I spend a lot of time struggling with the linearity of others. They want to hit every point from A to Z. I go from V to L to A to U to Z and skip all the rest. What's more, as an INTP I inherently understand and like to build systems, but I find that if I have to live inside one of those systems I have created it strangles me. I rebel against the rigid walls I've built.
I know that my designs work and do what they are intended, but when it comes down to the moment I find that I will not conform to the system. The dichotomy of the situation lends itself to a host of ironic situations. Right now on my desk I have a guide for how to do projects, it covers every detail of project management that I have learned over the years. And yet, as I look at it and the projects in front of me I know that I am not likely to use the guide as I wrote it. I designed it for linear thinkers, not me.
Of course that makes sense, why would I design something for me when my entire life has been designing systems for other personality types? Unfortunately, now my career is changing (again) and I really do need these new systems for me.
The concept of kits seems to lend itself to this. Years ago I realized it was silly for me to have a "perfect" kit or toolbox for every job. That lent itself to massive amounts of duplication (do I need a hammer for carpentry and a separate one for picture hanging and a third for pounding stakes in the garden?). So I started to break my kits into broader categories that allowed some cross over. To add some humor to it I gave them silly names. Now I have a shelf of "pounders" in my workshop. When I need to pound something I can go to that shelf and select just the right hammer for the job at hand (or the right hammer for the thumb at job).
I'm wondering if the same needs to be true for how I work in the office. Maybe I am spending far too much time trying to build perfect kits for everything rather than putting my "tools" where they need to be in a general sense. I've been building entire guides for doing things rather than small crib sheets for how to do a small thing.
Something inside me seems worried about making absolutely sure my kits are complete, but as I think about it it is impossible to have a complete kit for projects without knowing every possible project that may come into my life. Instead, I can break my kits down to tasks that may be part of a project. If I need it then the tool is there, if not then it can be safely ignored for this project.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Friday, August 16, 2013
Monday, July 29, 2013
The delicate balance of aloneness
This morning I woke up and spent a little time considering the sermon from church yesterday. I was in a pretty decent state of mind. I was trying to get my head straightened-out so I could have a productive day. Then my wife walked into our bedroom, "Can I ask you a question?"
I always feel a bit of trepidation when she asks that. I know it means there's some emotional payload coming. She gets up hours before I do and by the time I'm starting my day she has a list of items to talk to me about, things she wants to get done, and so on. We've had a few good arguments over it all. She's tried to wait a bit, but she has horrible timing. For a while she tried just hunting me down when I was in the shower. Then she tried sending me emotion-laden text messages while I was at work. Then she'd try to dump things on me as soon as I got home. Of course, by the time I am feeling balanced out in the evening she's too tired to talk and falls asleep. Our clocks couldn't be more out of sync if we tried.
Sure enough, she asked this morning, why I am "always" so hard on my oldest son? Apparently he had his feelings hurt when I told him to go out last night, put the lawnmower in the shed, pick up his two bicycles, put them away, and then close the door on the shed. Of course they had all been sitting out for days...in the rain.
As soon as the question was asked the mental walls flew up. The delicate balance of healthy mindset was gone. My train of thought was not only derailed, but the bridge was blown out from underneath it.
Suddenly I was no longer trying to have a good day that avoided moral pitfalls and was truly productive. Now I was worrying over how bad of a father I am. Is my son sitting there thinking his father hates him? Does my wife think that I'm driving him away from us? What about the other kids? Are they feeling the same way?
My morning shower is usually a refuge for me. I slowly come to terms with what the day is going to bring and try to get a bead on how I'm going to go about handling the list of things I have to do. I lost that too. I just stood there wondering if anything I do is worthwhile.
By the time I made it to work the day was destroyed. I spent lunch with my son and daughter trying to express to them that I love them by just spending time with them. It never feels like it's enough.
I was so close to having a good day. I almost had the morning just perfect. I had almost the perfect amount of solitude. Then it all got blown up. I can't even express how frustrated I am.
I always feel a bit of trepidation when she asks that. I know it means there's some emotional payload coming. She gets up hours before I do and by the time I'm starting my day she has a list of items to talk to me about, things she wants to get done, and so on. We've had a few good arguments over it all. She's tried to wait a bit, but she has horrible timing. For a while she tried just hunting me down when I was in the shower. Then she tried sending me emotion-laden text messages while I was at work. Then she'd try to dump things on me as soon as I got home. Of course, by the time I am feeling balanced out in the evening she's too tired to talk and falls asleep. Our clocks couldn't be more out of sync if we tried.
Sure enough, she asked this morning, why I am "always" so hard on my oldest son? Apparently he had his feelings hurt when I told him to go out last night, put the lawnmower in the shed, pick up his two bicycles, put them away, and then close the door on the shed. Of course they had all been sitting out for days...in the rain.
As soon as the question was asked the mental walls flew up. The delicate balance of healthy mindset was gone. My train of thought was not only derailed, but the bridge was blown out from underneath it.
My morning shower is usually a refuge for me. I slowly come to terms with what the day is going to bring and try to get a bead on how I'm going to go about handling the list of things I have to do. I lost that too. I just stood there wondering if anything I do is worthwhile.
By the time I made it to work the day was destroyed. I spent lunch with my son and daughter trying to express to them that I love them by just spending time with them. It never feels like it's enough.
I was so close to having a good day. I almost had the morning just perfect. I had almost the perfect amount of solitude. Then it all got blown up. I can't even express how frustrated I am.
A Side of Turkey
It's been a while since I did any fiction writing, but a few of the people at The Refuge have been talking about it and I decided to start up again. Having been out of the mix for a while I struggled to find an idea that I felt was worthwhile. Fortunately, an article online was helpful and suggested just spending a lot of time asking, "What if?" It was late at night and there was a bright flash outside that lit the house through multiple windows. It only took me a couple moments to realize that it was a lightning bolt from a passing storm. I asked myself, but what if it wasn't...
No, he hadn’t been dreaming. It was something else, but what? He wished his wife would stop snoring and junior wasn’t jammed in between them like a radiant heater stuck on high. Maybe that was it. Maybe the kid had kicked him. Great, kicked awake at, good grief, three-forty-eight in the morning with a presentation to make tomorrow for the Wilkinson account.
Taking a deep breath he closed his eyes again. Maybe he’d still be able to squeeze in a couple more hours before the wife’s hair dryer blasted him awake. And then he could see the inside of his eyelids. It was one of those moments where a person isn't quite sure what they are seeing, but know they had seen it before. Suddenly the red world of flesh and capillaries disappeared. He felt the bed shudder a bit beneath him.
Wide awake now his eyes snapped open again. What was that?! Stepping to the window he peered out into the darkness, except it was not dark. The sky was brilliantly lit with greens, whites and blues. Thousands upon thousands of streaks racing all in the same direction. Or rather out of the same direction - a bright light hanging low over the horizon and flying out of it the streamers of light. Suddenly one of them flashed like lightning and disappeared. There was a dull rumble that he could feel more than hear.
He stared at the spectacle for a while and thought about waking his wife, but realized if he did then junior would wake up too and then they would never get him back to bed. The meteors, and how could they be anything but meteors, were not decreasing in any way, in fact they seemed to be ever so slightly increasing. He decided he might as well give up on sleep and go watch the show. Maybe even see if there was anything on the television about it.
“...completely unlike anything we have ever seen before. This is nothing like the Leonid or Perseid showers in November and August! This is absolutely massive...,” the scientist turned cable television personality nearly shouted. The guy was not one of those real scientists, he just knew about as much as some high school teacher and got himself a spot on the evening news a few years ago talking about methane explosions or something. Now he was suddenly an expert on meteor showers.
“So, what you’re saying is this is a once in a lifetime event?” asked the woman who was far too chipper for this early in the morning. Must be on Cocaine, he thought.
“No! I’m saying this is unprecedented!” the fake scientist was getting shrill, “That bright dot is a comet and we’re looking right up it’s tail...,” he kept droning on about the moon and approach angles and slingshots and a bunch of other stuff.
Outside the light show was brighter than before. In fact that big light in the sky that he now knew to be a comet was much bigger. The thunder was growing louder too. It seemed that the comet had moved higher above the horizon. As he watched it he realized that it was growing, and quite fast too.
The slower meteors, if they could be called slow, were now more obvious to him as they flashed and exploded. The comet was filling half the sky and the rumble was turning into a low roar.
“....near Oklahoma...” he barely heard the t.v. nerd say. Well, maybe I’ll get interviewed in the morning. Couldn’t hurt to have old man Wilkinson see me on television when’s he’s eating his egg whites and...
At that very moment the comet grew insanely huge and the man felt something like hot rain searing his skin while a pungent scent attacked his nose. Standing in his backyard in his boxers while staring into the light his last thoughts, the thoughts of the first man ever to physically touch a comet, were of turkey bacon and a blue-green screaming demon.
A Side of Turkey
He opened his eyes and sat staring into the dark wondering why exactly he was awake. He lay motionless listening. The box fan in the window hummed on the low setting but there were no odd noises. Maybe it was a dream. He had always been the sort to have bad dreams. There was the one with the giant wolf and then there was the other with the screaming demon head. He shivered a bit at the thought of that one. Why the demon was a pale blue-green he never could figure out, but it scared the hell out of him.No, he hadn’t been dreaming. It was something else, but what? He wished his wife would stop snoring and junior wasn’t jammed in between them like a radiant heater stuck on high. Maybe that was it. Maybe the kid had kicked him. Great, kicked awake at, good grief, three-forty-eight in the morning with a presentation to make tomorrow for the Wilkinson account.
Taking a deep breath he closed his eyes again. Maybe he’d still be able to squeeze in a couple more hours before the wife’s hair dryer blasted him awake. And then he could see the inside of his eyelids. It was one of those moments where a person isn't quite sure what they are seeing, but know they had seen it before. Suddenly the red world of flesh and capillaries disappeared. He felt the bed shudder a bit beneath him.
Wide awake now his eyes snapped open again. What was that?! Stepping to the window he peered out into the darkness, except it was not dark. The sky was brilliantly lit with greens, whites and blues. Thousands upon thousands of streaks racing all in the same direction. Or rather out of the same direction - a bright light hanging low over the horizon and flying out of it the streamers of light. Suddenly one of them flashed like lightning and disappeared. There was a dull rumble that he could feel more than hear.
He stared at the spectacle for a while and thought about waking his wife, but realized if he did then junior would wake up too and then they would never get him back to bed. The meteors, and how could they be anything but meteors, were not decreasing in any way, in fact they seemed to be ever so slightly increasing. He decided he might as well give up on sleep and go watch the show. Maybe even see if there was anything on the television about it.
