WARD FLEN,. (Meaning: “With that” in the language of, P’rune)

Ward Flen is a mostly-spoken language meant for having fun, by being only slightly decipherable. Moggs skim below.

(This is my holiday gift to you all for 2022, I think! Just in case I forgot whem blogenter more’anthis)

Ward Flen is composed of words with classes, numbered flen 1-5.

Class 1 words are the GLUE for this special language. These words don’t mean anything but they sound like they do. Examples: tum, tups, misk, natt, ward, worth, enz, flen, oip, thuz/ofv/whem, k’aif, moggs skim, welks, thann, zep. You should add at least 1-2 of these words in most sentences. “Hey oip, then laptop keys?” You can make these up but I got you started up here with some perfectly useful worth glue Flen.

Class 2 is normal things like: laptop, desk, chair, pencil, hat, floor. Also general words like “thinking” or “better”, but basically these words should just sound normal and boring. You should use them to help people feel vaguely comfortable with what you’re saying, just sprinkle them in, it’s how wards can flen better. Tups haven’t natt, much anyway…

Class 3 is words you are talking about that are specific to your situation or place, like if you are at a store maybe the word “aisle” is a class 3, or if you are at a farm then “pumpkins” is a class 3. Or if you are in church maybe “salvation” is a class 3 or something. Class 3 words make people feel SURE that you are not talking nonsense. Class 3 words can therefore & thisway bring you back down to earth if you are talking and someone doubts how serious you are! Like, “Hello, I’m serious as worth the CHRISTMAS SHOPPING! Enz!”

Class 4 is a word that could mean several things depending on how you would write it, but you are saying it, so like “clothes” could be “close” or “close (nearby)” and so on. When you write it you could write c’loes or something. These words are cool because they are like a class 2 or class 3 even, but they also sneaky! Boring but what is saying…?!

Class 5 is a special hybrid made-up word that is special and sounds really fancy, like laptoprimes or iphoneheim or candybarwark. It gets people thinking they KNOW that word but what’s the extra bit—? There’s the fun, that’s class 5 fun right there. Did they hear that right? These are also fun because they are RISKY words if somebody stops and thinks through what they are hearing, they might catch on that you are a War’d Flen Fren.

For written Ward Flen, use ‘ apostrophes everywhere and end sentences in places, like then. Or start a sentence, with comma, also filteringsome! When you write it down it’s not meant to look confusing, it does look kind of different. So you’d write like this to someone who already knows ward flen, and thinks its f’unny situationmind.

OTHER NOTES:

1. Use enunciation and emphasis slightly differently. Let some of your sentences get quiet at the end, or trail off, or trail on (quiet at beginning, gets louder). Or trail sideways, which is where your eyes get big and you just stop mid-sentence and sigh, saying something like “whew” or gulping loudly and then look away awkwardly.

2. If somebody asks what you mean, but you want to prolong the fun, it can help to look away and wince and go “ahhh,” or “yahhh” like you are confused about why they don’t join in the conversation.

It can also help to draw in some breath quickly through your closed teeth, like you are wincing a bit. Then change the subject if you want.

Some of the best places & times to use ward flen are when:

• You want to laugh together with friends or family, and see who says what nonsense
• It’s way too loud to have a conversation, but somebody comes up and talks to you anyway (???)
• It’s kind of too loud to hear you, and you feel like saying something
• You want to interject in an ongoing group conversation, and see how long it takes anyone to notice your Ward Flen
• Another person is intensely focused on doing something ELSE besides talking to you, and you feel like sayin’ something to them
• Somebody is ignoring you and you wish to lodge a casual protest by busting their brain
• Somebody is paying attention to you, and you wish to be casually ignored
• Somebody is prying or listening in on your conversation, and you want to watch their CPU really heat up, see how an overloaded human CPU behaves. Work for it, deciphering always UTILIZEARNS EXTRA cycles w’ard Flen tum!
• You are bored and want to talk to yourself (or a pet) & see if you can make yourself laugh (tip, sing along to a song you don’t know with Ward Flen Karao’kke)

Good luck out t’here everybody with skim & enjoy Ward Flen zep! —Marc

Filed in: Energy /120/ | Interests /111/ | Publications /44/

Some recent updates around here:

Fediverse Feed Cleanup

The RSS feed format from Mastodon changed a while back, so things looked a bit broken in the sidebar here for a while. I made some changes that seemed to fix the appearance.

I am not sure in what ways I may keep using Mastodon for microblogging. The community aspect is nice, but since I’m already blogging here in different ways, I should probably reevaluate what I’m doing over there for good fit. Anyway for now, the sidebar feed appearance is not broken, at least. (I still need to play a bit with the word-break settings…(done))

Recent Imagery

The sidebar here at MAYBE also has a new feature where you can see photos of some recent things I’m up to. When you load a page it picks a random recent image.

