Posts tagged with "reflection"

just another diamond day

In the mid­dle of this heat wave has come a hail­storm that’s dent­ed the shit out of every pan­el of my car, fol­lowed by a series of unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly cool nights. I slept with the win­dows open, and the breeze kept me con­tent to be wrapped in my duvet until wak­ing.

It may as well be a lazy Sunday morn­ing in Autumn as I write this, sit­ting by the warm light com­ing through the blinds, wax­ing nos­tal­gic about more than I care to admit. I’ve been try­ing to write, but I don’t know what I’ve been feel­ing late­ly.

airplane ride!

Maybe it’s cause I haven’t had time to think. And it’s only going to get busier in the fore­see­able future. I’d like to spend more time alone, but that seems a lux­u­ry that’s quick­ly dis­ap­pear­ing. When I’m try­ing to nur­ture the rela­tion­ships that are impor­tant to me, it’s hard to refuse a hang­out, and mak­ing reg­u­lar plans quick­ly fills the week.

playing Magic: The Gathering

Tiana taps two swamps to add two black mana to her mana pool, and increase her sex­i­ness to nerds every­where by 500%.

Probably a good thing, cause I also feel like I’ve been spend­ing too much time alone dur­ing my bouts of intro­ver­sion.

It’s also been a while since I stepped out of my com­fort zone. I guess I did enough trav­el­ing last year to know where my bound­aries are. Since return­ing from my sojourn in the Old Dominion, I’ve been too com­fort­able, and slow­ly I’m being forced out of it as life catch­es up with me. But I know I can han­dle things, cause I’ve done it before.

So I’m try­ing to enjoy what I have now, caught some­where between day and night, iso­la­tion and over-stim­u­la­tion, work and play, sum­mer and fall.

nothing little about it

How is it July already. Jew-lie.

My anchors are the peo­ple I spend time with; the only rea­son for me to remem­ber the days of the week. Otherwise, I’d lose track of time as the sum­mer slips through my fin­gers.

It feels like I’m liv­ing the same life I had back in my apart­ment on Lees, soon after grad­u­a­tion; unem­ployed, sin­gle, keep­ing myself busy, co-habi­tat­ing with two cats, not going out much, not hav­ing any long-term goals, and not over-think­ing things. I’m doing what I want. My needs are being met. I’m invest­ing in the right kinds of rela­tion­ships. I’m enjoy­ing things as they are now, instead of try­ing to chase a sense of hap­pi­ness in the future.

This means I get to focus on one project at a time. Being able to lose myself in some­thing for days is a lux­u­ry I’ve rarely had. I think I’ve always pre­ferred to work like this, but hav­ing a 9–5 job tends to get in the way.

magnetic poetry

My eyes go straight to one line.

At the same time, I feel com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to some things. I don’t have cable, so I can’t remem­ber the last time I saw a com­mer­cial. I nev­er know what movies are out. I’ve start­ed see­ing par­o­dies of pop­u­lar songs before I hear the orig­i­nals.

I used to be afraid that these were signs I was los­ing touch with the world, turn­ing into an old man, but I don’t mind any­more. There’s so much shal­low con­sumerism, celebri­ty obses­sion, and dis­pos­able cul­ture out there, and I don’t want any­thing to do with any of it.

I’ll just live in my lit­tle world, big enough to get lost in.

Version 13

The design of the site was updat­ed a few weeks ago, bring­ing the lat­est incar­na­tion of equivocality.com to ver­sion 13. I thought ver­sion 12 was going to be the final design, but I’ve real­ized that things inevitably change in my life, and the site is always ends up being a reflec­tion of those changes. At least it last­ed over a year, which is more than I can say for any of my pre­vi­ous designs.

Clean and clear and under control

After going through a peri­od where I felt shat­tered and began to ques­tion every­thing that was impor­tant to me, I knew I had to rede­fine myself. It made me want to strip every­thing down, and go back to my ultra-min­i­mal­ist roots, while bor­row­ing a few much-loved ele­ments from pre­vi­ous designs such as fine dot­ted lines. All the code has been built from the ground up instead of being based on a pre­vi­ous theme.

Now there’s only one col­umn, with every­thing cen­tered to keep it all nice and sim­ple. This lets me post very large pic­tures, which I’ve real­ly been enjoy­ing late­ly, and some­thing the pre­vi­ous theme had restrict­ed me from doing. The pic­tures scale nice­ly though, so peo­ple with low-res­o­lu­tion mon­i­tors will still be able to see an entire pho­to with­out ever hav­ing to scroll.

Typography

One of the biggest changes from any of my pre­vi­ous designs is the use of a non-sys­tem font for body copy. I want­ed to move away from the Helvetica I’ve been using for so long now and give the site a unique feel. I decid­ed on Proxima Nova, which retains human­is­tic pro­por­tions with a some­what geo­met­ric appear­ance. I’m still frus­trat­ing­ly dis­ap­point­ed by the cur­rent state of web typog­ra­phy, so I’ve turned to Typekit to take care of that for me.

don't give up on me now

In the last ses­sion, I explained to my ther­a­pist how I felt more respon­si­ble for and in con­trol of my own hap­pi­ness, and less depen­dent on oth­ers for a sense of iden­ti­ty or ful­fil­ment (things I’d strug­gled with before). I also told him how I’ve been more vocal about my needs, to give my friends a chance to be involved in my life instead of always putting my feel­ings aside, and how I’m lucky that they’ve respond­ed so pos­i­tive­ly to that. I’ve made some major life deci­sions that I believe will lead to pos­i­tive changes, I’ve been pro­duc­tive, and I’m hap­py for right now instead of being delud­ed by a hope­ful sense of what the future may hold1.

