Terse Systems

I’m back from the AYE conference this year. I’ve been going for three years now. Each year, the conference has been a little different. Each year, I have been a little different.

I am not the person I was last year. I will not be the person I am next year. This much I can say from experience. There are people who say that no-one is ever the same person twice, from moment to moment, that personality is like water, always flowing by its nature. I’m aware of my calm now, my desire to speak clearly, and my inner critic in the background examining each word for its purpose. This is who I am right now. I know I won’t be the same person in a few hours. But I can see how that person feels, and be aware of that person.

I didn’t get much from the conference this year. I was – am – sick. I’ve had a nasty flu for two weeks now. Coughing, sneezing, sore throat, and a general sense of fatigue that calls into question every movement I make. The sickness made it hard to contribute to the sessions, hard to wake up and share food with several hundred active alpha geeks, and worst of all, hard to think. My mind feels like cold suet, half-used and left in the bottom of the sink for a week. Every so often I would go out and try to interact, only to have people peer closely at me, trying to recognize the Will they knew in me. I was told I looked tired. I was told I should go to bed. I was told I should rest more. I was told I was very stubborn. Still, I learned something from it. I learn something from it every year, though it confuses and frustrates me. And it tells me how I am different this year. I can see what I know this year that I didn’t know last year. I can see how I’ve learned.

What I learned from this year (and know how much I still have to learn): how to accept praise I don’t feel is warranted; how to see my own mind in the moment; how to listen; how to be in love.

Being in love is awesome. I don’t mean that in just the California surfer dude sense. I mean that I am filled with awe, for love is both beautiful and terrifying. It destroys as it builds. I find myself looking through old albums, wandering through emails of past lovers, trying to see myself as that person. Did I love X? How did I feel about Y? What is the past compared to the future? What comparison can I make to something that overshadows me? And do I trust myself to be in love, in the present moment?

Old questions, all. Greek goatherds had better insight. I think about the implications, and in the end? I just be me.

But I am sick. And being sick makes me a shadow of myself – I am not the person I was, right now. Remembering who I was and who other people see me as, I reach for ideas and goals I cannot hold, and so I suffer. This is also an opportunity for learning. But it’s a hard lesson to learn.

I had many of these books at work, at one time. I still get a thrill from looking at them, even the ones I haven’t read in years.

“I looked at Felix. Felix looked at me. He was clearly engaging me in a staring contest. I had no idea why.”

“Then I thought – I have fourteen years on him. He’s going DOWN.”

Have I mentioned my girlfriend is awesome?

Yesterday I saw my parents. Tuesday I went to the gym. Today… well, I’m at home. I emptied the dishwasher, cooked an omelet, uploaded more photos to Flickr, and now I’m going through my backlog of emails to see what I missed.

I explicitly blocked out this day for quiet and calm retrospection and thought. And now I don’t want it. I want something else.

I want to get up and move. I want to talk about politics and the influence of programming languages on the brain. I want to be involved. I want to inspire.

Most of all, I want my brain to be quiet. Grrr.

Dad tells me I never update the blog. This would be less embarrassing, except that I think that every single member of my family has a blog now, and my mother updates hers every day and has a small but dedicated readership. There is something disconcerting about this.

Nevertheless, an update is in order, particularly since I’ve disabled the comments to stop the spam (thereby killing the teenie titans thread, which is sad but would have died from spam attacks in any case).

The last couple of posts were heavy. July was not a fun month for me, and except for spending a much needed weekend in Seattle seeing friends, there was not much I could point to that I enjoyed. I was going to the gym every week with a personal trainer, and halfway through the month I found myself getting weaker and more exhausted with every session because I was so rundown. My personal trainer decided to go easy on me and “not push it.”

Things are much better this month. I’m dating a woman I really like, and I am trying out the words “girlfriend” and “boyfriend” in my mouth to see how they feel when I say them. I’ve been experimenting with wearing cargo pants and sneakers instead of jeans and boots. I’ve been waking up before the alarm clock goes off, and hiking in the morning. And just today my personal trainer told me that my reps and weights have shot up, and I’m at the level I would have been if he’d been working me normally. I not only recovered from the exhaustion I felt last month, but I’m actually better.

Will see giant robots breathe fire this Friday. Wish me luck.

[This is the speech I gave at Kristie’s memorial.]

I met Kristie through OKCupid on March 29th. She messaged me and said that I had the same first name and first initial of last name as the man she was divorcing, and how disturbing that was.

