school – Renaissance Guy

The Project Problem

You ever find yourself start something on a lark, and then the more you work on it, the bigger it gets, until suddenly it’s this whole big thing that you don’t really know how to work with? And then you’re left with the choice of either taking to your work with a hatchet in order to bring it down to a manageable size, and suturing up the wounds to make a finished, but far less grand final product, or letting it keep growing until eventually it becomes totally unsustainable. I don’t know whether this happens to other people, but it happens to me constantly. Most of my projects die this way, either unable to survive the hatcheting process, or with me not having the heart to put them out of their misery.

This includes everything from weekend activities to final class projects. Reigning in this tendency to overcomplicate has been a serious challenge for me academically. For instance, I will get an idea for a research paper topic, dive into the literature, and come back with a twenty page essay and four pages of citations, when the assignment calls for seven pages maximum, and five cited sources. Or I will be assigned to write something in a foreign language for a class presentation, and will end up writing something which, while perfectly correct, uses vocabulary several semesters beyond the rest of the class.

Arguably this single-mindedness and overachievement is a strength. After all, I’ve never known someone to fail an assignment because they overdid their project. By contrast, I know plenty of people who have failed assignments that weren’t long enough, or where it was clear the student didn’t care. On the other hand, a seeming inability to do the easy thing and go from point A to point B on projects sounds like the kind of lesson that eventually has to be learned through hard failure and bitter tears. Overdoing is not always beneficial, and it is certainly not always efficient.

In any case, I seem to possess, if nothing else, a striking ability to make more work for myself. This is what has prevented me from posting over the past weeks- the projects which I began with good intentions and high ambitions are coming due, and it is crunch time to finish the necessary legwork to meet initial promises. Every moment of available time from now until the end of finals must be put towards these pursuits if I am to clinch the A that I know I deserve. My entire media consumption is being geared towards research and study; each ounce of my wordsmithing retooled towards finishing and refining papers and presentations.

To be fair, I did plan all of this, more or less. I mean, I didn’t plan to put myself up against the wall. I never do. But I did choose ambitious topics. I knew I was signing myself up to do more work than was probably required, because in addition to getting an A, I wanted, and still want, to be working on something that I care about, rather than hammering away at busywork. After the dumpster fire that was my high school experience, I decided I would rather be proud and excited about something than get full marks. But contrary to the popular myth, loving your work does not obviate the work itself. Which leaves me where I am now, frantically scrambling to make good on my projects.

So that’s what’s happened, and why I haven’t posted. I started working on my final projects more than a month ago, and the work got away from me and ate up my time. I’d love to say that I’ll be getting back to posting immediately, but until finals are over and I catch up on rest I’ve been putting off, I’m not going to make any promises. I will be trying to post, though. And I expect that once I am no longer directing every waking moment towards study, that I shall have more to say.

A Lesson in Credulity

Last week I made a claim that, on review, might be untrue. This was bound to happen sooner or later. I do research these posts, but except for the posts where I actually include a bibliography, I’m not fact checking every statement I make.

One of the dangers of being smart, of being told that you’re smart, and of repeatedly getting good grades or otherwise being vindicated on matters of intelligence, is that it can lead to a sense of complacency. I’m usually right, I think to myself, and when I think I know a fact, it’s often true, so unless I have some reason to suspect I’m wrong, I don’t generally check. For example, take the statement: there are more people that voted for republicans in the last election living to the south of me than to the north.

I am almost certain this is true, even without checking. I would probably bet money on it. I live north of New York City, so there aren’t even that many people north of me, let alone republican voters. It’s objectively possible that I’m wrong. I might be missing some piece of information, like a large population of absentee Republicans in Canada, or the state of Alaska. Or I might simply be mistaken. Maybe the map I’m picturing in my head misrepresents how far north I am compared to other northern border states like North Dakota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. But I’m pretty sure I’m still right here, and until I started second guessing myself for the sake of argument, I would have confidently asserted that statement as fact, and even staked a sizable sum on it.

Last week I made the following claim: Plenty of studies in the medical field have exalted medical identification as a simple, cost-effective means of promoting patient safety.

I figured that this had to be true. After all, doctors recommend wearing medical identification almost universally. It’s one of those things, like brushing your teeth, or eating your vegetables that’s such common advice that we assume it to be proven truth. After all, if there wasn’t some compelling study to show it to be worthwhile, why would doctors continue to breath down the necks of patients? Why would patients themselves put up with it? Why would insurance companies, which are some of the most ruthlessly skeptical entities in existence, especially when it comes to paying for preventative measures, shell out for medical identification unless it was already demonstrated to be a good deal in the long run?

Turns out I may have overestimated science and economics here. Because in writing my paper, I searched for that definitive overarching study or meta analysis that conclusively proved that medical identification had a measurable positive impact. I searched broadly on google, and also through the EBSCO search engine, which my trusty research librarian told me was the best agglomeration of scientific and academic literature tuition can buy. I went through papers from NIH immunohematolgy researchers to the Army Medical Corps; from clinics in the Canadian high arctic to the developing regions of Southeast Asia. I read through translations of papers originally published in French and Chinese, in the most prestigious journals of their home countries. And I found no conclusive answers.

There was plenty of circumstantial evidence. Every paper I found supported the use of medical identification. Most papers I found were actually about other issues, and merely alluded to medical identification by describing how they used it in their own protocols. In most clinics, it’s now an automatic part of the checklist to refer newly diagnosed patients to wear medical identification; almost always through the MedicAlert Foundation.

The two papers I found that addressed the issue head on were a Canadian study about children wearing MedicAlert bracelets being bullied, and a paper in an emergency services journal about differing standards in medical identification. Both of these studies, though, seemed to skirt around the quantifiable efficacy of medical identification and were more interested in the tangential effects.

There was a third paper that dealt more directly as well, but there was something fishy about it. The title was “MedicAlert: Speaking for Patients When They Can’t”, and the language and graphics were suspiciously similar to the advertising used by the MedicAlert Foundation website. By the time I had gotten to this point, I was already running late with my paper. EBSCO listed the paper as “peer reviewed”, which my trusty research librarian said meant it was credible (or at least, credible enough), and it basically said exactly the things that I needed a source for, so I included it in my bibliography. But looking back, I’m worried that I’ve fallen into the Citogenesis trap, just this time with a private entity rather than Wikipedia.
The conspiracy theorist in me wants to jump to the conclusion that I’ve uncovered a massive ruse; that the MedicAlert Foundation has created and perpetuated a myth about the efficacy of their services, and the sheeple of the medical-industrial complex are unwitting collaborators. Something something database with our medical records something something hail hydra. This pretty blatantly fails Occam’s Razor, so I’m inclined to write it off. The most likely scenario here is that there is a study lying around that I simply missed in my search, and it’s so old and foundational that later research has just accepted it as common knowledge. Or maybe it was buried deep in the bibliographies of other papers I read, and I just missed it.

Still, the fact that I didn’t find this study when explicitly looking for it raises questions. Which leads me to the next most likely scenario: I have found a rare spot of massive oversight in the medical scientific community. After all, the idea that wearing medical identification is helpful in an emergency situation is common sense, bordering on self-evident. And there’s no shortage of anecdotes from paramedics and ER doctors that medical identification can help save lives. Even in the literature, while I can’t find an overview, there are several individual case studies. It’s not difficult to imagine that doctors have simply taken medical identification as a logical given, and gone ahead and implemented it into their protocols.

In that case, it would make sense that MedicAlert would jump on the bandwagon. If anything, having a single standard makes the process more rigorous. I’m a little skeptical that insurance companies just went along with it; it’s not like common sense has ever stopped them from penny-pinching before. But who knows, maybe this is the one time they took doctors at their word. Maybe, through some common consensus, this has just become a massive blind spot for research. After all, I only noticed it when I was looking into something tangential to it.
So where does this leave us? If the data is really out there somewhere, then the only problem is that I need a better search engine. If this is part of a blind spot, if the research has never been done and everyone has just accepted it as common sense, then it needs to be put in the queue for an overarching study. Not that I expect that such a study won’t find a correlation between wearing medical identification and better health outcomes. After all, it’s common sense. But we can do better than just acting on common sense and gut instincts. We have to do better if we want to advance as a species.

