The blog home of Jeff Putz

Today is the 32nd anniversary of the release of the movie Singles. Directed by Cameron Crowe, the movie is a coming-of-age bit that takes place in Seattle around 1991 or so. It's the time when the rise of grunge music happened, Gen-X was officially a generation and I was a sophomore in college. Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, Bridget Fonda and Matt Dillon were the leads. There were cameos by members of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, and sadly the only singer who made it to today is Eddie Vedder. The soundtrack was fucking epic, and remains one of my favorite rock albums of all time. Also, the cameos... Paul Giamatti, Eric Stoltz, Jeremy Piven, Tom Skerritt, Tim Burton, Victor Garber, and of course, the bands.

I don't have to tell you what college is like, even if you didn't go. It's a super weird time when you've been thrust into an adult-ish environment and you're not a kid anymore. Crowe's movies are almost all coming-of-age, and to this day I'm obsessed with the idea because most of life is about that, figuring it out. At that time I still had a very naive and idealistic view of what relationships were supposed to be (which may account for my perpetual single-ness), and this romanticized version of hooking up was deep in my mind. Also, while obsessed with Sedgwick's amazing curls, I was totally into Fonda's dorky, redheaded Janet. Clearly I've always had a preference for redheads, which in retrospect makes it seem inevitable that I'd end up with one.

What I could not have predicted was that, 17 years later, I would actually live in Seattle. Before Simon was born, and with me living in a place that wasn't Ohio for the first time in my life, I thought it might be interesting to try and find some of the locations from the movie. We did find the Virginia Inn near Pike Place, where Steve and Linda meet for water and Giamatti makes out with that woman, and the spot where Debbie gets a flat on her bicycle is also Virginia St. We went to the city center area just before we moved away, which is where Linda rides the roller coaster with the bad date (the amusement rides had recently been removed). We never got to the apartments themselves, but saw the Gas Works from afar, and did go to Showbox Sodo to see Garbage, which was not where the movie saw Alice In Chains, but it was the area.

College wasn't easy for me, but it was a mix of positive and negative experiences. Singles represents a point where I realized how much I loved music and film, which supersedes any issues that I had with that era. To this day, I find myself quoting it, too.

"What took you so long?"

"I was stuck in traffic."

I've noticed a pattern in the way that many people approach educating non-neurotypical kids. They come up with strategies that would generally work really well for someone who is Type-A, neurotypical. I see this frequently with things that experts (to use the term loosely) suggest will help Simon in terms of organization and execution around school work. Even in grown-up work, I've had jobs where "project managers," one of the most dubious of professions, are prescriptive about the way that engineering teams should organize and do things. It only leads to friction and wasted time.

I can't speak for everyone who has autism, and won't try to, but I can tell you that if you want me and a group of people in my charge to do something, you should just tell me what the outcome is that you're after. I'll keep communicating with you and start a feedback loop as we go to make sure that our assumptions are challenged and we course correct to the real outcome that's right for everyone. If you're going to give me a bunch of spreadsheets and mandate ceremony and structure, it's not going to go well. It's not even the busy work that you're creating for me, it's the fact that you're trying to impose same on a group of people who are every bit as different.

Getting back to education, I don't know how you solve for this. Individualized education does not scale in public schools, because they're underfunded and understaffed, and the depth of knowledge and capability of the staff they do have varies wildly. (And sometimes, you get psycho elementary principals that think kids and teachers need to be "managed" at all times.) It puts parents in a particularly shitty position, since we can't figure out what's best for our kids, but we can see what doesn't work plain as day. We're both the bad guys and the entitled. You have to fall back on a strategy that involves throwing everything at the problem until you find something that works, which is not efficient, and totally demoralizing for everyone involved.

What I know now about my own education is that my interests were almost totally driven by getting the degree. I was outcome-oriented even then. I'd guess that 80% of the subject matter I had no interest in. So I did only slightly more than necessary to get the degree, which, as it turns out, almost no one asks about, let alone what my GPA was. High school was kind of like that too, especially by my senior year. The thing that's scary about Simon is that he's already there, in some ways. He always asks how some bit of homework is something that he'll need in life. Yikes.

I don't like all of the prescriptive things from people who are box-checkers. I don't think that way, and I know that Simon doesn't either. He completely disregarded his packing list last trip, and packed one shirt for three days. For the record, I don't think that Diana is Type-A (she's too creative in a non-derivative way), but she's list oriented, while I think that anything that's important enough you'll remember.

If I may project for a moment, that may be the core issue. Many of us spectrum dwellers execute well against the things that we deem most important. Throw ADHD in the mix and this is even more evident. The trick might be to figure out how to promote things in our heads to be the right level of importance. I don't know if that's even possible. Intrinsic motivators tend to crowd out all the other things.

Sometimes I do encounter some text written by someone with ASD, and they're like, "This totally works for me!" But we're all so different that these "solutions" don't always transfer well between people. So here I am, that guy, dismisses the suggestions but doesn't have a clear path to the thing that ultimately helps me.

I saw some random post on social media complaining that, "Everything is about racism." As usual, I wanted to respond with, "Imagine how non-white people feel, and for totally different reasons." I've learned that such engagement is rarely constructive, so I moved on. But the truth is, everything is still about racism, because when you strip out everything else, it's the only thing left.

I am of course talking about the team that has hijacked the GOP, co-opted the term "conservative," and generally brought the vile hate for others into the culture in a way that made many feel emboldened to engage in it. Some of it is just blatant, and there isn't much else to do with it. Trump's debate rant about "eating the dogs," a reference to an absurd conspiracy theory about (legal) Haitian immigrants in Ohio, is hardly a new racist talking point. That's been around forever, but used to be applied primarily to Asian folks. What's so striking about this is that, ten years ago, uttering something like this in public would make it certain that you would not hold any high public office, let alone be one party's candidate for president.