Right now there are a lot of EDC photos, but I expect this will change over time. Anyway I really like keeping some of my own favorite interest- or hobby-related photos here on the blog, and I noticed that storing photos in other cloud services is great for a lot of things, but it’s really not a great fit for publishing or blogging.

Other

The home page here at FS also has an updated main menu, and some of those pages are also undergoing changes as well.

The same home page also shows a random selection from my entire image highlights gallery.

The About Marc page was additionally updated with some info, based on my conversations with visitors to the site.

It’s been fun to kind of pull things together here and unify various approaches and features as I spend more time on this personal site—it’s a hobby that’s been a lot of fun. Thanks for reading!

Above: MacNeil/Lehrer Variations: Theme: Part III

Filed in: Blog Updates /2/

As I’ve blogged about in the past, I keep a super-long list of personal interests. It’s been a big deal to this guy, who long ago suffered from chronic, severe depression. Being interested in all sorts of things is great and supports an enjoyable life.

Recently the list is nearing 1,100 items as we get into something like its sixth year. And it’s been a huge undertaking—not only in energy spent, but also in energy gained.

It has been so worth it to spend time maintaining this thing. Maybe it’s like my personal bonsai tree, of sorts.

I use my list as a source of random, specific interests, which are dumped into my daily journal, in shuffled sets of about fifteen interests at a time. I do this a few times a day. Then I skim the list and note any items that stand out as fun, or intriguing, or just anything. I’m feeling things out.

I didn’t realize this when I started the list, but doing this is not just about fun stuff. It’s also about where my head is at right now and that’s pretty important to know.

Right now I seem to add 1-2 new specific interests every week, on average. But sometimes I have bursts and discover huge sets of new interests. Or existing interests, which I had forgotten about.

This got me thinking about the various phases I’ve been through.

“It might be helpful to others to read something like that,” I thought. “The phases they should expect. Because if you don’t know about these, you might give up along the way.”

So, here they are.

Key Phases In Making A Huge List of Personal Interests

1. There’s a point at the very beginning where you have added some stuff, but your list is still too vague and brief. You skim the list and feel like it’s cool in some ways, but you may still feel dissatisfied, burnt out, or bored.
2. There’s a point where you have stuff written down, but it’s too repetitive to browse the list. You need a different list-browsing method maybe. Bottom-up?
3. There’s probably a point where you may or may not know it, but the main problem is that you keep reading the list in some order as a habit, and so you keep seeing the same old interests in the same old order. This is why I turned to a shuffling method and randomization.
4. There’s a point where your list-shuffling-software randomly spits out some interests, and you feel like there’s a “should,” like “I should do that” even if you don’t want to. Eventually you realize that’s a waste of energy and quickly delete items you don’t like, that were randomly picked from the main list.
5. There’s a point where you have lots of stuff in the main list, but you don’t like ALL of it, so you decide what changes to make and where, and whether to delete things that may become interests once again in the future. Part of the problem is a fear that you won’t ever be able to think up or keep around a really nice long list of interests, if you wantonly delete things!
6. There’s a point where there’s just way too much of it AND it’s helpful. You’ll be sitting here all day doing fun stuff, so you need to get organized and stop doing your interests. So—how do you get interested in the boring stuff you need to do? A separate issue perhaps, but maybe also linked in some ways…
7. At the same time, there’s a point where you realize that your list is insufferable and annoying sometimes. You start to learn that this perception tells you about what you should do, right now—take a break to chill, step away from the computer and lay down, or something else. The list becomes a helpful tool for measuring and noting your current condition. Well, that’s new!
8. There’s a point where you feel DUMB because there’s an entire category you forgot to add. Like, how did I miss favorite topic X, for 2 years since I started this list of interests…?
9. There’s a point where the interests just gradually trickle in over time, and they’re kinda new, but kinda really old interests in a way. They’re a fresh mix, and discovering them is like you’re deep sea fishing or something. It feels like a game of its own, and so…
10. There’s a point where you consider adding maintaining a list of your interests to the list of your interests.

What a journey it’s been.

Conclusion

That’s probably a good place to leave it for now.

But why not offer some random interests of mine to check out? Here’s a random list of ten I have pulled just for you.

