Discovery!

If one climbs into bed 7 hours before one’s alarm clock is set to ring, and further, if one falls asleep relatively quickly after doing so, one will wake up feeling relatively refreshed and energetic, even before one ingests one’s daily dose of caffeine (n = 1).

Resumption

Well, if the machinist finished doing the thing he said he was going to do (the machine shop was closed by the time I got back to campus today, so I could not find out), I should be able to start collecting (or more likely for the first day, attempting to collect) data again. This would be the first experiment since March, should it happen.

When my adviser and I agreed in March that I should stop experiments, I believe I told him that it should take about a week to figure out whether my data meant anything. At the end of this week I told myself it would take another week. Then I started to find something. I showed the adviser that something. He said, “Couldn’t this just be X?” I said, “Yes, it could just be X. But how do I know if it’s just X?” He said, “I don’t know.”

So I started digging around. I had heard of method Y, and it sounded like the analytical technique that would answer, once and for all, whether or not it was “just X.” I met with the adviser as he was leaving town, but he needed further convincing that Y was the answer. I backed down, because I didn’t know how to convince him. In part, I didn’t understand Y well enough myself, as I couldn’t seem to find the sort of formal description I sought.

So I went and talked to Dr. Z. I showed Z a related analysis, W. Z said it looked like what I was showing him might in fact be real, but he also didn’t know exactly how to test whether or not it was just X. He pointed me toward method V as a candidate. I went around and found the right books. I implemented V. V gave the same answer as W, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like V still wasn’t telling me whether the apparent effect was “just X.”

It started to seem like I had been running in place for two months.  Throughout this process, I had the persistent gut feeling that method Y was in the end the way to go. I believe that it was some shots-in-the-dark on Google Scholar that led me to papers in a related subfield that had used Y, which led me to other papers, which led me to some books that finally explained Y with the sort of formality (and in the end, the formality was all very simple—I ain’t no math genius.) that would be necessary to convince my adviser that Y would, in fact, rule out the possibility of “just X.” I have him the explanation and he bought it.

I went to the Boyhood Home and Europe for my sister’s transcontinental wedding extravaganza. I came back and was unproductive while I waited for my brain to catch up with my body.

I herded my thesis committee into a room, as I am required to do annually. They said, “But isn’t this just X?” I explained why method Y and its results rule out “just X.” They seemed to buy my story, too. I need more data, and I still worry that there will be some way in which everything will all fall apart (and this is a very real possibility), but the conclusion was that the reasonable thing for me to do to was to presume that this is real and move ahead.

I then worked on other stuff while I waited for the machinist to wend his way through a bureaucracy. Today he did half of what I needed him to do, and tomorrow, assuming he did the rest of what I needed him to do, I start trying to move ahead.

So I suppose I should be ecstatic about this. From the way I tell it, it almost sounds like I am on track, finally. And I was definitely pleased, at times. But I remain anxious, in part because my experiments are kind of high-wire acts. I think it’s not completely irrational of me to fear that things will fall apart. It’s happened before.

Hopefully I’ll achieve a modicum of success soon, so I can shift back into chill mode again.

Another axis

OK, time to see if there’s any validity to one of my assumptions about blogging: that if I tell the internet I’m going to do something, I’ll be more likely to do it. Today’s task is to find something new to do with my spare time. I have a City CarShare reservation for 5:30, so there’s a finite window for completing this task.

I’ve moved across the street to the coffeehouse, in the hope that being away from the TV will make me productive. They just played “Here Comes the Hotstepper.” Good omen? You decide.

One point of finding a new activity is to get me out and about more. I need both more human interaction and greater variety in my life. (This is a long running trend but I’m not in the mood for a navel gazing post.) So, some sort of volunteer opportunity is the first obvious candidate. But where to volunteer? To Google it is. Google leads me to VolunteerMatch, which appears to be a pretty comprehensive volunteer opportunity database. Over 1200 hits within 20 mi of my zip code, so there ought to be something for me.

What are my constraints? It seems that one should choose a volunteer opportunity that is suited to one’s skills and interests. Yet one of the points of my trying to find something new to do is to develop new skills and interests, to expand my repertoire as a human being. But if I’m volunteering I need to be doing something where I am genuinely making a difference.

Areas in which I might be able to make a difference:
1. Tutoring. I can handle most school-type stuff pretty well, at least when it comes to the early grades. A lot of people are afraid of math, and I’m not, so maybe I’d be useful there. Downside: I don’t know that I’m particularly good with kids. Possible resolution: Shoot for the older grades. Should probably stay away from excessively “mentorship” oriented stuff as I’m unsure how good of a life coach I’d make.
2. Computer stuff. I’m a pretty good troubleshooter/coder. I don’t know much web design though, which is what a lot of places probably want.
3. Lifting heavy stuff. Obviously saying this outs me as a terribly privileged brat, but I’ve found that with all the time I spend at a desk, periodic mindless physical labor can actually be kind of satisfying.

