad to have what I do back. | | Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 | | 11:54 am |
To clarify, SPARK is the hip hop dance collective on campus. Just in case any of you needed a daily dose of amusement with that image. As for my progress: reasonably paced and I'm rather devoted to it so I have high expectations. I can do a beginning headstand, I'm working on a pike stall, have a small repertoire of top rock, and am learning the six step. That's just the first two sessions. Thanks for the wealth of responses to the last post. To clarify, I'm doing pretty well, not ready to crack or the like, but I did find it to be a matter of curiosity. I'll reply individually soon. | | Sunday, September 14th, 2008 | | 4:26 pm |
Realization
I'm considering becoming just a bit more prolific on lj these days, not that that would require more than posting every quarter or so. Mostly I just have time to jot a few key reminder notes down and lock em in a private entry until I can find a chance to make them into a coherent post. Which, evidently, doesnt tend to happen. For what it's worth, I offer my schedule below Chinese Thought and Religion European Political Theory: After Marx Cell and Molecular Biology Body Re Education Principles of Managerial and Financial Accounting Introduction to Entrepreneurship Neuropharmacology Lab along with SPARK, and the Circus skillshare exco. Finding time will, as always, be a challenge but I'm hoping I'm up to it this time. While a lot of this will be time consuming, no one task is particularly difficult, unlike all the semesters of upper level neuro courses or the experiment in two sequential econ courses at the same time. Small revelation from last night: I don't really have things to comfort me. No particular activity (eg. dancing, writing), object, book, movie, or other guilty pleasures. I've got spicy food sometimes, massage (self or otherwise) and not much else for when I've had a particularly rough day. It's always worked reasonably well to do things this way (though in the last few years, I've relied fairly heavily on a person or two for the same purpose) but I can't help but wonder if it makes for a slower release of tension. Gotta relax somehow. I am rather curious, what would you all curl up with / do after a bad day? What can be classified not just as something you like, but a source of comfort? | | Sunday, June 15th, 2008 | | 6:22 pm |
Steel Stilts
Over the course of last year, I'd started to forget that I was a stilter. Now that I've remembered again, I feel much more complete. To that effect, let me unveil the steel stilts that I'll hopefully use in the steampunk cabaret next semester. These definitely still need work -- I don't have treads on them yet, they wiggle a bit, I need to get used to the extra six inches, and the strapping mechanism for the knee should be modified -- but it's a proof of concept. And oh god the sound. Learned a lot working on these with my father and the steelworker down the street. Next time I'll try aluminum, I think. These are surprisingly not that heavy, though -- certainly a lot lighter than Eric's four footers. I'm really excited. I'll upload some close up pics later. EDIT: Now on facebook. See comments for link. | | Saturday, May 31st, 2008 | | 4:06 am |
Commencement week was interesting. In 10 days, I managed to: stop an attempted robbery on my house sprain my dominant index finger and spend a day in the ER to see if it was broken write a 20 page paper say goodbye to many of my friends and miss a few others teach eight people how to stilt try four foot stilts find out that a part of my extended family is in shambles create new friendships with alums and old Dallas acquaintances begin to trust more openly channel Tesla and Todd at the same time, more successfully than ever before and follow my 2+ year relationship with Aries into a hiatus I don't know which of these I'll end up expanding on in greater detail but it certainly feels like it's been quite the whirlwind. Now that I'm in Dallas, all I have to do is plan out the rest of my academic and career goals for the foreseeable future, finish the publication from my labwork that's still not submitted apparently, and stay sane in a city with no circus community. I'll be building collapsible stilts and creating at least one new costume so I can travel to places that do. I'll sleep when I'm dead apparently. I wish I could relax, but this is neither the time nor (more significantly) the place. | | Friday, April 11th, 2008 | | 6:37 pm |
A part of me thinks that what I've been doing at Oberlin lately is just hedging my bets so that if I do decide to run off and join the circus, I'll know how. And have a resume. ...and have attended workshops on finding insurance and booking and touring... When you can quickly understand the paperwork involved in running off with a circus, perhaps it's time to take a break. The real question is what constitutes a break at that point. | | Monday, March 17th, 2008 | | 10:48 pm |
Virgin Burns on Saturday: Catherine - ball Me - rope dart Becca - this rope dart Ray / Amanda - ever (using ball) Daniel Chenoweth - ever (using poi) Christopher - ever (using staff) Awesome. And I have a lot of video of the whole thing. | | Friday, February 1st, 2008 | | 2:57 pm |
| | Sunday, January 6th, 2008 | | 4:15 am |
Can anybody make sense of The Origin of Emotions? I think there's a social experiment going on, looking to see how people respond to something as poorly constructed as it is. It's fascinating that it's available both through amazon and for free in a "non printable pdf" on the same website. Perhaps it's a piece of overly subtle satire? Also interesting is the reviewers' response to it. Fascinating that it's not all negative. I found it initially via a paid link in facebook. Which suggests he's sinking money into sending you to the free download section of his website. Again, something doesnt add up. This certainly won't keep me up at night, though. | | Sunday, November 18th, 2007 | | 2:34 am |
