Ultranormal

  • On Anger

    I read this harrowing essay about being a woman on the internet at lunch today and it got me thinking (which is a sure sign of a good essay).

    It reminded me of this episode of Plain English where he talked to Dan Pink about regret. The host makes a joke about how he’s wasted his time meditating because he was just pushing his emotions down instead of just feeling them. It stuck with me because he’s missed the entire point of mindfulness. The point isn’t to push your emotions back down inside you – it’s to process them so you can make progress. The more you do it, the easier it is to process negative emotions so you’re not carrying them around anymore in a leaky bag just waiting for them all to burst out and ruin your day.

    How are these two things related? Being a woman on the internet means being assaulted constantly by angry men. These men seem to be angry about literally everything – that a woman dares to have an opinion, that a woman has an opinion they disagree with, that a woman is either too attractive, not attractive enough, or admits that she thinks she is attractive, or that a woman dares to exist at all.

    It’s unacceptable that so many men feel like this is OK, or at least that there will be no consequences for their behavior that they do it anyway.

    I also keep coming back to their anger, and how avoidable this all is.

    All this anger… we don’t have to keep it. We don’t have to inflict it on other people. It takes work, but we can let it go. We can process it and be happier in the process.

    Several years ago, I came to terms with the fact that I had what felt like a bottomless pit of anger that I was dragging around with me, and that it was keeping me from enjoying all of the good things in my life. I would be sitting at dinner, enjoying the company of my family, friends, whatever we were talking about, and some event from my past would jump out of the pit and I’d be right back there, seething. I bet no one could tell. I hid it really well – but I was miserable.

    And when those angry visions came, you know what would embrace me, what would let me wallow in that anger? The internet. I could hop over to Twitter and find a whole bunch of fellow rage-filled folks and just inhale the outrage for hours, feeling more and more justified that this thing I hadn’t dealt with was worth being miserable about.

    Outrage is so exhilerating, intoxicating… an easy hit of righteous indignation could keep me going for another half our of rage scrolling.

    I knew it was a problem, but I had no idea what to do about it. I saw the documentary Happy several years before and the way they talked about meditation stuck in my head. Enough that I did some research, read a couple of books, but it never really felt attainable, or that I knew how to do it.

    It finally clicked (yay therapy), and I finally started processing my bottomless pit of anger. I felt better almost instantly. Not all the way better, but it felt like I had a toolkit now for how to handle the rage when it came up like acid reflux. Now, I’m working on weaning myself off Twitter, because I can feel the pull of it

    The point of mindful practice isn’t to stop feeling things. It’s to better process our inevitable emotions and put them to work towards making us happier. Anger is super useful in moderation. It can motivate us to be better, to ask to for better treatment. But, it’s poisonous when kept around.

    I don’t have a tidy ending for this.

    The root cause is anger, and if we could get the Angry Men of the Internet to deal with their anger and process it, then women could finally feel safe online, and in the real world.

    If the Angry Men of the Internet can’t deal with their anger, then they should be removed from the conversation because this is a public health crisis. We have enough information now to know that anger, especially among men, is highly contagious. If we can’t cure the disease, we should treat the symptoms.

  • Climbing Mountains or Digging Coal

    I was talking to my manager today about what I want to do, specifically about how much of my time I want to spend coding and I came up with a new metaphor!

    Coding, especially in Ruby, isn’t the same challenge it used to be. Do I still like it? Sure, it’s fun, and I fear obsolescence so I’d like to stay current as much as possible, but, I’m not scared of any problem I’ve faced in the last… 5 years? 10 years? I’ve been pretty confident I could solve them all.

    With code, I’m not climbing mountains anymore, I’m digging coal. It has its dangers, but it’s mostly the same thing over and over again, no matter how much gets delivered or how happy people are, I’ve done it before, and am capable of doing it again.

    I used to try something new on every project, and I still do that, but it’s less about code and more about how I work with other people. Mentoring and building people up feels way more like climbing mountains now. Seeing other people flourish and get to the next step of their careers is way more fun than solving technical problems.

    What does that mean for my next career steps? Who knows, but it’s exciting to come to that realization.

  • Meh, Humbug

    I’ve been feeling pretty blah about the holidays, and I think Josh Marshall gets to the core of it. I’m just tired of COVID, tired of the constant debate, unknowns, the raging of morons, the lack of common sense and shared sacrifice, of not knowing if I’m doing enough to protect myself and my family, and feeling like I’m not doing enough to help.