The other reason why we need to have hard, verifiable numbers with regards to efficacy, besides the possibility we might discover our assumptions were wrong, is to have a way to justify the trade off. My whole paper has been about trying to prove the trade off a person makes when deciding to wear medical identification, in terms of stigma, self perception, and comfort. We often brush this off as being immaterial. And maybe it is. Maybe, next to an overwhelming consensus of evidence showing a large and measurable positive impact on health outcomes, some minor discomfort wearing a bracelet for life is easily outweighed.

Then again, what if the positive impact is fairly minor? If the statistical difference amounts only to, let’s say, a few extra hours life expectancy, is that worth a lifetime of having everyone know that you’re disabled wherever you go? People I know would disagree on this matter. But until we can say definitively the medical impact on the one hand, we can’t justify it against the social impact on the other. We can’t have a real debate based on folk wisdom versus anecdotes.

On Hippocratic Oaths

I’ve been thinking about the Hippocratic Oath this week. This came up while wandering around campus during downtime, when I encountered a mural showing a group of nurses posing heroically, amid a collage of vaguely related items, between old timey nurse recruitment posters. In the background, the words of the Hippocratic Oath were typed behind the larger than life figures. I imagine they took cues from military posters that occasionally do similar things with oaths of enlistment.

I took special note of this, because strictly speaking, the Hippocratic Oath isn’t meant for nurses. It could arguably apply to paramedics or EMTs, since, epistemologically at least, a paramedic is a watered down doctor, the first ambulances being an extension of the military hospitals and hence under the aegis of surgeons and doctors rather than nurses. But that kind of pedantic argument not only ignores actual modern day training requirements, since in most jurisdictions the requirements for nurses are more stringent than EMTs and at least as stringent as paramedics, but shortchanges nurses, a group to whom I owe an enormous gratitude and for whom I hold an immense respect.

Besides which, whether or not the Hippocratic Oath – or rather, since the oath recorded by Hippocrates himself is recognized as being outdated, and has been almost universally superseded by more modern oaths – is necessarily binding to nurses, it is hard to argue that the basic principles aren’t applicable. Whether or not modern nurses have at their disposal the same curative tools as their doctorate-holding counterparts, they still play an enormous role in patient outcomes. In fact, by some scientific estimates, the quality of nursing staff may actually matter more than the actions undertaken by doctors.

Moreover, all of the ethical considerations still apply. Perhaps most obviously, respect for patients and patient confidentiality. After all, how politely the doctor treats you in their ten minutes of rounds isn’t going to outweigh your direct overseers for the rest of the day. And as far as confidentiality, whom are you more concerned about gossiping: the nerd who reads your charts and writes out your prescription, or the nurse who’s in your room, undressing you to inject the drugs into the subcutaneous tissue where the sun doesn’t shine?

So I don’t actually mind if nurses are taking the Hippocratic Oath, whether or not it historically applies. But that’s not why it’s been rattling around my mind the last week.

See, my final paper in sociology is approaching. Actually, it’s been approaching; at this point the paper is waiting impatiently at the door to be let in. My present thinking is that I will follow the suggestion laid down in the syllabus and create a survey for my paper. My current topic regards medical identification. Plenty of studies in the medical field have exalted medical identification as a simple, cost-effective means of promoting patient safety. But compelling people to wear something that identifies them as being part of a historically oppressed minority group has serious implications that I think are being overlooked when we treat people who refuse to wear medical identification in the same group as people who refuse to get vaccinated, or take prescribed medication.

What I want to find out in my survey is why people who don’t wear medical identification choose not to. But to really prove (or disprove, as the case may be, since a proper scientific approach demands that possibility) my point, I need to get at the sensitive matters at the heart of this issue: medical issues and minority status. This involves a lot of sensitive topics, and consequently gathering data on it means collecting potentially sensitive information.

This leaves me in an interesting position. The fact that I am doing this for a class at an accredited academic institution gives me credibility, if more-so with the lay public than among those who know enough about modern science to realize that I have no real earned credentials. But the point remains, if I posted online that I was conducting a survey for my institution, which falls within a stretched interpretation of the truth, I could probably get many people to disclose otherwise confidential information to me.

Since I have never taken an oath, and have essentially no oversight in the execution n if this survey, other than the bare minimum privacy safeguards required by the FCC in my use of the internet, which I can satisfy through a simple checkbox in the United States. If I were so inclined, I could take this information entrusted to me, and either sell it, or use it for personal gain. I couldn’t deliberately target individual subjects, more because that would be criminal harassment than because of any breach of trust. But I might be able to get away with posting it online and letting the internet wreak what havoc it will. This would be grossly unethical and bordering on illegal, but I could probably get away with it.

I would never do that, of course. Besides being wrong on so many different counts, including betraying the trust of my friends, my community, and my university, it would undermine trust in the academic and scientific communities, at a time where they have come under political attack by those who have a vested interest in discrediting truth. And as a person waiting on a breakthrough cure that will allow me to once again be a fully functional human being, I have a vested interest in supporting these institutions. But I could do it, without breaking any laws, or oaths.

Would an oath stop me? If, at the beginning of my sociology class, I had stood alongside my fellow students, with my hand on the Bible I received in scripture class, in which I have sought comfort and wisdom in dark hours, and swore an oath like the Hippocratic one or its modern equivalents to adhere to ethical best practices and keep to my responsibilities as a student and scientist, albeit of sociology rather than one of the more sciency sciences, would that stop me if I had already decided to sell out my friends?

I actually can’t say with confidence. I’m inclined to say it would, but this is coming from the version of me that wouldn’t do that anyway. The version of me that would cross that line is probably closer to my early-teenage self, whom my modern self has come to regard with a mixture of shame and contempt, who essentially believed that promises were made to be broken. I can’t say for sure what this version of myself would have done. He shared a lot of my respect for science and protocol, and there’s a chance he might’ve been really into the whole oath vibe. So it could’ve worked. On the other hand, it he thought he would’ve gained more than he had to lose, I can imagine how he would’ve justified it to himself.

Of course, the question of the Hippocratic oath isn’t really about the individual that takes it, so much as it is the society around it. It’s not even so much about how the society enforces oaths and punished oath-breakers. With the exception of perjury, we’ve kind of moved away from Greco-Roman style sacred blood oaths. Adultery and divorce, for instance, are both oath-breaking, but apart from the occasional tut-tut, as a society we’ve more or less just agreed to let it slide. Perhaps as a consequence of longer and more diverse lives, we don’t really care about oaths.

Perjury is another interesting case, though. Because contrary to the occasionally held belief, the crime of perjury isn’t actually affected by whether the lie in question is about some other crime. If you’re on the stand for another charge of which you’re innocent, and your alibi is being at Steak Shack, but you say you were at Veggie Villa, that’s exactly as much perjury as if you had been at the scene of the crime and lied about that. This is because witness testimony is treated legally as fact. The crime of perjury isn’t about trying to get out of being punished. It’s about the integrity of the system. That’s why there’s an oath, and why that oath is taken seriously.

The revival of the Hippocratic Oath as an essential part of the culture of medicine came after World War II, at least partially in response to the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials and revelations about the holocaust. Particularly horrifying was how Nazi doctors had been involved in the process, both in the acute terms of unethical human experimentation, and in providing medical expertise to ensure that the apparatus of extermination was as efficient as possible. The Red Cross was particularly alarmed- here were people who had dedicated their lives to an understanding of the human condition, and had either sacrificed all sense of morality in the interest of satiating base curiosity, or had actively taken the tools of human progress to inflict destruction in service of an evil end.

Doctors were, and are, protected under the Geneva Convention. Despite Hollywood and video games, shooting a medic wearing medical symbol, even if they are coming off a landing craft towards your country, is a war crime. As a society, we give them enormous power, with the expectation that they will use that power and their knowledge and skills to help us. This isn’t just some set of privileges we give doctors because they’re smart, though; that trust is essential to their job. Doctors can’t perform surgery if they aren’t trusted with knives, and we can’t eradicate polio if no one is willing to be inoculated.

The first of the modern wave of revisions of the Hippocratic Oath to make it relevant and appropriate for today started with the Red Cross after World War II. The goal was twofold. First: establish trust in medical professionals by setting down a simple, overriding set of basic ethical principles that can be distilled down to a simple oath, so that it can be understood by everyone. Second: make this oath not only universal within the field, but culturally ubiquitous, so as to make it effectively self-enforcing.

