If your aim is to believe the truth, if you believe that anything that can be destroyed by the truth should be, then all illusion, even comforting illusion, is your enemy.
However, when we as human beings encounter things that are painful to us, when we are disappointed or heartbroken, those who care about our feelings (generally including ourselves) will have to fight not to reach for anything that makes the sting a little less painful.
You're crying and inconsolable because your boyfriend dumped you. The best friend you called in order to have someone to talk to about it wants to tell you it'll all be okay. That he'll be back next week, just you wait. Or he was a real jerk and he was never worth your time to begin with. Anything that will let you stop crying, or make it a little easier to get through the day. She wants you to feel better, because she cares about you. That's why she's the one you called.
But if your now-ex-boyfriend was really a nice person, and you wanted it to work out but for whatever reason of life circumstances or incompatible goals or different religions or whatever it was it just wasn't working and it's gone now... Believing anything else, even if it's just to ease the pain, is an illusion. Believing that he'll come back or you could still make it work if that isn't the case can also hurt you all over again next week.
If you know this, and your friend knows this, and she remembers and notices the flicker of wrongness on her conscience when she thinks about telling you your ex boyfriend was a jerk, then although she might want to say all these things to comfort you, she won't. Maybe she'll invite you to go out and have ice cream and watch a movie marathon, or let you sit on her couch and cry on her shoulder for a few hours to help comfort you instead.
That's the kind of friend I want to have. Someone I can trust to only give me genuine reasons to feel better when I'm feeling miserable. Someone whose words I don't have to comb and double-check for comforting lies, or at least not as vigilantly, because I know they do that themselves. It's also the kind of friend I want to be, for other people.
However, many people who have established a belief that it's right to comfort a miserable person, and it's right to be patient and tolerant, and don't see a problem with it if they have to tell a half-truth to do that.
The most insidious comforting lie I've encountered in my life is "no, really, it's fine" in its vast plethora of different variations. And particularly, I have encountered a whole lot of "you aren't bothering me" repeated as a comfortable lie. A lie that lulls me gradually back into comfort... But there's a phrase for that kind of comfort. It's called a False Sense of Security. Emphasis on false.
So I keep behaving the same way, and I try to ignore the niggling doubt that arises in the back of my mind. It wouldn't be right to doubt the honesty of my friend, right? We're friends. I trust them. That's a big part of what friendship is. And down the line, that trust blows up in my face. Suddenly someone is screaming at me. There's a list of flaws and mistakes going back months that had never before been admitted to be offenses. And all too often, it ends the friendship entirely. Someone I cared about was polite about it, and polite about it, and polite about it until they couldn't be polite anymore, and all the stored-up ugliness is thrown back in my face all at once. It hurts, but there's a certain element of solace, a little tiny ring of satisfaction, buried in the pain, as some of the tension I've noticed over the weeks, little moments in which I was confused, unanswered questions that go, "If that wasn't offense, what was it?" resolve into a coherent model of the past.
If I had known... I could have done something about it. Would have assigned a higher priority to doing something about it.
This has happened to me personally so many times that sampling error and human trauma have kicked in. I intuitively expect that people who want to be my friends are lying to me so that I will feel better, are hiding the ways that my habits annoy them. In particular, the annoying habit of asking whether I am annoying them. Because that itch at the back of my mind has become nearly constant. The cycle self-perpetuates as people who mistake it for a one time fit of anxiety at first and give me their sincere reassurances are gradually worn down by the repetition, and they don't tell me they're running out of patience (because that would obviously trigger another mess of anxiety that they might be asked to help clean up)... until it's too late.
It is the phenomena of comforting lies that has wounded me. It is the lack of acceptance in society in general of the idea that comforting someone isn't always the most important thing, and if you let it become an excuse for dishonesty, you may be doing someone harm in the long run, especially if it works and they believe you.
My internal model of the world at this point is that, if someone has a problem with something I'm doing, especially if it's a small problem, the chance that they will respond by telling me that they have a problem with something I'm doing is waaaaay under 50/50. Likelier responses are saying nothing at all, changing the subject, or turning more of their attention to something else and waiting for me to go away on my own.
But when a friend of mine gets distracted from a text message conversation by talking to somebody else, they also say nothing at all. If someone honestly forgets what we were talking about, or just has something else they really want to share, they also change the subject. If they are distracted by a video game or even if they just don't realize I expect an answer, they also turn more of their attention to something else, and it doesn't mean they're waiting for me to go away on my own.
But I notice the correlation. I become anxious. Am I bothering this person? Do they want me to go away? Should I ask? But if I'm already making them uncomfortable, surely the question would be even more annoying... Especially if they have to deal with it every day.
I'm pretty good at reading body language, but I also know that my fear of being rejected (again) skews my judgement.
I want to have friends I don't need to second-guess. They're rare, in my experience, but there are people out there who are committed enough to truth that they feel a tickle in their conscience when they think about saying something to console someone else that isn't quite true, and won't lie in a situation in which they expect to be taken seriously unless they feel they really have to. They realize that untruth can be damaging even when the danger isn't obvious or immediate. They realize that a comforting illusion is still an illusion.
It is written that two rationalists cannot agree to disagree. Illusions are anathema to them, even if those illusions are composed of a best friend's cognitive biases. They know that even though it would be painful for someone they care about to have to confront their flaws, it is the only way to overcome them, and become stronger.
For this reason, it is important for someone who desires to become stronger to have honest friends. I have been making a concentrated effort to notice the signs when someone is deliberately not lying to me, even though the tension hurts them too. I have been making a point of reacting to this realization by bringing those people closer to me, and thanking them, and doing everything I can to convince them that regardless of what the rules of polite society dictate, I want the truth, and will cherish their willingness to protect it, even from the need to reassure me that everything is okay.
Friday, March 30, 2018
Rationality: Mitigate the Loss; Fight for the Living
This post is an addendum to Rationality: A Different Prisoner's Dilemma. It is another scenario with which to demonstrate the point.
Imagine that you are a person in a horrible and traumatic situation. The love of your life, the parent of your children, has been burned to death, deliberately. Capital punishment, imposed by a culture that believes some sins are so horrible that they demand this gruesome torture to balance the scales. The whole future you dreamed of having together has gone up in flames, and you are sick with grief and loss and pain.