Despite that, we kept writing to each other. We had too many of the same interests not to write. She loved books and despised Ayn Rand. She liked philosophy but thought that most philosophers were not worth the effort. We both had far too much we wanted to read, and far too many books we had already and not enough time to read them all, and no good way to get rid of the books that we had already read.

We wrote to each other almost every night. We talked about the best way to dispose of books. She liked the idea of bookcrossing, but was horrified by the idea of leaving books exposed to the elements, and I thought my idea of leaving them at the library was too pedestrian.

I met her once on the weekend on May 27th, when she was coming in to San Francisco for a haircut. Whereupon we discovered that we had the same hairdresser. We met up, had a double jointed contest. I made jokes about her pugs and she made jokes about my man purse. We went back to my place, she went through my library with a fine tooth comb, we exchanged books, and I gave her some comic books. And then I walked back to 4th street with her, gave her a hug, and let her go shopping for girlie things.

After we met, she sent me an email telling me about the rest of her day, ending it with “So there you have me. Wierd, inconsiderate, and kind of annoying.” And I knew I’d found a kindred soul.

And then work got crazy. People quit, and the deadline came up close. I started working weekends. Kristie had work explode on her as well. And then I finally had a weekend free and was trying to figure out why Kristie hadn’t returned my e-mails. And so I went to her livejournal. And she was dead, three weeks after we first met.

I wondered why I was crying.

I thought that part of it was because it’s a horrible thing to die, in the prime of your life. With no chance to say goodbye and no chance to find out all that you are, and all that you could be. But that wasn’t it.

I only met Kristie once. I wondered how I could miss someone so badly that I had barely met. But Kristie was special. She was so real and so important to me. She cared about TRUTH. She cared about JUSTICE. And when I finally believed that she was dead, I have to confess that one of my thoughts was that there are so many people that the world can spare.

I miss her. Kristie was a friend. A new friend and a real friend. She was someone I could have liked for many years. She was someone I could have shared things with for many years. She was someone I wanted to know better, and I never will now, and that sucks.

But I’m glad that I met her. I’m glad that I got to share something with her. I’m glad that I knew her. And I’m glad to have a little voice in the back of my head that says “Kristie would have liked this.” So thank you.

A friend of mine died last Tuesday. Her name was Kristie Hirschenberger. I wanted to meet up and was wondering why she wasn’t answering her email, and found out today.

Her livejournal is here. I talked to her father. It’s real. It’s not a melodramatic fake death for attention (and anyone who knew Kristie would know how ridiculous that sounds). A friend of Kristie’s is dealing with the aftermath here.

It was kind of random how we met. She sent me a message on OKCupid, saying I had the first name and initial as the man she was currently divorcing. Despite that, we exchanged email for a couple of months, then finally met up in San Francisco (where we found out we had the same hairdresser).

I didn’t just like Kristie. I knew her. Kristie and I had a ridiculously common mind. Talking to her could be like having an inner conversation, because she typically knew what I knew and had the same opinion on it. Some times that would get in the way of a joke (it’s hard when you know the punchline already) but she made it work.

I can’t believe she’s dead. I can’t believe I miss her so much.

I haven’t written much lately.

Part of it has been having a permanent job again. I’m in a position where I know I can’t do everything at once, and so I’m having to ration the amount of work I try to do on a given basis. Theoretically I’m doing this for the sake of Laziness, but that’s a long way from here, so I’m mostly doing this because it bugs the crap out of me if I don’t do it.

Meanwhile, having a permanent job means I can finally have a permanent life. Between work and real life, the blog takes a back seat. I could make some pointed comments about Spring’s idea of an ApplicationContext, but there’s just no one technical problem that stands out right now. It’s just a matter of laying a good foundation for the work coming next.

Even my technical books aren’t being used. I brought them into work, and now every time I look I think “I can either read the book, or I can fix the problem.” And the book goes back on the shelf. I will have to reread Domain Driven Design again at some point, but most of them are just lining the shelves.

And that’s the way this blog feels at the moment. I may have something useful to say here, but only when I start exploring new territory.

There is something to be said for having a clear field and plenty of runway.

For the first time in… oh, ever… I think I finally have a place where I can really get some good work done.

So given a canvas and provided the opportunity to fill it in, I must circumscribe myself. I have to take baby steps. I have to make sure each step is done well and provides a good foundation before I start reaching. I have to be patient. I have to be humble. I have to be willing to backtrack and see where I’ve missed a bit. And most importantly, I have to make sure that what I am doing serves the greater good of the team – if I think it rocks but everyone hates it, it’s de facto no good.

I’ve bought a bunch of books. I’m not reading them because they may give me ideas I don’t want in my head. I don’t want blue sky right now. I want horizon.