Post-Traumatic Tech Disorder

Back in 2007 with mine, Seth and Anthony‘s Brat-halla webcomic, I made a reveal on our interpretation of the Norse goddess Hel by depicting her as half corpse (the lower half).  It sparked some comments back then and I explained the reasoning behind the decision, so I thought I’d share those thoughts here (since those comments have long been lost).

The subject of Hel’s nature  tends to drive a wedge in-between some people.  To some, she could be part corpse.  To others, she’s just half blue or blue/black in color (as some artists have depicted her).  I always thought it was more fitting for her to be ruler of the underworld AND half-dead herself.  It feels right considering how often parities like that show up in the legends of the Vikings.

Technically (well, depending on your translation), the section of the Poetic Edda that mentions Hel describes her as half blue or half blue/black.  So where does this notion of corpse-titude come from?  Well, considering the culture of the time (those wily Vikings) with all their sailing and cold weather antics, they dealt with two conditions on a regular basis… drowning and frostbite.

Drowning (especially with cold water) will leave a bluish tint to the skin and leave one kinda dead.  Frostbite will turn the skin a bluish black color (noticing a pattern here?).  With frostbite, the part of the body stricken with it can pretty much be considered dead if the affliction is bad enough (and in modern times, requires amputation).

In those days, I could see a blue or bluish black skin discoloration easily conjuring up images of a dead body to the Vikings, so I took it to that level in characterizing Hel as being half-corpse.

I hit one of those milestone years with my birthday on Friday.  The big 4-0.  Aside from the high cholesterol, the arthritic knees, the greying beard, the numerous pills the doctors have me on and the extra "insulation" around the midsection, I still feel pretty spry and young.

Hmm… that doesn’t sound like a good start to the second half of my life, does it?  But oddly, I’m doing better than I expected.  Even with the bad knees, I can still jog and run… something the doctors said I probably wouldn’t be able to do again with the damage that was done with my knee.  And even with the high cholesterol, all my other tests came out great–sound heart, fairly healthy organs, perfect blood pressure, no other major blood chemistry issues, no rabies, no Lyme disease and (sadly) no latent mutant abilities either.  I really thought those toxic waste scrubs would do the trick.

I wonder if part of it all is that I’m not afraid to let the little kid in me out to play.  Arts and crafts.  Video games.  Comic books.  Acting crazy while my wife tries to shop.  Being kid-like when I get time to spend with my kids.

So, maybe the secret to staying young is being young… and not fully growing up.  Sure, I take care of my responsibilities and get my work done.  But I don’t stress out over most of it or let work fully control my life. I’ve seen some people who work out of fear.  I work to pass the time.  To make sure my brain gets regular doses of challenges to work on.  To keep my idle hands from tearing apart expensive electronics to figure out what makes them tick.

And in regards to my part-time job… well, I do that to have fun and escape from the logic-ruled techie world of my day job.  

For a while (many moons ago), I did a series of articles at the DigitalWebbing site called "Breaking Out!".  It actually started as a newsletter I put together with articles and interviews and even its own comic section.  But it wasn’t easy to print up newspapers like that (and I was very raw in the ways of the pre-press), so I went digital with it.

The  whole purpose of the Breaking Out! column was to motivate new and aspiring creators and also get them to approach finding work in the industry like a job hunt.  Oddly, there was this disconnect that some young creators didn’t think they had to treat it like a job hunt (but then I doubted most of them considered it a real job anyways), and I wanted to change some of that mentality.

My background at that point was mostly from the military, but I knew about helping people find jobs.  As people left the military, I watched many of them make mistake after mistake.  Not wanting to make those same mistakes, I learned all I could about job searching and resume writing and interviewing.  I turned out to be pretty good at it.  I volunteered a lot of time to help friends leaving the military get good jobs (or better jobs than what was being offered).  I remember helping one person get offers $15K higher just by tweaking her resume and helping her evaluate companies before interviewing with them.