When I brought up idea that it may be the med­ica­tion that’s been help­ing me so much, he said it’s good but not that good. Otherwise, he’d be pop­ping pills every time he need­ed some sort of per­son­al epiphany. Instead, it’s there as a way to help me think more clear­ly in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, but it does­n’t do any think­ing for me. This came as quite a relief, as I did­n’t want to think that I’d be depen­dent on some­thing for this sense of men­tal well-being.

My ther­a­pist’s ini­tial goal was to teach me how to take bet­ter care of myself, due to the fact that I had insuf­fi­cient cop­ing mech­a­nisms. Now, he believed I could han­dle that suf­fi­cient­ly, and after say­ing that I looked “delight­ed”, we agreed that I did­n’t need to con­tin­ue with our ses­sions any­more, some­thing he’d nev­er said to me before. I walked in and out of there feel­ing good. I like the fact that he respects me, cause he’s one of the few peo­ple who tru­ly under­stand me.

On the oth­er hand, I did­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly care for my psy­chi­a­trist, an hoary man who did­n’t seem to have a sense of empa­thy, whom I met for the first time a few weeks ago. As a sign that my expe­ri­ence with him was part of Canadian health­care indus­try, he had no clue why I was there, when it was a doc­tor at the same clin­ic who had to write the refer­ral for me. At the appoint­ment, I was asked to fill out a ques­tion­naire that includ­ed things like:

  • Are your par­ents divorced ____, for how long _________, and what age were you ____?
  • Father/mother: how much edu­ca­tion did he/she have?
  • Please cir­cle the type of socioe­co­nom­ic envi­ron­ment in which you grew up: poor / low­er mid­dle class / mid­dle class / upper mid­dle class / wealthy
  • Habits: mar­i­jua­na ____ fre­quen­cy ____ gms ____

Sometimes he talked over me, as if he was­n’t inter­est­ed in hear­ing what I had to say, although it’s hard to blame him for that, see­ing as how his role is to mon­i­tor my med­ica­tion instead of deal­ing with any kind of psy­cho­analy­sis. At the end of the appoint­ment, he said I had a lot of options cause I had a lot of inter­ests and intel­li­gence. The only thing is, I don’t think I told him any­thing that would have giv­en him that impres­sion, so it all came out as flat­tery.

At least I won’t have to be see­ing him for much longer, as I was told that I could stop my dosage, but he rec­om­mend­ed that I con­tin­ue for at least six months after I start feel­ing bet­ter (not after I start tak­ing it), which means I can’t still can’t drink until some time around Christmas. But by then, hope­ful­ly I won’t have to.

  1. One thing I’ve learned is that real­ism is more valu­able than opti­mism (and a lot more valu­able than pes­simism) when it comes to psy­chol­o­gy. [↩]

change and productivity

I spent the last few days con­vert­ing the guest room1 to my new office, after giv­ing it two coats of The Plaza and mov­ing my com­put­er out of the bed­room. This deci­sion was spurred by the fact that I found myself spend­ing an unhealthy amount of time in a sin­gle room of the house, the excep­tions being when I was eat­ing or poop­ing. Now my work area is delight­ful­ly bright, and I have a view of the sum­mer foliage out of the front of the house.

new office with cats

With half the fur­ni­ture now moved out, the mas­ter bed­room looks espe­cial­ly min­i­mal. I’m keep­ing some of my pho­tog­ra­phy light­ing in there, includ­ing a large soft­box, which is a dec­o­ra­tion that fills the room nice­ly but also makes it look like a cheap porn set.

I used to be trep­i­da­tious about cer­tain things, like com­mit­ting to a paint colour or walk­ing into a room with large num­bers of peo­ple, but now I find it a lot eas­i­er to get over my anx­i­ety. It makes me think my anx­i­ety used to affect me more than I real­ized. Doing things that were out of my com­fort zone was a test I need­ed to give myself every now and then, but now I don’t find those things to be uncom­fort­able at all, and I tend to act with­out think­ing too much or over­an­a­lyz­ing.

I won­der if this is what nor­mal feels like. And how much of it is per­son­al growth ver­sus the med­ica­tion.

In either case, it’s nice to be get­ting thing done again, when I had so recent­ly found it hard just get­ting out of bed. Someone relat­ed to me his expe­ri­ence on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal psy­chotrop­ics, and he said the peri­od was marked less by what he wrote or cre­at­ed, and more by what he did or peo­ple he met and con­nect­ed with. For me, it seems to be man­i­fest­ing itself as a peri­od of change and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

  1. Which, until last week, looked like this. [↩]