Lyrics Collage

This week has been dedicated to the production and management of stress. Stress production = big work deadline. Stress management = breathing deeply, getting a professional massage (first time ever, oh man what a treat), and scratching the creativity itch. On that last note, today's post is a continuation from last week. In a burst of "why the heck not" I took the playlist I put together last week, picked one line out of the lyrics for each of the 36 songs, and assembled them together into a lyrics collage (sort of a found poem). Presented here for your enjoyment:

I dream of rain
Rain comes pouring down
Only in dreams could it be this way
I think I see the future
If you only knew what the future holds
Losing it all on my own
At least I can say that I’ve tried
I tried so hard

Nightfall will be comin’ soon
The sun goes down alone
and the way is dark
There’s a world outside every darkened door
Just go ahead, now

Like a Sunday morning Elvis, singing gospel
You remain my power, my pleasure, my pain
I hate when things are over
I never pray but tonight I’m on my knees
I’m gonna watch you plead

Bless your soul
I don’t wanna have to pay for this
I’m just being honest
This is our fate
you better take cover

You look at me and you see your past
Save me from the nothing I’ve become
Come on now, what you waiting for
A little gambling is fun when you’re with me
A new religion that’ll bring you to your knees

Dedication, devotion
Keep that spirit alive
How do you give me so much pleasure
Le bien par le mal

I hope you find your peace
I’m never changing who I am
There’s not a thing that I would change
don’t waste your time

Happy Friday! There may or may not be a post next week, Thanksgiving-dependent.

35

It was my birthday this week. I’ve decided that from now on I’m going to celebrate my birthday AFTER Election Day, even though my birthday usually falls beforehand. Fabulously, there's something to celebrate this year! I'm sad that Tia Walbridge didn't win, but I'm proud and grateful that she ran and exultant that Democrats flipped at least 14 seats in the House of Delegates. Given that the level-headed expectation was that Democrats might flip 4-6 seats, that is simply staggering.

Today I’m celebrating with a fun post. Because I am my father’s daughter, I present to you: one favorite song* off the Billboard Top 100 charts for each year I’ve been on the planet.**

1. “Waiting for a Girl Like You” – Foreigner (#19 of 1982)
2. “Down Under” – Men at Work (#4 of 1983)
3. “Break My Stride” – Matthew Wilder (#27 of 1984)
4. “The Boys of Summer” – Don Henley (#53 of 1985)
5. “Walk of Life” – Dire Straits (#49 of 1986)
6. “Stand by Me” – Ben E. King (#67 of 1987)
7. “Make Me Lose Control” – Eric Carmen (#38 of 1988)
8. “Welcome to the Jungle” – Guns N’ Roses (#74 of 1989)
9. “Black Velvet” – Alannah Myles (#18 of 1990)
10. “Sadeness (Part I)” – Enigma (#63 of 1991)
11. “Life Is a Highway” – Tom Cochrane (#18 of 1992)
12. “Two Princes” – Spin Doctors (#28 of 1993)
13. “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (#77 of 1994)
14. “Kiss from a Rose” – Seal (#4 of 1995)
15. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” – Deep Blue Something (#39 of 1996)
16. “All For You” – Sister Hazel (#36 of 1997)
17. “Bitter Sweet Symphony” – The Verve (#79 of 1998)
18. “Smooth” – Santana ft. Rob Thomas (#19 of 1999)
19. “Desert Rose” – Sting ft. Cheb Mami (#50 of 2000)
20. “Fallin’” – Alicia Keys (#2 of 2001)
21. “In the End” – Linkin Park (#7 of 2002)
22. “Bring Me to Life” – Evanescence ft. Paul McCoy (#10 of 2003)
23. “Hey Ya!” – Outkast (#8 of 2004)
24. “Lonely No More” – Rob Thomas (#22 of 2005)
25. “Crazy” – Gnarls Barkley (#7 of 2006)
26. “Shut Up and Drive” – Rihanna (#90 of 2007)
27. “I’m Yours” – Jason Mraz (#27 of 2008)
28. “Poker Face” – Lady Gaga (#2 of 2009)
29. “Just the Way You Are” – Bruno Mars (#18 of 2010)
30. “Firework” – Katy Perry (#2 of 2011)
31. “Lights” – Ellie Goulding (#5 of 2012)
32. “It’s Time” – Imagine Dragons (#47 of 2013)
33. “Happy” – Pharrell Williams (#1 of 2014)
34. “Shut Up and Dance” – Walk the Moon (#6 of 2015)
35. “Hello” – Adele (#7 of 2016)

Bonus Track: “Praying” – Kesha (#28 for the week of November 4, 2017)

*Disclaimer: these are not my only favorites or even necessarily my #1 favorites; this is designed to become a playlist, so these songs have to flow nicely together.
**Other Disclaimer: The computer science student in me is peeved that I can't start numbering at zero. It would make much more sense that way, given how age math works.

