desperate for change

While I wouldn’t mind winning a free Cube car (http://hypercube.ca/), I think that I should have a mildly realistic list of alternatives.

My old car was a ’99 Honda Civic. While I do have fond memories of AlfredMobile 1, I do remember the ghetto-ness of manually operated windows. It was a reliable vehicle but it wasn’t a something that evoked any emotions that I seem to get when compared to other vehicles.

The current top non-Cube choice is a used Honda Accord Coupe of some kind. Leather seats if possible. This is the sportiest mid-life crisis car I can responsibly consider these days. Then, I’ll pretty much have no excuses to be home so much. Things to do. People to see. Salsa to dance. The internets will have to do without me for a while.

(I am guessing that I can’t buy any used Nissan Cubes at this point in time.)

It was exactly one year ago that I moved out on my own into “the bunker” i.e. the basement suite being a “mortgage helper”. (See my day 24 report here.) I am pleased to announce that I am still alive and kicking and have not acquired significantly more material junk. I am in a reflective mood. Think of this as my year in review:

• I have met women who say that they would absolutely not date a guy who is still living at home. I think that this line of thinking is rather narrow and is not really as mainstream as I originally thought; pretty much all my high-school guy friends lived at home until they got married. This is definitely not a factor in relationship and dating success.
• Related to the previous point: While I (aged 33) feel more confident and is more attractive than my younger self (say aged 23), I honestly have not matured emotionally to handle relationships. However, I think that I am starting to have a much better understanding of my weakness (tendency to fall too hard, too fast, too easily). I instinctively know this and watch myself but I can’t save myself every single time. Dear friends, as a plea to you, please smack me hard if you see me starting to get crazy.
• Related to previous point: I think this is precisely why I don’t like social dancing too much (except with my people I already know). On the other hand, I really enjoy the proper structure and routine of a regular dance class.
• The economic conditions are getting hella scary. Because I am month-to-month with my landlord, I plan to talk to him and move out at the end of April. Yes, moving back home. Mom will be thrilled.
• I think that the non-car lifestyle is having an adverse effect on my social skills atrophy. I don’t go out and see friends as much as before. Part of the moving back home plan would involve me eventually getting a car again. And I really need to see real humans more often.
• I have become a pickier eater than before. Eating my own cooking has warped my appetite. (Cooking and preparing meat is a real hassle.) I think that my body is starting to become vegetarian and is starting to reject meat on some occasions.
• I think that in the last years or so, I have gotten arrogant in my ways; it is hard to describe but it wasn’t obvious until I mess up big time. I am going to try to embrace a more humble point of view. Instead of comparing my strengths to other people’s weaknesses, it is more educational to compare my weaknesses to other people’s strengths. The former is about self-satisfaction; the latter is about growth and learning. As much as I want to be some kind of self-help guru, I am not even close. However, I feel that my messing up can minimally serve as an example of what not to do. In that regard, I think that there is some value in my writings.
• I am happy and grateful for good friends and family, for being employed in this economic climate, for dancing, for Internets, for a life that’s really not too shabby when you look at the glass half-full. I am definitely grateful for life lessons – certainly makes for more interesting blog posts.

While this hasn’t exactly been a Walden kind of adventure, the last 365 days have been interesting.  What new adventures will the next 365 days bring?

I don’t know why I seem to attract people who have lost their way. Am I approachable  or do I look like I know where I am going?

So at lunch time today, I was just leaving Brentwood Mall when I was approached by a man in the parking lot. If you have to ask me to describe how he looks, I would say that he reminds me of Cypher from the Matrix – so much so that I wondered if he is going to turn me over to the machines. He seemed friendly so I figured that there would be no harm talking to him.

He was asking for directions to Champlain Mall and apparently his GPS wasn’t able to give him the directions. I am a visual guy so I ended up drawing a map on an index card and talked him through the right/left turns needed. (Yeah, I just happen to carry index cards with me – inspired by the Hipster PDA.)

Is there any point to this story? 

Honestly, I had a tingle of “fight-or-flight” when he first approached me. I guess that it is an automatic reaction built into my system to keep my safe from the boogeyman gangsters in our city. I wasn’t panicking or anything but his looking like Cypher probably didn’t help.

I think that I have always had a bit of FoF response whenever I get approached by strangers. Because I don’t want to provoke an FoF response in other people, I tend not to be so much an initiator in social situations. This is really just plain silly and I should reprogram myself (or de-program if you want to look at it from a different perspective). It probably doesn’t help that my job involves sitting quietly in front of a computer and I am on the computer again when I get home.

Question: is social skills atrophy an issue in the software industry? I know it doesn’t affect everyone to the same degree but I am pretty certain that it can take its toll. I just might have to join Toastmasters again or something to get my mouth moving.

I am reading a book of Buddhist essays entitled Hooked: Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume. There is an essay by Ruben L. F.  Habito which talked about three different types of desire that we can succumb to:

1. The Desire to Have More
2. The Desire to Know More
3. The Desire for Thrill and Pleasure

And when we talk about the desires, we are talking about indulging in them excessively. Most people have a good understanding of how the first one and the third one works.  For myself, the desire to know more is the vice of choice.

The desire to know more is unlike the other desires. You don’t get full from knowing too more – unlike eating more. It doesn’t create physical clutter like stuff does. You can indulge in the desire to know more, under the guise of being productive and strengthening yourself. In fact, with the limitless amount of data available on the internet, you can just go on and on aimlessly or as in-depth as you like; it is like wishing for a meal of your choice and getting it instantly.

For those of you who work in the software field, this is easily a never-ending treadmill of books, classes, and websites. Besides the actual art of software writing, there is also the business aspects like marketing, sales, management, and entrepreneurship.  Once you get hooked into keeping up, the limiting factor merely become the number of hours in the day. In the last couple of years, this has turned into a habit of staying up late – just to see if I could squeeze another ounce of tid-bit into my already crammed head.

Anything in excess is not good. In my case, I’m just continuously tired, usually with nothing to show for it.

So what now? I think that I just need to manage this like I would manage physical stuff and clutter: be more aware of what I am taking into my brain and be more deliberate and focus as appropriate and disregard what is unnecessary. One downside of non-physical clutter in your head is that it is very difficult to do housecleaning.

Another thing to do is to blog more. The result of this is that it focuses my informational in-take into a tangible output. This will reduce the aimless never-ending web surfing.

Of course, we should take a moderate approach – we can’t just stop reading and learning and go back to being ignorant. We just have to be more conscious about the goals of learning – it should be directed and I shouldn’t be “stuffing my face”, metaphorically.

Besides, I get enough computer time at work anyways. I need to learn to chillax.