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Fri, 09 Jul 2010

Strategies for creating drain

File under: self-indulgent whining

I wrote a bit ago about joy minus drain. This morning, a friend put me through something that created a lot of drain.

He and I aren't going to see each other for a while. So in the morning, he arrived and was enthusiastic to hang out with me. Knowing how much I like the Smitten Kitchen lemon ricotta pancakes, he asks, "Can you find a recipe for blueberry ricotta pancakes?"

I find that recipe and print out a copy. (Actually two, by mistake. But that's okay.) I head toward the kitchen and, feeling more enthusiastic about the day, start working on the big pile of dishes that I left from last night. As I do that, he cooks. Showing forethought, he already has ricotta cheese to use for the recipe.

As usual (probably this isn't a good trait), I keep an eye on his cooking. Things seem to be going fine; he even successfully split the egg yolk from the whites! I do more dishes, and we talk about what we might do in this last day we'll see each other for a while.

I look back at his bowls, and I notice a few flecks of egg yolk in the whites. I sigh, knowing what he does not: you can't beat egg whites into stiff peaks if there's even a drop of yolk in them. I explain this to him, and he thinks it will be okay. They just won't be super stiff peaks.

There's something already draining about this. Something of a let-down. I guess I'd rather not be around to see this sort of imperfection during the process, even if the result will be good, because for the rest of the cooking period I'll be wondering if the result would be better if I had just done it. And you probably thought I wasn't a perfectionist.

But that's not the important bit. A moment later, he gets a phone call. During that period, I stretch out and relax on the couch. I figure we can get back to our work in the kitchen when we're together. After the phone call, I learn that he was scheduled to have lunch with a mutual friend at noon at Magic Carpet.

It's 11:45, and the Magic Carpet truck is a 20 minute walk away. The only sensible thing to do, if he's to have any chance of keeping his lunch plans, is to drop everything and run out the door.

Ugh. Utterly lame.

Any of the following thoughts might have popped into my head.

As a consolation prize, he invites me! And I accept. And we hurry and put the pancake batter away in the fridge. He needs to bike there to make the time, and not having a bike, asks if he can borrow mine. Blake (who happens to be visiting) and I take a few minutes to get ready. After a few blocks, I reflect.

I'm hungry, and I don't even know what I want to get done today. Is hanging out at Magic Carpet with our mutual friend really the top thing on my list? I don't know, and I'm hungry. So I went home. Blake went on, which was fine with me, and presumably joined them at Magic Carpet. It is a tasty place, and it's on his way to a train station back to Swarthmore.

If I want to be in the business of patching over other people's failure to plan, I guess I could make a checklist of things to make sure.

Well, there it is. I'll try to use it going forward as a drain-avoidance tactic.

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Fri, 28 May 2010

Joy minus Drain

Start by picturing someone you know.

When you spend time with this person, how much joy do you get? It's okay to include sarcastic jokes, dreamy smiles, sharp political discussions, useful shopping advice, or drunken stupors in this figure. Do you and your friend share a sense of humor? Do you feel good about yourself by hanging out with this person? You can include anything that gives you a sense of fulfillment. Usually you feel this joy when you're actually spending time with the person.

Next, add up all the ways this person drains energy from you. Does she show up randomly late in a way that makes planning hard? Does he tell you sad stories that drain you past the point of sympathy and into boredom? Do your personalities clash, leaving you both frustrated and unable to understand each other?

Now, subtract: Joy - Drain. If this figure is negative, you're probably better off if you don't spend a lot of time with this person. (If the drain comes from the person's flakiness, there are some useful mitigation strategies: Simply tell the person where you'll be within a time range, and if the person shows up, great. Also, just stop believing the person when he says he'll be there.)

High joy, low drain people are a blessing. A relief. Treasure them.

There are some more interesting cases. Low joy, low drain people are probably safe to keep around. High joy, high drain people? Oh boy. It's probably okay to keep them, but it's probably also smart to balance them out with other high-joy people. (Relying too much on the high-joy, high-drain people might make your own happiness turbulent. For that reason, it recently occurred to me that it might be bad news to date such people.)

P.S. While it's sensible to order your own friends this way, it's probably low-joy, high-drain to imagine your friends calculating these functions on you.

P.P.S. This concept started out as "Joy - Effort," where Effort primarily represented the work needed to successfully arrange a meeting time with the person. Chris came up with the idea of generalizing it.

P.P.P.S. So long as I'm on firm emotional footing (like I seem to be generally this year), I want my friends to tell me how I cause drain so I can try to improve.

P.P.P.P.S. Maybe this "Joy - Drain" calculus is obvious to most people. I discovered it in mid-2008 when I was feeling weighed down. Before then, I didn't express a whole lot of intentionality on who I spent time with; a surfeit of high-drain people that summer made that necessary.

P.P.P.P.P.S. It might be productive to apply this to countries/cities/neighborhoods to live in, jobs to keep or quit, or companies to do business with.

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Sun, 02 May 2010

Nimoy Sunset Pie

Says Rubin:

As much as he sees it as a hobby,
I see it as a mental problem.

about Nimoy Sunset Pie.

(Don't make version control tools, kids.)

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Sat, 02 Jan 2010

So are we

Asheesh: "I got that Orangina poster on the French exchange in 2001. Some of my things are from a while ago, at this point."

Rebekah: "So are we."

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Thu, 24 Sep 2009

"Surrounded"

Spontaneous pneumothorax, pneumomediastinum, and pneumopericardium in a 16-year-old drug-abusing motorcyclist surrounded by a pack of coyotes.