“...completely unlike anything we have ever seen before. This is nothing like the Leonid or Perseid showers in November and August! This is absolutely massive...,” the scientist turned cable television personality nearly shouted. The guy was not one of those real scientists, he just knew about as much as some high school teacher and got himself a spot on the evening news a few years ago talking about methane explosions or something. Now he was suddenly an expert on meteor showers.
“So, what you’re saying is this is a once in a lifetime event?” asked the woman who was far too chipper for this early in the morning. Must be on Cocaine, he thought.
“No! I’m saying this is unprecedented!” the fake scientist was getting shrill, “That bright dot is a comet and we’re looking right up it’s tail...,” he kept droning on about the moon and approach angles and slingshots and a bunch of other stuff.
Outside the light show was brighter than before. In fact that big light in the sky that he now knew to be a comet was much bigger. The thunder was growing louder too. It seemed that the comet had moved higher above the horizon. As he watched it he realized that it was growing, and quite fast too.
The slower meteors, if they could be called slow, were now more obvious to him as they flashed and exploded. The comet was filling half the sky and the rumble was turning into a low roar.
“....near Oklahoma...” he barely heard the t.v. nerd say. Well, maybe I’ll get interviewed in the morning. Couldn’t hurt to have old man Wilkinson see me on television when’s he’s eating his egg whites and...
At that very moment the comet grew insanely huge and the man felt something like hot rain searing his skin while a pungent scent attacked his nose. Standing in his backyard in his boxers while staring into the light his last thoughts, the thoughts of the first man ever to physically touch a comet, were of turkey bacon and a blue-green screaming demon.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
INTP Experience Down
It looks like Jason ran into a problem with his domain name. He's working on getting it resolved and apologizes for the outage, but if you want to get to the articles on the main site you can go here: http://whub34.webhostinghub.com/~intpex5/HomePage.php for the moment.
Monday, July 15, 2013
That crawling feeling
I really thought I was on the up-swing, but clearly I'm not. Recent news that one of my children will need a major surgery, continued pressure at work, and the return of my recurring pain has put me right about where I was before I crashed.
The oddest part for me is the crawling feeling on my skin. When I get like this my body becomes hyper-attuned. Every sound, smell, taste, and especially touch is heightened. I don't want anything touching me except maybe the flowing water of a warm shower. Walking down the hall the sound of my pant legs popping was grating.
Yesterday I did everything I could to avoid human contact. People asked me at church how I was doing and I avoided the question. How can I explain to them what I'm feeling if I can't figure out myself? My wife has started to key-into the fact that I'm not doing well, but I don't know what to tell her either. She asks me if I want to talk, and I do, but I don't know what to say or how to express myself.
I feel like I am caught in a strong current being pulled around, bounced off of things, and unable to rest. It's just a constant swirl.
I just want to hide. Burry myself in the side of a mountain, deep within its heart where there is no sound and the world cannot touch me. I want to be able to just let my mind unwrap everything on its own. To rest.
The oddest part for me is the crawling feeling on my skin. When I get like this my body becomes hyper-attuned. Every sound, smell, taste, and especially touch is heightened. I don't want anything touching me except maybe the flowing water of a warm shower. Walking down the hall the sound of my pant legs popping was grating.
Yesterday I did everything I could to avoid human contact. People asked me at church how I was doing and I avoided the question. How can I explain to them what I'm feeling if I can't figure out myself? My wife has started to key-into the fact that I'm not doing well, but I don't know what to tell her either. She asks me if I want to talk, and I do, but I don't know what to say or how to express myself.
I feel like I am caught in a strong current being pulled around, bounced off of things, and unable to rest. It's just a constant swirl.
I just want to hide. Burry myself in the side of a mountain, deep within its heart where there is no sound and the world cannot touch me. I want to be able to just let my mind unwrap everything on its own. To rest.
Monday, July 8, 2013
The INTP and Work
Following my recent crash and burn I've been trying to sort through what happened, why it happened, and how I can improve. One of the key topics that I have hit on is how I have been viewing work. I'm still processing through this, but this discussion on The Refuge helped me start to clarify some of my thoughts. Last night I was responding to the thread and got on a roll about what works best for an INTP in the workplace. A lot of this seems to be me explaining to myself where I went off track...
I see work in two ways. One is a way for me to pay my bills. For that, one job is just as good as the next if the dollars add up. Any extra dollars above what I need to pay my bills is frankly a waste of time. I don't love money or having fancy things so pay is just about keeping the bill collectors off my phone.
The other way I see work (if I am being clear-headed) is as a way for me to challenge myself, to create, to solve problems, and generally do what I want to do. Sure, my employer has a job description for me and expectations and all that, however what I really work for is my secret agenda and I use their money to do it. Now I'm not talking about stealing from them. What I mean is that I see it as an old fashioned bargain. They want something (labor to make them money by doing certain tasks) and I want something (to do what I like to do). We strike a bargain - they pay me and I do the work they need done. However, the reason I work is for me, not for them and not for money. I want to be intellectually challenged. I want to solve hard problems. I want to create order out of disorder. I want to learn new things. I want to be creative. I want to make discoveries. I want to be an INTP. So I work for me, not for them. I sell them some of the fruit of my labor, but the rest of it is for my pleasure. They know this and they're happy to get what they get.
I think of it like a young man in a small farming town. What if he's forced to become a farmer but what he truly loves is being a mechanical engineer? He might be forced to be a sod buster due to economics and education, but guess what he's going to end up doing? If he's on the ball and does what he wants then he ends up making a better tractor or designing a better thresher. He knows he has to sell vegetables to pay the bills, but what he really works at is what he wants and loves to do. Soon he designs a way of sorting vegetables, so he doesn't have to do that tedious job anymore, which will let him spend more time designing machinery and improving things. Then he goes to his next challenge. Sure his customers still think of him as a farmer and still expect him to produce vegetables. He does that and they pay him for it (and he pays those stinking bill collectors), but what they think and expect doesn't define what he is, what he wants, and ultimately what he does. He is a mechanical engineer.
I once read a psychologist who talked about going into a factory. It was a dreary environment - one of those places where workers are little more than machines with slightly more dexterity and a lot less job security. It was a mind numbing environment that epitomized the industrial revolution. Well, there was one guy there who was one of the happiest people the psychologist had ever seen. He got to work a bit early every day, set out his tools just so, and eagerly waited for the whistle and the first bucket of parts to arrive. His job was to put parts together in a certain way to make a product. He would make the same product day after day. When that whistle blew and the parts hit his bench he smiled happily and charged into his work. At the end of the shift he would carefully clean his workbench, put his tools away and walk out of the plant whistling while everyone else was dragging. How in the world could the guy be happy? The psychologist spoke to the foreman and asked about the man. Was he a slacker? Is that why he was happy? Was he a new guy? Was he a moron? Was he wealthy and just did this to feel like one of the people? The foreman responded that no, the guy wasn't a layabout, had been with the company for years, and he wasn't wealthy. In fact he was the top performer and constantly produced more than anyone else. So the psychologist went and spoke to the man to find out what the deal was. He found that the guy had designed his job into a personal agenda. He knew that he was stuck in that factory since it was the only game in town, but he was a guy who was competitive and loved challenging himself. So he started seeing how many pieces he could make in a shift. Eventually he realized that he couldn't improve his count unless he reduced his number of motions, set all the pieces in a particular way, kept all the tools in exactly the right spot, and stayed perfectly focused on what he was doing. Day after day he challenged himself to do better in that mundane job and refined his work, his tools, and his environment. Everyone else around him was miserable (including the foreman) but this guy had found a way to do what he wanted and he was happy. It wasn't a job anymore.
That's why I asked you what it is you want. I don't like going to a job either. It's pointless except for paying the power bill. However, if I can go do what I want to do and strike a bargain with someone else to get them to pay for it then it's not pointless anymore and it's not a job. It becomes an enjoyable activity for me even though once in a while I may have to drag my cart of vegetables to the market. If I set up my job that way then I don't have to be significant to the world, I don't have to be a rising star, I don't have to even like the people around me. It doesn't matter, because I am doing what I want to do. It just takes some thought to realize what that is and a little creativity to figure out a way to do what I want in the framework of my situation. I have to reassess every once in a while since things change, but the overriding question that I have to keep coming back to is simple - what is it I really enjoy and want to do and how can I do it right now?
I see work in two ways. One is a way for me to pay my bills. For that, one job is just as good as the next if the dollars add up. Any extra dollars above what I need to pay my bills is frankly a waste of time. I don't love money or having fancy things so pay is just about keeping the bill collectors off my phone.
The other way I see work (if I am being clear-headed) is as a way for me to challenge myself, to create, to solve problems, and generally do what I want to do. Sure, my employer has a job description for me and expectations and all that, however what I really work for is my secret agenda and I use their money to do it. Now I'm not talking about stealing from them. What I mean is that I see it as an old fashioned bargain. They want something (labor to make them money by doing certain tasks) and I want something (to do what I like to do). We strike a bargain - they pay me and I do the work they need done. However, the reason I work is for me, not for them and not for money. I want to be intellectually challenged. I want to solve hard problems. I want to create order out of disorder. I want to learn new things. I want to be creative. I want to make discoveries. I want to be an INTP. So I work for me, not for them. I sell them some of the fruit of my labor, but the rest of it is for my pleasure. They know this and they're happy to get what they get.
I think of it like a young man in a small farming town. What if he's forced to become a farmer but what he truly loves is being a mechanical engineer? He might be forced to be a sod buster due to economics and education, but guess what he's going to end up doing? If he's on the ball and does what he wants then he ends up making a better tractor or designing a better thresher. He knows he has to sell vegetables to pay the bills, but what he really works at is what he wants and loves to do. Soon he designs a way of sorting vegetables, so he doesn't have to do that tedious job anymore, which will let him spend more time designing machinery and improving things. Then he goes to his next challenge. Sure his customers still think of him as a farmer and still expect him to produce vegetables. He does that and they pay him for it (and he pays those stinking bill collectors), but what they think and expect doesn't define what he is, what he wants, and ultimately what he does. He is a mechanical engineer.
