As it turns out, I’ve been too passive. I wish that word could open up and bloom into everything I mean it to. When I kept trying to make a relationship work with Maria, I kept ignoring all the reasons it wouldn’t. The hurt steered me towards trying to make everything better, when I wasn’t giving a lot of thought to what I expected better to be.

I’m not solely talking about relationships. Take quitting Strategy, another fine example of not drawing boundaries, and not putting my foot down, when other people were being unreasonable and harming me. Looking up again and finding myself in a much better place through no significant effort of my own beyond the storm itself is an awakening.

I can’t think of any justification for the way I’ve been, just fear. I have to put explicit effort into questioning myself. I seem to have two cards to play, trying to be a martyr and trying to be amazingly amiable. Neither are respectable choices. They’re rooted in an over-simplified belief that somehow I’ll fool people into liking me if I do. We’re way beyond that now though.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity. — Albert Einstein

Time moves fast and slow. The morning went fast, with my head deep in solving a string of technical problems. Lunch went horribly slow as my heart twisted with sadness. My knee jerk reaction is to say something or do something to cure it. Instead I’m putting the headphones on, putting my palm on my chest, and telling myself it’ll turn out alright.

Nothing is going to change today. Either there will be time to mend and patch, or there won’t, but it won’t be right now as much as part of me feels like it should be.

I don’t value that many things, which is to say, I don’t hold them dear. I’m not good with the things I do hold dear. Of course, nobody is, it’s just tough. Perhaps I’m too much of a dreamer, and put too much hope in the future. Which is of course ironic because I rarely live in the future. Hope. That’s what it is.

I have hope for love. I don’t mind that it doesn’t always seem practical. Despite my career resting on amazingly obscure technical bits, I regularly slide back and zoom out, and laugh at the complexity that we orchestrate for ourselves.

Yes, it’s amazingly critical and important that the exchange server went down over the weekend and it took everyone a while to notice. I understand all of the justifications, all of the reasoning, all of the constructs. But it’s sunny out there, and love is out there.

I’ve managed my own projects my entire life. I’ve almost always been a lead in the decision making process because I’m the one that understands it. This is a huge part of me.

But beauty can’t be captured by process.

I woke up feeling pretty good, wrote some more, and felt better about things on my mind. The ride into work was wonderful except turning around to put some air in my tire when I got to the end of the alley, been having some trouble with the tubes on the rear wheel of the IRO the last few days. There was some breakage at work over the weekend, which wasn’t a huge deal but “understand this is very serious”, so it was. I’m game to add some custom nagios scripts in a few, but I feel compelled to sum up myself to myself a little more than I did this morning.

Feeling defeated is probably pretty selfish, it’s likely the product of thinking I’ve done everything I could and still lost, which is bullshit. Losing, or feeling like you’re not getting what you want, however broad that concept may be in your head or your heart is always hard, granted. I ‘spose it needs to be identified as how one feels. I tend to think I should watch a movie or do something physical until it goes away, but I think that conquering the fear of loss from saying or doing something stupid is the transcendental next climb in my life is a mountain full of plateaus analogy.

It’s too easy to forget that the common factor in all of your problems is yourself.

There’s some irony in talking to my Mom about relationships, because her response is summarized as “I’m sorry, it’s really hard”.

I wrote more about this, but I feel I missed the point. That’s usually all my mother says, besides a hug and some comforting. Sometimes in a few more words, but she’s right, and that’s exactly how I expect people to be. Maybe because that’s the way my mother has always been?

In the argument against fashion, one has to acknowledge that anti-fashion is fashion. It’s all a choice. And that’s fine. Somewhere along the way I became really, really okay with choice, but in a passive way. That’s fine.

Owning it. I hate when people blather on about something they know nothing about. I don’t like talking about something I haven’t thought about or researched. I don’t want to seem stupid. This is all a character flaw.

Do I want to take back what I said? No, not really. I meant it. Perhaps the context is lost, or was wrong from the start. Maybe I feel differently now.

I hate shopping for specific things I need at brick and mortar when I don’t know exactly what I need. I used to believe this was because I hated when someone who had less of a clue of what I needed tries to help me with a false sense of accuracy. “No, I’m pretty sure sir, that this nut of this Sturmey-Archer hub is not that metric nut you’re pandering to me.” I worry about people judging me still. Still. Still.

It has gotten better on it’s own accord, I’m asking people who I respect more questions. This happened naturally with my admitting how conceited I am.

Okay, really need to get this work done now please sir.

I mentioned talking to my mother about how I’m feeling in an earlier post and worrying about people telling me that I should “just do ….”. My mind is extrapolating, before I forget I must write it.