All Out of Feels

Well, it’s been about a year since the election. My husband told me that some people are planning Screaming Parties to celebrate the occasion. I have to admit, the idea holds a certain appeal.

Looks like a party to me.
(Photo by Asa Rodger on Unsplash)

The trouble is, I seem to be Out of Feels. I’ve checked all the closets, dusted under every bed, and even cleaned up several Piles of Horror (you know the kind I mean… 6 months ago it was an accessory to a short to-do list but now it’s 15 times bigger and has spiders living in it), but I’m like the Monty Python cheese shop which is uncontaminated by cheese. Screaming without feels seems questionable.

Screaming on the inside but mostly about Cheetos.

I am politics-averse. I make no secret of this. Chalk it up to an INFJ personality, a dislike of raised voices, a deep-rooted skepticism towards mob responses and tribalism, whatever. The deck is stacked against me getting anything personally fulfilling out of political engagement. Generally my only motivation to get involved in the political realm involves feeling intensely negative about something. So what am I to do on those days I can’t muster emotion to drive action, but there’s still stuff to do?

Lately I call these "days that end in -y."

The answer is, I do three things. Two are specific, and one is broad.

Specific Thing #1: Sign up for the Americans of Conscience Checklist created by Awesome Human Jennifer Hofmann.

You can read all about it by following the link. The weekly checklist is composed of straightforward, non-partisan actions you can take to defend your democratic ideals. Hofmann is a superhero for putting it together.

Specific Thing #2: Make it a habit.

I recently had one of those moments where I thought “there really should be an app that does <X>,” only to spend two seconds searching and discover that there IS an app that does X. In fact there are multiple apps that do X. In this case, X = give me an RPG-like framework to track the things I need to do and earn XP for it. My wacky gamer brain LOVES this concept. I’m basically rewarding myself with pretend currency, and I’m eating it up because I am a GIANT NERD.

I’ve cleaned up the mess in the bedroom, organized my desk, cleared a 6-month backlog of shredding, and (of greatest relevance to where this post started) participated in the Plus3 initiative to Get Out The Vote for Virginia, all because of this marvelous little app giving me the power to claim XP for it. If you find the notion appealing or simply intriguing, take a look at Habitica. And let me know if you sign up, there are rewards you can only get by doing “quests” or “boss fights” with a group, and Mama wants more cute digital pets.

I’ve spent some time pulling away from the seemingly-endless cascade of horrible things vomiting forth from the current Presidential administration, and now I need to come back to action. The bad is not stopping, and neither can we – but we don’t have to go forward motivated by fear, stress, horror, and panic. We don’t owe anyone those responses. The appalling indecency and divisiveness of our 45th President isn’t normal and we should never accept it as such, but we can make our responses to these situations habitual. As soon as the Americans of Conscience checklist fires up again, I’ll be coding tasks into Habitica and earning heaps of XP.

It's the zero-calorie version of doing this.

This segues into the General Thing: Lean into the pain.

This is a weird one for me. I used to interpret ideas along these lines as masochism and withdraw from them rapidly and without deep consideration. Maybe it took parenthood for it to click – there’s nothing like taking care of an infant to beat the snot out of one’s formerly unshakable standards for How Life Should Be.

Just washing bodily fluids out of all the cloth things in the house again. Whatevs.

The point is, all the negative and painful feelings are bound to come up for as long as the United States of America is processing this infection. The pain is a neon sign that shows us where we need to pay attention. The pain is a call to arms for the white blood cells. It’s just a variation on the same pain as yesterday. It didn’t stop us yesterday, it can’t stop us today, and it won’t stop us tomorrow.

A few things about security

Last month I sat for my first-ever board certification and passed. I am now a Physical Security Professional (PSP) certified by ASIS International, the largest security professional organization in the world. Here are a few things I've learned since coming on board with The Human Intelligence Group in 2013.

1. Crime is not a force of nature. It can be tempting to conceptualize the possibility of crime only in terms of Hollywood representations of teams of master criminals ("TEAMS!" -Basher Tarr). But those guys probably aren't going to rob convenience stores or burglarize apartment complexes. If an organization reasonably anticipates having to keep out Danny Ocean, they need to take steps to do so, but for most folks there are far less elaborate solutions that will make things much safer.