I once read a psychologist who talked about going into a factory. It was a dreary environment - one of those places where workers are little more than machines with slightly more dexterity and a lot less job security. It was a mind numbing environment that epitomized the industrial revolution. Well, there was one guy there who was one of the happiest people the psychologist had ever seen. He got to work a bit early every day, set out his tools just so, and eagerly waited for the whistle and the first bucket of parts to arrive. His job was to put parts together in a certain way to make a product. He would make the same product day after day. When that whistle blew and the parts hit his bench he smiled happily and charged into his work. At the end of the shift he would carefully clean his workbench, put his tools away and walk out of the plant whistling while everyone else was dragging. How in the world could the guy be happy? The psychologist spoke to the foreman and asked about the man. Was he a slacker? Is that why he was happy? Was he a new guy? Was he a moron? Was he wealthy and just did this to feel like one of the people? The foreman responded that no, the guy wasn't a layabout, had been with the company for years, and he wasn't wealthy. In fact he was the top performer and constantly produced more than anyone else. So the psychologist went and spoke to the man to find out what the deal was. He found that the guy had designed his job into a personal agenda. He knew that he was stuck in that factory since it was the only game in town, but he was a guy who was competitive and loved challenging himself. So he started seeing how many pieces he could make in a shift. Eventually he realized that he couldn't improve his count unless he reduced his number of motions, set all the pieces in a particular way, kept all the tools in exactly the right spot, and stayed perfectly focused on what he was doing. Day after day he challenged himself to do better in that mundane job and refined his work, his tools, and his environment. Everyone else around him was miserable (including the foreman) but this guy had found a way to do what he wanted and he was happy. It wasn't a job anymore.
That's why I asked you what it is you want. I don't like going to a job either. It's pointless except for paying the power bill. However, if I can go do what I want to do and strike a bargain with someone else to get them to pay for it then it's not pointless anymore and it's not a job. It becomes an enjoyable activity for me even though once in a while I may have to drag my cart of vegetables to the market. If I set up my job that way then I don't have to be significant to the world, I don't have to be a rising star, I don't have to even like the people around me. It doesn't matter, because I am doing what I want to do. It just takes some thought to realize what that is and a little creativity to figure out a way to do what I want in the framework of my situation. I have to reassess every once in a while since things change, but the overriding question that I have to keep coming back to is simple - what is it I really enjoy and want to do and how can I do it right now?
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
By tomorrow...
Yesterday I crashed and burned. Bad. It all just came apart at once. I left work and went for a drive. Eventually I ended up down by the Snake River. It was a place that I had visited numerous times throughout the years and I occasionally find myself drawn there when things get tough.
I stood there for a while gazing into the water and watching the massive trout rising below to sip insects from the surface. The sound of falling water was in the background and the pungent scent of old river water filled my head.
Nearby is an old power station. There used to be two of them that competed to provide power to the nearby town. They sat on opposite sides of the river and occasionally the operators would take pot shots at each other with .22 rimfire rifles leaving bullet scars on their stone walls. Now the area is overshadowed by a huge dam with massive turbines the likes of which those old boys never could have imagined.
Today I took the day off and then took another drive. I went in a different direction and ended up on back roads I had never seen before. A sign warned "rough road" which seemed to be a signal to the roads department to just let the potholes be. I dodged around them swinging wide from one side of the road to another.
Occasionally out here you take a turn and find an old homestead. I can't help but think about the people who built them, their desire to make a good life for themselves, and then they left it all behind. Sometimes it's obvious that the old house was the original homesteader and there's another place built right next door in the 1920's or so and then another next to that built even later. This one though sat all alone in a valley.
Clearly they had put some time into it. That was a nice place back in the day and it's held up pretty well. Someone put a lot of extra work into making those gables and extra windows. But they left, so I did too.
Eventually I found myself on a long lonely road that crosses the northern edge of the Snake River plain. I had intended to go another way, but this was good enough. Eventually I saw a sign for Atomic City and hit the brakes.
It's an odd place. It quite literally sits out in the middle of nowhere. Nearby is the Idaho National Laboratory where nuclear power was first investigated by the U.S. government. It was there that the nation's first nuclear reactors were designed and built. It was there too that the first nuclear submarine was designed and tested in a huge tank some 600 miles from the ocean by Admiral Rickover. It's also the area where the first ever fatal nuclear accident occurred. That was on the Army's watch, Rickover never would have let it happen.
Atomic "City" was the first town in the world lit by nuclear power as a test by the finest engineering minds in the nation. There's almost nothing there now despite its brush with history. A race track was built for some strange reason. There's a fire station to deal with range fires and it seems that there are a couple decent houses for the folks that man it. The rest is dilapidated, empty, eternally for sale.
Things are looking a little up though. The 2010 census showed that population had increased over the last decade. The number of families in town had increased 30% to 9 and overall population had risen 16% to 29 souls. Still, it's clear they have a way to go to get back to the heydays of 1950 when 250 people lived their lives here.
To get to Atomic City you take the turn at the old Quonset hut that's been turned into a bar. It's easy to find, someone made an attempt to make it look Irish by painting a couple shamrocks on plywood. There's a paved road into town, but all the others are still dirt just as they were back in 1950 when its name was changed from Midway to the more ambitious label it still bears today.
The only thing ambitious in town today was a large turkey vulture eating dinner on the road. Some rabbit had hopped it's last.
There was at one time the Twin Buttes Bar named after the two buttes that rise to the North. I suppose that in a place like Atomic City all you could do was get well lubricated and try to avoid the burning summer heat or hide from the biting winter winds. I can't imagine how depressing it would have been to walk into that place for a cold one and then step back outside and realize that things hadn't improved.
Mysteriously a couple cars and an ancient RV are now parked in the gravel that serves as a parking lot. Where the two Fireside Pizza signs came from I couldn't guess. As with all old towns some things just kind of show up, stay, rust, and soon nobody thinks about them anymore. A few decades later they're still there.
Apparently your car could get well lubricated too...
By the time I snapped this picture someone in a fire district truck was keeping an eye on me. I guess I looked kind of suspicious. After all, who comes to visit Atomic City today?
I turned back onto the road and frightened off the giant bird again on my way back to the old highway. In my mirror I could see the vulture return happily to its meal. By tomorrow there will be nothing left.
I stood there for a while gazing into the water and watching the massive trout rising below to sip insects from the surface. The sound of falling water was in the background and the pungent scent of old river water filled my head.
Nearby is an old power station. There used to be two of them that competed to provide power to the nearby town. They sat on opposite sides of the river and occasionally the operators would take pot shots at each other with .22 rimfire rifles leaving bullet scars on their stone walls. Now the area is overshadowed by a huge dam with massive turbines the likes of which those old boys never could have imagined.
Today I took the day off and then took another drive. I went in a different direction and ended up on back roads I had never seen before. A sign warned "rough road" which seemed to be a signal to the roads department to just let the potholes be. I dodged around them swinging wide from one side of the road to another.
Occasionally out here you take a turn and find an old homestead. I can't help but think about the people who built them, their desire to make a good life for themselves, and then they left it all behind. Sometimes it's obvious that the old house was the original homesteader and there's another place built right next door in the 1920's or so and then another next to that built even later. This one though sat all alone in a valley.
Clearly they had put some time into it. That was a nice place back in the day and it's held up pretty well. Someone put a lot of extra work into making those gables and extra windows. But they left, so I did too.
Eventually I found myself on a long lonely road that crosses the northern edge of the Snake River plain. I had intended to go another way, but this was good enough. Eventually I saw a sign for Atomic City and hit the brakes.
It's an odd place. It quite literally sits out in the middle of nowhere. Nearby is the Idaho National Laboratory where nuclear power was first investigated by the U.S. government. It was there that the nation's first nuclear reactors were designed and built. It was there too that the first nuclear submarine was designed and tested in a huge tank some 600 miles from the ocean by Admiral Rickover. It's also the area where the first ever fatal nuclear accident occurred. That was on the Army's watch, Rickover never would have let it happen.
Atomic "City" was the first town in the world lit by nuclear power as a test by the finest engineering minds in the nation. There's almost nothing there now despite its brush with history. A race track was built for some strange reason. There's a fire station to deal with range fires and it seems that there are a couple decent houses for the folks that man it. The rest is dilapidated, empty, eternally for sale.
Things are looking a little up though. The 2010 census showed that population had increased over the last decade. The number of families in town had increased 30% to 9 and overall population had risen 16% to 29 souls. Still, it's clear they have a way to go to get back to the heydays of 1950 when 250 people lived their lives here.
To get to Atomic City you take the turn at the old Quonset hut that's been turned into a bar. It's easy to find, someone made an attempt to make it look Irish by painting a couple shamrocks on plywood. There's a paved road into town, but all the others are still dirt just as they were back in 1950 when its name was changed from Midway to the more ambitious label it still bears today.
The only thing ambitious in town today was a large turkey vulture eating dinner on the road. Some rabbit had hopped it's last.
There was at one time the Twin Buttes Bar named after the two buttes that rise to the North. I suppose that in a place like Atomic City all you could do was get well lubricated and try to avoid the burning summer heat or hide from the biting winter winds. I can't imagine how depressing it would have been to walk into that place for a cold one and then step back outside and realize that things hadn't improved.
Mysteriously a couple cars and an ancient RV are now parked in the gravel that serves as a parking lot. Where the two Fireside Pizza signs came from I couldn't guess. As with all old towns some things just kind of show up, stay, rust, and soon nobody thinks about them anymore. A few decades later they're still there.
Apparently your car could get well lubricated too...
By the time I snapped this picture someone in a fire district truck was keeping an eye on me. I guess I looked kind of suspicious. After all, who comes to visit Atomic City today?
I turned back onto the road and frightened off the giant bird again on my way back to the old highway. In my mirror I could see the vulture return happily to its meal. By tomorrow there will be nothing left.
Gone
Well, I did it. I got burned out. Last night after that post on The Refuge I drove off for a while and just went somewhere safe. Took today off from work to do the same thing.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Is it so bad to go mad?
One of the things I have found interesting about INTP's is the number of people who have said something along the lines of, "I seriously thought I had mental illness..." I've been there too and often, and often too often. But I have begun to wonder what it is that I am afraid of and why I don't just quit wasting time and step off the edge and into the abyss that I am so sure is there. After all, if it's not there then I can quit worrying about being insane and start worrying again about world peace, hunger, and whether or not the Rolling Stones disprove everything I have ever heard about substance abuse. If, on the other hand, the abyss really is an abyss and I really do go mad then at least I can be happy in knowing that my fears were justified and I can go about my business believing that a rock I found in the road is an alien from the Galactic Empire come to tell me that I have been selected to rule the universe from a hostel in Southeast Los Angeles.
