Home Office Zen

"I consider "work" in its most universal sense, as meaning anything that you want or need to be different than it currently is." - David Allen, author of Getting Things Done

I love that definition of work: it's elegant, simple, yet progressive. I used much of my Thursday and Friday performing upgrades and sorting and purging old files (hard and soft) from my hard drives and cabinets, and posting and distributing stuff I had for correspondence. De-cluttering and clearing all that stuff up to completion felt like a monumental achievement. Happiness is ending a day with a paper-free desk and clear work table. I'd like to keep those spaces that way for a while. In theory, eventually the emptiness of those spots after a couple days will prompt and beckon me to think and focus on what I really want to see in that office space for ideas and creativity which translate to the components of projects that I want or need to tackle next. Hopefully, this effort will serve me in the same way as having a weed-free field does in which to plant stuff. However, if I still have to work my night shift on Monday, it will be pointless to begin anything before then. I shouldn't be entertaining, or playing around with the stupid, trippy ideas I get after any prolonged bout of insomnia.

I say 'components of projects', because the habit of deconstruction is something I have to learn how to use and value more. Everything I plan to do in the next while will be multi-staged, I have only small windows of personal time at home nowadays, so it's necessary that I break things up into smaller ordered tasks.

My knee is getting somewhat better; slowly though. I'm lucky that I didn't get hasty for an early registration for the Mogathon half marathon Race, which is happening today, I would have had to withdraw my application and lose my money. However, for each week of progress my joints are making in healing themselves, it seems like the heart/lung function and breathing capacity that I worked so hard in building up for in training are degenerating twice as quickly.

Small Variances toward Disasters Real and Potential

I start this entry with a mixture of gratitude and relief. Sirens woke me up last night (I didn't note the time), but I dismissed them, as I regularly do, as the more common action of the police arriving to pursue stunt driving/street racing punks, or vagrant delinquents partying in the local park, or hunting down other such creeps, the likes of whom I've seen hanging around the block lately, who gave me the impression that they'd be soon destined sometime in their miserable lives to be rightfully thrown in jail. The sounds of approaching sirens in this area at night annoy me at first for a small instant, but then I shrug them off; feeling satisfied that the police are trying to do their job as best they can, and that somewhere out there some dimwitted criminal is getting the karma that's due to him, and I then try to return to sleep without any extra worries. This time was no different: I let my real need for a healing slumber anchor me in my warm bed; no whim of curiosity came strongly enough to make me want to peel away the sheets and peek outside in the chilly night air on the balcony to see what kind of ruckus was happening. I continued settling myself for sleep, even though the sirens sounded closer than usual.

However, the sirens last night came from fire engines instead. What has been appearing on the local news today is video footage and reports of a fire that consumed the upper suites of an apartment block last night. I'm much less indifferent to it, because it was the building that's just across the street from where I live that was burning. I discovered the evidence latently this morning of the too close for comfort blaze that occurred last night in the area. It struck me that if the conditions were such that had it been a bit more windy, and had there been a little more dried fallen leaf litter around to get lit up and blown about, other homes in close proximity to there, including mine, could have been ignited by this fire also. It would have been just small degrees of change that could have made things possibly worse. Given this hindsight, my gratitude comes from all that not happening, especially knowing how ridiculously minute the conditions at play were which started the nearby blaze to begin with. The investigators determined the cause of this blaze, that resulted in an estimated two million dollars worth of assessed damage, to be a single improperly extinguished cigarette butt.

Thankfully, there were no fatalities, but I can't help thinking that it's a shame that the careless smoker who was ultimately responsible for all this couldn't somehow suffer just a little more. Not with pain of death; just a long bout of excruciating suffering. It would be a just thing if the stupid dickhead who caused all that had gotten third degree burns over 90% of his body. Had I lived in that complex, and lost all my irreplaceable belongings, being now rendered homeless along with many others over something so stupid, and if I found out that this guy got away physically unscathed, I'd be wishing for a slow lingering prolonged torture to be set on him that was akin to something used in the Spanish Inquisition. Luckily, I turned out to be not a victim of any of this and need not take any ownership of such a problem, but I can't help but to think that the innocent tenants affected by this particular series of cause and effect might have similar such thoughts. One certainly shouldn't blame them for having them.

What is unfair in life is that the repercussions of small nuisances seem to have much greater potential to rapidly escalate into something so much larger in degree and magnitude than the repercussions of finding small and trivial things of good fortune. Those seem to always require a hell of a lot more help, work, and effort to transform them from something good into something super fantastic on the same relative scale of exponential growth as the stuff triggering disasters. Sadly, everything in this universe is slave to the state of entropy; it's always easier to destroy than to create. A carelessly chucked cigarette butt burns down a building within the course of a couple hours, while finding a coin on the street does relatively little in comparison to expand your riches so wildly. It takes a miraculous series of events, even with soundest of investment savvy, to take a quarter you find on the street and transform it into a million dollars by the end of the month*. On the same token, it's more likely that this same quarter may been have lost by someone who needed it for exact change for bus fare, and was then denied a ride without it, which may have then consequently set off a chain of horribly inconvenient events that make for lousy day fraught with bad luck.

