Archive for the ‘My baseline’ Category

My baseline, part 10: Happiness

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

Current Status:

Am I happy?

Like with many non-rhetorical questions, the answer is not simple. I could say “yes” and I wouldn’t exactly be lying… but nor would I if I answered “no”.

A common temptation when asked this question is to evaluate how good your life is, to add the good parts and subtract the bad parts, and to answer according to that. However, that is not the reply to the actual question; after all, I wasn’t asked how good my life was, was I? My happiness is certainly affected by my life, but, in fact, it’s inside me. I’m sure that there are many people with much better lives who are completely miserable, and there are also people who you might think have reasons to be suicidal, and yet are as happy as one can be.

You’ll note that I have so far avoiding answering my own question. :) But, tackling it now…

… No. Not really.

I’m not miserable, depressed or actually sad. I smile and laugh a lot each day, look forward to many things either in the immediate future or in a more distant one, and love to be alive. Yes, there are times when the simultaneous problems become too much for me to handle and I “panic”, but that doesn’t tend to last long (though girlfriends have suffered in the past for being close to me at those times…).

But I don’t have a lot of what I want, have a lot of problems I don’t want, and I’m disappointed in general with my life right now. I keep thinking to myself: it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not at my current age. I had always imagined me in a completely different situation: living with the love of my life, a kid or two, no money problems, perhaps my own business, and working at home (possibly in a much nicer place than the one I live in). Instead, I look at my life and, while the story is far from over yet, I see distinct signs of what can honestly only be called “failure”. And, no, I’m not blaming anyone (even “bad luck”) but myself. For details, see the entire “my baseline” series.

Now, by solving the problems and achieving the goals described in the rest of the series, I will certainly be a lot happier. Not because of material gains or “status” (I don’t really care about the latter, in fact), but because I will not be disappointed with myself. And I guess that’s the most important thing.

Still, it’s possible that I will also (above and beyond the call of duty, so to speak) have to revise my idea of “happiness”. Time will tell…

Goals:

If you guessed “to be happy”, give the man (or woman) a cigar. :)

Posted in Happiness, My baseline | 2 Comments »

My baseline, part 9: Spirituality

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Being an atheist (quick! run!) and a skeptic, I had hesitated about writing a part of my baseline called “spirituality”; later, after I decided to do it, I thought I’d simply write a short post about using the term to mean “awe of the universe and life”, with no supernatural connotations.

However, today at lunch I finished Steve Pavlina’s book, “Personal Development for Smart People”, and its final chapter is about spirituality. And I liked his definition of it: your beliefs about how the universe works and about your purpose/role in life. From that, I can proceed.

Current Status:

As I said in the beginning (what, you haven’t run away yet?), I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in any god or gods, or in anything supernatural; not out of any “dogmatic materialistic belief”, but simply because I, like Carl Sagan, believe “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. If you tell me you have a dog at home, I’ll believe you without evidence, but if you tell me you have a dragon at home, I’ll demand evidence; in the absence of it I’ll think you’re either lying or crazy. And no supernatural “event” has ever had any more evidence than “so and so saw” or “so and so wrote”, which amount to mere hearsay, even if it happens to have been written millennia ago. I’m not closed-minded; it’s just that, to paraphrase Sam Harris, my beliefs scale with the available evidence. If there’s none, there’s no belief – always keeping an open mind to any evidence in the future, of course. But so far there has been none.

Contrarily to what many believers claim about atheists, my life isn’t depressive, hopeless, grey or nihilistic; not believing in an eternal soul or an afterlife makes my life more precious, not less.

But talking about my beliefs, or promoting atheism, reason and skepticism, isn’t the purpose of this blog. All of the above only had two points: to show how my atheism isn’t a “problem”, isn’t making me unhappy, or limiting my personal growth; and to allow me to talk about “spirituality” without having my readers think I’m a “true believer” or a new age mystic. I’m not either.

To me, the universe is a fascinating, mostly unknown (but not unknowable) place. Being alive and allowed to learn, to discover, to develop your knowledge, to find out how things work is exhilarating. Unlike some (the kind who complained about Newton “unweaving the rainbow”), I don’t make a virtue of not knowing, but I look at that as the beginning of a trip, with the anticipation and the excitement of so many new things to experience and learn ahead. A mystic will either claim (permanent) perfect ignorance or perfect knowledge; I, on the other hand, treat lack of knowledge as the beginning of a new adventure. And in this respect I couldn’t ask for more.

