On Sleeplessness

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:27:09 -0400

It’s the dream that wake me. We’re outside, talking, and a plane flies overhead. We stop to watch, because the plane is impossibly low. Then we realize that the huge airliner is not flying, it’s tumbling, end over end, and coming closer. At first, we watch, thinking that it will impact somewhere miles away. By the time we realize that it will come down on top of us, it’s too late to run. We turn in a futile attempt to escape, the burning fuel and screaming, twisted metal now only seconds above us, but everything seems to be in slow motion.

Then, I’m awake, and standing shivering at the foot of the bed, drenched in sweat and breathing hard. It seemed so real, and yet it made no sense. Where were we standing? Outside “our” apartment, one we’ve never lived in. What were we talking about? Who were we? What did you look like? None of them register. It was a dream, and it came from the confused cacophony of an unfettered brain, a sorting engine trying desperately to order the mess that life has stuffed into it. It was just a dream; a temporary glitch where random neurons collide together to form a story, because our silly minds insist that there’s a story to everything.

It all seems so rational. So why am I still awake? Why am I afraid to close my eyes?

Forest or Trees

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 12:36:32 -0400

I sat down twice yesterday with the best of intentions. I meant to write. I really did. I had ideas that I wanted to write about, and they were really great ideas. Wonderful things. Things you really wanted to know about, ideas you’d never had, insights that would have changed your life. Yeah, that blog post was going to be the one that changed everything.

Except, it didn’t, because I got sidetracked by shiny buttons in my blogging software.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. I get a great idea for a song, and sit down to record it; hours later, I have ... nothing. Well, not nothing. I have a lingering sense of frustration with being unable to get the recording software to do exactly what I want, or being unable to eliminate the distracting static from a particular instrument connection, or some other technical glitch.

I’m using a software package called Storymill for a project I’m working on. It’s a great tool for organizing a large writing project, with outlining, notes, linking, and lots of other features that are really helpful. Sometimes. But the best feature of Storymill has to be its “full screen” mode, which makes my computer look a lot like the first computer I ever wrote with. The entire interface is hidden, and you’re presented with a black screen and a flashing cursor. At this point, you write. You don’t format, or compose, or do layout. You just start writing, sending words onto the screen. It’s a poor interface for editing, and it’s horribly archaic. It’s also incredibly helpful. All the distractions are removed, and you’re left with ... words.

Recording music should be this easy. Programming should be this easy. Life should be this easy.

But life isn’t. A lot of the tools I use every day aren’t that simple. For example, I just spent nearly 5 minutes getting that small thumbnail screenshot into this post. Some of that time was spent remembering which key-sequence fires off the screen capture function on my MacBook Pro (it’s command-shift-4.) The rest of it was spent importing the screenshot into iPhoto (It’s a screenshot, not a photo, but the “media” browser in iWeb doesn’t just let me browse to a folder to find images,) and then figuring out how to put the image into this post and get text to wrap around it (you have to drop the image onto the page, “cut” it off, get into the text box in “text” mode, paste it in, and then adjust its properties using the inspector.)

The other day, I tried to describe my frustration with how my life has gone in conversation with a friend. I said finally that it wasn’t the big things that had gone horribly wrong that discouraged me, it’s the millions of little things that are way more difficult to do than they should be. When I think about that, I realize that a lot of the things that are supposed to make life easier really don’t.

For example: cell phones make it possible to reach virtually anyone virtually anywhere virtually anytime. It seems like that would be a good thing, and as a parent, I find cell phones to be essential. Except that now I have think about answering the phone all the time. Before I had a cell phone, I only had to think about answering the phone when I was home, or when I was sitting at my desk at work. It’s not that answering the phone is hard, but there’s a level of effort involved, and there’s – for want of a better term – a psychic cost involved in being interruptible anywhere anytime. People who call me don’t seem to understand this. I’m not being terse because I’m angry; I’m not being vague because I’m not interested in the conversation; I’m not being short because I don’t like you. I’m driving. Or in a meeting, or on my way to the bathroom, or about to get into an elevator, or talking to my child, or sitting down for the first time all day after running around dealing with all the things people call me on my cell phone to get me to deal with.

