The Mandelbear's Musings

Done yesterday (20120212 Su)

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:35:17 GMT

Hmm. Mixed. Distinctly mixed. Had bagels and lox for brunch (well, actually, Colleen had bagels and lox, I had my lox on a gluten-free "English" muffin, and the YD had hers neat. Then we headed up to San Francisco, intending to go to the DeYoung Museum, which the YD needed to visit for her art history class.

The parking lot was full, and most entrances to Golden Gate Park were blocked; there must have been something going on there. So we fell back to Plan B: the Cantor Museum at Stanford. The Cantor has a huge collection of Rodin sculptures; I love it. Colleen and I had a blast.

The YD was bored. And unfortunately, I misinterpreted her sitting down and saying "I'm done" as meaning *"done with the museum" rather than "done with this gallery", so Colleen and I left her there while we explored the upstairs. This proved to have been a big mistake; she was in tears at having been abandoned.

We took her out to dinner, partly as compensation, and partly because I was starving and didn't want to cook. We went to Jasmine, our favorite local Chinese place. We hadn't been there in several months; they seem to have a new chef and a slightly different menu. Yum.

But I didn't get much else done. A little work toward replacing the audio on the Conflikt concert page with a better recording, but didn't actually get it done. Blarg.

I also found out that the Westercon 65 web site is out of date and woefully short on contact information. Anyone out there know who I should contact about a filk concert gig? (Hint: not Rick Weiss; that's part of the "out of date" thing.)

A few links in the notes.

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River: Telling your friends what they need to hear

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 07:36:25 GMT

It's kind of ironic -- two days ago I wrote a post asking my friends to call me on my mistakes. Then followed it up with another post that several people called me on. Quite rightly, because I got carried away by my own rhetoric, and lost track of the points I was really trying to make. Being angry, upset, and short on sleep can lead to stupid mistakes, as I damned well ought to know from occasionally trying to drive in that condition.

It's doubly ironic, because I was trying to call some friends on their mistakes. Let's try again, shall we?

Sometimes you have to tell a friend something they really don't want to hear. It's hard. Sometimes it involves a mistake they don't realize they're making, which is bad enough. Sometimes it involves something they're afraid to admit to themselves. That's worse; because it can be perceived as a threat to who they think they are. You can lose a friend, messing with that kind of dynamite. Been there, done that.

Usually they don't listen, but if you're really their friend, you have to try. Sometimes, as in the case I'm thinking of at the moment (I'll get to some specifics further down), you make stupid mistakes that dilute your message. It's really easy for them to focus on a fact you got wrong, or the hurtful way you said it, and to ignore the message.

It's all to easy to give up at that point, or to not even get to that point. To pat them on the head and say "I hope everything gets resolved" or some such, and go on your way hoping that you were right. It's guaranteed to make your friend feel better, which is a good thing, right?

Maybe not.

(Aside: I now understand a little better where religious evangelists are coming from. But I'm not going there tonight.)

So let's get to the specific case in point. If you're tired of seeing posts about what's going on with my friends in Seattle, you might want to stop here. Or, better, you might want to read on and comment if you see me getting it wrong again. Because I think it's important to keep trying.

Here's the main point: my friend (not "former" friend -- if I didn't still care a lot about her, I'd just give up on her) has said repeatedly that she's not a danger now. That "I do not wish her harm". That she's on her guard now, and has her temper under control.

That. Is. Her. Mistake. How can she possibly know?

It's been less than two months since the assault. The court has ordered a psychiatric evaluation, but that hasn't happened yet. Let alone any therapy that might be recommended (or required -- I don't know how these things work) as a result. She hasn't yet finished -- may not even have started -- the anger management program that would teach her how to keep her temper in check.

I don't think she ever wished to harm her partner. But she did. She says that her temper is under control. But she said that before the attack, too. She was wrong then, what makes anyone think she isn't wrong now?

