Reskilling

 When I was 40 years old, I had a choice:

A. Reskill into a new industry that would be more stable than games with quality of life and salaries that I would never reach if I stayed in games

B. Continue my path as a game developer to go indie and eventually grow a studio

I chose B. Because I had passion for what I did as a game developer and because it was pretty much my entire identity.

I spent the next 10 years growing a studio, becoming a leader, and reaching the pinnacle of my career as a game developer working on cutting edge technology within my field.

Then I left... to be a better husband and father to my 2 kids. I took a break from my career because I needed to build the parts of my identity in the home as opposed to the office. This could have been the remainder of my existence if my wife didn't get laid off.

But she did. And now I am applying for jobs as a 50 year old game developer with over a year's gap from my last job. I suddenly went from cool trad husband to unemployed guy.

The world has changed since I was 40. The games industry used to be in a constant state of growth and hiring. But western developers cost more than anywhere else in the world. And investment funding within the games industry seems to be moving away from development in Western countries. At the same time, I see evidence of ageism to the point that I was told to remove graduation date from my resume as well as maintain a separate resume that downplays my management experience. It seems as if the world doesn't really need gameplay programmer anymore, or if they do, then it is considered a junior position best left to those who are just starting out.

I look at jobs outside of games, and it involves technology stacks that I never had to evolve within. There is a separate timeline in which I took that job at National Instruments and evolved along the standard path for software engineers during the evolution of Web 2.0 and beyond.

Looking back, I may have made the wrong choice. But I don't know. I went deep into this one tree of skillsets that has served me well over my career as a game developer. I loved what I did, and it's hard to imagine doing anything else, but it's times like now that I wonder what that other timeline might have looked like. I'm trying to figure out what to do next, and reskilling myself to catch up to that other timeline is now a part of my plan.

Knives

It began with a wish to be useful.

but when that died, it became a wish to be safe... to protect... to be a hero... heroes are useful.

Knives cut. They separate. I am a knife. I slice invisibly as a spinning blade flying through airs. In two hands, I become chaos.

Eventually, I learned to create.

Knives are useful for creation. They are a tool that converts raw universe into prepared, culinary acts of kindness for others.

I love food, therefore, I would like to share this love with others.

Food requires cooking. I wish to show my love through cooking.

In order to cook, I can not use just any old knife, I need a knife that represents my cooking soul.

The blade must be beautiful, and it must work well.

And so I collected expensive Japanese knives created by master bladesmiths in Japan who put their name on the blade.

And now I must maintain these knives, that is when the hobby of knife sharpening began... to respect the high value knives I have obtained.

Knife sharpening became a journey in itself, and now I am deep inside it.

I love knife sharpening... but I have run out of knives to sharpen. Perhaps I can solicit my friends to lend me their knives so that I may sharpen them.

And now I am the knife sharpener amongst my friends.

I am useful.

Epitaph Phrases

I don't believe in gravestones. They cost money and take up space. My preferred method of body disposal would be whatever results in no money being spent and nothing to be stored by some poor soul who feels obligated to keep something useless and morbid.

I do love jokes, however. Something with epitaphs on it might be fine as long as it brings good feelings. Here are some appropriate epitaph ideas that I'd likely approve of:

• "Face... over the plate."
• "Hi still-thinking-of-some-of-the-stupid-jokes-he'd-make, I'm dad!"
• "Father, become ash."

Being Useful

My superpower is that I'm expendable.

I was never the smartest kid or the most interesting kid.... I just tried really really hard at the thing that would get people to like me. It was only a matter of time before I figured out that people would like me if I do the thing others won't do: sacrifice.

My school age fantasies were all variants of bad people invading the school with guns, and I'd finally be remembered as the kid who sacrificed his life to save everybody. The running joke in my head was that this moment would happen right when some girl tries to talk to me as if I were a person.

In college, I made my carefree friends laugh with my superpower by being on top of their moving car making zombie sounds and slapping their windshield. Willing to win an award for funniest death.

When I got a job, I made my employers like me by giving up all social life and needing very little sleep. Still envisioning fantasies of sacrificing my life if terrorists ever invaded the building. When the layoffs happened, I volunteered myself to be let go in order to leave room for others to stay. Whenever there was a choice to be made between myself and another, I would go out of my way to make sure the decision-maker would not need to make a choice when it came to me. There was always a case where my exit would allow somebody else to stay.

Eventually when I became a boss, I continued to sacrifice in secret while touting values of work life balance... all to protect others from the bad things about this industry and all to ensure that the team continues to like having me as their boss. The effort to keep up with these demands meant my wife had to take the brunt of mental labors at home, paying attention to things such as home services, childcare, and date planning while I continued to be a rockstar at work. My sacrifices at work caused my wife to make sacrifices at home... and sometimes, her work suffered for it.

I quit my company last September after 10 years as a co-owner/tech lead of a game studio in order to become a full time homemaker. I needed to shift my energy from being a superboss to being a better parent and a better husband that doesn't leave all of the mental labor to my wife. Multitasking has never been a strength of mine, and working until 2am to run a game studio did not seem to move the needle with a wife that makes more than twice as much money as me and children that are over the whole "my dad makes video games" thing.

The only superpower I know how to have is sacrifice; it is my entire identity. I have lived my life up to this point as if I had nothing to lose by giving more than 110%. If things ever got really bad, I would just make sure every part of me was useful to somebody who deserved it more than I did.

But kids create a logical conflict to this mode of operation. I can't just spend myself until there is nothing left because that makes me less useful to them and creates a problem that others would have to solve. My lack of presence did harm to them. The expectation of presence... I want to believe that the family would be better off without me, but I know that won't be true. They may have been better off if I didn't exist, but reality doesn't work that way. The only truth that works is that they would be better off if I was a different person. In a sense, it works better to kill the person you are on the inside because the body can host a completely different person without anyone noticing. Each version of me has the superpower of being expendable.

Somebody asked what I do for myself, and I honestly could not answer. My whole sense of being centered around depleting myself early and dying young. I wasn't supposed to make it this far. Somewhere deep inside my core is the notion that I am inherently unlovable, and therefore have no value to the world outside the the transactional deeds and services I can provide for others. Is that really how this world works?

The current occupant of this body has no career because it could not see a path that didn't involve pain for those within reach. Instead, it currently lives a life concerned with cooking, growing humans, and cleaning inside a toaster with a tiny brush. I do find bits of joy in maintaining kitchen knives and managing kitchen logistics as if this were a restaurant documentary, but I'm largely invisible compared to the life I had before. As a game developer, I had a thing that I could say at my wife's work gatherings with other grownups. Now, nobody will notice that there are less crumbs inside the toaster or that our knives can cut a tomato sideways... nor do they care.

I don't know how to use my superpower in this current form. I simply exist in the background while my body double takes over. The me that I used to know has lost his way. No longer trying to do anything in particular. No longer working towards some future where my special gifts are supposed to pay off in some big way. Instead, I linger in that space after the movie once the credits are done rolling.

I guess this is how my story ends.

Colonoscopy

Had a colonoscopy recently because I'm 49 and my mother had colon cancer.

I was nervous about being put under. During prep, the medical professionals would ask what I do, and I wasn't sure what to say. I told them I used to be a video game programmer, but now I'm a househusband. The answer was complicated, and in retrospect, they were more interested in making me comfortable rather than actually knowing what I do for a living.

BUT... also in retrospect, I realize they would soon be pumping air into my unconscious hairy butthole and hearing all sorts of sounds come out as the air they pump in escapes.

I'd like to imagine that the reason they ask me about my job is that they then get to have fun making some high powered executive fart musical anthems.

Note to future self: I am supposed to go in for another colonoscopy in 5 years. If they ask what I do, I will tell them I am a professional dad specializing in fart jokes. I will then ask them if they know any good fart jokes.

46

I'm 46 today... I think. Stopped counting after 40, really. But being born in 1975 makes the math easy to figure out if I need to.

It's been hard to write anything here. Mainly because a switch has flipped in my head. That switch is the "somebody on the internet will read this" switch. Used to be on, but now it's off.

I deleted my Facebook account, my Twitter account is pretty much an anon signal booster for local politicians, and I have no Instagram or whatever it is kids do, these days. My world is inside my house. I don't reach out to friends and have no way to make new friends because almost all of my energy goes towards..