When I did leave the military (medical severance, so it hit quickly), I was prepared.  Resume written (and kept updated).  I kept in the loop with various companies in the area that had Oracle shops and could use my skillset.  Plus, I had an interview lined up within 15 minutes of emailing my resume out to companies and was hired for a new job before before I even finished outprocessing from the military.

So these series of columns was my way of passing on some of that information I’d gathered over years.  A lot of creative folks pour all their time and energy into actually creating and little things like building resumes and developing interview skills and learning how to interact with businesses… well, those things escaped them sometimes.  I actually got a lot of good responses from these articles and a couple dozen success stories from readers who had applied the techniques and found opportunities.

These articles no longer appear on the DigitalWebbing website, but I have them archived here for anyone who wants a little extra motivation and some creative business sense.

• Welcome to Breaking Out!
• No Solicitors!
• Comic Creator Credentials
• The Little Things
• BDSM: Bondage
• BDSM: Discipline
• BDSM: Sadism
• BDSM: Masochism
• Long-Term Thinking
• Convention Tips #1: Public Speaking
• Convention Tips #2: Portfolio Reviews
• Convention Tips #3: Etiquette
• The "Conversational" Portfolio for Writers
• Do You Have a Dream?
• Pessimism Voodoo Doll
• Bonding With the Muse
• Quitters Quit!
• Burnt and Frazzled
• Exposing Yourself
• Getting Done Without "I Am Going To…" (this was a new Breaking Out! article I added last year).

Look for more archive of some of my other columns (The Art of Words and The Creative Adviser) to show up here in the coming months.

Joshua’s fingers tapped lightly on the keys.  Just enough to make noise but no force backed them up to make letters appear on the computer monitor.  They just tapped away… anxiously waiting for words to form.  Trigger happy soldiers waiting for orders from thoughts too jumbled and chaotic to give them.  He scrolled up the page to read through what had managed to get through.

Eyes squinted.  Lips tightened.  Not enough angst.  It pained him to no end… but he pressed on.  Needs to be darker and grittier here.

Further down the page, his neck twitched.  His very muscles betrayed him and nearly forced him to look away, but he refused to give up at the hands of his self-imposed torture.  He approached the last sentence and breathed deeply letting all the negative thoughts gather in that bubble of air.  Swirling around.  Twisting.  Stinging.

And then he let it all go.  With one breath, he exorcised those little demons of thought.  He felt alive and free.  He armed himself with weapons forged of motivation and perseverance and charged back into the heat of battle.

Tap.  Tap.  Tap.

Again, his fingers released their anxiety with light taps on the keyboard.  Again, no letters appeared on the screen.  Again, his thoughts quickly fell into chaos and disarray.  Surrender looked promising.

He reached for the monitor power button and a miniscule arc of static leaped into nerves beneath his fingernail.  He cut the power to the screen and reeled back his hand shaking out the stinging sensation.  The screen faded and pulled the nighttime darkness from the rest of the room towards the light until all light left the room.

Joshua navigated his way past boxes and books and stacks of paper–a trip all to familiar to him after years of repetition.  Left of the big box, slide through the stacks of books, four more paces and reach for the door–

Tap.  Tap.  Tap.

Joshua looked back.  His eyes adjusted enough to distinguish the room in varying shades of darkness.  He stared at his desk.  Nothing there.  No sounds.  He wondered if imagination was getting the better of him.

Then a flicker of light from his computer keyboard.

Tap.  Tap.  Tap.  Tap.  Tap.  Tap.

He heard it clearly now.  Someone was typing.

An edged surface pressed deep into the arch of his foot as it stepped on an old phone charger.  He hopped forward only to feel the corner of tumbling books smacking across the long bone of his other foot.

Tap.  Tap.  Tap. Tap.  Tap.  Tap.  Tap.