As for my purpose in life… I don’t know.

Really. And I admit it readily, without shame or embarrassment.

I don’t think it’s unknowable to me, though. I believe it’s something I’ll find out eventually. In fact, I expect this blog to help me in that respect (as with many others).

Goals:

To discover / determine my “purpose in life”, and realize – or make sure – that it’s a good one.

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My baseline, part 8: Friends

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Current Status:

Not the worst of times, but certainly also not the best.

I was never good at making friends. You already know about my personality-crippling shyness, but that’s not the whole story. One other cause is my geekiness, and my unusual hobbies, passions and tastes. What do you do when everyone around you wants to talk about soccer, and you don’t find it interesting in the least? Pretend? (I actually considered going down that path for a while in my teens, but, fortunately, honesty and integrity won out.) In fact, it was not until I went online, first by connecting to bulletin board systems and later to the Internet itself, that I discovered that there were other people in the world – and sometimes even in my town – who liked some things I like. Friendships usually (but not always) grow from common interests, so you can guess that not having any of those with virtually everyone you meet throws a wrench in the whole thing.

Another problem – and this one is wholly my own fault – is that friendships, like any relationship, need to be nurtured, or they will wither down and eventually die. And here I have to admit another big fault of mine: both because of selfishness and because of my area of work – computers –, where things are done for a specific reason, I’ve almost never called people “just to say hi”. Such a thing is simply not logical to me, doesn’t make sense… and yet now I realize that that’s a big part of maintaining friendships. I usually only start a conversation when I want or need something from the other person; that’s the “selfishness” part I mentioned. And, naturally, nobody ever likes to have a “friend” who only calls when he wants something from them. A possibly mitigating circumstance is that, in a way, this is really a part of my personality: when I want or need something, I ask, and I expect to be asked when someone wants or needs something. In my mind, not talking to someone every day, or every week, or even every month, doesn’t make me less of a friend, and it doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t do everything in my power to help that friend of mine if he or she came to me with a problem… but, as I said, this is just my “weirdness”; relationships do need nurturing, and this is something I’ve recently tried to teach myself. It hasn’t been easy, but I hope to improve.

Yet another source of trouble is that I haven’t made any male friends in many years. Considering that most of them drifted apart from me – and it wasn’t my fault in every case; some people really do change for the worse with time, and there’s little or nothing you can do about that –, I guess I don’t really have any close friends of my own gender right now. This is not necessarily a big problem, on one hand; I do find women, even when there is no sexual interest, much more fascinating and interesting, so it’s natural that most of my friends these days are of the opposite sex. But it may also signify a problem, one I’ve noted and commented with (female) friends from time to time: that virtually all of my friendships have something to do with sexual attraction. It was just a couple of months ago that I was looking at my MSN Messenger contact list, and I could really divide most of it it into: ex-girlfriends, girls I’ve had sex with, girls I’d like to have sex with (or even something more), and, well, that part was it. (Of course, there’s also family, a couple of (former?) male friends, co-workers, former co-workers, and all that, but the other part of the contact list does make up the majority of it.)

In fact, only very recently did I have a couple of experiences that were virtually new to me: spending time with female friends without any attempts at sex (not that I’d have minded :) , but there really were no attempts, even verbal or indirect ones), and, most surprising of all… I enjoyed it. A lot. Yes, what is more than natural to most people was an almost new, and very pleasant, experience for me. Hope for me yet…

Goals:

To make new friends and nurture the friendships I have – though the latter part may not feel natural at first, it is the right thing to do. And to separate the concepts of “female friends” and “sex”. Friends are great, and sex is also great, but one doesn’t require the other for it to be great. :)

Posted in Family and Friends, My baseline | 5 Comments »

My baseline, part 7: Family

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Current Status:

I don’t think there’s much to write here; not because of lack of relevance, but because this is actually one of the most stable, and healthy, parts of my life.

It wasn’t always so, though.

My mother… I’d rather not speak much of her here. Suffice to say that these days I see her about once a year, that she made my childhood and teenage years almost a living hell, and that I have to thank her, in a way, for many sad and unpleasant lessons. One hint: if you think that a mother automatically loves her children, that it’s unavoidable, that she would never hate and envy them for their happiness, I’m sorry to say, but you’re living in a fairy tale world.