If we back up, "make America great again" was an obvious racist dog whistle from the start. The implied sentiment is that we were better when people of color were not participants in our society, women stayed home and didn't vote, and it was even more dangerous to be out and LGBTQ. Of course they dress it up as if it's a matter of policy, but facts and data do not support their positions. Strip that away, and you're left with the racism.

For example, the things they keep banging on are immigration and crime, and worse, conflate them. They use scary words like "invasion" to infer that you're in great danger. Controlled immigration is not the desire of just one side, I think everyone wants that. But there are a bunch of inconvenient facts to consider. For one thing, crime in the US has been plummeting for the last four years. The FBI is not making that up. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than so-called "natives," again, according to the same crime statistics. An anecdote indicating otherwise is not a trend, it's an anecdote (I don't think people understand the difference). Immigrants don't "take" jobs away from anyone, they only add to the necessary business to support a society, which boosts the economy and increases GDP. That's basic economics. Why do you think China is worried about a shrinking population? Because it shrinks the economy, giving it less leverage in world trade.

So when you strip all of that away, because none of the justification for "policy" is rooted in fact, the only thing that you're left with is hate for people who look different. If this were really about the rule of law, the people backing this nonsense wouldn't be supporting a convicted felon.

And with that, let me touch on the "undecided" voter. Various news agencies keep talking to these folks, and it seems like they fall into a few cohorts. The first is just sadly uninformed and doesn't understand civic engagement. The second is the people who make moral equivalence arguments, a throwback to, "All politicians are the same," which used to be more of a thing, but not these days. You may not agree with universal healthcare, and that's fine, but you can't pretend that the folks that want it are the same as people who seek to ban books, limit healthcare and discourage people from voting. And the third I think are people who have finally decided to confront the cognitive dissonance they've engaged in for years, realizing how terrible these hate and fear mongering people are. All three apparently fail to see that anything important is at stake, or at least, don't want to. I'll never understand how anyone can see a person who wants to ditch the Constitution and be a dictator is viable.

Let's stop pretending this is about policy. It's just thinly veiled racism.

Before getting into it, let me set the context again for how the MA Lighting line of consoles works. The more hardware you buy, the more things that you can control. The software is always free, but you can't do a show without a piece of hardware. The "cheapest" complete system in one unit, screens and all, is the Compact model, and it costs $30k, controls about 8,192 parameters, and can control more with networked processing units. If you're curious, the Full-Size model costs $80,000 and 20,480 parameters out of the box. (Parameters are single functions of a lighting instrument, like pan, tilt, dimmer, color, etc.)

So if you're an enthusiast, want to learn and are just starting out, you can do everything in the software on a virtual rig for free, but you can't control any real light fixtures. Without the control surface, you're also having to use virtual keys or shortcuts to program, and virtual faders to run the show, which isn't really how real-life would work. What you can do is buy the onPC Command Wing console for about $7k, which controls 4,096 parameters, but includes no screens and no computer inside, so it's bring-your-own-computer. (You could also buy an onPC Port Node for about $2k, but you're still stuck entirely using your touch screens or mouse and keyboard.) I'll add that the control surface of this is exactly the same as the one on the $30k Compact model, only without the light-up faders. I've settled on a decent setup for this, and because people ask, I thought I'd write down what I have, with links.

• GrandMA3 onPC Command Wing - around $7k depending on the dealer
• Asus Zenbook Duo 2024, Core Ultra 9 version - around $1,700 - Amazon
• 2x Viewsonic TD1655 15" portable touch screens - around $270 each - Amazon
• 2x portable stands (sold under a million brands, all made in the same factory in China, I'm sure) - $28 each - Amazon
• OWC 11-port Thunderbolt 4 dock - around $230 - Amazon
• LED XLR desk light - varies, mine was $74 - Amazon
• Custom flight case for console only - varies, mine was $690 from a local vendor

The point is that you can get "in" to MA for about $10k and have a functional, reasonably robust way to control small to medium sized rigs. I imagine that you could recover some of this cost using it for real gigs, but that's a topic for another day. The only real limitation to me is that using pixel fixtures will burn many parameters. There's a part of me that wonders if they'll up the parameter allowance in future versions to accommodate this, because they've already doubled the onPC versions to the current 4,096.

The disadvantage of using onPC is that you can't just crack open a case, plug in your network cable, and go nuts. However, the set up above comes together in a few minutes, and you'll have four screens available. What makes this manageable is the Thunderbolt dock, because it provides power to the portable monitors and the laptop itself, so you're not burdened by a bunch of power cables. You'll just have the dock and the console to plug in for power. The cables to the monitors carry the data and the power, making it all super convenient. If you manage them with a few zip ties, it's a fairly clean setup. The laptop, monitors, dock and cables easily fit into a laptop backpack. The dock also has ethernet, another thing that might otherwise require a dongle, though I'm using wifi at home (not recommended in real venues). I also have a cable to power the keyboard that pops off of the laptop, because its battery only lasts a few hours. My power strip happens to have USB power, so I just use that. That means the laptop has a single Thunderbolt cable connected to it.

Configuration once everything is connected for the most part just works. The software sees the console and outputs the 4,096 parameters over your chosen network protocols and the DMX XLR outputs. I'm outputting through sACN, and have a few different DMX boxes that hear it just fine without any extra configuration. The only glitch, and it only happens every third time, is that Windows gets confused about which screen you're touching, even though touch and video share the same cable. You have to dig into "tablet PC settings" and launch a process where you touch each screen then press enter. The easy way to check up front if it's right is to drag your finger across each screen, and see it draw a selection box. If it appears on the wrong screen, run the settings.

