Sometimes when I'm behind I shoot for a relatively minimal breakfast: a grapefruit or half pummelo, some toast, maybe some grits or vegan yogurt. I enjoy breakfast, even though I don't generally eat a full three meals a day: for some reason, since I've been out on my own, I've gravitated to two full meals (brunch and dinner) and the occasional midnight snack of milk and pound cake if I'm not too full.
But the "read and eat" ritual remains important, whether I do it two or three times a day. Unless I'm eating with others, or am in the middle of some absolute emergency, I always have a book with me when I eat --- to the point that I have a stand set up to read at the breakfast table. The current top-of-the-stack books are "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning" for the late-night reads and "Unmasking Autism" for the daily reader (along with "GANs in Action" for a project at work, and various books for writing reference).
Even if your meals are quick and minimal, you can read a few paragraphs while you eat, and hopefully enjoy it. And, if you're persistent, you can get through enormous books this way ... like "A New Kind of Science" or "Machine Vision" or "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science", three long books that I ate, one bite at a time, mostly over breakfast and midnight snacks, a page or even a paragraph at a time, until, at long last, one more mountain was climbed.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Half a pummelo, two slices of toast, and "Unmasking Autism".
When you've got a lot to do, sometimes it's tempting to just "power through it" - for example, by extending a meeting time until all the agenda items are handled. But this is just another instance of what's called "hero programming" in the software world, and while sometimes it's necessary (say, the day of a launch) it isn't a sustainable long-term strategy, and will incur debts that you can't easily repay.
Case in point, for the Neurodiversiverse Anthology, my coeditor and I burned up our normally scheduled meeting discussing, um, scheduling with the broader Thinking Ink team, so we added a spot meeting to catch up. We finalized the author and artist contracts, we developed guidance for the acceptance and rejection letters, and did a whole bunch of other things. It felt very productive.
But, all in all, a one hour meeting became three and a half, and I ended up missing two scheduled meetings because of that. The meetings hadn't yet landed on the calendar - one because we were still discussing it via email, and the other because it was a standing meeting out of my control. But because our three and a half hour meeting extended over the time we were supposed to follow up and set the actual meeting time, we never set that time, and when I was playing catch up later that evening, I literally spaced on what day of the week it was, and didn't notice the other meeting had started until it was over.
All that's on me, of course - it's important to put stuff on the calendar as soon as possible, including standing meetings, even if the invite is only for you, and I have no-one else to blame for that broken link in the chain. And both I and my co-editor agreed to (and wanted to) keep "powering through it" so we didn't have to schedule a Saturday meeting. But, I wonder: did my co-editor also have cascading side effects due to this longer meeting? How was her schedule impacted by this?
Overall, this is an anthology, and book publishing has long and unexpectedly complex and tight schedules: if we don't push to get the editing done ASAP, we'll miss our August publishing window. But it's worth remembering that we need to be kind to ourselves and realistic about our capabilities, or we'll burn out and still miss our window.
That happened to me once in grad school - on what I recall was my first trip to the Bay Area, in fact. I hadn't gotten as much done on my previous internship, and started trying to "power through it" to get a lot done from the very first week, putting in super long hours. I started to burn out the very first weekend - I couldn't keep the pace. Nevertheless, I kept trying to push, and even took on new projects, like the first draft of the proposal for the Personal Pet (PEPE) robotic assistant project.
In one sense, that all worked out: my internship turned into a love of the Bay Area, where I lived for ~16 years of my life; the PEPE project led to another internship in Japan, to co-founding Enkia, to a job at Google, and ultimately to my new career in robotics.
But, in another sense, it didn't: I got RSI from a combination of typing every day for work, typing every night for the proposal, and blowing off steam from playing video games when done. I couldn't type for almost nine months, during the writing of my PhD thesis, which I could not stop at, and had to learn to write with my left hand. I was VERY lucky: I know some other people in grad school with permanent wrist damage.
"Powering through it" isn't sustainable, and while it can lead to short-term gains and open long-term doors, can lead to short-term gaffes and long-term (or even permanent) injuries. That's why it's super important to figure out how to succeed at what you're doing by working at a sustainable pace, so you can conserve your "powering through it" resources for the times when you're really in the clinch.
