Cheerio, mate.

Herewith, a short list of things I’m expecting this summer to achieve this summer.

1. Write a short story.
2. Do math.
3. Launch erectlocution.com properly.
4. Read Dhalgren.
5. Draw.
6. Flesh out a cool business idea I have.
7. Listen.
8. Speak unequivocally.
9. Equivocate when it’s appropriate. I am imperfect.
10. Embrace health. My thinking rots without it.
11. Write.
12. Write.
13. Write.
14. Write.
15. Write.
16. Write.
17. Kiss. I have lots of kissworthy people in my life, though, of course, the kisses for which they’re worthy come in different styles and durations.

More later.

I’m nearing the end of two years comprised of managing a new house with lots of familial objects (i.e., The Wife and the Ranch-hands), while working full-time, and attending university part-time. The courseload has steadily increased, both in the amount of work to be done and its relative difficulty.

This scholastic year, for instance, I have struggled to find a relatively optimum time to work on mathematical proofs. Even at the undergraduate level, working on results that have long been known, this amounts to essays in logic more than numerical cookbookery. Their competent completion relies on a nice mix of logical vision, speedy recollection of the various axioms and their implications, and the on-deck brain performance to weave them into a cogent result.

It should be no surprise that 3:43 a.m. is not quite the sweet spot for such cogitation.

I have experimented with staying up, starting the work around 10:00 p.m., one advantage of which is that I’m already awake and chugging along. However, as the evening ages, I inevitably become more easily distracted, and each hour spent earns diminishing returns.

I have also experimented, in the last couple of months, with getting to bed earlier (like, 10:00) and waking up at 4:00 a.m. The angle here is to put fresher braintime against the problems. However, the warm-up time can be significant; and I’ve found my brain is quite capable of justifying lying down and waiting for the coffee to brew.

I am more eagerly awaiting the close of the next two weeks than I can recall ever having been. Quality is slipping, my retention is slipping, and my body is not defending itself particularly well from normal wear and tear. Sleeping has become more difficult therefrom, and this then requires more time spent doing the work. A vicious cycle.

I haven’t lost sight, though, of how fortunate I am to have this opportunity. I might prefer a few things to happen differently, but there are so many things conspiring toward serendipity that I can’t get too lost in the minutiae.

…except at 3:42 a.m.

Kind-hearted people perpetuate some notion of okayness, but despite their intentions, okayness is counterproductive. We either progress toward our goals or we don’t; an affirmational pat on the back almost surrogates our goal with validation, which is (arguably) far more vapid and less worth our time.

I can’t wait for summer.

I should’ve seen it coming, but I didn’t. Bill Mahr is a stand-up comic. I’m not one to buy wholesale into categorization as a reflection of essence, so I don’t think that means much. I gather, though, it does to Bill Mahr. It’s the likeliest explanation for 101 minutes of pedestrian comedy masquerading poorly as bad documentary.

I had watched the tail of a Mahr interview on Tavis Smiley a night or two before, and had adored Mahr’s comparison of the Jonah tale with a Mother Goose story. The third time he dropped it, nearly verbatim, by roughly 15 minutes into Religulous, I adored it less. I never confused it for compelling rhetoric; I had, however, confused it as something more earnest than a joke. That’s my fault.

The remainder of the flick runs through a checklist of the shockumentary genre:

• confronting representatives of the institution under scrutiny, with one or more besieged members stomping off
• forceful rejection while attempting to invade the institution’s hallowed grounds (chaotic camera work is appreciated here)
• interviewing one or more expatriots of the institution who divulge SECRET DIRTY INFORMATIONS!
• simplistic condescension

I watched and enjoyed Fahrenheit 911 and a couple other recent additions to the canon; and I chuckled a couple of times during Religulous. I’m also not above calling out problems I see with this or other institutions (independent of how warranted or skillful are my jabs). But Mahr’s repetitive schtick and outright rudeness, coupled with his reflexive delulsional grandeur, made me realize how much we need thoughtful commentary, couched in snark or not, and by just how much Religulous misses that mark. This is not thoughtful commentary. This is a comedy bit, and it’s not a good one.

If only Ricky Gervais had helmed this.

It’s been a week now. Except for the few hours of sleep I lace together each night, I’ve been in moderate or severe-moderate pain. I have learned, in these few days, a few things, or taken them more deeply for the experience.

• I am a wimp. I have hobbled around, groaned, and generally absolved myself of paying attention to the world because “It hurts.” I’ll say “millions” but we could probably conclude “billions” of people experience chronic pain, and almost certainly some additional, underlying issue, and yet many continue living in spite of it. We’ve all seen the ABC After School Specials and the Evening News pieces about people living, not quite in spite, but because of their pain. I’m not that guy.
• I have been spoiled. This is your average “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone” tripe you’ve already been fed, but that bitter taste in your mouth isn’t from the entrails, it’s from truth. Only just last week, I was wondering—as I’m wont to do—about how life might be different, might carry clearer signs of What Should Be Done (and How to Do It) if I saw things through the polarizing filter of illness or disability. Yes, I am that shallow (although not quite, but I’m not inclined to explain why not just yet).

• Nurture > nature. That aforementioned disinclination extends to a building of a useful metaphor between “life” and calculus, but I really want to relate the importance in calculus of a metric defined on a set, which creates a metric space. A metric is just a standard for measuring distance, and different standards even applied to the same collection of things can produce interestingly varying results.

  Consider the distance traveled by car between two buildings in an urban grid of one-way streets; and compare that to the same grid and buildings but replace the one-way streets with two-way streets. In the first case, your path has to follow more restrictive rules than in the second. This makes the for noticeably different experiences.

  You might also take a chess set, and rewrite all the rules about which pieces can move in which ways (e.g., Chess 960). The effect is similar.

  Well, the point here is that getting out of bed when your body likes you enough not to hurt is not quite the same endeavor as coaxing an aggravated spine to flex enough so you can tumble off the mattress. Pain makes for a different metric, and this brings into greater focus how some elderly, for instance, live in not in our world but in one made of the same points of interest set against a much less forgiving metric.

There’s a lot to work with there. We could talk about racism, health issues, sexual prejudice, disabilities, and any other differentiation that results in what we can loosely call different metrics. With any luck, we will.

You abuse sorrow as your social lubricant. You are not sorry, nor even apologetic, for simple misstatement nor for taking the last coffee in the pot. Respect me enough to trust I won’t wilt in the glare of your inadvertent offense, that I might manage another few minutes without caffeine.

If you’re bothered at all, be bothered that people live on the ground next to the lot where you park every day; be bothered by that when it’s frigid, and just as bothered when it’s not. If you’re bothered at all, you can’t spare concern for a lost opportunity to smile when passing in the hall.

Don’t bother mimicking humility through self-deprecation. I’ve done this, someone reading this has done this, and we understand why it doesn’t work: self-deprecation is a valuation independent of the quality of your work, “work” here meaning whatever your significant output might be.

Valuation depends on assessment of quality, intrinsic to work. Self-deprecation only prostrates your efforts, confusing pity with acknowledgement. It’s a waste of your time and energy. If you’re that concerned, spend that time and energy on the endeavor instead.