He shoved the books aside and used the edge of the desk to brace himself as he stumbled around it and reached for the reading light on his desk. 

Tap.  Tap.  Tap.

With a click of a switch, the darkness fled to the corners of the room revealing… nothing.

No one was there.  No more noises.  Nothing.

Joshua plunked down into his chair and rubbed his foot.  He bit his lip as fingers rubbed over dimpled, bruised flesh and bone.  Then he spotted something odd… a single key depressed on the keyboard.  The period key.  He examined it and the moment he touched it, it popped back into place.

He turned the monitor back on and as it hummed back to life, he saw words in his document.  New words.  Words he would never dare write.

"Once upon a time…"

There was a time I used to sketch all the time.  Technically, people referred to it as Math class (or Geometry or Pre-Calc or Calculus depending on which year of high school it was), but it was mostly free sketch period for me.  Or nap time.  Teacher’s didn’t take kindly to nap time so I did the activity that resembled taking notes.

And I’ll admit, I was never great at artwork, but I kept at it and got better little-by-little until I was a "passable" artist.  And for a time when I first joined the military, I did a daily cartoon for my unit for a couple months.  Pencils.  Inks.  Colors.  And hand-lettered.  All the fancy stuff.

That was an amazing thing to go through because I was able to watch myself get better.  Each week, I could see little improvements in proportions and perspective and most importantly, motivation.

I would have ideas racing through my head each day of stuff I wanted to draw for this cartoon and by the time I sat down, it would be there waiting to leap out of my brain and pounce on the paper.

Those were fun days, and even when I stopped doing that little cartoon, I still kept sketches in my notebooks for the longest time.  Mostly novel-style illustrations to go with the stories I’d write or doodles of places and things as I let my subconscious work through some tricky character moments or story events.

Then one day I stopped.

I don’t even remember when or why, but I just stopped drawing.  I still enjoy looking at art and if I see something really cool, I’ll sit there and dissect it trying to figure out how the artist put it together.  But my sketching went from every other day to every other month.  And that lack of usage shows in a bad way when I try to sketch now… a definite disconnect between what I see swimming in my brain jellies and what scribbles my hand generates.  It’s like that "pass it on" communication game where it starts out as a "dragon" in my brain and shows up as a squiggly, hairless cat with a smoking problem on the page.

But I’m determined to get that skill back.  Whenever I see my daughter sketching or working on art projects now, I get this itch.  This uncontrollable need to sketch something.  I think most of my problem has been fear.  Afraid to get back into drawing because of how many times I’ve worked with incredible artists and how horrible my stuff looks compared to the stuff they crumple up and toss out as "crap".

But watching my daughter with her art.  The joy she emanates as she creates.  I remember that feeling and that feeling tears down all those insecurities.  Feeling that spark, I realized I hadn’t lost it… it’s just buried under years of day job drone-ification, turmoil and drama.  I’ve been dabbling here-and-there, but I decided to make reclaiming that skill a part of my 8 main resolutions for 2011.

I’m doing a "stepping stone" program for these resolutions where I start on just one a month and make it the focus of that month.  Then once I get used to it, I add on the next resolution the next month (all of them I’m setting aside at least 15 minutes a day for as a starting point).  I actually started all this in December.  Exercise more was number one and I decided to start it early.  Daily (Mon-Fri) blog updates was the second one.

And on February 1st, I begin part three–daily sketching.

Been out of it today… recovering.  Enjoying nap time to get my strength back up.  Naps though can lead to odd encounters in your subconscious.  Not deep enough into sleep to hit a full dreaming state, but still out enough to get some dream-like input from your brain.  None of it really makes sense and just seems downright weird.

Unless you’re a writer.

Then it all gets jotted down for use later.  I’m sure there’s some meaning behind all the images and connections that form during these surreal moments caught between sleep and reality.  But damned if I’m going to mention them to my wife after she just got a degree in psychology.  She’s analyzed me enough during all those years of working toward the degree.