I'd rather not end this all with thorny remarks reflecting of a sense schadenfreude directed at that bonehead smoker for this latest fire, but they're there to share. I'd be satisfied, given the fire investigators' findings, that their insurance claims (if they had insurance) would be now null and void in light of this evidence of such carelessness, or if there was somehow some other flaw or insufficiency in liability coverage for him.

I'll instead end all this with the sincere hope that the others victimized by all this recover their material losses, and have some means of change for the better throughout this ordeal. On a personal level, I'll take this close call event as lessons learned about: heeding sirens with some better discretion, the impermanence of things, and not to mention a prompting reminder to have a closer review of my own insurance policies and coverage (protection and liability).

*- Mathematically, it is possible, but in real life not probable. If I took that quarter and somehow found a way to double the amount of it each day, I'd be a millionaire in a three weeks.

No Eureka moment, no TFR again

The only reason I'm writing now is to bleed off stray useless thoughts, and to empty my head enough of other superfluous things; to organize myself so I can concentrate on fixing up some lines of code in a program I'm trying to build. Sometimes the "Eureka!" or "Aha!" moments for finding a solution come when I distract myself with something else trivial and unrelated to what I'm supposed to be doing, but it isn't happening thus far. Maybe I need to find something else to do to put me in a proper 'trance' for it. I've exhausted my options and questions for general and specific searches on more than one engine; the concrete answers for dealing with this abstract stuff are still eluding me.

Perhaps it's because I overused my reserve of energy while doing my handy work yesterday that rendered me with nothing left for doing mental stuff like formula writing and number crunching for today. Yesterday, between catching up with personal errands, fix-ups, and processing stuff in the kitchen, I was on my feet for close to ten hours, with one break for coffee. I'm thankful and appreciative for all this abundance of produce that my friends and family gifted to me, but these masses of fruits and vegetables need to be cooked, portioned, and stored as single unit meal options for me. Dealing with all that raw material gets to be preparation intensive. I suppose I should have a measure of pride in knowing that I made six weeks worth of freezer-to-stove ready food for a cost of under 25 dollars. It was also an effort to not to be wasteful*, and to incorporate this stuff with my remaining white-flour/carbs in the pantry. Baked and steamed stuffed buns, other dumpling-like fare, stuffed peppers, a casserole, and big batches of three kinds of soup were the end products. My reasoning: if I eat this calorie-laden stuff while I'm more active in the fall, hopefully it will be all depleted by the time winter rolls around, so I'll be less likely to have more rolls stuck on me during my more lax time then . . . in theory.

This paragraph marks the end of my second crack at it with some break time afterward. I just came back from a light run. I thought that maybe my head would clear if I got more oxygen and some circulation flowing. No dice. I would have went further, but the old hips and knees said, "Oh no you don't!" When I approached the Vimy memorial, I realized that I totally forgot that today was the Terry Fox Run. I've either been busy, or forgetful about the TFR every previous year since I caught the running bug. It's a bit shameful that I've been this neglectful to participate in it each year, especially given the circumstances that prompted me to start running in the first place.

My third attack at it has now ended. I went back to reviewing some of my notebooks: hardcopies and digital; to see if I can re-assemble things on simpler level by doing some creative bypassing of a few variables, or re-structure the data arrays down to easier to manage chunks. It's a certainty that it's me being my own worst enemy by over-complicating things. I tried something different; I'm still no further ahead. My persistence isn't paying off. It's close to sundown now, and I don't want to let the whole damn day be wasted this way.

I'd be so angry if I go to sleep later, and the solution strikes me right then about of some ridiculously simple oversight, like missing punctuation or delimiters, being the reason for the failures before I started scrapping things to down ground zero, realizing how much time was wasted before such a simple correction entered the mind.

*- Globally, it is estimated that: one third of our food supply is wasted (China being the biggest culprit nation), while 870 million people on this planet are starving. Annually, the estimated mount of water wasted to grow food that isn't eaten amounts to the annual volume of water that flows through in the Volga river in Russia. Around 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases are produced by wasted rotting food and disposal of it. (source: Bing Financial) A lot of supermarket produce is discarded, not because of actual spoilage, but because of aesthetic imperfections. It's perfectly edible, yet some market and restaurant chains purposely taint and destroy it, and lock it away to prevent dumpster divers from salvaging and liberating this bounty from the trash. How can we dare call ourselves the dominant intelligent life forms, living on this planet this way?