It’s hard to say whether this gambit has worked. I’m not sure how you’d design a study to test it. But my gut feeling is that most people trust their own doctors, certainly more than, say, pharmacologists, meteorologists, or economists, at least partially because of the idea of the Hippocratic Oath. The general public understands that doctors are bound by an oath of ethical principles, and this creates trust. It also means that stories about individual incidents of malpractice or ethics breaches tend to be attributed to sole bad actors, rather than large scale conspiracies. After all, there was an oath, and they broke it; clearly it’s on that person, not the people that came up with the oath.

Other fields, of course, have their own ethical standards. And since, in most places, funding for experiments are contingent on approval from an ethics board, they’re reasonably well enforced. A rogue astrophysicist, for instance, would find themselves hard pressed to find the cash on their own to unleash their dark matter particle accelerator, or whatever, if they aren’t getting their funding to pay for electricity. This is arguably a more fail-safe model than the medical field, where with the exception of big, experimental projects, ethical reviews mostly happen after something goes wrong.

But if you ask people around the world to rate the trustworthiness of both physicians and astrophysicists, I’d wager a decent sum that more people will say they trust the medical doctor more. It’s not because the ethical review infrastructure keeps doctors better in check, it’s not because doctors are any better educated in their field, and it’s certainly not anything about the field itself that makes medicine more consistent or less error prone. It’s because medical doctors have an oath. And whether or not we treat oaths as a big deal these days, they make a clear and understandable line in the sand.

I don’t know whether other sciences need their own oath. In terms of reducing ethical ethical breaches, I doubt it will have a serious impact. But it might help with the public trust and relatability probables that the scientific community seems to be suffering. If there was an oath that made it apparent how the language of scientists, unlike pundits, is seldom speculative, but always couched in facts; how scientists almost never defend their work even when they believe in it, preferring to let the data speak for itself; and how the best scientists already hold themselves to an inhumanly rigid standard of ethics and impartiality in their work, I think it could go a ways towards improving appreciation of science, and our discourse as a whole.

One Week Smarter

Maybe it’s too soon to jump to conclusions, but I feel like the last week has been a step backwards. I’m not worried yet. This isn’t unexpected. Starting classes is a big step bound to overwhelm. But I had reckoned that once I hit the beaches, so to speak, even if I was scattered on the landings, that I would be able to quickly regroup before the battle, and I don’t feel like that’s happened.

I wouldn’t say I’m on the back foot. I’ve been on the back foot, and I’m not there yet. But I also wouldn’t say I’ve hit the ground running. I’m still in a reactive mindset, when I should be in a more proactive one. Maybe I simply haven’t had time to readjust back to a school schedule. But is this something that I’ll get the hang of in due course, or is this something I need to be consciously focusing on now? Is thinking about this problem needless anxiety, or do I need to think about it to pull me head out of the sand before it’s too late? I don’t know, and the uncertainty only makes me more nervous.

The feedback from those around me has been well meaning, but not always helpful. On the one hand I have people trying to congratulate me, when I’m reality this is the last thing I want.

For one thing, the path I am taking is not my first choice, or my second, or even third. I say that I’m going to a local community college; this ain’t quite true- it’s technically a state university, albeit a small one. But it isn’t where I planed to go, where I expected and was expected to go. It doesn’t reflect my talents or aptitudes, even if it might reflect my abilities. I’m not ashamed of the institution that I find myself at, but I am certainly ashamed of how I wound up here.

And yes, I know that for those sympathetic people who know my whole story, there is no shame in it. But aside from relying on the sympathy of others, a thing which I endeavor to avoid, it still doesn’t jive with the story I want to tell about myself. It isn’t the person I want to be, and that discrepancy makes me uncomfortable, especially when it is publicized.

For another, I have been trying to downplay this step to myself and others, partly to whitewash my shame, but also partly as a strategy to mitigate any future failure and play down the stakes to avoid psyching myself out. Whether or not I am the worst of my current enemies, I am certainly one of them, and the more I hear about how this is a big step, the more I question my own abilities to follow through. The more I question myself, the less sure I feel, and the less inclined I am to make myself vulnerable to failure by giving a full effort. So I downplay the importance of my actions, and take the official line that I don’t care. Or, as Epictetus wrote in the Enchiridion, “Whoever, then, would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, […] wish things to be only just as they are, and him only to conquer who is the conqueror, for thus you will meet with no hindrance. But abstain entirely from declamations and derision and violent emotions.”

On the other hand are people who seem to expect me to be able to handle everything from here, as though in completing the walking through the gates ceremony I was imbued with psychic logistical, scheduling, future-reading and long-term planning abilities. All of a sudden, because I am, at least nominally, a college student, I am supposed to be able to handle all of my own affairs, despite no precedent of doing so. All of a sudden people who previously assured me it was fine to not know where I’m headed in life are berating me for not being better organized and having a plan. This leaves me feeling somewhat like I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me.

These concerns are compounded by the fact that they’re coming from people upon whom I am relying for the course of this endeavor, and whose insistence on moving forward along a more conventional, if not necessarily orthodox, path of starting college classes rather than, say, traveling or starting a small business, was a major motivating factor in the decision to pursue this path, despite considerable hesitation. The main justification, in so many words, for going to a local college instead of a perhaps more prestigious one further away, was the desire to avoid fighting on multiple fronts at once. The assumption was that by remaining as a commuter student, the dynamic outside of school, by which the processes of maintaining my day to day health are carried out, and the logistical issues inherent in college are handled, would not be essentially different. The prospect, therefore, of any change in this area is especially troublesome.

I desperately want to be successful in my classes. My experience in high school was awful, and I want to be able to prove, to myself as much as others, that this is not how things are destined to go. But after learning through long years and bitter tears that oftentimes adults who are charged with overseeing my success do not actually care, and do not feel an obligation to honor promises, morals, common sense, or indeed the law, it is difficult not to feel wary of the future.

I hope that this week is a “two steps forward, one step back” sort of deal. Despite all of this wariness, I remain cautiously optimistic on the whole. Whether or not I can take them in stride, I still reckon I can handle the challenges of my classes so far. But then again, I thought that starting high school.

Time Flying

No. It is not back to school season. I refuse to accept it. I have just barely begun to enjoy summer in earnest. Don’t tell me it’s already nearly over.

It feels like this summer really flew by. This is always true to an extent, but it feels more pronounced this year, and I’m not really sure how to parse it. I’m used to having time seemingly ambush me when I’m sick, having weeks seem to disappear from my life in feverish haze, but not when I’m well.

If I have to start working myself back towards productivity, and break my bohemian habit of rising at the crack of noon, then I suppose that summer was worthwhile. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I expected. Near as I can tell, nothing I failed to accomplish was vital in any meaningful respect, but it is somewhat disappointing. I suppose I expected to have more energy to tick things off my list. Then again, the fact that nothing was vital meant that I didn’t really push myself. It wasn’t so much that I tried and failed as I failed to try.

Except I can’t help but think that the reason that I didn’t push myself; that I’m still not pushing myself, despite having a few days left; is, aside from a staunch commitment to avoid overtaxing myself before the school year even begins, a sense that I would have plenty of time later. Indeed, this has been my refrain all season long. And despite this, the weeks and months have sailed by, until, to my alarm and terror, we come upon mid-August, and I’ve barely reached the end of my June checklist.

Some of it is simple procrastination, laziness, and work-shyness, and I’ll own that. I spent a lot of my time this summer downright frivolously, and even in retrospect, I can’t really say I regret it. I enjoyed it, after all, and I can’t really envision a scenario where I would’ve enjoyed it in moderation and been able to get more done without the sort of rigid planned schedules that belie the laid back hakunnah mattata attitude that, if I have not necessarily successfully adopted, then at least have taken to using as a crutch in the face of looming terror of starting college classes.

But I’m not just saying “summer flew by” as an idle excuse to cover my apparent lack of progress. I am genuinely concerned that the summer went by faster than some sort of internal sense of temporal perception says it ought have, like a step that turned out to be off kilter from its preceding stairs, causing me to stumble. And while this won’t get me back time, and is unlikely to be a thing that I can fix, even if it is an internal mental quirk, should I not at least endeavor to be aware of it, in the interest of learning from past mistakes?

So, what’s the story with my sense of time?

One of the conversation I remember most vividly of my childhood was about how long an hour is. It was a sunny afternoon late in the school year, and my mother was picking my brother and I up from school. A friend of mine invited us over for a play*, but my mother stated that we had other things to do and places to be.

*Lexicographical sidenote: I have been made aware that the turn of phrase, “to have a play” may be unique to Australian vocabulary. Its proper usage is similar to “have a swim” or “have a snack”. It is perhaps most synonymous with a playdate, but is more casual, spontaneous, and carries less of a distinctly juvenile connotation.