Some people would be tempted to fling themselves into the flames as well. You probably do think of it, at least once, as you stand there, watching the pyre blaze. Some people will even think that this is the morally right thing to do, and will judge you for not committing suicide. They will think that you didn't really love the one you have lost, if you are able to stay standing and move on without them.
If it is your aim to reduce suffering and death in the world, however, then this impulse and any social pressure behind it is your enemy. If you leap onto the pyre to be burned as well, or hang yourself from a beam at home, or stop taking meals and waste away into nothingness, regardless of the method of your self-destruction, what will it achieve?
Your friends will be hurt. Your community will be hurt. Anyone who depended on your skills and experience and work ethic will be hurt. You will be destroyed, and your children will now have lost both of their parents. It will not bring your lover back.
Furthermore, you will have validated the idea that your suicide was moral. You will have set an example of surrendering to grief instead of coping with it. Others may be tempted, they might believe it was right, to follow you just as you followed your beloved spouse, directly into the grave. Is that something you could possibly want for your children?
You wail. You gnash your teeth and flail your arms and cry late into the night and hold your vigil. Death and suffering have struck you especially close to your heart, and you feel the loss, and you need to express it, but you must not let it consume you as well. If you let that happen, death wins. It claims two casualties for the price of one, and there is one less person working to prevent future suffering.
If you understand this, and you gird up your heart and throw yourself into your duties and refuse to distance yourself from your children... and cry and grieve, yes, in quiet moments, alone under the moon... the people around you may be shocked. They may persecute you, calling you cold or unnatural. They will say that you do not understand what it is to love.
They will be wrong.
It may seem to you, for a time, that life is not worth living to you anymore. But you will keep going because your spouse is not the only person you love, and is not the only person who needs you. Even if you believe it is a fact as normal and obvious as the sun rising tomorrow that you will be together again in heaven after you die... You should not then believe that the right thing to do is to hasten that reunion. There are still things left to do here first, and the right thing is to get them done.
The story I have just told is a story about the Sunk Cost Fallacy, applied to human life.
If you were to turn a blind eye to the needs of the world as it continues to turn, if you forget your duties in the pain of being robbed of something that was precious to you. If you couldn't let go of someone or something you loved, even though there was no way to get it back. That's the sunk cost fallacy leading you to neglect the people who still need you, and ignore the importance of things you still have the chance to save.
If, reading this, you can understand how much it hurts to let the dream that you could have been together with your loved ones forever fall away from you as something that can never happen; if you can understand how it could be tempting to follow that dream and step into the fire... but you can also understand why you have a duty to let go, for now, and focus on what can still be done... then take a moment to notice how it feels. The feeling of facing a lose/lose scenario, and having to make the best of a genuinely terrible situation.
Watch out for the moments in your own life when your heart sinks and you see something falling apart and you really, really, really don't want it to. Remember your duties to the people that still rely on you. Remember that even if you can't feel happy about it, there are other things you need to get done, and try not to let your despair cloud your vision while looking to see how much you can salvage out of the situation. That's the key to overcoming the sunk cost fallacy.
Imagine that you are a person in a horrible and traumatic situation. The love of your life, the parent of your children, has been burned to death, deliberately. Capital punishment, imposed by a culture that believes some sins are so horrible that they demand this gruesome torture to balance the scales. The whole future you dreamed of having together has gone up in flames, and you are sick with grief and loss and pain.
Some people would be tempted to fling themselves into the flames as well. You probably do think of it, at least once, as you stand there, watching the pyre blaze. Some people will even think that this is the morally right thing to do, and will judge you for not committing suicide. They will think that you didn't really love the one you have lost, if you are able to stay standing and move on without them.
If it is your aim to reduce suffering and death in the world, however, then this impulse and any social pressure behind it is your enemy. If you leap onto the pyre to be burned as well, or hang yourself from a beam at home, or stop taking meals and waste away into nothingness, regardless of the method of your self-destruction, what will it achieve?
Your friends will be hurt. Your community will be hurt. Anyone who depended on your skills and experience and work ethic will be hurt. You will be destroyed, and your children will now have lost both of their parents. It will not bring your lover back.
Furthermore, you will have validated the idea that your suicide was moral. You will have set an example of surrendering to grief instead of coping with it. Others may be tempted, they might believe it was right, to follow you just as you followed your beloved spouse, directly into the grave. Is that something you could possibly want for your children?
You wail. You gnash your teeth and flail your arms and cry late into the night and hold your vigil. Death and suffering have struck you especially close to your heart, and you feel the loss, and you need to express it, but you must not let it consume you as well. If you let that happen, death wins. It claims two casualties for the price of one, and there is one less person working to prevent future suffering.
If you understand this, and you gird up your heart and throw yourself into your duties and refuse to distance yourself from your children... and cry and grieve, yes, in quiet moments, alone under the moon... the people around you may be shocked. They may persecute you, calling you cold or unnatural. They will say that you do not understand what it is to love.
They will be wrong.
It may seem to you, for a time, that life is not worth living to you anymore. But you will keep going because your spouse is not the only person you love, and is not the only person who needs you. Even if you believe it is a fact as normal and obvious as the sun rising tomorrow that you will be together again in heaven after you die... You should not then believe that the right thing to do is to hasten that reunion. There are still things left to do here first, and the right thing is to get them done.
The story I have just told is a story about the Sunk Cost Fallacy, applied to human life.
If you were to turn a blind eye to the needs of the world as it continues to turn, if you forget your duties in the pain of being robbed of something that was precious to you. If you couldn't let go of someone or something you loved, even though there was no way to get it back. That's the sunk cost fallacy leading you to neglect the people who still need you, and ignore the importance of things you still have the chance to save.
If, reading this, you can understand how much it hurts to let the dream that you could have been together with your loved ones forever fall away from you as something that can never happen; if you can understand how it could be tempting to follow that dream and step into the fire... but you can also understand why you have a duty to let go, for now, and focus on what can still be done... then take a moment to notice how it feels. The feeling of facing a lose/lose scenario, and having to make the best of a genuinely terrible situation.