1. Helping my children develop into humans who won't be secretly broken, like me
2. Not getting divorced
3. Finding reasons to live and staying alive long enough to fulfill goal #1

Unlike the days of my previous entries, I now firmly believe in the following:

• Nobody cares what your thoughts about a thing are... Nobody reads your Twitter or Facebook
• Nobody cares about that thing you are working on... Nobody reads your LinkedIn unless they need a job
• Nobody cares what you can do... or where you have been... or how hard that thing you did was

The universe is big. I am nobody, and that's okay.

My job as a nobody is to care about other people that need to believe that somebody cares about them. I'll be that somebody...

...For my kids

...For my wife

...For the people I work with

...For the handful of friends I have left at this point in my life

...For the non-evil politicians within my votingsphere (for my kids)

Releasing my ego has been... liberating.

Parenthood

My parenting style might best be described as injecting an echo of myself into someone's memories:

I understand my place as a supporting character in my children's memories of growing up. The world has a set of rules and signals that will live a life of its own within them. The best I can do is to incept my own interpretations of these rules and signals within layers of their psyche as they develop into beings more capable than me.

I have two, now. the first is a high functioning autistic with ADHD.... a diagnosis I suspect to be hereditary. He began reading at the age of 3, has proven to excel academically by age 6, and like me... every thought and feeling he has defaults to an uncontrollable110%. He has no idea how much of myself I see in him growing up. He mustn't. My job as his parent is to help him develop his own instruction manual for his brain in order to develop the mental tools needed to avoid the mistakes I made growing up.

The second was just born a little over a year ago. She will be the last. We've learned a lot about staying married and self care and child psychology and all of those expectations and boundaries associated within those arenas. I realize that I should write down what I've learned about parenting in the last 6 years before that mindspace gets purged.

If there is any single piece of advice I might bestow upon my past self, it is this: There is no replacement for your physical time and mental presence. Work and efforts to bring in income are not a replacement for changing diapers and playing with your child. Money that buys objects and supplies are not a replacement. It's an emotional thing, and emotions are where real decisions come from. If you delegate that time to other family members (i.e. a grandmother), then they will feel the moral authority to make decisions about your child proportional to the amount of time they have invested. If you care, then put the time into owning your parenthood. Do not let other family members place their gender expectations upon you as an clueless male because that's what your father was. Yes, you start out as a level zero parent, and you will make mistakes. All new parents will make mistakes, and that needs to be okay in order for your marriage to survive.

Other pieces of random words to my past self:

• A baby-log channel on Slack (or any phone app that supports channels) is an excellent way to allow seamless baby duty handoffs between mom and dad by tracking last feedings and daiper changes
  
  
• Guest bed is a valid sleep resource. Sleeping together is nice, but taking turns sleeping is nicer.
• Mattress on the floor, eventually.
• Carpeted stairs + crawling backwards = good
• Stakes are high, and parenting is a pressure cooker of moral authority, fear, and judgement... don't let this turn you into somebody you don't like
• Mothers are tanks because society expects them to be tanks with a lot of hit points. Don't let that be an excuse to let the mother do all the heavy lifting
• Things to master:
• Battery supplies
• Bottles cleaning
• Baby station upkeep to avoid situations where you must open packages while managing twisty baby
• Baby bath and bedtime routines
• Nose Frida is the best way to get that snot out. Bulbs are inferior. Suck in short spurts... never prolonged suction.
• If the mother will eventually be returning to work, then bank the second half of your paternity leave for when her maternity leave ends; so that you can do the heavy lifting during that transition. It helps her, emotionally, to know that you are the transition.
• Accept that you will be less of the worker you used to be due to parental obligations. Make sure your career structure supports this notion.
• After age 3: Template for behavioral correction is to inform them of the proper pattern instead of just saying no. Eventually, you can prompt for pattern recall with a gently delivered phrase: "Let's try that again."
• Babies love soft ramps and gravity. Have these in your baby-safe caged area - also known as  "place where grownups can lay down and parent with eyes closed". Add comforter to this area for maximum effect:
  
  
  
  
  

Detecting and moving duplicate files with C# Windows Forms

In 2011, I wrote a Perl script that moved mp3 files based on name matching:
http://entropicflip.blogspot.com/2011/02/detecting-and-moving-duplicate-files.html

Thanks to cloud services such as dropbox, my duplicate-pruning needs have become more complex.
I now have photos and videos coming in from multiple sources that are mostly the same set, but not completely. These sources have different names for the files. On top of that, I don't really benefit from command line interfaces when it comes to routine maintenance of these files.

And so I'm revisiting that problem in 2016 using C# and Windows Forms instead of Perl.

Differences from my previous attempt:

• Works with any file
• Uses binary comparisons instead of filename comparisons
• Human-friendly UI
• Progress-indicator
• Optional filter to include or exclude files based on their extension
• Ability to cancel an operation in progress
• Preview mode + Log files, in case you just wanted to know the duplicates without moving them

Source code is hosted here:
http://entropicflip.github.io/FileDupePruner/

Windows users who trust me can download the exe here (choose 'View Raw'):
https://github.com/EntropicFlip/FileDupePruner/blob/master/FileDupePruner/bin/Release/FileDupePruner.exe

Relationship Symmetry Part 2

Part 1 was written in 2012 and exists here:
http://entropicflip.blogspot.com/2012/09/relationship-symmetry.html

I eventually gave Twitter and Facebook another go. Unlike my previous life as a superconnector, I wanted to keep this new iteration of social networking small, intimate, and secret as a means of staying in touch with a trusted inner circle. Eventually, friends of friends added me and I had to add them back… because symmetry.  And then industry people added me, and so I added them back… because symmetry. And then we released a game, and it felt important to engage and be a “brand”. I made my account public using my real name.  Journalists and fans of the game added me, and I added them back… because symmetry.

Being recognized as a human is meaningful. When you are in the same room with a person, there is an unwritten social contract to reciprocate any attention a person gives you as a courtesy for extending humanity to a person beyond what you might give to an inanimate object in the room. A mute feature allows that covenant to be broken without the penalty of letting the other person know that you’ve broken that agreement to pay attention to each other. It is a thing that people do when they want the benefit of a connected status without the attention burden. Attention is the primary difference between a friend and a rolodex entry. For me, symmetry is the gateway to humanity. Asymmetrical relationships are relationships that one would have with a business, a god, a subordinate, or an inanimate object. For many folks, posting on Twitter or Facebook is like leaving a prayer out there for an apathetic god that exists only in their own mind... because we are so very hungry for a relationship with the universe, and we want our thoughts to matter to "something".

I’ve never been good at doing things halfway. My need for symmetry consumed parts of my day as I tried my best to not mute anyone and maintain a level of attention to my feeds that would honor those who deemed me worthy enough to follow. But the math just wasn’t sustainable. The urge to mute became strong with prolific announcers of repeating/mundane events, oblique references, or pictures with words over them. What’s even worse was that I became obsessed with likes, retweets, and followbacks as a means of validating my own sense of self worth. This is what it means to be a brand: You broadcast a persona to the world, and that makes a second you exist outside of your meatspace who desperately wants to stay alive. My Twitter and Facebook feeds were filled with brands hungry for validation participating in an inherently asymmetrical attention economy.

In the end, I was still hungry. My need for connection was not being met. Like junk food, social media made it easy to engage in verbs associated with human connection, but the nutritional value of those verbs were not enough to sustain an actual meaningful relationship with other human beings. It was as if I was in a room filled with people wearing noise-canceling headphones while shouting into a megaphone. I took a look at myself in the mirror and noticed that I, too, had a megaphone for a mouth and noise-canceling headphones instead of ears. I was no longer human, yet I was desperately starving for humanity.

I’ve never been good at doing things halfway. Keeping an account alive and not using it would mean that there is this dead version of me out there that people can treat like a live person who might be expected to pay attention or follow back or get outraged at the wrongs they see... and I do all of those things, but for some reason, none of that seems to matter in the world of single-serving internet friends. Everything is a single serving interaction that gets thrown away after it is done, and that false perception of connection threatens to serve as a mental replacement for the types of meaningful interactions that happen through direct email or phone calls. To resolve any ambiguity about the value of my friendships, I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts once again - For the last time.

