If there’s one person that I think is currently undervalued in the public discourse it’s Hasan Minhaj. He has so many amazing pieces and he isn’t scared to go for the tough questions with people and he isn’t scared of saying it like it is. Here’s a few of his more recent ones.
(His Netflix special is also really really good.)
I’m currently working on a Django app (written in the Python programming language). It’s my first time doing any real work with Python or Django and it is painful. It’s painful because it reminds me of when I started doing WordPress work. I did everything all wrong, I was hacking core, I was doing these clusterfuckeries that would be shameful to show now.
The thing is, I got good at WordPress. To the point where I think it wouldn’t be ridiculous to say that I was one of the top hundred most knowledgeable people on WordPress performance at scale. As for Python and Django, I’m currently in the bottom few hundreds.
And yes, it will pass, I will learn and understand the patterns Django uses, start to understand the magic that goes on behind the scenes and know if the random code sample I’m reading on Stack Overflow is correct or should be burned in the fire of the sun.
But right now, it’s painful. Another part of it is I think the fact that the code is publicly viewable by everyone, something that is great in terms of transparency for the Canadian public but it’s tough to show the flaws of my work so publicly. Part of me isn’t sure if it’s my inadequacies or just that they will be public that I’m worried about.
If I’m truly concerned about the quality of the work that will help the healthcare professionals, that’s one thing. But it being because my ego doesn’t want to show how little I know about a certain topic… that’s less great.
Perhaps I’ll just listen to the wisdom of this song which I believe is a ballad about becoming at peace with one’s own limitations and understanding that growth comes at a cost of pain and feeling uncomfortable.
Anyway, that’s my interpretation of the song….
A friend made a really good comment and observation and it highlighted that my post wasn’t as clear as it could of been.
Sometimes mediocrity happens when greatness isn’t given the conditions it needs to thrive.
AD
While I mentioned in passing of sense of reflection on why this happened and taking responsibility for it. I don’t think it was clear that just because someone is not performing as expected or is not a right fit for the organization at this current point in time it implies they are not a great person and that in a different set of circumstances they would be great.
I’ve been that person that was not at the right place at the right time, just as others have. It’s tough in the moment, but it’s better for you in the long run.
I mentioned we’ve been doing a few projects. We’ve almost finished the deck, we still need to put stain on certain parts, but it’s looking really good with the finished railing and the lighting.
Recently I feel like I’ve been using projects as distractions. The Garden beds, the lawn, the garage, the lights, the trees, the posts, the deck. I’ll do individual posts on those because, why not, but I think it’s a bit of a response to the whole situation.
It seems so many people are looking at ways to get control over the situation. Sometimes it manifests itself as folks pretending everything is fine and they don’t need to do anything such as the protests against the stay at home orders in the US for example or folks going over the top and staying home 24/7 and using Lysol on everything that comes into the house.
It seems a natural thing for folks to want to have control over something when they don’t have it in other parts of their lives.
It makes me wonder what decisions or actions I’ve taken, not because I really wanted that outcome as much as to assert control over something. Maybe I didn’t need to eat those 4 frozen yogourt bars….
I used to have many physical books and bookshelves along with DVDs prominently displayed in my living room. A colleague mentioned their bookshelves recently and while there is a quote I like:
“We enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles—a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are.” Such a library is “an assembly of titles that, practically and symbolically, serves [to define us].”
Alberto Manguel (via Lucas Cherkewski)
Interestingly enough, that is in part why I gave away all my books and all my DVDs. While yes there was a practical reason to it, I never really re-read a book and the movies I had a copy on a hard drive. The real reason is that I was using it as a way of defining me to others.
At first blush there doesn’t seem to be anything sub-optimal with that, but I realized that for me, it was a vanity project. I wanted to appear erudite (smart, but like, for wankers), to show off my “depth”, how intellectual I was, how well read, how spiritual, how pragmatic, how emotionally mature etc etc.
And the problem with that, with culturing the image you want to project is that, for me anyway, it takes the focus away from being that deep, emotionally mature, intellectual person to giving that perception.