But still… I wouldn’t mind figuring out where they came from and how these snippets formed the way they did as they floated along lazily into my brain jellies.  Yes, I’m Curiosity’s bitch and she’s gunning for me.  I mean there’s gotta be something in the span of my psychological awareness to spurn the likes of…

So, there I am.  Surfing a large wave made of used laser printer toner cartridges.  And my surfboard’s a taco.  No tomatoes.  Extra cheese.  Crispy (yet nicely waxed) taco shell.

Odd thing was… my wife came home and wanted to grab Taco Bell for lunch.  Good thing my semi-dream state was projecting the taco and not the toner cartridges.

Social this and social that.  There’s only so much sociality a person can handle… or is there?

It seems like more and more social networks are cropping up all over the place.  Specialty networks and niches.  So, I started jotting down some ideas for some Facebook spinoffs that provide appeal for some special levels of social interaction…

• FaceOff – A social network for people who are afraid of insects and believe the best cologne is the Deep Woods variety.
• FaceTime – A social network for those addicted to time management.  It could work as long as the members don’t forget to schedule time for it.
• FaceMe – A social network for people who’d rather just socialize with themselves.
• Face-To-Face – A social network for people located within close proximity of each other but can only muster enough courage to socialize via the computer.
• FacePlant – A social network for people who love gardening.
• FaceLift – A social network for people with self image issues.
• FaceMask – A social network for people who can only be themselves by hiding behind the mask of anonymity.
• FacePlate – A social network for people with metal plates on their skulls.
• FaceDown – A social network for depressed people.  Careful… cheery thoughts will get you banned.
• FaceUp – A social network for those suffering from one of those "longer than 4 hours" side effects.
• FaceLess – A social network for people who prefer a network with the least amount of socializing.
• FaceFull – A social network for those who like to talk about food conquests 24/7.
• FaceRecognition – A social network for those who need to be seen (not heard).

Though you enforce your rule on our mortal lives with an iron pocketwatch, I beseech thee to show leniency to this poor fool who thought he could skirt your boundaries… who thought he could make more time to catch up on things that had fallen behind.

It seemed sound at the time to do multiple things concurrently to utilize time more efficiently, but once again, you have shown me it’s a fools quest.  Any little thing can break the stream and leave tasks tumbling over each other into a morass of lost effort and even increasing the time spent to accomplish the work needed to be done.

As I struggle to correct one thing, time slips away from everything else causing a temporal dogpile of work to dig myself out of.  Buried deeper and deeper until I can no longer keep up.

So I call out to you, oh Lords of Time.  I call out to tell you I’m giving up on time.  I will begin a time fasting–giving up on this whole illusion of seconds and minutes and hours.  It’s all just mystical hocus pocus to me know and I plan on ignoring it all.  For the extent of this fast, I’ll do things as I need to and as I see fit with no consequences of time burdening me.

"How long with that take you to complete?"

"However long it takes me."

"But… how long will that be?"

"When it’s done."

"When can I expect it to be done?"

"When I tell you it’s done."

Like most fasts, this is just a cleansing technique to clear my head of deadlines and worries and being repressed by Time itself.  It won’t last long…

… or will it?  I’m not sure… it’s hard to say when you’re not keeping track of time.

Today, I wanted to take a look back at my end-of-the-year vacation.  Reminisce a little.  Romanticize about another one.  Cause I’m definitely ready for another vacation.

Three days of work into the new year and I’m counting the days to my next vacation already.  This last one was… well, shorter than I planned.

I spent the first two days of it finishing up an install for a client and assisting another consultant with troubleshooting issues at another client.

I spent the last 4-5 days of it sick from allergies due to a massive pollen storm here in Austin.

In-between all that, I met up with family and friends in Houston, got some good tequila in me, enjoyed a tasty burger from Beck’s Prime, cooked the Christmas (Eve) dinner, and cleaned out/reorganized my office.  Well, mostly on that last one… allergy attacks sort of slowed that down.

