#8-minute freewrite

[irarelypostanything]

In a Constant Trance

The majority of people, just by the way the bell curve works, are somewhere close to average intelligence.  At work, most people are close to the average.  In games, most people are close to the average.  Yet by the combined result of western cultural values or the media or philosophy or whatever, most of us think that there’s nothing more terrifying than being average.

So some people pretend to be worse than average.  That’s more special than being ordinary.

So I lose myself in TV series like Billions, and Game of Thrones, and House of Cards.  Those characters converse the way I imagine ancient knights or samurai used to fight - violently, with talent, knowing that every action they made could be a win or fatal.  Like most people, I prefer watching TV to reading books.  It’s generally known that reading is better for the mind.  Maybe many, many years ago, people argued that reading was bad for the mind and memorizing stories was best.  Maybe they didn’t have the science to back up their claims, but they felt they just understood this in the soul.

There’s this fantasy.  It’s enticing.  It’s this alternate universe in which everything matters, in which nothing happens by accident.  And we’re the stars.  If the writing is good, it doesn’t even really matter what they’re doing.

Are they programmers?  Are they stock traders?  Are they politicians, or normal office workers, or are you going to show me a great TV series about people who basically work at the equivalent of Walmart and still tell a story with an amazing level of compassion and wit?  It’s good to have an imagination.  I think the ability to imagine is the greatest thing human beings have.

It’s just that sometimes I feel like I don’t get to imagine things for myself, anymore.  I’m so stuck in that trance of filling my head with whatever the TV show of the moment reveals, I never take the time to…

...as cliche and as cheesy as it sounds…

Write my own story.

[irarelypostanything]

There’s this episode in the “Modern Love” podcast - it’s about a woman who’s lesbian, but she doesn’t know it yet.  She flirts with a guy who has a prosthetic leg.  They go on the best date (with a man) she’s ever had.  Then, for reasons that are glossed over, she ends up dating another man and leaving him behind.

The prosthetic leg was removed because of cancer.  She ends up inviting him to a party.  He knows she’s dating someone else.  She waits for her to be alone, gives her a gorgeous jewel, and then says, “You have my blessing.”

Two months later, he dies.

NYTimes say they picked up the story because it’s compelling how much she blames herself for the story.  I understand that.  She said she understands that all these decades later, she doesn’t realize how special he was.

I can’t help but wonder - is it that simple?

I mean, maybe she’s right.  Maybe he was a great guy.  Or maybe he knew that when you say goodbye to someone who’s broken your heart, a smile and an act of goodwill, with no apparent ulterior motive or malice, can hurt more than any insult ever could.  Maybe he knew that the break-ups that end with an argument are actually relatively easy to get over.  But if it ends with something wonderful, the pain can take a much longer time to heal.

Maybe he knew that death was the final exit, leaving her to search endlessly for the meaning behind a man she could never talk to or touch or meet again.  Maybe he knew that someone dead, in memory, can haunt a person forever.

Probably he didn’t.  Probably she’s right, and he was a great guy, and he deserved so much more.

But I don’t know if it’s quite so simple.

[irarelypostanything]

If this was Singapore, I might be hitting up the night markets right now.  I hear the meat and fish is good.  I’ve certainly been to night markets before, but something like that must be a sight to behold.  I’d like to try it.  Maybe one day.

If this was San Francisco, I might be at a bar right now.  The burger would be three times more expensive there.  A tea shop would be in order to sober up.  We’d take a ride share car back, since very few people I know actually drive downtown in San Francisco, but it might be nice.  That city feels like money to me.  Some parts of it, the familiar parts, don’t.  Those upscale bars do.

If this was New York City, maybe I’d be at a coffee shop.  If this was Tokyo, maybe I’d be looking at the view.  Tonight it’s just me and the computer, but it’s not like it wouldn’t ever be that in a different place.  I miss the big city, but I also don’t.  I like being able to drive and I like not paying crazy prices just to live close to work, but it’s funny for me to think about how, for an introvert like myself, the big city is sometimes better.

You can lose yourself in a crowd.  A thousand people.  A hundred thousand.  If someone is rude to you then it’s just the atmosphere, but if someone is kind to you then it’s like finding one fish in a sea.  I kind of miss the rush.  I also don’t.  Crowded buses in a big city are the stuff of nightmares.

We’ve found so much out here.  You wouldn’t expect it right away.  I found a little family-owned pizza shop that’s the best I’ve ever had.  We all found this little hole-in-the-wall BBQ place, and it has the best ribs.  Period.  Hands-down.