Instead of a room full of brands, I am choosing to be in a room where I can have a mutual conversation with another person on purpose with the intention of building a relationship as if we were making eye contact in the same room. These symmetrical interactions are the ones that matter in the longrun. I've made peace with the fact that most of the general public does not know who I am or cares; this is an honest reflection of an uncomfortable truth that I've tried so hard to look away from for a very long time. My world is now the smallest it has ever been, and my energies are much more focused on things that I have actual agency over.

Form vs. Structure

"In each of us there is another whom we do not know."
- Carl Gustav Jung

Approaching 39, and only now am I beginning to understand the gravity of Structure over Form.

Form is when you are the fastest runner on the field, the smartest student in the classroom, the strongest fighter in the ring, or the most attractive person at the party. Form is what you are at the time of observation. Your form is beautiful, ugly, wise, foolish, powerful,sympathetic, immoral, righteous, regretful, and indignant.

Structure is the architecture that forms reside within. It is the city you live in, the friendships you maintain, the family you build, and the career you bet on.

Your identity is a combination of form and structure. It is the story you tell yourself throughout the course of your life: a success story, victimization, sacrifice, triumph, anticipation mixed with uncertainty. In the beginning, you tend to modify only your form, but eventually, you hit the limitations of that form and take measures to modify boundaries of the structures around you.

That conversion from form-focused to structure-focused is the conversion from user to architect, and it requires the ability to let go of a current form... as if you were letting your current self die in favor of living another person's life.

This.
Is.
Difficult.

Cognitive Dissonance is not your friend

Your mind believes that it knows who you are right now, and it will do its best to maintain that form's persistence by accusing other forms of being an imposter. The architect will need to embrace the concept of disposable forms as if they were inconsequential to the structure that survives those forms. In essence, the architect needs to adopt the form of an architect and not a user.

You believe that you are who you are because your brain is hardwired to reinforce whatever patterns of reality you can perceive as knowledge. Knowledge is comfort, and we choose to be comfortable.

A change in structure takes away the security that comes with knowledge.

Consider for a moment that this form you are currently occupying is merely a temporary assignment of values to an address in memory space, and the programs you interface with every day are structures that existed long before your form entered and will exist long after your form exits.

There is no "you". That perceived manifestation of "you" is merely an output of systems within a feedback loop. Your form's internal nature is eclipsed by the influence of your structure's external nurture. After a certain age, that nurture becomes self perpetuating - your sense of self will stop coming from others and will start coming from the perceived narrative carved only by your actions.

Narrative Architecture

Structures, alone, have no soul. They have no value unless a form resides within that structure to provide meaning. Good stories tend to be about people, not places or the rules within those places, but the environment within which a story takes place will often drive the ending of a person's story.

When things get really bad for your current form, then...

1. Stop time
2. Exit your current form
3. Examine the structure that your form currently resides in

When you think about what you want to be or whether you are making the best choice, consider the story of a person in your situation who is not you, but has similar friends and a similar set of personal obligations. What parts of the setting need to change in order to make that protagonist happy?

Who are the supporting characters of that protagonist's story? Companion? Boss? Collaborator? Their stories offer a structure for the protagonist to play a role in. Is the theme of that character's story one that your protagonist is willing to participate in? Examine their actions within the system, their handling of the boundaries at the edges of that system will affect the structure that your protagonist will have to work with.

And most importantly, how does that protagonist's story end? What plot elements need to be in place in order to get to that ending?

Jumping Between Universes

The first jump is always the hardest. In addition to losing who you are at the time, you also lose that sense of trust in the stability of things, which was never truly there, to begin with. Our self-reinforcing identity is deeply constrained by the time and place in which we live as well as the people that we allow to fill our mindspace. By remaining fluid and detaching from the concept of any particular container, we become less vulnerable to cognitive dissonance and open up the prospect of being replaced by better versions of ourselves more suited to participating in happier narratives.

Game Developer Career Migrations

Every industry has an ecosystem with class designations, skill trees, and options to multi-class.

Your current position is a spaceship capable of shooting lasers at other spaceships. The quantum theory of superposition states that you are able to combine your current firepower with other lasers from alternate selves in separate timelines in order to achieve penetrating resonance with the shields of unexplored spaceships.

Fatherhood and the Eulogy of Hyun Mo Shin

It took me a while to understand that I was not like most of the other kids in school, and it took even longer to understand why. My childhood had its tender moments, but was often marred by a constant sense of fear. The consequences for my mistakes as a child were brutal, severe, and worst of all... Emotional.

My father was the main villain in my life. He is the antagonist in my first vivid childhood memory at the age of One when I woke up to my mother's screams. Escape, independence, and prediction became a driving force in my development as emerging abilities began to manifest. I had to get out of there, and I had to go very far and beyond the reproach of anybody who can possibly wield any power over me. Eventually, I succeeded. As a young adult, I had the freedom to choose my own family, and my friends became more important to me than blood relatives with whom I shared no empathy.

Status: Estranged.

In 2005, I got a call from a person claiming to be my father's son. He told me that my father had been in and out of the hospital for the last 6 months, and these might be his final days.

Over the course of the following two weeks, I talked to many people with regards to my father's personal effects and legal affairs, and through these conversations as well as a few rare and precious lucid moments with him in the hospice, I began to see him not as a monster, but as a human being... one who was flawed and scared, but always tried to do the right thing with what he knew how to do... one whom I had greatly wronged.

As the only legal next of kin to my father in the United States, it fell to me to sign the DNR form (Do Not Resuscitate) that would allow him to finally rest instead of being revived after every heart attack. I got to know my father as a human being in the last two weeks of his life, and then I ended him.

This is the eulogy of Hyun Mo Shin that I composed and delivered at his funeral:

My father was born on July 10th, 1924 as the youngest of nine children within a family of rice farmers. He died peacefully in his sleep at 1pm on April 8th, 2005 at the age of 80 from a combination of prostate cancer and kidney failure. From what I know of him, he went to Gae-Oh University in Japan during the occupation of Korea where he learned to speak English. This allowed him to work with the United States CIA during the Korean War translating North Korean enemy transmissions to the American forces. During the Vietnam War, he ran a shop that supplied goods to American soldiers, and that is where he met my mother. When Vietnam fell in 1975, he arranged for her and their unborn child to travel by boat to Korea so that she and their son could live a better life away from oppression. From Korea, they moved to Australia for a short time but eventually settled in Iran where he ran a successful Chinese restaurant and lounge. When the Iranian Shaw was overthrown, he moved his family to Houston, Texas to start a new life over with a new Chinese restaurant. That business failed, and he was eventually forced to take a job as a maintenance man in an apartment complex. With the help of his soon to be lifelong friend, Bill Bokovoy, he moved up the ranks to eventually manage various apartments and convenience stores in the Houston area. He also managed a janitorial service. In 1996, he met Kim Soon and adopted her family as his own. Towards the end of his life, he worked as a tour guide for Japanese and Korean visitors to the United States. 

People describe him as a very intelligent, kind man with a noble soul and a gift for making others laugh. He was able to speak English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Arabic languages, and of course, Korean. He was always teaching me the value of doing the right thing. He loved to travel and go fishing, and I remember him as a man who lived his life to the fullest… whether it be a trip to the Super Bowl in between dialysis treatments or an indulgent meal at his favorite Asian buffet. Some might have described him as an incorrigible but charming ladies’ man, but it wasn't just about the women for him. His love for life transferred to all aspects of his interaction with those around him. He dedicated his life to his family and his community in the name of love. He would welcome Korean immigrants to Houston and volunteer his time to do whatever he could to help them get settled into American society. His last wish to me and my newfound brother was to make sure that his family would be okay… to his dying day, he was thinking about the others in his life. 

When somebody we know passes away, we can't help but think about our own mortality. All of you are here because my father’s life has affected you in one form or another. As I found out more about him, I began to see the waves and ripples he has created in the lives around him as he continued to live his own life, and it made me realize that we all create waves and ripples in the lives around us whether we choose to or not. After we’re gone, all that’s left are the waves. The world we live in and who we believe ourselves to be is a reflection of signals from the people around us. I feel that my father has lived a good life, and I see the proof in the people that are here in this room. Thank you for listening.

The humanization of my father is my own origin story. It marked the beginning of a drive to understand more about the world than I was capable of comprehending at that time. The universe suddenly seemed very large, and my life suddenly seemed very small. I began to actively examine just how tenuous our belief systems, identities, and relationships truly are and how much control we have over the meaning we give ourselves within the course of an unpredictable lifetime that may or may not actually be meaningful to anyone else.

