Obsessive Understanding

Goals... I need Goals...

2009-01-21T04:26:19Z

I tend to just intuit, assume, fill-in-the-blanks, stop-gap, and toss.

When I have ideas, I tend to follow them as long as the new idea seems fun, and then abandon them when they become work. I'm a past master of unfinished projects.

I have ideas, and ideas about those ideas, and ideas about what I should be doing with the ideas and their ideas.

I don't yet have anything written down. That's part of the problem.

There is no skeleton. There is no framework on which I can paste my ideas, to organize them into a coherent whole. Mostly because there's no reason to have one.

And therefore, there's no reason to direct my writing towards any particular goal.

But, you see, I have... well, if not, properly speaking, goals, then at least targets, aims that it might be... desirable to attain.

So, what I need to do is list what they are.

Then list what it would take to achieve them.

There are at least 3 reasons I can think of for me to start writing on a regular basis. Reasons why I would want to.

We'll see. Expect more later.

I mean, seriously, dude, WTF?

2009-01-15T03:46:00Z

The von Mises Institute is in AUBURN.

I think I'm moving....

Who wants to be a SuperVillain?

2009-01-10T18:34:07Z

So.

I've been exposed to fictional serial-killers, whom in my personal antipathy toward the human race I have elevated to the status of personal hero.

I've also been encouraged to pursue a career as an evil-genius supervillain.

These are not completely mutually exclusive but they do have very different MO'S and psychological mindsets.

That my closest friends are telling me these things does nothing to persuade me that a life of moral saintliness is within my grasp.

So, I am asking you, gentle reader: SuperVillain or Serial Killer? In which evil profession do you see me fulfilling my destiny? By all means, please give me your thoughts.

Bonus points will be awarded for coming up with a psychologically feasible way in which the aims and goals and MO's of both can be harmoniously integrated into a single evil career.

A Facebook-inspired pity-party

2008-12-05T04:19:39Z

Good thing about Facebook: getting in touch with people I knew from 10 years ago, my days at Samford. Almost ANYONE I knew then I had, till now, completely lost touch with. This is absolutely a blast from the past and a wonderful chance to connect with people I haven't heard from in far too long.

Like everything else, there is a dark side. Everyone I knew is married, it seems. They are proceeding apace in their careers, sometimes even on second careers.

Let's leave aside things that really sting - like, for example, my perpetual failure to ever find anyone remotely interesting who is remotely interested. (the universal rule about women is that the more we have in common, or the better we seem to get along, or the more potential there seems to be that the girl and I could get along wonderfully and have something incredible, the more certain that she won't be interested in anything beyond friendship.) (It's not that i'm depressed about being single: it's that I'm depressed that it doesn't matter what I do, where I go, how hard I try, or why things are the way they are: my status never changes because girls who could actually relate to me meaningfully are VERY rare, and ALL of them are either already taken or not the least bit attracted to me.)

I don't know, exactly, what set this off, but I'm pretty sure it was seeing the names of a couple of girls I knew at Samford, with their new last names, names of the guys they married, guys they met way back then. Wow, 10 years out and these guys are married, still together, they found something successful back then and it worked and 10 years later there lives still have the shape they assumed way back when and wow maybe relationships and marriage and all that are the norm and not the exception so WHY THE HELL..........

I'm just... tired. Really. Sick and tired and disgusted and frustrated and angry and hurt and sad and depressed. I mean, seriously, why me? Why ME??? How can I NOT feel... alone, how can I not feel like some degree of failure, no career, nothing to show for my time, no progress on anything of note, nothing to point to and say "This is who I have been, what I have done, in the last decade"... and if all of THAT weren't enough, not only am I AS alone as I was, way back when, but I also seem to have this RELENTLESS and UNENDING and UNBROKEN and PERMANENT fate, decreed since before the Big Bang itself, that under NO circumstances am I EVER to actually find someone I might really be interested in who will be interested in turn in me.

But you know what the real bitch of it is? This is me NOT looking. I'm not. I'm not looking for a relationship, I can think of several reasons why it would be a bad idea for me, reasons I agree with, and am choosing to do other things with my time. (I mean, it's not as if actually TRYING to find someone out there has ever yielded anything close to positive results, so why bother?) So, this isn't, really, the sting of rejection I'm feeling so much as the frantic restlessness of despair. As in, I'm not getting any younger, my opportunities aren't falling thick on the ground, so that I need a higher success rate or an increased number of opportunities just to stay even; not only are neither forthcoming, but the better it seems my prospects the worse they end up actually being.

I had so much potential and promise, so long ago. Now I feel I have nothing, and no one to share it with, too. And neither looks like it's going to change anytime soon.

Random ramblings

2008-10-25T03:30:03Z

At times like this, it's hard not to think of yourself as some sort of failure....

I wish I had the excuse of feeling broody right now. I don't even have that: dark, melancholy moods are a young man's game, back when nothing is quite so important as whatever it is that is absolutely the most important. It would be nice to say I have "more important" concerns pressing upon me but unfortunately there simply isn't all that much there. I'm bored. I'm bored, restless, somewhat lonely (not remotely crushingly so), and pondering how things could have gotten here in the first place.

I suppose things are not as socially dire as all that. After all, my best friend is watching his daughter on the weekend that his grandmother died and he's getting ready for a trip to California, so he isn't exactly free at the moment; there's a party going on tonight that I specifically didn't go to, not because I didn't want to, but because I was with the group last weekend and will be with them again tomorrow and probably for Halloween, and I don't want to tip my hand to the fact that they are pretty much my only social outlet; and there's a phone number that I got from a girl at work this morning, but I'm not going to call that number till tomorrow anyway. So, I'm not exactly a social pariah; I'm just being socially selective.

The problem is that I have time, and I should be writing, but I'm not writing when I said that what I wanted to do is want to be writing. This just doesn't seem all that much like obsession to me.

It's not that I don't want to write. After all, I'm here writing this, now, so it's not as if I'm running screaming from the prospect of (by the way, those old ladies, perched like vultures, in front of the coffee bar, are really {expletive deleted} annoying) writing. But the fact remains that right now I feel that there are things that I could be having, that in a certain sense I should be having, and yet I'm not having them; and in not having them I'm failing to be... rewarded as I should be, perhaps?