When I’m upset, I still have some childhood notion that there are answers. As I talk, I come back to myself and remember there aren’t any answers. It’s a hard transition from being young, having questions about everything, and suddenly finding so many questions that don’t seem complicated, but really don’t have answers. It’s nice to say, “Why did that person do that” and get “because their parents didn’t love them enough”, and feel like your question is resolved, but it’s not. Psychology is interesting, but we’re complicated, and I’m fine really with folks being a mystery.

I think when I have a bad day I want to come home to someone who’ll say “aww” and give me a hug. I’m sort of perplexed when I talk to my mother and outside of asking some questions about how I’m feeling, her only statement is “Yeah, it’s hard”, never “You should …”

Which is great really, because I hate it when I’m struggling with an emotional problem and someone tells me that I should walk away or put my foot down or anything that ignores that it’s a problem with how I feel more than a problem with my actions. That reaction completely ignores my feelings. While my heart may dream of non-existent simpleness, my mind is quick to throw out those reactions.

Some time ago there were many accusations that I was trying to be my father, that I was going to turn into my father, that I was acting on his wishes. My reaction was to try to be comforting. This was fucking retarded of me, because it was soulless and empty, and accordingly accomplished nothing of substance. The appropriate reaction would have been “fuck off and die”, or maybe more appropriately, “you’re insane, and I’m leaving”, or perhaps something a bit further down the not-harsh scale. I could likely count on two hands every conversation I’ve ever had with my father where he’s made comment about what I should do, with relations to my feelings being a significantly scarcer commodity. I love my father, but I’m definitely his loudest critic. While my mother surely has more experience to speak from, it’s much less appropriate for her to do as much. I’ve had many shocking conversations with his parents about him that ended with, “We didn’t realize it had gotten that bad”. Gotten? It’s always been that bad, where have you been the last twenty years? I’m losing focus here, the point being that the implication that my parents somehow lead me is pure absurdity. They stepped out of that role many years ago, as they should have.

It’s funny too, and a warning sign that was missed out of my compromise, when that type of person spends so my time asking their own parents what they should do, while I’m asking my father how the Boston Bruins are doing, because that is what is important to him.

But I’m not looking for answers, I’m vocalizing my feelings until they solidify into pieces I can move around and see where they fit, or throw out the cruft. This ends up overflowing at times, as feelings do, and catching other people up in it. Thankfully that doesn’t happen often, only when my feelings come to a dam and pile up while I play The Incredible Machine with my life until it makes sense again.

See, I do fix things. Whoops.

I’d like to start off by saying that I hate conflict. Wait. Do I? See, that was some time ago.

There was a lot of conflict around me when I was young. I didn’t understand it and there were no attempts made to help me understand it. Not that I could of. Somehow my natural reaction ended up being casually stepping around it.

At some point my solution came to be taking the workload on myself and silently fixing the problem when nobody was looking.

What about personal conflict? I seem to have developed being amiable, compromising, and telling people things that I think they want to hear. I suppose these are all viable tools, but I sense a pattern.

More often these days I’m aggravated by listening to people talk and cause conflict myself by calling them out on what they’re saying. I’m still reluctant to do it full on. I worry that they’ll take me for a jerk, even the ones I’m close to. This isn’t set in reality. It’s me a decade ago in high school, building reactions to bullshit social patterns that were common at the time, but set pretty squarely in adolescence.

This is good. A lot has come up and out, although there’s been a bit of backscatter. I suppose that’s inevitable, and while I’d like to point and yell “see!” it’s not what I was thinking it was.

This is all very hard work. I’d rather build a picnic table again, which was yesterday, but I know that’s not getting me anywhere. I know this too will pass, like the tribulations of the past. What a view.

It’s hard sometimes to own my feelings and not fear the repercussions of them. Or maybe it’s very hard for me. I have this expectation of saying I feel some way, or that I want something some way, and being immediately told to fuck off and close the door on my way out.

I talked to my mother a little bit about how I’m feeling, which I’ve narrowed down to defeated. There’s some irony in talking to my Mom about relationships, because her response is summarized as “I’m sorry, it’s really hard”. When you look at what she’s gone through and going through, you empathize with mutual frustration. I don’t bother talking to my father about relationships. Long ago his responses were nailed down to basically be “my heart can’t handle that shit” when he’s sober, and “fucking women” when he’s not. Tori recently chimed in a response to my earlier post, which I haven’t had a chance to respond to yet.

I’ve done a little private writing too, via email, to special folks, the exercise of all of this has been good. I did get tomorrow’s homework done, and started on Wednesday’s, which was all gnawing at me.

