kainasylum

My mom changed her mind and decided to do it all out for Christmas.  She took the day off to cook.  I was happy that we might actually have a normal Christmas.  When I arrived, I told her about the good things in my life.  She responded in her usual way by warning me of all possible dangers.  Everything was a potential danger that would end in disaster... just like my father's life, just like her life, just like mine....

Now I remembered what it was about visiting her that I dreaded.  Nobody is better at pushing my buttons than my mom.  She made those buttons.  I went off on her and grabbed my stuff to leave immediately.  She didn't understand why... and I explained to her what just happened: That I came to tell her some good news and she responds by pointing out all impending dangers... Nothing positive, no shared happiness.  Just doom and gloom in response to everything I said regardless of the content of my sentences or the circumstances communicated to her.  I explained that if I want to listen to that, I can do that over the phone in Austin to save myself time and gas money just to listen to an inanimate tape recorder stuck on repeat.

We sat down and talked some more after that.  I listened to her try to explain why she is so afraid of the worst.  We discussed the nature of her anxiety to her as best as I could in English.  And then I told her that I inherited that anxiety disorder from her... so I understand her fears, but I believe that we don't have to be afraid of everything.  This calmed her down.  I think for a moment, she was able to transcend her emotions and go "meta" on her own pattern.

Then she reverted back to beginning every sentence with "be careful...".  I decided to stay and eat, anyway; for that would be my duty as a son to the woman who birthed me.  I wish I had a mother that was capable of being less like a Pavlovian animal about her interactions, but I suppose this is the best I can hope for in light of where our focus was during the formative years.  Growing up, my focus was on social acceptance, as that was the greatest threat to me during my formative years.  For my mom, her focus was and will always be about survival.

I hate visiting her.  I don't think I can do it more than once per year.  It won't matter, anyway.  She is a broken shard of a soul stuck in an infinite loop.  Whatever sense of awareness she ever had in her has been destroyed by fear, anxiety, and the verbal/physical abuse my father dealt her.  There is nothing left but the belief that she will always be a potential victim of circumstances beyond her control in a world that is out to get her.

I couldn't save her.  I can't save her.  This is who she is now... and who she wants to be... The world makes sense to her when it is hostile in nature. The belief that she understands safety allows her to feel a sense of control over her life.  It all comes down to that - The mechanisms we develop in order to control our own happiness - Identity.

A recent reminder of my mortality brought some things to the surface...

When my father was dying, I asked him if he had any plans.
He said he was going to recover and write more articles for the Korean newspaper.
I asked him what he would write about.
He said he would write about important things.
He just wanted to write.  He wanted to be important.  He wanted to be remembered.  He just did not want to be dead.

He did not know that I was asked to sign the paper that would end his kidney dialysis treatments so that he could finally die.

I asked him that question because I needed to know if he was ready to die.
His life would end... but I wanted it to be on his own terms.

I asked him if he had any words of wisdom about life... about his life.  Anything he thought about in the recent months he had been bedridden in the hospital.  He didn't have anything to say about life and was annoyed that I would ask such a question.  He then asked me if I was here to find out about "Operation Jasper" in Vietnam... because he will never talk to anybody about that unless I was his commanding officer.

I signed the paper.  Because he never did.  He died on my terms instead of his.

In the following years, I would ask myself if I did the right thing... if his death was premature... if his life was fulfilled enough to where some part of him may have felt closure about the whole thing.

I began to examine the lives of others... of myself... but especially the lives of old people.  I could not help wonder if the elderly thought about their own mortality a lot.  That concept is horrifying to me.  The prospect and fear of dying quickly consumed me after that day; I am running out of time... and I'm not ready.

The questions I wanted my father to answer on his deathbed were...

1. Are you ready?
2. Why or why not?

I could not get these answers from him.  These types of answers can only come from the self.  It was my father's inadvertent last gift to me... those questions became my personal compass.  I want my answer to the first question to be yes, and I intend to have a solid answer for the second question complete with tangible conditions of satisfaction.

A recent reminder of my mortality brought some things to the surface.  Brandee the unicorn let me borrow her book: The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.  It was a lecture he gave to his students knowing that he was dying from pancreatic cancer.  In actuality, it was a lecture for his children who would grow up without him.  I saw the video last year, and it touched me deeply.  Reading the book revitalized some of the triggers and solidified the concepts I had formed from watching that video of a dying man's last lecture.