I think it's the fact that I'm bored. The golden mean and all that: if I'm too immersed in socialization, I never focus on getting things done; if I'm too isolated I go stir crazy and my sanity starts slipping. (Now it's a stupid idiot teenage boy. Damn a world full of losers!) (Bottom line, I'm not a people person.) The problem (well, one of them anyway: far be it from me to claim to have cured myself of a raging host) is that I don't quite have ADHD, in much the same way I don't quite have Bipolar Disorder, or I'm not quite a narcissist. I'm probably not quite a genius, either....

I'm a 95-percenter. Maybe 90. Probably 89, now that I think about it: good enough on sheer talent to do better than almost anyone, to do really, really well, and therefore completely allergic to ANY kind of effort whatsoever....

Except, that that's not it. It's the sterilization: It's the fact that I'm tired of the only person I'm sharing my thoughts with is me. It's hard to be motivated when all you have to look forward to is more of the same....

There's a part of me that recognizes, or at least believes, that personal wholeness lies in the direction of success, and that success lies in the direction of dedication; but there's a part of me that suspects that success won't happen until I'm so fully engaged in my work - and by that, I ALSO mean socially - that I can't think of anything else to do.

How the HELL do I get there from here?

Idle thoughts...

2008-10-18T03:58:41Z

I don't have to be angry...

Had a couple of interesting conversations tonight.

That's always the way it is when I'm hanging out with the NAFA people.

Socialization has been on my mind quite a bit lately.

Mostly the fact that I hardly do any of it. That I don't know how to doesn't help. That I don't know where to go to do it is also beneficial. That in my current state of mind I'm slightly less misogynistic than Arab culture is similarly salutary.

As a general rule I deal with this particular melange of moods by (when I think about it) trying to convince myself that I what I really want is to sell myself to writing so that I end up being successful; and from a position of success worrying about socializing (generally) and women (specifically).

Yes, there are reasons why I'm feeling misogynistic. No I'm not going to discuss them now. Yes I've written on them in LJ. No, I haven't published that post yet. Or much finished it for that matter. The long story short is: I don't trust women (as women; I have very good and very close female friends whom I trust as people, as friends; but they're not in my dating pool. I can't look at a girl I might be tempted to date and manage to muster sufficient positive opinions, and put in abeyance sufficient negative ones, to convince myself it would be worth the trouble). I've been beaten and scarred very badly; and short of either a) adopting a naively romantic stance or b) becoming intolerantly hostile to women generally, the best coping mechanism I can devise at the moment is just pure emotional suppression/repression. I will simply ignore both the attraction and the repulsion, the hope and the fear, the delight and the anger; I will simply act as if none of it exists, as if this were not a part of my life that is still open and gaping and raw, and attempt to focus my energies on that which I know I must accomplish to succeed.

I don't have to be angry. I'm trying to be dedicated; hell, I'm trying to be obsessed. And thinking like that does, honestly, help. But I can tell that there are definitely parts of me that doesn't like that things are this way. Unfortunately they cannot think of any other way they can be.

I only wish that sometimes I could forget all of the above.

Better living through mood-altering chemicals...

2008-10-09T01:37:30Z

Don't inhale cigar smoke.

I was in a down mood two hours ago.

I was feeling rather melancholy. Recalling that it has been a year since I moved here.

My headspace is, if not necessarily more stable, then at least more consolidated and grounded, than it was a year ago. Nothing left to who I am but who I am, and all I have to do is make of myself what I will. And all that.

I was remembering Gwynne's family. The feeling of belonging I had with them. Autumn is the season for wanting-to-belong. And while I'm not feeling particularly alienated from my family, I am so far from where I want to be that connecting to them is... out of the question at this point. I'm feeling somewhat alone but not ready to arrive yet.

I was writing out a letter that I thought I might want to send to her mom and stepdad, with whom I had become friendly while we were together. My thoughts were rather melancholy.

I was taking solace in what little of my heritage I actually have any connection to. Some CD's of Puerto Rican music my mom used to play when I was a kid. Thinking about the the tattoo I'll (eventually) get. I was hungry. I got dinner.

At a Caribbean Restaurant.

This is when things started to get better.

I like food. I like my heritage. I like trying new things.

Jonathan was happy.

Afterwards, bookstore. Cup of (decaf) coffee and a (Puerto Rican) cigar, and I'm out here on the deck at Books-a-Million.

Life isn't great, but at least I know it doesn't have to be bad.

A Sliver of Bitter

2008-10-05T23:40:02Z

There really aren’t a lot of people who know me that well.

This isn’t a knock against people who know me. It’s just an observation on how furtive I am at times.

Jake told me how is ex(-wife) tried to guilt-trip him and failed. “I’m impervious to guilt” he told her. She replied, “I know; it’s your superpower.”

I congratulated him.

It’s not difficult to guilt-trip me, IF you’re someone I have a personal attachment to. However, in the abstract, there’s a lot less that I will recoil from and say “you know, that’s a bad thing to do” if I’m left to my own devices. I have a very strong sense of right and wrong, don’t mistake me; it’s just that it fails to track things that most people would consider to be worthy of moral valuation.

There’s a reason for this, of course, though that’s not something I’ll get into now. But being responsive to the cues and expectations of others is a significant factor in how we develop, socio-ethically; correspondingly, being (mostly) unresponsive will cause one to “deviate from the norm.”

Being shaped by how we are treated and reacted to by others is a fundamental human characteristic, and once upon a time, I was very concerned to act in a way that met with others’ approval. To the extent that my moral compass does not track as most others’ do is as much an artifact of “my treatment by society” as it is my own actions and behavior.

The thing is, I am perfectly happy with the person that I am now, perfectly content to abide by the moral code by which I act now. That there are some parts of who I am that would make a majority of people’s skin crawl is, in a very real sense, no fault of my own. I am, after all, who they encouraged me to be. Once upon a time, my views, opinions, ethics, and morals were not terribly dissimilar from the ones society explicitly claims to endorse. It took quite some time for me to shed them. I may be self-made (“We are all self-made; but only the successful among us admit to it”) but I was pointed down the paths I took by the sum total of influences upon me, in no small part by the actions of others, throughout my life.

In other words, if society had truly wanted me to “play well with others” and fit nicely into it’s view of “nice” it would have done well to reward me back when I was trying to play by its rules. It didn’t.

I have abrogated the responsibility to take charge of making my own rules, and the rest of the world can go fly a kite. Had they really wanted things to turn out otherwise, they might have done well to recognize they were treating me differently than they now expect me to treat them.