Watch out for the moments in your own life when your heart sinks and you see something falling apart and you really, really, really don't want it to. Remember your duties to the people that still rely on you. Remember that even if you can't feel happy about it, there are other things you need to get done, and try not to let your despair cloud your vision while looking to see how much you can salvage out of the situation. That's the key to overcoming the sunk cost fallacy.
Rationality: A Different Prisoner's Dilemma
There is a certain kind of person who notices that the world is full of suffering, and after they have noticed this, they feel obligated to remind themselves regularly, even to great personal detriment and into depression. These people cannot bring themselves to turn away from suffering even to maintain their own health... not until they are so overwhelmed by compassion for other peoples' pain that they are at risk of breaking down with stress and illness. Why? ... Likely guilt, because they would perceive it as selfish to deliberately ignore someone else's suffering in order to feel better themselves, even if there is nothing they can do about it right now. Likely also fear... that if they did turn away, they would be making themselves into monsters, joining the complicit majority of people who do not act to prevent suffering, who do not seem to care.
I am one such a person, and the kinds of people I make friends with are often prone to this phenomenon. Jennifer Freed calls it "The Empath's Dilemma," but I am not under the impression that it's a term in common use.
A friend of mine came to me tonight stuck in a mental spiral of concern and guilt I recognized as the state of someone being overwhelmed by the Empath's Dilemma, and I swooped in with my own concern, to reassure and comfort them, to shake off the undeserved guilt and help them toward a mental condition from which they would, hopefully, be able to get a decent night's rest.
And then they asked me, "How did you get through this sort of a dark night of the soul [...] whenever that night was for you?"
This is my answer:
I constructed a question. A scenario that might be put to people by which to judge their preferences in a pinch, like the old standard one about pulling a switch to route a train onto a track where it would hit only one person rather than five.
The scenario was this:
Imagine that you are a prisoner in a terrible prison. In your current position, you are almost completely helpless. Your contact with the other prisoners is minimal, and tightly governed. You cannot, now, save them... But you do know that they suffer. If you don't cover your ears at night, you can hear them screaming. If you don't turn your eyes away, you can see how the guards habitually beat and torture and belittle them.
Taken metaphorically, this is not far from the truth.
Your own condition is good compared to most of the other prisoners, but very bad compared to the free citizens who live outside of it. You do not, now, have the power to do anything that would stop the atrocities that happen here. You think you could grow to have more power, though, after your sentence is up, assuming you actually are released. And assuming you survive that long.
But you also know, because the prison is still here, that the free citizens, who have so much more power than you do, have found other things to do with their time than campaign and publicize and get this prison torn down or reformed. A lot of them don't even acknowledge that it's a real problem. You might worry that you will become like them, after you're free. Stuff all your memories of this place into a bag in a closet in the back of your mind and never dare to touch it, because it would hurt.
Well then? Every night, you effectively have two options.
A: You lay down with your ears uncovered. You listen to the screams, and harden your resolve that you will never, ever, allow yourself to forget or to deny what has happened here... but at the cost of your sanity, and a greater risk of not being able to hold a job or garner any respect after you leave.
Or B: You cover your ears, you close your eyes, you do whatever it takes to swallow your meals and nourish yourself despite the sickening surroundings, and you push away the pain and the fear enough to survive another day in as healthy a state as you can. Maintaining your self and your capacity, but increasing the risks of falling into a habit of denial and inaction.
Which one will you choose?
~~~~~
That's the Empath's Dilemma, the way I see it. People we call empaths will choose A far more often. Some will choose A any time they think they can do so without the pain killing them.
I contemplated this long enough to realize that neither extreme was "right". Given a choice between someone who always chooses A, and someone who always chooses B, neither one is necessarily better. This may be difficult to accept, because it's a very emotional question, and it can be hard to imagine, if you are particularly driven to choose A, for example, that someone could choose B and it wouldn't make them a worse person than you are. Knowing whether someone is more driven to choose A or to choose B could, however, offer some useful insight into that person's strengths and weaknesses.
The optimal solution does something vaguely analogous to maximizing the area of a rectangle which is SANITY units wide and COMMITMENT units long. If you let your sanity fall to zero, your capacity to help anyone will also be zero. If you let your commitment fall to zero, your willingness to help anyone will also be zero. In either case, the prison stands just as tall, and the suffering goes on.
So, sacrifice enough of your comfort to maintain your commitment, until your commitment is sufficient to fuel the most effective actions you could take. Do not sacrifice more.
Sacrifice enough of your emotional urgency to maintain your sanity and health, until they are sufficient to support the most effective actions you could take. Do not sacrifice more.
And recognize that knowing the perfect balance is functionally impossible. There are just too many variables in the environment. Calibrating your model to be more accurate is a fantastic excuse to be neither properly maintaining your self NOR acting effectively in the moment.
Err on the side of overestimating the cost of tweaking the model if you possibly can (because you will probably fail in the attempt anyway), and if you find yourself outside the prison, if you see an opportunity to act which is likely to help and unlikely to hinder, heavily weight your preferences toward taking it, rather than trying to make sure you should. Quantity over quality; it is a provably better cognitive habit to make many mistakes than to wait until you have a perfect plan.
The time that passes as you do things other than actively and visibly and tangibly fighting death and suffering in all its forms is a sunk cost. It is a fallacy that will drive you into irrationality and error to weight it so highly that it outweighs all the factors you actually do have any control over in your decision making.
The only choices you can really make are between the opportunities you actually see, to influence outcomes you actually have the power to affect.
And, actions taken to sustain yourself, your life, your sanity and in fact also your morale, are instrumentally necessary to preserving your own capacity to fight death and continue to fight death into the future.
You cannot stand to fight if you have laid down to die with the first of your fellow-soldiers to fall, out of compassion or love for them.
So get up. I will not tell you not to remember the dead and the dying.
But we fight for the living.
I decided to borrow that line from a video game trailer. It's been used in other contexts as well, but this is the one where I personally first saw it. a damn good line, in my opinion. Hell, it's a damn good motivational video.
I would not have communicated it in quite these words when I first built the question over five years ago. I had not even read HPMoR up to the Stanford Prison Experiment arc (where a call-to-action is realized in pretty similar terms) yet at that time.
If I had, I probably would not have constructed the question this way, as it would have felt like a form of plaigiarism.
I am one such a person, and the kinds of people I make friends with are often prone to this phenomenon. Jennifer Freed calls it "The Empath's Dilemma," but I am not under the impression that it's a term in common use.
