Today’s Words:
fierce
tussah
tempt
slumber
tabacosis
tableau
influence

I must confess that I have an unfair advantage in that I am quite familiar with the word tussah. Tussah is not just the moth, but is also the name for the silk produced by the moth. I know this because my mom sells tussah silk. And red dye made with bugs (cochineal bugs, to be precise). But hey, prior to the invention of synthetic dyes, all red stuff was died with dead bugs. So it’s really, on the whole, quite normal. Or would be, say, 100 years ago.

I’m unsure what it is in a person that makes them want to live as if it were a 100 years ago. I don’t have this gene, but my parents both seem to. My dad’s farm, for instance, and our tractor, the 1938 John Deere that you had to start by manually turning the flywheel. I felt I had completed a rite of passage when I was finally strong enough to do it. But I never learned to drive it and use it the way my brothers did.

I think of all the time I spent before I had the internet, and it feels like I was waiting, biding my time.

I wish I could say that the first time I encountered the internet it was love at first site, but the date was a dud. I was on my dad’s milk run with him. He delivered milk to people around town twice a week. Raw, whole cows milk that he milked by hand. Seriously, what century? Anyway, we had stopped by the elementary school to chat with the principle, who he was friends with. And they had the internet. For some reason the high school did not, at that point. It was all very new. The default homepage was Yahoo, and someone said it was a “search engine”. The metaphor was completely lost on me, as I imagine it is on most people. Why would I use an engine to search? I pictured a train locomotive. Was it going to travel on the internet? Or a car engine. Did it need a lot of horsepower to crunch out that search? If so, I think I could just use the card catalog. I don’t want to stress the poor machine out.

I had only two other metaphors to go on: “surfing” and “chatting”. Neither made any sense. I didn’t know how to surf, and I detested chatting. I think I must have searched for something but I can’t remember what. I didn’t get it. It seemed fairly boring as an activity. So I went back to reading my book and waiting for my dad to be done discussing educational philosophy with the principle so we could get to the library, the only reason I came on these trips.

A seed was sown that slumbered inside me however, because I kept thinking about it. I wanted to understand how it worked. How did data go from that computer to other computers? Where did it travel? How did it know how to get to its destination? How did all the data going in all the different directions all get sorted out? HOW ON EARTH? It boggled my mind. I got a book from the library about it. I got about 3 pages in and decided I didn’t really need to know. But I was relieved to know that at least somebody knew how it worked.

The second time, in college, I took off with it. I had to go to the computer lab because I had no computer of my own. I taught myself HTML, printing out the Barebones Guide to HTML and using my free space at Angelfire to make really ugly pages full of animated gifs and pictures of me and my friends. One of the guys in my dorm saw it and made fun of me. What a lame website! Ha ha! Well, who’s laughing now, Jason?

My roommate had a Mac Classic and she commented that when my page was rendered in black and white it was completely unreadable, owing to the repeating .gif background of FLAMES. I thought to myself hmm, maybe I should change that. My first lesson in usability. Ah, the memories.

I am tempted to spend my entire post reminiscing about falling in love with the internet, but I don’t see how I’m going to work in my words that way. Which, I suppose, is something I should have thought of earlier, but I didn’t. I’m not in a thinking mood. I’m in a spewing mood.

So. Let’s roll backwards and rejoin our original thread. Whilst I am inexorably future-oriented, I have been influenced by my parent’s anachronistic orientation to some extent. Which, I suppose, is natural.

For instance, I have not jumped on the PDA/SmartPhone wagon. I write my appointments in a book, and I have a cell phone but it’s prepaid and I only use it for those sort of time-location co-ordinating moves that it uniquely makes possible. I don’t live on it.

Despite my recent excitement over Twittering, I like having an easy, slow, languid pace to my day. I never book activities back to back. You’ll never find me saying “I’m so busy!” as a reason not to do something. I hate busy. Busy is dumb. A life can only be enjoyed at a certain leisurely pace. And enjoyment is my North Star.

How do I manage this? I do produce a lot of output, all told. I run a lot of projects. So I am not, in fact, a slacker.

My formula is simple:

1. I don’t work when I don’t feel like it. I take swaths of time to slumber, to play games, to read, to write, to eat cookies, to sit around and contemplate what I’m doing here anyway.
2. This gives me lots of energy to gets lots done when I feel like doing it. My energy is not divided by ideas like “I’d rather be doing something else” or “Why am I doing this anyway?”. If I have those thoughts, I stop doing that activity immediately and inquire within as to what I’d rather be doing. This requires mindfulness. I call it “ninja joy discipline”.
3. I fiercely defend the tableau of things I’m committed to. I don’t let anyone else decide what my commitments are, and I check very carefully inside myself before I decide to take on any new commitment to make sure I truly want to do it and there is no shred of obligation, burden, trap, or any other icky stickiness. I shall not be owned.

I believe inner alignment is the key to productivity and happiness.

Sometimes I want to scream out to the world WE ARE ALL FREE PEOPLE.

Oh dear, I seem to be on a soapbox again. How did I get here? Please, help me climb down.

Ah, that’s better.

Must finish up. I have never had tabacosis and I pray I never will. Thank you and goodnight.