Practicing Gratitude and the need to take Action - Signing up for Permaculture Design Course

(I've signed up for a Permaculture Design Course - check out their website for hope for the future)

Sure we tell ourselves stories, rationalize our choices, on a good day with ourselves the heroes. But I can trace a story that goes back to 121-43 Buell street - in grade four or five. When I made a rainforest in a blue tupperware that I wanted to enclose. A perpetual motion machine. I can't remember where the idea came from - maybe skylab or something in the space programme. It could have been Cosmos - I'll check the dates - but I got excited about the idea of a homeostatic (not my words at the time) self-contained system. Life everlasting. Those are Verna's words, speaking of her progeny...

The maple tree I picked out of Hampton park and planted in the tupperware is today in my parents' backyard. Taller than the house. The tupperware, knowing Dad, might still be kicking around - I'll adopt it if it is...but the story is:

I love life.

The process of life - and early today I got to thinking: there are two tendencies in the Universe - Order and Chaos. Life arises when the raw elements of the Universe combine, randomly, in ways that decrease Chaos and capture energy. Molecules arise because two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms are more stable together than apart. And the properties of chemistry - how molecules interact - emerge from this greater stability.



2H2 + O2 = 2H2O + ENERGY (572 kJ)


[origin of life animations]

And so - completely just because - because elements combine into molecules, and molecules combine into polymers, or minerals, and polymers and minerals and molecules and atom interact in ways that increase order and release energy, to the point where collections of inorganic materials find themselves contained in micro-environments that make their continued replication, locomotion, reactivity, [the other defining characteristics of life] inevitable.

Which leads to us who are able to stand slack jawed at the wonder of it all. At least for a few hundred thousand years until we start teasing out how some of it all works, and we realize our responsibility to choose. Do we create Order or wallow in Chaos?

Morning Robot Flight of Fancy

So when you get the chance, day dream.

Found myself watching 5 year old playing with Zoob Blocks by Infinitoy. (affiliate links to Amazon ... Infinitoy Zoob Basic Set, 500 - Piece) The 3 yo was on lockdown for hitting so he had a few minutes to get ambitious.

Watching as he built a long robot arm I got to dreaming - wouldn't it be cool if it WAS a long robot arm? How would it work? You'd need motors in the socket that would spin the ball, just X and Y directions. You'd need some way to hold a position so grasping motors on either side.


Then why not make the stem a hydraulic piston so it can expand and contract?

How would you power it? Either each unit would have its own rechargeable power source or you'd have to wire them together in some way that wouldn't get tangled...either conducting through the balls and sockets or...?

And to control it? Each element would need a way to receive instructions - perhaps a firmware chip of some sort?

And I went off like that for awhile - just dreaming. The kind of dreaming you don't often get a chance to pursue. Now later I can look up actual roboticists doing such things, but today, a day off - with work lined up (otherwise I'd be the fretful unemployed) - I just went for it.

And did a little photoshop.

These are awesome toys - I've posted amazon affiliate links if you'd like to buy one, and kick something back.








or

The chicken, the egg, and the frying pan

Enjoying pondering the unresolvables as I do, I am often faced with situations in which the path to maximizing 'the good' is impossible to know for certain.

For instance.

The big kid has a journee pedagogique which he was excited to attend as it was foam sword fighting day. "Epic" in the argot of the times. Mid week, when the day he thought they were meant to make the swords came and went with no swords being made, he began to stress that today was not in fact fight with foam swords day.

Mounting unhappiness.

Lobbying commences to not attend.

Parents, having, you know, jobs, and time spent with kids elsewhere under threat - resist. "You're going!" "I'll read books all day" "I've got to work" "Please!" "No" "I hate my life"

et french sealing cetera

He's smart and pulls out all the pro stay at home arguments - boiling down to it's just one day and why are you so mean?

But as increasingly autonomous as he's becoming, inevitably he becomes bored, needs food, love, or any number of other unreasonable things, and less work gets down.

And this is the chicken and egg and the frying pan of it all.



I want to maximize happy. If we're broke we're unhappy - if kids are over institutionalized, we're unhappy, if we're stressed because work's not getting done, we're unhappy, if we're stressed because we're feeling guilty about sending kids to what they believe is 'we're just going to fill out papers all day long' instead of 'epic foam sword fighting day' - we're unhappy.

So being self-employed and having the flexibility to manage my time means I could keep him home - but I knew it was sword day so drag him to school, foolishly engaging at increasingly high volume in debate about the degree to which my earning a living rather than keeping him home makes me evil, and we get to the door, ask the directrice of service de garde if it's sword day, it is, and all this bull hickey washes away.

