Crying Tired

There’s a certain state of mind which I’ve met from time to time: you get there through repeated sleep deprivation combined with stress. You only need a very small amount of stress.

I call this state ‘crying tired’ because when you’re there, you feel perpetually right on the brink of tears. Even when there’s absolutely nothing to be sad about, when things are going well, there’s that tight desperate sensation of Just Keeping It Together, for Appearances’ Sake.

The oddest things can help or make it worse: if you’re tired for a reason, you can blame that reason. Often I’ve found myself railing against whatever kept me from sleeping, or taking pride in whatever I achieved while I wasn’t sleeping. Either way, it helps.
Conversely, if the insomnia was entirely your own stupid fault, this makes things worse.

I have to wonder if the first unsettling touches of alzheimers feel like this: you’re not doing anything out of the ordinary, but everything is profoundly harder. Your own simple notes seem like the inscrutable wisdom of someone you could never hope to emulate.

The fact that your own lack of restraint led to this just serves to enhance the pervasive sense of hopelessness.

Simple, achievable work helps. Perspective helps. Caffeine only helps up to a certain point… and once you start down the dark-brewed path you need to stay on it, or it will hasten the inevitable crash.

Eventually, sleep will help, you tell yourself.

Trains, buses and automobiles

So here’s the problem:

Starting point: In Springvale, on Sunday afternoon.

Destination: At Linux Conf 09 in Hobart, on Monday morning.

Solution #1:V-Line Bombardier Train

  1. Travel with E to Ballarat on Sunday night (desirable; I am addicted to E).
  2. Catch the 5:33am train to Southern Cross station, in Melbourne.
  3. Catch the 7:00am Skybus to Melbourne Airport.
  4. Allow the recommended hour for domestic check-in and boarding.
  5. Catch my booked 8:25am flight to Hobart.

Win: More E + Train==comfy.
Fail: 5:33am is a deeply disturbing time of morning.

Solution #2:An airport shuttle bus

  1. Travel with E to Ballarat on Sunday night.
  2. Catch the 5:50am airport bus from Ballarat.
  3. Allow almost the recommended hour for domestic check-in and boarding.
  4. Catch my booked 8:25am flight to Hobart.

Win: More E + less steps (and less connections) + 5:50am > 5:33am
Fail: 5:50am is still less than wholesome.

Solution #3:A Taxi

  1. Stay in Springvale on Sunday afternoon.
  2. Get an expense-claim-able Taxi to the airport at about 6am.
  3. Don’t get caught in Melbourne’s unpredictable roadwork spaghetti.
  4. Hopefully allow the recommended hour for domestic check-in and boarding.
  5. Catch my booked 8:25am flight to Hobart.

Win: Invisible Win.
Fail: Less E.

What to do? In all likelihood, sleep will be the first victim. It usually is.

Boredom makes for strange blog posts…

Clockwork & blue smoke

On the down side:

  • Start to mow the lawn. New-ish (somewhat underwhelming) electric mower seizes up, stops. When the receipt comes to light, Bunnings say:
    “No, too late, you can’t bring it back and get a different one, you have to take it to the manufacturer.”
    The manufacturer will give us a new one, so, not so bad.
  • Diconsolate, I go prod the power switch on my computer: there is happy in Teh Internetz. Nothing happens! Frowning, I turn the big switch at the back off and on again. There is an audible poof, and ribbons of dense oily smoke stream out. No warranties on that anymore. 🙁
  • Frustrated, but it’s time to pack my work stuff for the week anyway. My wonderful (if horribly expensive) Deuter laptop-backpack has unzipped iself and spilt its guts on the floor during the night. *sigh* I yank on the zip… and it comes off in my hand!
    …fortunately, when I get my gruntle back sufficiently to think straight, this turns out to be fixable with patience and Very Large Pliers.

…Still. *grumble*

On the up-side:

  • E gave me the most magnificent watch of all time!
    Daybird Watch Front
    It’s a ‘daybird’ self-winding all-mechanical watch with elegantly exposed workings. The spinning, glittering parts are powerfully hypnotic.
    The back is transparent:
    Daybird Watch Back
    Which enables you to see the self-winding weight turning as the watch moves.
    It ticks in a hypnotic way too. Fabulous!