Just something else, while I'm at it.

2008-09-28T01:06:48Z

I'm now going on a diet.

Jake's advice: become obsessed with losing weight.

Sounds like an excellent Idea!

And here the problem lies...

2008-09-26T01:15:29Z

I had a delightful conversation earlier today with a wonderful friend. (It was evidently existential-crisis management.)

I left the conversation feeling... empowered, energized, invigorated.

I had plans.

Reality, on the other hand - well, that's not true. Reality has no plans. (I don't necessarily believe it doesn't act intentionally, but it doesn't act with any particular designs.)

Actually, Reality doesn't Act.

That is not to say that Reality does not resist. And that is what it is doing here.

You have to want it bad enough. Well, DO you?

In a word: Yes.

Upon Returning to the Scene of the Crime

2008-09-24T19:52:25Z

Imagine the capital letter “L.” Now turn it 90 degrees counterclockwise so that it is oriented somewhat like the state of Florida: this is the skeleton on which the city of Huntsville is framed.

When Gwynne and I were together, we spent most of our time on the ends of the horizontal: she lived with her mom and worked on west end of the city (Pensacola), and we spent a fair bit of our recreational time out on that end as well – there was a Barnes and Noble out that way, for instance. Her sister, on the other hand, lived in 5 points, on the east end, on the corner with the vertical bar (Jacksonville) and out beyond that was Monte Sano State Park, where we visited on a number of occasions. That – this – is where we first read the listing for the house we ended up renting together. That house was smack in the middle of the horizontal bar (Tallahassee), but she and I never really spent a lot of time together there. I spent far more time there alone than I ever did with her.

For those who didn’t know, I’ve been working since January of this year at a gas station. Back in March I moved out of the house I had been in and into an apartment, not too far from the house, but somewhat south and east of it (say, Apalachicola). The gas station itself was in the middle to the bottom of the vertical bar (between Cape Canaveral and Miami). As a result, I have been able to pretty much avoid any and all references to my ex during the last 9 months: the life that I have lived and made for myself in Huntsville does not overlap in any way (literally!) the life that I had been building with her here when we were together. No landmarks, no places visited, no friends in common.

So, my life is about to undergo some changes. Now seems as good a time as any to make some sort of symbolic peace with the past and prepare to move forward. So Here I Am, at the State Park, typing away and trying to figure out what I want to say and why I’m even bothering to say it. It’s certainly not because I’m hung up on Gwynne – not anymore. I found out a week or two ago that she’s getting married: the news pretty much just bounced off of me. I don’t really care, and that seems to be a good thing. As I’ve told my good friend Jake repeatedly in the last 9 months or so, I have much bigger fish to fry. In the time since she left me, the isolation, the separation from anything in my past, has given me a space to concentrate on myself that I could not have had had I, for example, elected to remain in (or return to) Birmingham, and it’s given me a chance to figure a lot of things out.

I’ve never “settled in” to living in Huntsville. There’s certainly no damned reason to: I never wanted to stay here, even when I was here with her – it was just a temporary waypoint for us to be together until she was ready to leave. Yet being here, after she left, has been the entire experience has been something like a trip to a foreign country, a place to lose your anchor, drift aimlessly for a while. I had almost everything that mattered in my life – with the exception of my family, of course – taken away from me: my career as a sleep technician, my graduate school goals and getting a Ph.D., the woman I loved, the house we were going to live in together, the future we had planned. In it’s place I noticed that I had nothing left, that there was nothing there, that I didn’t know who I was and what I wanted and where I was going, that I was drifting, had been drifting, for years, for a decade, and all that Gwynne had provided had been a false anchor, a substitute self. I was stripped down to my bare essentials, looked at my naked self, and tried to figure out who I was and what I wanted.

As I said, my life is about to undergo some changes. It’s the beginning of Autumn – note that I said Autumn and not autumn. It’s not just that this is my favorite part of the year – for I, child of the tropics, deplorer of all things cold and wintry, who would nonetheless accept that evil, evil time of the year as a necessary companion to that season that embodies melancholy and wistfulness, regret and reflection, with heartbreaking poignancy. For all that last year’s Autumn was supposed to be the beginning of my life with Gwynne, our relationship was so rocky at that time that I hardly noticed the season – much too much else was going on for me to revel in it.

It’s been a year since I moved here. That fact boggles. It almost seems as if it’s been a year wasted, a lost opportunity, were it not for the fact that… more than anything else, the last year has been a winter, a time of death and sterility, preparing the world for a reawakening.

My life is about to undergo some changes. So I came up here, to Monte Sano State Park, because there are things I want to say. The year of barrenness has actually borne fruit. For the first time in my life, actually have goals and ambitions and have some clue how to go about them. Now is as good a time as any to revisit old haunts. Exorcize ghosts from the past.

I’m being promoted at work. Going to be a manager trainee. It’s a salary job with an effective dollar-an-hour raise (it’s actually more than that, but it’s also a required 50-hour a week job, so when you figure potential overtime, it only works out to about that). I’m not excited about this, I assure you of that. I keep hoping that at some point, I’ll become so dissatisfied with my employment situation that I’ll actually do something about it. I admit it’s been hard to get motivated for anything when, so far as I was concerned, NOTHING was any more attractive than anything else. Working at a gas station at least came with a minimal degree of responsibility. Not anymore!

More significantly, I think, is the fact that I will be working over on the west end of town – seeing every day some of the old haunts and places that I spent with Gwynne. (Today I’m doing Jacksonville, since soon enough I’ll be dealing with Pensacola on a daily basis.) I’m going to be perturbed out of my comfort zone soon enough. And when I am…

Yes, Viriginia, blogging has been light

2008-06-03T07:41:59Z

It's not my fault, I swear.

For the 2 of you who read my blog with any regularity:

Tomorrow/Tuesday will be my first day off since last Friday, 10 days ago. I don't expect to see a week where I put in less than 50 hours of work in in the month of June, and more than likely will be working at least 6 days a week for the entire month.

I'm tired.

In all this, there hasn't been much room for, well, Jonathan. It's time to find a real job.