The Smells of Autumn, Ignore The Media Day

It has registered to me that it is officially Fall today. It's not the sight of the turning leaves that's the signal; it's what my nose tells me. It's the effect of that optimal amount of briskness in the air that condenses the aromas in it just a little more, cleansing the smell palette, giving scents a significantly more animated play on the mind, and the memories they instantly conjure up; especially during the cooler evenings.

It was great to cycle back home tonight and breathe in the air and the smells in it. Riding down a street through the smell of birch wood burning from one of the last pit fires that someone will have for the year in their backyard was intoxicating. It instantly made me feel comfort on a deep visceral level. Cruising past one of the seniors' complexes on my route homeward I caught that exact smell, wafting out of some open window, that matched one of my earliest memories of the aroma of my Baba's* delicious cabbage rolls being fried and browned with that perfect dose of finely minced onions and salted lard. That memory struck me as if I were hit by that very grey speckled enameled frying pan she used to fry them in after I smelled that. There is a signature note as the plants begin their respiratory phase in the evening, a sweeter tea-like one coming from the neighbourhood gardens, as extra sugars, starches, and life energies are being used and infused into the last of their fruits and seeds; they are labouring to do their best before the killing frost arrives, which could be any day now. If that's what the smell of plant sweat is, it's a welcome one. I wonder if this sense of smell intensification is an evolutionary thing: a prompt for us to start eating more and fatten up for the coming winter. There are some unpleasant odours that become intensified as well, like that of the migrant skunk wandering around somewhere around my block, and other people's BO, but for the most part they are clean and refreshing. This magical effect that the air has now, during this week or so just before the actual autumn equinox and the frost, is what makes this my most favourite part of the fall season.

Yesterday was September 11th. It too was a very pleasant day. What helped make it a good day was a mindful choice. For about eleven years now, I have informally adopted and endorsed a personal tradition for that day I now term "Ignore the Media Day". Everyone should give it a try. It generally goes as such:

• You avoid the newspapers and all news related programming; better yet, just don't watch TV, or tune into the radio, or surf the Internet at all. Don't worry. . . you will survive!
• You consciously opt to wake up and start out the day by making it better for yourself and others in the present, instead of listening to some talking head on a news program regurgitating stories about a woeful past, or ones that spark fear about the future.
• You don't let word of negative events and propaganda at home, or from half a world away, control you, or let it determine what kind of 'mood' or 'day' you should have. You, and you alone, are solely responsible for that.
• Realize that all national and global news you watch and hear, no matter if it's mainstream or alternative, from CNN to Al-Jazeera, is broadcast to satisfy a broader political agenda: to influence and control you with uncertainty, fear, and your own sense of outrage. The corporate interests then attack you with ads so you can quell these fears with mindless consumption.
• Realize that there is something really pathetic about someone who sits around watching news all day indoctrinating themselves with political claptrap, and then acting like a self-righteous intellectual, yet who but never goes outside of their little room to interact with the real world.
• Dare yourself to try something creative and original for a change for some progression toward your own betterment and inner peace rather than immersing yourself in the details of someone else's meme warfare.
• Wave you nation's flag less, and wave hello to your neighbour more.
• Try reading something more rational, and completely unrelated to politics, economics, and religion: things which are most likely to create civil unrest and wars.
• Avoid online discussions about 'this day in history', or any other so-called 'related current day events'. It is said that time heals all wounds, but not when you are exposed to a constant stream of depressing stories that keep ripping off the scabs. Do you automatically remember the details of the Blitz in London during World War II? Of course you don't. Thousands more innocent civilians died in a single day during those times, and a lot more historical and cultural edifices were lost than a couple of skyscrapers, but there wasn't the constant memorializing and intensifying of the tragedy with constant replay of events in the media, depressing and demoralizing people; the prevalent simple, more positive message, was "Keep Strong and Carry On." People actually got on with their lives, and worked for the better.
• Avoid those who always try to find some soapbox to stand on. Generally, I find those who are constantly pontificating their opinions about world events they can't control continue to blame others for their personal problems that they are perfectly capable of fixing themselves, but choose not to; constantly externalizing their flaws. They may also try to con or guilt you into believing in taking ownership of some of those problems that, in reality you have no part of. Like the news, they try to involve you unnecessarily. Avoid these morons like the plague, along with other such nagging personalities. Be courageous enough to enjoy peaceful quality time alone rather than hanging around these sorts of people.
• Get outside and enjoy the beautiful fall day. Get some exercise, eat some real food, and most importantly, breathe in and savour the air.

*- Baba = My Ukrainian grandmother; and no, she never hit me with frying pans, she was a loving person. That was hyperbole.

Pre/Post Birthday, Welcoming Fall

The best summer day I think I experienced this year was on this last Thursday evening. It's futile for me to struggle to find the right words for it: I can't describe perfection. The beach for the most part was great, the way the light hit the water on the lake as I was paddling around it made it both serene and surreal. The yellowing leaves along the shores reflected a golden aura around everything as the sun began setting. It was just a perfect way to close out another year of living, as it was the eve of my birthday.

