Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

I’m taking a class right now. It’s called Leadership Skills Training. I won’t repeat the words from the site there, but it’s a pretty good description. There are six of us in the class, and we’re between weekends 2 & 3.

I’ve learned a great deal about myself so far. The first thing that became obvious was that I care a LOT about whether people like me. I got up to make my first presentation and completely left my body. I was be so busy worrying about how I came across that I wasn’t able to focus on my presentation. At the end, I had no idea if my thoughts had made sense, I didn’t know whether my heart had been beating, and I was out of breath, suggesting I’d forgotten to breathe.

This obsession with being liked began back in my youth, and didn’t start to abate at all until I started working on it. It turns out I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I’ve always known that, but I rationalized it as the thing that kept my standards so high (and thus my results so good). That’s not fully rational, but I’ve come to understand that my subconscious is not especially rational, either. I compare myself to only the best parts of other people. I beat myself up over things long past and things that I suspect or fear might happen. Talk about irrational!

So, perfectionism leads to extreme image-consciousness. This, for me, leads to a problem of authenticity. As I think of people I admire, they’re all authentic, which is to say, transparent. I don’t like people I can’t trust and I don’t trust people who don’t appear to believe what they say, or don’t act in line with their speech. So, projecting the same tendencies on others, it would behoove me to be authentic. So why don’t I just do that?

Fear, in a word. Fear of negative judgements. Now, it turns out that people are making those judgements anyway, so I may as well be me, right? See my previous point about the subconscious and it’s irrationality.

Anyway, because I’m afraid of negative judgements, I tend to go on the offensive when I’m worried I might be judged. I guess I figure I’m more likely to be in control. Maybe getting others on the defensive will keep them from noticing my faults. I’m not 100% sure, but this isn’t far from the mark.

According to our reading assignment from the first break, the only way out of perfectionism is compassion and it looks like a long, slow road. The only way out is through, though, so I’m on the path!

I was reading about Dartmouth’s wireless capabilities and reminiscing about the changes there during my education. During my time at Dartmouth, the campus email system Blitzmail was released, the dorms were upgraded from localtalk to ethernet, and all the Greek houses were wired up. I was impressed at the time by how committed the college was to the future of computing, and amazed that the people with that vision were allowed to spend the money to see it through.

Of course, it works for them principally because they’re a very small community with a rather well-scoped need. Get out of the small private college range, and it gets harder. Still, making it work even there isn’t easy, but Larry Levine and company have shown it can be done. It’s just a matter of time, now.

I had a milestone in my blogging life today. I got my first comment spam. NOW, I understand all the hubbub is about. I feel so violated! I’ll have to find time next week to investigate the MT blacklist plugin.

Quincy pointed me to a this surplus-everything site. It’s brilliant. I don’t know if I’ll buy anything there, but I can get everything from foam rubber human organs to military surplus kerosene lamps. And I’ve been meaning to buy a parachute…

After the girls blew up tonight, I needed a glass of wine. While I’m not an alcoholic, I can totally relate to a need to escape, now. There’s something about the relentless, escalating, screaming cries that just gets down to my core. It was the longest 30 minutes I can remember. I’d have paid any amount of money to make it stop.

Which brings to mind the plight of mothers in this society. Somehow, we think that motherhood isn’t just unpaid work, it’s not work at all! But let me tell you, Charlie, it’s work. Maybe women are more natural multi-taskers, and maybe it’s just that we have twins, but that is not a job I could handle all day every day.

Bonnie, I am in awe of what you do every day.

Our Tivo died on Friday night. It just showed us this screen saying “a severe error has occurred.” I thought it was inconvenient then, but that was nothing compared to not having Tivo over the last few days.

We don’t watch much TV. What we do watch is on the Tivo. We don’t know when the West Wing is on. Or the Simpsons. We just watch them on the Tivo. Suddenly, when we sit down to watch TV, there’s nothing on worth watching! And there are COMMERCIALS! It’s hard to believe everyone doesn’t have Tivo.

A quick google search turned up a page on http://www.weaknees.com which told me it was probably a hard drive failure. They also sold me a replacement drive with the OS already burned on it. I replaced my existing drives in 5 minutes and we’re back up in running. Whew! I can’t tell you what a relief!

While the Tivo rebuilds its program listings, I’m watching Law & Order (we missed West Wing, apparently). The detectives “googled” a suspect and got hits on “upyourbutt.net.” Ah, what a country. I wonder how many media mentions Google gets daily.

Reading about Bob’s digitization, I started thinking about the digital SLR and digital video camera I’ve been coveting. I don’t just WANT these things—I NEED them. The twins will only have one childhood after all (they’ll share toys, birthdays, and parental attention, so they really will have one childhood between them).

Then it occurred to me that everything seems to cost between $500 and $1000 these days. Digital cameras. Air conditioners (forget Central Air!). A sprinkler system. Plane tickets for four to a wedding next June:. Furniture for the playroom. Decent artificial Christmas tree. Espresso machine. Replace the gas grill. Replace the Tivo. I haven’t bought any of these things. Some are just nice to have (and are therefore doomed to not being mine). Some (like the plane tickets) are pretty much required. And if anybody tells you having kids isn’t that expensive, they’re lying.

Obviously, life is about making choices. But the Frontgate catalog wants me to have it all! At least I don’t have a pool—just look how expensive it is to outfit one of those!

My friend Scott Comer used to intone, “It takes money to have fun!” I wonder. I go in cycles, I think. I’ll go on a techno-bender for a while (influenced by my office mates, usually), but the checking account and sobriety catch up with me eventually. Why is balance so hard to find? Why am I running from side to side of this capitalist teeter-totter instead of standing in the middle? When something unexpected happens to a baby, they often look to an adult for some indication about how they should feel. Ask any parent. When the kid looks at you, don’t look concerned. If you look happy, the baby will be happy. I wonder if my techno-lust is another sign that I’m looking out instead of in.

Most of the toys aren’t in my future, and the stuff that is will not be from Frontgate. That’s okay. It just struck me as surprising how expensive toys have gotten. All of this makes public radio seem pretty inexpensive. Ah, pledge drive, you ask me for only ten cents a day.

I was driving in to work this morning, listening to KUOW’s weekday (because I don’t have a car-Tivo for Morning Edition). They were talking about new words just added to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. They’ve added words like cack-handed and “killer app” but decided not to include “blog.” If 92.4% of blogs created by people under the age of 30, I guess people under the age of 30 don’t do much publishing. Apparently, the folks at Webster’s care less about how English is spoken and more about how it’s written by editors and publishers. Well, the Gen-Xers (a word which DID make it in this time) are probably used to being on the fringe.

Okay, sorry Erik. Yes, I stole your style sheet, but it’s only temporary. Until I get a design sense of my own. And figure out cascading style sheets. And the twins are sleeping. Then I’ll get you to help me figure out how to do what I ultimately want. Oh, I’ll have to figure out what that is, first.

Everybody has a blog, these days. I work in an office with eight other people. Four of them are active bloggers. They tell me there’s power in the blogosphere, and I believe it. What I don’t believe, or rather don’t understand, is how anybody finds the time to read all these other blogs, let alone write the volumes of text they do.

Okay, so our little family journal is useful for family and friends to see new pictures of the twins, but does anybody really care what I think? Here’s an opportunity to find out, I suppose.

Erik is the serious blogger in my office. He turned me on to FeedDemon, which sure make it easy to keep track, but it’s still a lot of time.

Plus, since I work for Andrej, I’d better be up on this stuff.