Today marks the ninth anniversary of my father's death. That story is still evolving.

My first child is due at the end of August.
He feels like a stranger at this moment.
I hope the story between us ends well.

Triangular Theory of The Ideal Colleague

The "Warrior Gene"

Genetic Ramifications:

• Rapid Processing of dynamic stimuli under stressful conditions
• At the cost of Memory and Attention to details
• Higher error rate
• Ability enhancement triggered by Dopamine release
• Higher resistance to pain
• More easily Hypnotized
• Less affected by Placebos
• More likely to develop schizophrenia

Source: http://snpedia.com/index.php/Rs4680

"rs4680 (Val158Met) is a well studied SNP in the COMT gene. 23andMe blog summarizes them as

• rs4680(A) = Worrier. Met, more exploratory, lower COMT enzymatic activity, therefore higher dopamine levels; lower pain threshold, enhanced vulnerability to stress, yet also more efficient at processing information under most conditions 
• rs4680(G) = Warrior. Val, less exploratory, higher COMT enzymatic activity, therefore lower dopamine levels; higher pain threshold, better stress resiliency, albeit with a modest reduction in executive cognition performance under most conditions 

Roughly speaking, the predominant wisdom (known colloquially as the warrior/worrier hypothesis; summary at [PMID 17008817]) posits that people with Val alleles have increased COMT activity and lower prefrontal extracellular dopamine compared with those with the Met substitution. Val158 alleles may be associated with an advantage in the processing of aversive stimuli (warrior strategy), while Met158 alleles may be associated with an advantage in memory and attention tasks (worrier strategy). Under conditions of increased dopamine release (eg, stress), individuals with Val158 alleles may have improved dopaminergic transmission and better performance, while individuals with Met158 alleles may have less efficient neurotransmission and worse performance. Some evidence suggests that Val158 alleles are associated with schizophrenia, while Met158 alleles are associated with anxiety."

Triangular Theory of Triangular Theories

Yo dawg, I heard you like Triangular Theories...

Triangular Theory of The Triforce

Triangular Theory of Motivation

Based on Daniel Pink's research on Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

Triangular Theory of Happiness

Triangular Theory of Actualization

Eventually, a pattern emerges from all of the triangular theories... as if we needed a minimum of three points to define a perceivable concept in this two-dimensional world.

Triangular Theory of Sustainable Culture

Quantum Identification Theory

"If you want to understand the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration."

-Nikola Tesla
___

Our minds are wired to make sense of the world through discreet vocabulary. By placing a label on something, we make the identity of that something more tangible to our brains through a combination of adjectives, verbs, and nouns. To understand things, we need to know its identity so that we can figure out how we may interact with that entity in this reality that we believe in.

Who am I?
What am I?
What do I do with these abilities?

One can go about answering these questions in specifics, starting with factual nouns and adjectives, going from association to association in recursive fashion until we create a conglomerate definition that makes sense on the surface but falls short on depth as the composite definition is marked by restrictions and boundary limitations that never seem to be enough to describe an entire human being's state of being. We are always more than just a collection of nouns, verbs, and adjectives with the occasional adverb tacked on.

When the frequency changes, we change. Our discrete parts reconfigure themselves to match the resonance of the environment around us.

We are the collection of vocabulary words for that one relevant moment in time, but those words may become deprecated in the next timeslice. Definition of the self is not a series of discrete particles but a wave of potential definitions whose first derivative over time can be distilled into a function of discrete values within the coordinate space that our perceptions can observe.

Our minds are wired to see things as discrete atomic particles at any one moment in time. Fields of potential register with our subconscious. We perceive these fields by forcing an awareness of discrete definitions on a regular basis until a pattern becomes apparent. For some, the wave awareness comes from successive postings on social media and the like. For others, the wave awareness evolves from mandatory three pages of words written every morning.  These are all essentially snapshots of the wave at any one time. When awareness is repeated enough, we internalize the pattern on an instinctive level beyond words.

This method of cognizance leads to lucid actualization. By intentionally engaging in awareness of wave potentials, one begins to alter discrete particle definitions as they manifest. The self-fulfilling prophecy alters reality through repeated snapshots as anticipation of the next snapshot becomes a nontrivial factor of the recursive equation.

Anticipation eventually becomes prediction.

Ronin

I am trying to figure something out.

Over my last thirteen years as a game developer, I switched jobs an average of every two years - Not always by choice. At first, it was because the studio I worked for got shut down or layoffs/downsizing/reduction-in-force happened after shipping the game; it felt like losing a family every time. I tried my best to stop it from happening, but it seemed that no matter how many 12 to 16 hour days I put in or how much the people I worked with really liked working with me, the result was the same... powers beyond my control and beyond the control of anyone I work with would force me to find a new tribe in a new studio and start all over again.

Acceptance eventually set in: "bad weather", "the circle of life", "nature of the biz", "price you pay to do something you love"... These justifications started to wear thin after awhile. I was paying attention to my counterparts at other companies inside and outside the games industry, and that was when I started noticing the pattern. It manifested to a point where it eventually became possible to tell when bad things were going to happen again. Sometimes, the patterns were tied to specific people, but always, they were tied to specific behaviors.

In the more recent years of my career, I chose not to wait for the people who employ me to lay me off. I got good at laying myself off before my former employer could start their own (surprise) round of layoffs. I figured that I could preemptively reduce the headcount and extend the company runway before other people got reduced who weren't as flexible as me.

At this point in my life, I now understand that when you work for a company, the decisions that control your fate will not be your decisions, and they may be made by people who do not understand what you do and don't have the time to find out.

I want to make products that I believe in with a tribe that I can get stronger with over multiple projects over multiple years, but none of that is going to happen if I start over every two years. The only way to make this happen is to work for a very stable company and trust that I can grow within the established ecosystem there with its installed residents.... or make that company, myself.

Today is my first day as an independent game developer. This is an experiment to see if I can succeed by just working hard, being good at my job, and managing who I collaborate with... all while believing in something. At any one time, the things I do need to come from a personal place. The best communications I have ever had with people were the emotional ones. The best code I have ever written was an emotionally driven analogy for some concept in the real world. The best things I have ever done in life were done with the full intention of somehow fixing myself... or those like me. This is a truth that I am at peace with.

In order to succeed, I need to make this personal and tap into that emotional reserve, but I also need a structure to give the company's output meaningful context in order to achieve cultural resonance. This internal compass has evolved into three sharply defined tenets that relate to the concept of Identity, Agency, and Communion. These three points of a triangle are... The Ring of Blades!

The Ring of Blades is in service to player experiences that...
   Express Identity with Passion,
      Actualize Agency with Skill,
         and Establish Communion through Introspection

Asymmetrical Empathy

"I can do it, why can't you?", says the villain to the prey.

___

Our brains require a definition to perceive the presence of something... or the absence of it.
Without a definition, that “something” becomes irrelevant to the brain.

An intrinsic value is one that can’t be judged by just looking at a person. It is the type of quality that a person applies internally as part of his or her self image through actions and results. The process of interpreting actions and results into an intrinsic value differs from person to person because they each carry a unique lens. People willfully choose the intrinsic qualities that build their sense of self as a normal function of ego.

Our bag of definitions for the perception of an intrinsic value comes mainly from those chosen to define the self. We tend to use ourselves as a template when judging the presence or absence of a certain human quality in another. We judge potential friends, family members, and colleagues through this lens of symmetry. A dedicated athlete may judge a career-oriented person based on health-related habits. An English major may judge a CEO based on spelling and punctuation, and an engine programmer may judge a gameplay programmer based on their understanding of SPU assembly.

We do this instinctively without effort because our minds are hard-wired to understand symmetry. It is much easier for us to judge whether something is present or absent in another by checking for a one-to-one match with things present in the self. Symmetrical evaluation results in the following trend:

1. COMFORT: Worthy intrinsic value present in both
2. JUDGEMENT: Worthy intrinsic value present in the self, but missing in the other
3. NEUTRAL: Worthy intrinsic value missing in the self, but present in the other
4. NEUTRAL: Worthy intrinsic value missing in both

As far as this trend goes, #3 indicates potential wasted data. We typically require five positive interactions for every negative interaction. Neutral interactions are ambiguous. For most people, the evaluation of this 5-to-1 ratio operates with a blind spot that can result in up to 50% data loss.

