elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Sunday, August 9th, 2020 07:28 pm
Yesterday's worship included a retelling of the Chinese parable of the farmer who responds to every event -- runaway horse, horse returns with a stallion, etc -- with "could be bad, could be good, too soon to tell." A 2009 column updated in 2019 retells it as well, as well as referencing Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." (See quotations)

For me, my depression is tied up in a great deal of needing to acknowledge reality. my childhood had a very distorted image of me and life held up to it, which made understanding the reality very challenging. It took a long time for me to have a moderated view of myself. Telling a balanced story for me is important to not trigger the criticism and perfectionism. Finding a way to tell compassionate stories is important to me.

The "could be bad, could be good, too soon to tell" refrain is a recognition of the ongoing-ness of life. Christine asked me a few days ago about regrets. I am tempted to regret going to graduate school in physics: what if i had followed my heart and not let a cynical and broken hearted atmospheric scientist keep me from something "environmental"? But my healing is so caught up with being pushed to darkness with my depression: would i have learned the inner lessons i needed as early on another route? I don't know.

Off to work
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Saturday, August 8th, 2020 07:08 pm
Ooof. So, i think i read comics all yesterday because i forgot to take my antidepressant. Today i braved the weather outside and ...wow, am i out of shape. Not only did i melt into a puddle (dew point was 75°F for the high 70s -low 80s temperatures. It wasn't hot but it was terribly muggy) but i think i exerted myself in a way i haven't in ages. In good news i managed to beat back some of the horrible overgrowth so i can get to the garden. But as i dug potatoes i found many with a milky rot, and i didn't find that many (admittedly, i probably didn't find them all because i was not well motivated). I've got a good growth of a new weed that might beat stilt grass. It's native, but i wonder how well we will get along:

Virginia buttonweed (Diodia virginiana) is one of the most difficult-to-control broadleaf weeds in turf. It commonly proliferates in poorly drained areas and can tolerate mowing heights as low as one-half inch. This deep-rooted perennial produces both above- and below-ground flowers. Its prolific seed production, extensive root system and ability to vegetatively reproduce make control extremely difficult.

http://www.tennesseeturfgrassweeds.org/Lists/Fact%20Sheets/Attachments/9/w147updated2015.pdf


And when i was running the wheeled string trimmer i caught some of the fencing and ripped a big hole.

So, i'm sort of bummed, but i can get to the garden now. I also found two of my sweet peppers fruits had rotted. I dunno: it's been wet. I think that the corner where i dug up the potatoes is a little more wet than other areas in the garden (oddly, because it's up hill, but i think it catches the run off.

Last night we watched "Hell or High Water" (2016, "neo-Western heist drama"). I'd seen the trailer some months ago and thought it looked good, but ... ambiguous. How dark would it get? How depressing? There are so many times that what i want from entertainment is comfort and diversion, and i couldn't tell how affecting this would be.

The good about the film: it's well crafted, and it's a story of the part of the United States left out the post 2008 recovery. I wanted to say that the movie presented the events as morally ambiguous, but that's not it. It's the portrayal of desperation in the face of other wrongs, of the layers and layers of wrongs. The film makes it clear with the opening scene graffiti: “3 TOURS IN IRAQ BUT NO BAILOUT FOR PEOPLE LIKE US.” I'm not sure i felt sympathy for anyone in particular, just a great sense of the layers of inequities. The film came out in 2016, at the very end of the Obama administration: i wonder about the sterotypes and wonder about the truth.

The bad? Well, the gendered and racial ruts are pretty deep. One character does things for his sons, and i turn over in my mind why it wasn't for his kids. I could go on with the spoilers.

I only went to one session at today's conference, where a woman talked about the power of storytelling. I split, with one part of me enthusiastic and celebrating: yes, reframe! Yes, shape your reality! And another part distrustful. There's such subtlety, a yes and no. Yes, i do think that some parts of one's lived experience are completely malleable to framing. I also don't believe all people are equally capable of reframing to the same extent.