We don’t miss places.  We miss people in places.  We miss those we got to share those places with, and when we’re away then we’re also away from them.  If I had you here, who would need the city lights, the crowded square, the massive shopping center?  If I had you here, who would need a statue to take pictures of or a massive “golden” bridge?

I don’t know if I’m going to be here forever.  The big city is starting to sound more and more appealing, but so are different small towns.  I don’t know if I’m going to be here forever.

But when I go, I’m sure going to miss you.

[irarelypostanything]

Rick and Morty - Rick’s Mortality

Yes, that’s mortality...not morality.

I know JelloApocalypse has roasted Tumblr users (that video was one of my favorites, to be honest), but the last minute of his latest video really stuck out to me (putting the link at the bottom).  As he puts it, Rick and Morty will have you laughing until it punches you in the gut with an obscure song and a poignant scene.

I’m mostly thinking of Rick’s attempted suicide, but I would argue that endings like that are relatively rare in the series.  More often, we get an ending that makes us laugh and then question it later on.  The aliens who forced Rick into a simulation, for example, did not seem all bad--their boss was normalized when he apologized to his staff and then revealed that their families were on board.  In classic Rick and Morty fashion, everyone died in a second.

*

JelloApocalypse captured something that I think the show has only addressed subtly: Rick is a grandfather and Morty is a grandson, so the natural expectation is that Rick is going to die first.  In a typical family show, that would be the driving theme.  Rick would want to impart some wisdom, share quality time, and then give Morty the means to continue his legacy.

We get a hint of that.  In Rick’s near sacrifice, he asks that Rick be “good, and better than him” before accepting his fate.  I think the audience gets so jaded by Rick’s antics sometimes that scenes like this strike a chord. 

Is Rick going to live forever?  Maybe.  I find it interesting that he does’t express more interest in immortality, given his age.  His attempt to become a younger version of himself fails, and he expresses little interest in taking it up again.  Maybe he doesn’t have to worry about things like health problems and slowing down, so death isn’t a concern.

Or maybe...and this is more likely...he couldn’t care less about immortality.  Life is long enough as it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_h062haCH0

[irarelypostanything]

Go your own way

I’ve written it so many times that I’m sure I never fully took it to my heart myself, but go your own way.  You don’t need to wait for approval from your boss, from whatever perceived authority figure you have, from what you perceive to be “society.”  Just go your own way.

I guess my only contribution to the old thought now is that I spent some time looking through self-improvement blogs.  They have merit.  They go over tasks, in detail, that are scientifically proven to lead to success.  Visualizations.  Reading autobiographies of famous people.  On and on and on it goes, and you’re going to meet a thousand different people who have unsolicited advice on how to best live your life.

But it’s your life.  It sounds obvious, but inside everyone is the collective residue of expectation.  Only by examining yourself, not solely through their advice but your own experience, can you really understand what works for you.  And it goes for everything, from things as trivial as what your ideal work environment is to what you should be working on to begin with.  And what your values are.  And where family is prioritized, and other important things like that.  It’s you.  You know you.

You might find things about yourself that seem totally crazy to the rest of the world.  You might find that you enjoy reading a book more than going to a party, or that you honestly feel you were wired to enjoy working more than resting.  Maybe that’s not true.  Maybe it’s something else.

You’ll find lots of motivational advice on how you should radically change your life.  And always, it’s just a guiding point laid out by a well-intentioned “guru,” like a signpost on the road you can choose whether or not to follow.

Only you know if the path they point toward is the one you really want to go on.  So just go your own way.

[irarelypostanything]

Creative Writing Thoughts - There really is no book like “The Pale King,” by David Foster Wallace

I’ve written about this book before--it’s 500 pages, the subject is boredom, there isn’t a coherent plot, almost all the characters work for the IRS...and the book is compelling.  It’s hard to explain why.

Maybe the saddest, or maybe the best thing about the human condition is that we’ll never know the thoughts of one another.  If we could have our thoughts read and recorded and condensed into a database, would we want to?  Maybe we’d find out we have 95% more anxiety than your average person.  Maybe we’d find out that we think about things that are 70% more random than the thoughts of your average five-year-old.

What The Pale King does particularly well is it manages to do stream of consciousness without being extremely confusing.  There are lots of different characters, but the ones who stand out are a fictionalized version of the author himself, and Sylvanshine.