Symmetry is not enough. There are properties in others that are invisible to the self. Inversely, there are properties in the self that are invisible to others. Compassion for others who are not like the self requires...

• SELF AWARENESS: Embracing the parts of you that can’t be compared to others
• TRUST: Believing that intrinsic qualities you have not become aware of do exist, and that others might have this quality that you currently do not have the means to perceive
• IMAGINATION: In order to defeat your villain, you must think like your villain. You must match your brainwave patterns to those of your villain's brain. Only then will you be able to find the bomb and save the city, but beware... you might fall in love with your villain or become a new villain in the process

We define ourselves and others through silhouettes; the challenge is to build definitions without using the self as a boundary.

Cognitive Dissonance

The cold truth is that nothing has meaning. It all ends the same way, eventually. But people need to believe that there is meaning in something other than sheer survival. Meaning comes from what we're willing to believe. If the meaning is not found in sports, children, politics, television, music, religion, art, or the latest fashion trend, then the void gets filled with more eccentric endeavors such as drugs, hatred, Bollywood, or the local chapter of some society, somewhere.

To have a policy about things, a philosophy on your actions, is to give meaning to yourself as if you really mattered in this world. By existing with a personal compass, we seek to change the world and make it smell like us in order to affirm our existence.

We define ourselves through the suffering that we choose to own, whether it be our jobs, our sweat, smoking, the chase, the escape, or the fight... we all fight. It gives us meaning to fight. If we don't fight or choose not to fight, then we eventually end up fighting ourselves. We create a policy for the fight as a rationale to justify the things we do or don't do. In this way, reality evolves in our own image.

And this is where I'm currently struggling. Reality is shifting faster than I can keep up with. I was once the boy in love with love who loved nothing more than the fight. I do not feel like that boy anymore. I no longer have that religion... that old testament flair. The fierce dogmas I had subscribed to have dissipated and the fight now feels... optional. There is a fear growing inside me that my prioritization of peace has put me in a mental space of accepting mediocrity. But average is safe. Normal is dependable. Not sticking out like a sore thumb means nobody is looking at me, anymore.

My identity has not found a new silhouette since my recent bout with Cognitive Dissonance, but it is shifting into something I do not yet understand. I don't know who I am when I am not that guy trying to change the world through blades of agency. Hopefully, equilibrium will set in so that the shifting can stop and the discrete Heisenbergian packets of my persona might once again resonate into an identifiable frequency and wavelength.

Relationship Symmetry

Relationship Symmetry:

1. When you know each other's names
2. When communications are equal in both directions.
3. When messages are customized for the recipient's personality and situation

There was a time when I was Mr. Social Networking. I can only imagine that my Klout score must have been... "winning". I even went so far as to write this in response to all of the entitled ineffectual complaints I would hear from people who had contempt for the Twitter and Facebook culture.

My years of living on the social networks and maintaining virtual friendships have taken a toll on my ability to know the difference between a friend and a mutual rolodex entry. The result is the disturbing normalcy of asymmetrical interactions.

I have only recently become disturbed by the normalcy of this asymmetry.

One day, I woke up and realized that I am no longer "that guy who knows everybody".
I am no longer associated with a company or organization that warrants networking, nor can I help anybody get a job or speaking opportunity or move an audience in their direction. After my voluntary exit from my last fairly high profile employer, I have nothing to offer those in my networks other than a simple friendship.

Currently, I am at the bottom of my social networking value, and it is here that I am beginning to see the difference between being a connector node and being a person you are willing to carpool to the grocery store with.

The Bystander Effect is my enemy.

My new paradigm is a belief that...
Zero Communication is better than Weak (Broadcasted) Communication.

Focused (One-on-One) Communication is best of all.

• No more talking or emailing people in "group mode" as opposed to "eye contact mode"
• No more living my life as if the cameras are rolling on the social networks
• Intentional focus on introspective verbs rather than outward-facing expressions of opinion and affiliation

I have spent a lot of energy outsourcing my identity to others. What others thought of me started out as a comfort that eventually became a debilitating expectation to keep me going. It is time for me to re-calibrate who I think I am when nobody is watching. And from there, I can repair not just my own self-image, but also my ability to regenerate and maintain the friendships I have neglected due to "automated maintenance through a virtual facade".

No more Bystander Effect.

This is where the REAL begins.

The Seven MindKillers

From an early age, most of us are conditioned to take great pleasure in the fulfillment of Trust.
Over time, that trust gets blocked by Fear.

It is said that your mind has seven points (Chakras) that can be attacked by fear for maximum damage:

1. The first point deals with Survival. When you no longer trust the security of your own survival, you will be consumed with Anxiety about the things that can go wrong. Trust in the things that you can change. Accept what you can't change. Know the difference between the two.
2. Pleasure is blocked by Guilt. Distrust of pleasure comes from fear of judgement. Know the actual consequence of that judgement to disarm it and be at peace with the choices you make.
3. Willpower is blocked by Shame. Shame is judgement on the self. Fear of failure looks like cynicism and self-deprecation from the outside. Shame results in mental paralysis. Accept your past failures; they've made you stronger. Know that each success must be preceeded by multiple failures as a normal part of the process.
4. Love is blocked by Grief. The loss of love is inevitable. To allow this fear to consume you is to remain alone. The love that you feel in the present will always be worth more than the grief that you may feel in the future. You always have a choice to love at any one time. The present matters more than the past or future, for it is the only thing that you have direct control over right here and now.
5. Expression is blocked by Lies. Your true self will not manifest as long as you fear your own identity. Accept that you are you, and do not be afraid to let others know you as you know yourself. The maintenance of Honesty consumes zero energy.
6. Insight is blocked by Illusions. By giving fear a tangible form, we can disarm its power over our senses and see it for what it really is: A problem that is solveable.
7. The final point deals with Expansion; it is blocked by Attachment. Suffering can be perceived as meaning, but you are not your suffering. Your identity is malleable as you see fit. For every new form you adopt, an old form must be discarded. Embrace your past, but do not cling to it. It has served its purpose. No regrets.

Now... The badass version of your future self is calling you.

TRUST that person.

Catharsis: Less is More

Sometimes, when things are bad, I talk too much.
Because I want people to know what I am thinking.
Because they MUST know what I am thinking.
Because I got hurt, or I'm afraid.
And I need to blame, or share, or validate, or search for hope in some fashion.
... as if the gods were listening.

"Where are your Gods, now?", said the stranger to the kid in the ruined bastion.

"They are busy... doing important things in other places. But they'll hear me eventually, and then things will get better."

"The gods are listening.
They have heard you, but they can't do anything, kid.
... because their "hands are tied", either by another god or a fear of conflict.
... or because they don't have the time to deal with your problems.
... or because everything sounds like wizards fighting, and they don't want to make the wrong choice.

You can't fix this because authority is the missing element, and you have none of that.
And so the suffering will continue, the gods and you and me all agree that the situation is bad."

The kid thought long and hard about the stranger's words. He had been doing a lot of talking, lately.

Words work when the gods have the attention, understanding, and empowerment to change things... but in godless country, words are just an indulgent reminder of how truly powerless we are over things that are unwilling or unable to change for the better.

There comes a point where people just get tired of hearing about your open wound.

And so, the talking ended.
The silent protagonist knew what had to be done.

Love and Happiness Through The Looking Glass

This journal entry is for anyone on the outside looking in.
I have recently become on the inside looking out.

The Choice
Something I did not truly internalize until recently in life:
Love and Happiness are CHOICES.
They are internal choices and not external situations.

The absolute definitions for Love and Happiness are defined by the self.
Nobody but you can tell you that your definition is wrong.

You can not control the weather, but you CAN control you.
You CAN control what you DO and how you FEEL when it rains.
And you can CHOOSE to be happy during the worst of thunderstorms.

Like Happiness, Love is a choice.
It is NOT a stroke of luck or a spell that is cast upon you by another.
When you are in love with somebody, it is because YOU are CHOOSING to Love.

That Love will serve you well as long as your accomplice is also a willing participant who CHOOSES to love you back. If there is such a thing as a soul-mate, then your true soul-mate will love you back.

Equilibrium Between The External and Internal
There are limits to how much our interactions can achieve and how much we can alter own way of thinking.

We have standards for Love and Happiness.
We can’t just love anything that comes our way or be happy about any situation that arises.
But the fact is that Love and Happiness are powerful universal NEEDS,
and life becomes easier when we prioritize those needs over our limitations.

