Long time
I haven't really posted in here in a while. There's a variety of reasons for that, one of which is that I've been focusing more on my other blog. It's more focused topics, and so it's easier to generate posts. It's also less likely to get personal and offend someone. I guess that's one of the other big reasons: Some of the stuff I've been thinking about lately involves people who read this, and I don't want to upset them by putting it all out there (depending on the topic, either to them or to the rest of the internet). So it's been hard to come up with safe middle ground to talk about. There are two things I think I can discuss w/o pissing too many people off, so I guess we'll start with those and see what comes out.
First is that I've been going back to counseling. I've told most of you about this (though not about after the first session or two). I'm going back because of my issues with drinking. It got to the point where it was causing too many problems, especially since I don't have any friends I talk to on anything approaching a regular basis who don't drink, and so it comes up way more often than I'd like. To top that off, I was very worried that it was going to affect my professional life when it came to conferences and the like. At first she seemed to have some interesting thoughts on the subject. I realized that I'm very cagey in describing how exactly it makes me feel, it's something I have a very hard time putting into words. After bouncing around on some things, we've kinda landed on some sort of social anxiety track. It has occurred to me (but only out of the session, which makes it hard to bring up during) that there's 1-2 things I've been avoiding telling her about because I don't have any clue what they mean and they confuse me more than anything else, but I'll have to push myself to do so. I'm more than a little afraid of what she's asked me to do to work on it in the meantime. I asked a friend to help me with it the other day, but that went the way of most of the things I ask of her when we really get down to it. Problem is, she's about to leave and I don't have anyone else I feel that I can actually ask this of. I might ask Krystal since I'm about to go visit her but haven't gotten the nerve to ask her yet. (and yes I realize that you're going to read this and ask me what it was). So I'm in a standstill and it makes me more nervous for my next appointment with the counselor. This one at least is trying, and not being dismissive which is reassuring.
The other thing, most people don't know about. I've started up a profile on a dating website (okcupid). For those of you who've known me for a while, you've probably realized that I dont' take a lot of ownership for my relationship status: I don't go looking for dates (pretty much ever), and even when I do become attracted to someone, I almost never tell them unless there's nothing to be done about it. So I've been taking a more proactive approach to it this time, actively searching through profiles etc. I've contacted a couple people, but nobody's responded yet, which is quite depressing. (Just invitations to chat, I don't think I did anything too creepy. If anything, most of it is too generic). The other thing is it brought to light just how picky I'm being. Or rather, just how few people seem to meet the criterion I've set for myself. I think the biggest limiter seems to be the drinking issue (see above), and so most of the people I've been finding are either 18 or don't have the same taste in books (which is my other big one I've been looking for; I'll admit this one's harder to judge, especially given my taste in books, but there are some clear cases (people who only read romance, people who only read non-fiction, etc)). Since I have maybe 3 friends who satisfies both of those criterion, maybe I'm being unrealistic. I just can't see myself really falling for someone who doesn't fit that. That's why I'd decided to try a dating site, since I've had 0 luck meeting anyone who fit those from any other way. I'm sure there's something to be said about the sorts of people who sign up for these sites in the first place, but I'm well and truly out of other ideas. Answering their questions has also forced me to confront some desiderata that I wasn't fully aware of / hadn't fully thought through. I don't see this as blocking since most of it is eventually rather than always, but it's been an interesting journey so far.
Work has slowed to an almost standstill. Since we broke one of the computers I was using for processing (and really, that computer was housing 7 Virtual Machines, so it was 7 times more productive than the one I'm left with), things are looking pretty grim for me ever finishing. The university is not letting me move forward with anything but personal computers (each service is telling me to use the other to host my 10GB of data), and so at the current rate it'll take something like a full year to get all these articles processed. Maybe more. I've started shifting to another project, and that one's worrying me because it's a huge group project, but only one of the other people is actually free to work on it...so basically there's two of us who have to complete a 3 year grant (almost end-to-end) by January. There might be something in there that I can use in place of my other research for my qualifier, but it's a little less clear and I haven't had a chance to really sit down with my proff about it (he's out of town until the 28th). So hopefully when he gets back, we'll have a chance to discuss what my options / best path forward are. Right now, everything's blocking and I spend a chunk of hte day hitting my head against hte desk. On the flip side, I do have another distraction now: I'm teaching for a summer camp for high schoolers (mostly juniors / seniors), teaching them about basic computer science. It's really free-form, so it's a little different than what I'm used to, but it's going pretty well. There was a snafu in billing, so I'm not getting paid as much as I was promised (well there's a technicality here: He originally quoted one number, raised it by half again later when I was signing actual paperwork; Because of the billing snafu, I'm now halfway between the two numbers, so it's not terrible, but not great either).
All of my personal projects (see other blog) are in a holding pattern at the moment as well. Those are mostly my own blockings... having a hard time figuring out where to focus (short version for those of you who don't read the other blog: I've started tossing about some ideas for a musical, I want to rewrite my first 2 novels and short story, so there's some re-plotting/worldbuilding going on, I have also been playing with 3d modeling to give myself a better picture of the characters, but I've run into a snag there, and I've been considering mutating my story idea into an RPG setting, which involves hammering out rules for everything but would help with worldbuilding. The driving rules system for this last one is also slated to be an amalgamation of two of the systems we really like right now (trying to capture the best of both), and so that involves some heavy thinking as well).