I’ve since speculated that my emotions may be better used if I focused them into situations where people want a friend and there is no expectation of a model around which emotions are traded back and forth. Where there’s no concern for equality because it really is a gift to help someone through a moment in time, upon the completion of which they move along. This thought is far too reactive of me, but there’s some value in it. It’s also probably the reason I should have kids, but that’s futuretalk and rampant speculation.

As time has moved on, while my empathy for folks in general has stayed the same, I’ve become a lot more choosy about people. There are many posts here over the last couple of years about being more at ease with judging people based on how they life, while trying to avoid the dirty pit of prejudice. A while back I made a joke in passing to an ex-girlfriend and she responded with a comment that maybe the problem was the people I was friends with. I became serious and told her that, in fact, the people in my life now are some of the best people I’ve known. The more great and wonderful people I meet, the less interested I am in sitting around and the better I feel about the world.

I felt defeated most of the day. I felt like the world was once again reminding me that who I am doesn’t belong to it. Time, a shower, some coffee, some writing; somewhere in there I moved along. No answers were in there except that I know what I want, and I know that I’ll live if I don’t get it. That is, I suppose, all I can ask of life.

I’ve been taking a Pre-Calculus course at Seattle Central, did I tell you that? There’s a couple reasons for this. One thing that’s always kept me from taking college courses is the requirements for the ones I wanted to take. I’ll be taking the two computer science courses at Seattle Central starting this summer, and pre-calculus is a requirement. I talked to the instructor over email and he’s confident he’ll waive the other requirement, which is some silly “microcomputer applications” class.

This gives me flashbacks of having to take “Computer Literacy” and “Computer Applications” to take “Advanced Computer Applications” in high school, the latter of which was really “Desktop Publishing with Pagemaker”. I caught a bunch of flack from one of the computer literacy instructors and from my uncle who was the computer instructor at the vocational school for doing really poorly on the computer literacy final. In retrospect, whoever thought that testing on keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Word for DOS and which finger’s were supposed to hit which keys should have been flogged. It just alienated me from them anyways, the third teacher was really nice to me and I ended up helping her out in the computer labs quite a bit. Anyhow, there’s a great story about applying to my uncles program and officially getting turned down due to lack of space, but unofficially being turned down because of my “lack of maturity”. Whatever cock muncher.

The plan is to take the two computer science courses that transfer to UW, as well as whatever math I can that transfers, at Seattle Central. Perhaps I’ll take some introduction classes in other subjects, but this is time consuming enough as it is with a full time job and multiple full time hobbies.

The second reason for getting into the computer science courses is to put a little more padding behind my conversations with Adam Jacob about software design. Times like when he pointed me to MVC as an explanation for why Chef did something a certain way (ruby code in the recipe, not in the template) remind me that these things would be more obvious if I knew more of the terminology behind software design.

Also a lack of formal mental process outside of computer science is sometimes missing when talking to some friends, but I doubt I’ll have the time for classes outside math and science in the near future.

Class is funny, as in funny terrible. The class itself is fine, but some of the students stick out like a sore thumb. There’s one who thinks out loud, my biggest complaint of him is when the instructor writes homework problems on the board he starts groaning loudly for every additional problem over ten or so. There are hip kids chatting up the girls, a couple girls announcing very vocally that the class is too hard for them and that they’re dropping it. The teachers handwriting is atrocious, but it’s livable except when you get caught up doing a problem by hand and don’t hear what he is saying to reconcile it with what he is writing. The other day while doing some reading just before class I could hear a couple guys laughing in the study area over my headphones while every one was giving them an evil eye. It’s just amazing how unaware folks get of their surroundings, or their lack of concern/empathy for others.

Hardest part so far was filling out the application for in-state tuition, which was pretty quickly approved once I finally got it all assembled and sent in. I lucked out on a few things, like having a copy of my voter ID card which had the date of registration on it. Not everything had start dates, but I think the pound of other evidence was satisfactory.

It’s Sunday, beautiful out. There’s plenty to do, but I can’t make my self do homework because it’s not physically distracting enough. My emotions are torrential at the moment, and I believe the only cure is time. Sometimes I worry there are better solutions, and that failing to avail myself of them means the time brings a shell, a hardness, that will be difficult to chisel in the future.

Writing has always been an outlet. Needing to have an outlet has tended to alienate me from my peers who in general act as if life is pretty okay. Over time I’ve realized this is a charade, but it’s not completely absolving. Sometimes I feel backwards, like my heart overflows uncontrollably where others jealousy or anger does. I try to identify common threads in this pattern to mark habits I can assume to dilute the strength to which I feel.