"The happiest people are either very lucky or very flexible in their criteria for happiness."
-Matthew Y. Wong, Ph.D.

So our challenge in life is to find that equilibrium between how much we can change the world around us and how much we can change ourselves.

Unconditional Love and Happiness
Marriage is a promise to love, unconditionally.

The breakthrough that occurs in the transition from “Dating” to “Marriage” is the commitment to make the Relationship more important than the self as if it were... a third self.

There might be such a thing as a promise to be happy, unconditionally.
Perhaps this is the original promise that one can make to their first self.

Redefining "Religion"

The Awareness Problem
They say that in any organization/tribe/civilization, approximately 95% of the decision-making power is held by 5% of the people.  Empirical evidence suggests that relationships are a stronger factor in decision-making than actual correctness.

This happens partially because we are genetically hard-wired to seek approval as a form of motivation.  That, combined with the fact that one person can not effectively process more than a person's worth of information causes our minds to think in terms of specialization.  We delegate the processing of "surplus" information to others in order to preserve precious attention bandwidth.

Delegating Awareness
This cycle of converting information into decisions is the dominant pattern of how humans deal with the unknown.  We leverage trust as the commodity that allows us to trade certainty for peace of mind.

"I do not know the answer, but I know somebody that does..."

We are genetically hard-wired to trust.  This is not going to change anytime, soon.  From the moment we are born, we want to trust and derive pleasure from being able to trust.


Giving Form to the Unknown
Religion is our personal relationship with the unknown.

"I do not know the answer, but I know that there is an answer..."

It may manifest as an anthropomorphized deity representing "the trusted one", or it may simply manifest as avid Atheism and dedication to science.  Whatever form it takes, religion is essentially our personal compass that gives us a working mental model that we trust for making optimal decisions with the subset of information available to us.

Faith in Truth Outside the Self
We can not fight the fact that relationships are a more sustainable mechanism for decision-making than correctness.  The human brain is optimized for operations within a social structure.  Being correct consumes more mental energy than maintaining relationships.  Relationships offer a promise of stability in a world where truths can either be unstable, lost in translation, or ineffectual; one's relationship to truth is more stable than actual truths due to the degree of control we are afforded over that relationship.  In other words, it is much easier for our human brains to manage a relationship with truth than it is for brains to manage the overwhelming volume of unprocessed raw facts.

Religion is our relationship with everything outside of the self.
We want to trust our mental model of how things work, and some of us may even go so far as to engage in "faith"... trading certainty for peace of mind so that every possible question that could ever exist has a sense of closure that is intrinsic to the mental model we choose.  Instead of truth, we appoint a method that represents that truth.


The Code We Live By
Religion is the algorithm by which we program our brains to deal with uncertainty.  When established recipes for verbs become insufficient, we synthesize new plans by running available data through established algorithms... written either by the self or by another.

The personal Code we live by exists because we have an identity that requires an interface between the self and the non-self.

Triangular Theory of Friendship

Inspired by the Triangular Theory of Love

Friendships often begin as kinship. But then... marriages can happen, cities might change, babies might get born, and lives become different in ways that alter the common grounds that hold many friendships together.

Availability may not come naturally when the commonality is lost. Sometimes, you choose to make the time for a friend that otherwise has no place in your life.

Vulnerability can be the hardest thing to expose. The choice to be a friend and the choice to stay a friend begins and ends with this.

Tungsten-Carbide Alloy

By itself, single-element metals are highly malleable because the molecules of the metal are uniform in size, and this gives adjacent molecules room to move as each molecule acts like a ball joint to its neighbors.

Alloys are created by infusing a large-molecule metal with another element that has a much smaller molecule. The smaller molecules fill in the empty spaces between the large molecules, thereby making the metal seem more solid as the large molecules are fastened into place by the tight packing of small molecules in between the large molecules. Within an alloy mix, the same amount of space can contain more matter because previously unused space is now efficiently filled by smaller molecules.

Density increases.  The two elements will inevitably occupy a space that is less than the space occupied by each element separately.

The heavy metal can be quite formidable by itself, but as an alloy, it can become more effective at achieving goals while maintaining a desired equilibrium.

Detecting and Moving Duplicate Files with Perl

I had used iTunes the wrong way, and it auto-generated numerous duplicate copies of my music files within my music folders (song.m4a, song 1.m4a, song 2.m4a, etc...).  Manually deleting those files would have been extremely tedious as the duplicates were spread out across multiple nested folders within my Music directory.

I decided to teach myself Perl this weekend.
My goal was not really to master Perl as much as it was to solve this very specific problem I had created for myself.

Perl is... interesting, to say the least.
If coding wars happened ONLY on battlegrounds of string and file manipulations
... and success was measured ONLY by the number of verbs per keystroke
... then Perl would be far superior to C++.

The program I wrote to move all duplicated files out into another folder for manual deletion lives here:
http://ringofblades.org/Blades/Code/MoveDuplicates.txt

I wrote a second program to move non-mp3 files (*.wma and *.m4a) if an mp3 with matching filename was found:
http://ringofblades.org/Blades/Code/MoveNonMp3Copies.txt

Today, I also learned that servers do not like it when you post files with a .pl extension.

Special thanks goes out to the internet Perl community... Who taught me how to program in Perl without the need for any book purchases.

I used Strawberry Perl... because strawberries are pretty.

Reprogramming the Human Brain

In mid-2009, I had to understand what was happening and why it kept happening to different people around me, and so I began reading about personality traits with regard to regions of the human brain.

Much research has been compiled from studies done on victims of stroke, cranial injuries, and genetic conditions.  I scribbled down a synopsis of relevant findings on my whiteboard (which also included my TODO list at the time)...



From these groupings, certain archetypical patterns became apparent.

An overactive limbic system often leads to an inability to regulate emotions.  Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors are often prescribed to cap the intense peaks and valleys often experienced by those with bipolar disorders and similar emotional imbalances.

Of notable interest is the potential association between anxiety and handwriting.

The temporal lobes are particularly susceptible to outer head trauma.  Accident victims with head injuries may exhibit symptoms of damaged cells in the temporal lobe region.  This can often affect a person's sense of judgement, language, and morality.

And the cingulate system... this is where your buttons live.  Game developers, marketing firms, and drug dealers alike would very much like to have direct access to this region of your brain in order to convert your compulsions into agents of their system.

But they can't get in if you already have a religon.

Intentional Friendships

I turned 35 exactly one month ago.  The theme over the past few months has been to streamline various aspects of my life to make sure that the energy I put into things results in a meaningful threshold of effect.

One area that has reached outside my comfort zone is the way that I have been managing friendships.  There has been much sorting over the past few months... many casualties  The following guidelines for judging friendship were developed during this sorting process.

• Shared verbs are mandatory if a genuine friendship is to be maintained... otherwise, they are a Facebook-only friend
• Friendship can generate expectations, which can generate fears... common verbs justify repetitions of proximity.  Verbs are the medium through which friendship flows.
• Common verbs do not always need to be a collaboration
• An inner circle can hold about seven people; any more than that will result in leakage.
• The choice is mine as much as theirs. I will be rejected. It won't be personal. No expectations... only trial and error.
• Having a routine of verbs eventually leads to having well-defined openings to fill with friendship activites
• I do not need to be everybody's friend. Neutral is acceptable and more common than emotional intimacy... after all, there are only approximately seven openings within the inner circle.
• People change... It is normal for people to come in as buddies and leave as strangers within one's life... we share wonderful moments with good people all the time... this does not mean that we are entitled to continue sharing those moments if our taste in verbs is no longer a natural match.
• Three Axes of Friendship: Identity Reinforcement, Reciprocal Trust, and Mutual Commitment

The Plan
Agency: Cultivate Intentional Friendships.
Time as a Resource: Cull out friendships that feel obligatory.
Directed Target: Imagine what an ideal friend does.  Do those things.  Be that person.
Technique: To counteract the tendency towards blind loyalty, use the lens of amnesia to filter intrinsic friendship behavior from obligatory friendship behavior.

The Book of Lenses

Your answer is personal, but the right question can help get you there...