She said "But that isn't me" -- but if that's true, then there's somebody else in her head, who comes out when she's angry and takes over her body. Maybe I'm wrong about that bit -- I'm neither a psychiatrist nor an exorcist. It sure sounded like that, the times I heard her voice when she got angry.

That kind of thing can take years to get a handle on -- I've spoken to some of my friends who've struggled with various forms of dissociation. It's not something that she can fix in a couple of months before even knowing in detail what she's up against. There's a reason why she's going to be under the court's supervision for the next two years, and why an order of protection runs for a year and can be renewed for a second.

It's going to be a long, hard road. And it's going to require deep, lasting change, which I know from talking with her former partner is what she's really terrified of. No wonder she's looking for shortcuts!

But this isn't just about my friend, it's also about her friends. Yeah, some of you, too.

Do you really you're doing her a favor when you let her lie to herself? When you let her shift as much of the blame as possible to her victim? ~~When you tell her you hope this all gets resolved soon?~~ Cat makes a good point - "resolved" doesn't mean "blows over and everything goes back to normal", but more like "good progress getting her life back together". She's doing that, and I applaud her for it.

How about telling her the truth -- that she's looking at a couple of years of court-ordered inconvenience and hard psych work? And, if you're really her friend, that you're going to give her all the help and encouragement you can, but she has to start walking down that road herself before she can get to the end of it.

... it's getting late, and I'm liable to say something stupid if I keep going in this direction. Must. Keep. Walking... G'night, friends.

ETA: I know all of her friends wish her well, and that some of you may be giving her good advice and help behind the scenes. Keep it up! I've been trying that route, too; there's a lot of email you haven't seen. She's going to need a lot of support from all of us over the next couple of years.

ETA(2): Barring something very unusual happening, I expect this to be my last post on this subject. Flame wars are unproductive and exhausting, and I may not be getting any wiser, but I'm certainly getting older. I hope to provide more light and less heat in the future.

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Indirect comment to cflute's recent post - REDACTED

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:34:57 GMT

I'm not really sure how to go about this. And it's getting late. So I'm going to take the easy way out...

REDACTED: That was bloody stupid of me, wasn't it? Bears can be clumsy sometimes. I'm leaving this in place for the sake of the comments, which I found very valuable, but if you want me to remove yours just let me know.

This post should have been sent in email or a private message. I'm really sorry about any damage I caused with it, and will try to be more careful and less clumsy in the future. In particular, I need to stop posting about what I think is going on in other people's heads -- I'm extremely bad at it.

I will, however, stand by what I think is the point I ought to have been making, which is that when somebody has demonstrated that they don't have full control of what's going on in their own head, it will take more than a few weeks of good intentions to get it back. It may take a year or two of hard work.

And that I think such a person's friends would be doing them a service to remind them of that fact.

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River: Will you call me?

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:32:58 GMT

I'm going to try to keep this post pretty close to the surface; the next one downstream may cut a little deeper. You've been warned.

If you're my friend, and I do something wrong, or stupid, or hurtful, I really hope you'll be a good enough friend to tell me about it. If I make excuses, or try to feed you a line of bullshit, I hope you'll call me on it. I need you to call me on it -- that's how I learn.

I'm not all that good at being human. I make a lot of mistakes; and miss a lot of cues that might be obvious to someone more sensitive, and sometimes I hurt people without intending to. If you ignore it, or let me brush it off with an offhand apology, I'm likely to do it again.

My parents always told me that "just apologizing isn't enough."

Sure, I'll apologize, and try to repair the damage I caused. Sometimes it's not repairable, which makes me sad. I'll probably offer either an excuse, or an explanation. Don't let me get away with excuses.

I realize this is a difficult concept for some people, maybe even most people, but there's a big difference between an excuse and an explanation. An excuse involves putting the blame on somebody or something else. "The dog ate my homework." "He just came out of nowhere and rear-ended me." "I didn't mean to, I just sort of blew up."

