mdlbear | Done last week (20160515Su

Hmm. Interesting week. Mostly in the Chinese sense.

My boss seems to be somewhat more confident in my abilities than I am. It is not clear that this is entirely a good thing, especially if it tempts me to become complacent. But, yeah. Low self-esteem. I haz it.

I think I've managed to spend a few minutes noodling on the guitar every day this week. Mostly minor and suspended chords, but still. Music. It does tend to confirm that my mood is mostly minor and suspended.

My home hacking continues to be centered around xnomad. I've pretty much abandoned gnome at this point. Xmonad is blazingly fast, lightweight, works beautifully with a varying number of monitors, and seems to help me concentrate on the task at hand.

I've also upgraded a couple of netbooks to Ubuntu 16.04; not entirely successfully, but the one with hardware problems is the smaller of the of the Dell minis. The keyboard was crap when I started, and has not been helped by the fact that the hard drive is underneath it. Swapped the 16G SSD for a 100G hard drive pulled out of something a long time ago. That, and getting through a couple of boxes of shredding, has at least given me some sense of accomplishment.

The most "interesting" day was Friday, though, when I got home and it finally occurred to me to research burnout. Um... yeah. Nearly a perfect match for the problems I've been having at work over the last year, not to mention the depression, dysthymia, occasional sleep problems, and the fact that I lost ten pounds over the course of a month or so last year. (Not that I'm going to complain about that! But...)

Anyway.

I actually teared up reading, in Ten Questions for Meaningful Career Development, "2. Am I willing to believe that my efforts matter, at least to me?"

I think what I need to do, over the next year or so, is semi-retire. I can't afford to fully retire, and probably wouldn't want to for years. But something less stressful, maybe part time, ... yeah. The hard part will be finding it. There aren't really a whole lot of low-stress jobs for an ageing computer curmudgeon. If you spot one, let me know.

Notes & links:

0515Su
* up 9:50; W=193.6!; laundry, dishes, bath
% no back pain.
@ Madeleine LeBeau, French actress who sang ‘La Marseillaise’ in ‘Casablanca,’ dies at
92 - The Washington Post
: bath before bed.

0515Mo
* Up 1:30, back to sleep ~3:30; ; laundry
* up 6:20; W=194.4; laundry, dishes
% major hurdle cleared at work. $BOSS seems more confident in my abilities than I am.
: By experiment: if you run:
while : ; do date; sleep 1; done | dzen2 -xs 2 -geometry -0-0&
you not only get a clock at the bottom of monitor 2, but it will still be there after
you undock, go to a meeting, and come back. Hmm.

0517Tu Vacation day (mostly at home)
* up 6:30; W=194.4; laundry, dishes
* 1:30 Shoreline Clinic - testing. Vacation, though I will probably work anyway
Turned out to be pretty worthless. Not the sort of diagnostic test I was expecting.
* Replaced broken turn signal light on the van.
~ totally failed at replacing the rollers on the screen doors -- neither was one of the
five types I found at Home Depot -> ordered from Amazon

0518We
* up 5:30; W=196.6; laundry, dinner
@ African Superhero Film 'Oya: Rise Of The Orishas' Debuts Online Okayafrica.
* finished the latest bag of shredding.
* Some hacking: putting bottom bars on screens. Not entirely satisfactory, but with
weather, uptime, and date it's not too bad. xmobar could do more, but this is
lightweight.

0519Th
* up 5:00; W=196.6; dishes
* Hotel | Westercon 69
Pref: Fri 7/1 - Mo 7/4 800-996-0510 conf# 86963013 Arrive Sat 7/2
There may be no rooms available; check for arriving Saturday and leaving Monday
Arriving Friday would be preferable; phone. There may be rooms outside the block.
* Productive at work
% in the early afternoon I noticed a general feeling of malaise. Not quite dizzy, not
quite upset stomach, not quite a headache, not quite like being strung out on
caffeine, but definitely not firing on all cylinders. Slightly difficult to
concentrate. Still there, though more like a headache, at 7. Not much fun.
% It wouldn't surprise me if I was suffering from burnout. I'm not sure how one tells.
& a little noodling. mostly-open chords; minor, suspended, and beyond. 6/8
* C wanted me to hang out, so now have xmonad configured on Purple. xmonad is a real
win on small screens. As one might expect.
* the new apt command is convenient. Combined front-end to apt-get, apt-cache, etc.
Unlike aptitude, it doesn't get in the way or try to be "helpful".
% nearly 10pm. sleepy

0520Fr
* up 0616; W=196.4;
* Productive morning; meetings from 1pm onward to 4.
& researching burnout. Um... yes.
@ The Tell Tale Signs of Burnout ... Do You Have Them? | Psychology Today
" Burnout is a state of chronic stress that leads to:
* physical and emotional exhaustion ... check
* cynicism and detachment ... check
* feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment ... check. Mate in two.
Three at the most. Oddly enough, the best strategy is the same in both cases.
@ Preventing Burnout: Signs, Symptoms, Causes, and Coping Strategies
The most effective way to combat job burnout is to quit doing what you’re doing and
do something else, whether that means changing jobs or changing careers. But if that
isn’t an option for you, there are still things you can do to improve your
situation, or at least your state of mind.
@ Job burnout: How to spot it and take action - Mayo Clinic
! feeling somewhat accomplished for having figured this out. Doesn't make it any less
of a problem, but at least it's a *known* problem.
@ Career Thriving for Gifted Adults: Moving Forward not clear whether it will help
: Colleen made chicken, Turkish style. Ticia took two (admittedly small) pieces that I
fed her by hand.
@ Ten Questions for Meaningful Career Development | Psychology Today Teared up
around "2. Am I willing to believe that my efforts matter, at least to me?"
So there's that. See also:
" Go back to question #1—if your career isn’t working for you, maybe it’s because the
reason you went into it isn’t valid for you anymore. Or maybe your career choice is
fine, but you’re not doing enough for yourself. You might have taken a job in
journalism because you love to write, but now you’re only writing what others want
you to write. When/how do you find time to write for yourself? "
% losing 10 lbs in a month or so last year should have been a clue.

