No Diving

Beware: shallow water.

You cannot make a well with a shallow bottom. If you’re interested in sustenance, rather than just quenching your thirst, you need to dig deep.

---

I’m tired of the masks. The necessary layers we must wear when we come together to communicate. I’m tired of the eggshells we have to cautiously tread over as we attend our masquerade ball. The unspoken social contract that exists between you, and me, and everyone in between that clearly states the rules: talk only about yourself, keep it light, and never call anyone’s bluff.

It’s shallow, it’s hollow. It’s meaningless. We’re so afraid of being seen as uninteresting to one another that we only engage in uninteresting conversation. We share only this thin layer of ourselves, this well-worn, gilded exterior that is no better a representation of ourselves than a sequin is of a real gem. And all the while our interesting interiors wither from lack of exposure.

---

Everyone has an index card prepared for every topic. A single summary sentence, to demonstrate knowledge of all things, to have an opinion on every subject, to make a quick retort or a timely joke. There is a cursory interest, a five-minute skim of Wikipedia, and you’re off to the races.

But there is no more. There is no file to pull out when we wish to discuss things further. There are no additional notes to discuss the nuances of a held viewpoint. There is not even a second note-card, a “see-also” slide to at the very least direct the conversation to something of importance, to something worth diving into deeper.

There is no intimacy of knowing. We shun true connections with one another to keep ourselves safe, to keep ourselves from drowning in the murky waters of reality. But if we never share our true selves, is there anything still worth keeping safe?

---

There is a ‘No Diving’ sign posted by every pool where our conversations take place. The rules are clear: it’s fine to lounge in the shallow water, or wade in cautiously in water wings. But dive-in head first, in the hope that the water is deep, and you’re likely to break your neck.

Shallow water is safe, as long as no one dives in. There are no sharks, there are no dark depths. We can see the bottom at all times.

But it is in shallow water that we forget there is still an entire ocean to explore.

It Comes in the Night

Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes
And wrangle with my reason that persuades me
To any other trust but that I am mad

Sometimes, it comes in the night.

Thud.

A tiny little tremor, at first. You might not have even noticed it, if you weren’t looking for it, that is. If you weren’t lying there in the quiet stillness, eyes shut tight, on edge. If you weren’t keeping yourself awake, hoping it won’t come, while waiting for it to inevitably to.

Thud.

That first murmur, that slightest of trembles may pass unnoticed. Perhaps the second one would, too. Nothing more than an imperceptible flutter that you could brush away. It’s just your imagination, getting the best of you. Or maybe it is just a creak of your old house, a shutter that you barely feel.

Thud.

A third time, though, and it can no longer be ignored. This is no knock in the night, this is no imagined pounding. This is real, dead real, and it’s coming from within the fragile cage of your chest.

Thud.

You tense, trying to will the next beat out of existence, to calm your telltale heart, to not let it go any further, to bring it to a halt and finally fall asleep.

Thud.

It’s no use. The tremors hasten, they get louder, more violent, now your whole body seems to shake.

Thud.

You dare not move, you dare not breathe, fearing every motion may provoke this tempest further.

Thud.

What can you do, but hope that this is a dream, some terror of the night that you will soon awaken from in a cold sweat?

Thud.

You know better though. Every passing second, every cell in your body feels too real.

Thud.

Your chest tightens - dare you clutch it? - as that cage of bone and cartilage struggles to keep your heart locked up inside.

Thud.

Time dilates, each quanta stretching endlessly into the endless darkness, into nothingness.

Thud.

Now you need them, the things that go bump in the night, because now between the pounds, in the silence, is when the fear comes.

Thud.

You tense, trying to will another beat into existence, but you know, you know, that you’re dead, gone, you’ve beat your last.

Thud.

And then there is nothing.

---

Are we dead in between every beat of our hearts?

Do our lives hang from a thread, swinging, a pendulum marking time? Perhaps we live only instantaneously, at each apex, at the moment our hearts beat once more, squeezing life back into us for a moment before we fall back, pulled back down.

Our hearts are our resuscitators, doling out another compression each time we drift away. It’s only a matter of time then, before they give up on us, fed up with the rest of the body’s will not to live.

In that light, maybe it is not so insane to frantically paw for the carotid, hunting for some sort of throbbing proof of life. And maybe it is not so insane to clutch at the chest, searching for the ticking of a telltale heart.

Then again, maybe it is.

---

I am in the waiting room, walls stained with cheer and bright color. There is an aquarium, with bright little fish darting in between the spires and gates of a submerged castle. There are coloring books, and crayons, and building blocks, and half chewed-on toys.

This is not a place for me.

This is where mothers and fathers bring their children in the dead of the night for real emergencies. It is not for young men with bloodshot eyes and health problems they have made up. It is not for desperate souls who stumble into the reception, half-sprinting, half-drifting aimlessly from their house. It is not for a place for people who think, who believe, that they are already dead.

I am escorted down pastel corridors, past exam rooms where wide-eyed teddy bears and nail-biting parents trade shifts watching over children lying still in beds built for bodies much bigger than them. I’m taken to a room of my own, where the bed is a much less comical fit, and hooked up to machines, humming workers that blip and whir in tune to my body. At first, they struggle to keep up with the beat my heart drums up. My mind has so convinced my heart that it has stopped that it now races, desperate to prove the supposed rational agent within me that it is wrong, dead wrong.

Eventually, my mind realizes that these machines are watching over me, and smart, caring nurses are watching over them. Minutes pass by, and the beeps slow. For the first time, there is calm, there is relief, and my eyes close out of exhaustion, rather than fear.