Of course, the things that pull me back constantly are all the responsibilities and important stuff that the world tells me I should be concerned about. Not unparadoxically these are the exact same items that keep pushing me to the edge. And so back and forth I go just exactly like a madman trying to decide if the automatic door at the supermarket is out to eat him. Ergo, I am already quite mad and probably (based not completely on, but fully confirmed by the above) a raving lunatic. Strangely enough, I think the rest of the world pretty much knows this and is waiting to find out if I am the kind of lunatic who turns out to be brilliant, the weird uncle, or the guy you see on continuous live news coverage.
The last one is clearly short-term thinking and just doesn't work out for an INTP. After all, if we're going to be that kind of crazy then we're going to do it right and go into politics. Otherwise at some point a person ends up being swarmed by people in tactical gear and the social pressures of so many people screaming and yelling at us and even touching us while telling us what to do would be pretty uncomfortable. Worse, should I survive, I would have to sleep in a concrete building with a few thousand people who inherently cannot leave other people alone. So it's either that or go to inauguration balls with people of exactly the same character, but slightly better taste in clothes and fewer scruples about who they sleep with. Either way, that whole type of crazy just isn't for me.
That leaves the other two options. Now, I already have various assorted nephews and nieces who all think of me as that strange guy who's supposed to be related to them, but that they know nothing about. I suppose I could just be happy with some such small achievement and start sending them copies of my combined analysis of Tolstoy, Dr. Seuss and Nitsche for Christmas, but it doesn't seem right to leave it at that (particularly since that list of authors doesn't include anyone from the southern hemisphere). No, I have decided that if I am going to go mad then I might as well go the whole way and become brilliantly mad.
And so that's where I am at a bit past 1:00 in the morning. It's not a pretty place to be, but apparently it's where I am so who are you to judge? If you haven't gone stark bonkers yet then you're just being all theoretical which might get you published in a journal or two, but never gain you any real respect amongst we the leaders of the Galactic Empire.
So what brought all this on? Earlier tonight I was catching a documentary on Henry Ford. Actually, I caught the last third of it last night, then the first third this afternoon and the second third tonight (ah the wonders of modern television). I was struck by the fact that Ford just bit the bullet and became completely what he was. Admittedly a lot of what he was turned out to be a vindictive jerk, but that's not the part I'm talking about. I'm talking about the single-minded obsession with making one type of thing and just making it better and better. The guy was badly embarrassed in court when he seemed to think the Revolutionary War was in 1812 rather than 1776. Newspaper editors called him a joke and then went home in their Model T's to houses that would just fit into Henry's bathroom. It would seem that Henry had the better way. He picked one thing that he did well, focused it on one thing he wanted to do, and then promptly ignored all the other stuff. I suppose that if he had failed to make an inexpensive automobile and thus change the world we would have called him mad.
Then there was another snippet of a travel show where some attractive girl is wandering around Vietnam and is talking about the last emperor of that country (who's burial place is unknown because the 300 people who buried him had their heads lifted so nobody could get to the dead guy's stuff that was buried with him). This guy knew what he liked and what he liked was having 50 different meals prepared for him every day from which to choose - and by different meals every day I mean he didn't want to see the same meal twice in a year. Seems eccentric, but on the other hand I am a glutton and I'm not so sure I wouldn't have set up a similar system if given the chance.
Also tonight I saw a portion of a really bad movie with an actress who got some awards (one for apparently being simultaneously fascinated and upset by a reference to fava beans in a show that was also mentioned in one of those non-reality tv shows I happened to watch last night). In this movie she's investigating some alien phenomenon or another which causes her to be simultaneously fascinated and upset (but not enough apparently to get an award). On the screen were shown some esoteric notes filled with scribbling that looked significant, but probably was just a set designer's high school algebra notes.
Suddenly it happened, all those disjointed concepts blended together and I thought, "Well, why not just go ahead and become mad?" What I mean is, why not just do what I do even if it seems insane to everyone else and even to myself? If that means going catatonic for a few hours then so be it. If it means that I finally outfit my pickup with a camper so I can take a nap at lunchtime while blasting Tchaikovsky then why not? If it means turning my backyard into a collection of small outbuildings each resembling a shed, but each with a different purpose then I might as well start buying wood and paint. If I want to fill a couple thousand notebooks with arcane scribbling that only I understand then dammit I have every right to do so!
As INTPs we are inherently different than the majority. People simply aren't going to get us. Unfortunately, we spend huge amounts of time trying to fix that by essentially trying to fix ourselves. Well, who's to say we are the ones that need to be fixed? How do we know that we aren't the right way up?
I think in the morning I might as well go mad. I've nothing better to do...
Of course, the things that pull me back constantly are all the responsibilities and important stuff that the world tells me I should be concerned about. Not unparadoxically these are the exact same items that keep pushing me to the edge. And so back and forth I go just exactly like a madman trying to decide if the automatic door at the supermarket is out to eat him. Ergo, I am already quite mad and probably (based not completely on, but fully confirmed by the above) a raving lunatic. Strangely enough, I think the rest of the world pretty much knows this and is waiting to find out if I am the kind of lunatic who turns out to be brilliant, the weird uncle, or the guy you see on continuous live news coverage.
The last one is clearly short-term thinking and just doesn't work out for an INTP. After all, if we're going to be that kind of crazy then we're going to do it right and go into politics. Otherwise at some point a person ends up being swarmed by people in tactical gear and the social pressures of so many people screaming and yelling at us and even touching us while telling us what to do would be pretty uncomfortable. Worse, should I survive, I would have to sleep in a concrete building with a few thousand people who inherently cannot leave other people alone. So it's either that or go to inauguration balls with people of exactly the same character, but slightly better taste in clothes and fewer scruples about who they sleep with. Either way, that whole type of crazy just isn't for me.
That leaves the other two options. Now, I already have various assorted nephews and nieces who all think of me as that strange guy who's supposed to be related to them, but that they know nothing about. I suppose I could just be happy with some such small achievement and start sending them copies of my combined analysis of Tolstoy, Dr. Seuss and Nitsche for Christmas, but it doesn't seem right to leave it at that (particularly since that list of authors doesn't include anyone from the southern hemisphere). No, I have decided that if I am going to go mad then I might as well go the whole way and become brilliantly mad.
And so that's where I am at a bit past 1:00 in the morning. It's not a pretty place to be, but apparently it's where I am so who are you to judge? If you haven't gone stark bonkers yet then you're just being all theoretical which might get you published in a journal or two, but never gain you any real respect amongst we the leaders of the Galactic Empire.
So what brought all this on? Earlier tonight I was catching a documentary on Henry Ford. Actually, I caught the last third of it last night, then the first third this afternoon and the second third tonight (ah the wonders of modern television). I was struck by the fact that Ford just bit the bullet and became completely what he was. Admittedly a lot of what he was turned out to be a vindictive jerk, but that's not the part I'm talking about. I'm talking about the single-minded obsession with making one type of thing and just making it better and better. The guy was badly embarrassed in court when he seemed to think the Revolutionary War was in 1812 rather than 1776. Newspaper editors called him a joke and then went home in their Model T's to houses that would just fit into Henry's bathroom. It would seem that Henry had the better way. He picked one thing that he did well, focused it on one thing he wanted to do, and then promptly ignored all the other stuff. I suppose that if he had failed to make an inexpensive automobile and thus change the world we would have called him mad.
Then there was another snippet of a travel show where some attractive girl is wandering around Vietnam and is talking about the last emperor of that country (who's burial place is unknown because the 300 people who buried him had their heads lifted so nobody could get to the dead guy's stuff that was buried with him). This guy knew what he liked and what he liked was having 50 different meals prepared for him every day from which to choose - and by different meals every day I mean he didn't want to see the same meal twice in a year. Seems eccentric, but on the other hand I am a glutton and I'm not so sure I wouldn't have set up a similar system if given the chance.
Also tonight I saw a portion of a really bad movie with an actress who got some awards (one for apparently being simultaneously fascinated and upset by a reference to fava beans in a show that was also mentioned in one of those non-reality tv shows I happened to watch last night). In this movie she's investigating some alien phenomenon or another which causes her to be simultaneously fascinated and upset (but not enough apparently to get an award). On the screen were shown some esoteric notes filled with scribbling that looked significant, but probably was just a set designer's high school algebra notes.
Suddenly it happened, all those disjointed concepts blended together and I thought, "Well, why not just go ahead and become mad?" What I mean is, why not just do what I do even if it seems insane to everyone else and even to myself? If that means going catatonic for a few hours then so be it. If it means that I finally outfit my pickup with a camper so I can take a nap at lunchtime while blasting Tchaikovsky then why not? If it means turning my backyard into a collection of small outbuildings each resembling a shed, but each with a different purpose then I might as well start buying wood and paint. If I want to fill a couple thousand notebooks with arcane scribbling that only I understand then dammit I have every right to do so!
As INTPs we are inherently different than the majority. People simply aren't going to get us. Unfortunately, we spend huge amounts of time trying to fix that by essentially trying to fix ourselves. Well, who's to say we are the ones that need to be fixed? How do we know that we aren't the right way up?
I think in the morning I might as well go mad. I've nothing better to do...
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Art
For an INTP art is extremely important. It helps us to explore emotions, be creative, and fully engage in a single task that blocks out everything else. For me photography plays a big role in my art. Here's a sample in no particular order.
Please don't steal my images. Just enjoy them. :-)
Burned out
It's been a horribly stressful few weeks. Work piled-on and then I had a large project at home. It just wouldn't stop. Now I feel that floating feeling. Maybe it's the stress from this morning. I don't know. I just know that what I really want is to lay down and go to sleep for a while.
The burnout problem comes at times that I never expect it. I'm chugging along doing great and then all of a sudden I hit the mud. My wheels don't even spin like when I'm "stuck", they just stop and I sink. My engine shuts down and I don't want to do anything, see anyone, speak to anyone, or even step outside. I want to be alone far away with no obligations.
I'm burned out again. Damn. I was going to make sure that didn't happen and here I am. :-(
So I just looked at my other posts and what do I find? An unfinished post from a few weeks ago saying:
I guess I had an inkling of what was coming.
The burnout problem comes at times that I never expect it. I'm chugging along doing great and then all of a sudden I hit the mud. My wheels don't even spin like when I'm "stuck", they just stop and I sink. My engine shuts down and I don't want to do anything, see anyone, speak to anyone, or even step outside. I want to be alone far away with no obligations.
I'm burned out again. Damn. I was going to make sure that didn't happen and here I am. :-(
So I just looked at my other posts and what do I find? An unfinished post from a few weeks ago saying:
It seems to be an inevitable experience for an INTP - burnout. We drive hard and keep driving. As things get more and more difficult we bury our emotions, ignoring them even though they continue to affect us. Soon we are completely wrapped-up in whatever it is we are working on. And it works. We achieve more. We understand more. We makes things better. Sure, some important things may have to wait a while but no big deal.