I still haven't quite... grasped that I am living in Huntsville. But for all the destruction visited upon me in the great post-Gwynne unraveling, the most important outcome has been the realization that I never started living my own life at any time throughout my adulthood. I'm not used to "goal-oriented action" or, frankly, doing anything for myself. So, strangely, the relatively close juxtaposition of indulging in my own interests and projects for a couple of weeks - blogging for the fun of it, imagine that - and then being worked so much I don't have time to have fun and be myself, is making me want a different, yay and verily, better life - i.e. get a better job.

Incidentally: I'm working on a project which will, in time, be a synthesis of more than 5 years of thinking about different aspects of metaphysics, economics, physics, biology, etc. One of the "own interests and projects" that I am thoroughly enjoying indulging in. If I ever gain recognition, it will be because of this.

Last but not least - 6 days till my birthday. Since I have to work till 4 or 4:30 that day, my original idea - going to Birmingham - probably won't pan out. Anyone in Huntsville or who can make it up here Monday is invited for... something. Don't know what. Dinner for sure. I sure as hell am not going to neglect celebrating my birthday. I'm in a city I moved to 7 months ago and with a handful of friends I've met while working at a gas station, and last year I was here for my birthday because I was with Gwynne celebrating hers and Adara's. I haven't completely exorcised the ghost of her memory from my heart but that is one date, ESPECIALLY here in Huntsville, that I MUST take back and make my own. The more of my friends, my life, I can surround myself with, the better off I'll be.

Out.

Loneliness-Blogging

2008-05-17T22:37:08Z

I swear, I don't come to Big Spring Park for the wi-fi.

It's really one of the few places in Huntsville I know to go to when I have some free time; I can't help it that it has wi-fi.

But I do feel like writing, FWIW.

There are some places I could go but I'm still afraid to go. Monte Sano Mountain most prominently, though I forbore to take Governor's Drive up the mountain because I didn't want to remember our date to Burrit-on-the-Mountain.

It's the beautiful weather that gets me, of course. I have time on my hands, and while I have projects and enterprises of my own to pursue, 1) there really aren't that many of them, and b. these are exactly the kinds of times that you most want to share with someone. Having a pretty day and being by myself is bad enough; exploring the wonders of something new while remembering I should have been doing them with someone I still miss and care about? Yeah, not going to happen.

I'm not really "hung up" on her, to tell the truth, but yes, at times like this, it's hard to forget why I am here in Huntsville in the first place. Jake, my buddy whose own story is worse/sadder/more painful/more unfair than mine, reminded me yesterday that living in the past is a sure way not to move forward, not to heal. He's right, and I had kind of come to that conclusion myself. I'm just the kind of person who hates letting go of the past. I've always felt there's a fine line between wallowing in self-pity by remembering too much, and losing all touch with your humanity by remembering too little, and I've always erred on the side of the former. It's not always been the best of choices for my mood....

I tend to obsess, and I know this. And I don't want to. I don't want to be depressed, and rerunning the same gloomy thoughts in my head can only lead there. So you let the memories drift on, you remember that they are there but you don't relive them; remember that something happened, but don't remember what happened itself. As much as I hate losing pieces of myself, it's gotten to the point where I dislike wallowing even more. So I give myself permission to dip into this emotional stream, for a few minutes, and then - onward.

It has inspired me, incidentally, to actually (tentatively) explore my environs. A few places that I think would be fine to visit without being so overwhelmed with "Oh, isn't this so beautiful that it would have been wonderful to have..." so as to be safe to visit. And in order to do that, I might need summer clothes - all locked up in storage. Forward planning! What a concept!

In a sense, though, this is exactly what I need. Anything, EVERYTHING I do now is for me, because of me: I am for the first time in my life I am charting my course purely because it IS my course, without reference to anyone else's wishes or expectations of me. And having to be self-directed - having to make choices for myself, having to figure out what I want and where I am going - for the first time in my LIFE is teaching me lessons I should have long ago learned. Like the importance of planning ahead - because I'm not doing what's being demanded or expected of me, I'm doing what I want, and, well, preparation is important for those things, too. Now that the reasons for being prepared ahead of time are things that I am choosing on my own, I'm actually motivated to be responsible. Go figure.

It's not just responsibility. I'm also pursuing my ideas, my little intellectual puzzles, because they are what I want to do, because they are fun. And I realized/discovered that the most useful/practical application that my ideas would have would be using them to develop a universal modelling scheme for certain kinds of systems, so I'm dedicating mental energy to developing that. Not something I probably could have done were I not a bachelor. Who knows? It doesn't really matter - I'm doing it now.

Anyway, It's time to get done with being all introspective get back to living life. I do know how to do that every once in a while. Hopefully with a little practice, I can get good at it.

There to live deliberately...

2008-05-14T01:02:36Z

If there's anything to recommend having your entire life crash down around you (I'm not saying that there is, mind, just that if there were, this would be it; I wouldn't wish my last six months on my worst enemy) it's that it has reduced my existence to the barest of essentials. If you're a regular reader of my blogs (which, I'm not saying there actually are any, just that, should such a hypothetical being exist, then) you've noticed an increase in output over the past couple of weeks. And if you're at all familiar with the work of H. Paul Grice (I am, which is why I bring it up) then you probably can articulate the explicit principle that leads you to suspect that the topics of my first two sentences are in fact connected.

I do like to write. I think it's fairly safe to say I'm pretty good at it (whether I write anything that others would actually want to read is another (hopefully unrelated) question) and I've talked about writing, written about writing, thought about it (If there are any other linguistic media out there, it's probably safe to assume that I've indulged in some degree of linguistic manipulation within that medium for some purpose relating to exploring my affinity toward writing. Except for poetry. I dislike poetry.) and in general obsessed about it. Mildly obsessed. Not the kind of obsessive obsession that actually leads people to actually doing something. More like fixating. Yeah. That's a better word. Fixating.

The point of course is that I'm finding that this is something... I want to involve myself in. And now that I have no other obligations, to myself or to anyone else - now that my entire existence begins and ends with what am I going to do now - I find that I actually want to write. And that I'm actually making time to write. And that I'm actually, you know, getting some writing done.

Believe it or not, it's not all been whiny, obsessive, neurotic writing, either. Which is good, too. But I'm starting. I'm moving. Slower maybe than I could but people will vouch that glaciers are like that. It's a fun life and I think that that's what I want to do in it - have fun, and for me that means... letting things swirl around in my head until they come out in some bizarre concatenation of linguistic particles reflective of the mirror of nature that is my mind. This is what I do, this is who I am.

It's about damned time, too.