Except for my need to come home and analyze it.

You need to invest time in your family - there's no substitute for time to build strong bonds. You need to invest time in your business. If you had more money, you could possibly spend more time with your kids. But if it takes all your time to grow your business to the point where you have enough money, well, the Cat's in the cradle and all that is 'Cat Stephens on some FBI watchlist now?'

So - baby steps. Experiment. Adjust. Iterate. I know to date 9 times out of 10 I've put the family before the career, but do that too long and you risk ending up resenting them. Christ, I'll be dead before they're old enough to be 'grateful'…

But, whether it's eggs or a chicken, heat up that frying pan, and dollars to donuts but that's dessert, the outcomes likely to be tasty.

Moving on up, to the good times.

Depression and anxiety - good doctor M taught me - comes from feeling a loss of control - I could feel it mounting yesterday as the wants and needs of my family were in conflict - how pleasing one, displeased at least another - how the multivariate equation was unresolvable. Pouring all my energies into finding the highest stable state, I was burning myself out.



I wanted to play with my puppet, write thinly veiled autobiography, or otherwise 'do my own thing'…playing god knows what in the play room I tried to remember the last time I'd done anything creative - I was eating myself up with guilt over a post I'd written about depression - having had 'a point' but knowing that I'd not expressed it clearly and that, in the unlikely event certain people read it, it would be misunderstood. Would do more harm than good.

And that made me really angry too - because I did have some kind of point, even if I wasn't able to express it. My point had to do with how interconnected we all are - how the mental states of each of us spill over into the mental states of those around us - and of the almost impossible to disentangle web of our psychologies - how we are constitutively predisposed to certain mental states, and yet possess some free will. How even when depressed, there are best practices - but they are practices, and require some exertion.

My friend called me on the fact that I might be projecting - that I might be more depressed myself than I was admitting, or able to recognize, and so by drawing attention to the mental health of others I was in fact really trying to wrestle with my own.

And he was right - because I have always wrestled with self doubt over whether I am exerting myself sufficiently and appropriately. I over analyze.

Last week, sitting in the dermatologist's office because I have fair skin and start to wig out at fairly regular intervals if I've not been looked over for awhile, I was anxious. And the very simple conclusion I came to is 'stop asking "why" you're feeling x y or z' - because very often it's just natural variation, and when it's not, the same best practices that help even out the highs and lows are basically all you have anyhow.

I was in a french sealing waiting room to see if I had skin cancer. I'd not eaten enough breakfast. Was I supposed to be feeling cocky and relaxed? It was a no brainer.

When I do almost anything self-directed - from publishing off the cuff blog posts, to videos of my hand puppet - I feel like I've accomplished something. It's not a job, as much as I'd like it to be, but it helps me get through the day.

I'd love to spontaneously desire to create stuff that has clear market value, but I am way too wrapped up in myself for that. To get there I suspect will require a lot more of this esoteric, weirdness - this crablike purposefully obtuse random walk. I struggle with making any effort that I am uncertain will be rewarded. So instead, I make stuff that requires little effort, and so in the short term 'costs' me less when it receives scant attention.

But the long term costs are huge.

Now I know many of us are in this exact boat, and so my current way forward is to puke stuff out. The exercise of putting these self-doubts out into the world is to let the sunshine melt their empty dharmas away. Because it's really simple bad psychology.

If you are not willing to take any risks, you will never attempt anything worthwhile. I know, and am repeating myself, that many of you over analyze as I do. And I know, as you do, that we may not all get rich blogging, or posting videos of felt puppets - but it's fun. It's fun to share, and every once in awhile to connect.

This blog was named after what I've long joked will be the title of my autobiography. And that's kind of what it is. And it's useful to me to admit some of this stuff publicly - because most of these 'issues' are so thin - so insubstantial, that the slightest exposure melts them away.

Leaving getting on with things the best and easiest way forward.
Which is way more comfy than inaction.

Rocket phrenology

It's not rocket phrenology, it's not curing the world of cancer, or making a lot of money.

It's screwing the third tiny screw into the Ikea star light after changing the bulb in the baby’s room.



I use the term loosely, she's two and the height of a three year old. But she's a sweety, and while the light would have stayed on with two screws, did in fact require quite a sustained effort - dropping and almost losing the third screw almost three times, what? Cause she's the third child I'm not going to do this type of shit for her?

There is almost no way that past John could have done this - there's something about growing old and not quite shaking so badly that fine motor activities are beyond me, still being able to focus on things nearby, if I well, lets me honest here, take off the glasses...but there's a patience.