Opportunities, classified:
1a. SAT tutoring in the Mission. I could be useful there. Con: Starts at 4 p.m.
1b. More general tutoring at this place.
2a. An org wants an IT monkey. This could be very cool.
3a. There is of course Habitat. I did a spring break Habitat trip in college, and had a great time.
3b. Sorting food at this place.
3c. Meals on Wheels. But would I need wheels?

To be continued. 2a sounds most appropriate so far, given this part of their self-description:

[Our organization] provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. 

There could actually be some stimulating things to work on there, if they’d let me at them. Might be some competition for the position, too.

Addendum: Sounds like local food banks may be in need of extra help these days.

Receiving advice without beating yourself up

This woman’s story is heartbreaking and enraging. But I don’t have anything useful to say about women’s body images or abusive relationships, so I’ll leave those parts of the thread alone.  Rather, I’m linking to it because a peripheral issue came up in the discussion about which I do have something to say. Respondent:

Lastly, try to get outside of yourself a little bit. Volunteer at a nursing home or some place where you can give of yourself. I find that’s the best way to feel good about yourself – to give. After all, we are what we do, ya know? So bringing a smile or a warm touch to someone’s day makes you a thousand times more beautiful than crunches or miles on the treadmill ever could.

Well said, well-intentioned, and of course, exactly right.  But check the OP’s response:

and I know how shallow and idiotic I am. I know I should adopt kittens or feed orphans in Sudan instead of being so wrapped up in my own shit but I’m so numb, and just feel worse for *not* fostering kittens and orphans.

Classic. I’ve been down this mental road so many times myself. The relevant background here is that I started feeling shitty around 7th grade and I’ve been a bit screwed up in some way or another ever since. And thousands of times have I heard that I could just make myself feel better by going out and doing X, Y, and Z. And a similar number of times has such advice only made me feel worse.

Here’s what I think about why “how to feel better” advice has seldom worked for me.

First, consider the disease model of depression. Certainly I think that the shift to thinking about mental health issues medically has lead to a lot of good—and it always rankles when I hear people complain about the possible overmedicalization of depression in this country, as if that’s really one of our major problems—but at the same time I think there have been times when thinking about what’s wrong with me as a disease has led to an underestimation of my power in the situation. Diseases (generally) fall upon us for mysterious reasons. We tend to think of most of them as being “not our fault.” We tend to seek out specialists, trained in a medical science that is inaccessible to the laity, to make us better. This way of doing things can be freeing, as we are liberated from the stress of being responsible for our betterment, and because the disease is viewed not our fault, we receive from others pity and understanding rather than blame.

I think that when the depressed receive (well-intentioned, and usually good) advice on how to feel better, they often rush to dismiss it because it threatens the protections offered by the disease model. Suddenly, your unhappiness might actually be your fault. And the thing is, depressed people are really good at finding novel ways to feel bad. And the possibility that you might be responsible for your own bad feelings happens to be a fantastic reason to feel bad. And in the quotes I pulled above, we see one of the classic examples of this. Volunteerism might very well make the OP happier, but it’s so easy to just feel bad about not volunteering rather than to actually do something. “I suck. I’m so selfish.”

So this has personal relevance because I’ve been down this spiral of defensiveness followed by bad feelings about being selfish so many times. And dear Lord, it has taken a long fucking time, but I think I’m finally getting to a point where I’m no longer threatened by the idea that there are things I can do to make myself feel better. In fact, these days, rather than denying that are actions that will change my feelings, or feeling guilty about not carrying out those actions, I am actually sometimes somewhat empowered by the knowledge that they exist. It’s not, “See, I knew I was horrible! I’m not volunteering!” it’s “There are things I can do to get out of this funk! Awesome!” One of thoughts is that I should use this blog to help myself by keeping track of things that make myself feel better, so that I can have a ready reference when I’m in needed. And learn more about the cause-effect relationships

How did this change in perspective happen? I wish I knew, so that I could provide an instruction manual to others who are going down roads similar to mine. AFAIK it’s some crazy intersection of finally starting psychotherapy and life in general, and how the two play off each other. The meds are a necessary component, too, I think I learned last year when I tried to taper off them.

I’ll note that there is still a part of me that feels like I have certain emotional tendencies that no actions will change, however. I’m far from being in complete control.

But I no longer cling to the “depressed” label. It’s pretty clear I’m not DSM-certifiable major depressed anymore, for one thing. The code that my therapist puts on the bills is for “Major Depression-remission,” or something like that. But mostly I don’t cling to the diagnosis anymore because I don’t think it’s very useful for me to think about things that way. It just seems too narrow. Saying the MDD is over makes it sound like it’s entirely gone, when really parts of it are still there, because it’s a part of my past that continues into my present in the same way that all parts of our self travel forward with us while being processed by a filter that leads to some continuity and some change. I prefer to think of what’s going on in these terms: “I’ve been screwed up for awhile. I probably didn’t really develop properly. I think I’ve been getting better but I still have a ways to go.” Therapy has led me to a more holistic way of thinking about this stuff (I wish I had a better way of describing it), and I think that’s been entirely the right way to go.