A couple of things I learned today

2008-05-11T01:42:22Z

I came across a fascinating book today on body language. At $23, it’s an absolute steal; of course I can’t afford that much right now. It’s on the short list.

I read – ok, devoured – the first couple of chapters while at BN. (Those of us with poorly developed social skill sets, who are actually trying to learn, tend to be voracious consumers of helpful information.) The book suggested putting time aside each day to both pay attention to one’s own body language, and to make it a point to observe others’.

I’ve long found “people watchers” somewhat annoyingly pretentious. (Bare with me here; I’m frequently dogmatically opinionated.) Now, what I’ve found pretentious about self-professed “people-watchers” has been the almost transcendent self-satisfaction with which they describe their activity. It is as if they have said “this is something I do, it’s a Good thing to do it, I’m a Good person for doing it, and those who don’t do it cannot possibly understand how Good it is to be someone who does.” I’ll get to my visceral reaction in a moment. For now let me say that I have no doubt been unfair to some of my many people-watching friends and acquaintances in the past for holding that opinion of them. Let me also hasten to say that I’ve no doubt nailed some of them down cold.

Part of the problem, of course, has been my visceral reaction. “People-watching? First, I want as little to do with people as I can. Second, I can hardly see any value in such a passive activity. Third, your pretentiousness demonstrates that you are but a snob, by another name. Thanks but no thanks.” But it’s not just that I reacted to the practice of people-watching; there’s no doubt more, lying beneath the surface. The very fact that it was an activity, for all its passivity, that was essentially social that put me off from it. “People don’t generally care about me, and I don’t’ generally care about them, back. Why should an activity predicated on paying attention to them interest me in the slightest?”

Of course, the answer is evident, at least now: paying attention to others is a sine qua non of what Aristotle might call “flourishing.” I didn’t know that then, I hardly want to believe it now, but that’s the truth, that’s on’t. I’m throwing myself into my studies because at this point there’s hardly a better investment of my time and effort. Now let’s see something that I noted.

It was something about, even reading about people watching, in context of paying attention to my own body language. And there it was, plain as day: at the thought of interacting with others, I’m constantly closed off. I was watching someone, possibly a classic “nerd” type, not someone in general comfortable with others, and what I noticed in his body language, I could immediately feel reflected, performed, in mine.

And I thought about what effect that would have on others.

One of the unfortunate things about having poor social skills is the difficulty of trying to acquire them when saddled with their lack. If a man to have friends must show himself friendly, but one doesn’t know what one does that comes across as being unfriendly, it will be very difficult for the situation to change. Vicious circles, catch-22’s, chicken-and-egg problems, and Gordian knots. Self-perpetuating cycles of anger, frustration, shunning, and withdrawal.

And one wonders why...

I do call myself a philosopher, after all

2008-05-08T22:28:46Z

I pretty much wasted yesterday - got off work, went to Big Spring Park, there browsed online and enjoyed the (natural and human) scenery, went home, watched MythBusters, wasted my time in other more and less constructive ways. I thought I should write, but I didn't feel like writing, and I'm somewhat under injunction not to do shit I don't want to do (more on that momentarily).

Fast forward to today, reading a blog on a certain political topic, am reminded of a friend's recent ranting disagreement on said topic, read that friend's blog looking for a post, read a random other post, in which said friend linked to another blog which had been the subject of one of another friend's blog posts, and a few things seemed to collide in my mind with much of what's been going on in my life recently. So here I am, most emphatically not blogging about political matters.

I live in a state of semi-permanent anger at society in general, and people in particular. This isn't exactly news, I admit, but wanting to do something about it somewhat is. Even then, much of what has been offered up as encouragement/advice/instruction has been a cure worse than the illness. It's too late to name names, it's almost completely pointless to discuss the genealogy of my personal malaise. Let's just say some people who were (at least at the time) very close to me and who wanted (from their lights) only what was best for me, managed to screw the pooch and push me towards epic levels of resentment and apathy in the very act of trying to get me to "shape up" and "do better."

Being judged to fail others' expectations, when they had categorically denied any value to my own ambitions and interests, has almost completely soured me on this whole "other people" enterprise.

I'm not a very sociable person. This isn't my fault, whatever personal responsibility I must assume for nursing attitudes of resentment and antipathy. And as much as I might believe that others genuinely wanted and even worked toward what they felt was best for me, everyone (well, anyone who has ever tried to "encourage" me to "shape up" in any way, whether it was socially, or academically, or professionally, or fiscally) has basically come at it from the perspective that I was incapable (or oblivious, or inept, or insufficiently motivated, or, frankly, immoral) and therefore would not get to where I needed to be on my own.

So: the people who were close to me told me I was screwing up my life, that I needed to shape up, and that effectively ceding my autonomy by changing my life and actions to conform to their concerned ministrations was how I would "become a better person." (I know! Let's kill the patient to save it!) People who weren't close to me ridiculed my differences when I tried to be sociable, approved of me when I kept to myself (e.g. giving me a degree of ersatz social contact if I sought it through MySpace), and ignored me the rest of the time.

The irony of it all has been that my attempts at good social behavior were always punished; my withdrawal and similar bad behavior was always rewarded; trying to take control of my life led to opprobrium; and doing what others expected of me (to the denial of myself) was the only way I could gain acceptance.

Against this backdrop, my violently reactive, whipped-cur and under-siege mentality towards the social realm is, for all its extremism, a not-unreasonable response to previous situations. Yes, there's an automatic element to it, a mal-adaptivity that is extremely detrimental toward the kind of life I really want; at the same time, anyone whose ever encountered it in me, and tried to do anything about it, has reacted in exactly the sorts of ways that would set it off. And while I don't blame them, it is unfair of them to blame me.

What set this all off was the confluence of: a couple of posts I read somewhere about human sexuality, it's free expression, and the reaction to and sensitive awareness about individual preferences; the growing courage and awareness I am developing in social situations because of the work of my "social coach"; the nuances of a particular situation which arose yesterday while at the park; and an awareness of my own knee-jerk reactions to situations of social criticism.

A quick word about my "coach." He's a friend of mine I met here in Huntsville and we've been hanging out for 3 months or so, and has done more to get me to pay attention to social niceties and how I am perceived by others than a lifetime of nagging by other friends, family, or lovers. I asked him why that was so, and his response was incredibly illuminating. "The difference between me and them, is that as family, or girlfriends, they had a vested interest in you accomplishing something or living up to your potential. In some way, to some extent, they were in it for them, and that kept you from doing what they wanted you to do. I'm just your friend. I have no interest than in you being happy - I could care less what you accomplish or how sociable you are for myself."