And there's a gratitude. I finally had to turn on the little light, close one eye and put the other up close to one of the little holes, to see the tip of the French sealingly annoyingly small screw poking through to align it with the bracket...and even then trial and error feel the thing into the hole, before, a good ten but it felt like a hundred minutes later the thread took hold, and her star light was back in action. With all three screws thanks, not two, but the gratitude was being safe in my home, with the kids in a fairly suppressed state of insurgency, after the shit storm that was the Boston Marathon bombings, and the Iraqi poll stations, and that wedding in Afghanistan, and at least one other horrible thing.

And I'll admit, when the backlash started amongst the brigades of the twitter righteous, that Boston was “shocking” but no one was reporting these other atrocities - I’ll admit that Boston was more shocking, to me, because IT WAS CLOSER to home, and only later when the news of the American “accidental” bombing of (another) wedding got out, did the whole thing just seem so grossly symmetrical - so completely the world that we've allowed ourselves to be living in, but do I have the slightest clue “what to do?”

This is just me, just some douche stream of consciousing into his ipad, but maybe, in some possible future, the survivors of April 15th will get in contact with each other. And, you know, denounce violence?

But what do I know?

I know I am grateful my family is healthy, passably happy, and apparently never shy about telling me when they're not.

And that I've learnt to recognize that gratitude. And channel some of it into taking the time to get the star light right in the giant baby’s room. So she can have little stars of light on her walls, when she sleeps there.

Golf - Whiskey - Tango are Oscar Miked

There's a point where it's all triage, where its all sandbagging against entropy. You know - like “is it really wise to unload the dishwasher while x is throttling y?” I mean, sometimes...

I'll either die from a massive coronary, stroke out and drool for the next forty, or look back on these days fondly. Kind of the way some vets talk about combat as the best moments of their lives. There's something about the lack of choices - of the sheer need to survive, that's liberating. I mean, I'm a details guy by trade, but on the day to day, I'm probably already sweating inappropriately without them.

So you run from foxhole to foxhole...shits getting hairy? We’ll go outside...backyard too small for three of them? Well maybe it's time for the library...I'd like to say I plan, but only about the 275 of you who don't really know me will buy that...actually I can't even claim that crown of flying by the seat of my pants anymore. Both today and yesterday I worked a plan - that's how bad parenting changes a fellow. Didn't dodge all the shit, but wasn’t hosing it off the walls.

I often think of the brain teaser of trying to get the wolf, the goat and the turnip - whiskey, golf, tango - across the river in a canoe that can only carry the paddler plus one. You leave the goat and the wolf - bye bye goat...you leave the goat and the turnip, well, you get the picture.

So you take the goat across...
Come back for the wolf.

Grab the goat back before Wolfie gets ’em

Then turnip travels

And finally, goat.

We avoided any adelphophagy - (had to google that shit)

And landed without rug burn. Might not of wanted to blow a breathalyzer, but sue me.

Friday night lite

Even the mild bourgeois tit frustrations I suffer from can fill you with a powerful thirst. Booze is such a substitute for substance, the simulation of strong emotion, a relaxant, so the stresses you've been holding tight seem to melt away and the absence of pain feels a lot like pleasure.

Don't get me wrong - I love booze. There's plenty of stress we carry in a ridiculous orgy of self-indulgence, as if our lives were really SO dramatic that we run around in a whirl of make busy make believe.
Booze is good for that. Kind of dissolves away some of the pretence. Lets us relax a little. And there's no denying the placebo element - how depending on our culture booze lets us act in different ways (citation ). Some cultures get amorous, some belligerent, stripped of culture it's not actually the booze, more how we've been trained to hold it.

So after a week of petty frustrations. A week where I had to admit to myself, time and time again, that if I wanted a better job or to be self-employed, well I'd likely have to do something about it...I did SOME things. Tried to get you all to buy a Young Poodles shirt - not for the money, see, but for the moral support - worked, parented, spent too much time on FeelBad and Twatter...and then Friday approaches and there's several live music options.

Now avoiding temptation, that's the ticket...because you can feel the almond start to glow...that part of the brain that just wants to cut the tethers and head for the sun...but there's three little kids see, and keeping a smile on Saturday morning with the steady machine gun chudder of requests is hard enough well rested and regular. And there's the lack of sufficient petty worldly accomplishments to excuse any real kind of “celebrating” ...

But it's Friday night.

You pine for the “perfect” party - the booze up that has somehow been sanctioned by all the gods. But you settle for the actual party...or you don’t. Or, like I seem to love to do - you let the empty dharma kick around until every option fills you with disgust.

Not that the options themselves are bad. Just that you're not feeling worthy of facing the consequences of any of them.