0521Sa
* awake 3ish; laundry
% although a split-sleep pattern is not unknown, it probably does indicate a disturbed
sleeping pattern when I do it. Depression? Burnout? Who the hell knows. I don't.
* Up 7:30; W=197; laundry, shower, dishes
@ Master of Tides - Lindsey Stirling - YouTube flash music in a shopping mall
@ Using Affirmations - Stress Management from MindTools.com
" Note: There has also been research that says that the higher your self-esteem, the
more effective affirmations can be. This research also found that affirmations can
actually have a negative effect if you have very low self-esteem. " Oh. Check.
& basically continuing a dive into stress, burnout, and time management, mostly via
helpguide. Mindtools is pretty good but some content is behind paywall.
: My computer was frozen. Totally unresponsive to keyboard or mouse. Turned out that
Ticia had stepped on my KVM switch. Silly cat. Silly bear.
* 1:50ish Kitchen screen door fixed! Seems to have been sized incorrectly; it doesn't
engage the top rail but sits in the groove behind it. Anyway, works now.
* 2:20 deck screen door "fixed". It's stable, but needs new bottom rollers before it
can actually slide properly.
: Given how long it takes gnome-panel to start up after I log in, I think I've pretty
much abandoned gnome for xmonad. An xmonad/gnome session still has advantages, but I
wouldn't be depending on the panel to get work done.
* Some good time down with N putting up curtain-rod supports, then hunting all over the
house for a picture. Which was, of course, in the last possible place it could have
been -- in a box in our room.
& Managed to make Barnard unbootable trying to clear some space on its tiny ssd. That's
ok; I need to install something lighter-weight, like xubuntu or debian, anyway. Hmm:
How to remove hard drive from Dell Inspiron Mini 10 | Inside my laptop
OK, that was painless.
Getting a usb stick to boot turns out to be much less painless. Correct way to make
one is to skip all the GUI apps and just cp xubuntu*.iso /dev/sdb :P
& apparently I'd never gotten around to upgrading Cygnus.
: apparently I damaged Barnard's keyboard. (the disk is accessed by removing the
keyboard) Oops. Install went fine, though, and Cygnus seems to be doing ok so far.
: some nice youtube videos about math.
* xubuntu is a really fast install compared to unity.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Chords: Heh. I'm going to Balticon and am contemplating Klingon composition in B Locrian. The key signature is the same as for C major -- no sharps or flats -- but B is "do". Which means that all the fifths are effectively flatted fifths, or tritones: B - F♮.

Ah, yes. The Devil's interval.

I can be sympathetic that reading that list was so difficult for you. But I also wanted to give kudos to you - it sounds like you went looking for information about a problem you are having, and thought through the ouchy emotional and practical implications, and have figured out a few possible next steps. Which is actually a really good thing to do.

Thanks. It wasn't really difficult, or at least didn't seem so while I was reading it. More the shock of recognition -- that this was a known problem and not mere laziness or procrastination on my part (though that's still a large part of the problem).

I have problems recognizing my emotions, and sometimes even noticing them. This was a pretty standard example. Tears, for me, are usually a strong hint that there's something there to notice.

Heard and understood. The sympathy is still on offer. I can identify my own emotions and thoughts really well, but face-to-face other people's feelings are basically written in Pig Latin for me, and they can't understand my tone of voice, so I am not empathizing well at all. But shock and tears don't sound fun, anyway, and I still admire you for getting through it.

Thanks. It's always good when someone understands.

I know all about being blind to other peoples' emotions, too. Tears aren't exactly fun, but I treasure them because they'vee been so rare. I think last year when we put my cat down was the first time I can remember actually crying since I was three. (See mdlbear | Entries tagged with curio.)

Aww. *offers hugs* I bet you miss your cat. I still miss my cats from when I was little.

I do. He was the first cat I'd had since I was about five years old -- I hadn't realized just how much of a cat person I was.

I want to believe in heavens when I think about the difference our furry family members make in our lives, and how much they deserve every instant of love we can give them.

Have you read the story "Border Guards", by Greg Egan?

No, but I just looked it up and will soon.

Even though I know intellectually that the Rainbow Bridge story is pure fiction (and, heck, I've written my own version, so I should know), it's just as comforting as if it was real. I'll take it.

I have now. Reminds me, somewhat indirectly, of World Without Stars by Poul Anderson.

*plans to read*

I hope that knowing a name for the umbrella-cause of so many displeasures will help, or lead to help and strength.

From here, you look as if you have so very many strengths and graces.

You can always come out of semi-retirement when you like, if you like. Or you may like semi-retirement.

Embrace the decision. It sounds like you need some time to recharge.

Done last week (20160515Su - 21Sa)

no subject

no subject

go you

Re: go you

Re: go you

Re: go you

Re: go you

Re: go you

Echar De Menos (tr. to miss someone; lit tr. to make smaller)

Re: Echar De Menos (tr. to miss someone; lit tr. to make smaller)

Re: Echar De Menos (tr. to miss someone; lit tr. to make smaller)

Re: Anderson

no subject

no subject