Because if you don't save your resources for when you need them, you can burn yourself out along the way, and still fail despite your hard work - perhaps walking away with a disability as a consolation prize.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Powering through taking a photograph doesn't work that well, does it?
"I'ma gonna get that bird in the mirror, I swear, this is my territory, I'll show him---BONK!" "Okay, this time for sure---BONK!" "Tenth time's the charm---BONK!"
Not even putting up a screen in front of the mirror has helped; our little friend just hopped down onto the stairs of the cat condo (that "table" is a cat condo with a re-purposed glass tabletop, to give one of our now-passed older cats a place to sit and see the stars while shielding him from the rain) and started bonking the lower section of the mirror.
There's no reasoning with some people.
-the Centaur
P.S. Yes, I am making a direct comparison of people whose political beliefs are built around their persecution by imaginary enemies to a bird not smart enough to recognize his own reflection, why?
Cat, when it's raining: "Let me out! Let me out! But not this door, it's wet. Let's try another door. And another! Or another! I gotta get out! Just hold the door open until the rain stops!"
Also cat, when it is nice and sunny: "Who cares about going outside? Ima gonna havva nap."
-the Centaur
Pictured: the cat-shaped void, Loki, actually using his void-colored cat tree for once. Image taken in infrared bands and color enhanced by NASA to show surface detail.
... it's still one of the worst feelings in the world to turn back the sheets at the end of a long day, only to realize you hadn't blogged or posted your drawing. I had a good excuse yesterday - my wife and I were actually out at a coffeehouse, working on our art, when we had a sudden emergency and had to go home.
I had just finished my drawing and was about to snapshot it so I could post it, but instead threw the notebook into my bookbag, packed it up, and drove us home. Disaster was averted, fortunately, but the rest of the day was go-go-go, until finally, exhausted, I went to turn in and then went ... oh, shit. I didn't blog.
Fortunately, I didn't have to go back to the drawing board. But it did flip over to tomorrow while I was posting ... so, next day's post, here we come.
-the Centaur
Pictured: A jerky shot of me trying to document my wife's computer setup for reference.
I take a heck of a lot of pictures, seemingly way more than most of the people I know other than the ones in the movie industry; in fact, one of my friends once said "your phone eats first". But there's a secret to why I take pictures: it's for something, for the creation of an external memory - and memory is my brand, after all. With those photographs, I can figure out what happened in the past, even sometimes obscure things - like the attachment point of this lightsaber, which isn't just the diamond-shaped piece of wood, but also includes two hooks that seem to have disappeared in the move.
We may not find them, but at least now we know what to look for.
How can you turn the things in your life into an unexpected resource?
-the Centaur
Pictured: the old library, which was very nice, but not as nice as this one:
Some people wonder why me and my wife are so strict about not using pesticides and weedkillers in our yards. Well, there's the general principle of not contributing more toxic chemicals to the environment, and in San Jose there was the concern that our cats walked in the yard, then slept in our beds, and we didn't want them tracking in chemicals (other than dust and pee and poop, but, oh well).
But in South Carolina? We have a well. Our yard is our source of drinking water. And the recent unexpected excess precipitation event really brought that home by making the water drainage channels visible:
We get enough chemicals from our neighbors poisoning their lawns. We don't need to add any more to it. In fact, we're busy enough trying to slowly clean up the waste that the previous owners left on the property ... it's a nice house, but someone seemed to think that the woods around it were a dumping ground.
One step at a time. But one of those steps is, don't add pesticides or herbicides to your own drinking water.
-the Centaur
P.S. Yes, I understand a lot of chemicals get filtered out by the dirt. There's still no need to add to it.
When we decided to live in a place where water falls from the sky, we didn't realize how much we meant it.
The good news is that there's more places to go swimming. The bad news is that you can swim in only one direction, much like a muddy simulation of the interior of a black hole.
Honey, I hope you didn't need anything at the store.