Everybody takes away their own things from a lecture.  Here is how I filtered it:

• Get the fundamentals down or else the fancy stuff won't work
• When you're screwing up and nobody is saying anything to you anymore, then that means they've given up
• Focus on people, or else your potential will always be limited
• Storytelling is the ultimate universal context that justifies our actions as human beings and serves as the core of our motivations
• Get a feedback loop and listen to it
• Time is the only resource we truly own, and we have only a finite amount

It is Christmas Eve.  I have grown to dread this part of the year because it reminds me of just how not-like-the-others my world really is.  I am home alone because my only remaining family (my mother) is working today and tomorrow.  Logistics work out easier for her if I visit her at work.  We will most likely have Christmas dinner at some Asian restaurant somewhere in Houston.  This is partially why I left Austin for France... because that way, I would at least have an excuse for being home alone on Christmas Eve.

Time.... we only have so much of it left... and we keep wanting things.  How is it that I am 34 years old, but I still live my life like a kid who just moved out of his parents' home?  Because I keep thinking that home exists elsewhere.  Except there is no elsewhere for me... and that truth only becomes apparent during this one short time of the year.  So I typically just shut down in December... Wake up in January and forget that December ever happened.  This is how I have been able to prevent things from changing all these years.

I realize now that my little idiosyncrasies have manifested in various productive and destructive ways over the years.  I own these idiosyncrasies, now... There is no reason I can't just paint my own picture of the world for myself and others.

I'll start simple:  I want a non-awkward Christmas... The kind that most people dread because they have to spend time with their stressful family.  That sounds like a blast!  I can make it happen.  I can make my house feel like a home.  I can bring it to a point where my mom might even enjoy visiting my "home" when she feels like going on a "holiday".  That sounds like a good goal to have.

Maybe next year, I can introduce my mom to that Christmas feeling in a Christmased house... I don't really know what that means, but I think I can fake it til I make it to be just like the rest of you.

Life has been really good lately.
Is this real? Can it really be this good without some form of strife to overcome?
No drama. How is this possible?
Is it really supposed to be this easy? Why wasn't it this easy before? What changed?
Was it me... or did I just get lucky?

There are two parts of the puzzle: What to DO, and How to BE.
I always knew what to DO, but I could never quite get a good way to BE.
I now realize that BEing is the second order integral of DOing.
What to BE is the compass that governs what to DO.
I woke up one day and told myself that I will just BE "that person".
Without fear.
Without regret.
Without remorse.
Without excuse.
I can't control the world around me, but I can control the choices I make at any one time.

I am reminded of this old entry from 2007:
http://kainasylum.livejournal.com/72475.html
I am something else, now.
And it is good.

• First test taken in 2005: INTJ (Mastermind) http://kainasylum.livejournal.com/5361.html Asshole mastermind
• Feb 2008: ENTJ (Field Marshall) http://kainasylum.livejournal.com/80706.html Mass movement rally seeker.  Deltas from INTJ probably instigated by a combination of traumatic life changes, psycho-socio engineering, and drugs with the goal of establishing a new identity to complete destruction of the old one
• Mar 2009: ESFJ (Guardian Provider) http://kainasylum.livejournal.com/125264.html Hero complex on overload.  Deltas from ENTJ probably induced by the onset of equilibrium after post-traumatic adjustment.  Patient was seeking to recreate the stability of life in his 20s, even if that meant putting square pegs into round holes.
• November 2009: ENFJ (Mentor) http://www.mypersonality.info/personality-types/enfj/ Deltas from ESFJ may have been induced by internal self-correcting mechanisms developed to prevent abuse of the savior identity.

So go ahead and throw your people at me; we'll see what comes out of that alchemy.  If it doesn't kill me, then it will make me stronger than one could ever imagine.

Always a work in progress.  Shooting for immortality.

After buying that house, the last few months have been financially rough for me... At the same time, many of those I love have found themselves without income and/or fucked by debt.  The realization is setting in that we live in a system where people will be living in debt for life.  It got me to thinking... I am more likely to remain in debt for life than my parents, and if I have kids, they will be more likely to be fucked by debt than me.