I've set up my basic show file to put the contextual on-screen encoders above the actual encoders on the console, which vaguely emulates the big consoles. I position the other one over the faders, lining up a playbacks window right in line. I put the masters and such to the left of that. The 15" screens might actually be a little big for this application, but scaling the UI and matching it to the laptop screens makes for nice large targets. So far I've never fat-fingered the wrong button on a screen. It feels like the laptop screens are best used for sequences, layouts and selection grids, though preferably on the lower screen. The top one is better for 3D or things that you monitor but don't touch often, because that screen isn't as stable as the others. The Asus has a solid hinge, but it still has some give.

I'm sure most people start their MA journey on a computer, but it is like a different world when you have the Command Wing in front of you, especially with the screens above it. Coming from a previous career in broadcast, I appreciate well made, durable, heavy gear. This thing is heavy and solid. The buttons are not clicky like a keyboard, and remind me a little of certain on-air broadcast radio consoles. There's one 4-pin XLR on the back for a light, and mine is not official MA. The AC plug is locking. I've tried the DMX outputs, but generally assume I'll be using networking. The faders are motorized, but not backlit with color LED's like the Compact and up. It's probably not a huge deal, but the colors would be good visual cues to know which executor page you're on without looking up at the screen.

When it comes to the software itself, I don't have a ton to compare to. I've written some stuff experimentally, I've played with ETC EOS a bit, and I've seen a ton of electronic but manual boards that, at best, store cues. Conceptually I understand what it should do because I'm a nerd and I go to a lot of shows, concerts and theatrical bits. As a developer, I find that the conventions are very much like object-oriented programming, almost to a fault. That works to an extent, but I find it clumsy to "debug" when you aren't getting the output that you want. In software, you have what's called a stack trace, that allows you to walk through the code at every step. In MA3, you have a bunch of tiny icons on different tiles on various screens. Even if you can remember what they all mean, it's not always easy to see how things are related. There has to be a better way.

Still, the more I work with it, the more I can translate something in my head into actual output. I'm attempting simple things with the six Chauvet Intimidator 260X's I have, and recipes are extremely powerful to create looks quickly, and reuse different components. I need to design (or download) a bigger rig to try more interesting things, but I don't think that I'm there yet. Admittedly, I'm not spending as much time on it as I'd like.

One thing to note is that MA3 appears to draw each window as an OpenGL 3D surface. Every window, that is, "screen" in the software, increases the use of the computer's GPU. For mine, it's roughly 20% GPU for each screen, so with four open, it's at a constant 80%. That's not even with the 3D visualizer open, which adds even more load. This is enormously inefficient, and disappointing that it's a thing. I realize the software is optimized for plugged-in consoles, but in this state you can't really use it on a laptop for long periods solely on battery. It's a huge power hog.

Outside of the hardware and software itself, there is a robust community out there willing to help and answer questions, which is fantastic. I'm surprised at the number of people who have plenty of hours behind the $80k machines. Then again, once you know what you're looking for, these things are everywhere. And if it's not an MA console, it's probably ETC. I see both in the theme parks all of the time.

Overall, it has been a good experience so far, even with the "cheap" version of the hardware. I still hope that they change their licensing model to include more parameters (something that the Capture design software should also do), because of the higher requirements of compound fixtures and pixel bars and such.

Thinking about that buffer between work and life, it occurs to me that one of the things about working remotely is that there is no commute to help with the buffer. Don't get me wrong, I love my office. It's very comfortable, dare I say cozy, and having done four different jobs from it, it's one of the few professional constants that I've had. But part of that commute buffering for me was a whole lot of music.

I've said this before, but for a guy that doesn't play any instrument (middle school trumpet not withstanding), I hear a lot of the detail and depth in music, and I kind of wish that a desire (and lack of ADHD impairment) would have led me to learn more. Nothing makes me feel like music. It's hard to explain to people. When I am deep into a piece that I get, that makes me feel stuff, it's like I've left my body. I know that sound dramatic, but it's true.

This is why I go out for lunch so often, too. Some time in the car is time to listen. Maybe I just need to make time at the end of the work day for tunes. Last night we got into a spiral of music from our youth, and that was fun. Diana has seen some shows that I did not.

In software, we have a concept known as separation of concerns. The idea is that parts of your code do different, single things, so there's less overlap. Maybe an analog in real life is the difference between a multi-tool and discreet screwdrivers and wrenches. You may know from experience that the multi-tool can technically do the job of many tools, but it probably doesn't do any of them as well as the discreet tools. But in software, the biggest benefit is that the discreet bits are easier to maintain. If you wrote code to launch a rocket, you wouldn't do it all as one continuous block. Instead, you would have different parts to monitor pressure, open and close valves, gimbal the engines, etc.

In life, whether or not we separate our concerns I think depends a lot on what we do to make money. I suspect that most of us who are not artists try to create some separation between home and work, the so-called work-life balance. I used to be able to separate the two pretty easily. I've never really made work part of my identity, but what's interesting is how it seems harder to separate the two the longer I'm at a job. My current gig is the second longest I've been at any job, and it'll be the longest in January. With time, I think it's natural to care more. What I find challenging is that, when things are challenging, it's harder to separate work from home. I've had a few weeks recently where my frustration levels were high, and I found it difficult to approach things more clinically and less emotionally (and it's mostly been with stuff outside of my team). So I end up bringing that frustration home, think about it in the shower and generally feel cognitively spent by the time the weekend rolls around.

I imagine that most people derive value out of what they do, they're proud of a job well done, and they enjoy it to some degree. I'm no different. But really, it's the people engagement that's rewarding. I can't tell you what specifically I was doing at work 20 years ago, but I do remember the people. Despite this, in the moment, we place so much emphasis on the work itself, and the outcomes affect the way we feel in the short term. Isn't that weird?

