sacha chua living an awesome life

It’s a little intimidating doing something that’s very different from what I usually do, but if I focus on small ways to help, it’s easier. =) And then I can build strength and endurance and knowledge gradually, interleaving challenges with things I can do.

Whenever we sit on the couch to watch a movie, the cats inevitably gather. Neko prefers to sit on W-’s lap if he’s available (I’m only slightly jealous, harumph), but will curl herself up on my lap if W- is working on his laptop. Luke will jump on my lap for a bit if Neko isn’t there, or he’ll nap beside me if my lap is occupied. Leia prefers to play monorail cat along the back of the sofa or on the arms. If one of us stands up, the warm spot is almost immediately taken by a cat (usually Neko).

W- usually works on his computer while watching a movie. I’m tempted to do so as well, but since Neko doesn’t usually seek out company, I figured that it’s fine just spending time with her on my lap. Sometimes I try to type or draw on the side, and that’s not particularly ergonomic.

I could relax and focus on the movie, making it practice for being in the moment. Or I can play around with the possibilities, since not all movies need full attention. Knitting and crochet are out of the question because the cats are crazy about string. I can flip through Japanese flashcards on my phone. I can dust off my Twiddler one-handed keyboard and see about learning that again. I can skim nonfiction books to see which deserve deeper reading.

Hmm… This Twiddler thing looks promising. It’s amazing how much muscle memory can retain after so many years. I think it might be interesting to develop both right- and left-handed facility with this. Who knows, it might even come in handy while sketchnoting, so that I can trigger keyboard shortcuts.

This is me from 2003 or so, with a Twiddler one-handed keyboard and an M1 head-mounted display (on which I looked up stuff in Emacs, naturally). My dad took this picture. =)

It’s funny how things come together: cats, wearable computing, writing, drawing… We’ll see where this goes!

My parents were having problems with their company’s recent web hosting migration. No e-mail was getting forwarded to the e-mail accounts that they had set up previously, and the two blogs that were separate from the main site didn’t get transferred either. My mom asked me to help restore the blogs. They needed someone to sort out the email and other system administration issues, so I suggested that she find a local system administrator who can also take care of upgrading WordPress and other sites as needed.

I don’t particularly enjoy system administration. I feel terrible when I make a mistake on my own server, and I don’t want to be on the hook for anyone else’s. I’ve done some system administration work as part of web development, since I was usually the person with the most Linux experience in my teams. Setting up is easy, but maintenance could be fiddly, and keeping up with security updates can be no fun. (I’m looking at you, Rails.) Add to that the time zone differences and the inability to just lean over and fix things, and, well…

So I was feeling conflicted and unfilial about wanting to help my mom but not wanting to commit to being the company sysadmin. The problem needed to be fixed, though, and they probably wouldn’t find a good system administrator in time.

As an experiment, I tried imagining an alternate universe in which I would be comfortable making those changes and being The IT Guy (or Gal, in this case). If I lived near my parents, I would help them, of course. I do that for friends and family here. If I had the routines for managing many sites, then it would be easy to maintain another site and another company. I can imagine that for Alternate Universe Sacha, this kind of work might even be easy and enjoyable.

Having imagined this Alternate Universe Sacha, I tried “stepping sideways” into that role. Sure, I was half a world away, but I could mentally move the house to my hometown. Time zone differences and distance can make it difficult to communicate because it’s hard to tell how busy someone is and when you get the information you need, but it actually worked out well because I worked on it in the evening while people were at work back home. If I stopped worrying about the possibilities of messing things up worse and instead took the same methodical approach that I would use if I had a lot of experience in this (and I guess I do, compared to many people), then it would actually be pretty straightforward. Besides, I reassured myself, everything will turn out all right. Even if I messed things up, family’s still family. For gaining experience, it’s hard to find a more forgiving client.

It turned out to be straightforward, although it did involve a lot of clicking around. E-mail works again, and the blogs are both back up. Not only that, I now have an alternate universe Sacha whom I can think of myself as if I need to do more system administration work. I’m using that idea to make it easier for me set up proper maintenance for my personal sites as well. If I was an experienced and constantly improving system administrator who enjoyed doing this, how would I do this? It’s no substitute for actual experience–I’ll still miss things people learned the hard way–but it helps me reach that point of learning what I need to learn the hard way.

I wonder what alternate universe selves I might play with in the future. Do you use any?

There was a recent Lifehack.org post on tying something you love to workouts so that you feel more motivated. It’s useful to know how to hack your motivation. =) W- and I joke about this. After going to fitness class, we make sure there’s a little positive reinforcement. Sometimes we go out to eat. We cook most of our meals, so it’s a real treat for us to go to a restaurant. Sometimes we’ll prepare comfort food at home. Sometimes I’ll reward myself with time spent playing video games. It doesn’t do much for my motivation during the workout itself (I still feel like I suck!), but it’s good for getting me out the door and for cheering me up again afterwards. I try to skew my reward system towards free or low-cost things so that I don’t end up associating spending with pleasure: a pho date is wonderful, but so is watching a movie at home.

