Rise, My Creation, Your Master Commands

You've probably figured out that tools are important to me. I spend a lot of time thinking about them, and I like to write about them too.

Problem is that most of the tools I rely on every day are, predictably enough, software, and there's already a big crowd of people who write about software and getting work done. There's Sven and there's Patrick and there's Sparky and there's Eddie and there's Drang and there's Brettsy von Terpington and there's Merlin and there's Merlin and there's Merlin and there's more besides. I don't feel like trying to duplicate their success.

I was ruminating on this the other day when I had made my third failed attempt at a post I still haven't given up on about how I use alerts and notifications to emulsify awesome sauce. I found myself slipping into doing some variation on the sort of thing I read in my RSS feeds every day, and let's face it, if I do that, there's really no point to this place.

That got me wondering what the point of this place is, and I was surprised at how difficult that question was to answer. I thought on that for days, and then a very scary career opportunity presented itself, and the answer tumbled out of my skull.

I was trying to get work done but had just finished one of those conversations that completely derails your brain with scary possibilities, and as a result, I was worse than useless. I was literally experiencing a mild fight-or-flight response thinking about it, swept up in a mix of exhilaration and the sort of terror one feels when confronted with the dead-eyed ghost of a six-year-old Japanese girl.

I had anti-focus. I knew I had to process it before I could get anything done, so I started typing, and eventually, the following came out.

A note before we dig in: Please pardon the grandiosity (and random perspective-shifting). I tend to tinge purple when I'm brain-dumping and I hadn't intended it for public consumption, but I don't think I should edit it too heavily, for honesty's sake.

This is what I wrote:

The thing is that you are meant to do something on this earth. You are meant to change things in some small way. That is why you were given hands and a mind and a heart and legs. You were meant to do things that make people's lives better. You certainly were meant to always be working to make yourself better. This [opportunity] is the devil you don't know, sure. But would you rather be impotent and underused?

This thing in me that wants to live, I want to let it, and I'm not sure of how. I worry about the costs. But I desperately want it to live. Sometimes it seems I can physically feel it burning in my chest, and I don't know if that's real or not, but I damn near don't care because it feels alive.

The job's not going to give me that. No job is, unless it's a very special one. I'm not sure that even necromancing my old dream of being a decently-paid writer would do it for me, not really. Once you're doing what you love, the trick is to keep loving what you're doing. And how many people get paid to write what they want?

That sense of being alive, I've found it in music and art and books and women and movies and funerals and Jennifer and the birth of my children and I'm hungry for more of it. I want to find it in me, in my life.

"Your life is coming to you," I hear that thing say, and I think, it's here. I'm living it. What else is there?

To build something, for starters. To feed and amplify wonder. To make others feel a hunger and longing for that feeling and to be lost in it.

You can write about OmniFocus. You can write about notifications. You can write about clutter and focus and tools and tricks, but it should always be connected to your heart and your fear and your life and your longing for something you're not sure exists. That is your blog. The intersection of tools and dreams, usefulness and impracticality, fear and longing and love and sex and giving and meaning and failure. A glorious Kurt Vonnegut butthole-shaped crossroads of life.

That is The Tool Shed. Looking for a way to build dreams and change out of the things of this earth. Talking about the stuff we all know but don't say. Finding a way to help that thing live. Not a whole lot of blogging about that.

Now look at notifications and OmniFocus and tools and your job in THAT light, fucker. Where are the angels and goblins in your contexts?

Woof. Is that Bill Shakespeare? I don't have my glasses on.

But I hope the gist is clear: that thing at the center of me lies mostly beyond my comprehension, but I'm pretty sure it is at least partly a call to do work. Not necessarily my job, not even necessarily an avocation like this place, but something that matters, something that changes things in some small way. I can't quite shake that loose.