A friend of mine came to me tonight stuck in a mental spiral of concern and guilt I recognized as the state of someone being overwhelmed by the Empath's Dilemma, and I swooped in with my own concern, to reassure and comfort them, to shake off the undeserved guilt and help them toward a mental condition from which they would, hopefully, be able to get a decent night's rest.
And then they asked me, "How did you get through this sort of a dark night of the soul [...] whenever that night was for you?"
This is my answer:
I constructed a question. A scenario that might be put to people by which to judge their preferences in a pinch, like the old standard one about pulling a switch to route a train onto a track where it would hit only one person rather than five.
The scenario was this:
Imagine that you are a prisoner in a terrible prison. In your current position, you are almost completely helpless. Your contact with the other prisoners is minimal, and tightly governed. You cannot, now, save them... But you do know that they suffer. If you don't cover your ears at night, you can hear them screaming. If you don't turn your eyes away, you can see how the guards habitually beat and torture and belittle them.
Taken metaphorically, this is not far from the truth.
Your own condition is good compared to most of the other prisoners, but very bad compared to the free citizens who live outside of it. You do not, now, have the power to do anything that would stop the atrocities that happen here. You think you could grow to have more power, though, after your sentence is up, assuming you actually are released. And assuming you survive that long.
But you also know, because the prison is still here, that the free citizens, who have so much more power than you do, have found other things to do with their time than campaign and publicize and get this prison torn down or reformed. A lot of them don't even acknowledge that it's a real problem. You might worry that you will become like them, after you're free. Stuff all your memories of this place into a bag in a closet in the back of your mind and never dare to touch it, because it would hurt.
Well then? Every night, you effectively have two options.
A: You lay down with your ears uncovered. You listen to the screams, and harden your resolve that you will never, ever, allow yourself to forget or to deny what has happened here... but at the cost of your sanity, and a greater risk of not being able to hold a job or garner any respect after you leave.
Or B: You cover your ears, you close your eyes, you do whatever it takes to swallow your meals and nourish yourself despite the sickening surroundings, and you push away the pain and the fear enough to survive another day in as healthy a state as you can. Maintaining your self and your capacity, but increasing the risks of falling into a habit of denial and inaction.
Which one will you choose?
~~~~~
That's the Empath's Dilemma, the way I see it. People we call empaths will choose A far more often. Some will choose A any time they think they can do so without the pain killing them.
I contemplated this long enough to realize that neither extreme was "right". Given a choice between someone who always chooses A, and someone who always chooses B, neither one is necessarily better. This may be difficult to accept, because it's a very emotional question, and it can be hard to imagine, if you are particularly driven to choose A, for example, that someone could choose B and it wouldn't make them a worse person than you are. Knowing whether someone is more driven to choose A or to choose B could, however, offer some useful insight into that person's strengths and weaknesses.
The optimal solution does something vaguely analogous to maximizing the area of a rectangle which is SANITY units wide and COMMITMENT units long. If you let your sanity fall to zero, your capacity to help anyone will also be zero. If you let your commitment fall to zero, your willingness to help anyone will also be zero. In either case, the prison stands just as tall, and the suffering goes on.
So, sacrifice enough of your comfort to maintain your commitment, until your commitment is sufficient to fuel the most effective actions you could take. Do not sacrifice more.
Sacrifice enough of your emotional urgency to maintain your sanity and health, until they are sufficient to support the most effective actions you could take. Do not sacrifice more.
And recognize that knowing the perfect balance is functionally impossible. There are just too many variables in the environment. Calibrating your model to be more accurate is a fantastic excuse to be neither properly maintaining your self NOR acting effectively in the moment.
Err on the side of overestimating the cost of tweaking the model if you possibly can (because you will probably fail in the attempt anyway), and if you find yourself outside the prison, if you see an opportunity to act which is likely to help and unlikely to hinder, heavily weight your preferences toward taking it, rather than trying to make sure you should. Quantity over quality; it is a provably better cognitive habit to make many mistakes than to wait until you have a perfect plan.
The time that passes as you do things other than actively and visibly and tangibly fighting death and suffering in all its forms is a sunk cost. It is a fallacy that will drive you into irrationality and error to weight it so highly that it outweighs all the factors you actually do have any control over in your decision making.
The only choices you can really make are between the opportunities you actually see, to influence outcomes you actually have the power to affect.
And, actions taken to sustain yourself, your life, your sanity and in fact also your morale, are instrumentally necessary to preserving your own capacity to fight death and continue to fight death into the future.
You cannot stand to fight if you have laid down to die with the first of your fellow-soldiers to fall, out of compassion or love for them.
So get up. I will not tell you not to remember the dead and the dying.
But we fight for the living.
I decided to borrow that line from a video game trailer. It's been used in other contexts as well, but this is the one where I personally first saw it. a damn good line, in my opinion. Hell, it's a damn good motivational video.
I would not have communicated it in quite these words when I first built the question over five years ago. I had not even read HPMoR up to the Stanford Prison Experiment arc (where a call-to-action is realized in pretty similar terms) yet at that time.
If I had, I probably would not have constructed the question this way, as it would have felt like a form of plaigiarism.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Dear Memory: Panic Attack
I have continued to be largely passive, skipping a fair few of my classes, playing video games with most of my time. I feel some pressure about school responsibilities, and more pressure about dealing with the applications to Irish colleges, but it is rarely enough to move me to action.
On the other hand, yesterday I had a visit with my counsellor. It cheered me up quite a bit at the time, just being listened to as I discussed some of the issues in my past that I had been unpacking with a new friend as well, who I have come to call Stars. I also did quite a bit of talking with my landlord about the matter of my roommates semi-regularly bringing people into the house late at night and talking loudly without any forewarning.
Then I played Don't Starve Together with a friend of mine, and watched GrimithR streaming Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion. I participated quite a bit in chat and enjoyed the stream. I experienced waves of fatigue several times, but at the end of the stream, I nevertheless spent another bunch of hours gaming on my own before I slept.