I had a watch at this point, and I knew when we had to be elsewhere, and a loose idea of the time it took to get between the various places, and so I made a case that we did in fact have time to go over and have a play, and still get to our other appointments. My mother countered that if we did go, we wouldn’t be able to stay long. I asked how long we would have, and she said only about an hour. I considered this, and then voiced my opinion that an hour is plenty of time; indeed more than enough. After all, an hour was an unbearably long time to wait, and so naturally it should be plenty of time to play.

I would repudiate this point of view several months later, while in the hospital. Laying there in my bed, hooked up to machines, my only entertainment was watching the ticking wall clock, and trying to be quiet enough to hear it reverberate through the room. It should, by all accounts, have been soul-crushingly boring. But the entire time I was dwelling on my dread, because I knew that at the top of every hour, the nurses would come and stab me to draw blood. And even if I made it through this time, I didn’t know how many hours I had left to endure, or indeed, to live.

I remember sitting there thinking about how my mother had in fact been right. An hour isn’t that long. It isn’t enough to make peace, or get over fears, or get affairs in order. It’s not enough to settle down or gear up. This realization struck me like a groundbreaking revelation, and when I look back and try to put a finger on exactly where my childhood ended, that moment stands out as a major point.

That, eleven years ago, was the last major turning point; the last time I remember revising my scale for how long an hour, a day, and so on are in the scheme of things. Slowly, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more comfortable with longer time scales, but this hasn’t really had a massive effect on my perception.

Over the past half-decade there have been occasions when, being sick, I have seemed to “lose” time, by being sick and not at full processing capacity as time passes. Other occasions it has been a simple matter of being a home body, and so the moments I remember most recently having seen people, which are in reality some time ago, seem to be more recent than they were, creating a disconnect. But this has always happened as a consequence of being unwell and disconnected from everyday life. In other situations, time has always seemed to match my expectations, and I have been able to use my expectations and perception to have a more intrinsic sense of when I needed to be at certain places.

In the past few months this perception seems to have degraded. Putting my finger on when this started being a noticeable problem is difficult, because much of the past few months has been spent more or less relaxing, which in my case means sleeping in and ignoring the outside world, which as previously noted does tend to affect my perception of how much time has passed. The first time I recall mentioning that time had passed me by was in May, at a conference. I don’t want to give that one data point too much weight, though, because, for one thing, it was a relatively short break in my routine, for another, it was a new conference with nothing to compare it to, and finally, I was jet lagged.

But I definitely do recall mentioning this feeling during the buildup to, and all throughout, our summer travels. This period, unlike previous outings, is definitely long enough that I can say it doesn’t fall into the category of being a homebody. Something has changed in my perception of time, and my sense of how much time I have to work with before scheduled events is degraded.

So what gives? The research into perception of time falls into the overlap between various fields, and is fraught with myths and pseudoscience. For example, it is commonly held and accepted that perception of time becomes faster with age. But this hypothesis dates back to the 1870s, and while there is some evidence to support a correlation, particularly early in life, the correlation is weak, and not linear. Still, this effect is present early in life, and it is plausible that this is part of my problem.

One point that is generally agreed upon in the scientific literature regards the neurochemistry. It seems to be that the perception of time is moderated by the same mechanisms that regulate our circadian rhythm, specifically dopamine and a handful of other neurotransmitters. Disruptions to these levels causes a corresponding disruption to the sense of time. In particular, it seems that more dopamine causes time to go faster; hence time seeming to pass faster when one is having fun. This would explain why the passage of time over my vacation has seemed particularly egregious, and also why jet lag seems to have such a profound effect on time perception.

Both of these explanations would go a ways towards explaining the sensorial discrepancy I find. Another explanation would place blame on my glasses, since eye movement seems to also be tied to small-scale passage of time. Perhaps since I have started wearing glasses in the last couple of years, my eyes have been squinting less, and my internal clock has been running subtly slow since, and I am only now starting to notice it.

With the field of time perception research still in relative infancy, the scientific logic behind these explanations is far from ironclad. But then again, it doesn’t need to be ironclad. For our purposes, the neurobiological mechanisms are almost entirely irrelevant. What matters is that the effect is real, that it isn’t just me, nor is it dangerous, and that there’s nothing I can really do about it other than adapt. After all, being blind without my glasses, or giving myself injections of neurotransmitters as a means of deterring procrastination might be a bit overkill.

What matters is that I can acknowledge this change as an effect that will need to be accounted for going forwards. How I will account for it is outside the scope of this post. Probably I will work to be a bit more organized and sensitive to the clock. But what’s important is that this is a known quantity now, and so hopefully I can avoid being caught so terribly off guard next summer.

Works Consulted
Eagleman, David M. “Human Time Perception and Its Illusions.” Current Opinion in Neurobiology, vol. 18, no. 2, 2008, pp. 131–136., doi:10.1016/j.conb.2008.06.002.

Friedman, W.J. and S.M.J. Janssen. 2010. Aging and the speed of time. Acta Psychologica 134: 130-141.

Janssen, S.M.J., M. Naka, and W.J. Friedman. 2013. Why does life appear to speed up as people get older? Time & Society 22(2): 274-290.

Wittmann, M. and S. Lehnhoff. 2005. Age effects in perception of time. Psychological Reports 97: 921-935.

Reflections on Contentedness

Contentedness is an underrated emotion. True, it doesn’t have the same electricity as joy, or the righteousness of anger. But it has the capability to be every bit as sublime. As an added bonus, contentedness seems to lean towards a more measured, reflective action as a result, rather than the rash impulsiveness of the ecstatic excitement of unadulterated joy, or the burning rage of properly kindled anger.

One of the most valuable lessons I have learned in the past decade has been how to appreciate being merely content instead of requiring utter and complete bliss. It is enough to sit in the park on a nice and sunny day, without having to frolic and chase the specter of absolute happiness. Because in truth, happiness is seldom something that can be chased.

Of course, contentedness also has its more vicious form if left unmoderated. Just as anger can beget wrath, and joy beget gluttony, greed, and lust, too much contentedness can bring about a state of sloth, or perhaps better put, complacency. Avoiding complacency has been a topic on my mind a great deal of late, as I have suddenly found myself with free time and energy, and wish to avoid squandering it as much as possible.

This last week saw a few different events of note in my life, which I will quickly recount here:

I received the notification of the death of an acquaintance and comrade of mine. While not out of the blue, or even particularly surprising, it did nevertheless catch me off guard. This news shook me, and indeed, if this latest post seems to contain an excess of navel-gazing ponderance, without much actual insight to match, that is why. I do have more thoughts and words on the subject, but am waiting for permission from the family before posting anything further on the subject.

The annual (insofar as having something two years in a row makes an annual tradition) company barbecue hosted at our house by my father took place. Such events are inevitably stressful for me, as they require me to exert myself physically in preparation for houseguests, and then to be present and sociable. Nevertheless, the event went on without major incident, which I suppose is a victory.

After much consternation, I finally picked up my diploma and finalized transcript from the high school, marking an anticlimactic end to the more than half-decade long struggle with my local public school to get me what is mine by legal right. In the end, it wasn’t that the school ever shaped up, decided to start following the law, and started helping me. Instead, I learned how to learn and work around them.

I made a quip or two about how, now that I can no longer be blackmailed with grades, I could publish my tell-all book. In truth, such a book will probably have to wait until after I am accepted into higher education, given that I will still have to work with the school administration through the application process.

In that respect, very little is changed by the receiving of my diploma. There was no great ceremony, nor parade, nor party in my honor. I am assured that I could yet have all such things if I were so motivated, but it seems duplicitous to compel others to celebrate me and my specific struggle, outside of the normal milestones and ceremonies which I have failed to qualify for, under the pretense that it is part of that same framework. Moreover, I hesitate to celebrate at all. This is a bittersweet occasion, and a large part of me wants nothing more than for this period of my life to be forgotten as quickly as possible.

Of course, that is impossible, for a variety of reasons. And even if it were possible, I’m not totally convinced it would be the right choice. It is not that I feel strongly that my unnecessary adversity has made me more resilient, or has become an integral part of my identity. It has, but this is a silver lining at best. Rather, it is because as much as I wish to forget the pains of the past, I wish even more strongly to avoid such pains in future. It is therefore necessary that I remember what happened, and bear it constantly in mind.

