Hear Some Music I've Enjoyed...Randomly Selected for You
Haruomi Hosono - Sports Men | Youtube I'll be a good sport / Be a good sport / I'll be a sports man ♫
Claire Laffut - Hiroshima | Youtube
Ronald Jenkees - 103 Degrees - YouTube
Haruomi Hosono - Sports Men | Youtube I'll be a good sport / Be a good sport / I'll be a sports man ♫
Claire Laffut - Hiroshima | Youtube
Ronald Jenkees - 103 Degrees - YouTube
I had an interesting experience in buying & reading the book Learn Scala 3 The Fast Way and thought I’d share it here.
The experience relates to the relatively different way in which I read books these days.
This is not a review, just an experience. Part of my purpose here is to cover some dumb mistakes I made in the experience, and share the way I thought through those, or around those, too.
Quick Book Review Though: It’s a good book. I like the book, and will come back to it for sure. If the book looks interesting to you, I think you should buy it, probably from the author’s Gumroad page.
So for starters: I find myself book shopping.
And I remember: Amazon can be a nice way to browse for new programming books.
(Amazon book-shopping replacement wanted!)
I add about ten books to my wish list.
I recognize that I’m not buying all ten of these books. Maybe just one. A couple. OK, three? Well, ideally one. So there’s a first problem.
I wait a day to let any temporary emotional waves settle. This is a reliable method for me, since sometimes archetypes of interest can pass by really fast and then a book just sits around, having been paid for but never opened!
As an example of that: I’ve identified programming-books-interest as a flag for “Marc needs a schedule” in my internal mental archetype/symbol library.
(So if I put a schedule together, and am from that point no longer as interested in programming books, the money could have been a tiny bit of a waste, right?)
Anyway, programming becomes REALLY interesting when I don’t have a schedule for my day, which is always kind of funny to think about.
And Scala is like that, plus I’d add the flag “would probably benefit from a unique scheduling system” due to the unique nature of the language compared to say Python, C, BASIC, etc. Which probably is good to learn in general. I like unique systems, and generally find that building more unique schedule / get-with-the-program systems is a big benefit for me.
I review again.
Cover art. This is strangely reliable for me in picking books. The cover art doesn’t tell the whole story, but my theory is that I’ll naturally come back to it again and again if I like the art. This “reliable intersectionality” is good juju for learning purposes.
This book is a total win in the cover art area. I love pulp-style art, movie poster art, vintage stuff—this is great just to look at.
The topic: Scala sounds fun and I’ve been interested in it for a while. Yeah, go Scala!
I scan the Table of Contents…
OK, first big issue. The book seems written in the Ti-dom teaching style, front-to-back, everything builds on everything else. The author must have put a lot of thought into the organization of the book.
But…I can’t learn this way. I’m the opposite and I learn best by tearing into and modifying finished, working examples. If a book starts with “Beginning” lessons, I’m usually in trouble and need to try the exact opposite.
I learned this from college by getting E’s in classes taught by Ti-dom professors, usually INTP. Because I couldn’t even bear to read the books, and didn’t understand why, at the time. Damn it.
So anyway, I need to see if I can learn from the book by working backwards.
I scroll to the bottom of the TOC. I see that a “timer” example program is listed toward end of TOC. BOOM.
I can work with that. I have a timer-preferring personality in EVERY way possible, being completely up front here. The book appears to provide code for a working timer. I use timers all the time. Let’s go.
My plan: Buy the book, install Scala, rip out the timer code, get it working, modify it, break it, learn it, page backward through the book to understand the code, try some add-ons to the timer maybe, and then I will have learned some Scala.
Then I’ll look at the other examples too.
Later, I’ll polish my Scala and learn better Scala, maybe, but that can wait.
This should be opposite-enough to fit my learning style.
I buy the Kindle version of book at Amazon for $10. I quickly click “Read in Kindle Cloud Reader” …let’s go!
Nope. You can’t read that here, the book doesn’t work in Kindle Cloud reader. You need to use the Kindle app.
I cringe. F*CKKK. I wanted to read it nice and big on my desktop linux monitor, with a text editor open next to it.
My tablet’s broken, so now you’re telling me I gotta read this on my phone?
UGHHHHhhh. I deflate considerably. (I should have saved today’s weigh-in for this moment.)
I search up the book title, hoping there’s a publisher website and some other way to read this that’s not hyper-expensive.
I find the author’s Gumroad copy. OK this is a good sign! I sell on Gumroad too. But OK, it’s still another $10, turning this into a $20 book.
UGHHHhhhh!!!! Ugh. Kindle hatred intensifies. Still liking the book, but also hating Kindle now, along with that.
I buy the Gumroad version anyway, as I already have a plan of attack and it’s still cheaper than going out to lunch these days.
I download and file the PDF.
(Note to self, this Gumroad bonus method isn’t always possible—in a lot of cases the Kindle version is also significantly discounted vs. publisher’s mega-expensive version, but in the future I should really start at the publisher and end at Kindle if necessary)
And now for another mistake.
