5Q5A: Summer Vacation 2019

I’ve been fortunate to have booked time off for holidays for this part of summer that coincide with those of my girlfriend. We spent this past Fathers’ Day Sunday at my parents’ place; having a good visit with them. On the way back home, we talked about this and that in terms of how we were going to use the rest of the days during the time off: for things and events both together as a couple, and for each others’ personal time separately. She asked me if I did any blogging lately, and it struck me that I didn’t write or post anything for the longest while. I have no answer as to why such a lapse happened, except for the fact that sharing the delightful company with such a lovely, intelligent, and talented person occupies more of my thoughts and time now; I’ve been finding more solace in that now than I do in any writing. To keep myself focused, I resume the rest of this entry in 5Q5A format.


Q1. What whammies am I having to deal with this time around for this summer holiday?


A1. It never fails. I always seem to get some curve ball pitched at me that serves to be some obstacle to contend with, impeding me from having a completely blissful summer holiday; mostly in the form of unwelcome and unexpected expenses needed to rectify something requiring immediate attention. It has been becoming a repeated and inevitable cycle annually: a regular expectation that some freakish issue or series of unfortunate events will manifest themselves to make this happen. Last year, it was emergency surgery for my dog. This year, the (sometimes excruciating) state of my own knees and hips demanded that I replace some orthotics immediately (it greatly also affects how active I can be). Add to that, there is a malfunctioning dishwasher (drainage issues) to fix now. Instead of freely frolicking around elsewhere, I’m now relegated to take a crash course in how to be an appliance technician, or someone who may need to call a certified one if I can’t fix the problem myself. No functioning dishwasher means no way to properly sanitize bottles and equipment for beermaking: the other project I wanted to do this week. Added to that are repercussions of work-related issues that I choose not to explain here. It’s most definitely an unsatisfactory use of part of my holiday time. However, I do keep myself grounded by reminding myself that whatever problems I have during this time, they are pretty darn minimal compared to most those of the people I work for.


Q2. What cerebral things are becoming entertaining this time around (things in the mind that one can do that don’t need a specific or physical time and place)?


A2. Lately, I’ve been becoming intrigued with learning more of the nuances of poker: Texas Hold’em poker specifically. Aside from playing the actual game itself, it’s also a playful challenge in mastering being able to mentally wrangle things like the hole card rankings, pot odds, and putting other charts, tables, and other statistics into some mnemonic order. The technical side of playing the game (playing a tighter game) has improved a lot for me; the psychological (mastering effective bluffing) part of the game will always be a work in progress. I’m giving it a break for now; not allowing it to become an unhealthy, addictive, obsession.


Q3. If expense and travel time weren’t factors, what would have the plans otherwise been?

A3. Probably going on a road trip to Waterton Lakes National Park – getting away from this drought zone and enjoying the Rocky Mountain air may do us both some good.


Q4. If instead then resorting to cheap(er) thrills, what are they?


A4. Checking out and exploring the yet unvisited and unknown local shops in and out of town that cater to our eclectic and esoteric interests; and fashioning the odd little feast for us to indulge in throughout the week is also in the works. Using my moments of solitude, like this one, in my mornings and afternoons just be content to sit outside and chill out, playing my favourite music, with either coffee/beer/strong badass cocktails, with my laptop or notebooks, plotting my own little schemes of world domination for new world order (at least for my own little singular point of this world anyway).


Q5. What is the happiness being enjoyed in the here and now?
  

A5. At this moment, making a pleasant discovery about my dishwasher and being able to announce and exclaim, “Yay! The <bleep>ing thing drained completely!!!”, to my girlfriend in a text message. It’s like I successfully passed some sort of adulting test through appliance repair. Now I’m relieved and freer to enjoy the rest of this week in peace.


Addendum: I found and started reading a book later in the day about happiness; which itself seems like a fitting thing to do on a holiday. The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha was my chosen non-fiction read of the week. One of the better lessons in it is that you should never make yourself too busy for the dear people who matter to you.

5Q5A: Winterlude

Again, this is mostly for the benefit of my non-Canadian audience. 

I’m not trying to react too negatively about it, but It’s back, and being that I should be better prepared for its coming is neither here nor there. Of course, I’m talking about winter: and no matter how well prepared I am for the physical and logistical rigours of the season, like any savvy Canadian should be, ultimately, I am never prepared for it psychologically, despite having lived here all my life. Things like the extra darkness, the featureless snowscape, the extra work shoveling and blowing away accumulations, the treacherous driving from idiots who aren’t adapting to slick road conditions, and the augmented stretches of isolation and being penned indoors are already getting to me, and we are only four days into the season since the snow came. Knowing that there is 32 times that of a duration yet to endure until spring isn’t making me any more cheerful. I don’t feel anymore thankful or blessed in knowing that Halloween was snow free, and it could have come much sooner by one or two weeks, which is not uncommon in these parts to expect. It’s just here, and I have no will to deal with it. It’s going to be hard to find pleasure in this one. The title above is more of a note of sarcasm than anything.   

Q1. How is this going to be an even more challenging winter?

