No matter how many times I achieve what I want I will always be unsatisfied when I get it.
Do Not Let Your Spirit Wane – a relevant song.
And it's strange, all the things that I've run from
Are the things that completeness could come from
My dream self and I like the same things...
Drinking alone in my basement...
(not feeling like you deserve your life / smothering your guilt)
Do not let this thing you got go to waste...
It's here by some random ... grace...
(the absurdity of life's gifts)
Do not let this thing you got go to waste
Do not let your heart be dismayed
It's here by some random disclosure of grace
From some vascular, great thing
Let your life grow strong and sweet to the taste
Cause the odds are completely insane
Do not let your spirit wane
In love, I am careful to mostly reserved
And this dream is a life I don't think I deserve
Do not let this thing you got go to waste
Do not let your heart be dismayed
It's here by some random disclosure of grace
From some vascular, great thing
Get the fuck out of your head if it says
“Stay cold and be deathly afraid”
Do not let your spirit wane
My take: don't beat myself up for not deserving my life. For surviving where others haven't. For experiencing joy.
Apparently others also found this song meaningful: https://scottpoynton.squarespace.com/blog/2021/12/do-not-let-your-spirit-wane-a-philosophy-for-2022
The drive to self-destruct.
Surely someone has come up with this concept before.
Yes. Death drive a.k.a. Thanatos. Another link.
I've had a bit of it recently. Seems the healthier I get the more I want to wreck my health. The more secure my job gets the more I want to throw it away.
But I shouldn't feel like this so young, right?
Maybe I am getting a message from the universe. Your time is up. You've served your purpose. You're done.
Maybe I need to have a kid or something so that I can start some new purpose.
Maybe I need to get my friend Joao out of the favela and help him get somewhere to live.
Wrote this last night.
Quitting my addictions is forcing me to look plainly at myself, and I don’t like what I see.
I’m 23. I have a shitton of things I could be doing.
Yet how do I spend my days? Writing process documentation. Administrative work. Collecting my paycheck.
My big dream to make a business has petered out. I am making nothing new. My job responsibilities will only decrease with time. Or rather – the range of things I am uniquely good at, the things for which I’m the “best man for the job”, will only shrink.
I have always loved the thrill of being audacious. On the edge. Pushing myself.
I’m not hungry enough for it, though. I have a good life. Good food, nice apartment, sun, sex, affection, decent social circle, good gym and workout schedule. This all makes me comfortable and a little afraid of upsetting my balance.
If I had my addictions back, I could replace this sense of yearning. Alcohol is a substitute for a sense of adventure. Porn gave me a shortcut for feeling manly and strong. Gambling allowed me to fool myself into believing all forms of success are just chance.
But now?
I’m forced to look plainly at myself. I am not who I could be. I am doing and being less than I should.
Perhaps I ought to force a change. Change my environment. Surround myself with hard workers. Surround myself with the hungry.
I wonder if cutting out alcohol has made me more sensitive to emotions?
And more anxious? I know it dulls anxiety... perhaps I am having a natural reaction to sobriety?
Finished the Wicker Man. Great movie! Well acted. And not very scary after I studied it.
Watching the end scene now. His suffering is well acted. And the sound of the animals suffering too adds to the feeling.
He's a kind person. Watching him suffer makes me think of other innocent people who have suffered for equally horrid reasons. Because of their beliefs or the beliefs of those that kill them.
NEGAS!
Negas.
Negas.
Bolas.
On the top.
Of the howdy-dic-sey.
Leave the rubber tubers in the uber screws.
The source of mande is in the rafters.
Only the doomed would settle in ruins.
Reading the Elements of Style.
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
Will Strunk sounds cool. An opinionated guy.
“If you don’t know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!”
Rule 1: Use 's on all possessive nouns
- Charles's friend
- Burns's poems
- The mouse's cheese
Exceptions: -es, -is
“The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and ours have no apostrophe.”
“It’s a wise dog that scratches its own fleas.”
Rule 2: Use the Oxford comma
- red, white, and blue
- gold, copper, or silver
- he opened the letter, read it, and made a note of its contents.
Rule 3: Use commas for interruptions
- the best way to see a country, unless you are pressed for time, is to travel on foot.
If it's parenthetic – that is, if it could be put in brackets – then use a comma.
If it's parenthetic, that is, if it could be put in brackets, then use a comma.
If it's parenthetic (that is, if it could be put in brackets) then use a comma.
- The audience, which had at first been indifferent, became more and more interested.
- In 1769, when Napoleon was born, Corsica had but recently been acquired by France.
- Nether Stowey, where Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is a few miles from Bridgewater.
These are combinations of what could be separate statements:
- The audience was at first indifferent. Later it became more and more interested.
- Napoleon was born in 1769. At that time Corsica had but recently been acquired by France.
- Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner at Nether Stowey. Nether Stowey is a few miles from Bridgewater.
“Restrictive clauses, by contrast, are not parenthetic and are not set off by commas. Thus, “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
- People sitting in the rear couldn’t hear (restrictive)
- Uncle Bert, being slightly deaf, moved forward (non-restrictive)
- My cousin Bob is a talented harpist (restrictive)
- Our oldest daughter, Mary, sings (nonrestrictive)
God – it's kind of boring, huh?
I guess this is the kind of deliberate practice I need if I'm going to succeed in my creative work, though...
“I know where corruption of speech leads – and I'm not going there.”
It's time to work on my ability to say what I think. Unleashing my creative potential in the process.
On occasion, I have a strong desire to throw myself off the highest storey of my building.
To feel the thrill of my last moments.
To throw away the boredom of this life. Niggling pains and frustrations. Indifferences.
The Art of PostgreSQL – notes.
Opening quote:
“Data dominates. If you’ve chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming. — Rob Pike”
This book is all about writing less code by using SQL's full potential.
“Some might then say that SQL forces us to be good developers:
I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships. — Linus Torvalds”
Learning #1: You can import files from CSV using the psql \copy command.
This has quickly gotten difficult... but nice to know I am not being spoken to like an idiot.
“If you want to use stored procedures, please always write them in SQL, and only switch to PLpgSQL when necessary. If you want to be efficient, the default should be SQL.”
“Getting familiar with psql is a very good productivity enhancer, so my advice is to spend some quality time with the documentation of the tool and get used to it.”