1. My ’90s TV (Pick a year at the bottom) https://www.my90stv.com
2. Film trivia from a favorite film, on e.g. IMDB, IMCarsDB etc.
3. Minecraft and minetest (worlds, mods, skins, etc.)
4. Virtual travel to wherever sounds interesting (you can build your own method for virtual travel, or use someone else’s)
5. Researching helpful supplements / stackadvice on Reddit
6. Yamakawa Shuuhou, historic Japanese printmaker
7. Stargate Universe and similar prospective sci-fi
8. Creating icons (for your own website, software, or just for fun)
9. Thinking up code names for new projects and things
10. Planning, sizing up, estimating, and testing new computer hardware

Filed in: Interests /111/ | Energy /120/

Lately I’ve realized: It totally sucks that there’s this term “Emotional Eating”, which involves being ashamed or unhappy, and not processing one’s emotions, and completely messing up and eating too much.

Ridiculous!

“Emotional eating” should be a positive term. It should involve eating the stuff you really like to eat.

In other words, it should build on your own personal values system. And we know that your personal values are powerful and healthy when it comes to assisting with life-changing goals.

Signs of a Really Good Emotional Eater?

Maybe this sounds foreign. But I think a truly healthy diet culture should be able to teach people HOW to become Expert Emotional Eaters.

Let’s play with that idea a bit.

Here’s where I think an Expert Emotional Eater (EEE) should be:

1. The EEE should be in general control of their health. They are taking care of themselves in a good way.
2. They should be happy with their weight, or with the direction their diet & eating is taking.
3. They know how to leverage their favorite foods toward weight loss or weight maintenance, not just weight gain.
   1. They can design a diet with their favorite foods as a foundation, or centering philosophy.
4. They find it easier to lose weight on a diet that is calibrated to their favorite foods.
   1. They should know how often they should eat favorite foods to continue supporting a challenging emotional situation, such as extreme weight loss.
5. They should be able to list their favorite foods in any given category.
6. When listing favorite foods, they should be able to tell you what portion size they usually like with that.
   1. Why? Well, partly because they are also looking forward to what they’re eating later, and want to leave room for it.
7. They should have a nuanced opinion on “health foods”, rather than simply “this is healthy, and that isn’t”.
   1. They understand that “healthy eating, for me” may be a different thing from someone else’s healthy eating entirely, and also better and more useful to know about, in many ways.
8. They ensure they get enough nutrition, but also know how to be flexible with a pro-nutrient, or even pro-macro approach. They understand that many people get more than enough nutrients, and that nutrients can be measured and managed without changing an entire diet too much.
9. They know how to both refine and broaden their tastes. Their idea of good food may have some complex theories inside. Plus, they know what they like, but they also keep an open mind.
10. They see the world of emotions as a beautiful place that goes so much deeper than Good vs. Bad emotion.
11. They are able to set healthy boundaries with others on the topic of eating, for example in social eating situations.

So, there’s one set of ideas, just to demonstrate more about what this could mean.

There are many ways to lose weight and be healthy. You could say we’re drowning in them. But the one you’re reading here is just a bit higher on the “let’s work with my normal biology, chemistry, and cave-person brain” scale than, say, extreme volume eating combined with strict macros.

Personally, I like to combine this Pro-Emotional Eating perspective with a caloric-deficit model to lose weight, and that becomes something like my Moderated Dirty Cut.

I lost over 35% of my body weight and overcame obesity in this way, and many of my friends didn’t recognize me afterward. I still enjoy working on the Pro-Emotional perspective, learning more about what I like, and when, and why, and so on.

I think this model, the Pro-Emotional Eating Perspective model (PEEP!), let’s call it, is worth considering, if you like the way certain foods taste.

It’s meant for the people out there who know they benefit emotionally from eating good food…and who definitely know they have preferences that they enjoy.

When compared with typical weight loss via numbers only, or nutrients only, I think the theory speaks for itself.

Filed in: Energy /120/ | Interests /111/ | Essays /52/ | Dieting /18/

Amber writes,

When you interact with other people who are different personality types, do you change the way you act or speak around them?

Quick answer: Absolutely.

And: If you are interested in it, I think you should try it.

Big Note

I don’t really do this in the mimic-other-people sense that you may have read about. Like if someone folds their arms, I’m not going to fold my arms just because they did!

I don’t find that very interesting or creative, in fact it seems kind of shallow and easy to detect. If I detect someone else doing it, I find myself leaning toward not trusting them.

Most of the time I think you can keep your general style but change the expression on your face, the direction in which you look, and the words you use, here and there.

A little bit goes a long way.

You Can’t Always Be Yourself, Subconscious Edition

The truth is, you cannot always be yourself. As an idea, or model, it certainly works in some ways (do what you want to do in life, generally speaking!) but it is really broken and overused in some other big ways.

For example, reading articles like this one is learning. Learning is growing. Growing is change—everybody does it, all the time. Change is stress. Stress comes and goes. So, know the process and embrace it! And take breaks to enjoy what you’re becoming.

And that’s just the barely-conscious stuff. Your subconscious mind may also have some plans for you—you may suddenly decide you want a bright red sports car for your 50th birthday, even though you just bought a gray economy model!