2. If it's everybody's responsibility, it's nobody's responsibility. Security may be part of everyone’s job, but if nobody has specific, clearly-defined security tasks, training, and authority, you can ask five people who is responsible for security and get five different answers. Spoiler: none of the answers will be "Me!"

3. No effort = no security. Good security practices are often fairly intuitive to grasp, which means it's possible to explain good security to a wide audience. HOWEVER, intuitive does not mean easy to implement, and it doesn't mean these things magically happen by themselves.

4. If some security measures are in place and a crime occurs, that doesn't mean that there is no point in having security measures. Invoking a metaphor: if a football player gets a tooth knocked out when he's not wearing a mouthguard, which response makes more sense? A) Have your dentist make you a custom mouthguard, and wear it; or B) stop going to the dentist, because dentists are supposed to protect your teeth and obviously that didn't work. With the right information about what the known dangers are, your dentist can do a lot to help protect your teeth, and a security professional can do a lot to protect you.

There are ways to apply each of these ideas to the current political situation, but that's for a different post.

Twilight Zone

This right here was high up on the list of things I never thought I'd do:

Hello, yard sign!

Election day is November 7, 2017. I've learned a few things about Virginia state elections.

1. Virginia has elections in odd years. This tends to result in reduced turnout, which means that victories are often decided by small numbers of votes.
2. The entire House of Delegates (100 seats) goes up for re-election at the same time. This means, if you live in Virginia, there are reasons to go vote every single year. This may be the case in other states as well, but I haven't studied up on those.
3. While the outcome of the Virginia state election is not predictive, it is very significant as the first regularly-scheduled election since Insanity 2016.

I will be voting this year. May it be a lifeline of hope.

Put Down the Poop: A Moment in Parenting

I had a moment of revelation today that other parents of young children might find helpful.

Imagine that your adorable child, seemingly out of nowhere, walks up to you and hands you poop. (I'm offering this example metaphorically, but I'm certain it has happened to actual parents, because of course). Setting aside possible emotional reactions for the moment, what, physically, before all else, is the first thing you do?

...From here I'm addressing folks for whom the answer is "put down the poop," because I'm not sure what to do with other possible answers at the moment. Shhh, don't mess with my metaphor.

Young children routinely have moments where emotions run high, and they are overwhelmed by Big Feelings. There are a bazillion sources out there that can put this into academic perspective or come at it from a nurturing, calming angle. I'm here to talk about it in terms of poop.

When these adorable young darlings feel emotionally horrible, it is not uncommon for them to do something to make YOU feel emotionally horrible. They are holding poop and they don't know what to do about it, so they hand you some poop to see what you do about it. What made them feel horrible? Why did they pick up the poop? Did someone hand it to them? Did they go looking for something they wanted and find poop instead? Tangential questions. 

Understandably, you might be upset. But consider, in that moment, what do you want to teach your child how to do? Do you want them to pass around the poop? Throw it? Smear it on themselves? NO! YOU WANT THEM TO PUT DOWN THE POOP. So that's what you have to show them. It is HARD! It takes a LOT of practice to not be mad or upset when somebody, anybody, for no apparent reason, HANDS YOU SOME POOP. But the thing is, it's not about getting poop on you; these kiddos are just watching to see what you do with it. All questions of root cause are secondary to this moment.

Young kids get upset about ridiculous, meaningless things. This is not news. Sock color, who went down the stairs first, missing a chance to push a button, having to wait ten seconds. This list could go on forever, but I'm stopping there. But that's actually AWESOME because therein lies the opportunity! The topic is trivial and the stakes are low. That is the moment to focus on the emotional reaction and develop the coping mechanisms, because as they get older, their problems will get more complicated. They'll need to rationally work their way through things, problem solve, consider the consequences, etc.

My current experimental technique involves spending no more than 5-10 seconds addressing a meltdown-level problem logically. Anything more than that is meaningless noise. Priority one becomes consciously and deliberately adjusting my own emotional state so that I can help Child out of theirs. How, you might ask?

Pretend you've just been handed poop. If that can't make you laugh, you probably didn't get very far into this post.

Privilege and hostility

Hats off to Jeph Jacques, writer of webcomic Questionable Content. In this strip featuring two AI characters, he calls out a critical underlying influence in our current cultural explosions. Says one AI to another: "I suspect this is the first time you have been confronted with hostility due to your privilege. It is a painful and confusing event."