But that’s all in the past (though I won’t claim not to be affected by it to this day, and quite possibly to the day I die).

My father, though, is a great guy, and I’m proud of having him as a father. Again, that wasn’t always so; until the end of my teen years, it was as if he was a different person. Cold, distant, authoritarian, and never satisfied with anything I ever did (even though I was, in many ways, the son most people would love to have… at least at the time). Age, or life, changed him for the better, and, again, I wouldn’t exchange him for anyone else.

My brothers and sister are also great people, and I love them all. I like to think it’s reciprocated. :) The oldest of them (still two years younger than me, though) has also helped me a lot in the past, more than you can imagine, and I owe him a lot – and, yes, that also includes money, but it’s not limited to that.

As for the more distant family, except for my uncle and aunt, they’re mostly “far away”; most of them I don’t see at all, or see every couple of years or so. I can’t miss them, because they’re not close enough for me to miss. I’m not complaining here; it’s just the way things are.

Anyway, I don’t think I have real “family problems”. The ones close to me are supportive in every way, whenever I need them, and I love spending holidays with them, for instance. If there’s one problem here, is that I feel that I don’t reciprocate enough; that they do more for me than I do for them. I also don’t know if they know how much I appreciate all that they do.

Goals:

To let them know the above, of course. And to reciprocate all the help they’ve given me for years. Also, I should spend more time with them; this is, in a way, hard for me, because I hate feeling like a “parasite”, and whenever I’m with them they feed me and all that. I don’t have money to do things like invite them to lunch and pay for it, so I always feel that I’m “abusing” their generosity, even though, of course, they tell me that that’s nonsense. Still, having more money should allow me to not feel like a parasite anymore; besides, they’d love to see me without money problems.

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My baseline, part 6.3: Relationships (part 3)

Monday, March 9th, 2009

(continued from part 6.2)

When last we left our hero, he had just admitted – a realization less than a week old – that he had unconsciously sabotaged every serious relationship he’s been in – not counting the ones he didn’t even allow to start – for the past 10 years. Can our hero defeat the twirling moustached villain and rescue the princess, living happily ever after? Or will he fall prey to the curse from the wicked fairy… again?

Ahem. Sorry about that, but I have to insert some (attempt at) humor here, to prevent this series of posts from getting too depressing. The previous one’s ending was bad enough.

Anyway, ancient history: check, and realization-that-I’ve-ruined-my-own-shots-at-happiness-for-10-years-not-to-mention-having-made-other-people-suffer: check. Where does that leave me?

In the here and now, I guess. I still don’t know exactly what I want from life, but being alone is certainly “not it”. I have nothing against open relationships or polyamorous relationships as a choice, but I don’t think I’d want them for myself, at least at this point in my life. Being “wild and free” has its attractions, certainly, but perhaps I’ve been there too long… I don’t know; it’s not that that has brought me a lot of real friends… or a lot of sex, for the past few years.

Yes, sex matters to me. A lot. I love it, and want more and more of it. Many people would be ashamed of admitting this, even with it being absolutely true for them, but I’m not. I don’t see anything dirty or “sinful” about sex, and loving it and wanting a lot of it (whether with multiple partners or not) doesn’t make one “superficial”, “dirty” (again), “of dubious morals”, “of low standards”, “a whore”, “a sex maniac”, or any other idiotic descriptions. Yes, this applies to women as well – and it’s a pity that society is still so prejudiced about sexuality, and that so many people still think having consensual sex without it leading into a full relationship “diminishes” them in some way. I love sex, and I’m not ashamed to say so, or to admit that I think about it a lot, and that I think about “getting laid”, and act on it, without having any problem with the concept. (Incidentally, what I don’t do in order to “get laid” is lie to people, or deceive them in any way. That’s just wrong; sex under false premises is almost non-consensual, in fact.)

Unlike many, I fully separate sex from feelings, and, again, I’m not ashamed to say so (unlike so many people who claim – truthfully or not – that sex, to them, “must be part of something special”… as if sex by itself was worthless, insignificant. Sigh…) That means, however, that having sex doesn’t fulfill my emotional needs. And I do have them.

And this means that I miss having someone “special” in my life. Of course, there are some potential problems here. One of them is that it’s not easy; I’m shy, with somewhat peculiar tastes and knowledge, and I’ve gone way past the age where it’s easy to meet new people of the opposite sex (meaning, studying somewhere). Working with computers, a male-infested field, makes things even worse. There are certain other methods of meeting new people, some of them online… but none are easy for someone like me.