A little while longer, and I am woken up, gently. Soft voices explain, trying their best to soothe, that there is nothing wrong, that everything is fine, and there is nothing to worry about.

If only it were true.

---

Every check-up I receive goes the same way, some variant of what’s meant to be complimentary small talk.

“What a great pulse you have!” “Well, you must be an athlete!” “Your heart is in excellent shape.”

It’s no comfort, it’s no use. I know better than to believe it, because I’ve been through the nights when it comes.

There’s a ticking time bomb within me, and it’s only a matter of time before it goes off.

But is it my heart, or my head?

Diminishing Returns

Funny thing happens when you give a rat a lever. Being curious, he’ll press it. And so you give him a treat. Maybe a drop of sugar water. Being smart, too, he’ll press it again. And so you give him another treat.

Well pretty soon you have a fat rat who’s gotten pretty good at pressing a lever. And so you change the game. The next time the rat presses the lever, there is no drop of sugar water. So he presses it again. And again. And so on the fourth press, you do give him that droplet. Being smart still, the rat will press the lever as many times as it will take to get that drop of sugar water.

Well pretty soon you have a slightly more active rat who will press the lever 10, 20, 100 times to get another droplet. And so once again you change the game. The rat presses the lever again, and again, and again, and he’ll never get another drop. Being smart once again, the rat will never stop pressing that lever. He’ll spend his entire life searching for that drop of sugar water.

---

Funny thing happens when you give a girl a shitty boyfriend. Being trusting, she’ll let him into her life. And so he’ll be so sweet. Being loving, too, she’ll let him in further in her life. And he’ll be so sweet again.

Well pretty soon, you have a happy girl who has a shitty boyfriend pretty embedded into her life. And so he changes the game. The next time she spends time with her shitty boyfriend, there is no sweetness. And so she tries again. And again. And so on that fourth try, he is so sweet again. Being trusting still, she’ll try with her shitty boyfriend as many times as it takes to get that sweetness again.

Well pretty soon you have a slightly less confident girl who will try 10, 20, 100 times to get her shitty boyfriend to be so sweet to her again. And so once again he changes the game. The girl will try again, and again, and again, but she’ll never get another time with her shitty boyfriend being so sweet. Being trusting once again, the girl will never stop trying. She’ll spend her entire life looking for the side of her shitty boyfriend she once thought was so sweet.

Why Do We Read?

Writing is good design, expressed in words.

Blogs writers certainly can (and do) publish anything and everything under the sun to their respective websites. But does that mean they should? Not in an existential sense of course, but rather is publishing ephemeral interests in the best interest of the site, the readers, and the writers?

Answering that question unearths an even more fundamental sense of what drive authorship. After all, writers don’t write merely to write – they write to be read. Writing is the ego’s ultimate expression of vanity; pleasure for the writer does not arise from the mechanical act of writing, nor the intellectual act of expressing thought in language, but in the egotistical act of knowing others read and enjoyed the end work. So to truly assess the what of writing we must understand the why of reading.

---

With tiny snippets of text comprising Facebook posts, Twitter updates, and Tumblr reblogs, reading has been much maligned by more conservative observers, voicing their belief that literacy is being destroyed by these microscopic forms of writing. Yet this explosion in text compositions, however small, have at the very least dovetailed with an ever-expanding level of literacy the world over; if these two facts are not related, than at the very least the expansion of the written word from social networks has done nothing to harm reading and writing skills.

Perhaps more accurately stated, it is not the levels of literacy which are shifting, but rather the end goal for which reading and writing are now used. Literacy was until recently used to express, distribute, and preserve thought; the medium was in many ways an educational medium, either in the literal sense of essays and textbooks, or more subtly through fiction, literature, and poetry. In many ways, because of the web’s predisposition for text, writing and reading are now performing the duties previously assigned to speech; our eyes and fingers used to communicate what once was conveyed by mouths and tongues.

All that is a long way of saying that reading encompasses an ever-expanding realm of activities.We read to be educated, learning what others who have come before us have found to be true in the world. We read to be informed, having a grasp on the events and information that shape our world by the second. We read to be entertained, to be transported out of our world if only for a moment to be encompassed by an engrossing story. And perhaps most importantly, we read to be connected; to feel that we are part of a larger conversation.

Writing on a site should reflect this, then – of course it is difficult to express all of these qualities (along with many others) in a publication. It is not necessarily what topics are covered, but rather the how those topics are shared and examined. Writers should strive for consistency in tone – a single voice, well-written, can express many things, and will be taken seriously no matter the underlying theme.

Rehabilitation

Some days, some weeks even, I feel as though there is nothing in the world that could compel me to do creative work. And then suddenly, one morning at 4 AM, I will sit down at my desk, groggy and bleary-eyed, and crank out 2500 words.

What is it that separates these artistic doldrums from the frenzied tempests of action? Where is the key that unlocks this mysterious high-drive that produces work? What compels creativity?

The ideas are there, the desire to make is there. But suddenly, when I sit in front of the computer, perfectly-formed paragraphs that were floating in my head suddenly evaporate in an instant. I wonder if it is a mirage. Other times, my spinning mind will keep me up for hours, endlessly turning and re-crafting paragraphs as I lay, silent and still, pleading with my mind to just turn off because I know the second I jump out of bed, turn on the light and grab a pen, it will be gone.

I know there will be peaks and valleys in my work; but it has begun to feel like the valley are becoming increasingly wide, and the peaks now resemble spires, so abrupt are their ascent and descent.