Well, there’s a change. Surprise!

You Definitely Can’t Be Yourself, Group Edition

The same general idea is true with relationships.

Interpersonal dynamics always change, with each new interaction. The change depends on the personalities and traits of those involved.

Yes, this means that you definitely change, contextually. You may have already realized that in some cases you almost seem to become a completely different person, when you’re around different groups of friends, coworkers, relatives, and so on.

Unless you become aware of the specific dynamic, and know what to do with it, you’ll probably be stuck in whatever the default is for the combination of your personality type and the others who are involved.

You will probably, at some point, find yourself in a frustrating, repetitive loop that may remind you of some painful time in your past, or prevent you from making some kind of breakthrough you desire.

Personally, after studying this stuff for a long time, I do find that I’m usually aware of the dynamic. This means that I have some control over it.

Since I have some control, I tend to make conscious decisions about what to do—like which cognitive processes to favor in conversation, and which to avoid, sometimes—and I refine that initial decision over time.

(I’ve also made some REALLY dumb decisions about this in the past, and I’m glad to have had a lot of practice since then.)

Caveats

Here’s some important stuff to keep in mind.

• This takes time to learn. In some cases it is REALLY hard and frustrating. You may not be aware of many others who are willing to do it.
  • Corollary: In many cases it’s better to disengage, change roles, teams, situations, etc. first.
  • Corollary: People who are not willing to engage in this kind of study & change are definitely missing out in a variety of ways.
• You are changing yourself by doing this. And “Don’t change yourself to suit others” is a terrible model here, don’t apply it or you’ll fall into all the old loops and traps. It’s more like, “Change yourself to have more control over your life” IMO.
• By the way, this also involves inviting others to change. For the sake of preserving your own energy and motivation levels, there will be times when you MUST be willing to invite others to responsibly step up to the plate, so to speak. For example, it could be that you MUST be willing to invite the other party to really open their mind in some way, if they are asking you to close yours. Even if they don’t know how hard you’re working behind the scenes, you still must be willing to invite or direct them to use their best effort to work with you, when things aren’t exactly equitable for you.
• If you are taking conscious control of this activity, then you should certainly organize it, log it, and track it. At least at first.
• It can be extremely helpful to think up creative ways to be upbeat and be less of a hardass. There are very few situations where hardassery is the only option.
• You can’t solve a relationship, but you can sure as hell do a lot to make it work way better.
• Set boundaries with yourself. If you’re an introvert, don’t overexpose yourself to people, or to constantly-changing groups of people. If you’re an extrovert, be really careful not to sum everybody up, or tell yourself “I know people”. That’s a good way to lose control fast, when the dynamic isn’t going in your favor. Gentle, thoughtful moves are often best.
• A personality type system can be described as a model that helps to develop fairly-safe assumptions about a group of people. This description bundles two important aspects: First, the word is “assumption”, not “fact”. Second, an individual is not a group! Be careful and watch the individuals’ responses to what you are doing.

Other Tips

• If you know what cognitive processes or functions a person prefers, congrats—you also know what to avoid, if you want to work with them productively. That’s huge sometimes!
• There are some pretty safe general rules you can pick up fast. If somebody’s being an untrustworthy rogue, it’s generally not a good idea to act like a clueless tourist around them, unless you have a specific idea in mind!
• Another simple one: Introverts often don’t understand how important attention is, to extroverts. If you are not giving an extrovert (or a person acting extroverted) some attention, you are withholding or reserving some control for yourself. End of story. If you need control, the attention dynamic is one of the first areas to review.
• If the situation seems difficult, make simple, reliable decisions early & fast, and commit. If it’s an important, ongoing situation, always buy yourself time and know how you’ll use the time with respect to that situation.
• Don’t be mean or cruel to people. It’s not worth it. You want revenge? Dumb idea! Get something else, like at least get satisfaction first, and see if that’s enough for you.
  • Corollary: Communicate with people early and directly so you don’t have to be sneaky.
• Use these tools to make the world better. Watch for others gifts, as an expression of their cognitive preferences.

As a result of this kind of work:

• You should feel more capable of setting gentle boundaries with other people.
• You should feel more comfortable in your long-term relationships.
• You should feel like you can make smarter decisions about when you want to have some other people around, and when you don’t. You may even learn how to decide what kind of setting that will need to be, to support you best.
• You should feel ready to grow into a more circumspect, healthy version of yourself, using a gentle approach that works better than obsolete models like “don’t change who you are”.
• You should feel more unlocked in life, more generally capable, and definitely more skilled with people.

I hope that helps, Amber!