I slept long and through the morning, through my morning class and my early afternoon volunteering hour, although I woke up for brief minutes twice when someone slammed the door coming or going. I woke just as one of my one-hour classes would have been starting. I did not elect to rush to attend it. I prepared some soup. I went to my last class of the day, and participated somewhat in discussions, trying to keep up and catch up with information I had missed from previous classes. Sometimes my questions had a fairly obvious answer. I shrink in my seat, I rub my arms frequently, once I make a soft whining noise without meaning to. I feel intensely self-conscious and uncomfortable. I feel myself come close to hyperventilating a little, but I think unless someone was staring at me instead of the lesson, they probably would not notice.
It is tempting to flee home and into the distraction of video games, and the soothing of familiar voices preventing my brain from doing much with words, and some nice hot soup. I stay for the class, feeling panicky and feeling as though forcing myself to stay is almost a form of self-flagellation. Yet, at the same time, I am learning, becoming acquainted with some systems of accounting which are worthy of my attention. Pity my attention is scattered and split. Why is my capacity for enduring my classes so decimated lately? What's wrong with me...?
I stay, I follow along with the work. I comprehend what we're talking about, although I am extremely distracted and feel somewhat nauseous. I turn my mind tentatively to the question of Ireland and wonder a little whether I will really make it. I suppose there is room for doubt. It is a component of experience. This does not mean, necessarily, that I will not. I just feel so feeble right now.
On the other hand, yesterday I had a visit with my counsellor. It cheered me up quite a bit at the time, just being listened to as I discussed some of the issues in my past that I had been unpacking with a new friend as well, who I have come to call Stars. I also did quite a bit of talking with my landlord about the matter of my roommates semi-regularly bringing people into the house late at night and talking loudly without any forewarning.
Then I played Don't Starve Together with a friend of mine, and watched GrimithR streaming Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion. I participated quite a bit in chat and enjoyed the stream. I experienced waves of fatigue several times, but at the end of the stream, I nevertheless spent another bunch of hours gaming on my own before I slept.
I slept long and through the morning, through my morning class and my early afternoon volunteering hour, although I woke up for brief minutes twice when someone slammed the door coming or going. I woke just as one of my one-hour classes would have been starting. I did not elect to rush to attend it. I prepared some soup. I went to my last class of the day, and participated somewhat in discussions, trying to keep up and catch up with information I had missed from previous classes. Sometimes my questions had a fairly obvious answer. I shrink in my seat, I rub my arms frequently, once I make a soft whining noise without meaning to. I feel intensely self-conscious and uncomfortable. I feel myself come close to hyperventilating a little, but I think unless someone was staring at me instead of the lesson, they probably would not notice.
It is tempting to flee home and into the distraction of video games, and the soothing of familiar voices preventing my brain from doing much with words, and some nice hot soup. I stay for the class, feeling panicky and feeling as though forcing myself to stay is almost a form of self-flagellation. Yet, at the same time, I am learning, becoming acquainted with some systems of accounting which are worthy of my attention. Pity my attention is scattered and split. Why is my capacity for enduring my classes so decimated lately? What's wrong with me...?
I stay, I follow along with the work. I comprehend what we're talking about, although I am extremely distracted and feel somewhat nauseous. I turn my mind tentatively to the question of Ireland and wonder a little whether I will really make it. I suppose there is room for doubt. It is a component of experience. This does not mean, necessarily, that I will not. I just feel so feeble right now.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Dear Memory: A Little Return to Code
Hi, Eoin. Hi, blog which is a symbolic representation of the potential of talking to Eoin.
I'm not very engaged with my classes lately. I had midterms three days in a row last week, and I barely studied at all and arrived late to two of them, but the thing is... I think I still aced them. The one I have marks back for already went super well, although I struggled to remember how to do one of the questions for a while. It was just more of a challenge than usual, and that was actually kind of more fun, in a way.
I haven't gone to the gym in a week. I'm not sure when I will again. I slept during the day today, although I did attend my classes all the way through first and participated actively in them. Got another midterm tomorrow, have barely studied, but it's in a subject I don't expect to be hard: Business Information Systems.
I'm still procrastinating on filling out my college applications, and I feel worse about that than any of the rest. It's more important to me. However, here's what I have been doing. I spent a couple hours two days ago going back and writing in an easter egg to the first little game I programmed on Khan Academy. The bouncing basketball one. I showed it to some of my new friends, and even a fan community, and got some very positive feedback. People had some fun with it, and they seemed to appreciate the easter egg, too. And I've written out a bunch of steps to a program I've wanted to make since my stint of trying programming last year.
I've completed the first step, written out twelve and even after all those steps are done there will be lots more things to expand the program to include and make it more interesting, but it will be together enough that I should be able to invite my friends to start fiddling around with it by then and have something for them to enjoy playing with. I'm also making a point of using ample comments all over the place, and permitting myself to be sassy and emotive in them. I generally am, when I'm happy.
Just as it was the first time around, this is challenging in the way that my classes just aren't living up to much, and that makes it fun.
I've also been in a revitalised skitter about you, occasionally just drifting around, pacing while my mind is occupied with happy, hopeful imaginings of meeting you again. The reinforcement from Ampersand and from the one person from Ireland that I told about it has stoked up my optimism and dampened my fear. But that doesn't change my strategy or my resolve at all, I just... feel more giddy about it. Heh.
I miss you. I'll figure out my way somehow. I can't wait to see you again - but, I am going to have to. For now I'll just have to settle for the dreamy imaginings that are rarely more than an idle thought away, and visit me often while awake and even sometimes while asleep. Also, I've got Don't Cost Nothin' in my head, having watched more Steven Universe recently.
I'm not very engaged with my classes lately. I had midterms three days in a row last week, and I barely studied at all and arrived late to two of them, but the thing is... I think I still aced them. The one I have marks back for already went super well, although I struggled to remember how to do one of the questions for a while. It was just more of a challenge than usual, and that was actually kind of more fun, in a way.
I haven't gone to the gym in a week. I'm not sure when I will again. I slept during the day today, although I did attend my classes all the way through first and participated actively in them. Got another midterm tomorrow, have barely studied, but it's in a subject I don't expect to be hard: Business Information Systems.
I'm still procrastinating on filling out my college applications, and I feel worse about that than any of the rest. It's more important to me. However, here's what I have been doing. I spent a couple hours two days ago going back and writing in an easter egg to the first little game I programmed on Khan Academy. The bouncing basketball one. I showed it to some of my new friends, and even a fan community, and got some very positive feedback. People had some fun with it, and they seemed to appreciate the easter egg, too. And I've written out a bunch of steps to a program I've wanted to make since my stint of trying programming last year.