It’s as if a creative depression has taken hold.

---

But there is still something there, even fleetingly. A few embers left among the ashes. And as long as that is so, there’s a choice: let them die out, or, however long it may take, stoke them to reignite a fire.

In many ways I consider these kinds of personal writings as a form of rehabilitation, and I view my writing here as a barometer for my overall creative health. When there is regular publishing and lengthy, fleshed-out pieces, I’m in control of my faculties. When instead the ground lays fallow and bare, I’ve fallen into a rut. And when the personal side gets exposed, that means I’m doing my best to work it out.

And work it out I shall. Eventually. And I hope you’ll continue reading as I do.

Interesting Times

May you find what you are looking for.

With the press of a button, words I write under the covers on a rainy day can suddenly be available the world over - my neighbor ten feet away can read what I have to say just as easily as a far-flung friend in a café in Italy.

We live in interesting times.

I can pick up the black obelisk in my pocket and speak, softly, and my voice is carried up, up, and away, to land in the ear of another, half a country away; by the same measure, I can press that dark husk of glass and metal to my ear and hear the voice of someone distant with the same clarity as if it were instead her very lips pressed against me.

We live in interesting times.

I can open the lid of my laptop, and within a few minutes can be face-to-face with nearly anyone the around the globe; imperfections of memory are vanquished, no need to close my eyes and remember when instead I can open them, to have them filled with every curve, dimple, and feature.

We live in interesting times.

But I cannot snap my fingers and transport myself to far-flung regions of the world, planes, trains, and automobiles incapable of rivaling the immediacy of pulses traveling within the wire; every electronic connection made is another reminder that “us” – the you and I physical us, the unencoded and transmitted us – are still apart, two hearts forever knowing no truth of closeness, despite these digital facsimiles.

We live in interesting times.

The Right Amount of Fear

With two pinches of perserverance & a dash of determination.

Every paragraph and sentence, every letter and word I write is done so under extreme duress. Not at gunpoint, nor at the insistence of masked captors; the coercion is self-inflicted.

Make no mistake - I take great pleasure in writing. There is no more effective means of distilling and concentrating thought, no more poignant way to construct compelling argument. It takes great passion to step outside our comfort zones and to rush head first into something that can fail miserably.

But passion isn’t enough. Desire will make sure you burst through the door, ablaze with newfound fervor. And while passion never fades, it does get harder to draw energy from the reservoir. Something sustaining must take its place. Enter fear, stage left.

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Why though?

Why is it that fear claws its way into the empty void that passion leaves as work goes from novel and intriguing to just an everyday occurrence. Isn’t it enough to be genuinely motivated to do something incredible?

And yet it is fear that inevitably provides that motivation continue. Fear that successes cannot be replicated. Fear that there is nothing interesting to say, or that there is no interesting way to say it. Fear that the wonderfully courageous people that took a chance and read my writing will no longer enjoy it, and turn their backs.

Success is little more than a series of small failures, spread out over longer periods of time. Fear is essential in making those intervals lengthen and those failures overcome.

In the Margins

Reading beyond the lines.

I continue to undergo the final stages of metamorphosis from freeloader to taxpaying citizen, emerging from the collegiate cocoon to bloom into the butterfly of adulthood. And as I do so, I continue to find remnants and relics of the life that, at east in some ways, I will miss terribly.

One such collection of artifacts are the class notes collected from every subject from Russian short story to advanced digital signal processing. They capture a detailed account not just of the varied and esoteric interests of your dear author, but the changing moods as well. An all-nighter, for instance, could be noted by the sudden incomprehensible scribbling on a page as I nodded away in class. Whole sections are written in entirely different handwriting, evidence toward some sudden change in temperament.

But it is not the laborious note-taking, and the near-daily hand cramps that come with it, that will be missed. Instead, it is the accompaniment to these labors; the small, hastily-scrawled notes and non sequiturs in the margins, thoughts from a wandering mind.

Unerringly, in every class, it was here that I wrote down questions that had been left unanswered by lectures, or thoughts spawned in light of new information revealed during the course of a discussion, or even ideas that came to light by daydreaming during a particularly uninteresting class.

It is the big blocks of text that got me through my classes and helped pass tests, but it is the scraps of text written in the small space of the margins that fueled a curiosity and a need to discover what else was out there. The former I returned to out of necessity, to achieve a college degree. The latter I returned to by choice, to ensure my interest and creativity remained motivated.

I don’t meant to slight the professors in this manner- far from it in fact. Excepting the moments when my mind wandered indiscriminately, it was their insight and thoughtful discussion that provided the spark of greater interest. Intelligent people talking about intelligent things somehow have a strange power to induce intelligent thoughts in an otherwise unintelligent mind. I’m incredibly lucky to have been surrounded for it for even as brief a time as I had.

Of course, the curiosity won’t suddenly disappear. Instead, it’s just a reminder to always surround ourselves with people smarter than us, with people that have something to teach us. And to always keep collecting our thoughts, no matter how insignificant they may seem. Even the tiniest seeds of our idling minds can grow to into the tallest of trees, if given the proper chance.

Telling Yourself No

Greatness comes to those who stop and wait.

This isn’t about indulging in dessert after a meal, or late night raids of the freezer for some midnight ice cream. Though it certainly could be; I have quite a bit of experience with those things.

Instead this about telling yourself “no” to doing - on occasion at least.

I often find myself filling my days full to the brim merely for the sake of business -

This isn’t too uncommon of an occurrence. In the world we live in, business is a badge of honor. The harder we work, the more admiration we expect.

