I exist.

I have a hard time staying caught up on LJ, because I actually want to read all the words, and I've seen a couple other people who have been away for awhile and trying to get caught up complaining about the same thing that has been bedeviling me: at some point LJ made it so you can only go back so far on your friends page. I think it is time based, and it's inconsistent - some people's entries hang around longer than others. Anyway, I took a few minutes today and figured out again the hack that I used to use, and I thought I would post it in case anyone else needed it. Especially since I don't remember who was asking. Basically, you can pull up a certain day by using a format like: /friends/2014/12/22/ Ta-da, that's it. Sadly, you can't page through the days like you can in the calendar, but it's easy enough to manually adjust the date.

In other news, Happy Solstice/Hanukkah/Christmas/New Year's/Yule/etc.! We went out on a lovely walk in the woods yesterday and I sprained my ankle. So that's fun. On Saturday, we went up to where my parents are living and ate all the latkes. Also had a Hanukkah latke party with some friends last Tuesday (the first night). Christmas itself is likely to be quiet, as my BF is working, but we have plans for hot cocoa and Futurama Chrismas episodes. Hope yours are happy!

1) My pirate tank top, which I got at C20. I struggle with my relationship to clothes sometimes and this fits perfect, was cheap, is supercomfy, *and* I feel both hot and badass in it.  Plus pirates. And it was cheap!

2) Blackberries, which grow themselves and fill your mouth with tangysweet.

3) My flexible schedule, that means that most of my stress is stress I put on myself or can at least pretend I am in control of, and also means I can just chillax any time I want.

I was tagged by hprynne for this three positive things for 3 days thing. So here's day 1 (which was yesterday):

1) My awesome BF Shawn who spent his day off mowing the lawn and cooking me things and helping me be productive, even if that mostly meant reading things on the internet and organizing my head.  And then we tried to go pick blueberries but failed because it was closed but that's ok it was an adventure.

2) Kickass friends, who feed me tasty foods and tea and wine and meet me at coffeeshops to work and say things that make me think and all that good stuff.

3) Beautiful end-of-summer days that are not too hot and not too cool and have blue skies forever.

So, #1, I am moving to Olympia (with a cute boyTM) and have, in the nick of time, a house to move into! Hooray! Still feel like something could go terribly wrong at the last minute, but if it does at least it won't be because of something I did or didn't do. I don't think.  #2, Am currently engaged on trip of doom that goes something like this IF all goes according to vague tentative subject to change plan:

Tonight in Arcata
Tomorrow in Berkeley
Friday night in OC
Saturday morning, meet up with cute boyTM, yay!
Saturday night in SD
Sunday night in Santa Maria
Monday afternoon, pack all kinds of my stuff from storage into truck
Monday night somewhere north of SF
Tuesday night new house in Olympia
Wednesday night in Oakland (yes you read that right)
Thursday the 13th - hang out with people in SF!
Friday night in Olympia

That means by the time I'm done, I will have been all the way from San Diego/Olympia three times, and SF-Olympia an additional 2 round trips in three months.  (OC-SD-Oly end of November, back to SF beginning of December, back to Oly beginning of January, and then the above).   I really missed my calling by not following up on my 14-year-old self's dream of being a long distance truck driver. Also, between this and the intercontinental air travel last year, I feel solely responsible for global warming. :(

I have this 'if I won the lottery' plan, as many people do.  Mine goes something like, buy a bunch of houses in several different places - in the countryside north of SF, in Olympia WA, in Scotland, maybe some other places. Stock them with the necessities of life: friends, food, cars, etc. and then travel between them, living in them as the whim takes me. In making life plans, I figure it is always good to aim in the direction of the dream, so I've been pondering the true parameters and limitations of that plan a lot, trying to figure out if foundations are possible under my skycastles.  The living with friends part is the most important and yet the trickiest.  While I have many fabulous friends, most of you have your own lives and your own setups and as much as many of you may *say* they want to live together in one big utopia, you guys, you don't really mean it. Most of you are happy where you are, you've invested your intentions in the life you have. There are jobs and schools and houses and other people that are not so easily given up. And also people have different preferences.  Some like seasons, some need it to always be warm, some like the city, some the middle of nowhere.  We come from different countries, with immigration hurdles that would have to be cleared to all live in the same place for longer than 3-6 months.  Furthermore, in lieu of winning the lottery, if I actually wanted to buy a sizable property, let alone more than one, I'd need other people with some money to go in on it with me, and not everyone just has downpayment levels of cash lying around.  (I have pondered kickstarters for a 'tech retreat', but that would require levels of vetting and staffing and professionalism I'm just not in for.  Too much like work.) So, hello, reality.

One thing I have tried to figure out while pondering is what exactly my critical mass is as far as local people to be social with. If I live with ten people in the middle of nowhere, is that enough? Would we get sick of each other? Is there a difference between people you live with and other friends you can leave the house to hang out with?  How many vague acquaintances equal one best bud?

