Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

Thoughts from last Thursday: Tonight we set up our Indie Bits game, and I'm consumed by nervous anticipation. I imagine this is not unlike when your firstborn child goes to kindergarten. OK, maybe it's not that serious. But the feelings of, please don't bite anyone , and I hope you make friends translates roughly to please don't break while someone is playing you , and also please no one play this game because What if you don't like it?  What if people hate it? What if it doesn't work? What if it's uninteresting? What if the puzzles are too hard? There are so many ways this can go wrong. These are not feelings I typically experience with the things that I make, as I usually make things just for myself. I've always been more of an engineer then an artist. At middle school art camp, I was competent at various techniques, but I never had any great ideas. We would be set free to our own creative devices with a new method, and I sat there, feeling inad...

I'm depressed. Not acutely. Not newly. I feel like an addict. I won't ever be not depressed; I just live with it. It's my superpower - the ability to detect the pathos in any situation. As I've learned to live with being depressed, I have begun to think of it just that way. I feel like the Hulk in The Avengers.  His secret is that he's angry all the time, and in the same way, I'm always sad. Even when I'm happy, I'm sad. I don't think depression is what gets you though. I think it's feeling dissatisfied with feeling depressed.  It's the wanting to feel better. It's wanting to leave your little rain cloud behind for a day. So a few years ago, I decided to try accepting it, to try to see the sun while the rain is falling. I'm a stronger person for it, unfazed by things that distress others. I'm working at the hospital these days, and hospitals are difficult, hard places. People are damaged and dying, hurt and suffering and o...

Day 2 (no photos) wasn't nearly as much of a challenge. For me, pictures fall into a kind of dichotomous key:  - photos of me    A) for the public (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Vine)    B) for my friends (Snapchat, SMS)  - photos of other stuff    C) for blogging / professionally    D) fun things! Photos of me are a strange topic because I hate them. I have an idea about how I look, and then when I have a photo taken, I always think, "That's how I look?" I have always felt uncomfortable about my appearance and it's been a bit liberating to take more photos of myself and to put them out there. I don't need people to tell me how great I look for comment; it's more about saying, "Yes, I do look like that, and that's okay."  Photos that I take for private functions are less of an issue because I'm so busy these days that I don't really have much time for that kind of social activity. Not taking photos of other things was ...

Yesterday was the first day of the Bored and Brilliant challenge from WNYC's New Tech City, and the goal was to keep your phone put away (either in pocket or in a bag) during transit, so phones out only at destinations.  Having tracked my phone time for about 3 weeks, I know that my starting point was that I was spending an average of 155 minutes per day on my phone. I don't think Moment counts time when it's playing music or a podcast but I am not looking at the screen.  I use my phone as a Kindle a lot, so I'm not sure how much time I can cut down without losing my reading time, but we'll see.  It also doesn't seem to take into account time I'm making phone calls if the screen is off. So I kept my phone in my pocket.  I forgot once early in the day because it is such a reflex to pull my phone out of my pocket when I have a "blank" moment. It was much easier if I kept it in my bag. Other than that one time, I really enjoyed it. Not looking at ...

I read a book today. A whole book. It was pretty wonderful, both the experience and the book. I'm not sure what led me to suddenly decide to read some Pearl S. Buck. I've long looked at her book covers and thought, One day , but for some reason the melancholy that I've always mentally associated with her (for no reason I can cite) fit feeling like death today, so in the waiting room at the Urgent Care I started reading Peony and I read until I was finished, through the brewing of tea and my hot bath which I had hoped would clear my sinuses and did not. I want to start it all over again. I feel like I devoured it so quickly that there are things I missed, conversations I want to have with the book and my thoughts that I didn't give myself time to have.  A few thoughts though, before I lose the thread. There are so many dichotomies in this book, so many choices weighed and options considered. David must choose between the old ways of his people represented by marriage...

I got my braces yesterday.  So, the experience. First, you walk in and there are a lot of implements. Like, a lot.  All that for my face. It's a little nerve wracking. On the right on the tray you can see the strips of plastic with my braces attached. They prepare them ahead of time so that they can be attached en masse.  This mostly worked well for me. One of the braces on my molar didn't stay the first time, and then they ended up moving two of them, so they had to take them off and put them back on individually. I wish I had a picture of the remover because it looks like the thing you use to skin catfish except that they pry a bracket off your tooth and it makes a loud cracking sound. Not what you want to hear while you're laid out in a dental chair.  They put a large circular tarp in your mouth, and then something that looks like a transparent horseshoe with suction and a light that you bite on. I felt like a bit of a baby as the first half was honestly pretty s...