I don’t need folks to see my library, (I need to resist name dropping “smart” books here that would only serve the exact purpose as what the paragraph above talks about) for them to know who I am. They can figure that out relatively quickly.
I understand the appeal of signalling and it’s benefits. Yes it’s easier to know who you’ll have many things in common with. But does that actually grow my understanding of the world? Will it help me be exposed to new ideas and new opinions if I only interact with folks I think are like-minded.
I know that last paragraph is a bit of a jump, from the image we project with our bookshelves to getting out of our filter bubbles. But I think it’s related in that if we want to better understand the world, we need to let others better understand us, and that means not necessarily using simple signalling to categorize and simplify what is at it’s core an incredibly complex individual.
Edit: I realize this may seem like a hit piece against people who have bookshelves prominently displayed. That’s not my intention, if you have bookshelves that’s great, I just wanted to talk about why I no longer do, doesn’t mean I think you’re vain if you have bookshelves.
If you haven’t already seen these, there’s a BBC golf commentator who narrates his dogs. It’s kinda amazing and the kind of thing that will make your day much better
I know many people talk about Radical Candour and I know I’ve mentioned it a few times and I wanted to just put this article here: https://www.radicalcandor.com/challenging-conversations-radical-candor/
I think one of the reasons I mention radical candour is not to tell others I’m doing it. But to remind myself that I’m trying to get better at it.
In all honesty, I think I’m pretty mediocre at it. I’ll often say things that are sub-optimal and will often shy away from tough conversations.
This article reminded me of the rewards having those conversation has, especially in the long term.
One of the things people seem to miss most when implementing something like radical candour is to first listen and to try to understand the other person. How can you expect someone to listen to you, if you haven’t listened to them?
I mean this post is pretty self explanatory. What I did realize is that I felt like I needed to keep playing, the sunk cost fallacy that I paid good money for it (okay, it was on sale and I had a gift card, but you get what I mean). I felt like I needed to finish the story, I needed to complete it, not just leave it half done.
But that’s really poppycock, I mean, I don’t play games to get achievements, I play them to unwind and relax. I shouldn’t feel compelled to do finish anything I don’t want to.
As to the specifics of why I don’t like it, it’s all about the story. It’s really not engaging. I mean, I see where this is going and it’s not like I can influence the story (or at least have the illusion of influencing the story) so what’s the point? It reminds me of GTA V (which shouldn’t surprise anyone) in that it’s a sort of “you’re a bad person, but not bad bad, just like kinda bad”.
Like, it’s okay to shoot the sheriff, but don’t shoot someone’s horse, only truly awful people kill horses.
If you want to watch a really long movie with an anti hero set in a western, it is technically beautiful….
Editor’s note: this started out as random rambling and somehow ended as an anonymous Q&A
One interesting thing that seems to happen is that I don’t recall if I’ve actually written a blog post about something, or if it’s just that I’ve been ruminating on it frequently.
When I travel or when I’m on a plane (not sure why but planes are where I write most of my blog posts, probably something to do with being disconnected from the internet [although even that isn’t always true]).
One thing that I particularly find interesting is the one-way-ness of blogs. It seems folks are very reticent to give public feedback on a blog post. Facebook (where 90% of my traffic comes from anyway) seems to be where folks will write. I suspect it’s the illusion of privacy, but perhaps I’m mistaken.
The funny thing is one of the reasons for being more active on my blog is because I don’t want to be on Facebook. (I have problems with Facebook and not just the fact that they’ve flagged an organization I’m on the board of having a website that “goes against our Community Standards“, that dubious page is this: https://www.basicincomecanada.org/basic_income_primers. Now granted, I agree that PDFs are not great… but I’m pretty sure it’s not against the “community standards”.
Anywho, this post started out as me just rambling about blogs, but I just had an idea. How about for the next week people can submit anonymous questions and vote on them on sli.do. I’ll answer anything that gets at least 2 votes (and realistically probably everything).