A1. What’s even more foreboding about it is that now that I’m a member of the Condo board, I’ve been bestowed some responsibility of assuring snow removal around the building on days like these; dealing with the gray areas of how responsibly the owners and the people contracted to remove it for us are going to interact. To do one home is enough, to be responsible an entire building complex is another thing. Plus, along with dealing with some residents and board members, some of whom are bickering with each other, and being caught between their petty conflicts, doesn’t make me enthused to pursue this endeavor. It makes me a little regretful that I’ve yupped myself into this.
As usual, the missing of like-minded intimate female companionship is at its worst when enduring this phase of the year*.

Q2. What do you tolerate best about winter?

A2. Strangely enough, the cold really doesn’t bother me much physically. Genetically, I suppose I just turned out to be a very warm-blooded person. It’s just an element that one dresses right for. I don’t give it a second thought or complaint about those instances, like this morning, where I’ll march out in -30 C wind chill to help relieve the dog. The whining and complaining everyone else does about it, and its resulting negativity, is more what gets to me when it’s overplayed. I get grumbly when I have to remove snow, or be forced to travel by foot or vehicle over ice, but cold temperature itself isn’t the bothersome factor to me directly, just what results in its influence in other things beyond me. I get pissed off at the failures and foibles of some mechanical and technical things like cars, cell phones, and other devices that aren’t as resilient as I am when the temperature plummets, but not with the cold itself. Personally, I find brisk, cold air cleansing and purifying. I’m one of those weirdos who favours an extremely cold day over an extremely hot one. I can dress better for a really cold day; I can’t undress further for an extremely hot one. If I ever find it too cold for my personal liking, it’s just a good excuse to have a hot bath, or use the sauna, or enjoy some tea or soup.

Q3. What are your personal betterment projects going to be for the season?

A3. I’ve sorted things out to the following.

1.       Language project – Learning (some) Russian. What more appropriate language is there to learn in the harshest and most bitter of seasons such as this? I’ll expound more on the reasons why and my progress in future entry.

2.       Cooking – Becoming a better saucier. To take ordinary cuts of meat and vegetables and elevate them to another level of amazing with a simple formulation of a sauce seems to be worthwhile doing. I’m reckoning on learning about 20 – 30 different sauces, dips, and glazes during the season.

3.       Studying – I have a big, stupid hoop to jump through with some required courses. It’s actually a form of hell and punishment to me, and a reminder of collective ineptitudes which, unfairly, other parties aren’t being held accountable for. But, I’m challenging myself in creating some weird and wild mnemonic systems to help me remember this stuff, which I can hopefully transfer and apply to other things more meaningful and valuable to me.

4.       Writing better  – I’m considering workshops for it.

5.       Continued involvement with my Union

Q4. What fitness and leisure are you going to try to pursue more of?

A4. Things like:

1.      X Country Skiing – If there is an ideal weekend for it. I might travel up to Elk Point to experience the trails there. Otherwise, I’ll try to keep regenerating my lung tissues with the circuits here locally. Running on icy streets and sidewalks is too much of a risk given that I need non-sprained ankles and unbroken legs for work.

2.      More sauna time – and with that, to pass the time better while sweating out toxicity in there without boredom, it seems fitting to read . . .

3.      More Scandinavian crime fiction – I built up a rather large extensive syllabus of books by Nordic writers. After reading a few, I totally get why people have commented that I think more like a Northern European than a Canadian.

4.      Shooting Nazis – Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, a video game, has been released. I really don’t want to offend my German friends after saying this. Please remember that I’m shooting at Nazis, not the good Germans. The first-person shooter gameplay for this series is awesome, and I’m sure I’ll need some form of quasi-destructive cathartic release of anger towards something representing oppressive evil sometime throughout this season. I wish I knew more people who like to play board games and cards; I would welcome that too. As for now, the dog is lousy at dealing cards, and doesn’t really have a grasp on how to play chess or backgammon.

5.      Designing and building furniture – mostly shelving and table options (solutions).

6.      Cocktail Bar Development – gradually accumulating the essential ingredients for a fuller and varied personal mixology lab experience. If I can’t have quantity, I at least want quality on the minimal level.

Q5. Let’s end with being positive, what are the better or favourite sensations of winter that you enjoy?

A5. Sensations, as in what appeals to the five senses, could be summarized thusly:

1.      Sounds – or rather the absence of it when the first snow comes. Walking outside in the darkness on the morning of the first snowfall of winter, where the light snow absorbs all acoustical aberrations. On the opposite side is listening to blizzard blowing outside whilst being with a warm beside warm, crackling from the fireplace. It’s the winter equivalent of listening to thunderstorm for me, which I also find pacifying. The only time I really appreciate classical music is during winter. Ella snoring by my feet after a long cold walk, either her effort to warm up, or to warm me up.

2.      Textures – the mass of a super heavy quilt draped over me. This is only appreciated on the super cold days of course.