An absolute doozy of a mistake, as grandma would say.
I pause and reflect on the title. Scala…Scala…something’s off.
Realize it’s a book about Scala, but I was interested in…
…Scheme.
God…dammit.
I thought I was buying a Scheme book and it turns out got the names mixed up. Well isn’t this just dandy, as grandma would say!
LOL. F*CK. (Scala is expressive? That’s great, I’m expressive too. Just look at all my expressive language! I love being expressive!)
OK, but Scala was still on my list of interesting languages. I’m just not sure—it was a Java ecosystem language right? I don’t remember much about it.
I visit the (pretty) Scala website & confirm. It’s related to Java.
And Java was related to some of my most intense academic frustrations. It also seemed to be the working force behind the most mundane-yet-opaque software I ever used.
I still get the shivers just thinking about LaFs, too. “Stick with Metal, the others are buggy!” Brrr.
Plus, Java is a huge group of things. There are all these bulky classes, and you have to get the JVM and stuff.
I generally prefer lightweight-everything, due to the “enterprise software maintenance lessons” I learned while building stuff for clients back in the 2010s. Seeing that Disney and other huge orgs “use” Scala is a red flag for me. A simple guy like me could easily capsize in the metaphorical wake of commits from programmers at orgs like those.
So: If Scala is related to Java, is there TONS of infrastructure baggage that comes with it? I liked the Scheme idea because some of the distributions seem so lightweight. Well, I’ll see how the book goes, maybe the book covers this aspect.
BTW: A Javascript runtime is also available? WTF does that even mean. UGH. No JVM maybe? Hmm.
Still, there are things about Java that I really like. For example, all the included batteries.
I stop and think about myself and my emotional state. This is an important part of any new undertaking.
I realize I’m a very cranky person right now.
This may not be the best time to be installing new-to-me software, especially if any dependencies are involved. There’s always some catch…
I review the timer example by scrolling to that part of the PDF. It’s simple. But it’s where my laser-focus is at this moment. I am putting ALL of my bets on being able to get that working and work with it.
OK, so maybe I was imagining some ascii-art-style digits in the terminal, maybe some Casio-like functionality. Milliseconds flashing by. A bit of fun animation along with the basics. But it’s a very simple example.
I like that the script is using /usr/bin/env and it’s already looking like a scripting language I would use on the daily. I LOVE scripting in general.
I need the code though, like I need the raw text, not this PDF code. Where’s the code?
Found it. It’s not on the Gumroad page, but rather on the author’s blog page for the book. (Later I discover it’s linked in the beginning of the book—missing something like this is a known liability of my learning style, but I can deal). I browse the code on GitHub and find what I need.
Also, it’s time to install Scala CLI, the book says. I click the link in the PDF. “Invalid hostname”
It seems the link is not working but I can see a probable URL in the error message. Let’s try some of the options it brings to mind.
Is it Okular that can’t do dashes in URLs? Surely not? Some other issue? Not sure.
Hahaha they use a curl installer for the CLI. I’m so conflicted about these. curl -sSLf https://virtuslab.github.io/scala-cli-packages/scala-setup.sh | sh
The install seems to go well. That’s always nice to see. But I still can’t run the timer script. Oh, the installer says to log out and log back in, or source ~/.profile.
I restart the terminal. Nothing. source ~/.profile
and it works now. Huh. I guess it just LOOKED like my terminal was doing that, due to its normal startup routine, but it wasn’t.
I run the timer script. WHAM. Downloading JVM temurin:17 … LMAO what is all this furious, animated action!?
Wholly moses.
Compiling project (Scala 3.2.2, JVM)
Warning: there was 1 deprecation warning; re-run with -deprecation for details
Compiled project (Scala 3.2.2, JVM)
Usage: timer.sc minutes-before-alarm <gain-control>
Ex: timer.sc 10
Ex: timer.sc 10 -20
'gain-control' should be something like -10 or -20
With tons of strange terminal action out of the way, I run the script.
But wait, there’s more!
Timer started. Wait time is 1 minutes.
time remaining: 0 ...
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
at scalatimer_sc$.main(scalatimer.sc:98)
at scalatimer_sc.main(scalatimer.sc)
Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: ./gong.wav (No such file or directory)
at java.base/java.io.FileInputStream.open0(Native Method)
at java.base/java.io.FileInputStream.open(FileInputStream.java:219)
at java.base/java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:157)
at java.desktop/com.sun.media.sound.SunFileReader.getAudioInputStream(SunFileReader.java:117)
at java.desktop/javax.sound.sampled.AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(AudioSystem.java:1062)
at scalatimer$.playSoundfile(scalatimer.sc:70)
at scalatimer$.$init$$$anonfun$2(scalatimer.sc:50)
at scala.runtime.java8.JFunction1$mcVI$sp.apply(JFunction1$mcVI$sp.scala:18)
at scala.collection.immutable.Range.foreach(Range.scala:190)
at scalatimer$.<clinit>(scalatimer.sc:51)
... 2 more
I look at the exception/error. Yeah, I remember these things. They need syntax highlighting for these, seriously. It’s 2022 and we deserve it.