Read more on Pubmed.

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Sat, 07 Mar 2009

That LJ post about Watchmen - Yeah, it sucked

My friend Lisa pointed me to Andrei's review of Watchmen.

The review begins with surprises. In the edited version that is online now, we learn watching the movie caused "the destruction of all of [Andrei's] hopes and dreams." That's a sizable investment for a movie based on a comic book. Furthermore, he writes on his LiveJournal post that he felt "punished with awkward sex and slow-mo violence." One would think that a LJer would be pleased with both of those!

Andrei asks, "Is producing copious amounts of blood the only way to generate a dark mood?" This must be a rhetorical question; any LJer worth his salt knows that changing the theme and typing in all lowercase can do that, too. (In fairness, Lisa points out that this is difficult to achieve in a movie.)

Lisa mentions that a previous version of the post called people who like the movie "sheep." It's good that Andrei does not call them goats, else he raise the ire of Frank the Goat, LiveJournal's beloved mascot. Presumably Frank's global fanbase would have risen up in anger, too. (Frank the Goat has previously written about his ambivalence about not being a sheep.)

There are many things in this review I would not have said. Despite the temptation, I would especially not have shared this utterance with my new friend Quinn, the first person I know to have seen the movie: "Comedian bad, but torn and damaged individual."

The story of Andrei's post is a case study in dramatic irony. He writes of the voice acting, "We got the same crap Bale did in Batman where he thinks making your voice gravelly gives it more gravitas. No, it doesn't." It seems that Andrei thinks calling your friends sheep gives your voice more gravitas. As his friends teach him in the comment section: No, it doesn't.

At least Andrei's user picture (unmodified from original) does elicit the appropriate sense of gravitas.


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Sun, 15 Feb 2009

Ani in Noisebridge (at twenty five to five)

Ani: "Can I have my cock back?"

a pause.

Ani: "The one you're holding."

a pause.

Steen: "You threw it up here; it disappeared. We don't know where it went."


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Thu, 08 Jan 2009

"How to have a great time," by Kat Walsh

A sweet girl named Kat Walsh wrote me an email after I wrote about Debconf. Perhaps unbeknowst to her, she sent it on my birthday. Only a week before she emailed me, I had seen Kat at the Free Culture conference in Berkeley. That, too, was a great time; I helped organize it a little, but the bulk of the work was done by others. (My contribution was some tech and a lot of housing arrangements.)

Anyway, here is what she wrote. It happens that while she wrote it about herself, I find it completely applies to me. What a nice birthday present!

I liked seeing your debconf post. I've been trying to figure out where that joyous feeling comes from, how to get it, because I'm afraid of not knowing where to find it. So here's what I think is in common with thetimes where I've had a great time:

1. Feeling welcome/valued.

I've been to conferences where it felt like people were sticking to their cliques and I was an outsider and I didn't enjoy them at all. I've also been to conferences where I didn't know anyone when I got there and I left with new friends.

(And I should be better about my responsibility to bring others in this way when I do know people! But I see why people stick to cliques: it's both hard to venture outside the circle you're comfortable and hard to risk not spending time with the people you know you like to potentially have a bad time with someone new. Maybe that's only me.)

2. Feeling like I've accomplished something -- either alone or part of a group.

Giving a talk will usually do it. Being part of a project. Getting a suggestion and acting on it. Solving a problem. Even something as simple as introducing two people who need to know each other. But if something like this doesn't happen it feels like a bit of a fun waste of time.

3. Being around people who are better than me and full of joy themselves.

It's easier to be what I most want myself to be when I am around people who are already closer to it! People who are kinder, smarter, more productive, more inspired, more generous, more driven make me rise closer to that, like myself better, and have a better time.

4. Continuous activity

Every moment being filled well -- either the gathering itself or outside activities. Or a needed rest! But no long stretches of time where I'm wishing I were doing something better or thinking I could have better spent the time at home.

Kat is the kind of person who still, after decades of being around other human beings, still takes thoughts like this seriously:

it's both hard to venture outside the circle you're comfortable and hard to risk not spending time with the people you know you like to potentially have a bad time with someone new. Maybe that's only me.

No, Kat, it's all of us!

Anyway, conference organizers can succeed overwhemlingly when they provide for "4. Continuous activity" well. I think the rest has to be up to the participants.

A serious analysis of these criteria would reveal that they're pretty much true of all of life.


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Trisk

I now know why Albert Lee uses the nickname Trisk. I have learned his secret identity.

Steve Jobs died in a car wreck in 1988. The current "Steve Jobs" is San Jose session musician, Roland Trisk. Trisk, who often doubled for Steve Jobs before his death in sales meetings and conferences, had plastic surgery in order closely resemble Jobs. There are hints everywhere-in the enclosure of the Mac LCII, the first NeXT CUBE, even Pixar's first full-length film, Toy Story. Wake up people! The truth is out there!

Thank you, Gizzmonic on Slashdot.

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Thu, 30 Oct 2008

Renaissance Faires and :D

Lisa and I were recently discussing both Renaissance Faires and people who make smiles like :D.

For everyone, take a look at http://farmerchris.com/illusion/2/.

Make sure your mouse is not over the picture, so it is in black and white. Then move the mouse over it, and look at the dot toward the center. After a few seconds, move the mouse off the picture.

It's now in beautiful positive color!

More information at John Sadowski's original post.

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