My suspicion is that it's different for people who make art. Even if you were just a PA on the set of the first Star Wars, you remember that job. Musicians, actors, lighting designers, grips, electricians... anyone who is putting on a show... I'm not sure how you could separate those jobs from your life or identity. That's why I envy people who are able to make a living doing that stuff. I make the assumption that if you have fewer separation of concerns, you feel more fulfilled and have a sense of purpose.

To be clear, I like what I do. I've been in a position to solve real problems with technology, and that is validating for sure. But I like being able to walk away from it on a Friday night and dive into hobbies, movies, video games or whatever. It's just felt harder to do that lately. I talk about that pendulum of engagement where work is just something you have to do at one end, to being the thing that defines you at the other end. Surely the right spot on that arc is somewhere closer to the middle.

For the last 24 hours, the unexpected return of the band Linkin Park has been pretty much owning the algorithm. If you're not familiar, the band with all of the Gen-X anthems of the aughts, lost its singer in 2017 when he committed suicide. Last year they released some stuff from the vault, including a song called "Lost" that was pretty good. I remember thinking, you know, I've only bought a few singles, but their sound had a prominent place in music for a very long time. It kind of made me sad that we'd never get anything more. As it turns out, that isn't what happened.

Over the last few years, most of the rest of the band would from time to time hang out and write, and collaborate with a new female vocalist. Their drummer didn't want to do it anymore, so they found a new collaborator there, too. They weren't sure if any of this would work out, which is why they kept it secret, but then they unleashed it all last night, with a new album coming, some world tour dates, and a forthcoming US tour. They'll be playing arenas or larger again. They will be different, but the same, if that makes sense. They'll continue. If their live stream is any indication, they're going to have a lot of fun.

I admire what they're doing. I've lost friends to suicide, and you can't really rationalize it, and you definitely can't dwell on the idea that you could have prevented it. It sucks, because their heads were in such a terrible place that they couldn't see any way to continue. The rest of us are left with the task of continuing without them, which is difficult in its own way. This band, they found joy in their music, and decided that they could respect the legacy, while continuing on.

That feels like something we should all think about. Life is difficult. Some people experience more friction than others, and it's rarely as simple as choosing not to have the friction. Mental health, physical health, discrimination, financial stress, careers, parenting, relationships... life comes with a lot of pain. I'll be the first to admit that I find myself wallowing in the worst of it sometimes. As I said, it's not really something you can choose to avoid. What we can do, what we must do, is figure out how to continue. It often takes time, but as I get older, I feel like there's less time to get to the point of continuation. Suddenly it seems that the healthy part of working through your shit has to happen faster.

I have never thought about suicide, which statistically is more rare than I expected (depending on which studies you read and which cohorts they include). For me, maybe I've had it easy, because continuing is the only option I've ever considered. I wish that were the case for everyone. So maybe we just need reminders now and then. Things can't suck all of the time, and if it feels like they do, we need to know that it's OK to ask for help.

This is post for the lighting and theater nerds, I guess. I busted out my fog machine because I wanted to fog up my office (I put the lights in there), and to make sure it was still working well in advance of Halloween. Why the concern? Because fog machines are notorious for not working, seemingly regardless of their cost. I've had cheap ones before, and they last a year or two, and that's it. This one was about $250, because it puts out way more volume than the cheap ones, and can be controlled via DMX (the lighting control protocol). I wouldn't describe it as cheaply made. It's from ChauvetDJ, Chauvet's "pro-sumer" brand. Sure, it's made in China, but the Miami-based company seems to have pretty solid quality control. The moving lights I have are also from them. Still, I had a feeling.

A fog machine really has just two parts. There's a pump and there's a heater. The pump pushes the fluid, typically glycerine based, into the heater, where it vaporizes. The pressure pushes the vapor out into the cooler air, and the vapor kind of hangs there. A good machine also has various sensors to detect that fluid is moving or the temperature is at the right spot.

This time, I fired it up, and when it was at the right temperature... no sound. I figured that the pump had failed. I opened it up, and carefully probed the motor to see that it was getting power, and it was. Just to make sure, I took the pump apart (because YouTube videos), and there was no blockage. Fortunately, I found a replacement on the Amazon for $33, and the next day I replaced it and it worked right away.

I don't really know why the motor would fail while being idle for 10 months, but it did. There is so much conflicting advice about how to store it, ranging from always keeping fluid in it, to emptying the fluid and running water through it. There's a copper fitting on the end of the hose that goes in the reservoir, and it was a little green, so I speculated that maybe that created some strain on the pump. But I can't really know for sure.

Regardless, there's something deeply satisfying about fixing a machine that you never get from technical things like software. I suppose there's some basic skill in troubleshooting, but swapping out the part was hardly difficult. It's just feels good to do it. I repacked the gear box and replaced the control board in our Kitchenaid mixer, and while also not hard, it was satisfying.

Now I can fog up my office, but only when the air conditioning isn't running, because it pushes it out the vent toward the smoke alarms.

I've realized since the pandemic that one of the motivators for cruising was that, for me, it's an unusually dense social opportunity. I work remotely, and I don't have a ton of local friends. And that's fine, because I find it difficult to maintain many non-trivial relationships. That doesn't mean that I don't like people. To the contrary, I find people to be generally interesting, and we meet so many on our voyages. Many are from around the world. Once, we even "adopted" a former server from a cruise.

We returned from another three-night Bahamas run this morning. The social interaction usually starts in a bar, with a bartender from somewhere not the US, then we meet people at the bar, or dinner, or maybe in a show, and before you know it, you're seeing people around the ship that are familiar. The servers and bartenders are people that we get to know really well, as most stick around for multiple contracts.