3.      Smells – Birch firewood burning, conifer trees (the only non-dormant plants during the season; a good whiff of pine sap is intoxicating), fresh bread baking and soup cooking, any incense that masks months’ worth of smells of kitchen grease, other malodorous stenches and other volatile organic compounds (from not just my suite, but others’) that get trapped inside because you can’t really open the goddamned windows for fresh air for the risk of freezing the pipes.

4.      Sights – Hoarfrost, like everything outside gets encrusted with diamonds after a good freezing fog. Christmas lights, or any extra light that brightens the evenings before and after solstice.

5.      Tastes – For some weird reason, I tolerate red wine better during winter than at all other times of the year. As forms of alcohol go, ordinarily red wine seems like it is to me like what Kryptonite is to Superman. Anything fat and sugary is more pleasurable on an exponential degree during winter. If the only feast I had for Christmas was Butter Tarts, I’d be happy with that. I drink more coffee and tea during winter as well, perhaps to trick my brain into making the cycle of daylight longer than it really is.

*- I’m not going to be prideful, or be feeling ashamed, or hiding anymore about the fact that at times I get terrible spells of feeling weaker and vulnerable about being very lonely. Winter here is the worst for experiencing that, but some how I endure.

5Q5A: A Sort of Homecoming

And you hunger for the time

Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape …

Lyrics from the song A Sort of Homecoming, from the album The Unforgettable Fire, by U2.

The holiday time that I’m . . . enduring, so far, could be a lot better. It feels like a time where I really need to do some soul-searching. Anger and other anxieties have eating me alive lately, and I’ve noticeably been struggling to keep my composure. Peace has been hard to come by. 

The holiday started well enough, with a return to my old hometown, being amidst the territory I was raised and grew up around. I have not returned to where I spent my boyhood and teen years for a long time, and it was a sobering realization of how long a lapse it has been after a visit there to reunite for a birthday party with my extended family who remain there. I don’t visit there as often as my other brothers, or parents do.

The home where I grew up in is gone, only stuff of dreams and memories remain, and the landscape has morphed in subtly different ways, but still so familiar. It was a shock, and yet a comfort, to know that I’m not completely estranged and alienated from the place, and that in some ways I am still quite bonded to it. Just because I’m from Saskatchewan doesn’t automatically make me a Prairieboy (I’d be rather insulted if you called me one), nor am I a bush dweller. I’m a Parkland boy. The geography of the place is the beltline in between the prairie and the boreal forest. It’s interspersed with sloughs, deciduous groves, pastures, fields, and lakes which are no more than 10 kilometers away from any homestead situated in that region. The place where I grew up was even more unique in that we lived near the coulees. Traveling through them around the south and west of the old farmstead was always soothing to my senses. Trekking through the pasturelands in the coulees, before more bears repopulated the places, was enjoyable too. The rest of this I’ll shorten with 5Q5A . . .

Q1. How tolerable is the Ex this year?

A1. Someone broke into my building and tore open the mailboxes. Mine was untouched, thankfully. That’s the most drastic thing that has happened so far crime-wise. I hope that’s the worse it ever gets. Monday and Tuesday were sleepless, and by Wednesday I was so drained that I fell asleep early, and couldn’t even be stirred awake by the fireworks. The Strumbellas play tonight at the grandstand, and I should at least enjoy that concert from afar here on my balcony.

Q2. Fiction Book?

A2. An old sci-fi classic, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Knowing that Huxley was a respected colleague of his philosophical contemporary, Alan Watts, plus his experimentation with psychedelics and the curiosity as to how it impacted his prose composition was an angle that intrigued me to pick up this book. Feeling like I’ve been stuck in what seems like a dystopic atmosphere is probably another reason I’m giving it a perusal. It’s also to help draw out answers to that question of what my own personal form of ‘soma’ is: that mechanism or pattern I retreat to for coping with the insanity of this world. It's also significant because we've reached this point in history where it is technically possible to custom design people genetically. It’s next best novel to read after 1984 if dystopian philosophical classic science fiction turns one’s crank.

Q3. Non-Fiction Book?

A3. I haven’t gotten there yet. I’m just making it a point to regain some focus, so I’m just doing one thing at a time with intensified concentration. Writing like this is a good exercise for that too. I’m making it a point to avoid all forms of negativity, including watching the news . . . however . . .

Q4. Brad Wall announced his retirement today . . . thoughts on that?

A4. Mixed emotions, one being “Yeah! At long last!” with the reserve and caution of wondering how really buggered up things are going to be coming down the road, which he is tucking tail and running from, in order to distance himself further from whatever that is. It’s pessimistically suspicious, but that is what happens after working in healthcare and care facilities and living under the ridiculous dictates of this government for this long. It might be such that whoever takes over leadership in the Sask party may be even more incompetent, corrupt, and callous than he was. He claims that he has no immediate plans after he steps down. I don’t believe this for a second. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he automatically took an executive position with any one of the crony corporations he invited into this province through his anti-union privatization schemes shortly and soon after he steps down as premier.

Q5.  Next holiday at this time next year?

A5. As nice as homecomings are, I’m definitely getting out of this province. I don’t even care anymore if I have to go into debt to do it. One can’t expect stuff to change or be enlightening by doing the same thing over and over again; staycations apply to this as well. The political madness that might ensue after today might make it worth doing.