    I’m just tired.

    I’m planning on doing a whole lot of mindful nothing during my time off to see if I can kick the meh out.

    It’s going to be a lowercase holidays around here. I hope yours are happy and full of rest. We need it.

  • A Quick Friday Thought on Soft Power

    I was talking to someone today about soft power, and an hour of me giving advice and workshopping things came down to:

    1. Build trust by working in the open and asking people for feedback. Praise them for their contributions, often.
    2. Talk to people and ask their preferred work style, and respect it.
    3. You build trust by delivering on what you say you will – repeatedly.
    4. And finally, do everything with kindness.

    That’s it. That’s how you build influence and get things done without having hard power.

  • Coming Out

    Two years ago, I wrote about our kids coming out. Well, it’s National Coming Out Day again and I have stuff to talk about.

    That last post was about preparing for your kid coming out to you, but I think it’s worth preparing ourselves for anyone we care about coming out to us – because there are two sides to it. The person coming out, and the person (potentially you) receiving it.

    Coming out takes courage. Think about it. The person coming out is sharing their truth with you with the potential that you might not just reject their truth, but may violently reject them as a person. In the worst case, you could react violently and kill them. There’s literally no way for the person coming out to to know how you’ll react. That uncertainty, especially when coming out to a person they have a relationship with (friend, parent, spouse, partner, sibling, etc) has to be overwhelming.

    Especially today, I think it’s worth thinking about how we would and should react when someone comes out to us.

    How can we honor their truth and the courage it took to share it with us?

  • On Squid Game

    I’m going to put my thoughts about Squid Game below my list of other things you should check out, but first… if you liked it, here are some shows I think you’ll like!

    • Alice in Borderland (Netflix) – The acting and backstories in Squid Game are better, but I liked the premise and WTF factor of this more.
    • Doom Patrol (HBO Max) – It does for superheroes what Squid Game does for survival horror. It’s superheroes taken to their ridiculous end state, and I love it.
    • Sweet Home (Netflix) – Fits the “what am I watching” vibe, and the backstory mechanics are similar. Also REALLY loved the characters in this show. Lots of monsters and gore.
    • 3% (Netflix) – Same kind of dystopian capitalist end game feel.
    • Midnight Mass (Netflix) – Not at all the same genre but the tension and unease felt very similar.
    • Sky Rojo (Netflix) – Again, not at all the same genre, but the over the top violence and sometimes uncomfortable absurdity is similar.
    • 30 Coins (HBO Max) – It’s just weird. Very weird.Enjoy!

    Now, if you haven’t watched the show yet, stop here, because I won’t be able to contain myself and will spoil a lot of things.

    This is your final warning…

    Ok, this is your final warning.

    SERIOUSLY.

    On with the spoilers…

    I couldn’t stop watching it, and once it was over, I kind of hated myself for sitting through the ending. All the death, all that he went through, all the character development, his chance to finally make things right for his family and his Ronald McDonald ass turns around at the last minute to what, do it all over again?!

    The end felt like a cheat to leave the door open for season two, when, now that they have the mechanic of the game, they could start over every season with new down on their luck characters and go to town killing them with ridiculous playground game set pieces.

    I try not to invest too much in shows or get disappointed when they don’t go the way I want them to, and I think that’s a little bit of what’s happening here. I wanted a resolution for Gi-hun, for what felt like actual growth as a person throughout the game to pay off and make him better… and it didn’t.

    I guess I’ll console myself with Doom Patrol.

  • Random Pandemic Thoughts

    This isn’t really a retrospective, because it ain’t over, but we’re doing a relfection on how we’ve been affected by COVID at work today, so I decided to write some things down before the meeting so my thoughts are in some kind of order. I’m sharing it here because, well, I wrote it down.

    • Now that I’m vaccinated, I’m scared of what’s next. What do I want to do? Who am I now after being in a house-shaped cocoon for thirteen months? I don’t want to do what I did before. Going back feels impossible, not just because it is, but because of how little I want to.
    • Every time I try to think about the magnitude of suffering from the past year, I get completely overwhelmed and shut down. It’s unquantifiable, and makes me furious to the point of blackout that no one will be held accountable for all the avoidable failures at the national, state and local levels.
    • I feel guilty for being grateful for all of the time I got to spend with my family this year.
    • I feel guilty for not having done more to help others, but also feel like keeping my family safe, sane, fed and housed has to be enough… which I understand is a whole bunch of privilege and others had it way worse than I did.
    • I feel like I adapted to being at home all the time a little too well, and I’m going to have terrible social anxiety for a while.
    • I’m still disappointed every time I see people wearing masks incorrectly. I just don’t get it. At all. It’s not hard. Over your mouth AND nose.
    • I really miss a lot of things, and people, and the weird only-in-Savannah moments that used to happen all the time. So many of them that I can’t begin to write them down.