I've completed the first step, written out twelve and even after all those steps are done there will be lots more things to expand the program to include and make it more interesting, but it will be together enough that I should be able to invite my friends to start fiddling around with it by then and have something for them to enjoy playing with. I'm also making a point of using ample comments all over the place, and permitting myself to be sassy and emotive in them. I generally am, when I'm happy.
Just as it was the first time around, this is challenging in the way that my classes just aren't living up to much, and that makes it fun.
I've also been in a revitalised skitter about you, occasionally just drifting around, pacing while my mind is occupied with happy, hopeful imaginings of meeting you again. The reinforcement from Ampersand and from the one person from Ireland that I told about it has stoked up my optimism and dampened my fear. But that doesn't change my strategy or my resolve at all, I just... feel more giddy about it. Heh.
I miss you. I'll figure out my way somehow. I can't wait to see you again - but, I am going to have to. For now I'll just have to settle for the dreamy imaginings that are rarely more than an idle thought away, and visit me often while awake and even sometimes while asleep. Also, I've got Don't Cost Nothin' in my head, having watched more Steven Universe recently.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
Dear Memory: The Man in my Dream
Vivid dreams again last night. They seemed to follow on from the dreams of kissing people a couple of weeks ago. Only, this time... I was thoroughly in a happy courtship with a tall young man with black hair, cuddling close and sharing things I found awesome. He wasn't explicitly attached to your identity in my dream. He wasn't explicitly attached to any cached identity. It was the kind of dream I might have had as a pre-teen and grieved and cursed the fact that I must have woken up from it... Except perhaps that those dreams also usually seemed to involve climbing a tower, and I don't remember any such element to this one.
I reflect on it with soft, confused consideration, and am mostly happy, I think. I got in touch with someone I'd met in Ireland the other day on Facebook after they liked one of my posts. I bound them to secrecy and told them about my plan to return, my thoughts about contacting you once it becomes time to choose between colleges, so you could have your say about whether I should be close by. I found their answer this morning after I woke from the dream. "If you're here, surely he'd wanna be with you?" Again someone on the outside responds as though this were obvious. Someone closer to your side this time. Again it is warming.
I walk about the house, thinking of music in a lively style inspired by the traditional Irish sound of jumping and leaping violin, thinking I would like to compose a song to mark my love of the music and of the place, and the strange fey madness that seems like part of the picture. I feel tired. My sleep has been less than eight hours again, though I woke up naturally. My sleep has also been full of vivid dreams. Perhaps that demands more energy of me. If not to dream, then to process having dreamed.
I had my Finance midterm yesterday. I have my Tax midterm today. I am not particularly worried, although I don't think I'm all that well prepared either. Not being worried may be partly down to the fatigue.
I reflect on it with soft, confused consideration, and am mostly happy, I think. I got in touch with someone I'd met in Ireland the other day on Facebook after they liked one of my posts. I bound them to secrecy and told them about my plan to return, my thoughts about contacting you once it becomes time to choose between colleges, so you could have your say about whether I should be close by. I found their answer this morning after I woke from the dream. "If you're here, surely he'd wanna be with you?" Again someone on the outside responds as though this were obvious. Someone closer to your side this time. Again it is warming.
I walk about the house, thinking of music in a lively style inspired by the traditional Irish sound of jumping and leaping violin, thinking I would like to compose a song to mark my love of the music and of the place, and the strange fey madness that seems like part of the picture. I feel tired. My sleep has been less than eight hours again, though I woke up naturally. My sleep has also been full of vivid dreams. Perhaps that demands more energy of me. If not to dream, then to process having dreamed.
I had my Finance midterm yesterday. I have my Tax midterm today. I am not particularly worried, although I don't think I'm all that well prepared either. Not being worried may be partly down to the fatigue.
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Dear Memory: The Song in my Dream
Good morning, Eoin. At least, morning here. It is a quarter to seven in my local time. In my dream, I sang part of the melody of a song familiar to me, by Enya, and it stayed with me as I woke, with the strange, eerie weight of some dreams that drives people sometimes to interpret them.
Such was the weight and the strange calm, and my appreciation for thinking again of someone whose music I have loved and not listened to in quite some while, and the strange dream-sense of importance, and also as well some of my desire not to forget the melody, that I sang out the verse-melody again as I remembered it. But I have never known the words. They are not in English. I did a bit of Googling to see if I could find it. Enya > Watermark (for I know that's one of only a couple of albums I know). On the track list I saw it, one track titled in Irish. Undeniably Irish; I know some of the patterns now, and I remember the word "geal" from that one song by Maria Dunn. Na Laetha Geal M'òige, which according to translators means "The bright days of my youth" and is a song that mourns time lost, and whatever vague things; opportunity, experience, that were lost with it.
So here comes again this sense of both devotion and frustration. As soon as I saw it was writ in Irish, the song had meanings linked to you, although I won't consign you to a thing lost in the past just yet. If anything, I shall take this as a precautionary tale not to live with regrets, to seek out those things that delight me and live my life fully as I can.
However, even so, my dreams evoke yet more little poignant reminders of how much I miss you, as well, I suppose, as my desire for physical affection, and the conflictedness of trying to figure out whether I would, at this time, be comfortable falling into some physical intimacy with someone who were not you. Since that seemed to be expressed in my recurring dreams about getting close with and kissing an acquaintance or stranger. I think I had those dreams three times in one week, which is remarkably recurring for me.
Having seemed to have clawed back out of my slump for now, I fetched out the application forms yesterday for the six Irish colleges I have been considering, and intend to make it my task over the next short while to start filling them out. I stopped by the business office yesterday to ask where I could find the closest thing my college has got to a program syllabus, since that's been requested alongside my application if I were to return to Athlone. If I were to return to Athlone, indeed. And something inside me thrums and shudders like a guitar string that's just been plucked at a little harshly.