• Lens of No History: Would you let this continue if you could only remember the last 8 minutes?
• Lens of Infinite Time: How would being an immortal affect your choices?
• Lens of the Future Badass: What would your future self do if your future self was a very wise badass.
• Lens of Novelty: How much of this is truly sustainable?  Would you still keep going at this once the novelty wears off and daily life settles back in?
• Lens of Limited Time: If you only had three months to live, would you be doing this, right now?
• Lens of Utility: Does doing this yield benefits equal to or greater than the cost of not doing this?
• Lens of Androgyny: Would the situation still be perceived the same way if the gender were different?  Why would gender be a factor, and is that a rational line of thought?
• Lens of Opportunity: If it makes you feel bad, then what can you do instead that would be a better use of your time?
• Lens of Verbs: Strip away every noun label and every adjective modifier... Look only at the verbs.  Do you still want this in your life?
• Lens of Maslow: For the effort you are about to spend time on, which level of Maslow's Hierarchy are you addressing? Are lower levels of the pyramid sufficiently fulfilled for you to be prioritizing this level, right now?
• Lens of Three: Pick the three most important things to you in life... health, money, love?  Will this serve or work against those three highest priorities?

These are the questions that have worked for me so far.

Thresholds for Unsolicited Advice

I was recently reminded of the concept of things having value if you suffer for it/earn it...

It made me think of the concept of UNSOLICITED advice... where another person's "wisdom" is just handed over for free. It doesn't ever seem to absorb as well as the kind of advice that people figure out on their own.

There must be a threshold somewhere.... a threshold in which the words you tell a person are not told, but shared. Shared in a way in which the person feels as if they are contributing to the dialog as they engage in a collaborative process towards a truth.

Because truth is personal, and pushing your truth on someone is akin to forcefully rubbing your scent glands on that person in the hopes of making them smell like you.

Anything more than sharing is telling, and people do telling naturally because humans seek validation for their identity.

Anything less than sharing is work (as one may need to do with coworkers)... work in learning and work in accepting the intrusion of another into your personal process... because empathy requires work to manifest.

Sometimes you have to listen, and that is work.
Sometimes you are asked to tell, and that is a privilege.
There is a time and a place for both... and for neither.

New Thing: Try my very best to avoid giving UNSOLICITED advice. I would rather be compassionate than correct. Because that is the right thing to do. This is my advice to you that you should take. Don't be a hypocrite; drop whatever you believe in and take this valuable advice that I am handing over to you for free!

The Truth About Truth

At this point in my life, I've come to the following counter-intuitive conclusions:

• Speaking Truth can be a selfish act
• Truth is not the ultimate answer to everything
• Truth is a means to an end, and that end is validation of identity

I am reminded that most of us are trained to become masters of data, knowledge, and correctness... into knowing things and being able to analyze things, but after all is said and done, we exist in fragile human frames that respond to emotions more so than any truth.

It is this little quirk about us that allows us to smoke harmful cigarettes when we know that it may bring a horrible painful death upon us... because the truth of danger is drowned out by the emotion of want.

And it is this quirk that can make us walk away from a relationship at the slightest sign of strife... because the truth of safety can be drowned out by the emotion of fear.

Inversely, one might stay in a harmful relationship because the truth of harm is drowned out by an emotion that is considered to be "love" by the beholder.

The compass always points to identity. Most people accept only the truths that support their self image... what they already know or wish to be true about who they are. The reality you choose to accept is based on who you think you are.

Every word, every silence, every action and inaction serves an explicit EMOTION more so then truth. Every meaningful interaction has an emotional intent from the source, and an emotional effect on the receiver. Ideally, the emotion between source and receiver would coincide, but this is not always the case because truth is personal while emotions are universal.

You always have a choice... to either be correct or compassionate.

The human brain is infinitely capable of rationalizing any truth as being the absolute truth. This "absolute truth" is personal. Our brain can convince itself into believing or denying anything if it does not fit an existing model of what we already "know" about the world and ourselves. If somebody wants to believe that something is true, they will find a way to rationalize it.

You always have a choice... to either challenge one's identity with unsolicited correctness or choose to coexist with different truths that lead to common emotions.

On the subject of Twitter/Facebook disdain

So here's the deal,

You don't have to use Twitter, nor do you have to get on Facebook. You don't have to do anything in this world that you don't want to do. When you do transmit signals into the internet, you expect to get something out of it.... whether it be Twitter, Facebook, or this Journal... there is an intention behind everything. Some useful things that people get out of Facebook/Twitter include the following:

• Entertainment
  
• Information
• Interaction opportunities that lead to changes in social configurations
• Verb opportunities
• Solicited advice
• Opportunities for expression (yes, this is a valid human need)

Most people suck, and you probably don't want to know them. It is perfectly okay to say that you are happy with your current circle of friends and see no need to expand and maintain links with a group of people who may be acquaintances at best.

The purpose of Twitter and Facebook is to provide opportunities to participate in a network of other people who seek the same. It is a tool, not an obligation.

So if the concept of Facebook and Twitter offend you for some reason, then ask yourself what it is, exactly, that makes you so angry at what other people are doing with their own time. Seriously... try to put this into a sentence made up of vocabulary words. After you've thought about it, consider saving yourself the trouble of dealing with any of it by deleting your account. That would be easy enough to do.

People who actively participate on Facebook and Twitter must get something out of it, and that is why they continue to use it despite the hassles with interface and inundation of unsolicited reading material. It doesn't matter if you don't relate to the motivations of the typical active Facebook'er/Twitter'er... It is very likely that they have different needs for social engagement than you.

In Maslow's hierarchy, social needs are a very real requirement for human beings, humans will degrade if their need for social involvement is not sufficiently met. We live in an age where members of society are generally impatient and will actively seek out the things they want instead of waiting for opportunities to randomly fall into their lap. Most friendships and romantic involvements do not happen the way they do in Hollywood movies, they happen because people put out request signals and somebody else answers them.

So what is your intention for getting on a site like Facebook or Twitter? To know about things? To maximize opportunities? To broadcast information?

• If you have no intention, then get off those sites! Other users will only take from you, and you will get nothing out of it.
• If you have an intention, then embrace it. Don't be shy about it. The site exists to serve your intentions, and you have a pool of cohorts that have agreed to be in on this social exchange

Whatever the case, participation has always been voluntary and optional. Getting mad at people who use Facebook or Twitter does not really accomplish anything unless it is your goal to revel in being mad about something. Getting mad at frivolous things that really don't affect you is one way of making yourself feel important... but that is a topic for another day.

The Identity Compass

For anything to be considered of worthy value, it must be attained through a sufficient ordeal. Suffering is the true currency through which we gain the attention of souls.

Time is the only resource we truly own... we have only a finite amount to spend on ourself and others... and we will never have enough time to please everybody whose path we cross. Disappointment on both sides is inevitable.

"What do I want?"

Truth makes happen what needs to happen... and so when faced with a difficult choice, you can only refer to your personal compass to guide you towards the identity you are willing to bond with... for your truth is your identity, and there is no absolute truth as much as there is a truth that you choose to fall in love with for that time in your life.

To believe in something... to have a policy on your actions is to protect yourself from future regrets by staying true to the identity you have chosen for yourself. When faced with a difficult choice, then the path that coincides with who you want to be is the right path because the difficult choice itself is marked by suffering and, therefore, is a decision of worthy value that can define you, or at the very least, reinforce who you are.

Being who you are might mean hurting others, but it has to be that way because obligation at the sacrifice of identity is never a valid path to happiness.

You always have a choice on who you want to be.
You always have the option to just wake up one day and choose to be "that person".

"What is my identity?"

Sometimes, the situation is too chemically charged to see what you need to see. That is why we develop a relationship with "the other"... the friend, the confidant, the god, the goddess... "The other" is a sentient representation of the universe that we trust with our identity. The other can be a living human being, or it can be something more abstract. We keep a piece of our soul with the other so that if we ever lose ourself, we can simply refer to "the other" to be reminded of our own reflection.

"What do I want to become?"

Choices are an opportunity to expand the definition of who we are. Once defined in a new area, subsequent choices in the future can become more apparent.

My "other" would tell me this:

Let your intentions drive your reality instead of the other way around. Visualize the lego castle you wish to have... and one by one, those missing pieces will find their place because you will explore, and you will discover, build, and place them with your own hands. Define your target: Your self-intended identity, the reality you seek - That is your compass. Follow that, and all of your choices eventually become the choice you needed to make at the time to evolve the complex entity that is you.