The events of this week, and the scattershot mix of implications they have for me, make it impossible for me to be unreservedly happy. Even so, being able to sit on my favorite park bench, loosen my metaphorical belt, and enjoy the nice, if unmemorable, weather, secure in the knowledge that the largest concerns of recent memory and foreseeable future are firmly behind me, does lend itself to a sort of contentedness. Given the turmoil and anguish of the last few weeks of scrambling to get schoolwork done, this is certainly a step up.

In other news, my gallery page is now operational, albeit incomplete, as I have yet to go through the full album of photographs that were taken but not posted, nor have I had the time to properly copy the relevant pages from my sketchbook. The fictional story which I continue to write is close to being available. In fact, it is technically online while I continue to preemptively hunt down bugs, it just doesn’t have anything linking to it. This coming weekend it slated to be quite busy, with me going to a conference in Virginia, followed by the Turtles All the Way Down book release party in New York City.

Break a Leg!

Perhaps in the intervening days since leaving high school I have simply aged into a grumpy old man. Perhaps I have excessively high expectations. Perhaps it was that I was simply in a foul mood. Quite possibly all of the above; I won’t contest any or all of these charges. Whatever the case, the round of plays which were read at our local playhouse last week were all mediocre at best.

I should explain: Our local playhouse (that is, theater,) put on an event in cooperation with the local library and high school in which they solicited entries for original short plays, and had a number of them read by the school theater cast, which included my brother. Had I known about this, I probably would have entered. Alas, I did not know, and did not enter. Which is a shame, because most of the plays were just okay. I am reasonably certain I could have been a finalist.

Of course, it’s easy to throw stones without doing anything constructive. And I do endeavor to lead by example. And so I have taken it upon myself to write a short play, to prove that I can. In the grand tradition of those plays sampled earlier, mine is vaguely autobiographical, subtly (and not so subtly) caricaturing those closest to me, and lampooning those I feel have wronged me with satire and pretentious moralism. I don’t claim that mine is exceptional, or even good, merely that it is at least as good as those I saw.

Square Peg in a Round Hole

A short, vaguely autobiographical, but still fictional play by the Renaissance Guy.

Scene 1

The curtain rises on a bored English class waiting for last period to draw to a close. It is unseasonably warm for a Friday in October, and the temperature is producing a mix of agitation and sloth among the STUDENTS. TEACHER stands in front of the room, supervising.

TEACHER: Remember, if you don’t finish your write up for today’s discussion questions they’re for homework over the weekend. If you do finish, you can start working on edits for your college essays.

STUDENTS, BROOKE, and PAIGE groan.

TEACHER: Hey, you’re all upperclassmen now. You need to start taking personal responsibility. (Aside.) Not that that’ll help those of you who shouldn’t be in an honors class anyways, but that’s not my problem.

BROOKE twirling hair: Hey Max, did you get an answer for question four?

MAX: Yes. I’m just finishing the last one, and then I’m done. (Aside.) And then, god willing, I can be out of here before anyone notices I showed up today.

BROOKE: What’d you answer for number four?

MAX: These are, I understand, supposed to be our own opinions on moral issues. You can’t just copy my answers.

BROOKE places her hand over her chest, more for drama than actual indignation: I wasn’t going to copy. I already have my answer. I just want to know yours.

MAX: How about you tell me your answer first?

BROOKE: Alright. (Reading) If I were forced to choose to torture an innocent child in order to create a utopia, I would not do it. It is never right to harm an innocent, least of all a child. Even if this would create a better world, the ends do not justify the means.

MAX shaking his head: I disagree.

BROOKE: Oh? What’d you say?

MAX clears his throats and begins reading: Assuming for the purposes of this question that I am confident beyond a shadow of a doubt that inflicting torture on this child would indeed bring about the Utopian society promised, I would reluctantly agree to torturing an innocent in order to eradicate future suffering.
Indeed, I submit that such is the only moral course of action; for unless one is to argue that the current world is at all times entirely moral and fair by nature, which I do not believe for a moment, then it is accurate to say that innocents are already being tortured. Indeed, at this very moment there is already far more pain and suffering happening than could possibly be inflicted upon or experienced by a single mortal being, much of it experienced by innocents, all of it unnecessary in this scenario.
That this particular innocent sufferer happens to be visible, while the majority of sufferers are not, is not particularly important to the dilemma at hand. To claim otherwise is to claim that moral quandaries only really matter insofar as they apply to oneself, which in addition to being exceedingly selfish, assaults the foundational assumption of a universal standard of moral behavior, and is thus self defeating.

BROOKE applauds. PAIGE gives a thumbs down gesture, and BROOKE shoots her a glare, causing her to stop without MAX realizing.

MAX: I wasn’t done.

BROOKE: You wrote more than that?

MAX defensively: It’s an interesting question! And besides, our assignment is to give our opinions. My opinions all happen to be complex and multifaceted. Which naturally means they take up several pages.

BROOKE: Mm-hmm. And that’s why you’re the smartest guy in our class. (Aside) But goddamn if I can get him to stop paying attention to his work and start paying attention to me for five minutes.

The bell rings. MAX, caught off guard, begins immediately rushes to pack his things. PAIGE and STUDENTS exit.

BROOKE: So, are you coming to my party this weekend? It’s going to be themed after The Great Gatsby. You really liked that book when we read it for class last year, right?

MAX: Indeed I did, and still do. Alas, I have to get my transfusion later today, which usually pretty well tuckers me out for at least a few days.

TEACHER: Max! When you’re done, can you come over here for a moment.

MAX stops rushing to pack his things: Of course, just a moment. (Aside.) Curses.

BROOKE crestfallen: Oh. Well, if you feel better or whatever you should definitely try and come. If you’re up to it.

BROOKE pulls out a crumpled piece of paper decorated with doodles in colored ink, and a phone number: Here. Text me and I’ll give you all the details. Or even if you don’t feel up to coming and just want to chat.

MAX: Thank you. I’ll bear your advice in mind.

PAIGE steps in from offstage: Brooke, c’mon!

BROOKE: Coming!

BROOKE exits. MAX braces himself, standing alone against TEACHER.

MAX: (aside) Once more unto the breach. (To TEACHER) You wanted to see me?

TEACHER: Yes, Max. I’ve hardly seen any of you this semester. And it’s only October.

MAX: I can get a doctors’ note if you’d like.

TEACHER: I’d much rather see you in class. Or failing that, see the first draft of your college essay, which you were supposed to hand in last week.

MAX: I wasn’t here last week.

TEACHER: No. No, you weren’t here at all last week. Or the week before that. Why is that?

MAX shrugs: Lead guesses are either bacterial sinusitis or a garden variety coronavirus, but we haven’t definitively ruled out strep or a mild influenza.

TEACHER: Right. Look, you’re not the first kid to come in here with special needs, or an IEP. You’re not even the first to have… remind me, what’s your problem again?

MAX: Seventeen years and they still don’t know. There are some theories, but as yet nothing that matches all of the lab pathology and the symptoms. Though if you can figure it out, I’m quite sure there’s a doctorate in it for you.

TEACHER: …Right. Well, look, you’re not the first kid to come in with weird health issues. But all of those kids were able to put in the effort.

MAX: I am hopeful that the work I turned in today will show that I am indeed putting in my maximum effort wherever possible.

TEACHER: That’s a start. But I can’t grade you on just today’s in class assignment. You’ll need to complete the college essay for a start.

MAX: I will try. But I missed all the in class time that was spent on it, and as yet lack the stamina to work after school.

TEACHER: Christ, Max. You must have some free time. What’s your schedule look like?

MAX: Well, today I have to go get a transfusion.

TEACHER: Can you work on schoolwork there?

MAX: No. It drives up my blood pressure and pulse rate too much and makes the nurses nervous.

TEACHER: Okay… How about after?

MAX: After the infusion center is dinner. Then after that I usually spend another hour or so fighting to avoid throwing up dinner. Then my mother will sit with me and try and get me to take in some fluids to avoid dehydration.

TEACHER: Could you work on your essay then?

MAX: Not likely. The nausea tends to impair my ability to properly construe syntax. After that is bedtime. I usually sleep until around eleven, that is, unless I have a migraine, and then it’s more like two. And then it’s pretty much the whole meal-nausea-rehydration thing over again until the next day.

TEACHER (aside): I just don’t know what to do with this kid. I’m stuck between a state-led crackdown on kids slacking off, and a federal civil rights lawsuit waiting to happen. God knows I don’t want him here any more than he does. But God also knows the department will have me out the door faster than you can spell favoritism if I don’t put his nose to the grindstone. He can’t really be that sick all the time, can he?