But we lose something with our perpetual-motion lifestyles. When we are constantly focused on implementation, we often lose sight of our greater goals. We lose our drive to be creative, and we often lack the higher vision to connect our work back into the greater tapestry of our lives. We too busy with heads-down “doing” to look up and make sure we’re headed down the right track.

And so at times it’s best to just put it all away for a bit - close our laptop lids, hideaway all the pen and paper, and just relax. We can emerge from our perpetual stoops and look around at the world and see what actually is happening around us. We can let ourselves get carried away in the moment, and dare I say it, be inspired and motivated by the things around us that we either love or that we think could be better.

And even when that itch to do comes back, swat it away for just a little while longer. Let that drive to make something great build into a torrent, until you can no longer contain it. When you can no longer eat or sleep without thinking about what you want to do, that’s when you know you’re onto something great.

And that’s when you can get back to work.

Now is When it Hits

Now is when it hits.

As of this week, I am no longer an observer in the world, soaking in whats and hows and whys, or learning, training, practicing. Today, just as many of you have already done, or soon will do, I become in actor in the world performance, not asking the questions, but answering them.

There was no sudden shift in gravity to mark this event, no seismic, or cosmic upheaval. I suppose there is a little party, a black gown congregation, a long wait for a short hurrah. But there’s no demarcation in demeanor, nor flux in feeling. It is all the same.

Because there is no single moment when questioner becomes answerer. There is no unitary moment in time that I can point to and say, “AHA! That is when I truly became an adult!” These types of moments don’t exist; instead we slowly begin to answering the questions instead of constantly asking them. First, we delve into our own, answering within rather than seeking advice without. And slowly, we come to realize that others around us ask the questions we once sought to answer, we can now answer them, rather than wondering the same. Until one day we find ourselves giving the lectures, doing our best to satiate the curiosity of the youth that sit before us.

Of course, that isn’t to say that adults have some sort of mysterious question-answering secret power. Far from it. Rather, it’s a feeling that those around you can no longer adequately answer the questions you have about the world. You’ve expended your resources, used up your quota, and now, it’s up to you to provide the answer.

It’s more than that of course – we’ve also been given the tools to answer our inquiries rather than seeking out those that have already found the answers. One of the great gifts of an engineering degree, far greater than the big, bold letters printed on a piece of paper (or, dare I say it, the well-paying job), is being taught in a certain way of how to think about problems and formulate solutions. One of the great secrets of the engineering disciplines is that it in the end the education is so little about the source material. Whether you are learning how to build bridges, design heart valves, or concoct new chemicals, the true value of an engineering degree is understanding the problem-solving and design processes.

And, much as I hate to admit it, it’s not really even about the engineering degree – the liberal arts, as much as they are derided in the late hours within engineering buildings across the country, are taught many of the same things. How to think, how to form questions about the world, how to go about forming answers, and then communicating those findings back to the world – whether they’ll admit it or not, those psychology and sociology and economics majors are learning the scientific method, albeit with a good deal more hand-holding and arm-waving. The main difference is where the insight comes from – in the arts and sciences, more often than not its a combination of observation and intuition - something, I might add, is sometimes sorely lacking amongst the slide rules and pocket protectors we engineers hold dear.

The final piece of the puzzle in this metamorphosis is the self-awareness to recognize that we do not have the ability to answer the questions that we come across. That instead, we need the help, or the hard work, or the advice of others to accomplish our goals. The difficulty teaching (and learning) this skill is that it not only requires the ability to ask the right questions to the right people, but also the humility to recognize that there are things in this world that you cannot accomplish on your own.

And so now is when it hits. That feeling, as many before me have felt, of being prepared for some measure of greatness; yet at the same time, there’s a sense of gravity. We few – and as big as the classrooms have felt at times it still is a rather remarkable few – who have been granted this wonderful privilege of being educated in a way to make a difference in the world.

And, for better or worse, what a difference we shall make.

"Meta"

Wherein I talk about talk.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what Belligerent Mars currently is and could be. Certainly now that I’m writing with some regularity, but this was also the case before, long before, in fact, I started posting (Belligerent Mars, in fact, came into being in August - nearly half a year before I finally worked up the nerve to start polluting the internet with more sub-par writing). I think a lot about the topics, the style, the voice of this site. But I spend even more time thinking about the proper way to distribute my writing, how it should be packaged and parceled before being sent out into the world.

The problem that I’ve found with many blogs, a problem that I’ve surely fallen prey to just as easily as the next writer, is that the sites are exceedingly ephemeral. Most of the topics and discussions that echo throughout independent sites on the web become out-of-date within a matter of days, if not hours or even minutes. As someone who is a voracious reader of independent writers – after all, to become a better writer, there is no simpler (and more challenging) task than to read prolifically – I do worry about this almost built-in irrelevancy. Sure, it’s a great impetus to keep publishing new things, but it’s also a little unfortunate that the archives of many of these sites are littered with pieces that no longer matter. That’s something that with Belligerent Mars I hope to avoid.

Of course, there are exceptions (there always are). Great writing, no matter the topic, makes up for this wilting that most writing experiences. Some of my favorite online authors – John Gruber, Merlin Mann, and Michael Lopp, to name a few – succeed in having their older works feel timeless because they are filled with such excellent prose. Never mind that it’s a piece on pre-iPhone Apple; good writing is good writing, and especially when it’s combined with thoughtful insight that goes beyond the what of today and into the why of tomorrow, pieces are no longer crippled by their feeling of “nowness”. that’s something I certainly hope to strive for.