Filed in: Relationships /78/ | Control /110/ | Parenting /5/

I came across somebody’s Reddit thread asking users to post their top 10 sci-fi movies, and ended up looking through my master list to find just the sci-fi ones.

By the time I was done reviewing mine, I had a list of 20, so I thought I’d go from that because there’s more which is great in a favorite topic. So I’ll list them here then break things down further a little bit.

1. Contact – 1997 (Some of you personality type otaku out there want to know who the INTJ character is in this film, and I will just say I think he mostly works in the background in the story, but damn if he doesn’t make HUGE contingency plans.)
2. The Quiet Earth – 1985
3. Back to the Future – 1985
4. WarGames – 1983
5. Matinee – 1993
6. Close Encounters of the Third Kind – 1977
7. Star Trek: The Motion Picture – 1979
8. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan – 1982
9. Somewhere in Time – 1980
10. Blade Runner 2049 – 2017
11. Blade Runner – 1982
12. Inception – 2010
13. Tenet – 2020
14. 2001: A Space Odyssey – 1968
15. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back – 1980
16. 2010: The Year We Make Contact – 1984
17. When Worlds Collide – 1951
18. Meteor – 1979
19. Westworld – 1973
20. The Day the Earth Stood Still – 1951

Most Rewatchable

Those aren’t all super rewatchable to me, and the most-rewatchable list changes more frequently over time. But here’s my current most-rewatchable sub-list:

• The Quiet Earth
• Back to the Future
• WarGames
• Matinee
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• 2010: The Year We Make Contact
• Meteor

Points of Hesitation, Pain, Frustration, or Pause

Here are some weird points that stood out to me while I reviewed the list.

• I really, really wish I could watch The Quiet Earth again for the first time. I caught it on PBS one night and only saw part of it at the time, but it blew my mind. I remember wondering if I’d ever be able to finish watching it someday.
• Back to the Future stood out by comparison as a kind of bland pop culture title as I scanned my list at first, but thinking on it further, it’s a really damn good film. It gets better the longer it runs, with the beginning maybe the hardest part for me to sit through, in a way.
• I hesitated on WarGames, like “is this a science fiction movie?” for some reason. But damn if it didn’t really pick up the Colossus: The Forbin Project torch and run with that thing. Plus really quality hacking history in there, and adolescent love, and a radio-controlled flying dinosaur flown by a mysterious wizard…oh and MISTAH POTATAH HEAD!!!
• Matinee was similarly a strange fit in some ways but I’m not trying to be hyper-exact here. I really enjoy it. Similar with Somewhere in Time as well. I absolutely love the idea of actual, this-is-really-happening time travel via gettin’ dressed up and being authentic, and meditating a bit, and well, it just seems like the sort of thing the ideal universe really ought to reward with the gift of time travel. Even if you do wake up completely exhausted afterward, or worse!
• Meteor was kind of a sleeper WTF for me. Examples WTFs, “Why The Frick haven’t I heard of this film” and “Why The Flip do I like it?” come to mind. But it’s like comfort food for my mind. There are parts that make me laugh out of corniness, there are parts that make me roll my eyes. But overall it’s fun to watch. I like the score, and I like the look of the titles for some reason. Oh, and I do happen to like Henry Fonda, Brian Keith (god would he read a good bedtime story!), and Karl Malden.

Extra Content! Indie and Low-budget Titles, and Other Points of Interest

• The Impossible Planet by Dave Herring is one of my favorite indie, home-animated sci-fi films. It’s very low-dopamine. Easy to watch, and yet I found the mysterious vibes compelling and the story works well. Dave also created some other likeable titles, such as The Subway Shining. I think you do have to approach these from a home-crafted point of view, though.
• I also liked the low-budget The Clones from 1973. The story was solid and it was fun to watch in the procedural sense.
• More recently, Lavalantula (2015) was entertaining to watch with the family, and I found myself wanting to watch it again, which I didn’t expect.
• On seemingly different sides of specific political lines, Moscow to Cassiopeia (1974) and The War of the Worlds: Next Century (1981) (free to watch online) are a couple of Cold War favorites out of Eastern Europe.
• Closer to a romcom sci-fi mix, 2001’s Kate & Leopold is another one I watch at least every year or so.
• The Black Hole from 1979 is probably my favorite sci-fi crossover with the haunted house genre.
• I thought about this one very intensely: 1981’s Scanners features my favorite head explosion, by a long shot.
• 1962’s La Jette is the shortest film on my main list, and also the most slide show-like, of course.

It was fun to take some time and think about all these. I’m already mentally highlighting some favorites to re-watch this week at work!

Filed in: Interests /111/

A Happy Halloween Season to you all!

I present a simple model, and may it lead you to your own spooky conclusions…

Blood

Blood is vitality, life.

