* Life Cartography: Terra Incognita (The Sirens of Titan)

Currently Listening: Style (Taylor Swift)
Currently Reading: The Sirens of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut, 1959); Snow Crash, audiobook (Neal Stephenson, 1992)

I finally feel it is time to return to blogging after my so-called "hiatus."

As part my self-cultivation goal, 2015 is going to be a year of Doing and Becoming for me (where previous years have been about Synthesis and Understanding). The idea of course is that I understand myself well enough to the point that if I continue this rate of self-analysis, I would be beating a dead horse. It's time to start making something out of what I've learned and converge more meaning out of my synthesis. "Forced" updates to this blog will remain personal and reflective and will continue at least thrice per month.

Pseudo-Solitude

Over the past few weeks, I felt, rather irrationally, that I was regressing a little. (Granted, new situations in life seem to be arising all the time. Emotional events, work stress, etc. all contribute to subtle neuroses.)

Knowing that the best solution sometimes is just to "get away" and spend some time with myself, I took a mini trip along PCH. I wanted the solitude and a few hours to clear my mind without the external influence of others.

I noted that I was somewhat desensitized to the awe of large cities and glamorous lights. And that numbness was even creeping towards the mystique of forests and endless expanse of oceans. It all started to look and feel the same to me. If I had to draw conclusions from that self-observation, it would be either (a) I'm still too obsessed with the connectivity of the internet and the telephone to experience any awe or (b) everything outward is the same (change is the only constant) and our experience of the outward has to do with the experience of ourselves in tandem. If (b), then perhaps I stand by the ocean to experience humility and I explore the forests to experience curiosity.

Incidentally, I borrowed Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan from Marvin for this trip (amazingly, I've met someone who has the same taste in books as myself and, I presume, is an equal in literacy). It was very fitting for a solo trip focused on oceans and exploring "nooks and crannies":

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.

Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions.

Only inwardness remained terra incongnita.

That was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.

I will leave it up to my future self and whoever reads this to guess what I might of felt when I got to this part of the book.

Vonnegut has a great writing voice and if I ever get around to writing my sci-fi novel(la?), I would claim his work to be very influential on me. He is deeply cynical but optimistic at the same time--a paradox which I feel resonates with my own views of the world. Biographer Charles J. Shields says it best: "he offers a mixture of wistful humanism and cynical existentialism that implies a way of dealing with modern realities completely different from that of most American writers."

"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus

There are many things I'd like to be good at and develop and yet the greatest barrier to refinement and excellence is often my fear. But I will happily claim that I am really learning to overcome these and "putting myself out there."

I make plenty of mistakes at work. And I contantly have to pick myself up off the ground and remind myself that it's okay, I don't need to be "perfect." I can strive to be perfect and I should not let that deter me from trying new methods or admitting mistakes or asking for help.

In The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut described brain antennas used to control soldiers. Whenever, someone did something wrong, they would experience pain and discomfort. Only by ignoring the pain and completing an action to the end would the protagonist be able to learn--over time, it got easier (similar to exposure therapy). In the same way, judgement and feelings of failure are both painful and uncomfortable and the more we move past that, the greater our ability to do and become.

My recent foray into science communications is one example of "putting myself out there." I wrote a post not too long ago about wanting to be more journalistic in my writing and, while I felt the leap might have been premature, I had reached out to the writers of UCSF's student-run newspaper, Synapse. My thought was, if I don't have something that forces me to write and get exposure to critique, my progress as a writer would be languid.

So far, I've done an event brief, a contest winner announcement, and conference event coverage.

I'm both proud of what I've contributed and also very self-critical. I haven't been able to spend a lot of time on the work but I am forcing myself into it. And I'm optimistic that I'm taking positive steps. My PI even came in and complimented me on my writing and told me that my digital health article was well-written. I was glad for that. But I must improve!

I've made a little more sense out of everything I could regress to and everything I can reach towards. My hope is for steadfast improvement from now on.

"One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."