I could be wrong about that. This research https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6095985/ indicates that one's susceptibility to someone else's frame is independent of cognitive style. But the ability to convince oneself of an alternative frame?

I want to believe i am frame-flexible, that i can reframe experiences to be enjoyable more than average. It's something, though, that comes from being raised in a household where my mother was unendingly critical and a perfectionist, along with incredibly anxious.

... ...

and then discussions were hard and there were tears and i just don't know but keeping one breath after another, one heart beat after another, and trust that some how i'll do more good than harm on this planet.
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Thursday, July 25th, 2019 05:48 am
In a recent New York Times "Smarter Living" column, [You’re Not Paying Attention, but You Really Should Be:
How to actually notice the world around you.
], the author relates advice from Rob Walker, author of “The Art of Noticing.”

Another of my favorite tactics Mr. Walker suggests: Record 10 metaphor-free observations about the world this week. This is deceptively simplistic: Who couldn’t look at 10 things this week and write them down? The trick is the no metaphors hook. You’re just noticing, not comparing, analyzing or referencing. You’re forced to slow down and truly contemplate the world around you, rather than passively breezing through it.


I'm not sure this is a practice i need, but i am curious. Metaphor only or also simile?

I stepped out in the pre-dawn air, following a barking Carrie Dog. She had been awakened by something -- I assume some vehicle coming or going along the dirt road across from our driveway. The air was cooler than inside, fresh, dry. Cassiopeia shone over the house, moonlight shimmered through the trees. It made me realize the hot months may be about half over (assuming September brings relief).


Which didn't seem that hard, although i suspect "fresh" was once upon a time a metaphor. The word began as Old English fersc ‘not salt, fit for drinking’, per the Apple dictionary, and the metaphorical use broadened its definition. Since the fifth definition begins with "(of the wind)" i don't think it's currently a metaphor.

pondering and practicing )

Must stop thinking about this.

I'm taking a class today on persuasion and have 3 points to ponder
1. When was the last time your mind was changed by an argument? It might not happen often, so have a think. How did the other person change your view?

2. How do you normally try to convince people to your way of thinking? On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is “never,” how often are you successful at this?

3. When was the last time you were sold something that you didn’t really need? Chances are, there were some psychological tactics at play—what made you buy?
my answers )
I have a suspicion that my mental processes are far more fluid and flexible than average, so i don't think what works for me is necessarily going to work for others.
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 08:07 am
It is entertaining that i get my cognitive science/psychology snippets from Harvard's Business School. Entertaining, and creepy, in that the folks who are studying how we think are the folks who want to make or save a buck.

I haven't read the paper yet, so i don't know how much evidence is behind "Human nature being what it is" (did research turn this up or is this just an assumption?) but this insight seems intriguing.

A new paper by Robyn A. LeBoeuf and Michael Norton begins, "Imagine that your computer suddenly crashes: the screen turns black, the power drains away, and you cannot bring it back to life. How might you determine the cause of this event?" Human nature being what it is, they continue, instinct is to pin the cause on something that equates with the outcome. If the result was a small outcome—losing an e-mail that was of no consequence—then we might attribute the crash to a lunch burrito leaking on the keyboard. But if the outcome had serious repercussions—a wedding invitation list lost permanently—then we decide the cause must have been a targeted computer virus. Furthermore, we ratchet up or down our response to the event based in part on where we assess blame. We tend to link cause with outcome because it prevents us from perceiving ourselves to be at the mercy of capricious and arbitrary forces: "What do you mean a leaky burrito ruined my wedding?" Understanding this reaction can help firms plan for the choices made by consumers after a product has failed them. Read "Consequence-Cause Matching: Looking to the Consequences of Events to Infer Their Causes."


By the way, are we assuming this is a laptop that you've drooled your burrito on? Because a hacker isn't going to do anything that drains the power away. Bad power supply is more like it. Or, fan died and you've overheated. (Have a colleague who, when his disk was encrypted, his computer started crashing, and just putting an external fan system under the laptop stopped the crashing.)