A data-driven approach to fitness

For Christmas 2006 I received a Garmin 305. This, for the uninformed and those reluctant to click through, is a wrist watch GPS unit. It tells me all kinds of fun things during my runs such as how far I have gone, how fast I am going, and how fast I am running the current mile. There is of course a bevy of other things it can tell me too, should I desire to know them.

I think that this device is a major contributing factor to my success in starting—and more importantly, in actually sticking with—the program of running-as-exercise that I resolved to start at the beginning of 2007. (Take that, cynics! A New Year’s Resolution that worked!) Some reasons the watch has helped: 1. It appeals to the technolust I developed as a preadolescent through my Popular Science subscription and books like Future Stuff. When I put it on the first time, a little voice said, “Dude, my watch is plugged into the grid! It’s monitoring satellites! That’s so badass!”) 2. The automatic quantification has made it trivial to monitor my progress toward training targets. The training schedule says to run the next mile at 8:30-8:40 min pace? Easy. Some on running blogs and message boards wax about the importance of not getting anal about it all, running by feel, etc. For me, the obsessive quantification is part of the fun.

Finally, 3. I just like the idea of having a big database of runs on my computer. I have all the data! There’s a record of everywhere I’ve been! It has made me feel good to know that data has been there, even though I haven’t really doing much with it.

Last night I decided to start playing with the data. I wrote some Matlab code to load the database and plot all the runs I’ve gone on in SF since I’ve acquired the device. (Well, I’ve left it at home a couple times, so it’s only just about all of them.) You can see the 196 runs, which were carried out between 1/6/07 and 7/14/08, plotted on top of each other above.

Conclusions: I should explore that part of the Presidio I haven’t touched. Also, there’s a bunch of Pacific Heights left to see. But it’s really hilly in both those places.

Tools: Garmin Training Center, XML Toolbox for Matlab, Matlab, Preview
Likely inspiration: fake is the new real

Sigh…

From today’s press conference:

Apparently it’s what you believe about the economy that truly matters:

THE PRESIDENT: I’m not an economist, but I do believe that we’re growing. And I can remember this press conference here where people yelling “recession this, recession that” — as if you’re economists. And I’m an optimist. I believe there’s a lot of positive things for our economy.

In which the blog itself is discussed

It seems like a requirement that I make the first post an announcement of the beginning of a new blog, even though it ought to be to obvious to any reader searching for a beginning that the earliest-dated post is where the blog started. I am a slave to convention.

I was inspired to blog again by Not Liz, who is also blogging again, in fits and starts. She says WordPress has a nicer interface, and hopes that its niceness will motivate her to write more. I hope its niceness will inspire me to write more too.

So why do I care if I write more? Why do I want myself to blog?

Answer: I think that blogging might help me keep my head on straighter. At work putting thoughts down in a text file always helps me clarify my thoughts and get more things done on my projects. Maybe writing down my thoughts on the tricky project that is my broader life will help me get more things done there too. I feel like I’ve made progress on living a better life in recent years, but my progress still comes haltingly. Perhaps writing here will help me better identify what it is I want, and making promises in this public space to go after what I want will better motivate me to do what has always been lacking in my life, that is, to take action.

I think these are pretty classic motivations for journalling, which gets me thinking about the difference between blogging and writing in a private diary or journal. I have periodically tried to start journals on paper, but they’ve never lasted long. I think we’ve all done this, which is why it is a shock when someone plausibly claims to have written in a diary “pretty much consistently for n years.” I’m going to claim, without proof, that even though the internet is littered with the carcasses of abandoned blogs, far more people have been successful at keeping a journal in blog form than on paper. Why should this be?

It seems that the possibility of a readership is what makes us better bloggers than journallers. But how weird is that? Journals are for private thoughts and feelings—why would the possibility of a public readership enhance our likelihood of continuing to write? I think it works if you are able to develop a very particular sort of readership. One workable readership would be some of your utmost intimates. If you can restrict your readership to this group, you might be fine, as these are the people with whom you are most comfortable sharing things. A problem with this group, however, could be that you might sometimes want to write about your utmost intimates, as some of our strongest feelings are about those to whom we are closest. And it might be awkward to share your feelings about these people with these people. Or you might have things to write about about yourself that you don’t want coming back to your in real life.

So is this a bit odd? We’re more likely to blog than to privately journal because of the possibility of readers, and we’re going to let anyone read our private thoughts, it would probably be our close friends, yet in the end we might not want our friends to read our thoughts. So who do we want to read our blogs?

Maybe the actual ideal readership be a devoted group of strangers, who are otherwise completely firewalled off from your life. In this case we have blog readers as therapists: your readership is a set of devoted listeners who are safe to share with, as they are not involved in your life in any other way, and hence nothing you say would come back to you. You’d get the satisfaction of knowing that someone is listening to the ventilation of your thoughts, but none of the repercussions that can sometimes come when you make your thoughts real by sharing them.

I invite everyone to read my blog. I just might have to sometimes be careful about what I say.