Back in 2015, aboard the Disney Dream, Simon, then 5, was having a difficult time at dinner over something food related. Our server, a guy named Kruno from Croatia, got down to his level, and talked him into a happier place. It was a very kind act that you don't forget. We've since seen Kruno many times, and he's now woking on the Wish. Last night, we got to do a updated photo of the two of them.

There are a lot of examples like that, but the punchline is that the level of hospitality there is in its own class (and frankly not matched at the resorts). I know it's a business, but it shows how doing things right builds customer loyalty through actual, personal relationships. Yeah, Disney has all kinds of IP, and the rat's image is everywhere, but I buy what they're selling because they often have the right people on the front lines. After 28 cruises, it's not by accident that we return.

September 1, 2024

March 22, 2015

Adam Savage, of Mythbusters fame, recently said in a live stream that when he first visited San Francisco, he knew it was where he belonged. He was there for a wedding, and it just felt right. A year or two later, he moved there, and it's been his home ever since. He's fields a lot of questions like that, including those about feeling like he was supposed to be at a specific job or whatever.

I've started to write some flavor of this post a dozen times. Maybe I even finished one in some form and just don't remember. I've thrown it away time after time, because I was worried that it sounded sad or pathetic, or maybe just noise. But I'm going to put it out there anyway.

I don't think I have ever really felt like I belonged.

I mean that in almost every context, whether it be in work, geography, hobby endeavors... all of it. I think about it a lot lately given Simon's entry into high school, and his own social difficulties. When I first realized this some time ago, my initial reaction was one similar to the stages of grief. I had already been in denial, then I was angry, I skipped bargaining because it's probably attributable to ASD, then I was depressed about it, and these days I just accept it. I am wired this way, and it's not really anyone's fault. Sort of.

What does it mean to really belong? I think at the very core of things, it means being respected, valued and appreciated. Outside of my romantic relationships, I don't think I've ever really felt all three of those things. Some of my former volleyball "kids" have voiced these, even a few of their parents, so I guess it's not completely rare. But I've never really had it in work or family situations (not counting current scenario as the parent of a teen, because teens).

I believe that it's also about your identity. I'm not even sure what my identity is, which sounds a lot like I don't know myself. That's not it though, because to me identity is about how you fit and find purpose in your world. I can't say for sure that I've ever found "my people," or been in a place where I really fit in. I think the closest I ever got to it was when I started working in commercial radio, though when I accepted how terrible that business was, that sense of belonging disappeared very quickly.

This experience begs the question of whether or not it even matters if one must feel like they belong. If I've gone this long without, do I really need it? I don't need a ton of deep relationships, and I don't have the mental bandwidth for tons of trivial relationships, so I don't think that belonging is important to me in a social context. Maybe that's a lonely place to be, but maybe not. Being respected, valued and appreciated is also something that I've just adapted to not getting, so my motivation toward most everything is intrinsic and internal. Admittedly, this is something that wears on me over time. I don't need a high five for doing my thing, but I do want one now and then. External validation feels good, even when we're predisposed to relying primarily on ourselves for finding worth and satisfaction in our environment.

In Adam's description of belonging, he specifically talks about the feeling of exiting a building, looking around, and being overwhelmed with a sense of finding the right place. I've had that feeling so few times. And I want to be clear that it's not the same as feeling confident, though I imagine that's certainly easier when you feel like you belong. I don't think that I could have gotten this far in my second career if I didn't have some measurable confidence, especially given all of the rejection in various job searches.

What have I been doing with this? Nothing, really. I accept it for what it is. But I do think about it in terms of whatever my third act really entails. In not-too-many-years, I hope to be in a place where I can walk away from my career and try something else. Maybe that's where I belong. In the mean time, don't feel bad for me. I don't feel bad. Maybe my intent is to point out that if you are in a place where you truly feel like you belong, appreciate it. It's not a given.

For as much as I think about the time involved being on the "back nine," my acceptance of the ephemeral nature of my being, and try to work on being present, I allow frustration to build and stress me out in a great many areas of my life. I've never really understood how to let it go.

I have a disconnect between the necessary perspective (the gift of your impending demise), and the necessary response. The hardest thing for me to do is let go of things that I can logically rationalize have no bearing on anything long term. Today's problems mostly don't have long-term concerns. There are exceptions, like health things, but I suspect most problems don't matter. Do you remember that time at that job that there was a thing and you went home frustrated and angry? Of course you don't. What about that time your kid did that thing and it was a whole thing? Same.

I wonder if it's because of my thought spirals. Is it hard to let go because my brain is always circling back to everything? The only escape I have from that is to dive into something that is probably self-serving and anti-social, which is probably not ideal when I think I need more people time.

One of the little miracles of modern medicine you discover as a new parent is Orajel, the goo you put on your baby's gums when they're teething. We got to know that pretty early, because Simon was cutting teeth basically the day he came home from the hospital. Most things aren't that easy in those first days and weeks.

When your kid gets older, a lot of the pain is emotional, or at least it can be if they face challenges that are not easy to navigate. Unfortunately, there is no Orajel for the soul. At younger ages, I guess ice cream comes pretty close, but if there's a teenage equivalent, I'm not yet aware of it.

Simon tells me that today was better than yesterday. And that's the closest thing that either one of us will get to today in terms of relief. I'll take it.

It's a little weird, in a good way, but a lot of cultural things come up on CoasterBuzz periodically, especially as it relates to the cost of roller coaster nerding and traveling. After Disney's last earnings call, citing a "moderation in demand," many in the press have run with this idea that Disney vacations are too expensive and that this will hurt the company. To be clear, this has been going on for years, and yet, the parks look insanely different from the way they were just ten years ago. They're still making more than enough to keep improving them.