Reasons:

• We live in a society of education loans, car loans, and mortgages.  This has not changed from the time of your parents, and it generally enables a more productive society
• But houses, cars, medical care, and education are getting more expensive
• Average incomes are not sufficiently compensating for the rise in costs
• Interest Rates continue to grow, and
• Fees and penalties continue to become more extreme and numerous with every passing year
  

Summary: Everything is more expensive, but we are not making higher salaries to compensate; therefore, a life of debt will become more prevalent with every passing generation.

A person who makes $50,000 today is much poorer than a person who makes $50,000 twenty years ago.  More and more folks will remain "renters for life".  Retirement is a ticking time bomb.  Banks and credit cards charge poor folks high interest rates and penalty fees for being poor while rich folks get paid high interest rates as a reward for being rich.  The amount of money in the world is the same, but the imaginary money being generated by the system of interest rates allocates resources towards concentrated gravity wells that do not evenly distribute back into the societal ecosystem.  The rich will become richer, and the poor will fall further into entropy.  Differences in lifestyle between the rich and poor will diverge to the point where society fractures into two separate classes even more than it already has.

Those who are stuck paying minimum payments have it the worst.  Banks and credit card companies make their money from interest rates and penalty fees.  It has already become a gambling game to the creditors... debts are an investment commodity that can be bought, sold, and passed around amongst dealers like chips at a poker table.  An entire industry has been created that can sustain itself on the concept of interest and fees and casino tactics supported by our legal system.  That system will not change unless a crisis occurs.  There is nothing we can do, but wait for this crisis to happen.

But on our side, we can evaluate our own sense of entitlement on what we are supposed to get out of life in this world.  What do we really need?  What do we want that we can do without?  We have human needs relating to Maslow's Hierarchy: Physiology, Safety, Communion, Esteem, Actualization, and maybe even Transcendence.  The motivation to fulfill these needs is what drives our spending behavior.

Money was a concept initially created as a substitute for personal time in a bartering society.  It used to equate to direct services or goods.  The system became corrupt when money, itself, became seen as a good that could be traded for more money.

I'm going to try something new.... I am declaring war on those industries that sustain themselves solely on interest rates and penalty fees.  My credit is actually decent at this time, but I've been watching these companies victimize my friends for far too many years.  I can change my living habits and find ways to entertain myself that get me the fuck out of debt as quickly as possible.

AND I am going to take my beloved friends with me!

Been spending the last few nights working on THE song.
The basic layers are complete.

The progression is there, and the chorus and harmonies mix well, but the loops are way too obvious.  After getting some advice from a wise musician, I realize that I need to make that heartbeat star of the song change its identity as the song progresses into new phases.

The craftsmanship is also a bit... rough.  I have a lot to learn about Ableton Live, midi controllers, and recording my own voice to account for microphone lag on the timing.  I don't want to, but it looks like I might need to invest in more equipment as I'm finding the headphones insufficient for proper audio tuning.

There is still a lot of work to do.  Every time I listen to the song, there is something to change, evolve, and remove.  At this rate, I don't see things finishing for at least another two weeks assuming I can continue to work on this every night.

After this one, I will keep my promise to Damien and make him that special ring tone he has been dreaming of.

(by Mary Schmich)

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, "sunscreen" would be it.

The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists,

whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice NOW!

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth.

Oh, never mind.

 

You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded.

But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future.
Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind,

The kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts.
Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss

Don't waste your time on jealousy.
Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind.

The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive.

Forget the insults.

If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters.

Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life.
The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives.
Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium.

 

Be kind to your knees.

You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't.
Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't.
Maybe you'll divorce at 40.

 

Maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.

Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much,

or berate yourself either.

Your choices are half chance.

So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body.
Use it every way you can.

Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it.

It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance

Even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines.

They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents.

You never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings.

They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go,

but with a precious few you should hold on.

Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get,

the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in "New York City" once, but leave before it makes you hard.

Live in "Northern California" once, but leave before it makes you soft.

 

Travel

Accept certain inalienable truths:
Prices will rise.

Politicians will philander.

You, too, will get old.

And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young,

prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you.

Maybe you have a trust fund.

Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse.

But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy,

but be patient with those who supply it.

Advice is a form of nostalgia.