  • Browsing For Work

    I have a lot of personas when I’m at the computer. There’s me, the person, who has social media accounts and personal email and an Amazon account and various streaming services. There’s work me, who has gmail and a million github tabs open. There’s TechSAV me, and several SKTCS versions of me.

    All of them have their own GSuite accounts, and various other things for getting things done.

    I think I’ve finally got the setup for managing all of them without them running into each other too much! This post is very Mac-centric, but the guidance for Chrome still applies.

    The trick is to stop trying to do everything in the same browser. Thankfully, with Chrome, you can create multiple profiles so you can keep your various identities distinct!

    In Chrome, as long as you’ve logged into a Google account with it, will have your little user icon in the top of the menu bar. It should look something like this:

    A screenshot of my Chrome menu bar showing my bald head… that’s my user icon!

    If you click your icon, you’ll get a menu that shows your current Google account and then a list of your other profiles. If you don’t have any, it’s time to create some!!

    The Google profile window from Chrome

    If you click the + Add button, you’ll be able to set up entirely new profiles that give you a “clean” browser experience so you can keep your various personas separate so you don’t end up trying to join a Google Meet with your school account or wonder why you’re not seeing that email from your boss when you’re in your personal GMail.

    That’s great in isolation, but I get links that open browsers from email, text messages, etc… and I need a way to route them to the correct browser so I can handle them with the right persona. That’s where things get Mac-like (I know there’s something similar for Windows but I don’t know what it is because I don’t use Windows)! I installed Choosy a few months ago and it’s made this part of my life so much easier!

    Choosy lets you choose which browser to open when you click a link from another application, and the coolest feature is that you can set up rules to open a specific browser based on the URL, which app you clicked on it from, etc. For example, I have a rule that says to open any URL with “outvote” or “impactive” in it in my Impactive Chrome profile, so I don’t have to choose which browser to open every time I click a link to a Github ticket. Another rule is to open any link I click in my feed reader (the wonderful NetNewsWire) in Firefox, which I use for personal stuff (I like that it fences Facebook things by default, and I love an underdog).

    With this setup, I can keep my personas separate and make sure things open in the right place.

  • Write Your Reps

    Yesterday, my representative objected to the electors from Georgia based on nothing more than rumors. He continues to support Trump, and well, that’s unacceptable. I wrote him this afternoon. If Buddy Carter is your rep, I think you should let him know how you feel.

    Dear Mr. Carter,

    Your objection to the electors from Georgia yesterday based on nothing more than rumor and innuendo is an act of sedition. Your continued support for President Trump as he put your life, and everyone else who works at the Capital, at risk yesterday is unacceptable.

    You supported an illegal coup. You continue to support a president who has incited violence and lies continually about the results of the election. You help magnify his lies, destroying public trust in our democratic process, our institutions and the Constitution.

    Please resign and allow the first district to choose a representative who will uphold their oath of office.

    Sincerely,

    Kevin Lawver

  • Strong Ties, Weak Ties, No Ties

    Strong Ties, Weak Ties, No Ties

    Doug March sent me this Nieman Lab piece by Ben Collins that asks some good questions, but doesn’t have many answers. I keep thinking of our web of social connections that’s been tattering for a while; I think a lot of peoples’ just completely collapsed during COVID.

    Without that web of strong and weak ties (strong = family, close friends; weak = coworkers, acquaintances, neighbors), we’re left to our own devices of what’s “real” and acceptable. If we fall into these bubbles (cauldrons?) of conspiracies and nonsense, there’s no one to pull us out. There’s no reference point back to the “real” world, and we just sink deeper.

    And that’s the core of it, I think: loneliness. The world is a very lonely place for a lot of people, and the pandemic has turned that into a crisis. People are looking for a place to belong, and unfortunately, the internet has a WHOLE lot of corners to find it in, and most of them aren’t healthy.

    There are a lot of bad actors willing to profit from that loneliness and the anger that comes along with it. It’s time to call them out, and start reclaiming our friends and family from these cauldrons.
    I just wish some of those experts mentioned in the piece would tell us how to do it… because I have no idea.