Such was the weight and the strange calm, and my appreciation for thinking again of someone whose music I have loved and not listened to in quite some while, and the strange dream-sense of importance, and also as well some of my desire not to forget the melody, that I sang out the verse-melody again as I remembered it. But I have never known the words. They are not in English. I did a bit of Googling to see if I could find it. Enya > Watermark (for I know that's one of only a couple of albums I know). On the track list I saw it, one track titled in Irish. Undeniably Irish; I know some of the patterns now, and I remember the word "geal" from that one song by Maria Dunn. Na Laetha Geal M'òige, which according to translators means "The bright days of my youth" and is a song that mourns time lost, and whatever vague things; opportunity, experience, that were lost with it.
So here comes again this sense of both devotion and frustration. As soon as I saw it was writ in Irish, the song had meanings linked to you, although I won't consign you to a thing lost in the past just yet. If anything, I shall take this as a precautionary tale not to live with regrets, to seek out those things that delight me and live my life fully as I can.
However, even so, my dreams evoke yet more little poignant reminders of how much I miss you, as well, I suppose, as my desire for physical affection, and the conflictedness of trying to figure out whether I would, at this time, be comfortable falling into some physical intimacy with someone who were not you. Since that seemed to be expressed in my recurring dreams about getting close with and kissing an acquaintance or stranger. I think I had those dreams three times in one week, which is remarkably recurring for me.
Having seemed to have clawed back out of my slump for now, I fetched out the application forms yesterday for the six Irish colleges I have been considering, and intend to make it my task over the next short while to start filling them out. I stopped by the business office yesterday to ask where I could find the closest thing my college has got to a program syllabus, since that's been requested alongside my application if I were to return to Athlone. If I were to return to Athlone, indeed. And something inside me thrums and shudders like a guitar string that's just been plucked at a little harshly.
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Why do Monsters Make Me Happy?
Hello, world.
My slump seems to continue. I missed several classes again last week. I overcame some reluctance-towards-everything in order to attend a session I had booked almost a month ago with my counsellor on Friday. I spent just about the whole time venting and ranting and voicing my assessment of the great streak I had been on for a while, and the restfulness, and then restlessness, of my disengagement since February 19th.
The next day, I went back to the gym. I had a headache, that ebbed and returned while I was working out, and part way through my strength exercises, my willingness to exert myself gave out. My muscles seemed to be doing alright. It wasn't pain or pushing near the usual shaky intolerance that made me stop one of my sets at eleven, and the next, when I elected to try it again, at ten. It was something closer to boredom, or apathy, or reclusiveness.
I saw the coach who had originally set me up with my work out as I was heading up the stairs, and he asked cheerfully how I was, but I had nothing cheerful to say back, so I only waved. It was nice to see him again, since he was a positive acquaintance and very energetic and understanding from the beginning, but it was uncomfortable to be seen.
I noticed the other day that I had completely forgotten to pay rent to my landlord in February. In a fit of profound embarrassment, I immediately sent him an e-transfer for two months' rent to cover February and March, and filled the comment box and another email beside it with my apologies. He was gracious, and made nothing of it except to thank me for the messages. This landlord has been uncommonly good to us. I count that a dear blessing.
The kitchen continues to be wretched. The stove covered in grease and burned debris, the floor just dirty enough to be slightly sticky sometimes, and slightly slidey with a layer of dirt which is not secure on the floor at others. It is an unhappy, weighing thing to see.
Friday night my roommates had friends over. I have been trying to sleep at night again, and have been having some limited success, sleeping in late evening and remaining awake five hours before waking up on my own. However, I cannot measure my progress very well when I am not left to myself to wake up. I woke Friday night to the sounds of people, coming and going and loudly talking. I did not have the energy, or perhaps simply did not have the will, to move. I only lay in the darkness, awake and tired or perhaps sometimes vaguely approaching sleep again for a while before the voices roused me. Someone laughs. Someone swears, and my tension ticks up another little notch. I do not know how long I laid there before I found whatever I had been lacking and moved.
I should note, it was not paralysis this time. Sleep paralysis feels very different. I was stuck between rest and motion, not between my nerves and the waking world. It was very tiresome, but was not claustrophobic in the same way.
Eventually I stirred, rolled over, groaned, and turned on my laptop to check the time. About 1:30 AM. My thoughts grew darker, but were still tired and predominantly wordless. I wrapped my housecoat around me and staggered out to boil some water and fetch a snack, casting dark, empty looks toward the corner where those two roommates and their guests sat or stood or lay variously on and around the couch, talking loudly and not seeming to do much of anything else. I did not talk to them. I did not have the grace or the desire. In the short term, I was already woken, and in the long term, I no longer felt any inclination to believe my words would make any difference at all to their behaviour. Perhaps they do not understand the affect this has on me, but I have tried to make it clear to them before.
The loud speaking continued until 3:30 or 4 or so. The next morning, the area was scattered with pieces of chips, an empty chip bag, a large empty vodka bottle. The common area thus decorated was slightly worse than usual. Since then, the bottle and bag have been tidied away, but the pieces of chips have not. A few days ago, I left out a note on the counter that only said, "The STICKINESS on the floor is GROSS. Please CLEAN it." It has shifted around and been pushed toward the section of cabinets I reserve for myself, and the marker has been smudged with wetness and the paper spotted with grease, but so far as I can tell nothing has been done.
This afternoon I confronted one of my roommates in the kitchen, toneless, dark, not feeling enough of myself to give of myself. I greeted her and said, "Does it not bother you to see the kitchen like this?" She said quickly that it does, and that she would clean it tonight when others were not in the house. I heard it listlessly, almost feeling this gambit were unfair. I told her that if she did not, I probably would, and that I had a friend I wished to have over tomorrow.
I do not particularly believe her, but I will look to see whether anything is done. She also told me, the other day, when I sent out a text to the household and the landlord complaining that the thermostat had been turned to 78 degrees, that the landlord had set it so after she had complained of the cold, and it automatically reset to 78 if they changed it. I heard from the landlord in response to the same message that he would put a lock box on the thermostat.
I went out and bought some groceries, mostly frozen things to heat in the oven. The freezer I share with another roommate is mostly full. I send her a text message offering to make room if she needs it, and saying she shouldn't worry about it if she needs to rearrange the freezer or anything. I have generally gotten on well with this particular roommate, although she is rarely here. The kitchen bothers her more than it does me, and she has a boyfriend she can spend time with away from here, so I suppose why wouldn't she?