 

Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal,

wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

George C. Vaillant met his wife at the age of 29 in 1930. He was a prominent anthropologist working on pre-Columbian Aztec digs. She was the daughter of a successful expatriate American banker. Together, they had a storybook romance. His son would be born 4 years later in 1934; George C. Vaillant was 33 at the time. At the age of 35, he gave up the excavation lifestyle and settled down in the world of museums and universities. The family of three led a charmed life. During the time of the Great Depression, they employed a nurse, a maid, and a cook within their household. George C. Vaillant continued his life as a successful museum curator, professor, published writer, and father... until 1945.

At the age of 44, George C. Vaillant was found by his wife... dead in their own back yard from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

His son, George E. Vaillant (Jr.), was 10 years old at the time. He was the last to see his father alive.

( The Life of Junior )

His father's traumatic suicide was a double-edged sword that had changed his life forever. He gave up his own persistent Communion to become a manifestation of Agency to give his father's death meaningful context. George E. Vaillant died at the age of 10 when his father died, and in that child's place emerged an insatiable unbridled formless energy that would help millions around the world understand what may have happened to his father that day in their back yard.

Inspired by this article

House purchased.
Keys got.

It began... last October.
The experiment is still in progress.

Destruction phase is complete.
Results inconclusive.

I have forgotten entire sections of my former identity.
Whatever it was that ripped me apart must have been painful.
I can only trust that the actions of my other self were for the best.

The future is uncertain.
Point of no return has been achieved.

Commencing Rebuild...
Critical data loss!
Memory fractures detected!

Who are you people?

"I want ___"
"That would be nice, but you can't have ___ because..."

One day, I just woke up and decided to do it.

That little voice in my head that tells me why I can't have these things has lost my respect.
Everything that little voice said sounded like a lame excuse.
Living in the past.
Afraid to fail.
Unwilling to try, to believe, to expend energy.
...Of no pragmatic value to Kain at this point in his life.

And so it begins.  What if Kain went after everything that he would want in this lifetime intentionally instead of waiting for the "right situation"?  Crafting the world around him with methodical precision... and love.  Yes, love... because that is where the energy comes from.  It comes from the self.

The house purchase is drawing closer.  If all goes well, I will be moving into my own house in east Austin by the end of this month.  I can barely afford this purchase.  But I'll do whatever it takes to make this happen.  It is all a part of the reality I want for myself, one in which I can paint my walls whichever color I want and engage in some "projects" within the confines of my own backyard.

And what's best is that there is no neighborhood homeowner's association :)

Plasma donation went a lot more easily than I imagined, but it left me tired all day.  I will need to get my body in shape if I am to sustain the two donations per week I would need to help pay my mom back for the money she pulled out of her meager life savings to help me.  Whatever it takes.  The time in my day is a pie chart; time goes in, and results come out.  The world is a vampire, and my body is an ATM.

I'm back to quitting the smokes, again.  I think I'll be able to do it for real, this time... because I want to bring the physical back into my life again.  And with the physical comes the version of me that I liked the most... the fighter.  This is what I am born and bred to be... always and forever.  First and foremost.  I fight battles for what I believe in.

Which brings me to... her.  She is a wild card in all of this.  Honestly, I don't know what to make of her.  I did not plan for... her.  But I think there is a reason we are drawn to each other to the point where I can't continue on with the path that I was living.  And within this part of my life... I am relinquishing control... it is the only way to be.  I must be me... for that is the relationship I choose to have with this universe.

It is the edge cases that define a form that may not exist until we hit its boundaries.

The silhouette of something special became apparent only in light of a potential fate transition.

Like is when you are willing to share an experience.
Love is when you are willing to share an identity.

The absence of both, shared experience and identity, is neither like nor love... It is resource management.

I am thankful for my friends and lovers who graciously offer me an identity when I don't know who I am.

Goodwill, here.  Kain is away at the moment, and so I figure I would hijack his journal to give away his deepest secret: The reason why.

He is looking for context. Meaning.  We all are.  Like most of us, he wants to know that the things we did do matter, that we matter... and that the suffering and effort meant something - nothing wasted.  The narrative has a happy ending when the random set of generic events come together in a system that makes sense to him... with every observable action having meaningful context.  The entropy of the world makes sense when everything has a context... As if the universe were a living sentient entity that one could have a real two-way relationship with.