Overall, I got to truly enjoy about 8 days of a 14 day vacation.  That means I got 57% of my relaxing, recharging and revitalization in… and my depleted brain jellies from some major work overload during the last few months of last year needed at least another 20-30% of that to fully recover.

So, I’m working and putting in as much effort as I can with the day job.  But I spent all Monday working through sickness (and lunch-time at the doctor’s) and then spent Monday and Tuesday night with insomnia due to a medicine reaction.  So, tasks that were second nature to me before where I could speed right through them with no issues… well, they’re not going as planned this week. 

That’s not the kind of slowdown you want to hit when you start the first week of the work year with 70+ hours of work on your schedule.  It’s not the kind of slowdown I ever like to hit with anything I work on.  But right now, it’s the best effort I can put forth… recovering from illness and taking extra precautions because I’m afraid my subconscious is still back there all twitchy finger on the vacation button in my brain.

Deep down though… I know I’ll get through it.  I’ve encountered weeks like this before and the best thing is to persevere and keep pushing forward.  Just keep making progress.  It may feel like I’m trudging uphill to the top of a mountain made of quicksand sometimes, but the work still needs to get done.

And now that my 15 minutes of writing are up… I’m getting back to getting it done.

If you’re an avid football watcher… or know someone who is… or can’t run away fast enough from someone who is… you’ve probably born the brunt of some tirade for (or against) Kansas State’s Adrian Hillburn’s infamous salute at the Pinstripe Bowl last week.  Oddly, they’ve dubbed it the "Bronx Salute", which would have definitely drawn a flag in violation of the rule….

Rule 9-2-1d –

Any delayed, excessive, prolonged or choreographed act by which a player attempts to focus attention on himself (or themselves)."

But a real, honest-to-goodness salute does anything but draw attention to yourself.  I can tell you those two officials that threw the flag were definitely not military veterans.  Maybe even raised in a military town where all those bravado-filled muscled military folk kept stealing their dates… or just their favorite bars.

Yeah, that would probably cause a ref to throw a flag at a young man giving a sign of respect to loyal K-State fans in the crowd who traveled halfway across the country and braved blizzard aftermath to cheer on this team and give them the fight to come back in a game where they’d made so many mistakes… but still managed to get back to a position to tie the game up.

The thing is… the salute is a sign of respect.  It always has been.  Lower ranking troops salute the officers to show respect to their leaders.  It draws attention to the officer and on a base, you can clearly see it.  If there’s a group of enlisted walking down the sidewalk and an officer approaches, the second that first salute goes up, they all go up.  To acknowledge his stature as a leader.  To honor him with the respect he deserves.

That’s also why military don’t salute officers in combat/danger zones.  Because you draw attention to the person being saluted… who then gets identified as a prime target for an enemy sniper.

There are some exceptions though.  There have been times when an officer will initiate a salute to a group of enlisted men and women… when they’ve done something worthy of being honored.  The officer will salute those troops to thank them… to show his respect for all their hard work and effort and support.  To draw attention to them and their accomplishments.

See… a salute focuses attention on someone being honored.  It focuses attention on someone other than the person initiating the salute.  By the actual letter of the law by Rule 9-2-1d, Adrian Hillburn had every right to salute the Kansas State fans in the stands.  He had every right to honor them and show his respect for their hard work and effort and support.  He had every right to give those diehard fans the attention they deserved.

And as we can plainly see, the NCAA is establishing its right to snub those fans.  To piss on them while they’re freezing in the stands watching a game they paid to be at.  Money which goes to keeping the NCAA fat with cash… and fan eyeballs that go to helping the NCAA keep all those TV deals and endorsements.  The NCAA should be saluting fans every single game… but with actions like this and interpretations of rules like this, they’re just flipping the fans a real Bronx Salute.