While at the grocery shop, I bought Monster energy drinks again, and had one as soon as I got home. I had been feeling deadened, disinterested, wondering whether my slump had degraded into depression. Shortly after the drink, though, as generally and bizarrely seems to happen, I felt... better. Cheerful, in a way I have not been. Why does this happen? What is it about the energy drinks that sloughs away the misery in a way nothing else does? I find it... concerning. I have a sense that I ought to be able to feel this alert all the time, without having to rely on a drink to trigger it. Why is it that they make me happy, even if I still feel tired and sleepy? Do I really feel my fatigue more as emotions than fatigue? I do know that nothing saps my energy like getting upset, but I didn't expect it to work so thoroughly the other way around. I know tiredness manifests as a form of sadness, but I do not expect energy to manifest more as happiness than as perceptible energy.
My slump seems to continue. I missed several classes again last week. I overcame some reluctance-towards-everything in order to attend a session I had booked almost a month ago with my counsellor on Friday. I spent just about the whole time venting and ranting and voicing my assessment of the great streak I had been on for a while, and the restfulness, and then restlessness, of my disengagement since February 19th.
The next day, I went back to the gym. I had a headache, that ebbed and returned while I was working out, and part way through my strength exercises, my willingness to exert myself gave out. My muscles seemed to be doing alright. It wasn't pain or pushing near the usual shaky intolerance that made me stop one of my sets at eleven, and the next, when I elected to try it again, at ten. It was something closer to boredom, or apathy, or reclusiveness.
I saw the coach who had originally set me up with my work out as I was heading up the stairs, and he asked cheerfully how I was, but I had nothing cheerful to say back, so I only waved. It was nice to see him again, since he was a positive acquaintance and very energetic and understanding from the beginning, but it was uncomfortable to be seen.
I noticed the other day that I had completely forgotten to pay rent to my landlord in February. In a fit of profound embarrassment, I immediately sent him an e-transfer for two months' rent to cover February and March, and filled the comment box and another email beside it with my apologies. He was gracious, and made nothing of it except to thank me for the messages. This landlord has been uncommonly good to us. I count that a dear blessing.
The kitchen continues to be wretched. The stove covered in grease and burned debris, the floor just dirty enough to be slightly sticky sometimes, and slightly slidey with a layer of dirt which is not secure on the floor at others. It is an unhappy, weighing thing to see.
Friday night my roommates had friends over. I have been trying to sleep at night again, and have been having some limited success, sleeping in late evening and remaining awake five hours before waking up on my own. However, I cannot measure my progress very well when I am not left to myself to wake up. I woke Friday night to the sounds of people, coming and going and loudly talking. I did not have the energy, or perhaps simply did not have the will, to move. I only lay in the darkness, awake and tired or perhaps sometimes vaguely approaching sleep again for a while before the voices roused me. Someone laughs. Someone swears, and my tension ticks up another little notch. I do not know how long I laid there before I found whatever I had been lacking and moved.
I should note, it was not paralysis this time. Sleep paralysis feels very different. I was stuck between rest and motion, not between my nerves and the waking world. It was very tiresome, but was not claustrophobic in the same way.
Eventually I stirred, rolled over, groaned, and turned on my laptop to check the time. About 1:30 AM. My thoughts grew darker, but were still tired and predominantly wordless. I wrapped my housecoat around me and staggered out to boil some water and fetch a snack, casting dark, empty looks toward the corner where those two roommates and their guests sat or stood or lay variously on and around the couch, talking loudly and not seeming to do much of anything else. I did not talk to them. I did not have the grace or the desire. In the short term, I was already woken, and in the long term, I no longer felt any inclination to believe my words would make any difference at all to their behaviour. Perhaps they do not understand the affect this has on me, but I have tried to make it clear to them before.
The loud speaking continued until 3:30 or 4 or so. The next morning, the area was scattered with pieces of chips, an empty chip bag, a large empty vodka bottle. The common area thus decorated was slightly worse than usual. Since then, the bottle and bag have been tidied away, but the pieces of chips have not. A few days ago, I left out a note on the counter that only said, "The STICKINESS on the floor is GROSS. Please CLEAN it." It has shifted around and been pushed toward the section of cabinets I reserve for myself, and the marker has been smudged with wetness and the paper spotted with grease, but so far as I can tell nothing has been done.
This afternoon I confronted one of my roommates in the kitchen, toneless, dark, not feeling enough of myself to give of myself. I greeted her and said, "Does it not bother you to see the kitchen like this?" She said quickly that it does, and that she would clean it tonight when others were not in the house. I heard it listlessly, almost feeling this gambit were unfair. I told her that if she did not, I probably would, and that I had a friend I wished to have over tomorrow.
I do not particularly believe her, but I will look to see whether anything is done. She also told me, the other day, when I sent out a text to the household and the landlord complaining that the thermostat had been turned to 78 degrees, that the landlord had set it so after she had complained of the cold, and it automatically reset to 78 if they changed it. I heard from the landlord in response to the same message that he would put a lock box on the thermostat.
I went out and bought some groceries, mostly frozen things to heat in the oven. The freezer I share with another roommate is mostly full. I send her a text message offering to make room if she needs it, and saying she shouldn't worry about it if she needs to rearrange the freezer or anything. I have generally gotten on well with this particular roommate, although she is rarely here. The kitchen bothers her more than it does me, and she has a boyfriend she can spend time with away from here, so I suppose why wouldn't she?
While at the grocery shop, I bought Monster energy drinks again, and had one as soon as I got home. I had been feeling deadened, disinterested, wondering whether my slump had degraded into depression. Shortly after the drink, though, as generally and bizarrely seems to happen, I felt... better. Cheerful, in a way I have not been. Why does this happen? What is it about the energy drinks that sloughs away the misery in a way nothing else does? I find it... concerning. I have a sense that I ought to be able to feel this alert all the time, without having to rely on a drink to trigger it. Why is it that they make me happy, even if I still feel tired and sleepy? Do I really feel my fatigue more as emotions than fatigue? I do know that nothing saps my energy like getting upset, but I didn't expect it to work so thoroughly the other way around. I know tiredness manifests as a form of sadness, but I do not expect energy to manifest more as happiness than as perceptible energy.
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