(diary)
Sister Jean and I working in a coffee shop yesterday, her on course material, me on constitution, and asking one another questions now and then “how should I say”, … omg. I love my… https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=493977561199139&id=100017606988153
Source date (UTC): 2019-10-27 16:41:11 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1188495873078124544
(diary)(lessons)
Couple next to us. I describe ‘retiring’ to write because of two bouts of cancer immune system failure in between, and a third near loss of my liver because of it, after.
“Ooooh… I’m sorry. (More unwanted sympathy incoming…)
“Don’t be sorry. I’m here. Ether god isn’t done with me or the devil isn’t. I’m not sure. … But, after looking death in the face enough times you’re numb to it, you can choose to look at life as a tragedy and give up, or a comedy and start fresh anew. … I didn’t choose poorly.”
“(Laughter)”
Lesson taught. My deed for the day.
Source date (UTC): 2019-10-27 14:42:00 UTC
I miss Ukraine. I miss Kiev Center, L’viv Center, and the Carpathians. The air is different than white mountains or the cascades and so are the people.
Friend called yesterday to tell me about a new news channel a ‘friend’ (friendly acquaintance) of mine has started. Lots of photos. Lots of laughter. Lots of gossip.
Word is the Russians from the east have invaded like Mexicans have invaded the USA and it’s causing the same problems. Ukrainians are cultured, and soft spoken, and Russians are the Ukrainian version of america’s ‘trailer trash’: loud, rude, crude, and generally uncultured. Same is true in Estonia in Lithuania and Finland, by the way. I love russians among russians like I love all people among their own, but I don’t love them tuning cultural europe into trailer parks, any more than I like what happened to our cities in 20’s and the 60’s and now.
Source date (UTC): 2019-10-27 12:48:00 UTC
(diary)
Sister Jean and I working in a coffee shop yesterday, her on course material, me on constitution, and asking one another questions now and then “how should I say”, … omg. I love my family. Apparently my niece works the same way. Quiet, comfortable, creativity. It’s wonderful.
Source date (UTC): 2019-10-27 12:41:00 UTC
(Close friends: Please thank my lovely, brilliant, daughter Caitlin for having ‘the talk’ with her dad about migrating from mediating his autistic tunneling with OCD medication to ADHD medication, because it has solved the problem of my productivity that’s been plaguing me since my return to the states. I mean, if you thought I couldn’t shut up before, I’m as prolific over the past week as I was living in Ukraine and maybe more so – despite my current environment. I don’t need hours to get into the zone in order to work on a problem. And if interrupted I can return to it. It’s miraculous really. Although apparently I’ve returned to primarily CEO-Curt behavior a bit more than family appreciates. 😉 Thank you Caitie. I don’t deserve you really. I’m a useless father. But I certainly lucked out in the daughter department. 😉 )
Source date (UTC): 2019-10-25 11:59:00 UTC
(in chair. working)
Little old lady, with dramatic flair, throws my hat and jacket across the room and onto the floor. And giggles.
F. It’s like having a little kid around.
It’s sorta like havin’ me around.
Lolz.
Genetics….. 😉
Source date (UTC): 2019-10-24 16:05:50 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1187399809478676480
(in chair. working)
Little old lady, with dramatic flair, throws my hat and jacket across the room and onto the floor. Giggles. And makes the ‘slap-up, slap-down, that’s done!’ hand gesture.
F. It’s like having a little kid around.
It’s sorta like havin’ me around.
Lolz.