Confronted with this particular kind of emotional discomfort, some turn inward, and some turn outward. Either direction can have positive or negative outcomes. Turning inward can result in honest self-reflection, or desperate self-justification. Turning outward can result in reflexive aggression against whatever sparked the discomfort, or honest inquiry and evaluation of the larger situation. In either case, prioritizing defense of the personal status quo is the equivalent of digging a hole deeper.

Dear anybody with any kind of privilege: if somebody gets mad at you because of what you have, take a deep breath and have a cup of tea and get past the emotional discomfort of somebody being mad at you because of factors that were not conscious choices on your part. Or go beat up a literal punching bag, whatever works for you. Tell yourself you can cope with somebody being mad at you, even if you think it's for "no reason." Repeat it in your head as many times as you have to until it's true. Remind yourself that you are capable of making a choice that is distinct from your gut reaction. Ever read Dune? This is a way more mild version of the Gom Jabbar. Bear the pain and be human, then take the opportunity to do something better.

I made an art

I got a drawing tablet. I love my drawing tablet.

Reboots

My husband Tim and I are avid gamers. For at least the last ten years we have taken turns running one-on-one games for each other, and in that time we have built up quite a wealth of settings. Many of them are located in the same plane of reality, others stretch into different 'verses which may or may not be connected.

We went into a sort of gaming paralysis between November and February, in part because inventing perils paled as a pastime next to perceived precariousness in reality. What jogged us out of it was the idea of reboots.

We are each taking a beloved character in a well-developed world and rebooting the story. In the case of the tale I am GMing, I'm changing the interstellar settlement backstory of my first gaming world and seeing what that does to the fabric of the first story I ever told for Tim. In the case of the story he is running for me, he is retelling the story of one of my most high-powered characters (a full-blown telekinetic) with what seems to be a time travel styled twist.

In both of our stories, the reboot is built into the world. We're not actually taking back anything that happened before. The new version of my world exists in a spin-off 'verse, so it's not actually the exact same place, just a close resemblance. Tim's character, for in-world justified reasons, has the same name and the same soul as before. In Tim's world the reboot is part of the plot: some enemy of the interstellar Federation changed something (I don't know what exactly, we haven't gotten that far), and now the Federation has never met one of their craziest and most powerful allies in the nigh-perpetual war against demonkind. But some people in the world have a periodic gut feeling that "this is not the life I was supposed to live," or "it's not supposed to be this way." (I think Tim has currently won the prize for therapeutic gaming).

Anyone have experiences with rebooting old worlds and characters? Was it fun?

Flying the Flag

There is a perception (which appears to be backed by a Pew Research study) that Democrats are less patriotic than Republicans. PLEASE NOTE this article is from the National Review, which has a far right bias. I have included it specifically for that reason, to examine the author's interpretation of the Pew Research data as indicative of patriotism.

Based solely on personal observation, it seems that while the liberal narrative embraces love of people, love of liberty and justice for all, it omits the idea of pride - pride in our country, pride in our history, etc. For me, it's easy to understand why. Reading through the atrocities in our history, committed in the name of America the Beautiful with apparent pride, I felt revulsion over the very idea of flag-waving patriotism for a long time.

Yesterday, we hung a great big red white and blue American flag right next to our front door, because we are patriots. I think we who want to resist the darkness and fight for the best of what our nation can be need to reclaim the idea of patriotism. I am proud of the dream of this country. I am proud that in spite of the darkest moments of our history, there is a light that shines bright enough to call amazing people from all over the world to join us. I am proud that there are millions and millions of people who pledge their loyalty to liberty and justice for all, with an emphasis on all. I can disagree with the current administration and feel appalled by its actions and fight it every step of the way, and still be proud to be an American. I do and feel these things BECAUSE I am an American, and I refuse to allow those who cannot or will not reconcile self-criticism and pride set the definition of what it means to be a patriotic American.

Something I took note of in that study was the phrasing of the questions, and particularly the use of the phrase "stands above." The data presented shows what percentage of Republicans, Independents, and Democrats say that the U.S. "stands above" the other nations of the world. In the context of, for example, sports games, in which there can be only one winner, buying into the idea of "standing above" makes sense. But looking at the international, planetary scale and the future of the human race, if there's only one winner, we all lose. 

Can we help grow the narrative of patriotism into something better than it has been before?

Ask the Movie 8-Ball

Q: Movie 8-Ball, should I be making investments and planning house projects when I'm this scared about the future?

shake-shake-shake

A: "Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on." -Nick Fury (The Avengers)

Q: You do know quotes from non-superhero movies, right?

shake-shake-shake

A: "Look, all I'm saying is, what I wouldn't give for the chance to say one really great line." -Karen Flores (Get Shorty)

Q: I can't help you, Movie 8-Ball.