5Q5A: Small Online Indulgences

It’s a Friday evening. I’m expecting it to either rain or storm later. I've been put in a spot medically where I’m exercising caution and teetotaling tonight, so I’m trying to rediscover some simple long forgotten bliss of just sitting and snacking on tea and cookies in the refreshing open air. Hence, I’m not confined inside just passively watching TV just by simple spatial logistics. Reading here outside to combat boredom was a thought, but the subject material I borrowed from the library* was about global economics: a topic that, I confess, I'm woefully ignorant about in general. I'm trying to make myself take a more vested interest in it, but it still comes across to me like too much bullshit and gobble-de-gook, and I can't seem to trouble myself to do it tonight. I'd be better off reading the Big Blue Book of Fairy Tales and find something with more sense and logic in it. Another topic, for another time. The urge to do something more interactive (yet without the annoyance of other people) became stronger. I chose to write up a snapshot of what these activities look like on an evening such as this. More to clear and decompress my bothered mind than anything, and to be appreciative of these little things for what they are.

Q1. Latest New Wits-Tester?

A1. A video game downloaded from Steam, The Long Dark, by Hinterland Studios, supported by the Canada Media Fund – It’s rare that I ever get so captivated by a video game, but this one is special. Firstly, it is 100% Canadian in both production and (virtual) game environment, with the setting being somewhere in the boreal wilderness of Canada. The mission: to survive the elements alone after a plane crash. The conditions are post-apocalyptic, but there’s no terrorists or zombies to battle. Just you in the first person. No other humans around, just the elements of the cold of winter, the scarcity of food, the struggle to find shelter, and facing the prospects of starvation, hypothermia, succumbing to accidents, or being ravaged by carnivorous predators. Nothing more complicated than that, but so real-life in terms of the weighed consequences of the hazards in dealing with such an environment. I’m a fan of shows like Les Stroud’s Survivorman on OLN, so this game is particularly intriguing to me. You use whatever resources you can scavenge, salvage, and exploit from nature. The community online is graced by a smaller set of international players with same-such personalities akin to mine; of whom I never thought I’d ever find. It’s a very respectful group, and we can even interact with the developers for idea input and feedback. Really cool stuff, not only to be a player, but to be a voice in its future development. This is the game that puts my wits to the test and fascinates me because it is reflective of what I wrote sometime earlier of what I claimed I would do in the hypothetical scenario of spending a winter in cabin alone (Cabin Pleasures vs. Cabin Fever) and getting a prize for it. Games like this are the more comprehensible primers and interactive courses for economics: for making decisions about what to do with finite resources in an environment of scarcity with a finite amount of time before you could possibly meet up face to face with the Long Dark. Now, if I download another similar type game with zombies or bananas in it, it might make the material in the book I'm trying to focus on now a bit more understandable.

Q2. Online Window Shopping?

A2. Scouting and hunting through eBay and Amazon targeting for my vintage Russian Submariner Watch, an authentic (yet cheap) Moroccan Tagine cooking vessel, concert T-shirts from Rockabilia, and checking out cheap flight prices for a non-tropical** holiday perhaps for next year.

Q3. Music Streams?

A3. Mostly in a retro/vintage Alternative and folk/nostalgia/shoegaze Indie mood tonight. Memories from my mid-20’s onward, to more modern stuff. My sample set of favourite songs played thus far, I list them as they come:

·         Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division

·         Make You Better – The Decemberists

·         I Wanna be Adored – The Stone Roses

·         Hot on the Heels of Love – Throbbing Gristle

·         You Trip Me Up – The Jesus and Mary Chain

·         Airscape – Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians

·         A Forest – The Cure

·         This Must Be the Place (Naïve Mix)- The Talking Heads

·         Girlfriend – Matthew Sweet

·         Backsliding – Radiohead

·         South Central Rain – R.E.M.

·         The Only One I Know – The Charlatans

·         Fake Empire – The National

·         Seether – Veruca Salt

·         Picture You – The Amazing

·         Shovels and Dirt – The Strumbellas

·         Skinny Love – Bon Iver

·         Love Is All – The Tallest Man on Earth

·         The Night We Met – Lord Huron

·         Time - Tom Waits

·         Red Hands – Walk Off the Earth

·         World Spins Madly On – The Weepies

·         Gigantic – The Pixies

·         Serpents (Basement Version) – Sharon Van Etten

·         Summertime – The Sundays

·         I Know It’s Over – The Smiths

·         Suedehead - Morrissey

Q4. Adult Stuff? (the responsible stuff; not pornography)

A4. Testing the waters again with FOREX trading, and more serious study into the technical analysis involved with trend watching for the rise and fall of currency pairs. It seems sensible to research, as nowadays, money itself has been making more money than labour or other resources has. Also, looking for online classes for SQL, advanced Excel script programming, and other database management courses. All stuff I started to study, but have long since forgotten.

Q5. Language Lessons?

A5. Je continue à apprendre plus de français avec Duolingo, mais j’ai sauté quelques leçons. Ma motivation devient faible maintenant.