I guess I had an inkling of what was coming.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Discreet sets of information
A number of years ago I fell in love with the idea of the notebook. It had taken me a long time to understand exactly what a good notebook was, but once I got it I found it to be one of the most useful tools in my arsenal in life.
To make a long story short, when I was a boy I noticed my father and grandfather using notebooks in the electrical engineering field. They had these magical little books that they wrote in and checked constantly and it seemed to my young eyes that everything about their jobs could be answered in those little black notebooks. In fact, I was not the only person who thought this. Others would often ask to look inside my Dad's notebook to write down a formula or check a fact. Dad was always generous and allowed them to look, but that notebook was never to leave his side.
Years later I was working on a project that required me to learn an entire skill set in a very short amount of time regarding a manufacturing process. I simply could not remember everything and just started writing the most important facts in a notebook so that I wouldn't have to look them up again. After a year or so of this I had a notebook very similar to what my dad and grandfather had had. People asked to see it. A couple people, only half-jokingly, said they wanted to steal it.
I've been fascinated with the idea of notebooks ever since. Partly because I have failed to repeat my first success. Each subsequent notebook I started just became a mishmash of random information. Something wasn't right and I couldn't figure out what it was. However, I think I'm starting to get it.
First of all, the notebook is not the goal - it's simply a tool. If I spend all my time trying to make the notebook into the goal then I quickly lose interest. However, if it's a tool where I crank out the information I can't or don't want to keep in my head then it quickly becomes valuable. Part of the reason that first notebook worked so well was because I was under intense pressure. I didn't have time to think about the notebook, I was too busy learning the job.
Second, the notebook worked best when each page was a discreet set of information. I was building miniature "cheat sheets" in my notebook and over time it became the fastest way to find the information that I needed for that particular discipline. Even now, almost a decade later, I can open that notebook and find exactly the information I need. Sure, some if is outdated, but most of it is not and it is still one of my most valuable reference books.
As an INTP I love information, but I want it quickly, cleanly, and intuitively. I've begun using notebooks again and loose documents kept together in a folder as a type of folio. The most important part of this process though is to create a single-sheet design for each type of information that is uniquely suited to convey the information that I need as quickly as possible.
Whether the format is a notebook or a folio, I find that the art aspect of creating such a document appeals to me greatly and keeps me focused on what I am doing. Even mundane tasks can present me with a great deal of pleasure if somehow they are tied to one of my notebooks.
One final tip, the more "secret" my notebooks are and the longer I can keep them like that the more likely I am to be successful at developing them. If I tell other people about it or they find out then it's almost as if someone has taken a look behind the curtain - there's no reason to continue.
My notebooks are part of my secret world as an INTP. They are for me and for me alone. However, they are not the goal, they are the most beautiful and useful tools I have to achieve those things that I work so hard to do. They are the place where I deconstruct, synthesize, analyze, and convey the knowledge that I have learned.
To make a long story short, when I was a boy I noticed my father and grandfather using notebooks in the electrical engineering field. They had these magical little books that they wrote in and checked constantly and it seemed to my young eyes that everything about their jobs could be answered in those little black notebooks. In fact, I was not the only person who thought this. Others would often ask to look inside my Dad's notebook to write down a formula or check a fact. Dad was always generous and allowed them to look, but that notebook was never to leave his side.
Years later I was working on a project that required me to learn an entire skill set in a very short amount of time regarding a manufacturing process. I simply could not remember everything and just started writing the most important facts in a notebook so that I wouldn't have to look them up again. After a year or so of this I had a notebook very similar to what my dad and grandfather had had. People asked to see it. A couple people, only half-jokingly, said they wanted to steal it.
I've been fascinated with the idea of notebooks ever since. Partly because I have failed to repeat my first success. Each subsequent notebook I started just became a mishmash of random information. Something wasn't right and I couldn't figure out what it was. However, I think I'm starting to get it.
First of all, the notebook is not the goal - it's simply a tool. If I spend all my time trying to make the notebook into the goal then I quickly lose interest. However, if it's a tool where I crank out the information I can't or don't want to keep in my head then it quickly becomes valuable. Part of the reason that first notebook worked so well was because I was under intense pressure. I didn't have time to think about the notebook, I was too busy learning the job.
Second, the notebook worked best when each page was a discreet set of information. I was building miniature "cheat sheets" in my notebook and over time it became the fastest way to find the information that I needed for that particular discipline. Even now, almost a decade later, I can open that notebook and find exactly the information I need. Sure, some if is outdated, but most of it is not and it is still one of my most valuable reference books.
As an INTP I love information, but I want it quickly, cleanly, and intuitively. I've begun using notebooks again and loose documents kept together in a folder as a type of folio. The most important part of this process though is to create a single-sheet design for each type of information that is uniquely suited to convey the information that I need as quickly as possible.
Whether the format is a notebook or a folio, I find that the art aspect of creating such a document appeals to me greatly and keeps me focused on what I am doing. Even mundane tasks can present me with a great deal of pleasure if somehow they are tied to one of my notebooks.
One final tip, the more "secret" my notebooks are and the longer I can keep them like that the more likely I am to be successful at developing them. If I tell other people about it or they find out then it's almost as if someone has taken a look behind the curtain - there's no reason to continue.
My notebooks are part of my secret world as an INTP. They are for me and for me alone. However, they are not the goal, they are the most beautiful and useful tools I have to achieve those things that I work so hard to do. They are the place where I deconstruct, synthesize, analyze, and convey the knowledge that I have learned.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Tuesday
This was a three-day holiday weekend (Memorial Day), but I worked all three days. On Saturday I worked the majority of the day, on Sunday I taught my Sunday school class, Monday I worked half of the day. None of that really matters.
What does matter is that I finally seem to have broken out of being stuck. I really hit the breaking point when I realized that I need to simply work the way that my wants to work. I can't fight what I am. I finally stepped back and made a simple set of rules to follow when doing anything. These rules seem to be universal, but more testing will be required:
What does matter is that I finally seem to have broken out of being stuck. I really hit the breaking point when I realized that I need to simply work the way that my wants to work. I can't fight what I am. I finally stepped back and made a simple set of rules to follow when doing anything. These rules seem to be universal, but more testing will be required:
- Treat each day and situation like taking a day trip, or going to an event. Other things will have to be set aside so that I can focus on what is in front of me.
- Take care of today's "annoying" items and get them completely out of the way.
- Make a list of everything else on my mind that will need to be dealt with later.
- Get myself mentally ready to do what needs to be done. This may mean taking a break or stepping out for a while so that I can start making the mental shift and eliminate any latent emotions.
- Clean the area of anything not involved with the upcoming task or project. Set it all aside, file it, shove it into a cupboard, whatever. Just get it out of visual range.
- Set up the environment for close focus work.
- Get my "kit" of items needed for this project.
- Remove any remaining distractions such as noises, smells, etc.
- Limit potential disturbances as much as possible (phones, etc.)
- Play the right kind of music for the task that I'm about to do.
- Do the job in a way that it requires mindful physicality. There has to be a physical act related to what I'm doing that requires some focus on how I am doing as much as what I am doing. This may simply mean writing my notes in the most beautiful penmanship that I can.
- Art must be in the work. It cannot simply be a task. There needs to be some kind of art or excellence tied to it.
- There must be an internal goal that is the target. It is not known to anyone else, but it is what I want. Moreover, I aim at this target without aiming. I focus on the mechanics while the back of my mind remembers the target.
- Get "close" to the task. Give myself tunnel vision. Set apps to full-screen. Get closer to the white board. Get closer to the document. Whatever it takes to focus on the "sites" not on the "target".
As I started to put this into play I found flow in each of my tasks. Each step was critical to my success.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Anxiety and mindfulness
I was reading a series of posts about dealing with stress today at the Refuge and hit on something that I think is important not only for dealing with stress but also for doing tasks and progressing with projects. Here's the whole post. NRJC had just suggested that exercise is a great way to deal with stress. I completely agree, but I began to dig a bit deeper...
I think NRJC is right, but in a way different than just physiology (and I completely agree about the secondary physical/psychological effects of exercise). Unfortunately, I have a hard time getting myself to exercise because I treat it as a task to be completed. On the other hand, there is something to some exercises that can be very calming for me. In fact there's an analogous situation that has a lot of similar attributes that I find comforting. Let me see if I can put it together.
The analog is driving a car on a long trip. Out where I live it's not uncommon to drive on freeways or highways for a couple hundred miles (typically four or five hours of driving). If I take that trip alone and I do it right I find at the end of the road that I am extremely calm, relaxed, and focussed. I'm "centered". I hadn't really put that together with exercise until this morning when I started dealing with my own minor panic attack.
I think of a panic attack for me like a thinking storm. It slowly builds and the dark clouds start to come in from the horizon, but before I know it my mind is racing and filled with thousands of thoughts that I simply cannot control. External pressures of the expectations of others are like a storm surge making it even worse. I soon feel overwhelmed and that fight or flight instinct starts to kick in hard. When I was teenager (or a teenanger) I put holes in a few walls, found myself screaming at the empty house, and raging internally. It got so bad that at times I dropped out of the world for days on end. Nobody knew what was going on or how to help me. Like NRJC I am very aware of how dangerous this emotion can be in myself. My temper is something to behold and I keep a very tight rein on it.
I am still struggling with my storms, but at least now I'm gathering some intel that seems to be helping. So here goes...
First, I have to make up my mind that right now I am going to deal with my mental health. I have to recognize that I'm in the midst of a thinking storm and that I need to deal with it. Everything else is of secondary importance because if I don't handle it soon I am going to be useless to the world.
Second, what seems to be the most important is to engage myself at multiple levels all at the same time. This is where I see the relationship between me driving long distances and the right kind of exercise. Here's the ideal situation I have found so far:
I used to be a martial artist (I have since had an injury that makes it nearly impossible to continue) and I found that katas helped too. Katas are a series of complex motions intended to teach proper technique and to string different techniques together. They can also be used while visualizing attackers. What I found was that a sufficiently complex kata would cause me to fall into that state of flow. I had memorized it and so I didn't have to think about what to do. However, it was still complex enough that I had to be mindful to keep it moving properly. By visualizing the attackers I was adding another layer of thinking for my mind to go through. Proper breathing added another layer. If I was alone with music playing I could repeat it over and over and end up feeling deeply calm afterward. It strikes me that Tai Chi and Yoga can do the same thing although I always found them a bit too slow to fully engage my mind properly.