TEACHER: Do you think this is going to get better later in the year?

MAX: That would be a pleasant change. It hasn’t before, though.

TEACHER: If you knew this was going to be a problem, why did you choose to take an honors course?

MAX gives an over dramatic shrug: I don’t know. The other course I had been interested in taking didn’t get enough signals and wasn’t offered so… I suppose perhaps I guessed it would be more interesting than the regular course on the days I was here? Maybe I was led to believe by my standardized test scores and my advisers that I needed to be challenged intellectually as well as physiologically? Or that an honors course teacher would be more invested, and in a better position to work with individual students?

TEACHER bristles, but does not respond.

MAX: Or my IEP committee flat out told me that I needed to take more honors and AP courses to look good for my transcript, and for their official records? No idea really. Why does any teenager do anything?

TEACHER: Just… just get your work done.

TEACHER exits. As soon as he is gone, MAX plunges his head into his hands in silent but obvious distress. He remains like this for several moments before the scene ends.

Scene 2

Max’s MOTHER is picking him up in her car to drive to the hospital. The car is loaded with snacks, entertainment, and various other amenities that only veterans think to bring to the hospital, along with stacks and stacks of medical files and medication.

MOTHER looks anxiously at her watch.

MAX enters, apparently recovered.

MOTHER: Hey. How’s it going?

MAX answers slowly and in a soft voice: As my blood tests would say… equivocal.

MOTHER: Well, that at least beats terrible. How was class?

The car begins to pull away from the curb. MAX dribbles his index finger back and forth over his lips in answer.

MOTHER: That bad?

MAX chooses his words slowly: The English teacher apparently came to the conclusion that rather than reducing my workload of make up work, that I required a motivational speech on personal responsibility.

MOTHER: Again? I’ll call the guidance counselor. This is not acceptable. Your IEP is a federal document. “Essential work only” is not a suggestion.

MAX: You’re preaching to the choir again.

MOTHER: I know, I just… argh. You just need to remember that it’s not you, it’s them. You’re a square peg in a round hole, and if they can’t deal with that… well… we’ll make them deal with that. (Beat.) Was the discussion at least interesting?

MAX: Somewhat. I gain the distinct feeling that most of my conversations in that class are rather one-sided in my favor. Though whether for want of intelligent response, or for want of a modicum of interest, I cannot fathom.

MOTHER (laughing): I bet it’s a little of both. But it was interesting?

MAX: I suppose on balance. Apparently my points were warmly received enough to merit my invitation to another event.

MOTHER: What do you mean?

MAX pulls out the crumpled piece of paper: I was invited to a party this weekend. It is apparently to be fashioned after those thrown by none other than the Great Gatsby himself. Quite an ambitious aim; almost sure to disappoint. I see no particularly pressing need to attend.

MOTHER: Who invited you?

MAX: Brooke.

MOTHER: Who’s Brooke. A girl in your English class?

Max nods.

MOTHER: Is she nice?

MAX: Well, she has apparently insisted on fetching documents for me from the front table when necessary, and has made a point to be my discussion partner on multiple occasions. Granted, she sits next to me, and I strongly suspect she copies my work.

MOTHER: You should try and go if you’re feeling alright. When is it?

MAX: I don’t know. Brooke gave me her number and said to text her for details.

MOTHER smiles: She gave you her phone number?

MAX: Well, she said it was her phone number. I am familiar with cases of fake phone number giving, though I can’t think of any motivation given that she gave me her number unsolicited.

MOTHER: You should definitely try and go. You should text her now.

MAX: We’ll see how the infusions go.

Scene 3:

The party is in full swing. STUDENTS are dressed in a variety of attire, ranging from casual, to semi-formal, to 1920s themes. PAIGE and BROOKE both wear art-deco design fringe dresses and hair bands. George Gershwin’s Summertime plays in the background.

MAX enters, dressed in black pinstripes.

PAIGE: Well. He showed up. Guess I owe you twenty bucks.

BROOKE: Sh!

MAX: Good evening ladies. Quite a nifty little rub you’ve arranged. I dare say, you spiffied up nicely. You two looked like a pair of veritable choice pieces of calico.

(beat)

BROOKE: Huh?

PAIGE: I think he’s complimenting us.

MAX: Now you’re on the trolley.

PAIGE: Uh-huh. I’m going to go… what’s the phrase… see a man about a dog?

MAX: Sounds swell.

PAIGE exits.

MAX: I can tone it down if you’d prefer.

BROOKE: Maybe just a little bit.

MAX: I must compliment you on your choice of music. Though I’m slightly disappointed that you didn’t go with the Ella Fitzgerald version.

BROOKE: I can add it to the playlist if you’d like? I think this version is by a guy called Gershwin. He did the thing from Fantasia that was set in the city. It comes up in the new Gatsby movie.

MAX: I’m well aware of George Gershwin’s work. I’m quite partial to Rhapsody in Blue myself. My grandfather used to play his vinyls for me as a child, to make sure I didn’t just grow up knowing it as the United jingle.

BROOKE giggles affectionately. The music changes to a modern synth-pop dance track. The two stand in awkward silence for several moments.

BROOKE: Do you want to… uh… foxtrot?

MAX: Do you mean the actual dance the foxtrot, or just dance?

BROOKE smiles flusteredly: Um. Either? You’d have to teach me to do the actual foxtrot.

MAX: Sure thing. It’s actually deceptively easy.

MAX and BROOKE begin to dance a foxtrot, and other STUDENTS begin copying. PAIGE renters, carrying several liquor bottles.

PAIGE: Alright. Now to get this party really on theme: I’ve got the moonshine.

STUDENTS clamor towards PAIGE. Within moments almost all have a drink in their hand.

BROOKE: Come on. I think I could use a drink, how ’bout you?

MAX: Are you kidding?

BROOKE: What? You’re not one of those fundamentalists in class. It’s just a little ‘moonshine’.

MAX: More like coffin varnish. Aside from the fact that with all my medications I’d be better off drinking bleach than beer, this is all very illegal and dangerous, even without all my medical conditions. I’m sorry, Brooke, I really am. But I’m afraid I ought to take my leave.

BROOKE: You’re not going to turn us in, are you?

MAX pauses, hesitates: Unless I’m specifically compelled to testify, no. I’m not going to tattle. But I can’t stay here. If I passed out or had a seizure or something, and everyone else thought I was drunk because they had been drinking… I’m sorry, I have to leave.

MAX moves to leave.

PAIGE (shouting): Oh for crying out loud! Come freaking on, Max.

MAX pauses: I beg your pardon?

PAIGE: You don’t fit in as a student in class. You’re not an establishment kid, great. Now you’re claiming you don’t even fit in with us rebels? I mean, come on. You can’t have it both ways.

STUDENTS gawk and laugh

MAX exits.

BROOKE: Max, wait.

BROOKE exits.

PAIGE: You think you’re being edgy? You’re not being edgy. You’re just a loser. You’re just a square peg in a round hole.

Curtain falls.

End of play.

Parties interested in using this play may reach me by the Contact page to discuss licensing arrangements. This has been an amusing exercise, and one I may return to at some point.

What Comes Next?

So, as you may remember from a few days ago, I am now officially-unofficially done with classes. This is obviously a relief. Yet it is also dizzyingly anticlimactic. For so long I was solely focused on getting done the schoolwork in front of me that I never once dared to imagine what the world would look like when I was done. Now I am, and the answer is, to summarize: more or less the same as it looked when I was still working.

There is now an interesting paradox with my schedule. The list of things that I have to do each day is now incredibly short, and comprises mostly on those items which are necessary to my day to day survival; I have to make sure I eat, and shower, and get to the doctors’ offices on time. Beyond that I have almost no commitments. I have no local friends with whom I might have plans, nor any career that requires certain hours of me, nor even any concrete future path for my further education (I was, and still am prevented from making such plans because my school still cannot provide an up to date and accurate transcript, which is a prerequisite to applying).

At the same time, now that I have some semblance of peace in my life, for the first time in memory, there are plenty of things which I could do. I could go for a pleasant walk in the park. I could take to the streets and protest something. I could fritter away countless hours on some video game, or some television series. I could write a blog post, or even several. My options are as boundless as my newfound time. Yet for as many things as I could do, there are few things that I need to do.

