Where I am at with solitude, the Shell station incident, the late semester course load, and the night of weird questions

(21:48:51 CDT)

Where I am at with solitude, the Shell station incident, the late semester course load, and the night of weird questions

Since March 1st of this year (The Year of Our Lord Two-thousand and Ten) I have only logged ten posts, compared to, say, the twenty-three posts that I wrote in January. The reasons behind this decrease in blogging are varied, and are of a heterogeneous sort, a combination of things. I had a few bookkeeping things I had to do on my website, which I finished today (and, for the most part, started today). I had a couple of weeks where I had very, very little free-time and was often tired and brain-dead when I did have free time. I also felt that I was reaching some point of saturation, where writing was being done simply because it was habitual, but not totally positive in its effect. I would say this is comparable to someone who exercises daily, out of habit, but limits exercise to only a brisk few jumping jacks and declares it the same thing because they do not have time for more. I was doing three jumping jacks a day and needed to take a break, mentally realign myself, and get back in the habit of more solid accomplishment. This is not to say the posts made in the interim have been poor. If anything, most are better researched and better reasoned.

The first order of business is answering how the "solitude project" is going. *wobbles hands* Eh. 50/50. That is to say that I spending more time in isolation, if not proper meditation, and have deepened my studies while cutting out some of the distractions. I am not properly seeking quietude, though, at least I do not feel like it; and the other half, the breaking away from brain-droppings inspired by sites like Facebook and Twitter, has not really solidified. I have probably halved, possibly thirded, my online usage: my feeling of slight desperation to stay in the loop. I have not, though, quartered it and I have not yet broken the habit of checking it piece-meal. I need to redesign my usage metric so that I go online in the "casual browsing" sense only once or twice a day; alter it from a stop-gap of time management and instead make it something like a reward of good behavior. This is a diet of the mind, and to keep up the fitness metaphor of the first paragraph, I am cheating by breaking up the snack into bite size portions but still consuming it.

One of the reasons the solitude project derailed was the night of March 30. I was working at the library, a couple of days into what ended up being two-weeks mostly on, and feeling overall crappy. Not lonely. Not desperate for attention. Just not quite right in my social comfort levels. I had been in the project for exactly a week, and at that time going on hour-long purposeful solitudes—sitting in dark rooms, or walking down mostly empty streets—so that my mind was forced to face its thoughts. The first couple of nights had been angry, and then something like clarity began. After six or so nights, though, the seventh was again going negative. Not angry, just, as I said, off. I was walking back from a later-than-normal shift (I had stayed to help someone, I think) and hungry enough that I wanted to grab a little snack before getting home. I was tired and even a brief act of normalcy could only help the mood. I stopped off at the Shell Station on the corner of Jordan and University, the attendant was outside. She said something about "Go on in". However, seconds after walking in she came in screaming that I had to get out. I asked her why and her response was "I don't have to explain myself to you..." and that was that. I went next door, to Walgreens, and went home. There are few if any explanations that lead to anything but her being crazy, prejudiced against me since I walked-up instead of drove-up or for my size/appearance, or assuming I was someone else and not having the common decency to confirm I was who she thought I was. It was not my fault, really could not be my fault (unless they have policies against people of size and/or pedestrians), and yet it made me feel even more like crap.

Let's use that health analogy one more time: you have been avoiding, say, salad dressing for some time. You finally splurge, get some nice Ranch dressing, and it is bad. It was kind of like that, except instead of salad dressing think "Casual, non-work related human contact" and there you go.

After that, I started getting online more, and spending less time in quiet solitude. I started sticking to things better lit (it is the way of such moods that bright lights seem happy in a way that dim do not). My mind needed something. I think I am ready to go "deeper" into the project again, but there you are. That is mostly what derailed it. For those curious, I did not follow up the incident. Part of me wanted to talk to a manager but that would have involved me spending time that might not ever have been justified.I can't really imagine going back there, and doubt anything to justify the time wasted on it would have taken place. There is no real reason for a pedestrian to go there instead of Walgreens, much better stocked in nearly every way. I would have merely been doing it out of spite, and I did not want to do it for spite. I am not sure if that was the right thing.

On less melodramatic topics, my fourth semester of grad school has worked down into the final weeks. I have two real projects remaining. The first is to make a short instructional video about using the Kindle (which I have a neat idea for, if I can figure out a way to bring it about). The other is to make a search engine, somewhat simple, that will search through dissertations and theses for a given school. Kind of an open source, cheap thing that I have the logic worked out for, at least the "front end" logic. The "back end", about importing papers and arranging connections with other schools, is still somewhat unknown. I am looking forward to getting into the meat of that one about two weeks from now, though by then I should have a bit of the code already committed. Two other small projects need to be done in Java class, one is to make a graphical front end for a program that I am already finished with (though I want to rewrite because I feel I could do it better) and the other is make a program that compares two pictures using colors, which actually should be somewhat simple since that algorithm has already been made and completed and it is a matter of implementing it in the midst of the other requirements.

This brings us, more or less, to tonight. I am back at work, after a single day off, but it is not bad work. Strange. Questions tonight have ranged from a student who apparently put in an Interlibrary Loan request to get out of going upstairs to get the book (I suppose he thought it would be mailed to him) to a guest saying that she has looked at our nursing selection, found it lacking, and wondering where our nursing books were. When I gave her some call numbers for books that seemed to match her needs even though she said we did not have anything to suit her, she was thrilled. I have no idea if she had actually seen our collection but overlooked those titles, or if she was trying to say she had looked elsewhere for something but could not find it. Then, on the phone, more than one question that basically went "I have this computer problem..." and then, as I am giving advice, "Oh, wait, it works now". Oh, and a book showed up that has no call-number, but has our stamp and an old card pocket to put the date card in it. It is not in our catalog. Either it used to be (but where is the call number, then?) or maybe it was donated but got interrupted in the middle of checking it in? The opposite of a ghost book. Rather than being in the system but gone, it is not in the system but here. With stamps on. Weird.

Which wraps it up. I have a good dozen backlogged posts that should trickle through, one a day, and then I will get back into writing new ones. Oh, before I go, just wanted to say that Sarah and I have been playing at Frisbee Golf. More on that, soon, I wager.

Si Vales, Valeo

file under (...on Me in 2010)

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