I’m no fool though, in thinking I can count on my writing ability to suddenly become top-notch. And so, I originally envisioned Belligerent Mars as a site that, to the best of my ability, would avoid the seasonal and over-hyped topics of new product releases and rumor-mongering that afflicts much of the technology-related websites the world over. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this sort of writing – after all, I read pretty much all of it, and even then I never seem to get enough of it – but I also recognize that posting timely, frequently, and (given the short amount of time writers typically have to post something in the name of newness) to my own standards of writing would be impossible. I am (wait, sorry - was) a full-time student, and there just isn’t enough time for me to do that effectively.

Instead, what I initially conceived was a weekly higher-level topic on some aspect of technology or aspect of design; perhaps informed by recent events in the world, but not about them. Rather than focusing on the “what” of the latest hotness, I’d be more intereseted in discussing the “why”: the decisions that were made, or could’ve been made differently. Every week would have a major theme that would address one of these topics. Think of it like a three-act play: Monday, would be the exposition, setting the stage and relating to current events, while perhaps discussing some design decisions; Wednesday, the climactic peak, getting deeper into the topic at hand and uncovering other possibilities; and Friday would be a resolution, a tie-it-all-together, and perhaps a look toward the future. The rest of the week would focus on minor topics, and perhaps shorter pieces - testing out the water forfuture topics, or getting whatever happens to be at the forefront of my mind out and into the open.

---

That was the goal, of course – and like many goals I set, I’ve certainly fallen short. Belligerent Mars has had a somewhat weekly topic set, for the most part, talking about inconsolable fears and social networks and high technology and the like. But the site, so far has missed that story arc, that rise and fall that characterizes great storytelling, as well as great writing.

The biggest reason – the most acceptable reason, if you ask me – is that I just needed to get started and write. As I wrote in my very first post on the site, all the dieas, all the hopes of perfectionism in writing, style, and content were holding me back to such a degree that I never even got started. It was my conscious decision, first and foremost, to put aside these loftier goals in exchange for jsut getting something, anything, out there, stinking pile of shit that it may be. The plan was to come back to it after having a few months of writing under my belt.

Perhaps a more truthful reason, though, is that it’s just plain hard. It’s incredibly hard to write something you actually think is worth reading on a daily basis. It’s hard to just get started. Throw in a plan to tie-in a week’s worth of writing that should flow together and feel cohesive, and suddenly that goal has become somewhat preposterous.

That’s not to say that it can’t be done. In fact just the opposite. The real trouble was finding the time and energy to do something like this. I’ve been exceedingly time-constrained these past four months – if you’ve ever gone to college, you know how quickly time disappears. I’ve certainly surprised myself by how quickly I can write up a piece if I set my mind to it and I’m actually interested. But to do what I originally set out doing, I’d need a much longer set of uninterrupted time to do some real writing, and more importantly, to just think. It’s hard to find a stretch of four uninterrupted hours in the midst of studying for exams, homework, and design projects.

Now that I have a little more time on my hands, I’d like to give the original idea a real go: devoting a weekend afternoon entirely to thinking and writing, and doing my best to do less of the sort of last-minute stuff that has so far appeared on Belligerent Mars. I’d like to give some time to my work to allow it to breathe, to give myself a chance to edit it, and to hone and polish it to a degree I really find satisfactory.

I wouldn’t call that a promise. But I would call it a start. I hope you’ll join me as I continue to find my voice, and of course, if you have any suggestions or ideas, feel free to get in touch.

The Un-Idle Idol

I can’t remember the last time I saw someone my generation outdoors – really, truly, outdoors; where there are trees and real air – without headphones on. During runs, I pass bikers, joggers, hikers, all ostensibly there to enjoy nature, and all thoroughly tuning it out with little white earbuds. Do they not hear the trickle of the stream just a few feet away from the path, or the chirps of birds, the rustle of vegetation from startled chipmunks. I wonder if they even see the leaves, the trees, the mottled patterns of sun playing across the ground.

Of course, people my age don’t have time to be immersed, lost and wandering, listening to nothing but the world around them and the little voice in their soul. Between writing papers, scrambling to finish projects, cramming for tests, and the like, there’s little room for idle time. In a culture that idolizes “busy” and endless commitment, an empty space in the schedule is sacrilegious.

There are unfilled moments of course, even with such an emphasis on being booked full. A few moments, a commute to work, or perhaps an evening when homework and activities took less time than expected. What do we do with these unexpected holes in our time? Fill, fill, fill. Never a gap shall remain, even if it means staring into a screen, jaw slack and mouth agape, watching the lives of other people scroll by.

Why the obsession, then? I often wonder this after I catch myself mindlessly checking email in ten-intervals during lulls in the day. Were it just me, it could be written off as merely the ritual compulsions of a maniac doing his best to still his unquiet mind. But instead, it’s an obsession that many, most, if not all, are afflicted with. Is it just an act, paying penance to the idol of un-idleness, a performance to the world that they are important, they are busy, and will you just wait a moment because they are presently occupied.

Maybe that’s the answer, but maybe that is too easy. Maybe it’s not all some grand performance we all play to each other; maybe we really do desire to keep each and every second filled with activity. Because every moment left unfilled with the things around us is a moment we have to fill ourselves – with our minds, with our imaginations, with our hopes and our dreams. Maybe that’s too tall of an order, maybe the thought of thinking is just too much, maybe the dullness of the reality around is is more comforting than the uncertainty of the world we can create in our head.

Are we losing something when we tune out 24/7?