... or you're not blogging every day. And I even went down to the library TO blog, but forgot what I was supposed to be working on when I got here, and did a whole buncha other tasks.
So, anyway, here's a margarita. It was strong. Enjoy.
Welcome to 2024, everyone! This year, I plan on resuming my aborted "Blogging Every Day" and "Drawing Every Day" experiments (and, perhaps, even "Music Every Day"). But let's focus first on the blogging. I really enjoy reading the blogs of people who regularly take out the time to comment on the world, because it gives me a view not just into their thought process but into the gears of the world as they grind.
As for my gears grinding, this first day of the new year has been quite busy! It feels like I did nothing, as there were things that I had planned to do this morning that never happened. But, actually, I spent a few hours managing (counts them) 8 research projects and 2 nonfiction book proposals, met with a friend/research colleague online, did some prepwork for the Neurodiversiverse, helped my wife with some plane tickets, resolved issues with some online systems, and hung out with a cat.
Little of that was on my agenda, but it all has to get done. And it's easy to forget that. One way I've been using to track that is Clockify, which I started using when my consulting business picked up a bit. It really helps you see what you've been spending your time on - or neglecting - if you remember to use it.
Of course, one of the things I had wanted to do this morning was enter my hours for the weekend. Time to get to timing it.
Wow, what a year. I'd love to say it had its pros and cons, but the stark reality of it is that the one bad thing - getting laid off, not just years before I wanted to retire, but one day after we successfully showed our new project was working, thus throwing me years off course in my research - overshadows all the good stuff. As I was describing it to my wife, it's like falling down into a well and finding some shiny rocks down there. They might be nice rocks - heck, they might even be gold, and worth a fortune - but you've still got to cope with falling into the well, and figure out how to climb back out again, before taking advantage of the good stuff.
But 2023 was the worst year for me for a while. There have been bad ones recently - in 2016 we elected a wannabe dictator and many of my friends and family seemed to lose their minds; in 2019 my mother died; and in 2020 I had the double whammy of the pandemic with the most stressful period of my work life. But, like 2023, each of those years had ups with the downs: in 2016, my current research thread started; in 2019, we proved that our research ideas were working (for all the good it did us); and in 2020, we moved back to my hometown into what we hope is our forever home.
And yet, with the exception of the loss of my mother, none of those seemed quite as life changing as getting laid off. Even for Mom, I was somewhat prepared: my father had unexpectedly lost one of his siblings early, and our extended family had developed a kind of shared knowledge of how to cope with loss. I had already lost my father and grandmother, and knew that Mom, while healthy, was in her mid-80s, and could pass at any time; so I was spending as much time as practical with her. I spoke to her the day she died. And so, after she was gone, I started down a road that I had been preparing for mentally for a long, long time.
But I wasn't in the mindset that Google would kill off half its robotics program just in AI's hour of triumph. We were even working on a projects directly related to Google's new large language model focus. It made no sense, and left this strange kind of void, creating a severance I didn't expect for another decade.
Despite all of what happened this year, I keep coming back to one thing:
Was it worth it if I wrote those two new stories?
Yes.
So, farewell, you crazy year you: thanks for all you gave me. My wife even said "Supposedly what you do on New Year's Eve is what you'll do for the rest of the year," and today we worked on our businesses, worked on writing and art, met friends old and new, and even moved furniture (which, metaphorically, is her new business venture). So's here's to more writing, more art, more friends, and more business in 2024!
-the Centaur
P.S. I see that I kept up "Blogging Every Day" in 2023 for 91 days, almost a quarter of the year; my earlier attempt at "Drawing Every Day" in 2021 lasted 103 days, a little over a quarter of the year. Let's see if we can break both those records in 2024, now that I have far more free time (and flexible time) on my hands!
In ATL for the Conference on Robot Learning, very tired after a long day, please enjoy this picture of a Page One from Cafe Intermezzo. Actually, today was a really good example of "being where you need to be" ... I ran into a fair number of colleagues from Google and beyond just by being out on the town at the right time and the right place, and was also able to help out a fellow who seriously needed some food. And when the evening was ending ... three more Google colleagues appeared on the street as I sat down for coffee.