Every conversation we have, every movie we see, game we play, thing we read, in everything we do, we seek context that promises the potential to affect our future thoughts in a never-ending drive to modify our own internal genetic algorithms.  Anything without personal context ultimately renders the experience empty or irrelevant.

We try so very hard to seek that relationship with our universe.  It is the only way we know how to interact with our world: as a relationship with a sentient being. full of context.  empathy.  with likes and dislikes.  To have a relationship with an entity is to have control over how that entity affects us.  This control manifests as an identity: the labels that we allow ourselves to wear and the verbs implied by those labels.

We are not looking for truth.  We never were.  We never are.  We are looking for what the truth would promise us: meaning. emotional context. an identity we can call our own. understanding. control. peace with what we believe to be our own truths. validation from an "other".

We seek out this context in the various forms of media and interactions that reflect back at us... mixing ourselves with ingredients to experience the alchemy that makes us... Gravitating towards the edges of silhouettes that belong to forms worthy of our recognition.

So when that little voice in your head tells you to be afraid or just lay down, play it safe, and take it easy, then ask yourself:
"Why not? The truth is... we're all gonna fucking die someday... so let's just do this."

Our emotions, both good and bad, are driven by our own context... and suffering is the currency through which we acquire validation.

"I believe attention is the most powerful tool of the human spirit. We can enhance or augment our attention with practices like meditation and exercise, diffuse it with technologies like email and Blackberries, or alter it with pharmaceuticals. In the end, though, we are fully responsible for how we choose to use this extraordinary tool."

"Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient...To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention -- CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter."

-Linda Stone

The words we use, the vocabulary we master, the methods of expressions we engage in... these are the ingredients of the spells we cast.

And that attention can lead to emergent second or third order reflections that may be perceived as "magic".

 From Glenda and Matthew...
"When you answer somebody's questions, then that is advice.
But if you give advice without being asked, then that is judgement."

By itself, single-element metals are highly malleable because the molecules of the metal are uniform in size, and this gives adjacent molecules room to move as each molecule acts like a ball joint to its neighbors.

Alloys are created by infusing a large-molecule metal with another element that has a much smaller molecule.  The smaller molecules fill in the empty spaces between the large molecules, thereby making the metal seem more solid as the large molecules are fastened in place by the tight packing of small molecules in between the large molecules.  Within an alloy mix, the same amount of space can contain more matter because previously unused space is now efficiently filled by smaller molecules.

Density increases.  The heavy metal can be quite formidable by itself, but as an alloy, it can become a highly efficient weapon.

The truth is... I don't really know how to do the little things.  Everything has to be epic with me.  Everything has to be some life-changing, world-bending, delta-causing endeavor.  But maybe that's okay, because we are born and bred to fight.  The fight is all...

 Looking through some old files, I came across a list I used to maintain called "List of Assholes".

This was basically my list of people that I would fuck at every chance I got.  This included resumes coming my way, interactions in public... I had grudges, and I wanted to keep them.  Most importantly, I wanted to make sure I did not end up accidentally helping somebody with the soul of a jackal.  It was my non-violent coping mechanism for achieving balance in the world.  I would turn the other cheek... and quietly add them to my shitlist.

As I saw the names on the list, I could not remember who half those people were.  The rest were people I did not hate so much anymore.

I deleted that list.  It has no place in my life.  If I have to maintain a person's name in a list to remember that I am supposed to hate them, then I must be doing it wrong.

I just saw the movie "I Love You, Man"... it is about bromance.
That's what's missing in my life.
I want a dude friend unconnected to my work life with the kind of relationship where we regularly go to each other's houses with a 6 pack of beer to play some new game that just came out and generally act stupid.  I used to have that in college, but they all moved to Japan to teach English.

Where to find this type of thing?
What's that, you say?
Craigslist?

okay... it's a start.

To be continued...

Four days without smoking.  I am experiencing a distinct lack of endorphins.  Choices are as follows:

• Prescription Drugs (Smoking cessation, anti-depressants)
• Illegal Drugs (marijuana, heroin, meth, ecstasy, etc.)
• Cigarettes (again)
• Orgasms
• Physical Pain
• Herbal supplements
• Laughter

The weird thing is... I can understand that mother's mind (WARNING, THESE ARE GRAPHIC IMAGES):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1168424/I-send-son-heaven-Hell-Chilling-moment-mother-executes-boy-firing-range.html

I would not have completely understood these motivations a few months ago had I not been touched by the madness, myself.  Events over the last few months with somebody who believed she was "Lilith" and the effect it had on me have brought me to understand the link between madness and one's drive to be significant.  That one thing that people look for is the most powerful drive in a person's psyche.  We find comfort in having a form to internalize, an identity to covet, validation that we do exist... and the easiest thing to do is to leave the source of that significance up to faith... Meaning bestowed from the great unknown... Invisible to the human eye but real to the beholder because our perceptions are as real as we make them.