I’d say take a second to think about it. But I know better than that.

Driven by Discontent

Dissatisfaction guaranteed.

This isn’t the way things should work.

Do you ever have that feeling? That sense that, however large or small, this one part of the puzzle that snaps together to build the world somehow doesn’t fit quite right?

I see it everywhere, these deformed pieces within the world. The inequalities that we’re told to accept, the rungs we’re told to climb, the hoops we’re told to jump through. The difference we’re told not to bother to make. I – and I hope you do too – refuse to accept them. I’m driven by these things that are wrong in our world; they are the fuel to the fire, the reason to continue. And they are a constant reminder to not accept the world around us as a given.

Those that have come before my generation have heard some of these sentiments and labeled them entitlement. They call it bratty that we refuse to accept this notion that you need to wait your turn before you can change the world. That there’s a process, that you need to pay your dues. That’s what they did after all.

It’s dismissive – once my generation had this “entitlement” label, every request we make against the status quo suddenly begins to sound like the demands of a spoiled millionaire teen “you’ve got yours, now where’s mine?” When in reality, it’s a product of my generation refusing to pay their dues to a system intent on ensuring the world we inherit is in worse condition than before.

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Those people, the ones that scream “entitlement”, look at the world, and the things in it that don’t line up with expectations and say, “well, that’s just the way things are.”

Fuck that.

The world isn’t this mysterious actor that consigns us to a fate we have no control over. The world is made out of the actions of men and women, ordinary people no different than anyone else. They saw some part of the world as they wanted it to be and then made it so.

The world isn’t the way it is because it’s “just the way things are.” The wrong things in this world exist because the people who experience those wrong things have for some reason chosen to believe that their reality is immutable. That they’re meant to suffer through the parts of the world they don’t necessarily agree with, that the unpleasant is somehow in service of enjoying life more fully.

Somewhere along the way, we get the idea that we can change the world beaten the hell out of us, to be replaced by some sort of so-called “adult pragmatism” that tells us to manage our expectations. We lose our curiosity, we lose confidence in ourselves, and suddenly we lose that ability to dream. Our aspirations become diminished. We trade in the idea that we can go to space, or build a rocket car, or put the world on our shoulders for job stability, weekends mowing the lawn, and gossip amongst the neighbors.

If there’s something broken in your part of the world, fix it. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can, either. Tell them that yourselves, by showing them that you already did it.

The Pit

The Pit

And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?

Maybe it’s when you wake up that it hits. That feeling – like someone’s tied a weight to the bottom of your stomach. The inescapable fear that you’re falling down a tunnel of darkness and have no idea where – or when – the bottom is.

I suggest the morning because that’s always when I feel it. When sleep-encrusted eyelids wrench themselves apart in fits and starts, mutinous over the idea of starting another day. It’s right then, right when those first photons hit, because with them comes the reminder that the stacks of work that remain, the papers in disarray on the desk, the twelve application windows still open on the computer, discarded in exchange for a few hours of sleep.

In one sense, it’s a feeling of dread, of recognition that there is still so much left to finish. Guilt, too – that somehow eating, or sleeping, or doing anything that isn’t in service of making that pile smaller is a waste.

But it’s not really that, really. It’s not a feeling of dread, or guilt, or anything else, really. It’s something larger than that: it’s this sense of why are these things important to me? That’s what it’s really about. Because the piles in our life, the things we have to do, are so often dictated not by the plans or goals we set for ourselves, but by the agendas and timelines of others within our lives.

Of course some of that is unavoidable; life is after all so heavily focused on interactions with the people we love and care about, and that necessitates to some extent accepting work from others. But many of those things in our piles, in the list of things we must do, are on top of what we accept willingly from others, and the work we define for ourselves. And the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether that’s really worth it?

Shoveling

Dig in, lift up, spread around.

Every morning I wake up, put on a pair of galoshes, and grab a shovel. And I wish it weren’t so.

Because every morning there’s a big pile of Shit That Needs Doing. Never mind that I never agreed to most of what has wound up in that pile, never mind that there isn’t enough time in the day to finish shoveling, before the next day’s pile is added, and certainly never mind that shoveling shit day by day is far from the most glamorous job in the world.

What is there to do then? Can we do nothing more than protect ourselves as best as we are able, put in our eight (or twelve, or sixteen) hours in, and hope the stink comes out in the shower at the end of the day?

I’ve certainly shoveled my fair share of shit some days. It’s easy enough to fall into the rhythm: dig in, lift up, spread around. It’s comfortable too – no need to think when there’s a mound of work laying at your feet and a shovel in your hand.

Of course, one day you snap out of it and realize how much it stinks. But that’s the moment of liberation, too. Because as soon as you realize that shoveling isn’t the only way to deal a massive amount of work and obligation. Maybe you’ll have to get your hands a little dirty, but if you take the time to decide what’s worth your time, and what’s just stinking up the pile, you suddenly realize that this doesn’t have to be a never-win game.

Piling Up

Somedays I wonder if my life isn’t controlled by the numbers.

Five new emails. Three texts waiting. Two new notifications. Unread counts, piles of books, stacks of unfinished work. All calling out, imploring, demanding to be taken care of, trimmed down, and finished. all waiting to be ticked off and made into a zero.

Most of the time, I dutifully comply. I’ll jump from one pile to the next, reading, deleting, replying, making lists and little reminders of what I need to do. And when I’ve finally struck payload, and hit that satisfying zero, there’s a moment of satisfaction, a feeling of accomplishment.