Another place I can find this is in marksmanship. I like to shoot small bore rifle and pistol and also air rifles and pistols. These disciplines require the same things: exclusion of outside interruption, general focus on multiple variables simultaneously (safety, breathing, trigger control, body position, environmental conditions, etc.), and a challenge that requires focus but not being overwhelmed by any one single item. It's enveloping and I can spend hours at the range carefully firing at targets. Of course in that environment I avoid the music, but wearing the earmuffs gives me a sense of isolation. Afterward I am completely relaxed and centered again. I have done a little work with a bow and arrow and it's a similar experience.
Hmm....now that I think about it, that's really the state that I want to be in when I am doing anything. I wonder if these "rules" aren't applicable in other situations as well. For some reason my mind just jumped to the image of a Japanese tea ceremony and to writing Chinese calligraphy.
I think NRJC is right, but in a way different than just physiology (and I completely agree about the secondary physical/psychological effects of exercise). Unfortunately, I have a hard time getting myself to exercise because I treat it as a task to be completed. On the other hand, there is something to some exercises that can be very calming for me. In fact there's an analogous situation that has a lot of similar attributes that I find comforting. Let me see if I can put it together.
The analog is driving a car on a long trip. Out where I live it's not uncommon to drive on freeways or highways for a couple hundred miles (typically four or five hours of driving). If I take that trip alone and I do it right I find at the end of the road that I am extremely calm, relaxed, and focussed. I'm "centered". I hadn't really put that together with exercise until this morning when I started dealing with my own minor panic attack.
I think of a panic attack for me like a thinking storm. It slowly builds and the dark clouds start to come in from the horizon, but before I know it my mind is racing and filled with thousands of thoughts that I simply cannot control. External pressures of the expectations of others are like a storm surge making it even worse. I soon feel overwhelmed and that fight or flight instinct starts to kick in hard. When I was teenager (or a teenanger) I put holes in a few walls, found myself screaming at the empty house, and raging internally. It got so bad that at times I dropped out of the world for days on end. Nobody knew what was going on or how to help me. Like NRJC I am very aware of how dangerous this emotion can be in myself. My temper is something to behold and I keep a very tight rein on it.
I am still struggling with my storms, but at least now I'm gathering some intel that seems to be helping. So here goes...
First, I have to make up my mind that right now I am going to deal with my mental health. I have to recognize that I'm in the midst of a thinking storm and that I need to deal with it. Everything else is of secondary importance because if I don't handle it soon I am going to be useless to the world.
Second, what seems to be the most important is to engage myself at multiple levels all at the same time. This is where I see the relationship between me driving long distances and the right kind of exercise. Here's the ideal situation I have found so far:
- Be alone. I need to be apart. If I am with others then I have a wall up or I'm playing chameleon to their personality.
- Not only do I have to be alone, but I also have to know that I am not going to be disturbed. When I drive I silence my cell phone. If I exercise I tend to go somewhere where other people will simply not be or where I don't know anyone. The key is that no part of my life can intrude new information during this time period. It's mine alone.
- Have stimulating music playing. I love a lot of different kinds of music, but for this I really need complex classical music. I need the complexity of the music to give my brain something to jump around inside of and not become bored by. For a while I find myself listening to the cello and the brilliant complexity and skill there. Then I am listening to the violin. Then the flute. Then the kettles. Then a horn. Then I race back to catch the cello again. My mind is constantly carried along. The very best music will invoke mental images unbiden that give me all the more to pay attention to. I have found some blues and jazz does this too.
- There must be mindful physicality. In the car it's the constant adjustments to keep the car on the road, the speed changes to handle the flow of traffic, and the situational awareness of all that's happening. If it's exercise then it has to be a low-to-moderate aerobic exercise (walking a bit faster than usual, etc.) that does not require a great deal of thought and should not be overly exerting where it's unpleasant. Instead, it should be an almost subliminal, but effortful physical motion that tells my mind "Pay attention to this. Keep doing it carefully. Make an adjustment here. Make an adjustment there." Exercises like weight lifting, intense aerobics, etc. are not good enough for giving me that sense of flow I need.
- Controlled breathing can be another way of giving the mind something else to think about.
I used to be a martial artist (I have since had an injury that makes it nearly impossible to continue) and I found that katas helped too. Katas are a series of complex motions intended to teach proper technique and to string different techniques together. They can also be used while visualizing attackers. What I found was that a sufficiently complex kata would cause me to fall into that state of flow. I had memorized it and so I didn't have to think about what to do. However, it was still complex enough that I had to be mindful to keep it moving properly. By visualizing the attackers I was adding another layer of thinking for my mind to go through. Proper breathing added another layer. If I was alone with music playing I could repeat it over and over and end up feeling deeply calm afterward. It strikes me that Tai Chi and Yoga can do the same thing although I always found them a bit too slow to fully engage my mind properly.
Another place I can find this is in marksmanship. I like to shoot small bore rifle and pistol and also air rifles and pistols. These disciplines require the same things: exclusion of outside interruption, general focus on multiple variables simultaneously (safety, breathing, trigger control, body position, environmental conditions, etc.), and a challenge that requires focus but not being overwhelmed by any one single item. It's enveloping and I can spend hours at the range carefully firing at targets. Of course in that environment I avoid the music, but wearing the earmuffs gives me a sense of isolation. Afterward I am completely relaxed and centered again. I have done a little work with a bow and arrow and it's a similar experience.
Hmm....now that I think about it, that's really the state that I want to be in when I am doing anything. I wonder if these "rules" aren't applicable in other situations as well. For some reason my mind just jumped to the image of a Japanese tea ceremony and to writing Chinese calligraphy.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
My workload
That guy looks like me, except his office appears to have more natural light than mine. :-(
I'm stuck again. I have a pile of work to do and just can't seem to break through to productivity again. Why why why? Well, the title of the blog is...
- Sleep. Yeah, it hasn't been so good lately. Not because I can't sleep but because I just haven't slept much lately. I could if I'd just give up and crash, but when I'm stressed I need a few hours before I go to sleep to "process". When I'm really stressed I feel like I need all night.
- I have no idea what to do next. This is a real pain. The next action should be the right next action and it's all really vague at the moment.
- Seriously, that picture looks like me. I have a backlog of work that would make your eyes bleed if you could see it. There are so many things that are undone in my personal and professional life right now that it's kind of frightening.
- It's not like I haven't been doing anything, it's more that I haven't been doing a lot of things that are useful in the long-term.
#2 is probably the one on my mind the most right now. I've had some real breakthroughs in my work lately, but they only have gotten me so far. The next step has to be taken and I just don't have that great of an idea of what to do next.
Now that I think about it, probably the right answer is to get all the information in front of me and just look at it to let my mind start analyzing it in that mysterious way that it does. I think I'll pull everything out and start tacking it to my white board so I can see relationships and flow. Maybe that will give me some idea of how to move forward...I hope.
Monday, May 20, 2013
People are systematic
I was reading this article today and was struck by the line "The trick to dealing with [people] is not to think of them as human beings, but as systems that you have to make act the way you want." Now, this can be taken way too far, but there is a nugget of truth there.
People are not machines where you can guarantee outputs based on inputs. Humans always have choice, even if they choose not to exercise it, but people do work systematically. They tend to do things a certain way and according to a certain process because that has worked for them in the past. In that respect it is possible to predict with a high degree of likelihood what a person will do in a given circumstance.
There are a few tricks to doing this though. First, this is observational science not hard science. It is statistical and so I keep in mind that there's always the possibility that things will go differently. It's like betting on a roll of a pair of dice. If given a choice I'll always bet that the dice will come up to total seven because that's the statistically most likely number to come up. However, I'm always ready to assume that I may get something else.
Second, I begin to observe the person and analyze them. Since I can't control what their particular situation is I try to gather as much mental information as I can so that I can get the core ideas down. Soon I have a framework of how the person thinks and works. From there I can work with them in the way that they prefer to work. I can give them inputs with a high degree of knowing what the outputs will be.
The biggest trick though is to be detached. As an INTP I have a high level of empathy with people. I have a naturally strong "theory of mind" for the person across from me and I feel what they feel. This can quickly be exhausting. So, I need to break things up a bit. I have to decide what is important to observe and what is not and filter out the noise. Only then is it possible to accurately deconstruct and systemize what I have learned.
This can be most helpful in business. Most people work with expectations. In its most extreme form you end up with a government bureaucracy where every little banal thing has a form that must be filled out perfectly or it gets sent back. While we can (almost) all agree that this is ridiculous, there are varying degrees of this mindset. People need specific information to take action. They need specific requests to be able to switch into the right mindset to do what you need.
In business people say things like, "That's not the right way to do that," "That's not my job," "Well, he didn't get me what I need," or "How was I supposed to know that?" These are all indicators that the person was observing the situation from a particular system, did not recognize the input, and failed to produce the desired output. Because of this expectation on their part I can build a useful procedure or system on my end to get the desired output.
I think of these people as "black boxes". I input x, y, z and I'll most likely get product 983. If sometimes I get product 783 instead then I look to see how I can improve the inputs without trying to fix the black box. What if I also input a and b? What if I input items in the order z, x, y? I experiment a bit until I get the highest degree of predictability as I can. Then I accept some minor variation in the system.
Doing this allows me to objectively see people. This keeps me from being frustrated by them and experiencing a lot of uncomfortable emotions. It also allows me to minimize contact with people, increase my own effectiveness, and generally make my life easier.
What's the process I go through? It's simple really:
People are not machines where you can guarantee outputs based on inputs. Humans always have choice, even if they choose not to exercise it, but people do work systematically. They tend to do things a certain way and according to a certain process because that has worked for them in the past. In that respect it is possible to predict with a high degree of likelihood what a person will do in a given circumstance.
There are a few tricks to doing this though. First, this is observational science not hard science. It is statistical and so I keep in mind that there's always the possibility that things will go differently. It's like betting on a roll of a pair of dice. If given a choice I'll always bet that the dice will come up to total seven because that's the statistically most likely number to come up. However, I'm always ready to assume that I may get something else.
Second, I begin to observe the person and analyze them. Since I can't control what their particular situation is I try to gather as much mental information as I can so that I can get the core ideas down. Soon I have a framework of how the person thinks and works. From there I can work with them in the way that they prefer to work. I can give them inputs with a high degree of knowing what the outputs will be.
The biggest trick though is to be detached. As an INTP I have a high level of empathy with people. I have a naturally strong "theory of mind" for the person across from me and I feel what they feel. This can quickly be exhausting. So, I need to break things up a bit. I have to decide what is important to observe and what is not and filter out the noise. Only then is it possible to accurately deconstruct and systemize what I have learned.