Vampires need blood. Metaphorical vampires need vitality. Without it? They will appear almost frozen in expression. Cold.

If they wait too long to provide themselves with their own sources of vitality, they may become compulsive, and must use…

Sharp Teeth

Vampires are terribly good at being cutting. Demonstrating decisive actions, delivering cutting remarks, and relying on sharp wits.

When vampires must use the teeth, the best objects are soft, warm, squishy, alive. Metaphorically, that is…

Business

Vampires don’t just consciously think about business.

Vampires are business.

If you look at someone with deep, long-lasting, sustainable talent, you’ll see—they don’t really think about it much. They do it. They are it.

Vampires find themselves turning all sorts of transactions into business transactions. Even a supposedly personal relationship can take on strange businesslike characteristics. Silly sometimes, but it happens.

(Does this surprise you, Jonathan Harker? With little more than a hand wave, the business portion is completed! Now: Fulfill your duty to meet my desire.)

At a young age they begin to think about the “big picture” business moves. They seem to know that they belong in a castle or similarly regal dwelling of some kind. Know it or not, however, they often find themselves in such a state—it happens to them very often.

Vampires do often wish they could turn their desire into business, and vice-versa. But that’s too often a trap of the obsessive variety, it doesn’t easily work, and it brings mainly loneliness. Such puzzles can make life seem to drag on forever…

Immortality

Vampires may be immortal; humans may not.

Still, some humans can think well in past, present, and future timelines. Linda Berens teaches this about one temperament in particular: The NT Theorist temperament.

You may expect such humans to seem wise, stoic, even naturally hardened, in some ways. They have already been through a lot of things that they didn’t really have time to go through.

How does that work?

Mirrors

Vampires don’t appear in mirrors, because they are mirrors. Vampires naturally show people what they fear about themselves.

So, when someone looks in a mirror for a scary beast and doesn’t see the vampire, and they only see themselves?

That’s the lesson.

Some humans (who may not think of themselves as vampiric) are said to be mirrors, like this. When they open their mouths, others wish to shut them, because painful truths may be revealed.

Darkness

Vampires must work in the dark because their symbolic message is very potent, and their own weaknesses may become immediately apparent with a little sunlight. It’s true; this can lead to a dangerous situation for a vampire.

But also, Vampires are naturally comfortable sensing in the dark, i.e. perceiving meaning in chaos.

For this gift to work properly, a little bit of light may be far too much.

Evil? Good? What is goodness?

Finally, vampires think a lot about value. Very deeply, too.

For this reason, they don’t really know what’s universal good, or what’s always bad. To many non-vampiric people, this is frightening—terrifying.

Still, vampires are part of who we all are.

Everyone has a little vampire inside them. Bad and good, running together. A need to find their own bite, when the vitality has left and the mortality may even soon be in question.

Filed in: Relationships /78/ | Essays /52/

Jacob writes,

What is something you learned lately that you didn’t know when you were younger? As an intuitive personality, if you can give an example of a sensory skill it would be helpful.

Sensory skill! That’s a good q. There’s probably a lot of that, much of which wasn’t so clear or interesting when I was younger. Here’s one thing that comes to mind.

It’s been very fun and helpful to figure out just the right way to move my body to do things I couldn’t do before, or solve problems.

Here are some examples:

Example 1. Precision Study for Pain Management

For example, when my shoulder was injured recently, I couldn’t move my hand from the keyboard to the mouse without extreme pain.

So normally I’d move the mouse, or buy a trackpad keyboard or something.

But I decided to try different body positions and movements.

I figured out that I could invert my palm, turning the thumb down and to the outside, and there was no pain at all while doing this movement! Weird.

Then I kept trying that with other painful situations, and found even more of those. In one case I could wiggle my finger tips a bit and completely unlock my shoulder.

Example 2: Tricks and Techniques

Just today, I spent a half hour writing down just the right finger and hand motions and angles for opening, lighting, and closing my Zippo lighter.

I mostly use this lighter for 1) fidget toy and 2) sealing frayed ends of paracord lanyards or rope.

And really, if I’m fidgeting with this in the first place, I also want to learn some cool ways to use it. So that was a lot of fun.

Example 3: Fixes to Other Problems

Finally, I was pruning a tree with this interchangeable saw I have. But it kept dropping blades. I’d start to saw, and then the blade would pull right out of the handle.

My first reaction: I got a piece of junk of course, I hate this saw, UGH, probably better to get ONE saw that does ONE job!!!

But then I thought about it and decided: I’ll watch myself using it, lightly at first.

So I get a kind of comfortable setting for my hand going, it’s feeling nice. THEN I notice…

My thumb rests on the side screw while I’m sawing…then gradually loosens the blade-tightening screw by slowly turning it to the left!