Another potential source of trouble is that the fact that I realized and admitted what I’ve done for years doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m “cured” of it. I can look for signs of that in the future, and stop myself before it’s too late, of course, but one can never be 100% sure.

Still, the worse problem is perhaps this: that I still don’t know exactly what I want. It’s not necessarily a serious, monogamous relationship; one shouldn’t do something just because “everyone does it” and “it’s expected”. On the other hand, I still don’t know of a better alternative (for me), and that may well end up being my final choice. But I don’t know yet. And I don’t want to “experiment” using other people – with feelings – as guinea pigs.

Goals:

To find out what I want from the relationships part of my life, and to get it.

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My baseline, part 6.2: Relationships (part 2)

Monday, March 9th, 2009

(continued from part 6.1)

And what had changed? I’m no psychologist or psychiatrist, but, looking at my past actions dispassionately, I can theorize. What happened was this: the last couple of years in my “big” relationship were pretty bad for me; a side of me knew that I wasn’t really loved anymore, but I refused to admit it to myself (that wishful thinking thing again, mixed with a good old dose of sunk cost fallacy); even the sex itself (which is a very important thing to me) had gone down, both in quality and quantity. And yet, despite all odds, I was always faithful to her.

And it ended up pretty badly, as you know (from reading the previous part).

My guess, with the advantage of hindsight, is that all of the above unconsciously “taught” me something: that it’s not worth it to dedicate all of yourself to just one woman, to be faithful in every way to her, to love her above all things… that “romantic love” doesn’t really work. Note, I never thought this consciously; it was, I guess, simply an unconscious thing. I didn’t begin to think, say, that cheating on a girlfriend was perfectly acceptable, or that relationships are a waste of time, or that I should just look out for number one. Consciously, none of that happened.

Unconsciously, however… and this is a recent realization, which was one of the hardest things in my life to accept… I began to sabotage my relationships.

Looking at it now, there were many times when I was in great, healthy relationships with someone I loved, relationships that made me happy and fulfilled… and, yet, as time passed, I always met someone I was “curious” about. That someone might have been less interesting and less attractive than my current girlfriend, might not even be available or interested in me… but the curiosity was there.

And, since cheating on a relationship was basically anathema to me (though I can’t claim to having never done it…), apparently my unconscious self found a “solution”: ruin the current relationship. Sabotage it. Make problems up, invent causes of stress, create arguments, increasingly worse, until the inevitable “let’s give it some time/space” or “this isn’t working” or “we’re much better off as just good friends”.

Only now do I realize that I’ve done this for the past ten years. There wasn’t a single relationship I didn’t unconsciously “destroy”, just because I was curious about someone else… or perhaps, in some cases, because of a simple, calculating (though unconscious) “what if I can do better?” The worst time, usually, was when I met her (female) friends; that always gave me a feeling of “whoa! there’s all of this out there?”

And not only is this the reason I’m alone now, but it also makes me feel like a really horrible, despicable person, worthy of contempt. A part of me wonders if I deserve to be alone.

(to be continued in part 6.3)

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My baseline, part 6.1: Relationships (part 1)

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Current Status:

Ahem… do I have to?

Oh, right. I promised I’d be fully honest. Even here.

So… where to start?

A little “ancient history” to begin with. Due to the shyness and lack of self-confidence I’ve mentioned before, it was very late in my life that I’ve had any “contact” with the opposite sex. Not out of lack of interest on my part, but because I was simply terrified of it – and by “it” I don’t mean just sex or physical contact (actually, despite my complete lack of experience, that part wasn’t that scary… much the opposite), but everything that had to do with those incredibly weird but also incredibly fascinating creatures commonly called “girls”. Oh, and besides the lack of self-confidence and social skills, I also had absolutely no sense of style or fashion. Not that I’m much better now :) , but at least I have some (basic) sense of it now; these days it’s mostly a question of laziness and lack of money, instead of “whaddya mean this doesn’t look incredibly cool and stylish?”, or even “you mean… appearance is important?!?”.