And that’s where the marble stops, for awhile - no course of action seeming impeccable. A third way, a better way, would be to do something useful...but what are the odds of that?

Always keep building

Started reading “The $100 Startup”
. which tells the stories of many entrepreneurs’ experience starting businesses with next to no money - a lot of ’solopreneurs’ etc...looking for a touch of inspiration, and it's provided some. I like books like this - they tickle the “time to take action” part of your brain - at the very least its a momentary dose of optimism, and at best they change your life. Only a couple chapters in so who knows...

So we’re at red slide park - it's been awhile - it's covered in ice and I've got the boys - we need something to do - we start to build.

Building whatever provides direction - tasks get parcelled out - you fetch ice, I'll build, he’ll be the dump truck ... You're improvising but with a sort of goal - creating a touch of order out of the materials at hand. You run out of materials, you have to go farther afield, “this is why people end up exploring, because they run out of stuff where they are”
You try and keep everyone happy “he's not doing anything. If he doesn't do any work I'm going to come over there and kill you”
Boys, so charming...

You try and make everything an object lesson. “If a wall collapses that's ok, we'll build it again stronger its an experiment”

It keeps you busy. Until it doesn't.

Until its time for the next thing. People get bored, hungry, cranky - it ends, if you're lucky you see it coming and get out in front of it. We hit a wall it turned to shit.

But I've been reading another book - “How to raise your kid without raising your voice” and its the same thing.
A hit of optimism, some takeaway that works...we make it home without a missing persons and throw some calories into the mix.

Later it's a train track. And to make it “epic” I suggest a log cabin that the train will pass through...and they build it. The big one gets it most of the way, but the little one suggests raising it on pads - the solution that makes it function.

It's more than just surviving. We hit black ice, a bunch of times, strong emotions were experienced. But we kept building - with a little Netflix in between, sure.

And it was good. And it's what we're doing - even when I lose sight of the road in the shitstorms.

We're building. Our lives together.

The Truth will lead you to Fiction

When I think of some of the things I want to say it makes me realize its time to write fiction. Too personal, too private, too easily misconstrued, too true. I was having the conversation this evening.
“You need to shut down your Facebook profile and do something else. If I knew you were x y z I wouldn't hire you. You can't tell people that.”


And I was like : “Why, because we're living in Fear? I should be screaming this stuff to the rooftops, standing up to the Man. Would it be better if your sister was still closeted? It's taken generations for society to get even a little bit rainbow. I shouldn't be keeping this stuff in, I feel like I've kept too much stuff in.”

It's something I struggle with. If I had the slightest pair, wouldn't I be out in the world, telling people everything I believed in? Wouldn't I refuse to play it safe, fearful of what other people think of me? And it's difficult. Because I know plenty of misfits - plenty of people lacking rudimentary social skills of what to say when, what to reveal, what to hide. I know a bit about posturing, bluffing, biting your tongue. It's a skill set.

But it can also be a straitjacket.

So yeah, maybe fiction.

Rose tinted glasses

Many times, when the bullets are flying, I try and make a joke or otherwise 'keep it light'. I am either a world class diplomat, or Chamberlain - appeasing rather than confronting, avoiding unpleasantness rather than dealing with problems head on.

Perhaps in order to protect my self, I'm constantly telling myself stories how things are ok, or, if we are hurtling off a cliff to certain doom, we are at least trying to plant an ice pick in the cornice - at least struggling to survive.

And I know how fucking annoying optimists - or, worse, people feigning optimism, can be.

But does it help?

I think it does. I think it can amount to cognitive behavioural therapy - that active optimism is at least partially an intentional stance where no matter what the data, you look for a positive interpretation. I think for me it's necessary - if not sufficient. Because I've crept close to the edge of the cliff and taken a peek at the Abyss. I've had mild experience with the Fear and depression - and from what I know about neural plasticity - how the things our brains experience repeatedly or practice changes our neural pathways, resisting negativity can actually change how you see the world.

And how you see the world pretty much determines the types of choices you make.

I don't claim to make the best choices. I read a very interesting post (link) recently how procrastination is essentially a neurotic hangup where the fear of failure creates reward pathways for any and all activities that avoid the risk of failure - like never finishing anything that could be judged harshly. And I think that's a 'choice' I make too often.

But what I do think is that with a little objectivity and detachment we can change. And that cultivating optimism and gratitude gives us enough of a tactical advantage - enough serotonin or dopamine or whatever, to actually have the courage to attempt harder things, that wallowing in negativity would not.

So has it given me enough chutzpah to light the world on fire? Well, global warming may yet take care of that.

And while we're all hurtling somewhere - we're not dead yet, and that makes me hopeful.