Reality Bend Spell

Anger or sadness is your brain's way of telling you that something is wrong. You have a choice to either change the world, change yourself, or accept reality as it is. Each choice requires a form of sacrifice.

Hoping for others to change or letting the situation work itself out sacrifices your agency.

Casting a spell sacrifices the comfort and inertia of the now for the potential upheaval of an uncertain future that you are responsible for. Whatever happens will be caused by you, and it will be different from the now.

Be ready: Casting a spell must be done on purpose and with conviction.
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1. The first phase of the spell requires giving form to the anatomy of the problem...
by assigning a shape and definition to that which seems formless, we provide an opportunity to affect that anatomy.

Vocabulary is a weapon. By giving form to the formless, we make the monster vulnerable to our intentions.
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2. The second phase of the spell is definition of the desired form...
This is your target reality. At the end of the spell, your declaration will become true. Defining a target allows you to decide whether to continue or stop this process.

Setting a goal gives your will a tangible focus.
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3. The third phase of the spell is the transformation...
It requires that you understand the movable parts of that tangible form to surgically alter its signature. No matter how difficult it may seem, You MUST MOVE parts of the monster's anatomy to see changes.

Meaningful actions bend reality.
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4. The fourth and final phase is acknowledgment of the new reality...
This is confirmation that your spell is finished. By declaring that the spell is done, you allow your sense of agency to rest. Failure to complete this step will result in perpetual restlessness as the spell slowly consumes you from the inside out: living in the past or future, but never the present.

When the change becomes real, its effect becomes real. Acknowledge the outcome.

Meta-Pattern

They say that misery is like an old childhood friend that validates our suffering like a badge of achievement. To survive is to live, prevailing over the machinations of a world that refuses to cooperate. We seek out this misery as if it were a missing piece of our very definition, and if we can't find it within ourselves, we end up seeking it in others. And if we can't find it in others, we make up our own misery in the form of a self-fulfilling prophecy... so that we may feel like a complete person content to embrace our woefully incomplete selves, misery and all.

There are those in power who understand this concept masterfully. They understand that you need something to believe in. They will give you something to be miserable about, and from that, they will provide a source of hope to believe in. You will be broken down and reformed to a citizen of their own creation... ready to fight and die for the values that they believe you should be fighting for.

We start out knowing nothing. Thrust into the fold whether we're ready or not, whether we choose to participate or not... we are in the game. We can refuse to believe in the game. We can choose not to participate, but then our world stagnates in a state of frustration as we become keenly aware of events taking place all around us but not with us. We can choose not to play, and we may find others who refuse to play as well... but it won't last... because patterns can't be avoided, and the game is a tapestry of patterns.

You start out knowing nothing, but eventually, you see the pattern. And as soon as a pattern becomes defined, then a metagame on top of the game becomes apparent. This is the set of rules that build on top of the established patterns in a context of continued discovery and progression. It is at this point that everything becomes an inside joke, and the language moves away from the mundane and becomes more abstract to outsiders. Entire monologues could be conveyed with a simple look. Conflicts can occur before they even start. The threat of permanence leads to a projection of the present into the one remaining unknown that is guaranteed to remain unknown... Amplifying the future and dampening the present.

The lesson I've learned from all this is that the direct path is never the successful path. When you yearn for something, it will elude you. When you embark on a seemingly random path, it will find you. It is the pattern that says that things must be attained through a sufficient ordeal in order to be considered a thing of value. The ordeal can be marked by either suffering or blind luck, but it must feel rare and special in order to be appreciated. Approach directly, and you will obviously be trying too hard. Approach from the side, and it will look like a chance occurrence. We give a piece of our lives to the things that we deem profound, and we demand a proportional ordeal in return for our precious mindshare. This is the nature of the metagame. Always bet on the lucky general.

Whatever It Takes

We are looking for context. Meaning. We want to know that the things we did do matter, that we matter... and that our suffering and efforts meant something - nothing wasted. The narrative has a happy ending when the random set of generic events come together in a system that makes sense to us... with every observable action having meaningful context. The entropy of the world makes sense when everything has a context... As if the universe were a living sentient entity that one could have a real two-way relationship with.

Every conversation we have, every movie we see, game we play, thing we read, in everything we do, we seek a context that promises the potential to affect our future thoughts in a never-ending drive to modify our own internal genetic algorithms. Anything without personal context ultimately renders the experience empty or irrelevant.

We try so very hard to seek that relationship with our universe. It is the only way we know how to interact with our world: as a relationship with a sentient "other". full of context. empathy. with likes and dislikes. To have a relationship with an entity is to have control over how that entity affects us. This control manifests as an identity: the labels that we allow ourselves to wear and the verbs implied by those labels.

We are not looking for truth. We never were. We never are. We are looking for what the truth would promise us: Meaning. Emotional Context. an Identity we can call our own. Understanding. Control. Peace with what we believe to be our own truths. Validation from an "other".

We seek out this context in the various forms of media and interactions that reflect back at us like a Looking Glass... mixing ourselves with ingredients to experience the alchemy that makes us... Gravitating towards the edges of silhouettes that belong to forms worthy of our recognition.

Our emotions, both good and bad, are driven by the context of our experiences.  Effort is the currency through which we acquire the validation of these experiences.

Channels of Reality

The channels of reality seem to fall into three distinct categories:

1. Input

That which is given, including what we give ourselves: Starting identity and Channels of interaction.
What Is.

2. Agency

Action.
To SEPARATE from that which is given.
To do.

3. Communion

Identity.
To JOIN with that which exists.
To become.

RESTLESSNESS | EQUILIBRIUM
We spin endlessly in this cycle in the hopes that movement will place us at a location that minimizes the need for maintenance. When we find that spot of equilibrium, the world makes sense and our relationship with the universe feels stable.

ENTITLEMENT | ADAPTATION
Sometimes, the world challenges the identity that we have established by violating the boundaries defined by the moral authority of our internal compass. When the code is broken, we have a choice to make: Either assert the correctness of our own code or accommodate the perceived usage pattern that has manifested from the input.

THE TRAP | THE CHOICE
We are trapped when there are no more choices to make.

Beliefs are a choice. It is the first choice we make.

• The Concepts we believe influence the Inputs we choose to perceive.
• The Inputs we perceive direct the Actions we choose to take.
• The Actions we take dictate the Person that we choose to become.
• That Person we become is a testament to the Concepts we believe in.

Identity is a choice. We will revise that choice often throughout our lifetime.

The Designer's Intended Value

Can a quality product be completed without a designer? Sure, if one of two things were true:

1. Everybody on the production team was fully capable of cohesively visualizing the ramifications of their component before actually implementing it
   
2. There was infinite time to iterate on the implementation of bad ideas until they become good ideas

Time is rarely infinite and trusting everyone on the team to maintain a cohesive vision of the product can be a gamble. For that reason, most projects will involve people whose role it is to supplement the team's ability to visualize the details before time is spent on the implementation of those details.

Depending on the industry, these people are called Producers, Directors, Project Managers, or Designers. The idea is that the cost of thinking is cheaper than the cost of doing production work before finding out that it was a bad idea, solution, or plan. The consequence of bad design is a bad product at best and an unfinished product at worst.

So... what are the broad metrics of a designer?

• Pre-Visualization: Using associative cognition to set a good target in conjunction with analysis of resources to ensure that the target is completed in a form that satisfies the original aesthetic/pragmatic intent. Resources include time, people, tools, and feedback. Iteration can't be avoided, but it does have a cost associated with it. Therefore, one who is really good at pre-visualizing will be of higher value than one who does not hone this ability at all.
  
• Two-Way Communication/Relationships: Debates will happen. People will not blindly follow. Reading minds is not standard practice. The designer is not always correct and is unlikely to know everything. Unless the designer is going to implement everything her/himself, this person will need to deal with people factors.

Nobody is perfect, and the same holds true for any Designer, Programmer, Artist, or whatever it is that describes any function for a human being.

The designer is the person who can hold it all in the head and communicate it to a team of collaborators: Scheduling, Planning, Creative Direction... these are all skill sets that can be contained in one person but may need to be delegated to others for large projects. Knowing when to delegate is key along with other skills such as knowing when to take a gamble or cut losses.

In Japan, this job function is not called "designer". Instead, they are called "planners". This seems to be a more accurate term as the emphasis of the function is not on creativity as much as it is on problem solving.