There aren’t many things in my life that need this kind of extra motivation. Sometimes I need to use extra motivation in order to start giving a good presentation if I’m not feeling up to par, but it’s a scheduled commitment, so that helps me get going. Once I’m in the flow, crowd energy usually leaves me buzzing. Dealing with system administration issues and embarrassing mistakes is tough, but it is what it is, so I just have to knuckle down and do it. It’s just optional tough things that need this kind of external motivation-hacking, like exercising or shopping for clothes. (Yes, I’m weird.) There’s clearing my inbox, which I usually get around to doing once a week or so. Business mail gets faster replies, but I’m not super-responsive, and I think that’s actually okay with my priorities.

I have six sessions left on my 10-session pass (which is my second), and I plan to go once a week with W-. (Maybe even twice, if I can work up to it – I used to before I sprained my ankle.) I wonder how much I can hack my motivation, and if I can get to the point of wanting to get another 10-session pass. In that time, I’m probably not going to be able to enjoy the feeling of keeping up properly with the rest of the class. I usually modifying all the exercises so that I can do them without getting so tired that I might injure myself. But I can increase my enjoyment of being able to check off one more session (maybe with a nice big visual reminder?), especially combined with biking to and from the gym. I can line up treats for myself (such as books or stretching), and then focus on tying the positive feelings back to the exercise. I can also look for other forms of exercise that I might enjoy. Maybe lifting small weights or hula-hooping while playing games? <laugh>

Lifehack.org: How to Trick Yourself into Loving Your Workout

This weekend was very much a home sort of weekend. I planted pansies in the front flowerbox. Planted peas and beans in the back, too. I want to see how much I can learn about gardening during my semi-retirement. I love the way plants grow. For example, the spring onions I transplanted to a pot keep inching upwards, and there are rows of seedlings peeking out of the mounded rows in the back cage. Yay! Maybe this week I’ll buy a 6-cell pack of cherry tomato seedlings and get those started too.

Prepared and froze Japanese croquettes, getting through most of the bag of russet potatoes that we bought. Future yumminess! Also prepared yakiudon, which W- helped me cook. We’re getting better at improvising dishes based on whatever looks good at the supermarket. It takes us a while to shop for groceries, but it’s social time.

Life stretches before me. I think it would be wonderful to get really really good at gardening and cooking and all of these other things that make life better.

Sketchnoting the first day of the FITC conference was a fascinating experience because the speakers were clearly passionate about design and art, and they were doing things that were way geekier than anything I’ve ever done. (For example, programmed electrical stimulation of muscles.) Crossing over into world-crossers’ worlds.

It’s fun stepping into other people’s worlds. People talked about installations, exhibitions, and residencies – these structures that just aren’t part of the programming, consulting, or sketchnoting that I do. And yet I’m part of this world too. There are overlaps through visual thinking, data visualization, Quantified Self, and interesting ideas like Stefan Sagmeister’s seven-year sabbatical cycle. (I’m doing a more extreme version of this, I guess. I’m starting off with a five-year experiment in semi-retirement.)

This crossing-over thing reminded me of Mel Chua’s reflection on reaching across worlds:

But I was made for bridging; it’s my gift. When I pull across worlds and stand between them, I feel both the pain of loneliness and exclusion and not having a home to belong to, and the joy of being fully used — because in any one world, only part of me is awake. I need to reach across worlds to be all me, be all there.

A different perspective makes it easier for me, I guess. I’m at home in many different spheres: development, consulting, sketchnoting, self-tracking, writing, cooking, gardening, reading… Home enough, at least, to often feel assured, and I know enough about the impostor syndrome to recognize it when it tries to creep in. I cross over because it’s fun to see if I can translate what I know, and what new things these new worlds will teach me. If I had to give up all those other worlds and concentrate on one, though, I would still have infinities to explore. Interests are often fractal and endlessly deep. On this adventure, I bump into other category-defiers and boundary-crossers. The lines blur, and that’s awesome.

I’ll be doing consulting for around two days a week for the rest of the year. Before I started this experiment, I hadn’t even considered this kind of work arrangement. Development tends to need larger chunks of time because you need to hold the codebase in your head, especially if other people are also changing it. Sketchnoting involves intense effort over one or two days. Illustrations are usually be short engagements with rapid turnaround. This social business consulting that I do with E1 works out really well. I can make a big difference on the days that I’m there, and I can also think about other things when I’m not in the office.

I like the work that I do when I’m consulting. It’s a mix of such different skills: writing, front-end development, database queries, Excel wizardry, statistics, automation, even drawing. I make good things happen.

What do I want for the second year of my experiment? This, I think – a wonderful new normal. Strengthen the foundation of fitness, remove more stressors and unnecessary obligations. It helps to remember that I don’t need to chase after every opportunity, that it’s okay to slow down and breathe.

Sometimes I think that I’m not using my other days well enough, that I’m too scattered across a number of potential projects. That I should be Doing Something Amazing. But worrying about it is even less productive, and I should expect that like all skills, learning how to make the most of discretionary time also takes time.

Hmm. There’s something interesting there. I don’t want to use these five years to have wildly awesome experiences and then go back to “regular life” afterwards. I want to use these five years to move towards new normals, new habits. It’s like the way I like keeping our lifestyle smooth and simple instead of varying it with incomes’ ups or downs. Slow and steady progress, sustainable growth, instead of fleeting impulses and momentary enjoyment.