Anyway, this is why, even though I was interested in girls at 11, my first kiss was at 18. Go on, laugh. :)

Between 18 and 21, I had a few “actual” relationships (without sex, though – I think I tended to attract people who were as inexperienced as myself, so there was always no hurry, not to mention a little apprehension), which felt to like the most important things in the world at the time, but which, looking at them now, were no more than “children playing”.

And then there was the “big one”. I won’t give any real details here, as I promised I would respect the privacy of everyone in my life except my very self, but let’s say it was a 5-year relationship with “meeting parents”, “plans for the future”, living together for almost a year, marriage, and… divorce. That’s what happens when you get married and the relationship with the “bride” is already in its death throes, kids. Don’t try this at home… or anywhere else.

After my divorce, I went through a couple of years when I was sexually available – and active, in fact –, but emotionally “dead”… or, more precisely, “occupied”, as I still loved my ex-wife and harbored hopes – naïve, of course – of reconciliation. Eventually (and painfully) I opened my eyes to reality – this was, incidentally, the time when I read Douglas Adams’ “The Salmon of Doubt” and Ayn Rand’s novels, and saw wishful thinking for the cancer that it is. Wishful thinking weighs you down, prevents your life from evolving, and is a hideous, cowardly denial of reality.

But I digress.

Anyway, the acceptance of reality as it was, instead of as how I wished it to be (or dreamed it was) was the major step to being emotionally free, and complete, and able to feel and love again. However…

… and this was something I didn’t realize at the time, or even until recently….

… something in me had changed.

(to be continued in part 6.2)

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My baseline, part 5: Habits

Friday, March 6th, 2009

Current Status:

Could certainly be worse, but there is a huge room for improvement.

Like many parts of my life, my habits are chaotic, though there is a kind of pattern to them. There is no scheduling, no timetable, no planning in my life; all my attempts in the past to organize my time have met with failure. I can plan my time ahead “informally” (say, work these hours, then lunch with that person at that time, then work a few more hours, then have dinner, then…), but I have never been able to plan work. I know the theory, but I have never been successful in implementing it. This probably makes me more inefficient than I imagine.

I have a huge curiosity, and love learning. Both of those traits are great, but not when I’m late for something and “I just have to read this first” (e.g. a Wikipedia article, a TVTropes page, and a link I follow from that, and…). Almost every time I’m late to meet someone is because I found something fascinating five minutes before the time I should be leaving home.

I love to drink alcohol and to be slightly “tipsy”, as I mentioned before, and this too can easily become a habit that’s hard to break. Not in the sense of “I really need a drink” alcoholism, but in the sense that, for instance, wine is associated in my mind with the concept of “a decent meal”, vodka and gin with “going out”, and even singing in Rock Band becomes easier, more natural and more fun after a few drinks. Not to mention, of course, social situations: they become so incredibly more natural with some alcohol inside of me, that I almost feel like a robot if I have to go through one completely sober. In short, “fun”, to me, is associated with, and virtually requires, the ingestion of booze. Especial the “social” kind of fun. This is, of course, not a good thing, and can even lead to something much worse: the dreaded “A” word.

I have a lot of trouble getting up early (as in before 9 AM), to the point that I don’t even attempt to do so anymore. I’m lucky (am I?) that my current job allows me to arrive in mid-morning (provided I leave later than most, of course), but this is a lack of discipline and “good habits” that should be dealt with.

I spend virtually zero time tidying up my home. If I didn’t have a housekeeper (one morning a week), you couldn’t probably even walk in there. Not only are cleaning up and tidying up among the most boring activities I can imagine, I’m also – as you probably know by now – lazy.

I have trouble not eating the whole contents of the plate when eating, even if I’m satisfied or even full already. This comes from the education I had as a child (“no getting up with food still on the plate”), which has instilled in me a dread about wasting food; this habit served me well when I was a kid, but nowadays it makes me eat too much most of the time.

I spend very little time with my pets, who certainly deserve a lot better.

One good thing: I have a better-than-average sense of hygiene. Not like an obsessive-compulsive, of course, but a little better than an average person. I really hate feeling dirty, and let’s say I have a very, very good sense of smell. :)

Goals:

To add some responsibility and maturity to my habits.

To become an early riser – including during the weekends. Not only does that make the days “longer”, but it’s a healthy habit that also improves self-discipline.

