Thoughts

Happiness and Blenders

Posted on 2015-02-06 22:10 by rv

A lot of people just forget that they're actually happy. Sadly, in the act of forgetting that you are happy, you are making yourself unhappy. If someone asks you "Are you happy?" and you find yourself trying to ascertain if you're happy or not, chances are that you forgot. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's like leaving the stove on and forgetting about it: best case scenario is that your food is done, worst case scenario is that your house is on fire. Either way, if you don't periodically check, you just don't know.

Some people get really upset when they found out that the set of kitchen knives they just bought went on sale a week later. Or that the blender they bought was not in fact number one best blender of the year 2014. This probably sounds petty to you, but it doesn't have to be petty. I used to think that people who pursue better blenders are the same kind of people who would think that having a house and a mortgage would be the end goal of their life and the absolute thing they would need to be happy. Given that I'm currently looking to purchase a house (and, consequently, a blender) there is definitely some irony at play here. Here's my attempt at nuancing my change of opinion.

When you see people trying to increase their happiness by buying a better blender, what you're really seeing is only the topmost layer of what people think they need to be happy. The fact that they're looking for a blender can either mean that they've already ticked off from their list everything else that could possibly make them more happy than a blender, or it could mean that they're so shallow that they think they only need a blender to be happy. Or something in-between.

I think the foundation of happiness is accepting the phrase "I can be happy with anything". In order to truly accept this, I suspect that you will first have to lose everything. I honestly don't know. I've had my bad times but I've never been particularly close to this statement, which makes my foundation for happiness less-than-optimal. (Although perhaps the realization of this fact offsets the lack of depth a little). People who have this solid foundation for happiness in place will not get upset when they buy a shitty blender: they know that their foundation for happiness lies much deeper.

I know people from both sides of the spectrum. Some get really upset when some trivial thing happens in their life, which may cause them to be unhappy for weeks. Others have the most terrible things happen to them and they laugh it off. Some of my friends are, like me, transitioning from the "I can be happy with anything" mindset into the "Ok, we've established that I can be happy with anything, now where do I get a better blender?"-kind-of-mindset.

Don't forget your foundation, but don't cling too much to it either. Or else you'll never have a nice blender.

Posted in Thoughts | Tagged blender

How to deal with decreasing awesomeness of the internet

Posted on 2015-01-30 16:57 by rv

Is the internet well? Opinions may differ, but I'm here to evangelize mine: No, the internet is not well. The problem is with the concept of the internet as a place of freedom; a place where anything can be said and done, and shared with everyone all over the world.

That functionality, although it still exists, is becoming more and more regulated. The authorities have caught up, and certain things are starting to move to the fringes (eg. Tor hidden sites). It starts with all the blatantly illegal things, but whole-internet censorship is really not far away in many countries, including the UK, where I live.

It's not just legality issues that are making the internet less free, a far worse culprit is monetization. Youtube clips have ads on them, streaming websites throw ads in as well. No more free database service for you; the internet rule of the day is that either you pay premium, or you accept that you'll get annoyed at crap advertisements that people throw at you.

Then there's politics. Surveillance. All of these reasons make it very likely that, a few years from now, you'll no longer be able to access your favorite service for free. You don't have to agree with this, of course. Perhaps you think that the internet will be a happy shiny perfect place in 5 years, but in my opinion signs point in the other direction.

So what to do? First things first: GET YOUR DATA OUT. Never, ever, keep your only copies of things in Flickr, Facebook, Google or even Dropbox. Don't trust backup services either; they're a nice extra, but they may go bankrupt or become unreachable any time. Think of the legal issues involved: do you know exactly which files you are backing up, and do you know the rules of possessing those files in the country you are storing your backups in? I'm guessing no.

In the Netherlands it used to be legal to make a copy of any copyrighted thing, as long as it is for your own personal use and you won't commercialize it. That is no longer true, because it conflicts with European regulations which override it. Historically, this kind of thing has been hard to enforce, but the authorities have done an amazing job of catching up, and they're only going to get more in-your-face about it in the future. If you can legally justify getting something that's available in your country right now, get it now. Laws will change, availability will decrease, and you will be branded a criminal for doing something that was legal just a few years ago.

Edit: perhaps I was wrong. Google Earth was one of things I was thinking of while writing this, and I expected the free version to go away in the future. Instead, one day after I wrote this, Google made Earth Pro free. Perhaps the 'users are the product' philosophy will set us all free?

(no)

Posted in Tech , Thoughts

If my life was a..

Posted on 2015-01-21 23:39 by rv

If my life was a movie or a book then I'm pretty sure I'm getting close to the end credits. The initial premise, the way my character was presented at the beginning of the story, his frustrations, worries and goals, are all close to being resolved. The main storyline is nearly complete. The end credits will roll. The story will end.