Conclusion

These are the types of things that I frankly ignored or didn’t care about when I heard them from others, in the past.

But these days they are a lot of fun and they build confidence.

I also used to google this kind of thing a lot. Why solve it yourself when others already have? The problem with that is, if you find a fitting answer, you still get others’ techniques, others’ ideas, and you aren’t able to build up or strengthen your access to introverted perception & judgement functionality, for example. It’s also a risk to your creativity, to say nothing of your access to your sensory side. (As an introvert, it’s very helpful to pretty much own and fully-leverage your introverted side, to the extent you can)

In most cases it helps me to plan for some extra patience—at least multiple sessions—and space out the learning a bit. In other cases it helps to write things down and save notes for later.

I hope that helps, Jacob—and anyone else out there who might find some extra-precise body studies helpful.

Filed in: Sensation /40/ | Control /110/ | Se /25/ | Si /18/

One of the biggest problems humanity faces today is pretty tricky: It’s the concept of the unknown.

I wrote about this topic and its relation to UFOlogy before.

I believe that, moving forward as a species, we will need to tackle and solve this problem, making the unknown less of a feared condition or aspect of life.

Lately I’m noticing even more than usual that, far from applying only to fringe topics like UFOlogy, it most certainly even applies to everyday questions.

Can I Have More Details on The Unknown?

I noticed that a lot of people are wayyyy past their personal comfort level by the time they ask “What Do You Mean By That?”

They don’t like having to ask this. Not just because it makes them feel dumb, which is true sometimes. But also because they are very uncomfortable with the unknown in general.

And—is it really wise to continue talking about the unknown in such a case, with someone who is that uncomfortable already?

What if it started with a simple topic, like you saying “here’s an idea for this weekend’s party?”

In my experience, even thinking about this simple type of future activity can cause high levels of stress for those who fear the unknown. Everyone has their threshold.

This is why I think it is important to start thinking more deeply about responding to the question and mindset as soon as it comes up.

What to Do About It

Here’s something to try on your own: Stop things short, as soon as you hear “What Do You Mean By That,” or sense a similar questioning mindset. Set a temporary boundary right there. And then make some time to ask yourself:

• Am I trying to communicate something that exists in my mind, as a concept, imagined idea, or plan? (I generally call this “intuitive” material, or information from the realm of the intuition)

• Is it possible that this person is uncomfortable or lacks experience with intuitive-weighted topics, like planning? Or mental imagery? This is really good to know as early as possible. New phrases or tools can be used to help make these topics easier to deal with. And knowing about this issue in general gives you more control over potential problems that may arise.

• Is it possible that this person needs more bigger-picture context? For example, some details about the history of the topic in question? Even for party planning, it can be helpful to rewind a bit, and say, “before I go into my idea, here’s some background.” Basic sequential logic can do wonders here.

• Is the conversational approach appropriate, or is more formal training or a formal presentation a better idea? This is especially helpful to consider if you need people to work with you, or for you, at the level of plans, ideas, and concepts.

Why It’s Important that We Help Them

It may not be your fault for having an idea that others don’t understand. But it’s a good idea to start thinking about that bridge—about what can be done in these cases. Cases that can come up when the “What Do You Mean By That” idea you’re trying to communicate refers to a concept you can’t exactly produce in physical form from your coat pocket, but which you also really need to get across.

And why is important for us intuitives, planners, conceptualizers, inventors to think about this?

Because it involves creating new processes to be used in the future.

So, by definition, those in your audience who aren’t comfortable with the unknown probably can’t do this part for themselves, either. And it doesn’t make them ignorant, or stupid. Far from it! Some of the most clever, executive-minded, and productive people I’ve ever met have also really struggled with the unknown.

If we really want to improve the universe, the world, humanity, and its general readiness for future events, those of us who can face the unknown comfortably have a lot of important work to do, to benefit those who can still make their own contributions…though perhaps not with the exact same gifts.

Music: X Files Theme – Eerie Harp Guitar Version – Jamie Dupuis

Filed in: Ni /42/ | Intuition /61/ | Thinking /70/ | Ne /17/ | Si /18/ | Relationships /78/ | People /72/ | Essays /52/ | Productivity /119/ | Control /110/

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and some of you kind readers checked in with me, so I thought I’d share a little bit of what’s been up.

Used My Own Free PDF Download

I’ve been publishing free downloads online for like what, 20 years now? Something like that.

I use my own downloads all the time. It’s kind of funny (moreso when I google my own site on accident and it’s got exactly what I needed) but I guess it makes some kind of basic sense.

Anyway, in the past I created a free PDF guide / download for COVID sufferers.

So I was wondering, when will I get COVID myself?