This can be most helpful in business. Most people work with expectations. In its most extreme form you end up with a government bureaucracy where every little banal thing has a form that must be filled out perfectly or it gets sent back. While we can (almost) all agree that this is ridiculous, there are varying degrees of this mindset. People need specific information to take action. They need specific requests to be able to switch into the right mindset to do what you need.
In business people say things like, "That's not the right way to do that," "That's not my job," "Well, he didn't get me what I need," or "How was I supposed to know that?" These are all indicators that the person was observing the situation from a particular system, did not recognize the input, and failed to produce the desired output. Because of this expectation on their part I can build a useful procedure or system on my end to get the desired output.
I think of these people as "black boxes". I input x, y, z and I'll most likely get product 983. If sometimes I get product 783 instead then I look to see how I can improve the inputs without trying to fix the black box. What if I also input a and b? What if I input items in the order z, x, y? I experiment a bit until I get the highest degree of predictability as I can. Then I accept some minor variation in the system.
Doing this allows me to objectively see people. This keeps me from being frustrated by them and experiencing a lot of uncomfortable emotions. It also allows me to minimize contact with people, increase my own effectiveness, and generally make my life easier.
What's the process I go through? It's simple really:
- What do I want to get out?
- What does the other person most want to get that also gets me what I want?
- How can I most effectively and efficiently give that to them?
- Test - assess - improve - repeat.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Afraid to Start
I'm stuck. I hate being stuck. Every once in a while this happens, but it's been happening a lot more lately...as in, for a decade now. I get started on a project. I get it rolling and people start to rely on me. Then what happens? I get stuck. I procrastinate. I can't start. I won't start. I spend all of my time trying to figure out how to do the job perfectly without ever actually doing anything directly related to the job.
I have strategies to combat this, but they all sound hollow when the time comes. I stare at my computer screen or the stack of papers on my desk. I want to do the right thing, but I can't. I just keep staring.
The guilt starts to build up in me, then the frustration, finally I just shrug and accept it. Another day lost. Another day I can never get back spent fighting myself.
All I can think of is to go into the office tomorrow, shove everything to the side, and go back to my old morning routine. What choice do I have? Stay in the same stinking place forever until everyone knows that I'm messed up?
I want to go curl up in a corner. Only problem is, I'd be right there with me.
Why don't I want to work on this stuff? I think a lot of it is how mundane it all sounds. I'm facing a bunch of customer-service items, not anything truly challenging. What's there to research? What's there to occupy my mind and keep me engaged. It just seems like a horrible shade of gray. If it were black or white I would be fine with it, but the gray just goes on forever.
There has to be something of interest to do with it all. I just can't for the life of me figure out what it is. Guess I'll surf the web for a bit in search of enlightenment. Maybe the answer is out there....yeah, like it's been there for the last ten years and I haven't found it yet?
I have strategies to combat this, but they all sound hollow when the time comes. I stare at my computer screen or the stack of papers on my desk. I want to do the right thing, but I can't. I just keep staring.
The guilt starts to build up in me, then the frustration, finally I just shrug and accept it. Another day lost. Another day I can never get back spent fighting myself.
All I can think of is to go into the office tomorrow, shove everything to the side, and go back to my old morning routine. What choice do I have? Stay in the same stinking place forever until everyone knows that I'm messed up?
I want to go curl up in a corner. Only problem is, I'd be right there with me.
Why don't I want to work on this stuff? I think a lot of it is how mundane it all sounds. I'm facing a bunch of customer-service items, not anything truly challenging. What's there to research? What's there to occupy my mind and keep me engaged. It just seems like a horrible shade of gray. If it were black or white I would be fine with it, but the gray just goes on forever.
There has to be something of interest to do with it all. I just can't for the life of me figure out what it is. Guess I'll surf the web for a bit in search of enlightenment. Maybe the answer is out there....yeah, like it's been there for the last ten years and I haven't found it yet?
Broken people
For a long time I tried to fix the people around me, but I finally realized that all people are essentially "broken" and because of that they are often afraid, frustrated, selfish, angry, and hurting - just like me. What people need more than to be "helped" is compassion, patience and kindness.
One thing I think INTPs short-change themselves on is their compassion. Because we can enter into the mind of the other person we can be very empathic and feel their hurt, sadness, frustration, and everything else. Our natural instinct is to either run away or "fix" the problem as if it were actually our problem. But it isn't, we can't fix it and we care too much to run away.
I guess in some ways it's like being a faithful golden retriever. Imagine the picture of a sad little boy sitting under a tree. The dog quietly comes up, sits close, gently puts his head on the boy's lap, and shares in the emotion. It's almost as if he begins to weep and mourn with the child. Occasionally he licks a hand, but he knows all he can do is be part of the experience with the one he loves. There's no judgment, no attempt to fix the problem, no desire to be somewhere else, just a gentle kindness and steady devotion.
Seek to understand and care, but don't try to repair.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
It gets better
If you couldn't guess by my last/first two posts, it's been tough lately. Fortunately I think that I finally got my back aligned properly. The pain is gone and all that's left is some stiffness. More importantly, my emotions are starting to balance out. Thank goodness, because I was coming unglued. I think between the experimentation with my medications, the massive workloads I've been under, and the pain I've been feeling I was more than a little off-kilter.
Part of the reason that I started this blog was so that I could think things out in writing in a free-form way and get a better handle on what I'm feeling and why. As I go I put in the information that I think will be helpful to myself (and other INTPs) in the future.
Right now I'm feeling really pretty good. That's nice because I haven't felt "right" for a few weeks now. I have a simple action plan for the next few hours now that I'm "coming out of it". This is a technique I've used for a while and really seems to get me back on the right track.
The image at right is a sketchnote from one of my notebooks showing how I do this process. Essentially it is broken into four parts:
Part of the reason that I started this blog was so that I could think things out in writing in a free-form way and get a better handle on what I'm feeling and why. As I go I put in the information that I think will be helpful to myself (and other INTPs) in the future.
Right now I'm feeling really pretty good. That's nice because I haven't felt "right" for a few weeks now. I have a simple action plan for the next few hours now that I'm "coming out of it". This is a technique I've used for a while and really seems to get me back on the right track.
- Gather everything. All the papers, notebooks, files, folders, notepads, post-it notes, print-outs of digital files, receipts, budget files. Everything.
- Stop the distractions and just look at it all in an effort to see patterns. As I think about it all I begin to make notes or draw mind maps of the structure.
- Then I sort it all. The goal here is not to start doing work, it's to get everything in the right place. I am not doing something with the stuff, rather I'm doing something to the stuff so that it all makes sense.
- At this point it's starting to cohere into a reasonable system. Now I can start actually doing something with the stuff. The last panel shows different ways to begin with each item. The goal is not just to have stuff, but to make that stuff work for me and what I want.
That last sentence is really key to the whole thing. If I am going to really get rolling on a task or project then I have to be doing it because I want to do it. I have a very hard time moving forward if I am being forced or coerced to do something - even if I am the one "forcing" or "coercing" myself. In essence, I have to find a real and interesting reason to move forward. Otherwise I see right through it all, hate the task, and put it off forever.
Next, I have to have a way of doing the item that helps me work in the most effective way for myself and my unique INTP personality type. That will come later, but for now it's all about processing all the "stuff" I have sitting around. Why am I going to do this?
- Because I want to get the emotional weight of it off my back.
- Because there are important things that I can't start until I get this broken out.
- Because if I don't get moving I'm going to be stuck here forever.
And that #3 item there is enough to make me get moving. The first step is to "gather everything" and sort it into piles of stuff in general categories. It doesn't matter that each pile is internally disorganized. Just put all the stuff related to project A in a pile and all the things to research topic 134 in another pile, etc.
Okay, now my office is a disaster. :-) I have piles of stuff everywhere and each pile is its own category of "stuff" which is itself disorganized. That's okay.
At that point I can prioritize a bit and pick the one pile of stuff that I feel is the most important at this point in time. Now I will begin to really go through the above process for that pile. The sub-ideas in the sketchnote become really important and what do you know, now I'm actually working again!
Okay, now my office is a disaster. :-) I have piles of stuff everywhere and each pile is its own category of "stuff" which is itself disorganized. That's okay.
At that point I can prioritize a bit and pick the one pile of stuff that I feel is the most important at this point in time. Now I will begin to really go through the above process for that pile. The sub-ideas in the sketchnote become really important and what do you know, now I'm actually working again!
Frustrated
During my short time since discovering my INTP nature I've come to realize that there really is a duality to being me. There's the "me" that I identify with and act from and then there's the "other me" that is emotional, pushy, and kept under a tight leash lest he get out and do something embarrassing or hurt someone's feelings (or worse).
What's frustrating is that the other me has a lot more control over my life than I realized. It's like someone else is there sabotaging me. On the other hand, that someone also seems to have a pretty good handle on certain aspects of my life and I can't seem to hear what he's trying to tell me.
Right now I am absolutely full of anxiety. That other guy is screaming bloody murder at me and I keep telling him to shut the hell up. It is not a constructive conversation. Honestly, I just want to cry and I am not a person who cries.
So what's going on?
I am completely burned out emotionally and there's not much left for me to work on. A lot of it comes from the constant physical pain I've been in for the last couple of weeks. A lot of it is from the massive workload I have been under. I just did a brain sweep and it's a pretty extensive list of a lot of important things. Other pieces include my messed-up medications. Others just the frustrations I can see in other people as they try to deal with me. Other parts are the loss of quiet times in my life recently. Burnout thy name is INTP. :-/
Pain
The physical pain is an enormous drain on me. It's absolutely relentless. In short, my back has four bad discs and a couple times a year those bulged discs will begin to pinch a nerve or two. Soon my muscles try to compensate and I get muscle spasms. This can last just a day or two, but sometimes it will last for months. When it gets really bad I have to go in for cortisone injections in my spine - which is one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. I've noticed over the years that a lot of the problems are related to the weather. As a storm rolls in the barometric pressure drops and I think those discs bulge ever so little more starting the cascade of problems all over again. This spring we've had one storm after another roll in and it's beaten me down.
I keep trying to work through it, but the thing is, this kind of pain can be extremely sharp and so it can't be ignored or even suppressed. At times I think it's getting better then the next day a storm rolls in or I move the wrong way and I'm right back to where I began. The only relief I get is through drugs or by laying flat on the floor or in my orthopedic bed. Neither place is conducive to doing any real work.
