January 2010

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A week or so gone by since I entered the dark…

January 10, 2010 in Uncategorized by Some Dude | 1 comment

I’ve been tempted to write a post a few times in the past week, but I’ve tried to keep myself focused on staying off the grid as much as possible, and on getting things done around Chez Wright so that my surroundings won’t be such a source of agitation. I’ve definitely been a creature of grasping at material things to salve my psyche, and now I am paying the price by having to figure out what to do with all of my possessions, up to and including pitching some in the trash. My physical personal space as well as my mental / emotional personal space has suffered from what could be described as benign neglect, or perhaps more accurately as fallen prey to my wrapping up in a social networking cocoon.

Yesterday my friend Marin came over to help me address some things in the house that require two pairs of hands and an eye for proportion, balance and levelness. Marin is one of those gifts from real life for which I am immeasurably grateful – Thich Nhat Hahn tells the story of “Angelina” in his Teachings on Love, where “Angelina” is someone who steps into one’s life and somehow makes life more expansive and rich, who reminds us of the boundlessness of human love and compassion. This is not romantic love, but loving kindness, the love that can be experienced and shared when one is willing to be open, honest and truly there for someone else. Marin is an Angelina, my dharma sister, who entered my life through Twitter and stepped into the waking world to help me selflessly in many ways – moving me into my home, looking after my birds and my home while I am away chasing the Dharma, arranging and re-arranging my space so that the chi can flow better and the dralas have somewhere to land in the chaos of my life.

A note: this is a purely spontaneous post, and the last paragraph came from my feelings of unexpressed gratitude. Appreciation for one’s good fortune is, according to Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, absolutely critical for the accumulation of the kind of merit that will permit one to progress along the  Buddhist path. I bow in gassho to my dharma sister Marin.

So Marin came by and helped me with hanging curtains in the front of the house and in my practice room, and re-arranging furniture in the living room and practice room. If this was all that she did, that would be more than enough, but her impending arrival was the motivation I needed to spend all of yesterday relentlessly attacking the clutter that seems poised to consume my living space and what is left of my sanity. Most of yesterday’s efforts did little more than re-arrange the items, organizing the boxes of the flotsam and jetsam of my life so that I can attack those in a more orderly fashion. The clearing of space so that I can walk around and sit down in my living room is nothing short of monumental (if you haven’t lived in the Cavern of Clutter or one of its emanations, you cannot possibly understand), and I can now tackle smaller chunks in the evening when I am home from work instead of feeling overwhelmed. Feeling overwhelmed is death on making progress with machete, torch and maul through the standing fields of things I own.

This was not exactly what I was going to write when I started paragraph #2. Welcome to the unbridled, untamed wildness that is my mind. And yet I am finally getting to the point I wanted to make a couple hundred words ago.

We went to dinner at this little Thai restaurant down near the waterfront on the line between Canton and Fells Point after our labors. It was a delight to find after trying to make sense out of the options for eating in Canton (read: not terribly vegetarian friendly, and although I forget if Marin is vegetarian or just sparing in her consumption of meat, it’s been a year since I gave up meat and so vegetarian is key), but I would never had found it if it weren’t for Google’s location-based search and my iPhone. The food was yummy, and we caught up a bit both with each other and on the happenings of my #twangha (Twitter sangha). During the conversation I had to admit to Marin and myself that Twitter may  be somewhat “toxic” for the likes of me, because of my confirmation issues, tendency towards anything that distracts from those things which my mind has labeled distasteful or undesirable such as housework, paying bills or generally anything that is not “fun”. I said I’d begun to see a bit of the Luddite point of view, but perhaps I should say Neo-Luddite after reading some about what was really behind the Luddite movement. I make my living from technology, I am using technology right now to expound upon my thoughts, and yet I am not convinced that technology on the whole has made things “better”, just “different”.

I’m not sure where all of this is going, and it has rather turned into a bit of a ramble, so I think I shall call it a “post” and move on. I’ve more to say on the topic of being off the grid, but for now real life beckons.

TTFN

Two days later, the shakes haven’t quite set in…

January 3, 2010 in Personal Updates by Some Dude | No comments

I decided this morning that I would record my thoughts during this period of “going dark” as private posts, that I would then unlock once I came up for air at the end of my hiatus. Perhaps because I hope that my thoughts might be useful to others as they attempt a similar period of being “unplugged”. Perhaps because I need something to take the edge off lest the shakes really set in… at this moment, I don’t recall how I reacted to going dark the first time, but there is definitely a “jones” going on right now that doesn’t exactly surprise me. If anything, it just underscores that this was the right thing to do.

I came home Friday, January 1 after a day spent amongst friends IRL, and as is my usual wont sat down at my computer. After checking my e-mail, the news, comments on my “be back in a few months post”, and the weather I sat there wondering what else I could do. *twitch* That is in police work what we call a clue. Time for sleep meds, a little Trism to occupy my brain while the sleep meds kicked in, and off to dreamland.

Saturday I slept in. Sat down at the computer as realized I had a bad case of “what the fuck do I do now?” Discussed some things with Nora over IM, went back for a nap, got up and eventually moseyed over to Eric & Michelle’s for MENYGWACON. I chatted, I played games, won at Carcassone and came in close in Alhambra and Gates of Lo-yang (sp?). Came home and realized that I was going to have a period of separation anxiety over this whole going dark thing. I discussed a few more thing with Nora over IM, spent some time with my feathered children, and went to bed.