An explanation is an attempt to identify something that I can do differently next time. "I put my homework where the dog could reach it." "I wasn't paying attention to the side streets; I must have been thinking about something else." "I seem to lose control when I get angry, and say things I don't really mean." See the difference?

My Dad was a scientist, and I'm a computer programmer. I know it deep in my bones -- I can't bullshit nature. I can't sweet-talk a computer. There's always an explanation, even if I don't know how to find it. People are more difficult, and I'm more difficult still. It's really easy for me to lie to myself. Or rather not lie, exactly, but to gloss over what really happened because knowing the truth, the reality, would make me uncomfortable.

A friend is, often, someone who's willing to point out uncomfortable truths. Someone who's willing to stand behind me and push me to own up to my mistakes, to stand beside me and hold my hand when I do.

If you see me doing something wrong, call me on it.

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Done yesterday (20110902 Fr)

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 16:34:32 GMT

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Hmm. This is a hard one. I'd call it ok, except that I spent pretty much the entire work day saying goodbye to people, which is sad. I'll stop by occasionally, and try to keep in touch in other ways, but it'll still be difficult.

My last day at EWS coincided with with the monthly all-hands meeting, where each of the three of us who were going back to research got handed a fern for our new office, and a couple of bags of chocolate-covered nuts. And tasty food -- burritos from Chipotle -- augmented by platters of spring rolls and fruit brought in by (lab tech) Grace.

I got several hugs, which was nice. People said they'd enjoyed working with me, and mentioned Middle-Sized Bear qualities like gentleness -- that felt a little odd, but good. I gave out a few of my personal cards.

On the gripping hand, I seem to have gone back to being as bad as ever about making phone calls, and especially to friends. I Do Not Like this, and it makes me feel bad about myself, but I'm not sure what to do about it. It's weird, because I like talking to people, but I don't want to interrupt anything more important (of course, anything must be more important than talking to me, right?). *sighs*

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Done this weekend (20110812 Fr - 14 Su)

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:14:39 GMT

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It was a pretty good weekend, on the whole, but there was more friction than was good for us. That's fixable, now that we know how to plan Tempered Glass visits. I'll get to that later.

It was also tiring, with about 500mi worth of driving, and me doing a lot of the cooking, fetching and carrying. With special thanks to the Younger Daughter, who was exceptionally helpful. We took her out to dinner Sunday night, while Callie and Naomi were having dinner with old friends of N's, and Mike Whitaker was visiting the Bohnhoffs. Good times were had.

We got in some good rehearsal time, too, with four songs worked on. One of the problems, though, was trying to cram in an intensive rehearsal session every day, along with shopping expeditions (Callie and Colleen), a baseball game (Naomi and Mike), dinner in San Francisco (Callie and Naomi), and a full day of work from home (me). Yeah. Not a terribly realistic schedule.

One of the other problems was that Colleen, not being a musician herself, really doesn't want to sit on the kind of intensive rehearsals that we do when we're working on new songs. They quite understandably drive her crazy. So...

The conclusion we (well, mostly Naomi, but she's Tempered Glass's artistic director and main inspiration) came to was that, when they're visiting the Starport, it's a social visit. Talking, hanging out, visiting other friends, making music certainly, but if there's time to squeeze in an actual rehearsal it's an extra. In contrast, when I go up to Seattle, it's a "working weekend" and the emphasis will be on getting in some good, solid rehearsal time every day.

Did I mention that we'll be giving a concert at Conflikt? That's the plan. And it'll be almost all new material.

Did I mention the crab lasagne? There was crab lasagne. Also salmon. And cheesy eggs, and bacon.

Plus a surprising anmount of coding done; about an average work-day's worth in spite of being at home Friday and fitting it into the spaces between bouts of insanity.

So, ... a good weekend, but kind of stressful and disappointing because we tried to fit a week-long visit into a weekend, with predictable results. We're learning, though -- next time will be better.

Not a whole lot of links, but you'll find a few in the notes.

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