And then, a new story will begin. With the same main character as the last story, but a slightly different, more evolved version. The new version of the character will have different worries, different problems, different goals. Even if the hero's journey is at an end, there will still be stories to tell. Perhaps the stories of others will take center stage in part 2. Perhaps there will be a major event in the life of the main character that will make him re-evaluate his goals. Or perhaps he'll just live happily ever after. That'd be a pretty boring story to tell, though.

Can't wait for part 2. Got to finish part 1 first..

Posted in Thoughts

Living responsibly

Posted on 2015-01-05 04:20 by rv

The new year is here already! I have thunk so many interesting thoughts in the past few weeks but haven't blogged about any of them. I imagine that my blog is telling me off about this in a very stereotypical grandma-like voice. If you've got a job, work. If you've got a car, drive. If you've got a blog, write. So here's some random thoughts.

It's almost 4AM right now and I have just become completely awake. The reason for this is that my girlfriend and I came back from Japan yesterday and I decided to do something I've hardly ever done lately: go to bed when I'm tired. Which, in my case, was about 9PM.

People always use the new year as a reason to make random wild claims about how one will improve one's life in the future. I tend to use the ends of holidays. Fortunately the two coincide for me every once in a while. Even if nothing comes of it, it's important to reflect and see how you can do better. A blogpost is a great way to write down what you would like to happen in the near future.

This year I only have one primary goal; one addition to life that I want to spend my energy, brainpower and money on. A house. Last summer I decided I wanted a car and a better apartment. I got a car, and searching for a better apartment made me realize that renting a more expensive one would not make sense at all in my 'grand scheme of things'. Regardless of the circumstances here, I'm realizing that a lot of things I naively thought, or wished, were variables in my life, are really constants. I tend to pride myself on being flexible and leaving my options open, particularly when it comes to where to live. But sometimes, sometimes you just have to choose a side, and reap all the benefits (and negatives) that come with it. I've already made my choice, now it's time to formalize it.

There's a lot of other things I want to do in the span of the next 12 months. Traveling. Cycling. Driving. Getting fit. Expanding my knowledge on various topics by doing some serious research and experimentation. Some of these will happen, some of them won't. There will be an inevitable lack of holiday time, willpower time or money, making it unlikely that I'll be able to do all the things that I want. I am able to say these things right now because I am fairly clear of the 'mind fog' that waitbutwhy so excellently describes. This is what good holidays do: they clear your mind and make you able to see things in the long term, accepting things that are not possible for what they are, rather than feeling frustrated about it.

This post-holiday clarity of mind is a feeling that, in my case, gets lots very easily when I go back to work again, usually within two weeks. Depending on my circumstances, I can resist the dull drone of daily life for a while, or I can choose to embrace it fully, knowing that there will be another holiday coming up in a few months. Why would I not resist it? Very simple: in daily-life-mode I am a million times more effective as a programmer. In clarity mode I think about all kinds of things, both related and unrelated to the task at hand, and I question a lot of the decisions I and others are making. In daily life mode I focus on the job at hand and don't let anything else in.

When I'm in daily life mode it's not easy for me to focus on anything else after I come home from work. Even if I leave at a sane time and don't work late I find myself not having the mental energy to delve into new things for extended periods of time. Daily-life me is displeased by this fact and kind of unhappy about it. Clarity-mode me is like "Whatever dude. It's all good, just enjoy life, man".

I've tried many coping strategies and I can't find any that work on me. The only way to deal, it seems, is to lower my expectations. If I've done a full day's work but not done anything new personally in the evening, that is perfectly acceptable. If I want to learn something new and unrelated to work, I can take time off to focus the main part of my brain on it, or, if work is not too hectic, I can accept the performance decrease at work and keep my brain in clarity mode for a while. The core point of this whole strategy is convincing my daily life self that living this way is okay. Unfortunately I need my claritic self to remind me of that, and he's not always there.

A new year, a new coping strategy. My personality changes less and less as time goes by. Some of my issues I've ironed out, others still exist. I'm getting better at being me.

There are always amazing things to look forward to. :)

Posted in Daily Life , Thoughts

Traveling memories

Posted on 2014-12-17 06:41 by rv

It's odd how the act of traveling can make you remember things so much more vividly. Just sitting in the plane to Japan I remembered vividly my last cycling trip, and the many before it. My memories seem to more strongly associated with places than with people. Maybe that's because the people end up migrating elsewhere? Or maybe it's because people change more rapidly over time than places do? With places I focus on similarities compared to the past, whereas with people I can't help but notice their differences.

Next year it will have been 10 years since I first went to Japan and changed my life forever. It's when I made the most severe mental change in my whole life so far. There have been many small, incremental improvements to 'the concept of me' over time, but Japan was definitely a version 2.0. Hopefully there weren't too many regressions.. I need a testing framework for my personality..

