Straight Edge Life

One thing I’ve found in common with many of my friends who drink, which is all but one of my friends by the way, is that they put little or no thought into why they drink. I mean NO thought. It’s just something they do just “because”. I have trouble understanding this. It’s as frustrating as when my mom used to say “because” as an answer to any question she didn’t want to answer. She didn’t do that often, but you know what I’m saying. I guess I just wasn’t blessed with that level of casualness in my life. A lot of what I do has a very specific reason behind it. Everything I do has some reason behind it. At least a little. So I don’t get it. It is what it is, I’m not freaking out, it’s just a curiosity. It’s something I don’t know how to approach when I want to talk to people about drinking. It usually comes in the context of “oh wow, why don’t you drink?”. I give them a nice answer and they can’t respond in turn. Anyways. It’s weird to me.

So… I got this motorola razr phone about a week ago. Actually, it may have been a month ago for all I know, I’ve been overwhelmingly busy lately… Anyways, got the razr when I dropped something heavy on my Treo. My Treo was al older 600 model and lacked the handy little feature of bluetooth. Well, the razr’s got bluetooth, and that means that with my t-mobile data plan I’ve got connectivity on my laptop wherever I can get a phone signal. This kicks some serious tail. I’m sitting, once again, in the lobby of the VW dealership, getting my trunk hinges replaced, once again. Without a will do do any actual work, I have decided to blog again. Might just be a momentary thing, but I like the idea of not being pinned to a hot-spot very much. I also like not being at home and writing.

Which reminds me… I’m selling my desktop computer in the next couple of days. Going 100% laptop for a few months. I’m doing this so that I may buy myself a nice little server upgrade. More later, perhaps, my car’s done.

A friend of mine decided some time ago to stop drinking. This made me very happy. She used to do something of a variety of drugs, drink and smoke. She didn’t jive all that well with the drugs, didn’t like being out of control. She quit doing dope and eventually quit smoking as well. Finally she decided that drinking wasn’t such a good idea either.

I was happy to see her making healthy choices, I was happy to finally have a friend in Eugene who didn’t drink. Her stated reasons for finally stopping drinking were fairly eloquent and I thought, sincere. Basically, there’s a fine line between moderate drinking and alcoholism, so why walk the line? Alcohol fucks people up. The benefits do not outweigh the risks.

Anyways. She started drinking again recently. “Moderately” or so she says. I can’t say that I wasn’t expecting it, and I haven’t lost respect for her, but I had hoped she would stick with what she said. But everyone drinks for the most part and there’s a lot of social pressure to join up. Plus, people like the way it makes them feel. Go figure. I don’t fault her for herding but I am somewhat bummed that I don’t have anyone in town to hang out with that doesn’t drink.

“Seasoned Unixen don’t routinely regard the mouse as any kind of shortcut, because it takes a hand away from the keyboard, which is where the Force resides.”

‘el bid’ on macosxhints.com

I hate working during the day. I’ve gotten more done in the last 3 hours than I could ever get done in 8 normal working hours. I don’t always care for the vampire schedule but I dig what I can get done. You see, I don’t like working all that much in general. It’s not that I don’t love what I do, because I do, but that I really do have a lot of other things I’d rather be doing that don’t always make money. So, being able to get a lot of stuff done in a short period of time is great. Anyways… just taking a momentary break to munch on a banana and check my email. Weee… Ok, back to work.

I used to write entries for this site as though they were simply being entered into a journal or diary. Over time it became this focused and sort of obsessive blog about being straight edge. I’m not sure that I could or would want to revert back to the journaling mindset while writing entries for this site… I’m not sure it would be possible or desirable to un-focus this site from what it’s become. It probably IS better for me to start up another site and let that be my new journal. But since I don’t have all that much free time at the moment I will indulge my desire to journal once again on straight edge life.

I had an amazing weekend in California just a few days ago. One of the very best birthdays I’ve had since the days of rocket-shaped carrot cake in Monterey with a dozen of my 6-year-old friends. In many ways it was the best birthday I’ve ever had. As time passes and life doesn’t really seam to get any easier I am more and more thankful for any and all time that I manage to make enjoyable. It takes effort to create enjoyment. When you’re younger it’s just there for the taking as school, and particularly summer, shove it in your face. Having three months off each year is really pretty damn nice. I hear the Europeans still take something like 2.5 months worth of government-sanctioned vacation each year. They’re on to something if you ask me. But yeah, it’s hard work trying to carve out a window of time and opportunity in which one can truly enjoy them self. When I get it I am happy to have it, and this weekend was exactly that. Both from my own efforts and with the help of loved ones.

