i get in these moods sometimes where i start thinking about responsibility, and the differences between what we do every day to keep the wheels turning and what we really need to do in order to be good people. i think, for the most part, that a lot of what we think we need to do is a farce, but we do it anyway because it makes us feel on top of things. i think there are a lot of good reasons for this approach, and indeed that one of the inspiring features of the human condition is that we do some rather amazing stuff just because we can.

we also, however, get hung up on a lot of crap and wade through life with a heavy burden of insecurity. we worry about
and i think these worries often get in the way of our ability to answer questions about

sometimes i have a day where i’m just like “you know what? no. i’m just going to sit here and drink a cup of tea. and

it’s a huge luxury to be able to have days like this and not lose my job, run out of food,
but i think that luxury is actually a part of what leads to the reaction. unfair as it may be, i do not live in a world where i can kid myself into thinking that
and that, i think, implies a new sort of responsibility
if i don’t believe that i have to fit into the slots that culture has carved out for me

i know that i can dominate discussions. be overpowering. ask for feedback without really listening. yes. listening is really the key. i know that i don’t listen deeply enough. actively enough. honestly enough. i know that i worry too much about getting my own ideas across. about being heard. about being smart. i don’t care so much about being right in the end, just about contributing. believing that i played a part in shaping the conversation and that it would have been different and somehow less rich if i wasn’t there.

i also know that i enrich situations by simply being a part of them. that’s how people work. the only way that i can endanger richness is by derailing conversations so that they’re about whether i get them or not instead of just about themselves. seeking validation of the fact that i tend to seek validation is a bitter pill. it is burying my head in the sand. succumbing to fear rather than standing up, looking around, and doing what is right.

so here i sit. and i can’t worry about what you (whoever you are) might think about posts like this. i can’t worry about whether this is a manifesto. or an apology. or a rant. or self-indulgent. or productive. or anything else. i only know that there is too much in my head, and worrying about what i send out doesn’t accomplish anything because it only means that i displace one thing with another without actually freeing up any space.

i hate writing things like this. i hate reading things like this. i hate the constant drive to rant and moan and complain and then try to make it better by going all meta and ranting about ranting and thereby proving that i get that i don’t get it (which means i get it, get it?). i hate pretending that the goal is just to find the right switch and flip it. i hate being able to say that i understand that it is all here, right now, not there, not later, not THEN, not MAYBE AFTER, not IF ONLY…

but, most days, i can’t fully let go of wanting to SAY rather than just DO, and i hate admitting that it’s hard for me to do something so easy. that

but then at the very same time…

i love

expressing yourself is not about finding a unique formula that does catchy without too catchy, deep without cliche. it’s just about saying what’s in front of you. honesty is unique by default.

sometimes i feel like i spend way too much time thinking about which things in my life are the things i should blog about and not enough time just blogging things as they happen even though i might change my mind about them later.

in that spirit:

this morning i took part in a very frustrating phone meeting, and thinking about what made it frustrating got me thinking about gender and corporate culture. basically, we got stuck on a point that we thought had already been agreed upon, and the discussion went back and forth for a long time without really getting anywhere and with no one really feeling like they were heard. this happens too often in our phone meetings on this project, and i think my coworkers are somewhat happy to find that my patience is wearing thin because i was a bit too chipper and naive for their liking during the first few weeks after my arrival. i’m one of those people who can annoy the hell out of you by constantly wanting to give people the benefit of the doubt when all you want to do is bitch for a second. i’ve gotten better at just letting people vent over the years because i have learned the important distinction between unproductive fingerpointing and productive bile. today as we were talking though it became clear that the frustration really came down to the fact that all three of us (who are all female) recognize that there are a lot of deeper interpersonal issues going on in this argument that have to do with vested interest and pride, and our idea of how to move forward is to deal with Those things, whereas the coworker with whom we are arguing (who is male) is trying to play some kind of power game that we think is a big sham. but calling him on that is not how things are done. and i’m not sure i have the patience for this world.

i had the idea the other day of several people pitching in and buying or renting property in a range of locations, and then sharing them all.
so everyone can broaden their sense of home without needing to afford/support (you pick your politics) a model wherein a person has more than one residence.
and someone is always there to water the plants.
:)

who’s in?

what i thought this panel was going to be about:

what it was about:

why the difference matters:

interesting snippets:
difference between design and engineering – design looks at the whole picture of a product and decides what to build, engineering figures out how to build the actual pieces.

jesus endorsement site

are they saying we should become industrial designers? is it more about the impact of hci on id?

yeah, they’re talking about thinking about how interaction designers have to think like product designers because products are becoming the interface.

ok.

got that one.

but what about the dialogue with industrial designers?
i should have listened more closely to the kodak guy. i think he was talking about that.

we read slaughterhouse five in my sophomore english class in highschool, and the day i sat down on the couch to start the book i found myself so transfixed that i read the whole thing then and there. i didn’t know what to do in class the next day when we were only talking about the first chapter or whatever because i couldn’t remember what hadn’t happened yet, so i probably balanced coke cans on the windowsill or something. i was into that for a while in that class.

anyway after that i was hooked, and over the course of the rest of highschool and the beginning of college, when i lived in new york city and used paperbacks were for sale for a dollar or two from random street vendors scattered every few blocks throughout the streets around NYU, i worked my way through every vonnegut book i could get my hands on, which is a tribute i have paid to very few authors. i think i got a kick out of digging up the more obscure titles because, after a point, every kurt vonnegut book is really the same story, and there’s a bit of a geekout factor in recognizing all the recurring themes and characters. it’s also kind of like you get a chance to read the same great book over and over again from a multitude of slightly different angles, and you get to see the ideas evolve over time, like the favorite conversation topics of a close friend.

vonnegut’s wit and cynicism was the perfect fuel for the mindset of my late teens. mortified by the horrors in the world,

so it goes was a rather frequent phrase in my emails of the period.

as he aged, mr. vonnegut became more and more cynical while i became less and less so, and over time we grew apart. i still displayed every title on my bookshelf, recommended them to friends when they came up, and my connection to indiana was surely different than it would have been had i not known it to be the state that he was happy to no longer call home. but i still haven’t read his most recent collection of essays, and i only skimmed some of the speeches and short stories i have encountered over the past few years.

i felt like his trademark points boiled themselves down over the years to a few tired diatribes, and i admit that i grew tired of his crankiness.
i felt bad about this, and i haven’t let myself really think about it because i think i was afraid i would respect him less, and i didn’t want that to happen to someone who played such a role in my ideological development. but when i think about that even just a tiny bit, i know it is silly. i know that i’m at a point in life when things still feel somehow hopeful and idealistic, and far be it from me to begrudge a brilliant and socially conscious man like kurt vonnegut the cynical retreat of his old age. the truth really is that i’m probably afraid that the same will happen to me, but if that’s the case i should continue to embrace the wisdom that maturity brings to those i admire. in the name of not diverting eyes from lessons most needed and all.

this became a bit rambly, so perhaps i should finish my tribute in another fashion. a story, perhaps. a napkin drawing. a bokonon foot orgy. a quote from the headstone in breakfast of champions, which is an unoriginal tribute i am sure – “Not even the Creator of the universe knew what the man was going to say next-perhaps the man was a better universe in its infancy.”

i can think of no better tribute, actually, than just continuing to live and write, knowing that onward life shall go.