I'm currently sitting in the domestic terminal of Narita, waiting for a flight to Naha. It's been a long time since I've been there, yet it feels like going back to somewhere familiar and safe. It's not quite like feeling at home, yet close to it. It's more like a feeling of unguardedness and a ridiculously high (over)confidence that nothing bad can happen, or at least that I'm prepared for all bad things that might happen. Just like every other time I went to Japan in the last 7 years, that feeling starts right after I board the plane at Heathrow or Amsterdam. It's not an end-goal kind of feeling -the feeling alone is not enough to satisfy the mind- but it provides a foundation from which to start doing more extreme things. The only other place I've ever been to that felt the same was the Seychelles.

No goal for this blogpost, except perhaps to collect a few loose thoughts before the year ends. I'm still learning how to act my age; my mental age seems to age less fast than my physical age. But I feel that I'm catching up. And the more I catch up, the more clear my future life decisions become. 2014 was a fantastic year. 2015 will be even better. There are still countless achievements in life left to be unlocked.

Posted in Thoughts , Travel

You can't always get what you want?

Posted on 2014-12-15 21:57 by rv

Sometimes I buy something nice for myself. Something that is not the best-value-for-money product, but something a bit more expensive. It's better, of course, just not quite as betterer as you might expect from the price tag. Yet, unquestionably, it's better. I enjoy such a purchase greatly because I know I bought something good, but I also feel guilty about having spent money when I didn't really have to. After such a purchase I feel like I need to stop spending for a while, so even if there's something else that I really want, I'll delay buying just for the sake of it, even though I can afford it.

This seems to happen to me with complete disregard to price range. I'll feel bad about going for the slightly more expensive meal (~20GBP), the slightly more expensive Lego set (~50GBP), the slightly more expensive headphones (~200GBP) or the slightly more expensive bike (~1000GBP). Just reading back what I just wrote makes me feel guilty for buying all those things, even though I know I can afford them and enjoy all of them.

As you get older there's more and more purchases coming up: a car, a house, a hotel, a planet, a galaxy. I feel the need to have worked harder for each thing that I own because I taught myself that if you want to buy something, you should suffer. The idea of "I just bought that and didn't even break a sweat" implies a never-ending guilt trip to me. But only if you buy nice things. Buying crap things is OK. You don't feel the need to suffer so much when you're buying crap things. The problem with that is, you're buying crap things.

Perhaps I just like tormenting myself. I'd just really like it if I could be happy about the nice things that I buy without feeling guilty about it..

I was going to call this post "You can always get what you want" and make it about how I can afford the nice things instead of the average things, but a) the tone was very dickish and b) I didn't actually get what I want cause I don't want a guilt trip and I have one. Damn you, Rolling Stones, you were right after all.

Posted in Thoughts

The cycling spirit

Posted on 2014-11-12 22:30 by rv

The cycling spirit is gone. I caused it myself, by getting a car. Although I've still got my bike, and I keep it in ready condition, the need to get out there and cycle around is ever decreasing. That feeling I used to have, that of "I can go anywhere by bicycle" is kind of gone. Not completely, mind you. And I'm sure it will come back next spring, but right now I just feel more comfortable in a car. That feeling makes it even less likely for me to go out and cycle, because it somehow feels like a mental betrayal to other cyclists. I'm not 'one of them' any more, at least not at the moment. I still want to do long-distance, fully-loaded cycling touring, but I've gone from being "an infrequent cyclist who does cycling trips" to "a car owner who sometimes does cycling trips". It feels different.

Maybe I'll just give up on cycling for a while. England's not the country for it anyway. England takes cycling way too serious. I miss the casualness of Japanese cycling.

Posted in Cars , Cycling , Thoughts

Constructing a mind palace... in Minecraft

Posted on 2014-11-10 21:25 by rv

I absolutely love Minecraft. Though my level of obsession has dimmed a bit compared to when I was first mindblown, it's still an amazingly satisfying sandbox to play in. There always seems to be something new to build, which always manages to recapture my interest.

One of the things I noticed while playing Minecraft is that I pretty much know exactly what, where and how I built the things in my world. If I somehow lost my world and all of its backups, I am positive that I could recreate an extremely large portion, if not all of it, just from memory. The connection to a mind palace should now become evident.

In the past I've tried to build mind palaces of things, and have been more or less successful, up until the point where I try to populate the rooms in my mind with actually useful information. That's where my memory stops functioning well, I suspect because an entirely imaginary mind palace is just too unreal for me to hold in my mind. But if you tied a mind palace to something tangible (well, more or less) like a Minecraft world, a place with actual houses and paths and rooms, then perhaps it would be a lot easier to store knowledge in. If you go so far as to place things that you want to remember in signs and books, I bet you could remember a lot.