I didn’t work too hard this weekend. I tried something new (took a ballet class. loved it), met a few new folks and hung out in the company of friends. Shot a few photos and ate good food. Might not sound like a dream vacation, but compared to the nightmare of sickness, overwhelming responsibility and financial pressure of late; it was a dream-come-true.

It actually made me think pretty hard about whether I could live in the Bay Area. I’m smart enough to know that location didn’t have much to do with my experience. It’s more to do with being away from work and close to friends that made the difference. But the more I go down there to visit the more I associate that place with good memories and experiences. Too bad 1,200 square foot homes cost $750,000. Yeah, like I will EVER have $5,000 / month after taxes to spend on a mortgage. Good lord. Anyways. I’ve got a shitload to do tonight; going beta on a project in the morning, but I sort of needed to journal for a bit before I kicked into high gear for the evening. I’m in my new office (back in the basement after the January raw-sewage flooding incident at the Public Defender’s office), and it’s extraordinarily tidy. The perfect environment for getting a LOT done. Should be a good work night. Wish I could bring my hardware from home and put it down here, this office is just the right size and just quiet enough that I could get a lot done here on all my projects.

Righty-o. Catch you all later.

Google news has three articles this morning saying that of the 54 current studies on the health effects of varying levels of alcohol consumption, only 7 properly classified their user groups of “moderate”, “heavy” and “abstainers”. 47 of the 54 studies, the ones that showed that alcohol did provide health benefits, clumped recent quitters and people who quit drinking because of failing health into the “abstainers” group. Basically it put the sick and recent addicts into the “abstainers” group. The remaining 7 studies who only included life-long non-drinkers in their “abstainers” group showed that the abstainers had equal or better health than moderate drinkers.

“Too few studies have been done without the “abstainer error” to conclude that drinking has health benefits, the researchers said. “

“Our research suggests light drinking is a sign of good health, not necessarily its cause.”

“In the seven studies that counted only long-term teetotalers as abstainers, the results showed they were not more likely to die than moderate drinkers, according to researchers. “

“Specifically, 47 of the 54 studies included in the abstainer category not long-term teetotallers, but people who had recently cut down or stopped drinking. Since many people quit drinking because of declining health, disability, frailty or medication use, there’s a good chance these people were less healthy to begin with.”

“Initially it appeared the abstainers were at higher risk for heart disease because they refrained from drinking alcohol, and so did not get its protective benefit, when in fact Fillmore says those in the abstainer category were often already frail and predisposed to death.”

Med Page Today

The Globe and Mail

Forbes

News Medical.Net

This is the first thing I’ve written in a while. For any purpose. Soon I will be taking this site offline. Well, I’ll probably leave the site up but I will stop updating it, and when the domain expires it will go offline.

I’m done. Too many words and too few photos these last few years. Too much time behind a computer and to little time out in the world. Life, it seems, is passing me by and this site feels like it’s part of the problem. It’s an entity of it’s own, something that has a life and grows on it’s own, separate from me. And that’s not what I want.

I may start a new site somewhere that will, hopefully, feel a bit more connected to who I am. You see, I started straight edge life in the middle of my divorce. The identity of Straight Edge helped me find enormous strength when I had very little of my own. It helped me sort out my priorities and to find the resolve to take care of them properly. Unfortunately for this site those priorities do not include maintaining a large site or gluing myself to a label.

Straight Edge is part of who I am, it will always be, I’m not about to start drinking, have no fear. I’m as dedicated now to living totally substance free as I ever was, if not more so. But the label of it has put distance between me and a few people who I deeply care about. It’s just time for me to move on. You know, there’s a point where you spend so much time talking about life that you forget to actually live it. So… goodnight my friends. I’ll let you all know when I’ve got something worth reading or looking at, I promise.