So I guess that's what's been going on with me.
First is that I've been going back to counseling. I've told most of you about this (though not about after the first session or two). I'm going back because of my issues with drinking. It got to the point where it was causing too many problems, especially since I don't have any friends I talk to on anything approaching a regular basis who don't drink, and so it comes up way more often than I'd like. To top that off, I was very worried that it was going to affect my professional life when it came to conferences and the like. At first she seemed to have some interesting thoughts on the subject. I realized that I'm very cagey in describing how exactly it makes me feel, it's something I have a very hard time putting into words. After bouncing around on some things, we've kinda landed on some sort of social anxiety track. It has occurred to me (but only out of the session, which makes it hard to bring up during) that there's 1-2 things I've been avoiding telling her about because I don't have any clue what they mean and they confuse me more than anything else, but I'll have to push myself to do so. I'm more than a little afraid of what she's asked me to do to work on it in the meantime. I asked a friend to help me with it the other day, but that went the way of most of the things I ask of her when we really get down to it. Problem is, she's about to leave and I don't have anyone else I feel that I can actually ask this of. I might ask Krystal since I'm about to go visit her but haven't gotten the nerve to ask her yet. (and yes I realize that you're going to read this and ask me what it was). So I'm in a standstill and it makes me more nervous for my next appointment with the counselor. This one at least is trying, and not being dismissive which is reassuring.
The other thing, most people don't know about. I've started up a profile on a dating website (okcupid). For those of you who've known me for a while, you've probably realized that I dont' take a lot of ownership for my relationship status: I don't go looking for dates (pretty much ever), and even when I do become attracted to someone, I almost never tell them unless there's nothing to be done about it. So I've been taking a more proactive approach to it this time, actively searching through profiles etc. I've contacted a couple people, but nobody's responded yet, which is quite depressing. (Just invitations to chat, I don't think I did anything too creepy. If anything, most of it is too generic). The other thing is it brought to light just how picky I'm being. Or rather, just how few people seem to meet the criterion I've set for myself. I think the biggest limiter seems to be the drinking issue (see above), and so most of the people I've been finding are either 18 or don't have the same taste in books (which is my other big one I've been looking for; I'll admit this one's harder to judge, especially given my taste in books, but there are some clear cases (people who only read romance, people who only read non-fiction, etc)). Since I have maybe 3 friends who satisfies both of those criterion, maybe I'm being unrealistic. I just can't see myself really falling for someone who doesn't fit that. That's why I'd decided to try a dating site, since I've had 0 luck meeting anyone who fit those from any other way. I'm sure there's something to be said about the sorts of people who sign up for these sites in the first place, but I'm well and truly out of other ideas. Answering their questions has also forced me to confront some desiderata that I wasn't fully aware of / hadn't fully thought through. I don't see this as blocking since most of it is eventually rather than always, but it's been an interesting journey so far.
Work has slowed to an almost standstill. Since we broke one of the computers I was using for processing (and really, that computer was housing 7 Virtual Machines, so it was 7 times more productive than the one I'm left with), things are looking pretty grim for me ever finishing. The university is not letting me move forward with anything but personal computers (each service is telling me to use the other to host my 10GB of data), and so at the current rate it'll take something like a full year to get all these articles processed. Maybe more. I've started shifting to another project, and that one's worrying me because it's a huge group project, but only one of the other people is actually free to work on it...so basically there's two of us who have to complete a 3 year grant (almost end-to-end) by January. There might be something in there that I can use in place of my other research for my qualifier, but it's a little less clear and I haven't had a chance to really sit down with my proff about it (he's out of town until the 28th). So hopefully when he gets back, we'll have a chance to discuss what my options / best path forward are. Right now, everything's blocking and I spend a chunk of hte day hitting my head against hte desk. On the flip side, I do have another distraction now: I'm teaching for a summer camp for high schoolers (mostly juniors / seniors), teaching them about basic computer science. It's really free-form, so it's a little different than what I'm used to, but it's going pretty well. There was a snafu in billing, so I'm not getting paid as much as I was promised (well there's a technicality here: He originally quoted one number, raised it by half again later when I was signing actual paperwork; Because of the billing snafu, I'm now halfway between the two numbers, so it's not terrible, but not great either).
All of my personal projects (see other blog) are in a holding pattern at the moment as well. Those are mostly my own blockings... having a hard time figuring out where to focus (short version for those of you who don't read the other blog: I've started tossing about some ideas for a musical, I want to rewrite my first 2 novels and short story, so there's some re-plotting/worldbuilding going on, I have also been playing with 3d modeling to give myself a better picture of the characters, but I've run into a snag there, and I've been considering mutating my story idea into an RPG setting, which involves hammering out rules for everything but would help with worldbuilding. The driving rules system for this last one is also slated to be an amalgamation of two of the systems we really like right now (trying to capture the best of both), and so that involves some heavy thinking as well).
So I guess that's what's been going on with me.