What often comes up in those discussions though is the issue of expectations as they relate to income and affordability of everything. For whatever reason, Disney vacations seem to be aspirational to Americans, as the ultimate thing to do with your kids. That always seemed weird to me, even before I lived next door, and after I had a kid of my own. We have a great time there, don't get me wrong, but the world is a pretty big place with an awful lot of cool things to see. I wouldn't prioritize it.

But mostly, those conversations get into financial realities. The first thing is that obviously this is a discretionary expense. No one needs to take a vacation. There's also this thing where you keep seeing stories about people who skip what I call the "roommates and ramen" stage of life, which is to say that you start your adult life kind of poor, and so you have to make some compromises about your lifestyle. My roommate happened to be my then-girlfriend-future-first-wife, and we didn't have a lot of fancy things or eat fancy food. That seemed reasonable to me, because college degree or not, I hadn't really done anything in life yet. Without experience, I wouldn't expect to be well-off financially.

This comes up a lot in the context of student debt. It also gets conflated with the cost of college and ease of borrowing, and while I don't want to trivialize those issues, they are different from the expectation problem. Maybe there was an expectation that if you just go to school you'll be better off, but that was the story when I went as well. What changed I think is that the expectation also started to include the idea that you'll have nice things and do nice things right away. I know there are memes that mock the expectation involving avocado toast and $8 Starbucks iced coffee, but I can't imagine doing that sort of thing when I was 22. It's even worse when people get a masters degree (MBA's especially), and they think that they should be living large immediately. But like me after school, they haven't actually done anything. Education isn't the same as experience.

The worst example is the asinine articles where they find some family that together makes $500k a year, and they're "struggling" to make ends meet and pay off their student loans. Naturally, they live in expensive markets with huge houses, obnoxious cars and a nanny. I mean, buy what you can afford, but if you're struggling and buying things you could easily do without, you made that situation. I bring up this example because I want to illustrate that the expectation problem is not just a facet of recent college grads. It seems to be a much wider cultural issue.

I first went to Walt Disney World as an adult four years after graduating college. And when I say we went, I mean Steph's grandparents, who were snowbirds, had a friend that was a retired Disneyland mechanic, and he front-gated us (got us in for free), and we park hopped between three parks in one day. Not exactly a dream vacation. At least I had moved beyond ramen at that point.

After yesterday's rant about school, things got worse. Simon's anxiety went off the charts last night, and there were a lot of tears. He went through the new schedule today, with some class changes, and he was in full meltdown by the time he got home. Some of it was the discomfort around change and uncertainty, but the sheer volume of homework overwhelmed him completely. Diana was able to chill him out before dropping him off for math tutoring, and he was better when I picked him up. I was able to get him to copy some definitions to a typed up worksheet, but he was done.

I don't want to make it about me, but hearing this going on while I'm in my office working, is a lot like the feelings you get when your baby is crying at night and you don't know what they need. Even into the teenage years, there is a point where something chemically changes in your brain, and you flip from "learn a lesson" to an intense need to protect. This happened as recently as our DC trip in the spring, when he thought that he lost his earbuds in the Jefferson Memorial (they were in his pocket the whole time). He got so upset that I wanted to comfort him instead of lecture him about responsibility.

His feelings and concerns are legitimate, but it's increasingly hard to separate the discomfort issues from making sure that he gets what his IEP entitles him to. Diana is going to at least bring up the latter and the class schedule stuff with his guidance counselor tomorrow. In a couple of weeks, he has another IEP meeting. Fortunately, Diana is excellent at advocating for him at these. I wish that I could also be there, but in a short work week with stuff happening at work my anxiety will already be high, and I don't know how constructive I can be about making sure he gets the services that he should. (I have baggage here... During the pandemic, one of the people in these meetings, a professional, allegedly, suggested that he just had messy handwriting because he was a boy. I barely held it together, but called her out that, "Testicles have nothing to do with his handwriting." And here we are years later getting him tested for dysgraphia.)

Like Simon, I can get overwhelmed at times too. The smaller, tactical steps to resolve things are difficult to see. My head is already at, "OMG these years are going to suck for him." Getting him the right level of help and way of learning is hard enough, but getting him to the point where he can just be happy in school feels impossible. This was a big talking point in my last therapy session. I can solve all kinds of complex problems in my work, but I can't apply those same skills to my child's wellbeing. To be fair to myself, I'm not an educator, let alone an expert in developmental learning challenges. Knowing that doesn't put me at ease.

Ten days ago, I was like, "This might all be fine." That was awfully naive.

Already, it feels like we've fallen into all the old negative habits of school. Simon does not take initiative to do homework, he wants an assist before trying. My reflex is that it's because he'd rather be at his computer doing things that he likes. We've tried before to enforce a no-screen rule before the work is done, but the only thing that does is cause him to be immediately overwhelmed at the volume of work, and the delay it will cause in him doing what he wants. So the next logical thing is to simply prohibit computer time during the week, which he will take as a punishment not associated with any specific negative behavior, because that's what it is. It would only be a preventative measure to take one desire out of the equation, which he would not understand. It's a no-win situation.

My dark sense of humor is to joke that Simon inherited all of my worst traits. And I can see, with vivid clarity, the ways that he's the same. I didn't know about ADHD or ASD as a kid, but by high school, I wasn't that interested in the process of learning things that I didn't care about. I have to keep in mind that I don't think it was a personality thing, it was the way that I was wired, and that's probably the case with him. I should have aced geometry, but I hated it, and didn't take the time to really learn. I did better with trigonometry, probably because I just had the right teacher to reach me. My senior year, I don't remember what the class was, maybe an AP class, but the first week was about proving that 1 was greater than 0. What the actual fuck? It just is, I don't care the reason. I dropped that class like a bad habit.