Finally, spinal pain seems to send my endocrine system on overload. My body is flooded with hormones and I get mood swings. As an INTP though I tend to ignore my mood and emotions and so they build up. It's exhausting.
Work
As for work, I seem to be caught in the desire to do things "right" or not do them at all. I am terrified of making mistakes that will hurt other people or be the wrong move and waste time. So I spend huge amounts of time just trying to make things "just right". Then nothing gets done. Then it piles up even higher. Then I worry about that.
In Stephen Covey's 7 Habits book he points out that there needs to be a P/PC balance in life. The P is production and the PC is production capability. In essence what he is saying is that you have to have a balance between actually doing work and improving how you work. You have to have both, but it has to be in balance. It's kind of like the old "work smarter, not harder" adage, except that he points out that you still have to work.
In my case I get perpetually stuck in the PC arena. I want to keep building ever more perfect systems of doing things rather than just getting things done that can be done. It's paralysis by analysis.
Maybe some of it is just my default way of handling things. If I am stressed then I want to fix the problem and the underlying cause. So I focus on that underlying cause more and more hoping that once I nail it down the rest will just follow.
I don't have any answers right now. I just know that I feel like running away...
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Coming unglued
I'm having my first good panic attack in over a month. My senses are on high alert with everything keyed-up. I'm on-edge and ready to fight or scream or cry or just curl up in a corner and start shaking.
My mind is racing, my back is hurting like hell again today, I have a stack of work a mile high, I want to get things under control and haven't had time to work on my personal organization system, I feel like I haven't spent any time with my kids, I think I may be in over my head at work (again), I have a lot of things just languishing and commitments piling up. On top of that I'm feeling some of the wonderful after effects of my muscle relaxers and pain medications - not quite withdrawals but still sucks. Oh....and I ate something that's not agreeing with me. It might be the corn chips I had for lunch (I'm allergic to corn...and stupid) or it might be the hot pepper sauce I slathered on my burger tonight.
I am an absolute wreck right now and I feel like everyone can see it but me. I think a lot of it has to do with messing with my anxiety medication. My doctor and I have been trying to figure out what's been going on with me for over a year now. I went in complaining about being really tired all of the time and having anxiety problems. He found out that the fatigue was a hormone problem and we've got that under control.
However, the anxiety has been a long trek. First we tried an SSRI. Yeah, that worked awesome, it was almost as good as being on opiates. Unfortunately the infamous side affects hit me and I got off of that as quick as I could. Then we moved to buproprion. He started me on a low dose and that seemed to help keep me from laying on the bed shaking like a leaf and pulling the blankets over my head. I was able to work, but I kept complaining about terrible insomnia. We tried Ambien, but I could even ward that stuff off. I'd just sit wide awake in a hypnotic state all night.
I mentioned it to the doctor a few months back and thought it was because my hormone replacement therapy was off a bit. We did a test and it came back normal (I'm still not convinced that it is, but that's a different discussion). So the nurse calls me and says that the doctor thinks I might be depressed. I snorted at her. Yeah, I'm not depressed. I know depression. We're old friends.
So, I finally go in to see the doc again for my yearly check-up. We go through the regular stuff and then he comes back around to the insomnia thing again. He asks me if it's depression. Hell, how am I supposed to know now? I can't sleep, my hormone levels are normal, maybe it is, but it's just different this time? So, he decides to double my dosage for buproprion. Fine, I figure, if it helps it helps. Besides the bupropion never really got me to stop stress eating all the time like the SSRI did.
That's not all though, the doc's also worried about sleep apnea. I don't say what I'm thinking which is "Dude, I can't freaking sleep! How can I have sleep apnea if I'm not, you know, ASLEEP!?" Well, we do an O2 test anyway. No big deal, just put a monitor on my finger all night and read my oxygen levels. If it drops significantly then I might have apnea (stop breathing while asleep). Except I spend all night awake watching the freaking monitor. You can read the whole story on The Refuge. It was not a fun experience.
I eventually realized that what I had experienced that night was a panic attack. In fact, it had been pretty much going all day. The next day I started doubling my buproprion dose. It took about two days and all of a sudden all of that background anxiety started to fade away and I could focus on work again. Until tonight I haven't had another panic attack.
So why did I mess with my medications? Because I thought I was experiencing some "unpleasant" side effects with my buproprion. It turns out that wasn't the problem, it was one of my other meds doing it (I think it was one of my pain medications), but that really doesn't matter much right now. I took a little "drug holiday" over the weekend so I could move from taking it in the morning to taking it in the evening. It wasn't too bad. I felt a little off, but I knew it was manageable. I was starting to think that my move was a good idea, but tonight I decided to move back to the AM schedule. I realized that the new schedule had the medication mostly out of my system by 5:00 and I found myself getting grumpy at home with the family and my sleep is kind of messed up again. I haven't felt like that in a while and I don't like it. So, I'm moving back. No big deal, just don't take it tonight and get back to the regular schedule in the morning.
So, here I am. It's almost 11:30 at night and I am awake. I took a nap when I got home because I could barely keep my eyes open. Now I'm wide awake again. My little personal oximeter is showing my pulse is up and my oxygen drops once in a while if I just forget to breath normally. I want to get work done, but it just isn't going to happen. It's just sitting on the kitchen table staring up at the light. I finally gave up and packed it all up again.
I'm guessing that all of it combined finally got me and with my buproprion dosage off I'm back to anxiety hell. I'm not scheduled to take my medication until in the morning. I have no idea what I'm going to do right now. So, I'm starting a blog after something someone else said on The Refuge. What the hell, it's better working my thoughts out in words than running through them in my head.
I think tomorrow I need to go back and do a mind sweep and just start cranking through a few things at work again.
I just figured out why my back is suddenly hurting again after yesterday being so good. Outside there are flashes of light. A thunderstorm just rolled-in. I'm a walking barometer and all day I've been feeling worse and worse. Guess my spine knew this storm was coming.
Now, will there be wildfires tomorrow filling our area with smoke again? Somehow I wouldn't doubt it. Off to surf the web again...
My mind is racing, my back is hurting like hell again today, I have a stack of work a mile high, I want to get things under control and haven't had time to work on my personal organization system, I feel like I haven't spent any time with my kids, I think I may be in over my head at work (again), I have a lot of things just languishing and commitments piling up. On top of that I'm feeling some of the wonderful after effects of my muscle relaxers and pain medications - not quite withdrawals but still sucks. Oh....and I ate something that's not agreeing with me. It might be the corn chips I had for lunch (I'm allergic to corn...and stupid) or it might be the hot pepper sauce I slathered on my burger tonight.
I am an absolute wreck right now and I feel like everyone can see it but me. I think a lot of it has to do with messing with my anxiety medication. My doctor and I have been trying to figure out what's been going on with me for over a year now. I went in complaining about being really tired all of the time and having anxiety problems. He found out that the fatigue was a hormone problem and we've got that under control.
However, the anxiety has been a long trek. First we tried an SSRI. Yeah, that worked awesome, it was almost as good as being on opiates. Unfortunately the infamous side affects hit me and I got off of that as quick as I could. Then we moved to buproprion. He started me on a low dose and that seemed to help keep me from laying on the bed shaking like a leaf and pulling the blankets over my head. I was able to work, but I kept complaining about terrible insomnia. We tried Ambien, but I could even ward that stuff off. I'd just sit wide awake in a hypnotic state all night.
I mentioned it to the doctor a few months back and thought it was because my hormone replacement therapy was off a bit. We did a test and it came back normal (I'm still not convinced that it is, but that's a different discussion). So the nurse calls me and says that the doctor thinks I might be depressed. I snorted at her. Yeah, I'm not depressed. I know depression. We're old friends.
So, I finally go in to see the doc again for my yearly check-up. We go through the regular stuff and then he comes back around to the insomnia thing again. He asks me if it's depression. Hell, how am I supposed to know now? I can't sleep, my hormone levels are normal, maybe it is, but it's just different this time? So, he decides to double my dosage for buproprion. Fine, I figure, if it helps it helps. Besides the bupropion never really got me to stop stress eating all the time like the SSRI did.
That's not all though, the doc's also worried about sleep apnea. I don't say what I'm thinking which is "Dude, I can't freaking sleep! How can I have sleep apnea if I'm not, you know, ASLEEP!?" Well, we do an O2 test anyway. No big deal, just put a monitor on my finger all night and read my oxygen levels. If it drops significantly then I might have apnea (stop breathing while asleep). Except I spend all night awake watching the freaking monitor. You can read the whole story on The Refuge. It was not a fun experience.
I eventually realized that what I had experienced that night was a panic attack. In fact, it had been pretty much going all day. The next day I started doubling my buproprion dose. It took about two days and all of a sudden all of that background anxiety started to fade away and I could focus on work again. Until tonight I haven't had another panic attack.
So why did I mess with my medications? Because I thought I was experiencing some "unpleasant" side effects with my buproprion. It turns out that wasn't the problem, it was one of my other meds doing it (I think it was one of my pain medications), but that really doesn't matter much right now. I took a little "drug holiday" over the weekend so I could move from taking it in the morning to taking it in the evening. It wasn't too bad. I felt a little off, but I knew it was manageable. I was starting to think that my move was a good idea, but tonight I decided to move back to the AM schedule. I realized that the new schedule had the medication mostly out of my system by 5:00 and I found myself getting grumpy at home with the family and my sleep is kind of messed up again. I haven't felt like that in a while and I don't like it. So, I'm moving back. No big deal, just don't take it tonight and get back to the regular schedule in the morning.
So, here I am. It's almost 11:30 at night and I am awake. I took a nap when I got home because I could barely keep my eyes open. Now I'm wide awake again. My little personal oximeter is showing my pulse is up and my oxygen drops once in a while if I just forget to breath normally. I want to get work done, but it just isn't going to happen. It's just sitting on the kitchen table staring up at the light. I finally gave up and packed it all up again.
I'm guessing that all of it combined finally got me and with my buproprion dosage off I'm back to anxiety hell. I'm not scheduled to take my medication until in the morning. I have no idea what I'm going to do right now. So, I'm starting a blog after something someone else said on The Refuge. What the hell, it's better working my thoughts out in words than running through them in my head.
I think tomorrow I need to go back and do a mind sweep and just start cranking through a few things at work again.
I just figured out why my back is suddenly hurting again after yesterday being so good. Outside there are flashes of light. A thunderstorm just rolled-in. I'm a walking barometer and all day I've been feeling worse and worse. Guess my spine knew this storm was coming.
Now, will there be wildfires tomorrow filling our area with smoke again? Somehow I wouldn't doubt it. Off to surf the web again...
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