I saw her boob - and it wasn't at the Oscars

I support a woman's right to breastfeed anywhere she damn chooses and it took me twenty minutes to realize this morning that any discomfort I feel 'not knowing where to look' falls into the more general category in the 'How boys need to behave' handbook of 'Be conscious when you're staring at a woman's breasts'

So Smith was on a much deserved night away and I'd managed to get the kids to their institutions without any overly serious altercations.

We cruise into the garderie and a fairly hippy academic type is breastfeeding big time on one of the benches we sit the kids to get their boots off.

I was ticked. I was all 'I've had three kids that were breastfed semi-publicly where am I supposed to look?'…I furiously averted my eyes and was annoyed to have to do so. Getting the kids changed is a hassle at the best of times and now I have to work around this…this…this public display of maternal love and affection? But I didn't get there at first.

So I started thinking: ok, rationally I support a woman's right to breastfeed, but should she 'cover up' or otherwise 'act with more decorum' - and it bothered me. So I started thinking about 'provocation' - is she being aggressively mega hippy? Should she be conscious of my discomfort and change her actions accordingly? And so the broader questions - what is provocative? Our actions clearly influence each other but is anyone responsible for the reactions their actions trigger in others? And I was thinking about slutwalk, and hijabs, and the whole patriarchal bullshit that intellectually usually seems so simple, but confronted with this woman breastfeeding, when I was SLIGHTLY stressed with having to change two children - threw all that logico-deductive stuff out the window.

Anyhow - it took me awhile to figure the whole thing out. At first I was angry, and then a little later I realized I was INTERESTED, and not in the 'I'd like to read a long boring text about this' way.


(image from KORA Organics, so credit where credit is due)

And that led to whatever 'breakthrough' I think I might of had.

'Confronted' with this woman breastfeeding, I didn't know where to look. And only twenty minutes later did I realize that probably where I WANTED to look was, well, you decide…

And so that's when I saw that my discomfort was just a tiny little part of the dance we all play with each other everyday. What is and is not acceptable behaviour. And so finally I realized that 'don't stare' - and especially 'don't stare at a woman's breasts unless you're pretty sure it's the right time to do so' is just BASIC 'how to avoid being gelded' behaviour.

Is it acceptable to breastfeed in public? Absolutely. Is it rude to stare? Most of the time. Am I going to sneak a peek? Of COURSE not…

And don't tell Smith, she's supposed to be relaxing.

Three is the new too many

Individually, and sometimes in pairs, they are beautiful and charming, but collectively they are overwhelming and parenting three kids often feels like they are taking turns lining up to punch me in the … um, you know.

Today even went well! Nobody swore, screaming was limited to actual physical injuries and not high volume judgments on our parenting, some people ate breakfast. Altogether a good morning.

But then Charlie was sleeping off some nightmares so didn't come down right away and I was sleep deprived so kind of punchy. Almost got into it with Sam but didn't, and he and Mary got out the door without incident. I overheard her even getting part of his story about some altercation - so a red letter day.

The thing with kids - and it was almost as true when it was one as now that it's three - is that you live in an almost perpetual state of triage. Who's bleeding? Is it arterial? Who is or was defecating? Do I need to involve myself? Why are you screaming? Why am I screaming? etc.

From a distance, when they have all been successfully institutionalized for the day, it's often funny. It's often brutally stressful too when the demands are too great and our failings seem too insurmountable.

It has definitely put us on our heels, conflicts that start with the kids can easily spill into spousal fights and simmering unresolved tensions - but you keep going.

Parenting has really taught me to approach each day like the Eastern Front. "The Russians are coming, we're all going to die!" "Yes the Russians are coming, but our orders are to hold the line." Better to die with our boots on, making a go of it, than run from the challenge.

We are far from perfect parents - kids reveal weaknesses of character and blindspots you never knew you had. Added to the ones you were always well aware of and incapable of dealing with, it can be a bit depressing. But on the good days, and even on the slightly less awful days, it's something else. The biggest challenge I've ever faced, many days more stressful than anything I've ever experienced, but worth it.

A wise man once said "If it was easy, everybody would be doing it." and sure, given there are 7 or 8 billion of us, everyone IS doing it - but what each parent that is trying is doing is to attempt the improbable - to fight against the inevitable heat death of the universe, to overcome thermodynamics and the tendency to entropy in all things - to help these beautiful little creatures as best we can, and then hopefully predecease them, preferably suddenly, after some string of blissfully harmonious family dinners and other adventures, having reflected adequately on our place in the world and our immense satisfaction with it.

Or in a fiery pinto flying off a cliff.

Just not in a knife fight with one of the kids, while their mother cheers them on.