This continued into college, where I did enough to get by, even in classes like TV production, where I frankly learned nothing new because it was just emulating what you could see on TV. (My instructor, may he rest in peace, was shocked that I used lighting for my half-hour show, because he didn't teach that, and no one else did it. I was just imitating "real life.") But I busted the curve on broadcast law, because I was infatuated with the subject. I see this pattern everywhere in my life. I never really learned electronics theory, despite the kit, because I just wanted the outcome, where I could make an LED blink or whatever. My eventual primary profession, writing code, took me years to get proficient at it, especially debugging, because I just wanted the outcome, not the learning process.

It's certainly possible that I'm projecting on to him, but when he's saying in the first week, "When will I ever need this in life?" all I can think of is me at the same age. What's different is that I was able to fake a lot of things on instinct, which I don't think he has. To be clear, he's not being an obstinate dick (at least, I don't think he is), he genuinely finds certain things challenging. Next month he's supposed to be evaluated for dysgraphia, which would certainly provide some answers, and hopefully a strategy to roll with it. This is the struggle, because intelligence has nothing to do with things like dysgraphia, autism or ADHD.

My therapist says that, if we can afford it, we should try to find someone who can tutor him after school. Diana has tried in the past to find people like that, but the schools can't even find enough qualified teachers, so where does that leave us? We are sending him to Mathnasium, which does seem to help with math, but it's the writing and basic problem solving that we're struggling with. Combined with a temperament that goes off the rails when software doesn't work the way he expects, things escalate quickly.

My way of helping sometimes is to just let him flail, but that results in output only if he's comfortable enough to at least start his assignment. There are so many things that he does that trigger me and I respond emotionally. I can be clinical for about 15 minutes, then I'm making it worse. It sucks. I don't know what to do. He's checked out after school, and frankly, I'm checked out after work. It's a toxic combination.

This is largely an unstructured rant. I'm not looking for feedback, because from others looking in, it's usually non-useful. I just need to get it out, write it down, revisit it, and hopefully have better ideas the next day.

I don't even remember now when the last time was that I bought the whole Adobe Creative Suite, but I think it was 2011 or 2012-ish. I was, to that point, buying it every few years, because new features were rarely compelling enough in one release to justify upgrading over and over, even with upgrade pricing. I think it was north of a grand, but amortized over two or three years, I could roll with that. I think the software was certainly valuable enough.

But then in 2013 they switched to a subscription model, meaning they wanted to extract money from you monthly, and in return, you would always have the latest versions of everything. At $60 a month (maybe it was $50 then), I couldn't really justify it. I hung on to those last purchased versions for years, which was also super weird because the UI on most of the apps wasn't updated to use the newer, high resolution screens on Macs. The text was all chunky and gross.

Eventually the apps showed their age and lacked some of the cooler features. Adobe Premier Pro, for video editing, in particular had come a long way. I was using Photoshop and Lightroom a fair amount, Illustrator rarely, and Acrobat even more rarely. I eventually caved and bought the Photoshop and Lightroom subscription, because it started out at only $10 a month. Later, they offered a $30 rate for all of the apps, and I was on that for a long time. When you went to cancel, they offered the $30 to renew, and given that they could see how low my usage was, that sure makes sense. But this last time, a few months ago, there was no discount, and in no universe was I gonna pay $60 a month. Even the Photoshop/Lightroom sub was $20, and I skipped on that too.

These days, I'm not cutting a lot of video (though I should be, because of that doc I shot), but when I do, I'm using DaVinci Resolve, for which I have a perpetual license because I bought an edit controller. For photos, I'm mostly resizing images, which you can do natively in Windows and Mac. I'm a little ashamed, but I don't think I've taken a photo with my Canon since Europe, a year ago. Ugh, I'm starting to feel bad about it. Anyway, my point is that there's little value in the Adobe suite, even though it sure is nice to have when I do need it.

The funny thing is, I'm OK paying for web apps that run in a browser. I'd probably pay for the Google stuff if I wasn't grandfathered into a free plan. I pay for things like the New York Times with games, Vimeo (just on principle, because I like what they do), obviously streaming services. I get value out of that stuff. I got value from the Adobe stuff, but not relative to the cost. So now I just go without.

I've been having variations on certain kinds of dreams for my entire life, which kind of makes me wonder if I have things that I need to somehow resolve. The radio dead air dream has mostly subsided, and I haven't had that in a few years. This morning I woke up to the restarting college or back-to-school dream. The scenery looked really different this time, and I think I was returning to a school in Georgia or the Carolinas or something. The feelings were different this time, so I wanted to write them down while they were fresh. Most notably, I was thinking in the dream about what the feelings are in the dream. That's super meta.

I do think these dreams are rooted in anxiety, but it's almost reassuring to see that the anxiety isn't rooted in a social context, like it used to be. It was less about wanting to belong. Now it's more about obligations, like I need to finish this degree. This time I even explained to someone that I had to take a few more classes to finish, then realized that I already graduated, and that this was for some bonus qualification. I got lost in some building that was half closed, but I needed to get to the registrar's office before it closed to drop a class that I didn't need (probably because I already graduated). A group of people were counting on me to set up some kind of outing with reservations and stuff for that evening, which is obviously a tie-in to work responsibility in real-life. The vision of a campus was so vivid. Unlike the last time I had the dream theme, a few months ago, I was not an RA.

The stand-out feeling was about the start of something new, and the relatively unlimited potential about what that means. Despite my feelings about the way actual college went for me, I always had a very optimistic outlook at the start of each year. In the dream, I thought, what can I get involved with that will feel validating? I leaned into certain things with confidence, like doing radio or coaching volleyball. That's the thing that has changed the most in these dreams over the last two decades. Anxiety to succeed and be a part of something used to be the driver, but now I seem to be confident, and the anxiety is just about completing more mundane tasks. I guess that's some kind of weird progress.