Cell phones are just one example. We can browse the internet on laptops, cell phones, wifi, etc. All that empowering technology is great, except when it isn’t. Do I really need to know that the thing I’m about to buy at Target is cheeper at another store 15 minutes away? Does it really matter what other people think of the restaurant I’m about to eat in? Do I need to know all the stuff that’s out there that I can know about whatever I’m doing? And what happens when this technology doesn’t work? I love having an iPhone, but I want the time back that I’ve spent trying to get it to connect to the 3g network, or calibrating its location services, or asking me whether I want to join a network it has found.

The answer to that last one, by the way, is that I want my phone to only ask me whether to join networks that I want to join, not the ones I don’t. Before I had a phone that asked me this question, I was blissfully ignorant of the topology of wifi networks around me. And I lived.

But I’m sounding like an old grumpy person at this point, so I’ll end there.

On writing, or not

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:24:04 -0400

I used to write often. I kept a daily journal; I contributed to two blogs, and wrote for three of my own. I taught on a weekly basis, and essentially wrote the curriculum each week. I wrote stories for my kids. I wrote letters, and later emails, to various friends and family members.

The divorce ended my writing. There are a number of things that could account for it. I had to write a great deal about the issues in the divorce while it was going on, and that was very painful. My understanding of faith and religion changed a lot as a result of the experience, and I no longer feel comfortable writing (or talking) in the authoritative voice I used to use. As my personal life became increasingly painful, I found it hard to keep the humorous edge that characterized a great deal of my writings; it’s hard to be sarcastic when you’re crying.

As for the halt to my journaling, the best explanation is that I lost touch with whomever it was I had envisioned in my mind as the audience. I’m not quite sure who that was. Some of the entries in my journals read like prayers; others seem to be letters to my ex, or to my kids, or to myself. I’ve sat down a few times to try and journal again, but I always seem blocked by this.

It seems to me that there are a few things that I can write about at this time in my life. I can write about the events of my days, which is probably boring to ninety percent of the world, but is also a good way to exercise the “writing muscles” of my brain. I can write about my professional life as a software designer, which perhaps might find an audience. I can write to respond to the things people have said about me recently, which would probably start to sound like a shrill apologetic after a while. I can try to write fiction, something I’ve always wanted to do, but found myself too distracted to ever pull together.

I could, probably, also mine my journals for things I’ve written in the past, and post them with commentary. That might be too painful at this point, but it certainly would be an interesting exercise. Whether it would be healthy is another matter. When I’ve been able to bring myself to read those volumes (I’ve got journals that go back to the early 80’s,) I’ve found myself being very critical of those entries.

But the most helpful approach, I think, would be to write about how hard it is to write these days, in the hope that somehow it helps to exorcise whatever demons are involved in that block. To that end, I’m committing to posting at least once daily on this blog for the next thirty days, whatever it is that I can write on that particular day. In the interest of avoiding the whole “audience” issue, I’m not enabling comments on this site, but if you wish to interact, you can follow me on Facebook or Twitter, or drop me an email using one of the links on the main page.

Why I hate iTunes Music Store

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:11:42 -0400

The iTunes Music Store has become progressively more difficult to use with every release of iTunes. The latest set of changes replace the XML-driven native iTunes interface with HTML pages. This is probably a win for Apple, as it makes maintaining those pages a lot easier - and it means that most of the UI related to the Store in iTunes is handled by Webkit.

It’s not a win for users. If you launch the store and want to browse music by genre, you need to wade through a whole bunch of stuff before you find the links that will take you into the old browser-style interface, and the Explore options take you to further web pages that also don’t have genre-specific links. There’s a link for “recommendations for you”, but this page is full of music I don’t care about.

Compare the store with eMusic.com’s web storefront. It’s a winner. Browse and search are right at the top, so I can easily browse by genre. he content of the landing page is tailored to me, based on my past purchases. The recommendations are right there so I don’t have to wade through them.

Why I love Microsoft

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:13:04 -0400

Thanks, Bill. The $550,000 will really help out with the attorney fees, credit card debt, and other expenses.

Oh, by the way, I don’t actually use your software. Hope that isn’t a problem.