To reduce drinking – both in amounts, and in frequency. But, more importantly, to solve the underlying problem; that is, I need, no matter what, to be able to not only deal with social situations when perfectly sober, but also to thrive on them. This involves both dealing with my shyness, and becoming more accepting and open-minded about other people – even the ones who initially seem to be complete and utter morons. It will also involve a lot of practice, as for the last few years all of my experience in those situations was with the help of Mr. Wine. It will be, in a way, almost like a child leaving his mother’s wing, and dealing with the harsh world on his own.

My pets certainly deserve more attention; not only are they my responsibility, they’re also a part of the “family”.

And, of course, I need to do something about my home. Not all at once, of course (it would be physically impossible, anyway), but I should ensure that every week my home is more tidied up than the last. And this can’t be done without spending some time at it.

I must learn that not eating everything in front of me is not a “sin”. This will imply conscious effort, like when breaking any other bad habit.

Oh, and I need to start washing the dishes after every meal.  Really.

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My baseline, part 4: Money and Wealth

Friday, March 6th, 2009

(Since you may not be reading these posts in order, you may wonder why this post doesn’t focus on career, jobs and so on. That was, in fact, the subject of my previous post.)

Current Status:

Bad. Very bad. And the worst part? It’s all my fault. I have no one to blame but myself.

Even though I have a job, and earn a couple hundred extra euros each month from my websites, and even though I own my home, thanks to the generosity of my late maternal grandfather, which is extremely rare in Portugal for people under their forties (and perhaps fifties), I am still tens of thousands of euros in debt, both to credit companies and to my family (especially my brother and my father). In fact, earlier this week I had to borrow my father more than a thousand euros just to pay this month’s bills and debts… and that was after all my salary was gone for the same reason. While I am more grateful to my father than you can probably imagine, this also fills me with shame; shame because I should be in a much better situation at this time of my life, shame because the reason I’m not is that I’m impulsive, childish, and don’t think things through (not to mention several other reasons), and, perhaps most of all, shame of myself for being a burden to my family, even though I’ve left their home ten years ago.

Currently, the major cause of my permanent lack of money is a loan I took in 2006, when I left work to try to live from blogging and creating sites at home. Everyone at the time told me that I was crazy and that it would never work; that it simply couldn’t be done. They were right and wrong – right because I didn’t succeed (due to my laziness and other reasons I’ve mentioned), wrong because it could be done; just not by me, at that time. Or perhaps it was simply the wrong thing for me. Anyway, the result is that, for the past three years, and for at least two more, about half my salary goes to repaying that loan. It was stupid and impulsive of me; understandable in a way because my job at the time was getting unbearable, but an “adult me” (whom I expect to meet someday) would have simply moved to a more pleasant job, with less stress and more free time, so I could try out blogging and creating sites for money without getting myself into a ridiculous debt.

So now I pay — in every sense of the word — for that childishness.

Another problem I have is a peculiar form of consumerism. It’s not that I just have to “buy things”; however, I do love the sensation of having a “new toy” to play with; mostly video games, but also music CDs, books, movie DVDs, and so on. And for the past few years I’ve been buying them at a rate faster than I can “consume” them; my home is currently full of books I haven’t read, games I’ve only played for minutes, etc. (I haven’t bought music CDs for a while now, and, no, it’s not because I just download them, like most people in Portugal do; as to DVDs, they’re relatively quick to watch after I go to bed, so I don’t have a huge “backlog”).

Due to all of the above, I’m what you could call “penniless”. Oh, certainly, there are many people whose situation is a lot direr than mine; at least I have a roof of my own, and a family that helps me in emergencies. This is not a “poor little me” post, anyway. The point is that I’m inside a “hole”, and I need to climb out of it… which won’t be quick nor easy.

Goals:

Again, these should be obvious: end the “permanent emergency” I’ve been in for years, pay all my debts, and make my life more comfortable in that respect. This will mean some changes in my life, for certain; I need to cut expenses and find ways of earning more money than I currently do; whether that means a new job, or other sources of income, I don’t know yet.

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My baseline, part 3: Career and Work

Friday, March 6th, 2009

(Please note that this part is not about money; that’s the next one. While money is certainly related to, and a result of, one’s career and work, I think they’re actually two very distinct subjects, requiring different approaches.)

Current Status:

I have a job, as a systems administrator / programmer in a small company near Lisbon. The salary is not too bad (for Portugal, that is), but, of course, I wish it was better. The work isn’t usually very hard (though it can be immensely boring from time to time), and I even have something I love to have at work: some free time.