*- The book is Zombies, Bananas and Why There Are No Economists in Heaven by Jessica Irvine. I thought with a delightfully oddball title like that, it might actually find some chords to strike within me that I could relate to, but I still see that it has its work cut out for itself. I will say that finding an economist with a sense of humour in itself is like finding a diamond.
**- My lungs still won’t let me breathe well in elevated heat and humidity, as proven throughout this past week. It’s been like breathing through a wet paper bag. So, why would I opt to go to some tropical place with that extra extreme, plus 60% less quality in medical service if I should ever succumb to it? It’s either Eastern Canada (in fall), or Northern Europe, that I have left as options.

5Q5A: Lit Trek

It is cool to see that even professional bloggers and authors are using the five-point format now for current and topical stuff: like for instance, Tim Ferriss with his 5 Bullet Friday posts. After last night, and the past week, I need to make things simple.  Here it goes with my version . . .

Q1. You were in McNally Robinson last night. What was there that piqued some interest?

A1. It wasn’t so much about any one book, or even one genre. It was formats of some books that caught my attention and fascinated me (I swear, sometimes I have moments where I have bloody Asperger syndrome). More specifically, I was roaming around the foreign book section, and catching sight of books that were in dual language format, One language on one page, and the translated English text on the side on the opposing page. I thought that this would accelerate my learning and retention of the bits of grammar and vocabulary of my other learned languages. There was Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis there in the original German and in English in the same book, another collection of Russian short stories formatted the same way. I’m not so keen as to learn more Russian, but if I had to that would help (I’d still be kind of hopeless speaking it though). I also wanted to collect the French translation of 1984. I can recite lines and passages from that work from memory, and having that copy would probably be helpful in improving my comprehension of at least written French. I also looked around for the title in Spanish, El Señor de las Moscas, for a likewise translation of The Lord of the Flies, but I couldn’t find one.

Q2. Did you end up buying anything?

A2. No, I resorted to my dirty little Jason Bourne-esque espionage sort of trick of mnemonically processing the ISBN numbers of other books, and walking out of there to plug into library searches later for free. If that doesn’t work, I’ll tour around and hopefully find the same things in the used book stores at a better discount.

Q3. Last favourite read?

A3. It was The Bat, by Jo Nesbø, a Norwegian author. The first book in a series about the exploits of a Norwegian police detective, Harry Hole (and yes, I know some of you are snickering right now). I’ve been impressed by both the quantity and quality of the crime and detective friction that has been coming out of Scandinavia lately. That’s both interesting and puzzling, because it’s inspired and created in such an idyllic place to live in this world.

Q4. Next Canadian fiction read?

A4. After thinking about it, I should maybe hope to get my hands on The Mountains of Portugal, by Yann Martel. I would collect that one . . . and by honest means.

Q5. What are your greatest negative/positive issues or experiences at a bookstore?

A5. Firstly, I have no mental filter for handling all the interesting titles and subjects. Not many subjects are boring or off-limits. It gets to be too much for my brain after even a short while, because it is like it is trying to download and absorb everything I see on the shelves. That gives me option paralysis too easily. The titles and subjects too often get burned into my neurons, only to be stored as useless information. That might be OK for a trivia contest, but it doesn’t serve me well when I’m trying to focus on a finding a practical reference or interest. I often get headaches when I walk out of such stores like that. The positive I guess is perhaps being around follow customers with perhaps similar interests, or at least interests . . . period. At least I know most of them won’t be boorish hellraisers. However, it’s typically a 95% population of introverts in a book shop, and thus those there usually have neither the courage nor the social intelligence in knowing how to get to some point of trying to even greet each other as strangers.  

Five Questions, Five Answers: Recovery Process

Q1. You are weaning yourself off pain meds, but are still relegated to sit still. As your brain fog clears, what do you plan to do with your time today?

A1. I have a commitment to do the following things:

• get therapeutic massage treatment (trying my best not to scream like a wounded animal when my injured bits worked over)
• exchange materials at the library after appointment
• attend to correspondence from SGI
• resume research and hunting for vehicles online
• rebuilding a new training schedule (dependant upon medical consults)
• make appointment to get bike tuned up*
• provisionally, figure out bus schedules for work and downtown*

Q2. What were the wildest pain-killer induced hallucination experiences you had?

A2. Anything to do with watching and tracking movement. For example, using the elevator in my building. Instead of watching the elevator move up and down, it felt like as I watched the elevator lower, that the elevator stood still, and the whole rest of the building was moving up and down. At times, Ella scurrying across the floor looked like a weird black blur. It probably makes matters worse with me experimenting with new contact lens and reading glasses.

Q3. What are/were you reading/watching on TV for entertainment?

A3. Continuing to read non-fiction: At Home, by Bill Bryson. Magazines: Wired, Popular Science, Make, Popular Mechanics, Consumer Reports, PC World. I'm following Vikings from the History Channel, and catching up on Hannibal on television. The favourite movies were Django Unchained, Men in Black III. I have been tuning into a lot of the TEDx video lectures, and some thought provoking documents as well. To tame my anger, I did my best to avoid the endless news loops about that idiot Boston bombing suspect, and the Al Qaida linked terrorist bastards they arrested in Toronto and Montreal.   