On the other hand, what kind of local amenities do I find to be a requirement? Can one local friend enough to meet my social needs, as long as they're not going to get sick of me and there's enough stuff to do that we don't get bored?  What things do I love? What things do I hate?  Having been all over the place lately has helped in this regard.  Such as, it turns out I find cats to be essential.  I have been semi-seriously using Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a guideline.  My worst living experiences, for example, have featured not having good access to food, mostly due to not owning a car but sometimes also due to being in a place that would react to a Thai restaurant with torches and pitchforks.  And I like my meat and veggies to be fresh, organic, and locally grown where possible.  Farmer's markets are way up there with cats on the list.

My more prosaic ideal has a safe neighborhood with grocery stores and a farmer's market and good restaurants and some nature nearby, a house with a cat and a few awesome relatively clean roommates who like to sometimes sit on the couch and watch movies, a backyard with a hottub, space where I can workout and occasionally do crafty things, and suitable accommodations for out-of-town guests.  An international airport should be within reach and there should be at least some local friends to hang out with. At an affordable price. Where the weather is not shit all the time. That's not too much to ask for, right?

This is an old post. By which I mean, the creation date on the file is 2009, from when I was working on quitting my job to go freelance, but I never actually posted it.  It's pretty relevant to, oh, everything I do, though, especially when I am trying to figure out my life, which I apparently I don't ever actually stop doing. I've edited it for clarity and timeliness. (And it's worth pointing out that I recently did a thought experiment about returning to the 'me' of four years ago knowing everything I know now. And one of the big major things is that I would have quit the job I'm pondering about here as soon as feasibly possible rather than waiting as long as I actually did.)


I occasionally have conversations that involve me reciting a bit of my past, a 'where I've been and how I got to be here' sort of thing.  And it seems the response to my tales is usually a 'wow, that's pretty cool.'  And, well, yeah, a lot of it is, in retrospect. I've had some experiences I wouldn't trade for anything.  But at the time it felt more like wild flailing.  Hell, it felt like failing.  And I think one of the blocks I had with my job situation (as in, leaving it for something new) is that I feel like I'm getting too old to flail.  So I pondered if there was anything I could learn from my past that would help me better figure out my future.  So at least I can....flail with style.  Here's what I came up with.

1. I often fail semi-intentionally
Obviously everyone is somewhat capable of learning from their mistakes, but with me it's something of an artform.  It's not like I go out of my way to mess up, but if there's something that can be flubbed, there is a high likelihood I will flub it.  But then I won't ever make the same mistake again.   So really, the more things I flub the first time, the better I am at a thing in the long run.  This is related to the best way to learn your way around a place is to get lost in it.

In order to take full advantage of this, I have to not be afraid to make those mistakes.  I've gotten much better over the years at mitigating the negative effects, but I am conscious of giving myself the freedom and permission to make a royal mess.  If possible I like to do new things where no one can see me, because they don't always have the same understanding and appreciation for my learning process as I do. The end result here is that I am very tolerant of risk, because I know that not only 'even if' but *especially* if I fall flat on my face, I still end up ahead in the long run.

2.  New experiences are more of a priority for me than security and comfort
There are pros and cons to both sides, of course.  Valuing security, for example, is obviously much more important if you have a family depending on you.  And I have a tendency to be dissatisfied with life, which eventually tends to lead to large violent life changes, where sometimes I throw the baby out with the bathwater and end up back at square one, so to speak, in certain key life areas.  Sometimes I suffer miserably, and sometimes I end up leaning on the generosity of others more than perhaps I should. *But*, because of point one above, I rarely regret these actions in the long run, and when I have the resources I consider it my duty and my pride to be generous with others. In the end, I feel a life *lived* is better than a safe one.  (As a wise man once said, ships in the harbor are safe, but that's not what ships are built for.)

3. When I dream, I dream big
This is partly because I enjoy a challenge, partly because I feel the world *needs* people with big dreams, and partly because I feel I have enormous potential that I've never quite lived up to. :)  This, again, has its downside.  It's easy to think I'm not doing so well when really I've just set unachievable goals, or to give up on doing something merely good because I want something great.  But I'm conscious of this and compensate for it.  Sometimes with goals that are artificially low.  This gets me through the day to day, but never think for a moment that my true goal is anything less than world domination.  In general, this motivates me to get out there and move in a direction, but also contributes to my feelings of dissatisfaction and unsettlement as mentioned above.

4. I angst a lot, but when I commit, I commit hard
I often have trouble making decisions.  I waffle.  I want to make sure I'm making the *right* choice, which seems in conflict with 1 and 2 above, but I think is actually critical to success.  If I don't have full confidence in what I'm doing, I might get discouraged when things go wrong. But once I've decided, I *do* have full confidence in it, and I *move*, putting everything behind it.  If I'm going to fail, I'd rather do so spectacularly, and not because I've half-assed it.

5. I like to leave my options open
In general, the world is not a big conspiracy theory.  To the contrary, nobody really knows what's going on.  If you can figure even a smidge of it out, you're doing better than most people.  Some people respond to this by blatantly flim-flamming their way through it.  Others become unassailable experts in a narrow field.  But mostly I think it's about figuring out what you can do with the cards the universe presents to you. Luck is a big factor in success, but it's not so much about having the luck as *recognizing* the luck and jumping on it.   Basically, even though I put my efforts behind the thing of the moment, I also am willing to change my mind, to be open to new experiences. Sometimes, this can leave me trying to have my hand in multiple cookie jars at once.