However, the work doesn’t fascinate me.

And, thinking back, I don’t think any work, any job, has ever done so.

Now, many people here would say that I’m “talking crazy”; that work is work, that a job is a job, it’s something you do for the money, and that’s all. You’re not supposed to enjoy it. You sacrifice 8-10 hours a day in exchange for money. Some, here, might even add that one is lucky to have any job, in today’s economy.

Of course, I don’t agree with that. It’s possible to love your work, to love the job you have. It’s possible to have your career and your main hobby coincide. It’s possible to get paid for something you’d gladly do for free, because you love it.

I just haven’t found what mine is yet. I’ve been fascinated with computers (and video games, but that’s another story) since I was a child, and I’ve found that I’ve always been able to intuitively learn a lot about them, even in the 8-bit days; therefore, that’s what I took in high school and college (I didn’t finish the latter; another long story), and that’s what I’ve worked in for all my life; mostly as a Linux sysadmin, but also in operations, programming, and even (eeek!) helpdesk. Since childhood, I always saw my going into computer stuff as a given – and nowadays, I wonder if that was a mistake.

I’ve tried something else, in 2006: blogging for money. The result? I can do it, but it’s not “fun”; it’s not something I love, either. Or, more precisely, there are things I love to write about, but they don’t give me any money; the ones that pay (e.g. blogging about gadgets, technology, and so on), don’t fascinate me enough to spontaneously write about them. It’s still “work”. And I’m too honest (and perhaps lazy) to write regularly about something just for the money.

Then again, maybe I really am one of those people to whom there is no “work that doesn’t feel like work”.

Bottom line: I don’t love my work, nor do I see, in front of me, another work I’d love. Now, granted, I haven’t tried most of them, and there may be something out there that I’d love so much that I’d do even without being paid for it… but I simply don’t see it.

Goals:

Mostly, to discover something I really love doing, while getting paid for it. It’s not computer stuff – at least the computer stuff I’ve tried so far. It must be something else.

Maybe the added clarity I hope to gain from this blog will help me find out.

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My baseline, part 2: Mind and Personality

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Current Status:

I’m not a bad person, regardless of what you might have heard. :) I’m bright, intelligent, cultured, with a good (if sometimes weird) sense of humor, and a good friend to my friends. I’m often the “voice of wisdom” when my friends are feeling down for some reason, and they appreciate me for it – or so I like to think. I’m intellectually curious, and love to constantly learn new things. Some may say I lack modesty, to which I reply: “yes, and…?”, as I, much like Sherlock Holmes, believe modesty not to be a virtue at all (“to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.”) I am, or at least try to be as much as I can, completely (and sometimes brutally) honest in all things. I also have a big (perhaps too big) sense of empathy, which can actually be harmful to me from time to time.

If the above seems conceited, I refer you to the aforementioned Sherlock Holmes quote. Besides, you haven’t heard the bad part yet. Honesty, after all, goes both ways.

The bad part is that I tend to be a coward. The most visible aspect of that is that I’m shy – as shy as you can imagine, if not more. I always tend to overanalyze things, to expect the worst, and to make up excuses for not even trying. This affects my relationships with other people the most, but also other parts of my life; it affects my self-confidence and my self-esteem. Because it’s so hard to overcome my fear and just try something, the rare times I manage to do so the fear is still visible, and I’m obviously not acting “naturally”. This affects many things in my life: looking at people in the eyes when talking to them, asking a woman on a date, talking naturally to people in a group, asking a boss for a raise, even going to a store to ask questions about a product. None of the above is natural to me, I make up all sorts of excuses to avoid doing them, and, when I do act, it feels (and looks) “artificial”. And it was even worse in the past; I’ve actually made progress in the past decade or so.

That cowardice is related to, and probably even one of the causes of, my second biggest fault: laziness. While I love solving problems, and have been known to stay up until the next morning solving a problem that fascinates me, or installing a new server at home, or playing a strategy videogame, I also tend to avoid most actual “work”, to avoid inconvenience and effort, to cut corners, and so on. This is why, for instance, I don’t have a university degree, and is one of the reasons bosses never “love” me, I’m never promoted, and never get a raise (here there are other reasons which are not my fault, one of them being my honesty; bosses love people who always look busy even if they have to pretend to be working, and I simply refuse to do that). This also makes me give my pets (cats and parrots) a lot less time than they deserve. :( And my home is, to put it bluntly, in chaos.