Go figure. The one person whose actually managed to encourage me to give being sociable a try is the one person who flatly doesn't care whether I do it or not.

Being sociable, I have reluctantly come to realize - social awareness and adeptness - is necessary to getting the good things out of life. It's hard to read or hear what people say about "being insufficiently aware of social cues" - people discussing the difference between Triple A and Major League ball when I never learned to play catch. You can only learn "sociability" by being sociable, by spending time with people, and as I've indicated, people have hardly gone out of their way to make me feel welcome. It might not be their fault that they chose to ostracize me, but as I've already said, it's not my fault that I have a low opinion of them.

So, I react badly to seeing other people comfortable in social situations and then judging me for failing to do so. I react worse to people spouting the virtues of being extremely sensitive to others' feelings (admittedly, the people who do that don't usually condemn those of us who aren't; at the same time, such "sensitivity" is lauded as a virtue, which in turn, strictly implies I have a degree of non-virtuousness) even though they themselves have been the targets of insensitivity - as if to say "I had thicker skin than to let others' opinions of me drive me to bitterness, so you should too." Sometimes I feel like asking these people why they can't do calculus.

I've been writing this post for far too long and it's starting to discohere, so I'm going to wrap it up quickly. It's the Scorpion and the Frog, all over again - the irony of being judged by those who claim not to be judgmental, for reasons that have nothing to do with a moral issue. My nature and my experiences led me to the person I am, and I at least have the good grace to admit to being judgmental. I don't pay attention to people. That's not the way my brain was wired, and that's not what my formative experiences taught me would be a worthwhile investment of my energy. Don't give me any bullshit about choices: I'm sure plenty of sociable people could choose to be better at math, too. "It just takes more work."

I'm at the point in my life where, on my own terms, and for my own reasons, I have decided that pursuing the Path of Sociability will be to my benefit. (Ye cynical among us might consider some of my reasons "manipulative." Que sera, sera.) I still have knee-jerk reactions to comments about "sensitivity to social cues" and like bullshit: I didn't choose to be socially isolated, to have my attempts at "fitting in" blow up in my face, I still get pissed off thinking about it, and I don't want my "friends" (and I sure as hell resented hearing it from former girlfriends!) telling me how I need to be a "better person" by being more "socially aware." If you think the misanthropic nature of discourse herein indicates an internal selfishness that undermines any genuine capacity for sociability, I can only say that every single person who has ever despaired of my lack of social couth and tried to do something about it has also, in times of quiet reflection, confessed to me their own degrees of personal misanthropy.

I'm rambling, and I know it. Trying something new and failing at it and getting your knees skinned does little to promote a cheerful disposition, necessary though it may be to assume an air of reckless optimism in order to get back on the horse. There's so much out there that I don't even know that I don't know, and sometimes it stings to be made aware of just how frankly inept I am at it all. And none of this even touches upon the distinct, yet related, issue of living my life for me. All in good time.

I know where I'm trying to get to. It'll just be an arduous path to get there.

alarican @ 2008-04-14T20:33:00

2008-04-15T01:33:46Z

pwned

Cogito Ergo Sum

2008-02-18T23:05:02Z

Really, sometimes, my too-subtle-to-notice sense of self-referential ironic humor probably says deep things about my brain that would send any reasonably competent mental-health professional 'round-the-bend.

I think there's a hyphen shortage somewhere in China right now.

That was another one, by the way.

I keep waking up and thinking "When is this nightmare going to end?"

The more sane I get, the closer I regress toward normalcy, the more this hash-up (tee-hee!(!!)) of a misshapen disaster that is my life seems by degrees to be just what the doctor ordered.

The title derives from DesCartes famous phrase in his Discourse on Method, which is nonetheless often erroneously attributed to his Meditations on First Philosophy - my interest here being to refer to that work instead. Or rather, an oblique reference thereto.

For what is truly the first time in my life, I am ultimately and solely responsible to and for myself. Four months shy of my 34th birthday.

It scares the piss out of me.

About damned time, but it still scares the piss out of me.

I'm tossed up to the winds. The woman I love wants nothing to do with me. I am no longer in good standing at the school I spent so much time trying to graduate from. I am no longer working in the field I spent so much of my time loathing.

I am 500 miles away from my nearest family. I have no legal, emotional, or practical connections with any other human being. With the (rather sizable) exception of financial obligations accrued over a long period from non-point sources of debt, whatever future direction my life assumes is completely free of external constraint.

The buck stops right the fuck here.

It is all up to me. Shaken down to my roots, reduced to essentials. At this point I have nowhere to go but where I point, Nothing to do but what I choose. For the first time in my life, it's all up to me, I have no one and nothing else to blame, I have no one and nothing else to be concerned with.

Meditations on First Philosophy.

How important is it to be certain of your first principles? How important is it to know what it's all about, why you're even bothering, to be able to start?

There is nothing here but solipsistic me. That is not enough. It never was - I spent my childhood waiting for the Will of God to make itself manifest to me, and lost my faith when it never did. I never had any questions about how I ought to live, even if I frequently failed to do what I should. But the open question was always, What I ought to do.

I'm not terribly closer to that answer now, either.

It was bound to happen eventually

2008-01-24T17:28:19Z

There’s a curious asymmetry to my personal attitudes towards my (admittedly mild) bipolar disorder.

I dislike the lethargy that accompanies depressive cycles, yet I embrace the debilitating melancholy that accompanies those cycles. There is something… noble… to chemically induced emotional suffering; or rather, there is a strong inclination to believe that, since such suffering is un-asked for and inescapable, some degree of personal vindication is warranted as a result of enduring it. This is, I suspect strongly, bunk, yet there is something curiously validating about being mired in the emotional morass that depression produces.

For corresponding reasons, I feel a marked antipathy towards the feeling of well-being that comprises the upward phase of the bipolar cycle. While I certainly don’t mind the energy that accompanies my (minimal) manic phases, the positive feelings – in general being positive about life, as well as feeling that the world is not about to end – are always met with standoffish disdain.