Train Tactics

Like anything else that one is compelled to do repeatedly, while simultaneously being starved of cognitive sustenance (i.e. bored), riding public transport breeds odd little eccentricities and optimizations.

Many are about fares, tickets, routes, schedules, and other boring / commute-specific things, and as such constitute some of the most inherently boring-to-others thoughts it is physically possible to entertain.

Others are just Odd.

For instance:

  • The ten-kilo-backpack-head-check-and-swing, usually performed immediately upon alighting from one’s train/bus/tram, in order to minimise the knocking-off of one’s fellow passengers’ blocks.
  • The dubious-looking-seat-fondle, performed ever after that first time one sits in something unsavory on a train-seat, to assess if those black bits will potentially adhere to one’s pants, or if that long brown streak is dry and entrenched.
  • The lanky-kneecap-morris-dance, practised by any two people sitting opposite one another whose cumulative height is greater than 10’8″. I have observed variations on this dance where claustrophobia, religion, laptop computers, narcolepsy, large briefcases, toddlers, malice and alcohol have in their own ways enhanced this awkward ritual.
  • The ‘towers of Hanoi’ full-train-logistics-tango: when a train is standing-room-only, it is profoundly unlikely at any given time that all the people who are getting off at the next stop are nearest the doors. The only way around this is for everyone nearest the doors to get off, then for the people whose stop this isn’t to get back on. The awkwardness of this dance is enhanced greatly by passengers who both refuse to move to let others off and abuse those who are trying to get back on. Thank you folks. You know who you are.

But the best of all is probably:

  • The peak-hour-pole-dance, brought on by the knowledge of all those left standing that the train will soon be negotiating a set of points, and those not clutching a suitable upright or hand-grip will soon be performing an involuntary lap-dance for a stranger. Only so many total strangers can hang onto the one upright door-post, even if armpit odour isn’t taken into account.

With passtimes like these, I really can’t understand why more people don’t take the cheap, environmentally sound option that is our public transport system! Three cheers for Connex!

It’s quiet because I’m on holidays

…and I typically can’t be bothered blogging, as it involves using a computer, using my brain, and giving a stuff.

Also, blogging is easier when your computer works. Mine has decided to become unbootable for the second time in as many weeks, and in the same way as last time, so I am ignoring it, as the process of diagnosing and fixing it reminds me uncomfortably of work.

I still have this laptop, but it’s uncomfortable, and it reminds me even more strongly of work, so I may not touch it much either.

I may blog again between now and 2008, but don’t count on it.

p.s. On a completely unrelated note, I just want to say that desperate, failed, elitist neurotics like Andrew Keen and statistically uninformed doom-criers like Doris Lessing can, how shall I put this most succinctly, go fuck themselves.

Life after the bomb

Sometimes I think I’m already living in a post-apocalyptic world, like the worst thing short of death has already befallen us all. The crazies and mutants have already arisen to rule the world. They already bicker violently over the broken remnants of civilization. I’m already dying from one or more of the myriad horrible afflictions that plague the survivors of The Bomb. We all are. Already I toil in the mines, struggling just to subsist in a world without the freedom and luxury I once knew. Already I doubt the wisdom of reproduction for fear of the horror my children would know. Already I crave only surcease, carried forward by survival instinct alone.

Then I go drink more coffee, and everything is fine again.

Under New Management

Man·age·ment, -noun:

A terribly disfiguring and potentially terminal disease of the brain. Management causes an almost total cessation of actual work through advanced procedural confusion.

The afflicted individual may initially become more productive than usual, but as the incubation period (or “promotion”) reaches its completion, most activity normally understood to constitute ‘useful work’ ceases, replaced by politicking, CRM (Compulsive, Repetitive Meeting) syndrome and distended lunching.

In cases of chronic (also referred to as “Senior” or “Upper”) Management, almost all normal forms of communication can be inhibited, leading to the individual being completely isolated from reality. Under no circumstances should the therapist attempt to make communication with the sufferer of Upper Management, as this can lead to agitation and random, violent activity. Just accept that they are unreachable, and try to avoid any unnecessary exposure to their attempts to communicate with you, typically in the form of ‘Powerpoint’ diagrams.