Compared to Aragorn and Jayne in one night. Funny that. | | Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 | | 2:19 pm |
Victory is mine, victory is mine. Great day in the morning, victory is mine. Today I drink from the Keg of Glory. Bring me the finest bagels and muffins in all the land. The OCircus budget, crafted by Catherine and I from the ground up, has been approved in total. That means over four thousand dollars are available to us for costuming, props, tech, and fire safety. We will have certification for a handful of people to legally perform with fire in the state of Ohio. We will have the finest fire blankets and a host of other safety equipment. We will be able to create real costumes for performers. We will not have to worry about going without lights. And we can buy our own diabolos and an entire aerial arts rig for training and performance. And this all occurred in the budget appeals process where money is substantially more tightly regulated for the normal budget submissions. Last year's big show ran on one tenth of this budget. Now we can start to build an infrastructure, expand our teaching, expand our performances, and mature. This is the beginning. I got a fortune cookie today that reads "A lifestyle is what you pay for; a life is what pays out." I finally have a life again. Speaking of, playing mini hitler, averbally delivering a speech in a military jacket with Mooch translating for me was a blast. It's so much fun working with such a talented cast. It's a good week. | | Saturday, November 10th, 2007 | | 12:21 pm |
I have no idea why I enjoy it so much, but I feel rather at peace sitting at my computer with the sounds of a football game, the cheers and blaring hip hop, 100 feet from my door. Maybe it's just where it's not purely the game but where I am in the "Stream of Time." Lets see, yesterday my group managed to pull off a really strong presentation on addiction to the neuropharm class. We had a great range of styles. Lauren and Laura were on the first article, with Laura calmly handling most of the technical detail and Lauren doing intro and wrapping it up with occasional comic relief references to Lindsay Lohan. We started the second paper with Anne Cherry, the most talented student lecturer I have ever known. She can make even the staunchest powerpoint antagonist into a supporter, seamlessly interacting with the presentation like it was an extension of her body. It was really beautiful. Apparently I managed a calm sort of hyperactivity, which came out as a clear explanation of the material without taking it, myself, or the presentation too seriously. Practically, this means that I let myself appreciate the shiny when I rediscovered the laser on the pointer/remote control and vacillated between the technical terminology and descriptions of GFP transfection as "making sure that the fact that the cells now glow shiny colors after you jabbed a needle in the rat's brain doesnt have an effect." And then Lauren, who had been prepped enough to have all the material but just isn't comfortable with it. But still managed to look like she only hates presenting, not like she wasn't working hard, which is always nice. I got lucky with my group. After the performance presentation, the prof gushed a bit about how it went and he specifically complimented me later in the day. I beamed a little -- neuro spends so much of my time trying to convince me that I'm not worthy that it's nice to know I'm getting somewhere. Having that and all the preceding stresses off my back must help. Having the neurophys lab in a good place can't be bad either, all the thinking's almost done and we can just work on data collection now. Genderblender definitely helped last night -- dressing in something between goth and circus, interacting with a group of people who all just seemed comfortable with themselves and each other (both my own friends and everyone else), and dancing for hours was great. Also seeing Johnny and Carly again, each respectively donning an alter ego that so suits them (the ridiculously suave gentleman and an androgynous robot with sparkly stubble) was amazing. And watching Lizzie's Taiko beforehand was great to set the mood for rocking. The more I see of Taiko, the more I enjoy it. And tonight there will be: more research to be fully caught up with work (never would have thought that possible), a burn with Lizzie and Becca, and a Bucketkickers reunion concert. Just like old times. It's a good place to be. | | Thursday, November 8th, 2007 | | 9:44 pm |
Schedule
ECON 253 Intermediate Microeconomics - Lipow 9:00 am - 10:50 am TR ECON 322 Public Policy and Happiness - Lipow 3:00 pm - 4:15 pm TR MENA 101 Introduction to Middle East and North African Studies - Mahallati 10:00 am - 10:50 am MWF PHYS 111 Electricity/Magnetism/Thermodynamics - Styer 9:00 am - 9:50 am MWF PHYS 111 Lab - Richards 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm W | | Friday, October 26th, 2007 | | 1:59 am |
Dallas theater is apparently not quite an oxymoron. It's also not quite as good as I've been hoping. I saw a production of Scapino a while back that was amazing, one of Debbie Does Dallas that I loved, and I'm struggling to quite replicate the experience. Saw The Last Days of Judas Iscariot tonight, first performance of the troupe in a new space they had just built. Enjoyed the script, though it did break down in the end. Enjoyed the production for the most part, though the actors did occasionally flub a line. Worthwhile certainly, but not Pillowman, and that was just in little theater. I'd say the same of the more "professional" performance I saw of Glengarry Glen Ross on Tuesday, which was enjoyable but just slightly off. Perhaps I have bad seats to blame for that one since the critics loved it so. I suppose being in the wings when the first act is staged with actors facing directly stage left and stage right at a booth is predictably a bad idea. Oh well. |
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