Genetics….. 😉
Source date (UTC): 2019-10-24 12:05:00 UTC
Disagreeableness. 😉
(diary)
I treated college as a purely commercial exercise and couldn’t have cared less about grades, homework, professors’ opinions, or anything other than whether I was… https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=489926048270957&id=100017606988153
Source date (UTC): 2019-10-22 01:48:50 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1186459363537498112
Disagreeableness. 😉
(diary)
I treated college as a purely commercial exercise and couldn’t have cared less about grades, homework, professors’ opinions, or anything other than whether I was learning something I thought was interesting and valuable. I loved my education in the arts. I still do. its precious to me. I loved contract law. I found political science immoral. I found engineering obvious and tedious. And my only major mistake was not moving into literature when the department asked me. If I’d taken philosophy and literature I would have excelled more so than in the arts – where my primary concern was technique theory and history. I never had any intention of doing anything other than running a business. Education was purely ‘for me’. But I might have had a very different life if someone had said “you know, when a department asks you to join you don’t say no unless you have a very good reason”. I didn’t have a reason to say no. I loved college. I only realized much later that my health problems started early – probably when I got that damned flu. I kept take classes in something or other until the dot com era, where it was simply too impossible to make time. Founding Ascentium was just a dead heat from day one and between that and health I didn’t have anything left. I was pretty ill I think by the time I left college. I just didn’t feel right. And so began a lifetime of doctors without letting anyone know I was having health problems because it’s damaging to your career. That said, founded or built one company after another until illness convinced me that it was do or die so to speak, and that if I didn’t start working full time on it I wouldn’t have time for it.
What’s the lesson here? I dunno. i certainly wouldn’t have taken the AI->Law -> Hayek->Popper -> economics route if I’d done it otherwise, so it’s a choice between two worlds one of which exists and one of which is only imagined.
Best advice from an older family member: “You never want to be forty and say ‘I wish I had….’. I took it. I didn’t. I don’t. Not because this path has been other than fulfilling, but that I simply wonder what that other path might have led to. I think I might have been a lot happier in some ways and not in others.
Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 21:48:00 UTC
(health update) (personal) (for close followers)
As most followers know I have a rather obsessive thought pattern common to the autism spectrum. Aside from reduced empathy and exaggerated systematizing it’s really the only symptom I have to deal with. But, this ‘talent’ makes it extremely difficult for me to switch contexts, and switching contexts is somewhere between frustrating and aggravating’ because it’s so difficult – My mind wants to constantly work on (obsess on) one problem or another. And for most of my life this has been extremely advantageous as you can imagine. Collecting reams of information isn’t work. Learning isn’t work. Working isn’t work. Not collecting information, not learning and not working is work. It’s like having a gravity well for your attention that’s relentless as being in a loud steam powered factory, and you have to feed it constantly to keep it at peace. It can be useful especially in the current era. And I’m sure it was also useful as a hunter-gatherer, and we are clearly adapted to long winters, in cramped quarters with others indoors. I would have no problem working away on whatever winter crafts in communal space in a Scandinavian long house, or Saxon hut. None at all. Watching my sister, mother, grandmother, its pretty easy to see her extremely happy in that environment.
But over the past two years (since I’ve come back to the states to care for family) my productivity has suffered because in my current environment I’m not able to insulate myself from stimulation and get ‘into the zone’ very often, and when I do it’s for short time periods. I’ve managed huge progress on the grammars, on religion, and on the operational description of human consciousness because it’s just information consumption and contemplation. But when I move from problem solving to ‘authoring’ it’s like pulling teeth. So this summer I’ve been trying everything in order to up my productivity to previous levels despite the ‘environment’.
My daughter Caitlin manages drug field trials for medical research, and has the same behavior (as did my grandmother, my mother (less so), my sister, and my niece, my other daughter (who is classified as mildly autistic), and my niece. My son manifests it slightly differently.) She suggested that I ask my doctor to try migration from OCD treatment (reduce resistance) to ADHD treatment (stimulation), because it would allow me to work, and switch contexts without depending upon coffee.
The effect has been rather immediate and obvious, in that context changes, and cognitive tunneling seem to have been radically reduced; my need to use physical motion or talking to myself to break out of the ‘cognitive well’ seems eliminated; with the only side effect being that ‘what comes to mind comes out of the mouth’ a bit more rapidly. And given my plentiful and hyperbolic sense of humor I might have to be careful.
Everyone in family and extended family has noticed, immediately and they say something along the lines of “you’re here” or “you’re present” rather than constantly detached (focused on whatever I’m thinking). Yet I can easily switch topics and return to work, break from work, and return to it again, easily.
So cross fingers, think good wishes, or say a prayer that this works and I can get more of this done before the boogaloo happens.
Hugs all. Thanks for your participation, encouragement, support, and most of all – patience.
Revolution Comes.
-Curt
Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 12:42:00 UTC