We can make them, and then we can act on them... all in our wonderful little vacuum of existence.

And so once again, I am reminded that...
The will to be significant is more powerful than the will to live.
... and this is the first step towards making your own Heaven and Hell.

I've been writring a lot of rejection letters to senior and lead programmer candidates, lately.  That is painful.  It kills a piece of my soul to write these things, but somebody else put it best when they said it is better to receive a rejection than nothing at all.

The company took us all to Estancia to belatedly celebrate the signing of the deal to make our own game from the start with a well known publisher.  Estancia is a carnivore's paradise.  This is probably one of the best restaurants I have ever eaten in.  Definitely a great place for a non-vegetarian date.  After that experience, I am now ready to begin my transition into vegetarianism... and maybe even vegan, eventually.

BTW, this is my boss. He is French.

I really like my coworkers.  It feels like a tribe of quirky ronin mercernaries.  I've spent this week and last week sharing an office with a CEO/Designer, a designer/writer, a producer who can design, a creative director, and a badass martial artist animator/designer who all share a common vision from the school of Looking Glass... each of us have established a level of competence in our fields.  I'm not throwing the word "designer" around lightly; each of these guys are literally at a lead designer level of competence or higher.  Design is the dominant discipline in Arkane's DNA, but unlike past design-dominant situations I've been in, the cult of design does not drown out the value of the other disciplines at all.  We have every reason to make this new project something very special.

All we have to do is not fuck it up.

I think each and every one of us have learned a valuable set of takeaways from our past experiences.  Strangely, our personalities seem like variants of the same cloth.

Yeah... I would crunch for this, and I look forward to it.

Current new hobbies:

• Knife Throwing
• Rock Guitar
• Top Secret Dance Off

Personality changed... again!

I was an INTJ (Mastermind) around 2005.

I became an ENTJ (Field Marshall) around 2007 after taking regular doses of a Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor (Lexapro) that permanently changed my personality in drastic ways.

The year is now 2009.  I am currently an ESFJ: Guardian Provider:
http://www.keirsey.com/handler.aspx?s=keirsey&f=fourtemps&tab=2&c=provider

"It happened again, today.  That feeling of madness that sets in when you suddenly get a flash of seeing and knowing more than your brain can hold.  It feels like being in a giant dark empty room the size of the universe, and all that's in it is yourself and the plain white chair that you are sitting on... the walls far beyond what your eyes can fathom.  No matter which direction you look, you see the same 360-degree view.  I lost it... and I had to scream, and then I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could until I was exhausted.  And then it became clear.  I don't know how, but I think I know why you're doing this, Goodwill."

"Do you, now?"

"You think that in this maddening chaos, I'll see the pattern... the truth that I choose to ignore in my desperate cling to order through the things I do that bring me closer to a life that makes sense to most people."

"See anything you like?"

"I saw the lives of people in middle America... with as much energy and ambition to be a hero as I have... they wish to be something great before they die, yet they are unable to do anything but live their life as they can because their chances for options were limited.  These weren't just people in middle America, these were people everywhere... close to me and far away.  Trapped inside their bodies living a mundane existence, relegated to a life of survival, screaming to escape... being held up by one thing."

"And what was that one thing?  Something you don't have, perhaps?"

"They have a home that feels like home... with people around them that they see on a regular basis."

"What is it that you are afraid of more than anything else in this world, Kain?"

"That nobody will notice... that I'll always feel homeless."

"After all is said and done, you are nothing special, Kain.  You're a piece of shit... just like everyone else."

"I don't know why I let you talk to me like this.  You are a fucked up dumb stuffed animal that I got at a Thrift store!"

"Embrace the entropy.  You're the one who gave me life."

"Goodwill... "

"It doesn't matter what I am.  What will you do now, Kain?"

