Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

And... It's June
June 01, 2009

<a href=“http://www.flickr.com/photos/94632485@N00/3584666692"class="right">A quick update on the weekend’s shenanigans – Berta and Abby went camping with the Girl Scouts over Friday night, so Riley and I had a boy’s night out.

I picked up Riley from school early, and we headed to the movie theater to see Up. It was good. The movie is about a guy named Carl who meets a girl, falls in love and makes a promise, and the promise becomes an adventure; one that drags along an unsuspecting Wilderness Explorer named Russel. It’s a good movie, in the traditional Pixar style. Much better than Wall-E. The beginning of the movie is very sad.

Principle #6 - Zero Is Bad
May 28, 2009

I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s “Work Should Feel Wrong” entry, one of a series on my personal principles, that today’s principle is the hardest of the bunch to describe.

Roll the clock back to my college years (hey, it's not that far...) and visit one of my Calculus study sessions with Brian. For whatever reason, Brian always went to class and needed help with the homework, and I never went to class and helped him with his homework. Be that as it may, it was during one of these sessions that we discovered this principle - more of an axiom - about the number zero and it's strange properties.

Principle #5 - Work Should Feel Wrong
May 27, 2009

By now you should know that I've been posting a list of personal principles for the past few days. Yesterday's was about moving forward every day. Today's is about getting the most out of work.

I remember growing up always being encouraged by my parents to reach for the stars. There wasn't anything they discouraged me from when thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up.

It started at an early age, when I wanted to be an astronaut. Now before you laugh, I put some actual planning into this. I had a kind of path to my goal sorted out -- I would enter the Air Force Academy to be an aeronautical engineer, become a pilot, and eventually fly the space shuttle. All of this came to a crashing halt when, in preparation for my future years of touring the stars, I took a drafting class in high school and found myself in a remedial math class on fractions for the vo-tech crowd.

There's nothing wrong with vo-tech, and nothing wrong with remedial math, but when I was taking Advanced Placement Honors Calculus at the time, remedial fractions broke my delusions of getting ahead in aeronautics in high school. Nonetheless, my parents were still encouraging.

Principle #4 - Move Forward Every Day
May 26, 2009

I took a break yesterday from the principles to play some Rock Band 2. I hope you did something to rest yourself, too. But today continues from Sunday's revelation of the Tetris Principle on to "Move Forward Every Day."

If you come by here or read the site's feed often at all, you'll notice that I complain a lot about not having any time to get anything done. I assume that this is a characteristic that many creative people share, since there always seems to be at least one - usually more like 50 - big project that you're always talking about getting done, or simply looming out there, taunting you...

Sorry, I was just distracted by those three novels I want to write.

It's not a simple matter of budgeting time. There are plenty of systems that will help you do that. If you look at GTD, it even quantifies this particular rule pretty well with its "next action" idea. But that's still not the full picture, even if there's some implication of it there.

Principle #2 - Go Ahead and Be Picky
May 24, 2009

Today's entry is next in line of my personal principles, after yesterday's rule, "Give Love Freely". This principle starts with bananas.

A few years ago, I loathed bananas. Couldn't stand the smell, much less the taste. I don't know why, but that's just the way things fell out. But in discovering that I didn't like bananas, it turns out there were a lot of other foods that I don't like: Nuts. Strawberries. Soup. Watermelon. Anything flavored with lemon.

Wow. I'm really picky. What the heck, Owen, don't you like anything? Sure, I like stuff. In fact, I just don't like these things as much as I like other things. What I'm saying is that since I'm being given the choice, I'd rather not waste my time with things that I know I don't like, no matter what other people think of them.

This is much different from avoiding new things. In fact, it's almost the opposite, since I usually love trying new things. But if I've done something, there's got to be a really good reason for me to re-try it if I didn't like it in the first place. When given this world full of pleasures, why torture myself with things that other people insist I should like that I know I don't?