Another good example of a mind palace is my photo folder on my hard drive. I've organized it chronologically and hierarchically, first by year and then by month+day. While I can't remember exactly what happened on which day, using this folder structure as a mental guideline, I could tell you with reasonably high confidence what I was doing at any given month. But only for those months that I have photos of. My hobby of photography has waned a lot over the past years..

tl;dr: create a physical or virtual structure to hold your mind palace, then populate it with real-world information.

Posted in Tech , Thoughts | Tagged minecraft

"Survived another week"

Posted on 2014-11-09 17:41 by rv

I caught myself thinking this recently. Despite the fact that my life has never been better, my goals are far away, which sometimes makes progress indiscernible. It led me to think about how I could progress towards my goals faster. A provoking thought entered my head. What if I really let myself go?

I've never really given myself one hundred percent towards a goal for an extended period of time. I've never had to. Every time I do, I find that either the goal changes, or I become adept at reaching it so I don't have to devote one hundred percent of myself. If someone waved you a check of a million dollars or pounds in your face and told you to type the entire text of the bible over and over again for several years on end, sacrificing your social life, your personal hygiene, your health, would you do it? If not, where do you draw the line? Would more money change your decision? The promise of a better life? Or would you do it if you could give slightly less than one hundred percent , like maybe if you could keep a small part of your social life?

Life isn't usually that simple. There's never a simple case where you can simply do X for Y days and receive Z, at least not for significant values of Z. There will be interruptions, unclarities and changes of mind. It might look simple to you at first glance, but it never is. The best way to simplify your situation is by knowing more. Know more about your profession, your situation and what you're good at. The more you know, the more you'll realize that it's not an easy road. But also, the more you know, the more you realize that there is a road and it is possible to travel it. If you know what you're doing.

tl;dr: expand your knowledge, don't expect anything.

Posted in Daily Life , Thoughts

As days go by

Posted on 2014-10-30 15:58 by rv

I haven't blogged in a while. Despite having switched from enjoying-life-mode back into grind-and-earn-money mode, I've managed to maintain a remarkable sense of self-actualization over the past few weeks. I think the reason for that is partly because I try to work less long days, as I mentioned in the previous post. I get time to recover and clear my mind at the end of the day, rather than never fully clearing it and piling up new workloads the next day without having fully processed the previous day.

Working less hours is part of the reason, but also a consequence of something else. My goals in life have become startlingly clear to me after I found out exactly how much money I need to buy a house in this bloody country. It'll take years and years of savings to fully pay off a nice house. Even if I found a better paying job, the difference it would make will never be as significant as I want it to be. And even with a better paying job you're bound by obligations and forced to work for the better part of the year. Given that fact, I'd say I've got a pretty damn good job right now, and I see no reason to change it for something marginally better.

Financial independence is the final goal. It's not even worth thinking about what I'll do after I achieve it, because the possibilities will be endless. In the past I tried several times to 'do a startup', sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. But what I've come to realize is that the startup life is not something that I want for myself. I'm usually quite introverted, and although I learned that I can muster up the extroversion needed to function capably in a startup role, it's not something I enjoy doing or would feel comfortable with doing for a long period of time.

This is the point where people tell me "but to gain something you will have to step out of your comfort zone". Well, yes and no. Stepping too far out of your comfort zone is simply not sustainable and will wear you down. For me, I think I function at my best while 95% within my comfort zone, using the remaining 5% to explore new territories. I need to find things out for myself. Advice from others only helps at the most superficial level, any concrete advice will be noted only for reference while I make my own mistakes, from within that very comfortable 95% plan.

Realizing that I am more reluctant to leave my comfort zone than I previously though, I began to list my options. The list is limited, of course, compared to before, but the remaining options are those that I feel much more enthusiastic about than anything else. And because the options are 95% within my comfort zone, I get to expand my knowledge while actually enjoying it rather than feeling stressed out.

I don't believe that any advance in knowledge in the field of programming is going to help me to make progress as a human being. While it's true that I'm getting better at coding, especially within a project atmosphere, most of the things that I learned, that I value highly, are as a result of interactions with people. Focusing deeply on a topic will teach you two things: in-depth knowledge of the topic, and how to focus deeply. I think I've learned enough on how to focus deeply on something to apply it to things other than programming. Don't get me wrong, I still love to code. But I find that a lot of my peers see coding as the final goal, whereas whatever the thing is that they're coding is just a happy side effect. I want to use programming as a means to an end, whatever end that could be, even if it has nothing to do with coding or dev-ops or anything technical. I believe that if I can use programming in this way, I can become better as a person.

Posted in Daily Life , Tech , Thoughts

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