"I will become a caricature of a human being to those who can see me.  I'll give them a fantasy that I will never be able to live up to when examined closely."

"And what good would this do?"

"I've tried being an agent of order for a long time, now.  Something is not working.  It is time for me to become an agent of chaos.  We'll see what happens."

"Every creation is preceeded by destruction.  Every destruction is preceeded by creation.  You need both.  Order will naturally invite opportunities for entropy, and only in chaos will you see the mathematical pattern arise from what seemingly starts out as noise."

We all say that we are self aware.  Hardly anyone ever says that they're not... but how do I know if I'm really all that aware?  How do we know if anyone is really that aware when they will always tell you that they are?

INPUT
Awareness of the what streams of information exist around us and how we filter those streams would govern our ability to adopt optimal streams for our own purposes.

SORTING
Awareness of how we process the information that we take in allows us to examine that process and make adjustments to our machine as needed.

OUTPUT
The people around us make up the relevant world that we interact with, and the shape of our interactions are the result of the way we use the information that we decide to adopt.  We have an effect on the people around us whether or not we intend for that effect.  At any one time, we have a choice to either blame external entities for misperceiving our output or dealing with the results of that misperceived output by clarifying and/or adjusting the way we transmit our signal.  This signal we transmit is the only window that others have into our own existence.

Taking responsibility for our awareness...

• of what we take in
• how we sort
• and what we transmit

... empowers us to command our sphere of existence as we convert...

• WILL (communion - the drive to be)
• to ACTIONS (agency - the drive to do).

Naturally, we are not alone; this world is full of actions driven by the will of sentient beings.  Interactions with any sentient being involves an exchange, SHARING, or clash of intentions.  Being neutral simply makes you a pawn for the intentions of others who manifest their wills in specific areas that they have found opportunity in.  If you give up your will to be aware within any of those three categories (input, sorting, output), then somebody else will happily provide a reality for those three categories on your behalf.

To be unaware of yourself and others is to become a passenger in the universe... and quite possibly a victim to the will of others.

This problem is made visible by patterns.  Strip away the variables and identify the constants.  Every problem has a start point and a desired end point... The solution is a series of smaller problems.

Time is the only ingredient that we do not control.  It imposes its will upon us, and we have no choice but to abide by its constraints.

Glenda and Matthew, I love you :)

There is a certain force in everyone's lives that drives them to seek proof of their existence.  Once a source of proof is established, then we develop an attachment to that source... an addiction, even.  We gravitate towards that which gives us definition... a form that we are willing to adopt as our very own... whether it becomes that of an athelete, a fighter, a lover, an artist, an entertainer, or a skilled craftsman.  The deeds we embark on represent that outward flow of the energy within us to manifest as something tangible in the material world.

Being inherently intangible, the concept of "love" takes on a form of its own within the mind of its beholder.  We start out learning what it is supposed to mean in our early lives by watching our caretakers.  Eventually, we embark on our own evolution of the concept through the relationships we develop over the years... incorporating what works and throwing away what doesn't work in our quest to find the ideal definition of this intangible concept.

Through trial and error, the models of attachment become apparent as sources of reference.  We all have those models in one form or another:

• puppy love
• the one that got away
• the one that was tragically destined to fail
• going through a phase
• the mystery that eventually becomes uncovered
• the indulgence
• the mistake
• the fucked up one

Through these models, we learned pieces of how to love, how to suffer, and how to be the heroic or villainous self that we think we want to be.

Each broken attachment results in mourning followed by an opportunity to redefine our reality as we think it should be, and through defining that reality, we define who we are as a person... and then we get attached to that definition and seek validation for this self-identity that we have developed from the living sentient mirrors around us that would reflect our transmitted image back at us.  Those of us who seek to participate in society are and always will be hard wired to seek validation from external sources for the identity that we choose to become attached to.  It is why a lot of us do the things we do.

And so the cycle begins anew.  Collect.  Sort.  Transmit.  This is the nature of our addiction to the living sentient mirrors around us.  Once we see the pattern, we gain the option to break the pattern.

So find those mirrors that reinforce our best reflections, and use those reflections to magnify the best versions of ourselves... So that we may evolve.

And yes, there is a game concept in this entry.  The name of the game will be Metaphor.  If I am ever to do anything with my life beyond just work and survive, it would be this... and it has to be soon.

One thing a day.