I’ve gone through quite a lot of interests. Sometimes they combine in useful ways, like the way coding and writing are imbued into practically all the other interests I have. Sometimes they last for years, and sometimes they’re over in months. From other people’s stories, I get the sense that this will likely continue throughout my life. =)

I want to do this better – the cultivation of interests, and the occasional letting go. Why do I want to do it better? I want to minimize the risk of being in the following situations:

• When I overcommit to an interest:
  • Spending more money, time, or space than an interest needs
  • Making long-term promises (ex: speaking, organizing) that I might feel weird about
• When I find myself in a lull because I haven’t cultivated my interests enough:
  • Recognizing temporary interest distance and accepting or working around it
  • Accepting the feeling of being a beginner and getting to the point of enjoyment
  • Letting go at the apppropriate point

In addition to those downsides, I want to make better use of the upsides:

• During the initial period of fascination, I want to take unselfconscious notes
• As my interest matures, I want to get better at seeking and organizing information, and then coming up with my own thoughts
• I want to get better at drawing connections between interests and taking advantage of the combinations

So I’d like to learn more about how I think and learn. What kinds of things am I interested in? Why do my interests change? What stages do I go through? How can I make just the right level of commitment, feeding fledgling interests without adding too much weight to them, building on mature interests without stretching them too far, and taking breaks or letting go gracefully without flaking out? Should I focus on developing interest persistence, or get better at going with the flow?

Here’s an example of an interest I’m thinking through: I like Emacs and its community. I seem to get into Emacs cyclically. For a few months each year, I spend a lot of time looking closely at how I use Emacs and learning from what other people do. I hang out in Emacs communities, pay attention to mailing lists, tweak my config, write blog posts, sometimes create resources. (My Emacs geekery really is quite oddly rhythmic. Here’s the data by month since Nov 2011.)

Then other things take my attention, and I drift off. I haven’t tweaked my configuration or written an Emacs-related blog post in a while. I’ll get back to it at some point, I know – the oddest thing will bring me back: some idea or question – but in the meantime, I’m fine with letting it be for now.

But I’ve set up monthly Emacs Hangouts on my calendar and in Google+ events, because precommitting to those means that they happen. And there’s some kind of an Emacs Conference that I think would be an excellent idea, but I haven’t been able to muster the energy to do the kind of social outreach that I think would be needed in order to get the schedule sorted out. And there are the occasional requests for help that come in, even though I don’t feel I can contribute even a fraction of what http://emacs.stackexchange.com/ or the relevant mailing lists could.

I feel like it would be good for me to be closer to that interest, but there are other things on my mind at the moment, so I leave things hanging. I’ll be there for the Emacs Hangouts I’ve set up, but I haven’t felt like doing anything else lately: lining up people for Emacs Chat podcasts, writing or drawing a review of Mastering Emacs, exploring the awesome new packages that are out there…

On the other hand, I know that sometimes all it takes is a little time immersing myself in it: checking out StackExchange questions or IRC conversations, reading source code, going through my long TODO list of Emacs things to learn. Likely that will kickstart my interest.

In the meantime, this lull itself is curious and interesting, because I rarely get to pay attention to feelings like this. It feels odd to be a little bit distant from Emacs and reading books, two of my long-term interests. Writing, drawing, coding, and data analysis continue to be interesting. My sewing is on hold; I think keeping myself to one type of garment a year seems like a good way to avoid burnout. Gardening has been slowed to the pace that nature keeps. I notice a fledgling interest in cognitive research and psychology.

I’m taking it easy, fanning interest when I can and relaxing when I feel like doing that instead. A mix of routine and freedom helps, I think. I like writing and coding in the morning. Sometimes it takes a little effort to get started, especially with writing, but then I get going. In the afternoon, it’s okay to relax.

I don’t think that my values and the things that tickle my brain have changed, so I’ll probably return to my long-term interests once my new interests settle down and get integrated. They’ll be richer for it too, like the way coding got better when I added writing, and writing got better when I added drawing. In the meantime, I’m curious about charting the shifts in my focus and making the most of them.