Poem: "Insert Title Here"

I occasionally write poems, though much less often than I did in college and before. The subject I always circle back to is language. I've had a longstanding love-hate relationship with words. Here's a poem I wrote in August of 2015. POLITICAL DISCLAIMER: "Every word is a lie" is a poetic turn of phrase that leads somewhere else; it is NOT an endorsement of "alternative facts" AT ALL EVER.

Every word is a lie that tells itself true.
Before we gave it a sound, what color was blue?
Before we said it sang, did the wind have a voice?
What’s the flavor of home, what’s the weight of a choice?

Without words don’t we know what’s right from what’s wrong?
What did we feel before love came along?
These pearls of power, these kernels of truth,
Exist between tongue, lip, throat, jaw, and tooth.

The marks that we make out from mind, eye, and hand,
Spell out the stars, tides and sea, rising land.
Gone, forgotten, the things never given a name…
Yet unspoken, they lived, loved, and died just the same.

Ask the Movie 8-Ball

Q: Movie 8-Ball, how did this happen? Weren't things peaceful?

shake-shake-shake

A: "I think you're confusing 'peace' with 'quiet.'" -Ultron (Avengers: Age of Ultron)

What's up with the cover art?

Sometime in the last calendar year I decided to take the list of 98 roleplaying characters I portrayed between 2002 and 2016 (feel free to re-read that until the implications regarding my mentality really sink in), and think about how I would describe the evolution of those characters over the course of the story that was told. In the course of this mental exercise I identified nine personality styles or archetypes (I use the word loosely) to describe the various phases of character development, which I see as naturally fitting into three groups:

Group 1: Defined by conflict

1. Mercenary - Fights (or steals, or whatever else) for personal enrichment
2. Warrior - Fights with and/or under the command of others; follows rules of engagement
3. Champion - Fights for a cause

Group 2: Defined by a relationship to harm

1. Survivor - Endures harm
2. Guardian - Prevents harm
3. Healer - Undoes harm

Group 3: Defined by how they see their "place" in the world

1. I Just Work Here - Accepts their place, tries to live a normal life
2. Explorer - Questions their place, inquisitive regarding the world around them
3. Leader - Defines their place, reshapes the world around them

The three tiers in each group are characterized by the level of influence the character has or tries to have on the events or worlds in which they find themselves. Tier one takes the world as it is; tier two thinks the world could be different; tier three thinks the world should be different.

You may notice that off on the left there's a lonely bubble labeled "Mercenary" that doesn't connect to anything else. I have tried on more than one occasion to play a character with a mercenary mindset. However, these characters never grow, develop, or change in any notable way, no matter how long the story runs. I believe that is because the mercenary mentality does not make sense to me, and I don't have an intuitive grasp of how a person evolves from - or to - that style of being. Or, maybe what I do understand of it frightens me, so I try to steer clear.

Pitfalls in Emotional Management

Pitfall #1: Taking emotions as indicative of truth or fact.

The evaluation of emotions on the spectrum of false<->true (obvious idiomatic example: "true love") muddles the relationship between feeling and fact, and can lead to the (potentially extremely harmful) conclusion that feelings can be right or wrong. This is not the case. Beliefs about the world can be wrong (as in incorrect). Choices / actions can be wrong (as in causing or enabling undue harm). Feelings are never wrong, they simply are.

Pitfall #2: Translating emotion directly into action.

Emotions can certainly be overwhelming, but I hesitate to ever endorse the assessment that "I just couldn't stop myself." I believe both in treating oneself with understanding and forgiveness, and in recognizing one's capacity to replace gut reactions with conscious choices. I think it's more appropriate to say "I didn't stop myself." Evaluations of "could" and "couldn't" are fundamentally oracular in nature, and generally speaking we cannot say with absolute certainty what could or couldn't have happened.

I present these thoughts as a backdrop to my approach to civic engagement, because people on all sides (me included) seem extremely volatile in their emotional response right now, and it's something that needs to be recognized and addressed. It sure would be awesome if we could avoid destroying each other and the planet along with us. (I do not believe that presenting these as possible risks is an exaggeration, hence my personal volatility). Stay tuned.

No More Fear

Question / poll: How many of you folks have spent most of your lives afraid of personal conflict and willing to stay silent when you disagree? If that describes you, I'm curious to know: do you remember how that started for you, or when it took root? Because that's totally been me for a long, long time -- I've only recently begun to shake free of it -- and I want to figure out if there are common origins. Whatever you're willing to share.