The details of how I spent my birthday are too personal to share. I had quality time for solitude, and better moments with the company I did have. I was just happy to have the kind of time needed to do some navel-gazing that couldn't be impeded by any interference that remotely resembled work. Sitting still and giving myself time to think and reflect was about all I was capable of doing for a long while after the morning of that day. I tried to make some glorious (foolish) attempt that morning to break my all-time distance record for running; but the gaps between hydration stops were too large, and I was beginning to get some cramping and sciatic seize-ups. It forced me to limit myself to doing just a bit over a half-marathon distance. However, I did achieve my secondary goal of crossing all six bridges in this town. I'll need about another day from now to recover soundly after all that before I hit the trails again.

An Irish folk music band at the
Farmers' Market. Worth the
extra effort to shop locally.

The one thing I will comment about of what I gathered during my moments of sitting still and brooding on my birthday is just how much my tastes for some things have changed over time. Now, if I want an adventure, I seek something cultural or culinary rather than trekking on some weird expedition. I look at the value of objects with a more practical and larger-view attitude than with what their supposed monetary value is. Some pictures I took as I ambled around the Farmers' Market and Broadway Street Fair yesterday illustrate this point better.

My thinking today. . .a total
White Elephant.

For example, years ago, I may have been impressed and amazed to actually find a Lotus convertible, like this one shown here that I found yesterday, on the streets of this town. Now, my manner of thinking automatically comes to, "Someone has way too much money to waste on exposing and maintaining this lovely machine in the environs of this wretched climate." My attitude now is such that if you really want a sense of freedom and power, don't get a luxury sports car, or a palatial home, or anything else signifying ridiculous excess. Why get an over-powered car when you can only drive as fast as the idiot in front of you in traffic? A bigger home only compels you to waste time and energy filling it up with shit* you really don't need. I really can't be troubled with keeping up with the Joneses. Opulence and affluence doesn't really impress me anymore, I'm not sure if it ever really did. My idea of what real wealth is has changed radically, especially upon the realization of how the actual 'value' of money is established. I learned much while dabbling around the FOREX markets. It's completely arbitrary, and stupidly assigned and regulated through the means by which ultimately there is a shortage or deprivation of something for someone else, and is maintained by a system that keeps others in debt and impoverished. The drive for the super/hyper-accumulation of monetary wealth ultimately signifies one's willingness to take part in creating suffering of someone else and depletion of resources. The greed of an affluent few makes slaves and prisoners of too many.

Braised Beef Tendons from the
Mandarin Restaurant, my lunch after
my tour of the Farmer's Market.
Years ago, I wouldn't have been
so daring. This cured my aching knees.

The "wealth" I'm most impressed with and interested in now is that by which knowledge and resourcefulness is focused to use that which is deemed unusable, and puts it into a whole new light: quite literally in one case. For this instance, I was amazed by a Facebook post of a Chinese artist who took discarded drinking boxes, and created them into functional and aesthetically pleasing geodesic designs for lampshades. I've been totally enthralled, after reading articles, about the ingenuity of those eccentrics who can build homemade robots out of stripped down laser jet printers, and a crafty application of open source Arduino boards and Raspberry Pi circuits. These, plus those who can grow and produce actual foodstuffs, are the people I'll be seeking out when a global financial meltdown, energy crisis, or some other kind of apocalyptic collapse comes; not the buggers with the shiniest toys.
Gastronomically, I'm becoming more fascinated by chefs who are using entrails and offal and turning them into gourmet cuisine. I think I freaked my brother out a little bit when he phoned me to offer me a birthday greeting. Because he is a meat inspector, I presented the question to him as to where I could find a clean source of hog's blood for making my own homemade sausages**
I'm seeing innovation in what is simple and traditional (for others), and seeing the value of salvaging, and viewing those who squander and waste stuff with a lot more disdain. What I seek more of are truly Zen moments, like I had at the lake last Thursday. That's how I'm changing as I get older.

Along with this fall's harvest of fine fresh, and unconventional food, I welcome the prospect of discovering more unconventional, yet stunning, innovative ideas. I heard a rumour that there is a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) expo coming to town sometime this month. I hope I'll get a chance to check some of it out.


* - I love that observation made by George Carlin: something akin to . . . "Have you ever noticed that as you accumulate things that your shit is "stuff", and other people's stuff is "shit'?

** - Blutwurst, boudin noir, black puddings, kishka, morcilla . . .whatever foreign or euphemistic name you give "blood sausage", it's damn delicious, and lately I've been having weird cravings for it. I first sampled it in an Argentinian parilla joint in Valencia. I can't find a source of it around here, so I'm relegated to try making my own.