No doubt a part of it is this is the artificiality of these positive feelings: having extra energy through artificial and, frankly, chemical means is neither an original experience nor laden with an inherent moral dimension, but I don’t want to feel good if it’s neither a personal choice, nor the obvious outcome of fortuitous circumstances. People who are, always, overwhelmingly positive are, to my sensibilities, profoundly creepy. Perhaps there’s too much Schopenhauer in my intellectual diet; more than likely, my fundamental temperament is overwhelmingly negative: yet it seems simply appropriate that the natural reaction to the state of the world at any given time, and one’s own place in it in, ought to be negative. This may be why the artificiality of negative feelings is never met with suspicion: I seem not to ever think that there isn’t a sufficient reason to feel negative.

Still, I am uncharacteristically grateful for the positive effects of my current mania. In terms of their personal value to me, my reverses in the last 2 months have been the most I have ever endured. The loss of my relationship to, not just the most wonderful woman, but the single best person I have ever known – with the full knowledge that the blame for that loss can be properly attributed to my own actions – in itself has been emotionally crippling. I certainly don’t want to forget the pain that losing her has caused me – there’s a part of me that doesn’t even want that pain to appreciably lessen – but given my feelings and temperament, I was unlikely to ever choose to move myself beyond it. I have energy to rouse myself out of bed, to write, to think about tomorrow and the next day – no, I can’t forget the magnitude of my losses, but I feel willing to live again, to make right what I have ruined in my life and create anew something of value from where I am now.

As I have implied, I’m not exactly thrilled that it has taken what is essentially a glitch in my neurochemistry to get me living again; still, from this side of things, I am relieved to actually be here. And given the sheer volume of soul-searching that the last two months have engendered, at the very least, I have some very firm indications of the direction I need to be going in. So, it’s actually… gratifying, to, finally, be moving where I want to be.

How to do.

2008-01-16T11:31:31Z

The following is a list of topics I've investigated on Wikipedia, the news, on television, books, conversations, book reviews, blogs, and the like, over the past 24 hours or so:

Angel Falls

Plasma Cosmology

Geomagnetic Reversals

Dark Matter

Dark Energy

Hubble Deep Field

Cryptography

The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics

The Democratic Debate

The Michigan Primaries

Mussels

Polenta

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

Tax Rates

Avery Brooks

Statistics and Combinatorics

The World Series of Poker

The Wind and the Lion

This is a rather eclectic list of interests, I'll admit. There's little rhyme or reason to it, though there are obviously some themes: food, politics, science. It is reflective of a mind curious and voracious. It also has the fingerprint of the dilettante.

I've also had some interesting conversations with friends, acquaintances, and coworkers, particularly on the topics of pursuing my passions, living according to my choices, and investing my life with the effort and energy to turn the future into something of my making. One interesting conversation took place with a local artist and entrepreneur, who is busy creating a virtual artist' bazaar where (graphics) designers can meet up with (computer) game producers, consolidating the global talent pool and facilitating a potential marketplace explosion of brokered artistic contracts. Whilst discussing this, I asked: "So what happened? Did you say to yourself, 'Boy, wouldn't it be neat if,...' looked around and saw no one was doing it, figured there was money to be made there, and jumped right in yourself?" Her response: "That's pretty much exactly what happened."

A friend of mine recently recounted in a blog a snippet of a conversation/discussion regarding politics he and I had. I mentioned a half-remembered anecdote illustrating the benefits of some political practice, without any citation (apparently, a common failing of mine). In his post, he does me one better, investigating the very topic I brought up, grabbing some specific statistics, and arguing that the implications of these statistics certainly do not support my contention.

I have some ideas. Probably some good ones - ideas, interests, passions, dreams, that I have never done anything with. That's all I've been, all my life, an aimless, rootless dilettante without the strength of my convictions; as a coworker said, without "intestinal fortitude." My unwillingness to firmly grasp my own life with two hands, to value my life in and of itself, for myself and not because someone else was in it; my failure to pursue my dreams for me, rather than living my life for someone else - this was a root of a problem that destroyed the most wonderful relationship I have ever had, and horribly damaged the most wonderful friendship I've ever known.

I've never had to "work hard" a day in my life; I've never cared enough about what I was doing to see it through. And I know that "working hard" is exactly how success is reached: by struggling, fighting, overcoming, persevering, persevering, persevering; by focusing, seeing what must be done, and turning oneself into the kind of person that accomplishes the task at hand.

I know what I want; I have some pretty good idea what it will take to get it. If I had so dedicated myself to things that I loved, cared about, months ago, I never would have hurt and betrayed someone I deeply love; my rootlessness has cost me my own life, and someone else great pain. This is far too great a price to paid.

My mind is restless and synthesizing - I range over many topics and interests, and try to tease out patterns. This is a valuable talent and one that can be turned to a profitable skill. But doing so must be important to me - I must pursue it with commitment and focus.

I must do.

So, am I a perfectionist?

2007-09-06T13:39:52Z

I was once told (certain people tend to have recurringly insightful comments to make in my life) that while I am neither generically competitive, nor generically a perfectionist, I am a competitive perfectionist. I don't compete for the sake of competition, and if I compete at all, it will be in an area where I excel, so that I have a very good chance at success. Similarly, while do not, usually strive to excel, if it is in an area in which I am already capable, and the opportunity exists for me to be preeminent, I will improve myself, for the chance to be the best.
I don't play chess: I know that anyone with any talent and/or training in the game will destroy me, so why compete? Trivia games are like red meat to me, however, blood-in-the-water type ravenous sport. I'll take you on, and humiliate you - I WILL be the best, and I will brook no competition.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof, which will scarce fit in this margin, on how to live a happier life. A secret that has eluded me for a long time.
I'll tell you what it is, later, I promise.
I O F M T F. In fact, I should start each day asking, H C I F T?

Never settle. Never become satisfied if when it happens. But being dissatisfied does not mean I have to be afraid. And I should embrace it, wholeheartedly, as the cost of living, as the rules of the game.

And so I hereby give myself permission to do so.

Painfully Shy

2007-09-04T00:13:53Z

I have social anxiety disorder.

Now, that's interesting.

Gwynne had suggested it to me a few weeks ago. I didn't doubt her in the least - if I haven't said so already, I'm relatively confident, whenever she makes an observation about me, that she's likely to be right. But, I haven't quite gotten a chance to actually look into it.

Until Now.