Then I happen to see right into the matrix, through all the java noise.
Oh! It couldn’t find gong.wav. I don’t have the sound file. I’m good at searching up random .wav files since about 1996 though, so that’s easy.
Search query: "parent directory" "gong.wav" site:.org
…and, nothing in the .org domain space, my little barebones security measure.
OK, so I back off the paranoia a bit. "parent directory" "gong.wav" site:.net
— There we go.
It still says something is deprecated and to run with -deprecation. I do that: timer.sc -deprecation
, and get nothing I can understand. But then I re-run the script, and the deprecation notice is gone now. ??? To-learn-about, definitely later.
After a very long 1 minute, I hear the alarm sound! It repeats. OK, that was nice. I change the sound file, change the script name—little changes are working OK.
OK. Let’s wrap this up for now. What have I learned?
My questions:
That’ll do for now. I’m curious! Good.
I move this experience into my programming log, under Scala. (I do notice that if I ctrl-f for quick access to “scala”, I get all my notes on Perl scalars in the results, dammit.)
I will take a break, rest the nerves, and maybe see how things go from here. I’m looking forward though.
I managed to passionately barrel through the experience this far (just my style in these situations sometimes!), I’ve got my first promising results under my belt, and have avoided some personal learning style pitfalls that could set me back years.
Great! I’m done for now.
(I thought I’d include a bit of the follow-up, too.)
(I might have had a stiff drink between the two sessions)
I go back to the beginning of the book, since it felt 150% appropriate to do so for context at this point.
I learn that, experience- and background-wise, I’m totally part of the target audience. Feels reassuring.
I try the online exercises. Haven’t really done this kind of thing before with a book on programming. But OK, great, these are useful and interesting to work through.
However, I don’t really know where to go for enlightenment when I get something wrong. I guess maybe try five problems, get some questions from working on them, then dive into the book to find the answers?
Oh, some of the questions clearly require specific book-contents knowledge, like valid “Kirn family” names? This is not what I was expecting as compared to the typical syntax-pattern questions to which I could at least try to intuit an answer, but I’ll look into why this might be important to know.
Yeah, after trying exercises for a bit, I think about 3 of these incorrect answers is my working-memory limit before I need to go to the book. Page number references would be nice but they might also drive an author crazy.
Also, I visited awesome-scala and didn’t find e.g. SDL 2, which I was hoping for. Not much there for graphics. Maybe I’ll stick with the typical password-generation-type scripts for now.
That’ll do it for this post! Again, if you’re interested in the topic, I can certainly recommend the book. It’s priced very well and the coverage has been very helpful.
The above has been an account of my experience. I wouldn’t say I’m making any requests up there, really. It might sound complainy but it’s more of a relating of issues I had, and not at all a “please change your book” or anything of the sort.
With that said, I did have one request / wish:
A big thanks to Alvin for writing the book, and I look forward to learning more about Scala 3! (I can’t find Alvin’s email address to reach out, so I’ll see if I can DM him on Twitter or something, but I doubt it’ll work)
Above: One of my EDC photos from 2022
OK, so in retrospect, 2022 was a HELL of a year here. I hope it’s treated everyone ELSE pretty well though!
Here are my highlights of 2022:
Good lord, is that enough bullet points? Have I DONE enough in 2022? Phew.
Things That Sucked
Here are some things that sucked about 2022:
Looking Forward
Here’s the energy I’m bringing into 2023:
Here are my 2023 stretch-goals:
(Eh. Maybe none of that happens—OK. They are systemless goals, just things to hope for right now.)
Extra: Movies I Liked in 2022
Some movies I enjoyed in 2022 include: (In no particular order)
I’m SUPER excited for Indiana Jones 5, the new Transformers, Guardians, Ant Man and cannot wait to get to the movies in 2023.
Closing
In closing, it’s been a wonderful year and I learned a lot of helpful lessons & stuff.
Happy Holidays & Enjoy the New Year! —Marc
Filed in: Interests /108/ | Blog Updates /2/ | Movies & Films /1/ | Energy /118/ | Global Issues /2/
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:
Good luck out t’here everybody with skim & enjoy Ward Flen zep! —Marc
Filed in: Interests /108/ | Energy /118/ | 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
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.
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:
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: Dieting /18/ | Energy /118/ | Essays /52/ | Interests /108/
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.
Other Tips
As a result of this kind of work:
I hope that helps, Amber!
Filed in: Control /109/ | Parenting /5/ | Relationships /77/
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.
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:
Points of Hesitation, Pain, Frustration, or Pause
Here are some weird points that stood out to me while I reviewed the list.
Extra Content! Indie and Low-budget Titles, and Other Points of Interest
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 /108/
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 /77/ | 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: Control /109/ | Si /18/ | Se /25/ | Sensation /40/