6. I am really good at managing my money.
There was going to be one on this list called 'people are surprisingly willing to give you a chance', but even though that's a valuable piece of information that affects life planning, it's not about *me* and this list is all about me.  So there's this one instead.  I don't really have much to say about it except that I am apparently better than average at living within my means, even if my 'means' are very slim, and at socking money away into the bank.

So what's the conclusion here?  Well, I think it's that really, there's nothing wrong with 'flailing', for me.  'Flailing' is *how* I get to do cool stuff - they're possible inseparable.  And so if there's something I want to do, I'm probably not going to regret just going and trying it, no matter what other people think, as long as I've thought it through.  If it doesn't work out, or I want to do something else later, then I will go and do that thing then.  There is a small chance that calamity may occur, but I call that 'adventure'.

Epiphany #1, which really came at a christmas party, talking to a perfect stranger, who mentioned how petrified she was of losing her job in a bad economy: I AM NOT AFRAID.  I mean, sure, there's lots of stuff I'm afraid of, and some of it touches very close to this other stuff, but a lot of it is about other people - what people think of me, letting them down, messing their lives up.  For myself?  I am not afraid.  And the amount of confidence I have is very very important.

So the room I had hoped I had lined up in Oakland fell through, for reasons that can't be helped or held against anyone. Also, the wheels got stolen off my car. Am thinking maybe the universe is trying to tell me something. So I am running through again why I decided to come back here. In a lot of ways it's just the path of least resistance, but I feel like I should break it down a little more. Here are the pros and cons of living in the Bay Area:

Pros:

• All my stuff is here.


• Have a lot of friends here.


• Like the culture - geeks, openness, hippie values.


• I was still referring to it as home while I was away (although perhaps due to lack of anywhere else to refer to)


• I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be (although some I like equally well)


• The weather is nice.


• SF is a great city to visit (meaning more people are likely to come visit me here - and right now I owe a lot of couch karma.)

Cons:

• It's really expensive.


• Parts of it (especially the slightly less expensive parts) are really unsafe.

The pros certainly seem at first glance to outweigh the cons, but the cons are rather a doozy. I know lots of places that are cheap and safe but, say, have shit weather or no culture or a lack of awesome people.  I've been looking around rather extensively, you know, and waiting for my gut to kick in, but maybe I should do a spreadsheet thing where I give different things like the weather and the cost of rent points and then rate cities against each other.

So these are from longer ago - end of June I took a trip out to Bristol to hang with inulro and, um, not sure Jason has an LJ. They met me at the train station and after a tasty lunch we headed out to Avebury.  Being literally the day after the summer solstice, it was slightly infested with solstice celebrants. I kind of adored the lady in the satin red robe with staff who was chatting away on her cell phone as we walked in, but was too polite to sneak a photo.  (Unlike Stonehenge, I'm not sure we actually have any evidence that Avebury was calendrical. Admittedly, its history is a little more messy - most of the stones were knocked down and then put up again, and many are still missing, but the primary orientation of the setup is North/South.)  It was kinda grey and also super windy, but it didn't rain on us much.

( horse, stones, and barrows )

Went back to their place in Bristol, had a lovely dinner, played with the bunnies, and slept well. Watched some Daily Show too, which I hadn't seen since I'd been over here. With John Oliver taking over from Jon Stewart, it was like a weird British-alternate-reality version of the Daily Show.  The next day we went to Cheddar to meet up with some peeps and play mini-golf and drink tea.  Unfortunately, the intended tea room was closed.  Cheddar is neat, although it is most definitely a small tourist trap town that reminded me a fair deal of some tiny American tourist trap towns. We did not go in any of the caves (which looked incredibly cheesy *snerk*) but did eat and buy some real made-in-Cheddar-aged-in-caves cheddar.  Also, the thing with Cheddar is the Cheddar Gorge, which is a little like oh how cute, England tries to have some landscape, but was pretty cool.  I didn't get any good photos of it, as we pretty much just drove through it and it was raining, but you can see it in the background of the below photo.

( it could be bunnies )

This past weekend I went to London and took absolutely no photos. Saturday was a Fitocracy meetup - I went to an actual gym for the first time since college. When I get resettled I might have to find a good one and actually start going regularly. I've been working out at home for the past couple years, but there are things I don't have at home, like a squat rack and an assisted pullup machine. (If you workout and haven't heard of Fitocracy, you should check it out. It's a pretty cool community.) Then there was dinner at a Turkish place, and a mad dash through the pouring rain to a nearby bar for drinks. Luckily by the time I had to leave, the rain had stopped. I headed over to poggs place, only getting minorly lost on the way. Sunday was leisurely Sunday roast in the pub before I caught the train back to the Midlands.

A couple weeks ago, there was a trip to Kenilworth Castle, which was nearish a tea shop I wanted to go to. There's all kinds of history and stuff about the Queen and her lover related to it, which I'm mostly not going to go into.

( I just like old falling down things )