When I came downstairs this morning, I realized that I needed some kind out outlet, at least for now. I have to write… that is in my blood. And hopefully sometime soon that need will be turned to more creative endeavors as I begin to free myself from the social network addiction that I now must admit to myself. I’ve got a metric ass-load of things that need doing so that I have space to work, both physically and mentally, and so I should hop to it. The real challenge will be to see how long I feel I need to keep doing this kind of mental purge before I can let go of the crutch and take those first wobbly unassisted steps away from the keyboard.

TTFN

Two years later, going dark, again.

January 1, 2010 in Personal Updates by Some Dude | 6 comments

I’ve started this post several times. I haven’t like any version of it, and I’m not sure I’ll like this one (which I started New Years Eve) either. Maybe I should take that as a hint and a half, except that I feel like I need to write this post. Because I feel like some folks will want an explanation. Probably because I hope that someone will want an explanation, that what I am doing will be important to someone. When you get right down to it, that really is the crux of the whole matter, and is one of the reasons why I know that “going dark” is the right decision at this point in time.

Some will remember that I went dark from the end of January 2008 to the end of March 2008. Many of the same factors are very much in play today. Balticon is no longer the burden it once was, but I am still all too susceptible to the “winds of public opinion” in terms of how I view myself. The additional twist to the situation is that I’ve become painfully aware of how much I try to be somebody, where “somebody” appears to be the embodiment of all the things for some reason I feel that I am not, and therefore it is more desirable to be that somebody than just being myself. The wired world makes it all too easy to fan the flames of all those rampant neuroses, and all too easy to spend all of one’s available free time on such a pursuit.

As I wrote in my post two years ago, “rationing” doesn’t really seem to work for me – that requires more willpower and discipline than I currently appear to be able to muster. For me, hopping on Twitter or responding to an e-mail on a discussion list is like an alcoholic walking into a bar with a wallet full of $100 bills. Just like back then, right now I feel like the only effective way to keep this problem in check is to abstain altogether. I’m not happy about it, because I’ve met some truly incredible people on Twitter in particular, and its been the only way that I communicate with them. But I really don’t see an alternative right now… maybe if I get a better handle on who I am, or just get myself to stop trying to be somebody, I’ll be able to come back to Twitter, etc. without it becoming jet fuel for my hang-ups. And maybe not, I don’t know.

This doesn’t mean I’m disappearing off the face of the planet, or that I don’t want people to contact me. I’m not becoming a monk or a hermit, I’m not deleting my Twitter account or anything like that. I just need to be smart for once and not put myself into situations that I know are going to cause me all sorts of problems that at this point in my life I appear to be ill-equipped to handle.  If something important happens – good, bad or otherwise – I want to know. If you’re coming to town and you want to meet up, I want to know. But for now it’s going to have to be via e-mail, because I can’t just monitor Twitter and not respond – I’ve pretty much proven that much to myself by now.

I will admit that I’m a little scared as I prepare to “walk away”, “take a break”, “go dark”. I’m afraid that in four or five months time I’ll come face to face with my inability to participate in online communities without feeding my neuroses a banquet. I’m afraid that I’ll ome to the realization that life without participating in online communities is actually a much better experience. I’m afraid that I’ll come back, better prepared to work with my hang-ups and less likely to get sucked into the intakes of my neuroses, and no one will care that I’m back – I’ll be old news, a back issue, a footnote. My inner child has been throwing tantrums ever since I seriously started considering this a few weeks ago, and that is perhaps the most compelling reason to “go dark”. If there is one thing that has started to sink in from all this sitting and studying and practicing, its that if I lean into something and experience a great deal of irrational resistance and turmoil, I’ve probably touched on something that needs attention, a rut where my habitual behaviors and reactions are stuck. It doesn’t make those fears any less real in this moment, but it makes my resolve enough to actually go through with what I feel needs to happen at this point in my life.

I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying dark this time. Two months gave me a chance to breathe, to catch up, but I don’t think I made much in the way of progress with my head trip. So it is conceivable that I could be “dark” for three or four months, perhaps more. I need to focus my efforts on my physical health, my mental and emotional well being, making sense out of my life post-marriage (including taming the chaos of my living space), and deepening my meditation practice and Buddhist studies. All of these things have suffered from neglect while I’ve sat here in front of this computer indulging my hang-ups on Twitter and a few other online communities, and it is no one’s fault but my own. So now I must “pay for my past indulgences” if you will, and step away from the limelight of social networks and the like, in order to not only restore balance in my life but to lay a foundation for being able to work with these kinds of situations without having to so severely withdraw from the fray.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. It may have been morbid curiosity, it may have been a deep sense of caring, it may have been that which causes us to continue to watch a train wreck even when we’re pretty sure it won’t be pretty. Either way, thank you. I hope to see you again online at some point. If you’re going to Balticon this year, I’ll be there in my role of Benevolent Despot of Operations and Security, and hopefully I’ll se you there. I leave you with a senryu that popped into my head yesterday toward’s the end of a day of community sitting practice; it’s content is not terribly original, but since the words were spontaneous they bear recording.

Mind goes wandering.

Lost and uncertain, gives up,

then comes back to rest.

_/!\_ Namaste _/!\_

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