And when I get COVID, will I use the tools I wrote about? I was pretty sure they were helpful, but you never know, really.

Answer: You’ll get COVID in September, 2022, and it will suck, and yes you will use all the tools, and more.

Well, I’m glad that’s over with. It went through the family and caused a number of setbacks, one of which was posting to this blog. So yeah, it sucked.

Some aspects that come to mind:

• Weirdest Goal for Whenever COVID Left My Body: Sitting in the yard, doing some whittling. Like GOD, when can I WHITTLE again?! Seriously this was such a random desire…
• Funniest COVID Activity: I personally tend to use TONS of caffeine when I’m sick, because I ran some measurements and it helps me out. So it was funny to hit something like 500mg this one day, and then lay there listening to tunes in my bed, with my feet shaking like TAPPITY-TAP-SHAKEY-SHAKE-BOPPITY-BOP. The shaking doesn’t bother me, it’s just a side effect of the caffeine. But I was chuckling about it because Megan was like “yeah I’m not sleeping in here, I mean look at your feet going off.” (She had COVID too btw)
• Loftiest Goal During Post-COVID Lethargy Period: “When this is over I will climb a friggin’ MOUNTAIN.” (Was I serious? I don’t really want to do that anymore unless it’s easy and comfortable ;-))
• Biggest COVID Annoyance: I got out a favorite candy bar as an experiment to get my spirits up, but I couldn’t taste it at all. lmao. It basically tasted like slime, or garbage. So annoying.
• Most Weirdly Helpful Supplement: After my sweet-taste came back, I suddenly found that gobs of sugar were helping a lot with the lethargy. More than caffeine even. It was weird at first, but I made the difficult decision to swim with the tide. THEN SUGAR IT WILL BE, I uttered to myself with steely resolve! Some absolutely epic sugary snacks were consumed. (This was also somehow my weight-gain portion of COVID. Strange!)

I Watched the Kids By Myself for a While

Megan flew to Denmark and hung out with some old friends there. Eventually she flew back home with like 20 lbs. of candy for the family to enjoy.

In the meantime, I microwaved a ton of food for my kids, and they probably all wondered when I could get back to blogging. Megan is a really good cook. A phenomenal cook even.

So I’m back to blogging now, and we’re all eating better as a result.

Other Stuff

• I played with tarot cards for inspiration, they’re pretty useful for that. At first I was like, “what do these mean?” And looked them up every time. But now I just look at the pretty pictures and name everything I can see in the picture. Then I kind of review those themes, and it helps me think about things and come up with ideas.
• I polished up my role-playing GM skills a bit, playing a Chic Spy RPG with my kids on Chic Spy Day (5 October), and a fantasy roleplaying one-shot on another day. It’s getting to the point where I am doing less prep, but in a good way. My son was picking some pretty amusing character names, like Timothy Plaguebringer, and at the same time my daughter is sometimes like, “I’ll be Cheryl” and that’s that. “Timothy Plaguebringer, meet…Cheryl!”
• I have been reading a lot of books. And I realized that cover imagery is just huge for me. I pick a LOT of books by their covers, and this doesn’t embarrass me anymore. In fact at this point I almost always refuse to buy even a really amazing book that’s on sale, if I don’t like its cover. This is for lots of reasons, but among them: I will never be able to finish the books I already have.
• I have been whittling in the back yard.
• Over the last few years, I’ve been wondering, “what’s advanced fitness look like, for me?” And this question was really quite a derail. At first I was like—of course, let’s go “higher, faster, farther.” And then I think that got VERY boring before I was ready to admit it. And so from what I can tell, improvised skill-based activity is looking like a really solid solution instead. To give an example: Earlier this year I pulled an empty peanut butter jar off the shelf, and started hucking pencil erasers into it, from 20 feet away. My kids joined in. Now it’s a weird family game (trying not to say tradition) but I swear it’s fun! There’s also a knack to it… So, I’m working this new vein and finding really interesting lessons relevant to what I’d definitely consider advanced fitness. Weird! But it’s been cool to discover.
• I installed a dishwasher, which I’ve never done before. If you want to do it well, it can present some weird challenges, like “don’t flood your kitchen”. Also I’ve never been more afraid of breaking a brand new appliance in my life, maybe.
• I listened to a ton of good music and have probably never been more thankful for music. What IS it about that stuff? Seriously.

Here are some bangers I’ve enjoyed again, or enjoyed anew, recently. Take care everybody!

Ghost Light – The Healer

Draper – On You

Giorgio Moroder & Paul Engemann – Shannon’s Eyes

(I guess you never know what tunes will get you through hard times, but Shannon’s eyes was SUCH a COVID CURE here, I swear!)

Filed in: Fitness /31/ | Interests /111/ | Goals /52/