Moreover, almost all of here things that I could do require some degree of proactive effort on my part. In order to sink time into a video game, for example, I would first have to find and purchase a game that interests me, which would first require that I find a means to acquire, and run said game on my hardware (the bottleneck isn’t actually hardware on my end, but internet speed, which in my household is so criminally slow that it does not meet the bare minimum technical specifications for most online distribution platforms).

As problems go… this isn’t particularly problematic. On the contrary, I find it exhilarating, if also new and utterly terrifying, to think that I now command my own time; indeed, that I have time to command. In the past, the question of time management was decidedly hollow, given that I generally had none. My problem, as I insisted to an unsympathetic study skills teacher, was not that I categorically made poor use of time, but that I only possessed about three productive hours in a day in which to complete twelve hours of schoolwork. The only question involved was which schoolwork I focused on first, which was never truly solved, as each teacher would generally insist that their subject ought be my highest priority, and that all of their class work was absolutely essential and none could be pared down in accordance with my accommodations.

Nevertheless, while my new state of affairs isn’t necessarily problematic, it certainly has the potential to become so if I allow myself to become entranced in the siren song of complacency and cheap hedonism. I am aware that many people, especially people in my demographic, fall prey to various habits and abuses when lacking clear direction in life, therefore I have two primary aims in the time that it will take the school to produce the necessary paperwork for me to move on to higher education.

First, I need to keep busy, at least to an extent that will prevent me from wallowing; for wallowing is not only unproductive, but generally counterproductive, as it increases feelings of depression and helplessness, and is associated with all manner of negative medical outcomes.

Second, I need to keep moving forward. I am well aware that I often feel most hopeless when I cannot see any signs of progress, hence why much of the past five years has been so soul-crushing. In theory, it would be quite easy to occupy my time by playing video games and watching television; by building great structures of Lego and then deconstructing them; or even by writing long tracts, and then destroying them. But this would provide only a physical, and not a mental defense against wallowing. What I require is not merely for my time to be occupied, but an occupation in my time.

I am therefore setting for myself a number of goals. All of these goals are relatively small scale, as I have found that when setting my own goals as opposed to working under the direction of others, I tend to work better with small, tactically minded checklist-style agendas than vague, grand strategies. Most of these goals are relative mundanities, such as shifting around money among accounts, or installing proper antivirus software on a new laptop. All of these goals are intended to keep me busy and nominally productive. A few of them have to do with my writing here.

I generally detest people who post too much of their day to day personal affairs online, particularly those who publish meticulous details of their daily efforts to meet one target or another. However, having my goals publicly known has in past attempts seemed to be a decent motivator of sorts. It forces me to address them in one way or another down the line, even if all I do by addressing them is explain why they haven’t happened yet. If there is a reasonable explanation, I do not feel pressure; if there is not, I feel some compulsion to keep my word to myself and others. So, here are a few of my goals as they regard this blog:

1) I am looking at getting a gallery page set up which will allow me to display the photos that I have taken personally in one place, as well as showing off some of my sketches, which people say I ought to. Aside from being nice for people who like to look at pictures, having a gallery, or a portfolio if you will, has been a thing that I have wanted to have in my life since my first high school art class, as part of my quest to be a pretentious, beret-wearing, capital-a Artist, and people have been clamoring to see more of my pictures and sketches of late. My aim is to have this page in working order before thanksgiving.

2) I am also working on getting that fictional story I keep mentioning polished up for launch. The reason it hasn’t gone up yet is no longer that I haven’t written necessary materials, but that I am still working on getting the backend set up so that it displays nicely and consistently. I’m also still writing it, but I’m far enough along writing it that I can probably start posting as soon as I get the technical hijinks worked out.

This story was scheduled to start some time at the beginning of last month. However, a major glitch in the plugin I was aiming to use to assist its rollout caused a sitewide crash (you may remember that part), and subsequently I had to go back to the drawing board. Because I am, quite simply, not a computer coding person, the solution here is not going to be technically elegant. What’s probably going to happen is that the story is going to be posted under a sub-domain with a separate install of WordPress, in order to keep fiction and nonfiction posts from becoming mixed up. I’m working on trying to make navigating between the two as painless as possible. The timeline on this one should be before thanksgiving.

3) I aim to travel more. This isn’t as strictly blog related, but it is something I’m likely to post about. Specifically, I aim to find a method by which I can safely and comfortably travel, with some degree of independence, despite my disability. My goal is to undertake a proof of concept trip before May of next year.

4) I want to write and create more. No surprises there.

This is likely to be the last post of the daily post marathon. That is, unless something strikes my fancy between now and tomorrow. I reckon that this marathon has served its intended purpose of bringing me up to date on my writings quite nicely. I have actually enjoyed getting to write something every day, even if I know that writing, editing, and posting two thousand words a day is not sustainable for me, and I may yet decide to change up my posting routine some more in the future.

Schoolwork Armistice

At 5:09pm EDT, 16th of August of this year, I was sitting hunched over an aging desktop computer working on the project that was claimed to be the main bottleneck between myself and graduation. It was supposed to be a simple project: reverse engineer and improve a simple construction toy. The concept is not a difficult one. The paperwork, that is, the engineering documentation which is supposed to be part of the “design process” which every engineer must invariably complete in precisely the correct manner, was also not terribly difficult, though it was grating, and, in my opinion, completely backwards and unnecessary.

In my experience tinkering around with medical devices, improvising on the fly solutions in life or death situations is less of a concrete process than a sort of spontaneous rabbit-out-of-the-hat wizardry. Any paperwork comes only after the problem has been attempted and solved, and only then to record results. This is only sensible as, if I waited to put my life support systems back together after they broke in the field until after I had filled out the proper forms, charted the problem on a set of blueprints, and submitted it for witness and review, I would be dead. Now, admittedly this probably isn’t what needs to be taught to people who are going to be professional engineers working for a legally liable company. But I still maintain that for an introductory level course that is supposed to focus on achieving proper methods of thinking, my way is more likely to be applicable to a wider range of everyday problems.

Even so, the problem doesn’t lie in paperwork. Paperwork, after all, can be fabricated after the fact if necessary. The difficult part lies in the medium I was expected to use. Rather than simply build my design with actual pieces, I was expected to use a fancy schmancy engineering program. I’m not sure why it is necessary for me to have to work ham-fistedly through another layer of abstraction which only seems to make my task more difficult by removing my ability to maneuver pieces in 3D space with my hands.

It’s worth nothing that I have never at any point been taught to use this computer program; not from the teacher of the course, nor my teacher, nor the program itself. It is not that the program is intuitive to an uninitiated mind; quite the opposite, in fact, as the assumption seems to be that anyone using the program will have had a formal engineering education, and hence be well versed in technical terminology, standards, notation, and jargon. Anything and everything that I have incidentally learned of this program comes either from blunt trial and error, or judicious use of google searches. Even now I would not say that I actually know how to use the program; merely that I have coincidentally managed to mimic the appearance of competence long enough to be graded favorably.

Now, for the record, I know I’m not the only one to come out of this particular course feeling this way. The course is advertised as being largely “self motivated”, and the teacher is known for being distinctly laissez faire provided that students can meet the letter of course requirements. I knew this much when I signed up. Talking to other students, it was agreed that the course is not so much self motivated as it is, to a large degree, self taught. This was especially true in my case, as, per the normal standard, I missed a great deal of class time, and given the teacher’s nature, was largely left on my own to puzzle through how exactly I was supposed to make the thing on my computer look like the fuzzy black and white picture attached to packet of make up work.

Although probably not the most frustrating course I have taken, this one is certainly a contender for the top three, especially the parts where I was forced to use the computer program. It got to the point where, at 5:09, I became so completely stuck, and as a direct result so she overwhelmingly frustrated, that to wit the only two choices left before me were as follows:

Option A
Make a hasty flight from the computer desk, and go for a long walk with no particular objective, at least until the climax of my immediate frustration has passed, and I am once again able to think of some new approach in my endless trial-and-error session, besides simply slinging increasingly harsh and exotic expletives at the inanimate PC.

Option B
Begin my hard earned and well deserved nervous breakdown in spectacular fashion by flipping over the table with the computer on it, trampling over the shattered remnants of this machine and bastion of my oppression, and igniting my revolution against the sanity that has brought me nothing but misery and sorrow.

