Done yesterday (20091104)

[mdlbear]

1104 We
  * up 7:25; W=197.0; drugs, nose, teeth; coffee
  * Water day
  * 10 min meditation not very focussed, but relaxing.
  * walk, twice around the pond.
    | very scattered, unable to concentrate.  A couple of slowdowns when
      thinking about lack of interaction with people.  Mind=mush
  " I often wonder what it would be like to be, if not "normal", at least
    enough like other people to be able to experience a few things in close
    enough to the same way as to find them comprehensible.
   	(from a comment on a locked post)
  "
  @ http://osewalrus.livejournal.com/616089.html#cutid1 "Elija moment"
  @ Nathaniel Branden has written on it extensively (e.g. The Six Pillars of
    Self Esteem), and Jean Illsley Clarke wrote 'Self Esteem: A Family Affair' 
    http://powells.com/s?header=Search+Form&kw=Nathaniel+Branden
    http://powells.com/s?header=Search+Form&kw=Jean+Illsley+Clarke
  * bed ~11:30; a little snuggle

In spite of a little meditation in the morning and a walk around noon, my brain felt like mush all afternoon. Very scattered and difficult to concentrate. I finally did dive in to a Makefile and made some progress, though not as much as I would have liked, and fixed a bug in the one of the last two systems that actually still run my demo.

Spent most of the evening hiding out in the office until things thinned out somewhere between 10:30 and 11.

Quote from a comment made elsejournal: "I often wonder what it would be like to be, if not 'normal', at least enough like other people to be able to experience a few things in close enough to the same way as to find them comprehensible." It's an exageration, of course; many things about other people are comprehensible to me. With others, though, I'm never entirely sure.

Links: My sister-of-choice pocketnaomi pointed me at this post by osewalrus, in part to introduce me to the phrase "Elija moment". cflute pointed me at books about self-esteem by Nathaniel Branden and Jean Illsley Clarke. I'm currently starting on Ten Days to Self Esteem by David D Burns.

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

You do know, don't you, that Nathaniel Branden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Branden) was Ayn Rand's lover? (Since both of them were married to other people at the time, and both spouses knew about and condoned the relationship, it might be viewed as an early attempt at polyamory.)

[mdlbear]

No, I hadn't known that. Fascinating.

Thanks.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

I hate to admit it, but I was a raving Objectivist when I was college, before I became a hippie. (I simply went so far around to the right that I found myself on the left...)

[mdlbear]

I was an anarchist but not an Objectivist. Was never a hippie, but I hung around with Quakers and other peace activists in grad school.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

I still find a few things I can agree with in the works of Ayn Rand... mainly the idea that people who create things - inventors, builders, engineers, technicians, programmers, even teachers - ought to be rewarded more for their work than those who merely shuffle papers or "manage" the ones who do the real work. (Incidentally, Alan Greenspan, former long-time head of the Federal Reserve Bank, was also a member of Rand's inner circle, although their relationship was not sexual.)

And then it was 1967, and suddenly being weird was a positive attribute, and the air was full of protest music and the smell of burning rope... ;-D