Weak. Sadly weak. Harrison Ford is one of my favorites. No boy growing up in the Indiana Jones franchise can really say otherwise in all honesty. And I certainly don’t fault the weakness of Firewall on Harrison. It was just a limp and formulaic plot. I give it props for not trying to be more than it was. I also enjoyed that Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajsku) from 24 was in Firewall. She’s always fun. Don’t go into this movie expecting a lot. Certainly don’t go into it expecting that it will have anything to do with networking or any other aspect of geekdom. The server rooms are silent (viciously untrue of real server rooms) and the presentation of technology is very non-specific. It’s just not very compelling and fails to bring your concern for his kidnapped family to a level high enough to make anything that happens very interesting or important. It’s pretty obvious that someone in hollywood pulled the formula out and popped in the appropriate and inoffensive topic (networking), found some good actors and a crew. Harrison Ford does an excellent job of getting the crap kicked out of him and still winning the fight. How does he do that? Anyway… not much else to say. 4 out of 10.

Everybody gets pushed on by all sorts of forces. Some come from the outside and push straight in. Others come from the inside and push left, right, up, down or out. And then there are the ones that come from the outside and push straight through out on their way to something else. The ones that hit you like some helpless bystander caught in a drive-by shooting.

I don’t think I would go so far as to say that how someone handles these forces, external or internal, is a test of their character. It’s a test, sure. But of character? Not so sure about that. I think the better test of character is to see how well a person picks and chooses which forces to fight, which to submit to and which to watch from a distance.

A very good friend of mine told me of a dream she had about a huge wave coming straight at her. Recurring type of thing that haunted again and again. Eventually another friend told her to ride the wave, to body surf it.

Half the crap we deal with can usually be handled by simple knowing how to approach it. Is this something to tackle alone? Is this something to handle with the help of a professional? Is this something to ignore? Is this something to bear down and endure? Or will simply looking at it from a different angle show a completely different shape? Perhaps something more pleasant. Perhaps something even more frightening. You never really know until you take the time to have a look at it.

In this case my friend hasn’t been haunted by the dream since changing her perspective on it. Not after she looked at it in a different way.

I’m not particularly adept at recognizing the source of the forces pounding on me though. I’ve got a gift of strength, conviction and resolve but not necessarily of awareness. Few people do have the awareness gift in all honesty. And we all suffer from not seeking an outside opinion. Bouncing ideas off of other people is enormously important. Sometimes just imagining what your best friend would say is enough. “What would Mike do”, or some stuff like that. More often you need the real thing, the real response from the real person.

So yeah… seems that there are some forces pushing on me right now. Strong stuff. Forces from outside and definitely forces from inside. I’m on the verge of changing some pretty big bits of my life. Been thinking pretty hard about what to do for a living, where to do it, and with whom to spend my time. I’ll admit that I’ve made a few decisions in that regard. I’ll admit that I’m extraordinarily happy with those decisions as well. Just this weekend I committed to a decision that I hope to keep near to me for life. Feels damn good to know at least one thing definitively. But there are enough details to work out, enough other things… enough sources urging for other change that it’s a bit overwhelming. I want to unwrap them, untangle it, sort all of it out. And that leads me to the bigger question: How?

Optimistically I think there comes a time when your problems are solved simply by desiring something else so purely that you no longer feel the effects of original problem. Does that make sense? But not everything is totally clear cut and passionate. Not all decisions are made for you. Not all decisions are easy.

When you very much love what you do it’s definitely easier to exclude the things you don’t love. That makes decision making a bit easier. It’s definitely better than living in the sustained “lesser of two evils” state that most of us deal with on a daily basis. Constantly choosing between crap and crappier gets old fast. Passion, on the other hand, is a stunningly good leader; it loves having control. And so long as your passions are healthy, that’s totally cool. It’s safe and won’t often lead you wrong.

No, what I’m really talking about here is when you’re dealing with too much passion. Or, worse, when the practical and the passionate confront one-another with butting heads. This is the worst situation of all. When a person is asked to give up or sacrifice their passions it is a horrible thing. Even if he’s being asked to sacrifice one passion for another it’s a terrible thing.

Well, I don’t know the answer to this question of How. I don’t know how to tackle my issue of awareness either. All of it seems a bit frustrating and I’m sort of sleepy. Really want to slow things down and enjoy my life. And perhaps that will be my saving grace… being sick and tired of being sick and tired. Am willing to do pretty much anything to get myself back to the point where I’m enjoying my life again, full-time.