For a moment at least. Because when you’ve let your life be dictated by a pile of stuff demanding your attention, you find yourself wanting when that pile has been churned through and taken care of. Where’s the next task to mark complete? Where’s the next fire to put out? I’ll find myself almost mindlessly refreshing my email at times, almost out of desperation.

Then there are the times when one of these boxes goes rancid; perhaps there’s something, or everything, that I just don’t want to think about. Or perhaps instead this list of things is uninteresting, but I just can’t bear to toss it, out of sentiment or out of some notion of duty. The piles get larger and larger, my mind devotes more and more time thinking about not thinking about it, and suddenly the levee breaks and I spend a whole week getting no sleep trying to catch up on all the things I’ve been avoiding.

This behavior is worrisome, to say the least. I’ve spent a lot of time cultivating the piles just so, doing my best to make sure that whatever goes into them deserves my time and attention. And for the most part, that is true.

Still, so many days I just feel like I’m shoveling, that I’m somehow digging myself out of a pileup of the work I find important. Except, it really feels like I’m digging myself into the muck of work that I have no control over. That I’ve given myself over to these counts, these lists, these boxes of stuff, and in doing so I’ve given up all control of what I do with my time. That suddenly all these interests have turned into obligations and now there’s nothing to do but tackle each in succession, chipping away until there’s nothing left to accomplish.

It’s become untenable, because that’s no way to travel through life. I want purpose to arise out of the actions I choose to make, not the obligations that have landed at my feet. There’s got to be another way, and I think it starts by getting rid of the entire notion of these piles.

Goldilocks

Too hot. Too cold. Just right.

Every morning, I engage in a guerrilla war with my shower. I’m always the first to strike, giving both knobs a good hard twist, and spilling the first – well, it’s first water, not blood, but you get the idea. My shower always has the upperhand though, invariably deciding to emit freezing cold or scalding hot water. It’s all I can do to fight through the volley to reach the knob again, and twist it, almost imperceptibly, to regain control. Of course, my first attempt always overshoots, going right past water temperature nirvana right into the other spectrum of shower hell. I’m sure my shower gets quite the kick from me standing there, doing my best impression of a safe cracker as the water fluxuates between icicles nd lava, until finally, I’ve guessed the combination and can enjoy my shower in comfort.

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There’s a lesson to be learned in all of this, besides of course testing the temperature before hopping in like an idiot. Rather, that lesson is of designing an intefrace to meet a user’s, rather than a system’s expectations.

We don’t typically think of a faucet as an interface, and yet that’s precisely what it is. We tell our pipes what pressure we like our shower to be, and what mix of hot and cold water is most to our tastes. Well, sort of, because that mix isn’t really what we’re interested in: it’s the temperature of the water that we’re really after. It’s diffcult of course is that there isn’t really a good way to make a purely mechanical valve that regulates temperature. While that offloads some of the difficulty to the user (and it’s something modern faucets are beginning to build in, to the great convenience of lazy showerers everywhere), the simplicity of shower design isn’t overly burdensome.

The real trouble is that the mixer, or my mixer, at least, isn’t really built to the expeectations of a typical shower user - that is to say, someone who doesn’t want to be scalded or turned into an icicle every time. A shower has a large range of temperature output, anywhere from groundwater temperature to the maximum of a boiler. People on the other hand, expect a much smaller range of temperatures, typically in the 80–120º F range.

It’s a classic case of mismatch between a system’s capabilities and a user’s expectations. Sadly, showers are typically designed from a system’s standpoint: they can output the full range of the system, with no special treatment to what expectations are in the real world. From this, we get a tiny little sliver of a goldilock’s zone: nudge the cold mixer a turn either way, and you’ll be in for a quite a shock as the temperature goes from ideal to one of the unpleasant extremes.

The solution of course, is building a more effective interface – one that understands the user, rather than the system. If users almost always use a very small region of the system output, make the controls corrspondigly biased toward that range. It’s exactly what the brain has decided as the best way to allocate neurons: creating a perversely-biased homunculus that corresponds to the areas of our body that are most actively involved in sensation.

Of course, this involves knowing something about who is actually using your product, or service, or as the case may be, your shower faucet. It’s certainly no small feat for an engineer to get out from behind his keyboard and, you know, have a real conversation with a customer, but it is essential in order to understand your user and design a great product.

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You may be wondering, active reader that you are, what a better design would be for a shower would in fact be? To that, I’d suggest looking in the direction of the toaster, that lowly kitchen appliance. The toaster, and I should say the simple, slot-loading toasters in particular, is almost unique in that once you’ve found you’re ideal toast level, you set the dial, and leave it alone. When you come back the next morning for another slice, there’s no guessing, no estimation: your setting is stored for as long as you’d like. A shower could certainly be constructed in such a manner (and indeed some are constructed similarly), wherein you set a temperature once, and then adjust the flow of water accordingly. That would be a shower that wouldn’t be a pain getting into every morning.

Tools, or the Trade

Jack of all trades, then master of one.

The most recent episode of "Lets Make Mistakes got me thinking about some of the problems compartmentalization in my industries causes.

As Mike and Katie explained, channeling Jared Spool from his Event Apart talk, so-called specialists in fields such as design, or development (and I’d add that this applies to much of the engineering world as well) are more accurately “compartmentalists”: they are highly trained in a very specific skillset, but they have little understanding or ability to solve the problems that the broader organisation they are in faces. Contrast that to the medical profession, where doctors are trained broadly to diagnose and treat health problems first, and then once this base is established, physicians specialize within their field.