I'm only now starting to get comfortable with the idea that all life is searching, that when you feel like you've arrived, it's pretty much all over. So if this site really does last and is to be anything, it is to be a chronicle of that searching, with a keen eye on keeping it bullshit-free.

I'm encouraged by the surprising level of reaction I've gotten from people who have read this site and the new friends I've made because of it, but the real reason I know this place is on the right track is that every time I write something like this, I'm choking down panic. That means it's worthwhile, because it means I'm selling my heart.

Now I think I'll call my shot: Spinning the Wheel of Topics, the next post will be about trying to spend more time acting and less time reacting.

Something Something Meth Joke

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a worker in possession of a cubicle must be in want of some goddamn focus.

Work begets noise, which in turn begets distraction, if you are paid to think. The only noise that isn't distracting is the noise generated by your own work, but of course that afflicts everyone who is not you. And so, the ultimate productivity tool: the office door.

Since I am bereft of office, it's a rare day that I'm not leaning on the next best things: the Ambiance app and ambient music like the wonderful MusicForProgramming() and (oh, the joy of nerd-ass nostalgia) the Myst soundtracks.

I think a lot about noise, because I've only recently become attuned to its effect on me, even though I've been bitching about cube life for years. As often happens with those of us who enjoy having supple hands and whining about George Lucas, for me it began with a podcast.

My head used to be a hive of bees. Angry bees. Angry, armed, socially-marginalized bees who have been sprayed with methamphetamine. Breaking Bees.

Focusing on a task was sometimes like trying to walk chest-deep across a wave pool. Hence the sensitivity to noise and chaos, which only amplified that sensation.

Listening to conversations was often like catching bullets. Parties? Hour tops and the chaos is too much, I want to go home. The racket in my brain could only be quieted down by throwing books or movies or TV or video games or booze at it. Media were a sort of anaesthetic.

Coffee. Loooooooooots of coffee.

My vanity told me that this mental caterwaul and media gluttony were the symptoms of an uncommonly strong and absorbent mind. In retrospect, I see how arrogant and fucking absurd that was. Having an epileptic seizure on top of a drum kit does not make you Neal Peart.

But it was the way it was. I didn't have a baseline for normal. I didn't draw the connections because I couldn't see them from a distance. I saw myself as a man completely lacking in will. And then, last year, I listened to that podcast, Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin's Back to Work on the excellent 5by5 Network. The episode I linked there is the one that literally changed my life.

In it, Merlin describes his experience of being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. He describes his symptoms in pretty good detail. And as I listened, I found myself nodding along, thinking that's me, yep, that's me too holy crap MOST OF THIS IS ME.

I spent two days trying to convince myself that it was bullshit, that this is an overdiagnosed "disease", that my failings were those of morality and will, so I didn't talk to anyone about it. Then I had a couple of days at work when I got so mentally overloaded that I had to go into a restroom stall, close the door and breathe deeply. I do not enjoy breathing deeply in public restroom stalls.

So I brought it up with my wife and began the arduous process of making an appointment with a psychiatrist. Roughly two months later, I was finally sitting down with one. (Side note: behold, the greatest healthcare system in the world.)

He asked me questions, I answered them. I may have seen knowing smiles. I suspected there would be a concern that I was a drug seeker. I was extremely uncomfortable, and talking about why I was there made me feel agitated and frankly a little desperate.

Turns out there was no need for the worry. The doctor told me that there were very expensive tests they could run that my insurance likely wouldn't cover, but we could try medications instead and see how I respond to them. Even better news: there are non-narcotic medications that we could try first. Lo and behold, they worked, so I stuck with them.

I had my doubts, of course, as to whether it was all in my head (ignoring the obvious point that mental disorders are indeed in your head), but taking a week off of my medication several months ago mostly put them to rest. The final coffin nail came just a few weeks ago, when I went for a checkup with a new primary care doctor. He noted the ADHD diagnosis in my record and asked me about it, then said: "You know, a lot of people don't get diagnosed until after high school. They're good students who go to college and flunk out."