Hmm, I wonder if this is related to my hesitation around the Quantified Self talk we’re planning for November: I’m not sure if I’ll be able to give the enthusiastic performance that I imagine newcomers would find helpful…

Aha! I think that might explain it. By myself, I’m okay with the shifts in my interests. I just try to take good notes and share them along the way. Social commitments add friction to interest-changing because I don’t want to flake out and I don’t want to fake things, which is why I’m reluctant to make plans even if I miss out on opportunities because I don’t want to do so. However, it would probably be good for me to know how to work with this, because social commitments are a good way to help make things that are bigger than yourself. If I remind myself that (a) at the core, I’m still likely to enjoy the things that drew me to that interest in the first place, and (b) it’s not the end of the world even if I mess up, that might help me reduce the anxiety around essentially making a promise that future me will still have the same passions that people are drawn to in the present. So I’m likely to still avoid making big commitments (say, no convincing people to quit their jobs and start a company with me), but I can practise with the small ones I have.

At the moment, I think I’ll still want someone else to take point on organizing the Emacs Conference speaker schedule, but I can re-evaluate that in two weeks, and we can always move it further out if needed. I should be able to handle the Quantified Self talk – worst-case scenario is I don’t manage to inspire and connect with people, but I don’t expect a small 1-hour talk to change people’s lives that much anyway. So it’s okay even if I don’t feel 100% there in terms of the interests right now. I have enough good memories to know I’ll probably feel that way about those interests again soon, so I can plan accordingly.

It’s a little odd teasing apart temporary factors and long-term factors in my mind, but I’m glad I can sit and write my way through it. In the meantime, I’ll focus on keeping my experiences of those interests pleasant, tickling my brain whenever I can. There’s so much depth to each interest that I don’t really need to add more. But on the other hand, the combinations can be quite interesting, so I’ll explore away. =)

I notice that even when I’m fuzzy-brained, there’s a part of me that observes it curiously. Even when I move slowly, tired, there’s a part of me that savours it. Even when it’s like there’s a big fuzzy blanket on my mind, there’s a tiny part that looks forward to being able to think about it.

I like having that little observer, the one who turns all sorts of things into learning experiences. I wonder how I can get even better at this.

In terms of drawing: Sometimes I feel a little odd circling around similar thoughts, like what to do when I’m fuzzy. But it’s okay to do so, especially if doing so clears away the surface thoughts so that I can notice little things to be curious about.

In terms of writing: If I have a bunch of posts scheduled, then I tend to skip writing when I’m fuzzy. But maybe that’s when I should write, so that I can remember what that fuzziness is like and dig into it deeper. There’s plenty of information out there already, so it’s okay for me to take some time to explore the things I haven’t figured out myself – even if they’re simple for other people.

In terms of learning: I like reading research. I pick up tools for understanding, and I can place my experiences within a bigger context. The more I read research, the easier it gets. I tend to be more interested in research than in popular science books or other non-fiction these days. Maybe it’s because the abstracts for research are so concise, and the occasional full-text article that I get to read goes into more detail than books usually do. Hmm, maybe I should learn more about the library’s research resources…

In terms of self-observation: Stoicism talks a fair bit about this. It might be interesting to make myself a reflection guide to use especially when I’m fuzzy. Even if it means reviewing the same thoughts, that should be fine. After all, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius works well despite – perhaps even because of – the repetitive exercises.

What would it be like to have this part of me even further developed? I imagine being able to keep my calm in trying situations, and to appreciate life as it comes. I imagine being able to notice the tiny new things in each rotation. Even when I walk in circles, I can go somewhere new.

Sometimes, when I sit down to draw my five index cards of the day, I have a hard time delineating five interesting thoughts – things I want to remember or share. They often seem so inward-turned.

I was thinking about the shape of my blog, too. I feel like I’ve shifted from a lot of technical posts to a lot of reflective posts. Possibly less interesting for other people, but useful to me. It’s hard to tell. These are the kinds of posts I’ve been starting to find useful in other people’s blogs, anyway, so who knows? Maybe these things are interesting for other people too.

