It's Impossible To Take Your Time With Everything

Theory

There is this weird dream logic inside me that wants to do everything I want to do in a progressively better way until it reaches an optimum which then also can be sustained.1 I imagine that, no matter what it is, if I would just start to try to achieve anything and keep iterating on it, that any improvements needed to reach a sustainable optimum would be in reach. Reached optima somehow would become free of effort. They would just happen. In this way I could at least potentially do an infinite amount of things.

Of course, this is not how it works. Everything has a cost and in reality life is quite limited. There is even a cost associated to making something cost less to do. Effortlessness does only exist in a certain, unrealistic, frame.

  1. This implies that most if not all things I want to do are ongoing goals, not projects, which is true. Projects are only a step or part of an overarching ongoing goal to me. ↩︎

I Really Like Console Games

Games

Have to say that I really enjoy the xbox experience a lot. The whole idea of a gaming console on which the games that are produced for it just work is amazing.

The game pass is great for players like me, too. If my xbox one doesn’t cut it anymore I would not hesitate to get me an xbox series s.

The whole experience of playing games on consoles is very frictionless. Something that a time constrained man like me appreciates a lot.

.@help Adding a picture to this post doesn’t work through the mac app:(I noticed that I seemed to have forgotten to add the screenshot to that question. Web app edit of said post works. Also the pic was uploaded, I noticed in the uploads section of the web app…)

.@manton The design/template UI workflow is really not that good. Instead of using a two column layout which includes the editor and the preview it would be enormously better if it would be a three column layout so I wouldn’t need to click back and choose a different file all the time, click forward to edit and preview it. Especially because often times different files interact with each other. The way it is now, is just not ergonomic at all.

2021 - Year Of Strain

Memories > Year in Review

A difficult year. In better moments it was a so-so year. In other moments in which I take the bigger lines and shapes of my life into account it has been a bad year.

There is a dog now in the family and that makes me happy. We had a great summer vacation in northern Finnland. But this year was not without strain to keep moving in a positive direction or at least not lose ground. Like making it through fast flowing rapids. There was lots of stress: self-made and unavoidable at once. I broke my arm in the end of 2020 and needed to heal the first few months of 2021. Things at the job were hard and at times disappointing. Looking back, this year showed me the strength of my now six year long relationship; That we managed to get through this year together, trying to understand each other even more, giving each other space, when we knew there were lots of things going on. I am proud of us being able to talk, to forgive and to move on. Around midnight, when the neighbors were lighting fireworks, we acknowledged the year for what it was, especially for us two (the dogo was sleeping through the explosions…). Me being the more optimistic person even went as far as being hopeful for the new year. It carries the opportunity of a fresh start. We smiled and kissed.

The pandemic didn’t help. Being here in Finnland’s north meant that we both experienced increasing cabin fever: a new topic was discovered. Do we need to move? How do we manage giving space and time to each other in a loving, non-condescending way? One fascinating aspect of being in a long-term relationship is how the relationship and with it oneself and the other changes over time. I wonder what captures this dynamic better: The continued reveal of yet another onion skin or a more evolutionary abstract image of ever-changing symbiotic organisms. It is the question between an essentialist and non-essentialist viewpoint. Whatever it is: Not knowing (or rather: deciding) makes this dynamic no less interesting to me.

This year was hard and in many ways one I’d like to forget. But I won’t reduce the year to that. There were beautiful, funny, heartwarming, delightful moments. And these I won’t forget.

I am grateful for the past year’s me trying to keep the ship afloat even when I wasn’t feeling like it.

I am grateful that I continued to be interested in cooking dinner for us. I feel like I have improved a little.

I am grateful for the dog coming into our lives, our little chaos agent, that brought us so much happiness in a year of strain.

I am grateful for my relationship and my partner being there and giving me the reality check that I sometimes needed. Or the back rub. Or the space and time. Or the normality of everyday life. I love you for your honesty, humor, your smile and you holding me accountable. You, like no other can make me reconsider a strongly held belief. You, like no other can make me belief I could be a decent man if I tried. Thank you for being here with me, E.

.@help Somehow while playing with my testblog I ended up with a weird situation: Note that 1.) The content of the titles page is test and 2.) The content is red and an h1 even though the layout for that page has been deleted.

I barely Can Watch Movies Anymore

I barely can watch movies anymore. This has less to do with problems of changing aesthetics and me being unable to adapt (, although maybe a little bit). It’s more about it getting harder and harder to suspend my disbelief. An example from last night: I tried to watch „Don’t look up“ but got so infuriated by the depiction of how things would supposedly work, that I couldn’t enjoy an otherwise interesting idea. I guess I just don’t like when a movie’s plotting is dependent on unrealistic premises, especially when it claims to start from a place of (somewhat heightened) realism. Things should make sense within the confines of its world. If our actual world builds the backbone of the movie’s world then you gotta show the work that’s happening why things are different than we normally would expect them to be. Show me the work. This is not the same as asking for everything to be explained. I am simply asking for potential plausibility. Handwaving in the right spots is of course part of storytelling.

Maybe it’s because I have studied history of science and technology, have been working in the literature studies department while I was studying and am now working as a programmer that I am therefore primed to notice and dislike such inconsistencies. I prefer nonfiction, memoirs and sociologically interesting sci-fi. Works that do not reduce the interesting complexities of our world to tell a story that doesn’t shy away from the effort to be plausible.

I think that this happens to me more frequently now, is because I am much more time- and attention-constrained. I do not have the resources after a long day to consume too many things that ask me to do the work of „making it work“. I also have less chances to consume anything at all the older I get and the more responsibilities I have and am therefore more discerning on what I spend my time on. „Tried and true“ is often the answer. So no wonder that watching sports have become such a big part of my life instead of artistic works. I also prefer a solid but consistent tv show over an at times brilliant but otherwise disappointing one. I assess consuming media more and more from a standpoint of how risky it is: How likely will I be disappointed? I already have lists of lists of things I would like to do. If I decide to try something new, it better be worth it. And: It seldom is.

There is a ratcheting effect built in this way of consuming media: You do more and more of the same and less and less of the new. If it was only me I would even prefer such a bias, but it also has consequences for enjoying things like movies and tv shows together with my partner. So I end up giving chances to things I would have not considered. Maybe that’s good. Things shouldn’t be too predictable either. But boy, do many, many things suffer from a lack of plausibility…