Q4. What has been the most useful assistance you've had during this process?

A4. The chiropractic work, and a five meter length of HDMI cable connecting my laptop and TV in my living room.

Q5. What are the ones you wish you had?

A5. Someone to do my laundry, take out garbage, and do all the rest of my spring cleaning for me. Having someone around to take the dog for long walks would have been useful as well.

*- The tire wear is quite bad, and I'm sensing imminent strut/suspension failure; thus it will be going to the wrecking yard sooner than I anticipated. So, I'm planning alternate transportation in the event I don't find a replacement very soon.

Five Questions, Five Answers: Awoken by Paper Dragons

1.       Q: This has been the fifth night in a row of poor sleep for you. Why?

A: I’ve had some really taxing days of facing a new form of psychological challenge that I really don’t feel at all well-equipped to deal with. Despite the fact that I’ve been congratulated on the “good work” I’ve done, it has been prompting me even harder to think about where to go to next in terms of career building and education. What has followed is that I’ve become stressed and stricken with insomnia as I’m building castles in the air, and finding dragons in every room. Generally, the dragons to slay are the issues of where to find the time to study, and funding. It falls within the course correction motive I mentioned in an entry some while ago. It’s time to stop giving lip service to the idea, and start acting on it.

2.       Q: What kind of armour and weapons do you feel you need to slay these dragons?

A: Coalescence, a means with which to pool all my ‘special powers’ into one driving force to spearhead myself into a new spot. Forging, aiming, and propelling the spear is the big challenge. Another part of my weakness that’s been getting me so down and slowing me up is that any talents that I do have are so diffuse and varied that they leave no lasting impact on anything. Burnout, having no extra money, or time in the day, and depriving myself of opportunities to improve on any of them is making me worse. It’s like I’m now forced to use a Swiss Army knife to build a super-computer from scratch. One other major flaw I recognize in myself is that I seem to have no filter for processing massive onslaughts of information; it all just remains in my head as useless trivia. I have to find some systemized form of ‘armour’ for dealing with that.  

3.       Q: How is the great purge project going?

A: It is about 67% complete. I think I made about ten bushels worth of rats’ nest filler, and pretty much burned out my paper shredder.  The last third of this project will involve finishing rummaging and sorting through the remaining stuff in my filing cabinet drawers, scanning essentials, hardcopy destruction, copying digital backups, and systemizing things for future upkeep. The next big deal after that will be sorting and archiving my photos, which could last until the end of this coming spring . . . if I remain so ambitious. 

4.       Q: You have a three day weekend, what is going to happen?

A: The routine things would be: jogging, strength training, coffee with my friend, tidying up the place, reading some novels, writing, and cooking/stocking the fridge. The non-routine things will be finding the ways and means of attacking the problems I just mentioned above. Spending Friday afternoon in the SPL (Saskatoon Public Library) will happen for certain; avoiding dragging home any trivial and irrelevant materials of transitional interest from there that will just clutter up my brain will be a challenge as always.

5.       Q: Will you need more time off?

A: I’m sure I will, but when I’ll need it is still as of yet an uncertainty. It depends on some news I hear after two weeks from now. I could explain more, but I don’t want to jinx things.

Five Questions, Five Answers: Winter Solstice

1.       Q: Why is the winter solstice significant to you?

 A: The date with longest night of the year, at this latitude where the time between sunset and sunrise is close to 17 hours long, occurring just nine or ten days before year’s end seems it should warrant something very meaningful. In the depth of this profound darkness, it’s like I become instinctually attuned into trying to crawl out of it and think of the future more, and I look at this last week and a half as that prime time of planning for what I want to see coming ahead for myself in the New Year. This month, it seems that the extra darkness at this time of year has been really making me screwy. I have a lot of mixed split shifts falling on early morning/late evening throughout this week; add to that the fact that there has been hardly any snow around to reflect more light outside, and solstice falls right at the time when the lunar cycle waning into new moon phase, it seems like the past few nights have been freakishly darker and longer than I’ve ever experienced. Perhaps that will just make me feel more pressured and desperate to change things once 2012 rolls in. It’s getting to be evermore exhausting in battling the depressive torpor that comes along during this season that I think I could just easily collapse into. I’m all the more thankful that I have Christmas off this year.

2.       Q: Are you affecting any positive changes now?

 A:  I’m dating again. I’m not going to say too much, because I feel like I’ll jinx myself if I do. Let me just say that it’s definitely not happening like the last few times in the past. It actually feels like something a hell of a lot different than a miserable job interview or a trip to the dentist*. I’ve been actually having a good time, and I feel like I’m actually connecting with a wonderful like-minded person (first time in a long time). I’m just taking it all day by day, moment by moment, avoiding analyzing things too much; thus thereby doing us both a favour by avoiding putting any ridiculous and unrealistic expectations and speculations on the table. 