It was a tough call, and one which I had to think long and hard about before committing. Eventually, my nominally better nature prevailed. By 7:12pm, I was sitting on my favorite park bench in town, sipping a double chocolate malted milkshake from the local chocolate shop, which I had justified to myself as being good for my doctors’ wishes that I gain weight, and putting the finishing touches on a blog post about Armageddon, feeling, if not contented, then at least one step back from the brink that I had worked myself up to.

I might have called it a day after I walked home, except that I knew that the version of the program that I had on my computer, that all my work files were saved with, and which had been required for the course, was being made obsolete and unusable by the developers five days hence. I was scheduled to depart for my eclipse trip the next morning. So, once again compelled against my desires and even my good sense by forces outside my control, I set back to work.

By 10:37pm, I had a working model on the computer. By 11:23, I had managed to save and print enough documentation that I felt I could tentatively call my work done. At 11:12am August 17th, the following morning, running about two hours behind my family’s initial departure plans (which is to say, roughly normal for time), I set the envelope with the work I had completed on the counter for my tutor to collect after I departed so that she might pass it along to the course teacher, who would point out whatever flaws I needed to address, which in all probability would take another two weeks at least of work.

This was the pattern I had learned to expect from my school. They had told me that I was close to being done enough times, only to disappoint when they discovered that they had miscalculated the credit requirements, or overlooked a clause in the relevant policy, or misplaced a crucial form, or whatever other excuse of the week they could conjure, that I simply grew numb to it. I had come consider myself a student the same way I consider myself disabled: maybe not strictly permanently, but not temporarily in a way that would lead me to ever plan otherwise.

Our drive southwest was broadly uneventful. On the second day we stopped for dinner about an hour short of our destination at Culver’s, where I traditionally get some variation of chocolate malt. At 9:32 EDT August 18th, my mother received the text message from my tutor: she had given the work to the course teacher who had declared that I would receive an A in the course. And that was it. I was done.

Perhaps I should feel more excited than I do. Honestly though I feel more numb than anything else. The message itself doesn’t mean that I’ve graduated; that still needs to come from the school administration and will likely take several more months to be ironed out. This isn’t victory, at least not yet. It won’t be victory until I have my diploma and my fully fixed transcript in hand, and am able to finally, after being forced to wait in limbo for years, begin applying to colleges and moving forward with my life. Even then, it will be at best a Pyrrhic victory, marking the end of a battle that took far too long, and cost far more than it ever should have. And that assumes that I really am done.

This does, however, represent something else. An armistice. Not an end to the war per se, but a pause, possibly an end, to the fighting. The beginning of the end of the end. The peace may or may not hold; that depends entirely on the school. I am not yet prepared to stand down entirely and commence celebrations, as I do not trust the school to keep their word. But I am perhaps ready to begin to imagine a different world, where I am not constantly engaged in the same Sisyphean struggle against a never ending onslaught of schoolwork.

The nature of my constant stream of makeup work has meant that I have not had proper free time in at least half a decade. While I have, at the insistence of my medical team and family, in recent years, taken steps to ensure that my life is not totally dominated solely by schoolwork, including this blog and many of the travels and projects documented on it, the ever looming presence of schoolwork has never ceased to cast a shadow over my life. In addition to causing great anxiety and distress, this has limited my ambitions and my enjoyment of life.

I look forward to a change of pace from this dystopian mental framework, now that it is no longer required. In addition to rediscovering the sweet luxury of boredom, I look forward to being able to write uninterrupted, and to being able to move forward on executing several new and exciting projects.

Me vs. Ghost Me

My recent attempts to be a bit more proactive in planning my life have yielded an interesting unexpected result. It appears that trying to use my own My Disney Experience account in planning my part of our family vacation has unleashed a ghost version of myself that is now threatening to undo all of my carefully laid plans, steal my reservations, and wreck my family relationships.

Context: Last summer, I was at Disney World for a conference, which included a day at the park. Rather than go through the huff and puff of getting a disability pass to avoid getting trapped in lines and the medical havoc that could wreak, I opted instead to simply navigate the park with fastpasses. Doing this effectively required that I have a My Disney Experience account in order to link my conference-provided ticket and book fastpasses from my phone. So I created one. For the record, the system worked well over the course of that trip.

Fast forward to the planning for this trip. Given my historical track record with long term planning, and the notable chaos of my family’s collective schedule, it is generally my mother who takes point on the strategic end (I like to believe that I pick up the slack in tactical initiative, but that’s neither here nor there). Booking our room and acquiring our Magic Bands naturally required to put names down for each of our family members, which, evidently, spawned “ghost” accounts in the My Disney Experience system.

This is not a particularly large concern for my brother or father, both of whom are broadly nonplussed with such provincial concerns as being in the right place at the right time, at least while on vacation. For me, however, as one who has to carefully judge medication doses based on expected activity levels over the next several hours, and more generally, a perpetual worrier, being able to access and, if necessary, change my plans on the fly is rather crucial. In the case of Disney, this means having my own account rather than my “ghost” be listed for all pertinent reservations and such.

The solution is clear: I must hunt down my ghostly doppelgänger and eliminate him. The problem is that doing so would cancel all of the current reservations. So before killing my ghost, I first have to steal his reservations. As a side note: It occurs to me belatedly that this dilemma would make an interesting and worthwhile premise for a sci-fi thriller set in a dystopia where the government uses digital wearable technology to track and control its population.

All of this has served as an amusing distraction from the latest sources of distress in my life, namely: Having to sequester myself in my home and attend meetings with the school administrators by telephone because of a whooping cough outbreak, the escalating raids against immigrant groups in my community, neo-fascist graffiti at my school, and having to see people I despise be successful in ways that I never could. Obviously, not all of these are equal. But they all contribute to a general feeling that I have been under siege of late.

While reasonable people can disagree over whether the current problems I face are truly new, they certainly seem to have taken on a new urgency. Certainly this is the first time since I arrived back in the United States that immigrant communities in my local community have been subject to ICE raids. Although this is not the first time that my school has experienced fascist graffiti, it is the largest such incident. The political situation, which was previously an abstract thing which was occasionally remarked upon during conversation has become far more tangible. I can see the results in the streets and in my communications with my friends as clearly as I can see the weather.

I might have been able to move past these incidents and focus on other areas of my life, except that other areas of my life have also come under pressure, albeit for different reasons. The school nurse’s office recently disclosed that there has been at least one confirmed case of Whooping Cough. As I have written about previously, this kind of outbreak is a major concern for me, and means in practice that I cannot put myself at risk by going into school until this is resolved. Inconveniently, this announcement came only days before I was due to have an important meeting with school administrators (something which is nerve wracking at the best of times, and day-ruining at others). The nature of the meeting meant that it could not be postponed, and so had to be conducted by telephone.

At the same time, events in my personal life have conspired to force me to confront an uncomfortable truth: People I despise on a personal level are currently more successful and happier than me. I have a strong sense of justice, and so seeing people whom I know have put me and others down in the past be rewarded, while I myself yet struggle to achieve my goals, is quite painful. I recognize that this is petty, but it feels like a very personal example of what seems, from where I stand, to be an acutely distressing trend: The people I consider my adversaries are ahead and in control. Policies I abhor and regard as destructive to the ideals and people I hold dear are advancing. Fear and anger are beating out hope and friendship, and allowing evil and darkness to rise.

Ghost me is winning. He has wreaked havoc in all areas of my life, so that I feel surrounded and horrifically outmatched. He has led me to believe that I am hated and unwanted by all. He has caused fissures in my self-image, making me question whether I can really claim to stand for the weak if I’m not willing to throw myself into every skirmish. He has made me doubt whether, if these people whom I consider misguided and immoral are being so successful and happy, that perhaps it is I who is the immoral one.

These are, of course, traps. Ghost me, like real me, is familiar with the Art of War, and knows that the best way to win a fight is to do so without actual physical combat. And because he knows me; because he is me, and because I am my own worst enemy, he knows how best to set up a trap that I can hardly resist walking into. He tries to convince me to squander my resources and my endurance fighting battles that are already lost. He tries to poke me everywhere at once to disorient me and make me doubt my own senses. Worst of all, he tries to set me up to question myself, making me doubt myself and why I fight, and making me want to simply capitulate.

Not likely.

What ghost me seems to forget is that I am among the most relentlessly stubborn people either of us know. I have fought continuously for a majority of my life now to survive against the odds, and against the wishes of certain aspects of my biology. And I will continue fighting, if necessary for years, if necessary, alone. I am, however, not alone. And if I feel surrounded, then ghost me is not only surrounded, but outnumbered.