There is a life transition that's not as far away as it once seemed. My view on what "retirement" means has changed dramatically, and now it's a thing where I'm not so much going to stop working, but feel financially secure enough to try other things part-time, with no real risk. Loafing will be possible, but not entirely likely. I'm trying to set this at seven years from now, which is doable if there isn't some huge market crash and I'm working consistently. I think this version of the dream I had plays into that, the movement toward doing something else in a new period in my life. That will be exciting, and involve staying in this house at least a year (to not be in the tax bracket where gains in selling the house wreck me), then moving... somewhere. For now I think it would be in the area still, but it's still a ways off.

Leaning into what I know, acknowledging that with age comes wisdom and abilities, is kinda neat. I think we tend to treat life as a place that you're going, with certain outcomes, and it feels good to think that you actually have some of those outcomes. I hope that it makes it more possible for life to be a place that you are, instead of an endless cycle of milestones to reach.

I've said many times that I was deeply moved by the musical Hadestown. The touring musical came through here in 2022, and I was completely enamored with it. I walked in intentionally avoiding any understanding about what it was, and it just wrecked me in all good ways. I remember at intermission thinking, "Holy shit, this is so good!" And what's unusual about it is that it's a tragedy. It does not have a happy ending. But to the point of Hermes, the narrator...

Cause here’s the thing
To know how it ends
And still begin to sing it again
As if it might turn out this time

Even the most cursory understanding of Greek tragedy means you know that Orpheus loses Eurydice (spoiler alert!). That's how it ends. It sucks, but you can't look away, and the pain is deeply understood. More importantly though, you have to believe that there are better outcomes possible.

American politics has been, to say the least, really fucking weird the last few years. Everyone, objectively, could declare that fascism, hate, incompetence, committing felonies, is bad. But somehow, a non-trivial portion of the electorate believes that it's OK to overlook all of that provided the guy on "our team" wins.

There's this crazy cognitive dissonance that tries to separate all of this horribleness, which includes dismantling democracy itself, from the decision about who to vote for. It's not like anything that I've ever seen in my lifetime. And yet, I feel like, we're better than this, it doesn't have to end this way.

The classic Greek tragedy is rooted in something noble, something beautiful. Orpheus got a raw deal, and we're attracted to the story because it's rooted in love.

The aforementioned cognitive dissonance is not rooted in love, it's rooted in hate. It quietly started when Obama was president, when the GOP, including Mitch Fucking McConnell, decided to make the party's core policy to be nothing less than, "The opposite of whatever the Black guy in the White House wants." Now, a significant portion of the population has subscribed to this belief, that they're victims and at a disadvantage, just because people who want to be treated fairly, not at an advantage, exist.

This is not the American way. Well, it kinda is, because the European settlers obliterated the natives, and then had a history of discrimination against African-Americans and even white Europeans how immigrated here. But the core sentiment with the founding of the nation was to reject the control of its people by oppressive regimes. It isn't right to advocate for people who want to continue to repress others. But here we are.

I've written before about the perceived passage of time, and how there is actual science that suggests routine, as you get older, makes time pass faster. Deviating from routine does the opposite. I think this may play into feelings of burnout, too.

Last year, we had that trip to Europe, and it was two weeks. Obviously visiting a half-dozen countries that you've never been to before is about as non-routine as it gets. And doing so in July, sort of opposite of the December holidays, makes for a well staggered change of routine. This year hasn't had any equivalent travel or routine breaks. 2024 feels like it's happening really fast. And the "grind" I think is contributing to an increasing feeling of burnout.

The weird thing is that I typically associated burnout with work that I wasn't crazy about, but that isn't the case right now. I'm leading a team that's totally killing it (without killing themselves), and I'm wielding some amount of influence, to various degrees of success, beyond my immediate sphere. Work is good. But I'm still kind of tired, like I need to get away from it for awhile.

We booked an "emergency cruise" coming up soon, which is the usual long weekend variety where we only have to take Simon out for one full day. These definitely help, because even though there is some flavor of routine to them, they're infrequent enough that they feel like positive disruptions. Again, it's not adventure travel, it's turn-your-brain-off travel where people are there to take care of you. I place a lot of value in that.

Next year, I'd like to do another two-week trip, and we're starting to talk about what that looks like. A long cruise would definitely make it easier with Simon, but we could in theory do a long run in one or two countries if we can map out the feeding our teenager angle. I'm excited about that. We sure loved London and Copenhagen, and while we haven't been to Oslo, it's on the table too.

For now, I have to figure out what to do this year. I just hate taking time off during the school year, because it never feels quite like a vacation. I have the advantage of having "unlimited" PTO, but in practice, that means I can take about five weeks without my job performance hurting.

For the last four or five years, I've taken some amount of pride in the fact that I've made a lot of things. I want to take a break from that, sort of.

Maybe the way I really need to frame it is that I want to stop measuring the value of my non-work time by the output of making stuff. The truth is that I really like watching movies, and I've been doing a lot of that lately. I like it, and shouldn't feel bad about it because it's a passive activity. I like playing video games, and I've done a lot more of that this year. It's semi-passive, of course, which is to say that it still involves riding the couch. And of course, there are so many shows on the calendar. I like to be entertained.

Don't get me wrong, there are still certain things I will certainly pay a lot of attention to that are creative, if not necessarily result driven. I'm enjoying the lighting stuff a great deal. I'm thinking about volunteering to help out a volleyball coach if they'll have me.

The one thing I must do is edit that damn short film. I know why I haven't done it, it's because I think it's going to suck. Maybe it will, but I have to just be OK with that. It wears on me that it's sitting in pieces on my computer.