The worst is when I write because everyone in my life I could talk to is tainted in some way, most often by having had a relationship with them or because I feel that their advice tends to be patronizing. Not having a shoulder or someone to hold is probably the hardest part of being upset for me.

Despite deciding recently that having expectations of the path of relationships was causing me stress and not soluble with how I’m living my life, I somehow find that I never escaped that hole and I’m still looking down wondering what’s in the darkness below.

I feel like I’m stumbling towards my fears of being alone like my father, because I can’t seem to find a balance in people between wanting to be loved and wanting to live their lives. This feels inextricably linked to that path. I feel very alone right now, and impotent to do anything about it. The more my hopes get up, then let down, the more cynical I feel.

I don’t believe it the course of my life isn’t knit out of my own choices, but I do feel like the material, myself, I have little choice in the making of.

There are trends. Every girl I’ve dated since Heidi has made comment to the affect my strong feelings have on making the relationship move at an undesired speed. As a result, I’ve tried to withhold expressing them but tend to be talked out of that. I have no other manner in which to prevent my heart from leaking, like fuel from an drum, setting myself up for intense burn-off.

I fight the desire to leave this all behind. I love this place, and these people, but I’m burning out. Perhaps I’m destined to give too much because I feel so much, and it will always wear on me.

I guess I need to sit back for a while and watch, and hope life turns out a little better on it’s own accord? The quiet of my bedroom and the warmth of a blanket are calling.

Tori mentioned to me recently having read an article about stupid fixed gear trends, and Luke Kaines recently shared this wired article in his google reader feed. They are probably the same article. This got me thinking as the benefits of fashion are pretty dubious to me. Which is to say, I get them, but I think it’s mostly a bunch of horsecockery.

I dislike the time or money it takes to keep something fashionable or attractive. I’ve got better things to do than paint my truck, and if I was going to spend any money on it, paint certainly isn’t near the top of the list of beneficial upgrades. A spacer plate for the TBI, a solar panel, new weather stripping for the barn doors; these are things that serve useful purpose. This attitude comes through often and I summarize it as utility beats fashion. See my clothes, my furniture, etc.

First, all my fixed gear bikes have brakes, of course, there simply isn’t any good reason to drop it. Arguments are “I can’t spin the wheel”, to which I reply, “tricks are dumb”, and that “brakes are heavy”, with the response “ounces aren’t more important than your head”. I’ve had my fair share of major head trauma. I’m not the type of person that’s going to chastize you to your face, but you’re a fucking idiot. Theres no excuse that can justify the risk imbued in that photograph. Brain trauma is a terrible thing to put yourself and the people that care about you through. I narrowly escaped permanent injury, and that was on a motorcycle in the city at speeds below what I’ve seen cyclists ride. I was wearing a full face helmet, which surely saved my life.

I rode a couple geared bikes to work for a while that just didn’t fit me and I was searching for a bigger frame. I found a 63cm Schwinn frame on craigslist and paid too much for it out of it being the right product at the right time. Sheldon Brown, my main source of bicycle information, recommended trying fixed before trying single speed, so I jumped in.

The red Schwinn is giant, which I realized more later. It has 32mm x 27″ Schwalbe tires, 63cm frame, cut bullhorns, and a front brake. I think I went with 40t x 17t drivetrain, on a 17/19 surly dingle with an 18t freewheel on the other side. I got the dingle out of having no idea what would be appropriate in Seattle.

I loved it. It was lighter than my other bikes, which is a great feel. Part of whats great about riding bikes is cruising along in the open air, and with a heavy bicycle you feel more like your riding along on the top of a hunk of metal. With a lighter bike it’s fun due to a more free feeling. I could take my bike with me to non bike friendly places and easily shoulder it, then throw it in a corner somewhere. It was simple, and didn’t require much tuning or tomfoolery. And it was still steel.

Steel. I love steel. I had a coworker (a fair weather rider) give me the usual shit for being a hipster while telling me I should buy a nice carbon bike like his. First, any road bike whose cost rivals the $3000 that I paid for my Suburban is disproportional. It’s just not worth it. If you’re not riding that bike absolutely every fucking day, you’re also an asshole for blowing that much money on something you don’t use. I don’t trust carbon. I don’t know where I’m going to end up on a ride, and need the trustworthy utility of steel. A long ride on a multi-use path could very easily end up in the potholed streets of an industrial area’s of SODO (two Thursdays ago), or bombing through rooted trails of Woodland Park (last Thursday). Steel is also ubiquitous, inexpensive, durable, and repairable.