Treatment:

Although it has been suggested that some Management cases make compelling arguments in favour of voluntary euthanasia, there do exists viable treatments which can lead to a total recovery in some cases.

Short-term stabilization can typically be achieved through a Retrenchment or Redundancy, often administered as part of a broader course of Restructuring.

This is never sufficient in itself, almost always being followed by a relapse, typically to a more Senior form of the disease than before.

Suitable follow-up treatment can include a long course of parenthood, or exposure to a high-energy source of specialist technical jobs. In time, the patient may even be able to tolerate controlled doses of reality check.

In the long term, especially where the chance of relapse seems high, a methodone-like substitution program known as ‘team leadership‘ may prove effective.

Of course, if the patient is exceptionally senior and/or proves resistant to all of the above, in the end the only suitable treatment can be retirement.

…this random outburst brought to you by too much caffiene, the ‘italic’ button in the WordPress editor and a severe but non-lethal dose of Powerpoint.

Update: Note, this should not be taken as a reflection of my actual opinion of managers in general. Without adequate management, very few jobs are even remotely tenable.

Guts!

I seem to specialise in blogging from odd places under odd circumstances…

Today I’m in hospital with (probably) an incarcerated hernia

This is, I am assured, nothing to be worried about, but I notice I’m not being sent home or anything. There is very little to do here, unless one brings it; the TV is diminished from its traditional brain-sucking power by the absence of cable. They screen the occasional DVD, but have put Stranger than fiction (which I quite anted to see) at the same time I’m scheduled for surgery. The food here (Valley Private) is so bad that I am frankly looking forward to being put back on the drip and told to fast again. E (who should be canonized!) brought me fast food, Red Meat comics and my laptop, so all is well.

That’s all really. I have little to say, because I have little to do. In the absence of stimulus I become a potato. Ho hum.

Depression or SADness or just Discontent?

Several people who I have paid to make such observations have told me at different times that I suffer from varying degrees of depression, sometimes. This often makes sense to me: Sometimes I am clearly irrational about life, and react with unwarranted negativity to perfectly reasonable, unremarkable situations. It also makes sense to me that this kind of feeling can be remedied by the right kind of therapy: There are drugs to simply lift the brain chemistry a bit. There is psychological therapy to dig up and understand the roots of these feelings, buried or denied so deeply that the connection between cause and effect is invisible to us without a patient helper to shed some light on it.

Then there’s my old companion: Seasonal Affective Disorder, a syndrome with the perfect acronym. I can minimise it with a light on a timer switch to fake the dawn every day, but never wholly eradicate it.

Susan Ivanova: It’s just that I’ve always had trouble waking up when it is dark outside.
Commander Jeffrey David Sinclair: Commander, we’re on a space station. It is always dark outside.
Susan Ivanova: [forlornly] I know… I know…

Someone once remarked to me that the crises in people’s lives always seem to strike in one of three places:

  1. At the start of Winter, when the horrible realization sets in, that one is going to be cooped up with negligible natural light for the next three months, wearing heavy clothes and waiting for the next cold virus to come along.
  2. At the end of Winter when the horrible revelation strikes, that one has been cooped up with negligible natural light for the last three months, wearing heavy clothes and waiting for the next cold virus to come along.
  3. At Christmas, when it starts getting too hot to sleep at night, and light well into prime-time.

The thing that troubles me today though is: how do I tell when the problem is ‘real’? Talk to enough psychologists for long enough and it becomes clear that everyone is in denial about something. We’re all hiding from one truth or another, even if it’s just acknowledging the need to trim your toenails. That being the case, who am I to say “I’m miserable for no reason”? How can I really know? Sure, sometimes discontent is obvious: if your dog just died, it is probably premature to diagnose ‘chronic depression’. If the answer isn’t obvious though, how can you be sure you’re not just hiding it from yourself?

Then again, inventing reasons to fear the unknown and unknowable is also referred to as ‘paranoia’. Very few people living in this brave new millenium need any more of that in their lives…