3.       Q: Were you getting really bitter and angry about rejection?

 A: More accurately, what I’ve gotten frustrated and angry about is not so much “rejection”; but about “failure of fair and sensible acceptance”. It probably stems from my days working through the Justice department at the sexual assault centre. That experience undoubtedly had a huge impact in regards to my manner of approaching women. There was a need back then for me to consciously suppress appearances of looking too threatening or “virile” while working in that environment. In my private life, I really wanted to avoid the smelly shit pile of drama and suffering that could be created if any overt romantic interest I had in someone became poorly communicated, or misunderstood**. I hence didn’t do anything publically or privately that could have been misconstrued as unwanted provocation, or flirting no matter how innocent, neutral, practical, or natural the circumstances were. One would think that helping victims out would be something noble or heroic to do, but once I mentioned my occupation in casual conversation to others, people often avoided me like the plague, finding some excuse to leave the room and my presence . . . especially women. Because the work demanded a high degree of confidentiality, I couldn’t talk about it for fear of inadvertently disclosing details, and I had nothing else to talk about outside the topic of work. I was trying to do this very challenging thing for others, working on their behalf for some ideal of justice and righteousness, and yet I was the one being treated like an outcast. I felt very lonely and alienated, and even did some stupid things to compensate for it***. Meanwhile, the asshole psycho predators that we were trying to get off the street, more often than not, had wives and girlfriends, who were still stupidly faithful and loyal to these men, even while these guys were abusing them along with others. When these bastards were caught, they were penned up with murderers and violent offenders, some of whom were getting love letters and marriage proposals in jail. Life seemed so unfair for me that way: these monsters were getting others to tolerate, accept, and even love them; at the same time, I was struggling just to have people acknowledge me. I think noting these ironies made me very disillusioned about even bothering to give much thought or effort into pursuing some kind of relationship. I’ve witnessed and could cite more examples of this kind of dynamic involving people I know in recent history, but mentioning them here and now would be pointless, upsetting to them, and exhausting; it would only spur on more revulsion than I already have about this detestable facet of the human condition. I suppose that’s my way of feeling bitter and jaded about the topic.             

4.       Q: Any other big ideas in the coming New Year?

 A: I’m going to be taking more interest in re-inventing a new career path for myself, and continue my journey of life-long learning. Too complicated to explain for now; how I wish it were easier. I think I have consciously and purposely given myself harder challenges ahead in the spot I’m in, to help give me more incentive to escape the rut I think I’m in now.

5.       Q:  Last question . . . any maxims from this year that you could take into next year?

 A: Never underestimate the power of kaizen.

*- A trip to the dentist, or a bad job interview might actually have been better in a couple of cases.

**- After spending countless hours of researching, processing, and reviewing all sorts of scenarios of the legal ramifications and trouble one can face with even the slightest of actions being misinterpreted: bouncing around on a pogo stick through a minefield looked a hell of a lot safer than trying to ask someone out on a date.

***- Stupid things . . . like succumbing to the foolish notion that joining and going to a church was somehow going to help me solve my problems, or make me a better person.

Five Questions, Five Answers: Entry 3 – Sick Day

1.       Q: It’s a sick day for you. You look and feel horrible. Are you sure you want to do this?

A: I have not much energy for anything else, and nothing else better to do. My mind is totally draped in a fog from both boredom and the side effects of Neo-Citron. It might be well worth a laugh to read it later after I recover; then see and study the specimens of pulp that got coughed up from my conscience.

2.       Q: What have you been doing with the rare moments of lucidity you’ve had during this day?

A: Reading a book called The Power of Less, by Leo Babauta. It contains material and suggestions that suit my objectives I mentioned before in the last entry. It seems ironic that I’m dwelling on a chapter called Simple Focus, since it’s something I’ve been finding almost impossible to do all day.

3.       Q: Were there at least any kaizen moments happening today?

A: I added some more categories to a research database I’ve been constructing. That’s all I had in me. Trying to have the vision of how this thing is ultimately supposed to look like and function, and taking the steps backwards to fill in its innards is a really hard process to think about now in the current state I’m in. A chimp banging a ball-peen hammer on my keyboard would have a better chance at making the thing work than I would if I were trying to create formulas with this brain full of cold medication. I really hate the bloody after effects of lingering sedation.

4.       Q: Back to last entry’s content . . . a nerve was struck when you were confronted with the question about planning for creative expression. What happened since then?  

A: I came face to face with the shocking realization of just how long it has been since I really engaged in any hobbies or pastimes that cultivate any meaningful form of self-expression or self-actualization. I did running during the summer for the sake of getting healthier, and that consumed a lot of my personal time, but it’s not what I would consider a form of self-expression, or a passion, or even a fancy. Psychologically, at best, it was just a method of teaching me how the process of setting higher goals for oneself can be really satisfying, and that there was a beneficial result after. I have very few things around here in my living space that I would deem as trophies of achievement, or proof of having some ability to fashion something of some substantial quality from one any particular talent. Once I took a reckoning of that fact, I began to feel somewhat disappointed, and I feel kind of angry that I’ve been robbing myself of so much quality time.