I don't actually believe we live in a simulation, or in the Secret, or whatever ... but if you're doing the right thing, I find that Providence tends to open the doors for you right when you need it.
-the Centaur
P.S. Being in the right place DOESN'T mean you get all your nano wordcount done though. I am making progress on "Blessing of the Prism", my Neurodiversiverse story, but on Dakota Frost #7 I found myself spending most of my writing time sorting chapters in the big manuscript into sections, as I realized that one of the ungainly sections I didn't like was actually a coherent start for Dakota Frost #8.
P.P.S. On my blogroll, I saw someone say, "no writing is wasted", and in a sense the chapters I just saved are not wasted. In another, and I say this as a bloviating maximalist, a big part of writing is selection, and sometimes having too many versions of a thing can make it hard to pick the right one and move on.
Zonked because I was up early trying to get something resolved with my passport. Crashing early, still not certain what project I'm going to pick for Nanowrimo tomorrow.
Had a great day with a buddy from grad school who drove up so we could bike the Swamp Rabbit Trail. During that, I had a great idea for a blogpost, which has completely evaporated on the bike back.
Continuing on the forest theme, sometimes you come across a tree that you think is just dead. This is a good time of year for it: the foliage is falling, so you can more clearly see all the trees, but some of them still have leaves, making the ones which are completely barren stand out. Often the bark is black and cracking, or all the small branches have fallen off, leaving just a stick. I've twisted a fair few of these out of the ground with one hand and added them to the growing border that is creating our path.
But others are bigger - the kind that tree experts call "widowmakers". You can walk up to one, and just push on it, and it may start to fall - but you get more than you bargained for. The tree's momentum, once started, cannot be stopped, and its weight - even if rotten - is enough to cause a cascading chain reaction, breaking off healthy limbs and knocking over other trees on its way down. These slender systems, dead but balanced in a semblance of life, crash with unexpected impact, ringing out through the forest as they land.
It may be fun to knock over a system you don't like, but the crash can kill you, and it can do a lot of damage to other people as it falls to rest.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Well, I don't have pictures of the trees that fell over, but I do have vines that I've pulled down, which looked twenty feet long but proved to be fifty feet of falling debris that also could kill you.
Sometimes when working on a vast project it transcends "you can't do it all at once" and moves into the territory "it's hard to know where to get started". One such project is trying to bring the woods in our house under control. Apparently the previous owner's yard folks had been trimming the landscaping around the house and throwing the cuttings into the forest, so an entertaining variety of invasive ivy, grapes, something like holly, and other vine-like things were progressively destroying the trees of the forest.
It's been a process. The yard looked like wilderness once you got past the landscaping and was nearly impassable. But, after we were forced to take out the first of our dying trees (NO, well, full disclosure, a delivery truck took out the FIRST of our trees when it ran into it) when it got consumed by ivy one year and threatened to fall on the driveway, we decided to start the multi-year project of rehabilitating the yard.
We took out that tree, then took out another half-dozen. We hired goats that year to eat the vines down to the ground, then followed up with chainsaws and clippers to sever the roots of the vines climbing the trees. The goats decided they were done with it and didn't eat any new growth that came back up, so the next year, we hired a guy to bring in a "mulcher" (really, a bobcat with a giant grinder on the front of it) to clear out runways through the landscape, leaving islands of greenery for the deer and other animals.
Then, we started on the paths.
Our idea - and I'm not saying it's a good or feasible one - is to have paths running through this forest. This would take way, way more money than we want to spend on it - but we're patient, and have time. So, slowly, step by step, we've been taking fallen tree limbs and creating borders for the paths.
Drawing that line is an act of magic - even if it's just with an old rotten piece of wood thrown onto some leaves. As soon as the line is drawn, you know what's inside it, and what's outside it. You know which plants you can leave alone, and which weeds need to be pulled up. And once you've done that, you have an even larger area of order, which brings increased clarity, which brings more opportunities for order.
I don't know if we will ever complete our plan to rehabilitate the forest.