I looked on the BN website (you get free access to it if you're in BN, whether or not you're purchase or have a membership to access the internet generally) for books on Social Anxiety Disorder. First book I came across was this one: Painfully Shy. The first chapter is available to read for free online. And as I was reading it, I was so overwhelmed by a recognition of myself that I nearly broke down and cried right there in the middle of the store.

As with so much in my psychological inventory, the issues surrounding this are complex and various. I can definitely see the roots of some of it in the disaster of my triple promotion. I can see the effects of it in a number of areas, including being both a direct source, and a factor contributing to other sources, of my depression. And while I wouldn't exactly consider myself socially isolated, I sure as hell am not very socially integrated. Let me put it this way: I'm leaving Birmingham, soon, home to me and mine for nearly 20 years, within a month. With the exception of coworkers (whom I've only known for as long as I have had my current job), the list of all the people I'll be saying goodbye to include only 3 friends I've made since I've moved back to Birmingham, two and a half years ago, (that list goes up to 5 if you include someone new I met 2 months ago, and an ex-girlfriend that I keep up with but practically never see) and 3 friends (including my roommate) whom I met around 15 years ago, as a freshman in college!!!!

There were two things, in just the first couple of pages in the book, that really stuck in my mind, that I will mention right now. The first is a sort of compound juxtaposition of things stated in 2 different places: in one place, the observation that people with SA/SP (Social Anxiety disorder/Social Phobia) have a hard time forming and finding intimate relationships, and in another, that sufferers tend to make excuses (my understanding of the way it was said, was that it was on the order of contrivances) in order to avoid (certain kinds of) social settings. I remember being in high school (and as an undergrad) refusing, point blank, to ask a girl out, unless I was so certain of a reasonable chance of success, by setting a bar so high that would have to be met in order for me to feel there might be a reasonable chance of success, that I practically never did ask anyone out. A part of the tragedy herein is that I, in fact, was rejected so often in so many circumstances - with the exception of one rather random chance encounter, with a girl whom circumstances put me in contact, every week, for a couple of hours at a time, every single girl I ever asked out in person turned me down!!!! - that the effect of this repeated, relentless rejection was only to drive. home. the. point. ever. DEEPER. that I would only, EVER be rejected.

The second was that because people with SA/SP tend to have more difficulty finding successful or satisfying jobs than others do -as having the disorder makes it that much harder to go out and LOOK for something - that they usually settle for jobs that are below their capability but within their comfort zone to pursue. And it reminded me that only a month ago, I was breaking down and crying because I was so mortified at the prospect of going to a job fair, and being dismissed out of hand by companies represented at it.

Anyway, I have other things to do, right now, and I am sure I will talk more about this in the future. For right now I can only lament, with more than just an edge of bitterness, that one of the authors of the book (published in 2003) wrote an earlier one back in 1992, and that had I been able to read something like that half my life ago, my life would have no doubt turned out very differently. And I find it very galling to think that there ought be no crying for spilled milk....

I'm starting to settle again...

2007-08-26T03:38:21Z

... but I'm not going to let it happen.

I'm pretty damned fucking smart.

I have great ideas that are interesting, important, valuable.

I have a life, I have a destiny, that is important. For all that I have let myself down; for all that I have dug myself into a hole through my own relentlessly apathetic inaction; for all that I now must bear the consequences of a decade and more of wasted time; I still have the intelligence, the temperament to make myself happen.

Because I am ready to erupt into the world. Ready to stop holding myself hostage out of fear of the judgments of others.

Practical stuff - finding a job, forex - is all well and good and important. But what is unacceptable is this notion that I can simply continue to be this... happy-go-lucky, unconnected, undriven time-waster. Life's WAY too short.

I have a woman who loves and supports me. That's not why I am choosing to live my life, but she has changed my life; she has made me realize that I truly want to live my own life. It doesn't entirely start from the inside out, nor does it fully start from the outside in.

Nested, iterated, triangulating, reflective-equilibrium-seeking, conscious and conscientious self-making. Begin, not with a blueprint, necessarily; but, absolutely, with a firm knowledge of where I am going and how I am going to get there.

Don't be afraid of myself. Don't be afraid of my dreams. Don't be afraid of failure.

Most importantly: don't be afraid. And don't forget to think.

Well, THIS is new....

2007-08-16T12:21:54Z

I'm at Panera.

After work.

I mean, geez, how long has it been since I've been here?

I've been busy.

Life has been happening all around me.

I know, I KNOW - I should update this thing more often, and actually USE it. Tell people what's going on. Vent. Write. Express. Create.

All those good things blogs do.

I'm just here for a few more minutes, so, No Long Posts right this minute. I'll do something later. Hey, it took me 2 months to get around to changing my MySpace profile.

ANYWAY. For now, In case you haven't heard.

1. I'm in love. It's someone who was once in my life, then wasn't, and now is again.

b. Because things between us are pretty serious, and she lives in Huntsville, and can't, for good and sufficient reasons, move here, I am trying, as soon as possible, to move there.

III. She's the one. This is it. Like I said, it's pretty serious.

G. More updates as events warrant, I promise.

OUT!

Quite a lot, actually

2007-06-18T21:25:37Z

It's been a busy couple of weeks.

There was the trip to see my friend in Huntsville who was having a horrible week/month/year. (qv later) Then the trip up to Greensboro to visit my brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew, who treated me like a jungle jim (that's what uncles are for, I'm told). Then driving back on Memorial Day to work the next night, leave from the hospital and drive straight to the airport to fly up to New York (City), there to see a friend I've not seen in 10 years, see the sights of Manhattan, spend time with my mom's sister, attend my friend's wedding, and stay with my dad's sister and parents and nephews. Then the return to Birmingham; two nights more at work, then a drive back up to Huntsville (hmm, whatever for?) to celebrate a birthday or two (or three). Drive back to Birmingham. A normal week, mostly, except for the bit where I lost a day of work because patients are not showing up at all. Dreadful no-shows left and right; a real hemorrhage of income. Then a visit from a charming young lady from Huntsville(!?!) for four days....

So, there is this rather charming, beautiful lady who, funnily enough, lives in Huntsville. And, it's a slightly complicated story but we seem to find each others' company quite enjoyable. It's fun, it's scary. And I'm finding that I'm unprepared for all the internal landmines that threaten to undermine the "something rather wonderful" that we have. And I've just settled down, for the first time in 25 days, into a settled routine. And I do miss her....

There's more, I'm sure. Not sure what it is, yet....