5.       Q: Now that you know that, what’s going to happen next?

A: As I’m still feeling crappy enough with this cold, I’ll have to call in sick for tomorrow. The only advantage of being sick at home is that I won’t have enough energy to waste in plying myself to busywork trying to distract myself and avoiding that question anymore. I may have to force myself to explore it further between coughs, sneezes, and periods of being goofed up on Neo-Citron.

Five Questions, Five Answers: Entry 2 - Limits

1.       Q: In the pilot 5Q5A entry, you mentioned focusing on simplifying things by imposing tighter limits on your writing activity. Can you explain how you’re [going to be] doing this?

A: I consciously give myself a timeframe to work within, and an environment where I’m least distracted. I don’t use anything as obviously formal and annoying as an alarm; I do use something of a more passive and enjoyable as a time indicator, like a preset music playlist from iTunes. Music is the only distraction I’ll allow. It keeps me alert and provides me with a pace and flow to work with. I usually play techno, trance, or some soothing instrumental classical tunes (because it’s rhythmic, and there’s no extra singing in it to distract me). When the playlist stops playing, I stop writing. My ability to write, programme, and do calculations is inversely proportional to the number of other people hanging around me when I’m doing such things. It’s a type of performance anxiety I suppose. I need a high degree of solitude for brain work. Working at these things in a public place, classroom, or an open cubicle environment drives me absolutely insane, so another limit would be the number of people around me when I’m trying to concentrate. Whatever system I use, it seems I just get more done alone than I do working with others. Resisting the temptation in trying to do everything in one fell swoop is another thing to work on. I see that using baby steps and kaizen is probably the better way to go. I applaud the feat of one grad student mentioned in Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4 Hour Body, who was partying every night while in school; yet managed to complete his entire Ph.D. dissertation by limiting himself to writing one sentence each day through the duration of his academic year. I think that’s totally amazing.

2.       Q:  The end of the year is coming soon, and you usually plan a major project ahead of yourself for the coming New Year. Have you decided what you’re going to be doing yet? 

A: I know that late November/early December is the time when I usually start itching and dreaming to plan some action on getting some changes happening once January 1^st rolls around. This year, however, I seem to have been lost in a bit of a fog, thus I’m resorting to exercises like this one to promote some sort of clarity of vision. If I ever get a decent stretch of time off work before this year’s end, I’ll probably be using it to do the annual “office purge”. I rummage through my filing cabinet and hard drive(s) to empty spaces, so then there might be the inclination to see how I want those spaces refilled. I know my organization system will be changing majorly and radically. I’ll be using my scanner more to digitize, and render stuff to OCR compatible material as much as I can; ditching as much superfluous paper as possible. Once more stuff is digital, I hope I can take giant strides ahead with cutting, pasting, re-processing, and keeping what is essential, and having things kept to a minimum. That’s one priority I know I want to take care of, and perhaps a sphere of ideas will expand from there with the new modality of reclaimed space and digital efficiency. 

3.       Q: Between now and then is Christmas. Any thoughts as to what you’d want to get as a gift for yourself?

A: Realistically, it would be $200.00 or less. Initially I thought of getting a PVR, to record my favoured TV shows from my digital cable service. But, then I thought about how there’s less and less programming that’s interesting to me nowadays, and I already have a whole piss whack of shows recorded via Windows Media Centre stored on a hard drive somewhere that I haven’t even seen yet. There’s no time for it. The kid in me thought about a getting a Wii console. It’s a cheaper system that would allow me to at least be “active” with exercise programmes, but I’m even second guessing about this, as this system will probably be obsolete soon. Plus, logically, if I have no time for TV, where will the time come from for video games? I’ll figure out what I’ll get when I finish shopping for my loved ones, and then I’ll see what’s left moneywise and available inventory-wise after Christmas as the Boxing Day Sale madness escalates. 

4.       Q: Television and video games are stuff of the realm of introversion. What else could you get to force yourself to circulate and be more social?

A: A pass to the civic facilities, or a gym membership time is doable. It’s most practical and falls within my commitment to stay fit. But then again, so far I’ve found that the clientele that go the Field House during the hours I have time off are mostly just a bunch of near-dementia-addled old retirees, with whom I have nothing in common. Anyone else close to my age seems to be at work on a normal schedule. The arrogance and stuck up attitude I see from the younger people (especially from the ladies, surprisingly) dedicated to going to the gym is a real let down for me. It’s rare that people want to interact with me and vice versa. I hate wasting time and money at loud bars by myself, yelling at people to greet and chat with them (forced to make private conversation loud and public). I’ve checked out the local Leisure Guide numerous times in the past. There are lots of interesting classes, but again, they happen at times that aren’t available for me. I’m stuck at square one with this question.

5.       Q: Last Question . . . What you’ve planned (minimally) so far looks like it could satisfy the practical side of yourself, but what about the creative side of yourself, as hinted at in Q5 of the previous Q5A5 entry? 

A: Ah-ha . . . my first really challenging question I’ve encountered out of all of this. I’m glad it’s the last one. It looks like it’s time to hit the drawing board. Besides, my playlist has just finished now.