It’s wonderful to be able to flip back through my archive and see the patterns over time. Of the 2,800+ posts in my index as of April 2015, I’d classify around 170 as mostly reflective. (Totally quick classification, just eyeballing the titles and categories in my index.) Here’s the breakdown:

While writing a recent post, I searched my archives to trace the evolution of my understanding of uncertainty over several years. I can remember not having these snapshots of my inner world. When I reviewed ten years of blog posts in preparation for compiling Stories from My Twenties in 2013, I was surprised by how many technical and tip-related blog posts I skipped in favour of keeping the memories and the questions, and the sense of things missing from my memories. Maybe that’s why I wrote almost three times the number of reflective posts in 2014 as I did in the previous year. 2014 was also the year I switched the focus of my experiment from other-work to self-work, and that might have something to do with it too. I’m glad I have those thinking-out-loud, figuring-things-out posts now.

The end of April was around 33% of the way through the year, so I’m slightly ahead of last year’s reflective-post-density (expected: 20 posts, actual: 25). Comments are rare, but I’ve learned a lot from them.

I’m fascinated by the ten-year journals you can buy in bookstores. They give you ways of bumping into your old selves, noticing the differences. I like the way blogs give me a little bit more space to write, though. =) Here’s a slice of my life going through May 14:

• 2014: Visual book notes: Mastery: I was drawing a lot of book notes in addition to writing about Emacs. Around this time, I was worried about whether I was slacking off, but actually, things were pretty good.
• 2013: Learning update May 2013: Hmm, this is still a pretty good list.
• 2012: Sketchnotes: Jeremiah Owyang @ Third Tuesday Toronto (#3TYYZ) on the Social Business Hierarchy of Needs: I used to go to more events. Now I tend to prefer to learn from books or the Internet.
• 2011: Cattus Petasatus: Latin learning is on hold at the moment.
• 2010: Even more awesome LotusScript mail merge for Lotus Notes + Microsoft Excel: I still get comments about this, even though it’s been years since I last used Lotus Notes.
• 2009: Thinking about the next summer dress I’m going to make: Oh, sewing! Also, web development and presentations…
• 2008: It’s not just for you – it helps other people remember the steps, too!: Learning out loud
• 2007: Didn’t write anything on that day, but the next post was about a hastily-organized trip home.
• 2006: Didn’t write anything on that day, but the next post was about the Mesh conference. Hey, Jen Nolan’s name turned up! Neato.
• 2005: People with a passion…: Emacs development and community stuff. =) Still at it!
• 2004: A couple of snippets of flash fiction.
• 2003: Didn’t write anything on that day, but the next post was about being late for school.

I have shifted. I focus on different things. I like the direction I’m going in. I can imagine, years from now, getting very good at asking questions, describing and naming elusive concepts, and exploring the options. If it seems a little awkward now, that’s just the initial mediocrity I have to get through. Hmm…

2015-04-20b Cultivating coping mechanisms – index card #self-care #coping

I'm not sure if other people do this, but I figured I'd write about how I deliberately cultivate certain coping or self-soothing behaviour, in case it resonates with anyone.

Whenever I come across a mildly stressful situation, I use that as an opportunity to practice and reinforce ways to deal with it. For example, I like getting hugs, so I've learned to create that feeling for myself and I've learned to ask people for hugs when I need it. I associate hot chocolate with comfort and self-care instead of having it as a regular luxury, so it's there as a treat when I really need it. I tell myself that it's impossible for me to stay sad when I'm eating ice cream, and that becomes the case. I practise elucidating what I'm feeling, accept it, and experiment with ways to improve the situation. I give myself permission to stop trying to do things that require a lot of thinking and energy, and to instead focus on cooking and other easy ways to create value for myself and others. I figure out good walks and relaxing forms of exercise. I guiltlessly spend time cuddling the cats.

Sometimes I'll focus on remembering what it feels like to be comforted and happy and safe while, say, mind-mapping thorny feelings, and eventually it becomes easier and easier to do so.

When more stressful situations come, I have some idea of what works for me, and I have positive associations around those techniques. I wonder if it's a little like clicker-training yourself… =) Anyway, I've been finding it easier and easier to deal with life's little curveballs. I don't know the magnitude at which things will start to overwhelm me again, but it's nice to know that I can handle more and more. In the meantime, even obstacles can be fuel for greater happiness and equanimity. =)