I graduated high school near the top of my class. It took me eight years to finish my first bachelor's degree. Gaming the system was the only way I didn't flunk out.

The pills aren't a silver bullet, of course. I still get a little overloaded in chaotic situations, which makes parenting interesting. I still have low-focus moments and, occasionally, days. I would prefer a life without daily medication, when I am otherwise in nearly perfect health.

But now the roar has died down to tolerable levels. I often find that I'd rather not dick around but instead find a quiet place and do something productive, which is new. Sometimes it's so quiet in my head that I just sit and listen to it. Every now and then, when I do that, I feel so god damned grateful that my eyes well up.

These periods of quiet and drive have been going on for less than a year, so they're still very much a novelty, and I feel like they're still gaining strength. And there's still so far to go. But so much in me has changed. I feel like I found a part of myself I hadn't known was missing.

Of course I hadn't known. I was too busy berating myself for being weak and lazy. I don't do that as much anymore. Now I am grateful not to know what a life of more of the same would be like. Now I know what it can be.

Thanks, Merlin and Dan. I owe you guys big. I love you.

1001 Proven Methods to Turbo-Hack Your Toddler

Killer iPhone tip for working parents I learned from Merlin awhile back:

1. Set your lock screen wallpaper to be a picture of your family. Preferably not a portrait.
2. When you get home at the end of a workday, before you open the door, turn off whatever app is running, lock your phone, then bring up the lock screen again.
3. Look at it for a full 5–10 seconds and say these words: This is why I’m here.
4. Make sure your phone is ignored or turned off for at least the next two hours.
5. You may check it while taking a shit. A real shit.

If you are childless and able-bodied, most of the mundane tasks of the day come as easily as breathing. You don’t trip over six difficulties on your way to the car. You can go to work, bust ass all day, leave all of your energy behind, and check out when you get home. You’re allowed to be grumpy. You’re allowed to eat dinner in front of the Internet or the TV.

With kids, it could be that the hardest part of your day is just starting when you step through your doorway. Even if they’re being well-behaved angels, your kids will want you to play with them. They will want you to be on. And that takes energy, energy you’ll probably have to dig for, as does shepherding them through their nighttime rituals.

My son’s favorite game? Jumping off of things and having me catch him, often without informing me that we have begun a game. I mean, come on. But you don’t have a choice, you are required to show up and dig deep. You have to be positive and constructive and fun. You are emphatically not allowed to lose your shit.

So I’ve spent the day wading through the hundred skeeter bites of being allowed to be only half of a software developer, the endless frustrations of working on government contracts, the drama du jour on my team, whatever—and for my kids, now it must be as if it never happened.

So I kill my podcast. I lock my phone. I hit the lock button again.

My picture is nearly a year old now. It is the picture we used on our Christmas card in 2010. It is a series of eight grainy, black-and-white snapshots of my family, crammed into a photo booth. In them, you can see my daughter looking on with the wide-eyed fascination you expect from a one-year-old. You can see my son trying to hog the whole frame to make faces. You can see me restraining him and, in the last shot, pretending to eat his head. You can see my wife, more smirking and laughing than smiling, as captive to the chaos as I, and you would not know that she was probably thinking about her dying mother. None of us are looking at the camera.

People see this picture and say, “It looks like you have a lot of fun.”

I’ll admit that for about half a second after I hear this, I’m partly surprised. Yes, we have tons of fun, but I have a full-time job and two children under the age of five. A lot of the time, what I am is tired. For my wife? It’s even harder.

So I look at that picture, and I remember. I realize it’s a better summary of What My Family Is than I could ever write. There is mess, there is noise, there is struggling, and we are laughing the whole way. I see that, and most days I can lay my burden down.

This is why you’re here, I think, and it’s just a long enough walk to the back door for me to hope that maybe today I’ll be a better husband and father than I am.