The combination of the above two have meant one thing: that I almost never see things to the end. This has harmed my life in myriad ways.

Those two are my main faults. Some minor ones include, for instance, the fact that I’m sometimes something of an elitist, but in a somewhat paradoxal way: on one hand, I tend to believe I’m smarter than most people, and on the other hand, I tend to expect everyone to be as capable as myself, and become surprised when told that they’re not. For instance, if I’m told someone is in danger of getting laid off, my first reaction is to ask, “why not learn new skills and get a better job?”, only to be told that, for many people, learning new skills is almost science fiction. This attitude of mine may appear snobbish to many people, when, to me, what I suggested is the most natural thing.

Oh, and I’m terribly impatient with incompetent, abusive drivers, which are the norm in Portugal, unfortunately. Few things can get me as furious as an idiot — who shouldn’t be allowed to drive a trycicle — putting my life, and those of any passengers in my car, in danger.

Goals:

In general, to become a better person. To overcome my stupid shyness, cowardice and laziness once and for all. To train my willpower to be able to do anything I want, to see it to the end, without quitting out of laziness or boredom. The fact that I will tell readers of this blog about what I’m doing, and what the results are, should act as an incentive for not giving up at the first obstacle.

Also, I should control my temper more, even though few things get me really mad. Unfortunately, they include something I have to face almost every day: Portuguese drivers. While I don’t think “tolerance” for potentially murderous attitudes is desirable, I should eventually prevent those morons from ruining my day.

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My baseline, part 1: Body and Health

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Current status:

I’m not actually an “unhealthy” person. I rarely get sick, and every part of my body works “as advertised”.

My diet, while far from ideal, would probably get me labeled as a “health nut” in many parts of the world: while I don’t take special care about what I eat (count calories, avoid this or that unhealthy food, and so on), I actually like (and often eat) salads, vegetables and “green stuff” in general (I often say that a meal without something green on the plate isn’t a real meal), fish, boiled food, etc.. I don’t add sugar to anything, nor am I addicted to salt. I almost never eat bread, cakes, or other sweets. I don’t currently have any addictions, I think, although there were times in the past (years ago) when I was addicted to caffeine.

I do have a problem, though: I drink alcohol often. I wouldn’t call myself an alcoholic, and I believe I’m being honest about that, at least by comparing myself to the normal characteristics of “real” alcoholics. I can perfectly choose not to drink, and don’t find myself “craving” it; in fact, I think I drink mostly for social reasons, because I’m usually very shy when sober (but that’s for another post in the future), than because “I really need a drink” or anything. Still, drinking wine at most meals – and not just a glass or two, either – can’t be healthy, or good for my waistline.

While I’m not unhealthy, I’m totally out of shape. I haven’t really exercised in years, so while I can, say, run fast, I get tired quickly. Even ascending a few flights of stairs can get me panting. Because of that, and also because I should certainly eat and drink less, I am “overweight”, both in weight and in body shape. I’m not really “fat”, and being tall helps, but I certainly don’t look athletic either.

For the record, I’m 1,79 m tall, and weigh 85 kg right now (see this post’s date). (If you don’t “speak” metric, see the FAQ.) According to this calculator, I have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 26.5, making me “overweight”.

Goals:

Naturally, to become (and look) healthy. This will surely involve paying more attention to what I eat and drink (including doing less of both), and finding a way to (gulp) do some regular exercise. The latter is a problem to me, because I get utterly and completely bored when I have to do something for a time that needs attention but doesn’t occupy my mind in any substantial way; in other words, if I’m doing nothing at all, my mind wanders and I don’t get bored, but if I have to keep paying attention to something, it’s mind-numbingly boring (much like travelling by bus: if I’m seated, it’s fine, but if there is no free seat and I have to stand, then I have to keep my balance, avoid other people, keep my wallet from pickpockets… and I “feel” every minute of the trip). Still, I have to find a way. Posting results here (including my weight) should help motivate me.

As for alcohol, I don’t intend to cut it down completely. Drinking, and enjoying its effects with similarly-drinking friends is no “sin”. What I do intend, though, is to stop drinking alone. That includes meals. Even in restaurants.

Concerning weight, I want to get my BMI to 25 or less, which means losing 5 kg or more. Not too hard, I expect, as long as I really change my habits.

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