Sylvanshine is this insecure, stressed, anxiety-ridden man who takes business trips and frequently tries to find ways to pass the CPA.  That’s really relatable.  Not only is it the same story as a few million people, but the chapters on him manage to do a pretty good job of just writing about normal thoughts while also somehow being compelling.  I mean, he rides a plane.  He contemplates what to eat before he arrives at his hotel.  It sounds really boring, but his thoughts lapse back to insecurity about work, insecurity about where he is in life, and dreams of where he might be so much that it makes us really care about him.

And then, completely out of the blue, we get character pieces of a few more important people, including a devoted Christian who has to decide whether to be with his girlfriend during an abortion, and two unnamed IRS workers who think of a really interesting conversation topic.

This book is an experience, and I don’t think any book I’ve ever found truly reflects the experience of growing up in modern-day society quite like The Pale King.

I wish David Foster Wallace had had the chance to write an updated novel in the days of smart phones, but that’s a wish that shall go unfulfilled.

[irarelypostanything]

Software Thoughts - the one bad programmer on every team

Many...maybe lots of software engineer teams have one programmer who’s significantly worse than the rest.  This programmer isn’t on a wavelength with the others.  This programmer has only a shallow understanding of the rest of the team and what the objectives are.  This programmer makes weaker contributions, demonstrates less knowledge, and is just generally less useful than everyone else.

A really popular question on Quora, with a few thousand likes, is what to do in the event that this programmer is you.

The mature answer, and by far the most popular one, is that being the worst is actually an opportunity in disguise.  As long as your company isn’t actively firing the lowest performer on every team, it’s sort of the wrong premise.  It doesn’t matter how you are compared to the rest, what really matters is if you can improve.

Assuming you don’t work at Intel, anyway.

It raises some interesting questions, though.  Is it really a good thing to be the worst?  By all counts, probably not.  Probably what it means is that you should go somewhere else, maybe change your approach a little bit.  And it doesn’t exactly raise your confidence if you consistently feel like you’re a lot less useful than the rest of the team.

Here’s the good part, though: There are a hundred million ways to improve.  Studies show that the most frustrating thing experienced engineers dislike in less experienced engineers is incompetence--being a jerk doesn’t matter to most people as much as being incompetent.  But the good news there is that you can actually work on it.  Easier to learn a new programming language than to become a fundamentally different person.

Unless that programming language happens to be Clojure.

[irarelypostanything]

Software Thoughts - Trust

So it’s probably going to go down like this: You’re a new hire software engineer, you’ve never been in the field before (except maybe as an intern who did important but fairly self-contained things), and you’re face-to-face with a room full of people who have been coding together and without you for years.  It’s terrifying.  You want to run everything by them because you’re unsure of yourself, you take their words as absolute truth, and you’re devastated when your ideas are shot down.

You either compensate for your fear by acting extremely insecure, or by acting with exaggerated confidence.

In any case, time will pass.  You’ll start to get the hang of things.  You’ll start to figure out the little nuances of how this particular company does things.  And still, you’ll be fairly new.  You’ll be surrounded by people who have been software engineers for 10, 20, maybe even 30 years.

They’ll have some pretty strong opinions about things.  Some of them, when you ask a question, will act like it’s the stupidest thing they’ve ever heard and proceed to give you a 12-point PowerPoint presentation, improvised, on why the very thing you’re suggesting is completely absurd.  Sometimes, even when they’re nice, they’ll shoot your ideas down.

And sometimes, probably most of the time, they’re right.  They’ve done this before.  The experience is so vast, it’s almost comical.  They can give you advice on how to fix your bug because they’ve seen 1200 variations of it.  They can tell you which person to go to for support because of the last 396 similar situations.

What they provide for you, as potential mentors, is experience.  What you provide for them, as a new person, are two fresh eyes and a lack of the assumptions they’ve built up.

This isn’t creative writing.  This isn’t fine art.  If you can prototype something that proves them wrong, they will have no choice but to listen.  Maybe you found it out because you’re actually a genius.  Maybe you found it out because you’re already smarter than them.

Or maybe you just got really lucky, and unlike them you had the time to try out that one overlooked solution posted three weeks ago that only has 3 likes on StackOverflow.

Software engineering is alive.  It constantly changes.  Everyone is rushing to learn the next big thing.  And things update so fast.  Solutions are posted, documentation changes, and in one instant someone rushes a software update and everyone is rushing back and forth trying to keep the pace.

And here you are, ready to start, and you’ve had some time to study things from a distance and now you have a chance to prove yourself.

So good luck.  I hope you make a choice you’re happy with, congratulations, and I know you’re going to go far.