This spring I bit the bullet and built an IRO. I wanted something even lighter for the riding around in the nice weather. I found a 59cm Mark V on Ebay, and built it up with half new parts from IRO. The wheelset is the nicest I’ve ever bought new, but it’s nothing special, and running Continental 23s. The drivetrain is IRO, 46t x 16t.

I know some monster’s that ride even higher, and I get it now. This was a huge jump for me, but I don’t find it absurd at all. I had some problems with running a 1/4″ chain on the 3/8″ dingle (duh) on the Schwinn, and replaced it recently with a slightly smaller cog, but I still love that bike the way it is. It’s my truck fixie, and I take it out when I’m going exploring in SODO or South Park in the industrial areas. It’ll go almost anywhere.

The IRO is so light and fun. It’s a daily companion for me and thus naturally a big part of my life.

So that article? Mostly trash. There are plenty of good reasons for having a top tube pad. Shouldering a bike, protecting the paid from a ulock, a padding your knee if you use the top tube for a skid stop. I’ve never found these things so commonly difficult to justify a pad, but I get the function. If you have one because you like how it looks, that’s fine. People do this with everything. If you think you have to have one, well, that’s dumb.

I have a pile of spoke cards from different races and rides. There are memories in them, and when I see people with the same cards I’ll sometimes go up and talk to them. It’s a social thing. Red versus blue bandannas I don’t get, spoke cards I do. I don’t like the look of them in a bike, and I don’t have any on my bikes as a result.

I ride mostly upright in the city. There’s a lot going on and you need to ride pretty defensively. You also need pretty good leverage when skid stopping.Bullhorns are a great compromise for this. Drops are fine on my touring bike, but I don’t want to be that bent over when there are cars speeding towards me at angles. Straight bars don’t give you the leverage. My IRO still doesn’t have bar tape on it because I’m not committed to the setup and don’t want to blow money on replacing the bar tape as I try different things.

I hear Brooks saddles are uber comfortable. I rarely have issues with saddles and I’m fine with a < $200 saddle from an LBS. Mostly I don't want to go buy a new leather saddle (don't eat kittens), and these are popular enough you don't see many used, so I haven't even given it a try. There's a list of other benefits to riding fixed like learning a healthy cadence for your knees, something about lost power to the freewheel. I don't know a lot about these nor care much. Riding bikes is fun, riding fixed is a lot of fun. Fuck fashion and attitude. Go ride a bike. Speaking of which, it's sunny out, and I have another stem I want to try on the IRO. So I'm going to go do that.

Coffee makes my digestive tract all giggly. What a great, yet totally unproductive feeling week.

I quote this often, “The three grand essentials of happiness: something to do, someone (or something) to love, something to look forward to.” That was written on a piece of paper over my fathers mirror for years. I have no mantras, but my mind works in a relative manner, so I have many jumping off points for thought.

When I dropped out of high school, I stopped thinking about the future. More specifically, society had me convinced that it was the future that mattered, and I rebelled against that when I found it to be the source of much of my unhappiness. It got left behind.

Six months ago the future was thrust upon me with the question of what I wanted from a relationship right now. It took me a little bit to isolate that out of the anxiety. A bit of thought, writing and conversation later, the dissection brought me to a fork in the road.

I have no desire to settle down in the near future. I found myself considering compromises, would I trade a relationship for a bit more of the daily grind? A solid part of my life could be considered a daily grind, but I make regular efforts to go out and get involved in new activities, sometimes even meet new people AND talk to them, which blows my mind-of-yesteryear. I’m unwilling to give up hopes for more adventures, and unwilling to make compromises that decrease the likelihood of major changes in my life.

My father’s life, if you didn’t know, consists entirely of being grumpy, watching sports, drinking and a bit of eating, alone in the woods. With an occasional trip to see his parents and siblings for a weekend. This is concerning on a number of levels, but in regards to this thread, it is a summary of his having given up. Fire took our house, social dysfunction took his hobbies, my mother took his family, cigarettes took his job, etc. These are all things that happened to him. In the name of his financial future, he does very little now. Granted this is compounded by his health problems, a product of heavy smoking, but these too happened to him. He very slowly has taken some responsibility for these things, but I see little chance that enough tides will shift for him to start living again in time. I’ve grown accustomed to this fact over many years.

The anti-lesson I’ve taken from this is not living for the future; emotionally, or financially.

Suddenly I’m counting vacation days and trying to etch out a schedule with the people that matter to me and I desperately want a month spent breathing, in the near company of those I love. Every now and then I’m reminded that I do incredibly complex technical things for a big animal, and I just want to hold someone.

It’s incredibly likely in five years I won’t be working full-time anymore. I don’t know what that means to plans, but I’m really frustrated by having to make plans at the moment. Living this way isn’t worth it.