But the compartmentalization problem is larger than just this issue of missing context and generality in our profession. Our trades are also centered around achieving mastery of tools to complete a task, rather than an understanding of the critical thinking needed to design an optimal solution.

The focus in the engineering and tech industries, is on the proficiency with which one uses tools, rather than the care and expertise one employs in practicing the actual trade. It’s very easy to quantify how good one is at creating parts in assebmlies in solidworks, or write lines of code, or design a page layout in photoshop. These aspects of our work can be easily counted, measured and quantified. But they say very little about the skill and expertise that goes into the actual creative act; there’s not much in the way of exploring how well-designed the result of these endeavours are.

Doctors, on the other hand, are almost exclusively taught the trade of their profession: the anatomy, the pathology, the critical thinking skills required to effectively perform as a physician. They are taught clinical techniques as well, but these are almost supplementary to the main goal of teaching doctors how to think about medicine. And, more importantly, doctors are also required to stay up to date on the latest techniques in their fields. This constant updating of the underlying how something is accomplished is only possible because doctors are fully versed in the why that the something is necessary in the first place.

(Facebook Is) A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

“It just follows you around.”

That was the explanation given for Facebook’s new and godawfully-named “Chat heads” messaging feature by a Facebook PR rep in The Verge’s hands-on video, but it could just as easily apply to Facebook’s new mobile strategy as a whole.

Facebook Home, the “don’t-call-it-a-fork-it’s-an-app-dammit” skin over Android represents a bold commitment to mobile by the social network. The interface is playful and well-designed, has some extremely compelling features, and, at least under the carefully curated conditions that the press were allowed to view Home, the whole system looked gorgeous.

But there is a cost to this new hotness, despite the upfront price tag of free. With such tight integration into the operating system, Facebook can now log your location at all times, track all the apps you’re using, and monitor a whole lot more of the social interactions you make that don’t, or rather didn’t until now, include Facebook as the intermediary. Is the convenience of this system really worth such a high cost?

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It is announcements like these that really stress that Facebook is a tale told through two separate stories. There’s the public, user-facing image of the company, there to delight us in making connections within our social network; the company that has really begun to flex its design chops to great effect; the company that is committed, sincerely, to bringing people together in new and exciting ways. But there’s also the Facebook that sells all those interactions, those likes, interests, and social history to the highest bidder; the company that plays exceedingly fast and loose with user privacy; the company that is committed, sincerely, to making money by selling people to companies.

Facebook Home surely represents one of the grandest experiments in collecting data about people’s habits and schedules, their interactions, and perhaps even something deeper that represents who they are. That data could surely be put to great use by the people that are generating it, let alone sociologists, ethnographers, or city planners. But instead that data will be used to help companies collect a couple extra dollars in revenue.

Isn’t that a fucking shame?

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I’m reminded of the scene in Fahrenheit 451 where Guy Montag is in the subway doing his best to reak a book, while beset on all sides by blaring sounds and flashing lights from the advertisements surrounding him. I wonder if that will soon become our future, beset on all sides from ad copy trying to use the deep knowledge they have of our history, our habits, where we are and what we do, to sell to us at all hours of the day. Could our own devices that we now so heavily rely on become our personalized commercial prisons? With Amazon and now Facebook making the jump to placing ads directly on the lock screen of our devices, it certainly seems plausible. And terrifying.

Momento Mori

I sent this in to Pitt’s engineering department today as part of an application to speak during graduation. I’ve decided to post it here because it really represents my sentiments that I have about graduating in less than a month, and I think a lot of readers feel the same way, too. I’m scared, petrified, not only about what I’ll be doing after I leave, but also that whatever I choose will somehow end up being the wrong choice, and I’ll end up doing some meaningless, soul-sucking job for the rest of my life because it will be the only thing I’m qualified to do. Here’s to that little voice in side of us that voices all our doubt.

-SM

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For many of us at least, this will be the first time in our lives we will be jumping off a cliff of adulthood where we don’t know if or when a net will catch us. We will still have our loving family and our friends to support us to be sure, but there won’t be an entire organization surrounding us that is built around helping us succeed. It’s incredibly frightening.

But it’s also incredibly freeing. We’ve been given the tools the last four years to go out into the world and truly and remarkably make a notable impact.

Many of us will be graduating with considerable debt. And after four years of paying for the privilege to earn the great degrees we will now be departing with, there’s certainly a sense of entitlement. “Where’s my piece of the pie?” is something I’ve certainly wondered. But the great majority of us will also be graduating in less than a month with almost no commitments or responsibilities to anyone but ourselves. There are no car payments to make, no mortgages to keep up or properties to maintain, no spouses or children to support.

This window of almost no responsibilites and commitments is incredibly small – in a few years, we will have house payments to think about, or a wedding to plan, or even kids to take care of. This window, these few years, may very well be our only chance to go out in the world, try something risky, and fail big: starting a company, or a foundation, or volunteering, or anything that could change the world. And that proposition certainly scares the hell out of me, and I would imagine it scares a lot of other graduates. But what other time in our lives will the consequences for failure be so low?

I don’t want to suggest that this graduating class eschew monetary gain, because I fully understand the allure. I just want to make the point that as engineers, the money will always be in demand – the world is always in need of skilled thinkers and builders, and our graduating class certainly qualifies. I just want to make it clear that this is the time to take risks and make mistakes. If I could convince one person to open their mind and consider trying whatever crazy idea in the back of their minds that they were unsure of undertaking, I’d consider my addressing of my fellow classmates to be an outstanding success.