Travis

I spent close to six months in jail last year. In one of the housing units that housed me, I met a man named Travis. Travis was white. I am of a darker shade of skin. My first day in the housing unit, he introduced himself. The unit was a dorm (not a place of cells). It being a dorm means there was about seventy guys all in an extremely large, oversize, living room that happened to have bunkbeds on one side. So Travis saw me, greeted me, and we kept on talking.

I liked Travis and continued enjoying his company because he didn't ask questions about why I was in jail. He wasn't interested in jail politics or race. He wasn't interested in fighting. He was peaceful. He had a temper (regarding certain topics), but towards me he was always gentle.

While I was still new, he helped me fill out my commissary bubblesheet. This was a signficant favor. He asked me what I wanted to order. We walked over to where the commissary menu was, and I told him what I wanted and pointed to the items. There were two options for toothpaste so he confirmed I wanted the Colgate brand. I don't remember exactly who was stocking my money account with the jail but it was probably my Dad. Travis went on to fill in my bubblesheet for me. I didn't have to sit down, take a pencil, and fill in the many small bubbles to communicate to the jail what I wanted to purchase. The bubblesheets are normal sizes of paper but they have dozens of items crammed into them, with empty bubbles waiting to be filled in to indicate a request. Bubblesheets are collected once a week and you're given what you wanted, assuming you had a sufficient balance, the next day.

Later on in my time in the dorms, there was a man who made an announcement to the dorm that he would fill in anyone's bubblesheet in return for a small compensation (probably some item from the commissary). It was his hustle. It sounded like a credible exchange to me, since filling out your bubblesheets is a bit of a nuisance.

School Friends Versus Work Friends

When you're in school and you make friends, there is an underlying substance there which is as follows: both you and your friends are fighting against the challenges of the education system.

When you work at a company, there is no such thing to bond over. If you want, you can argue that everyone at the company is fighting together to acquire money and time from customers, but this isn't regarded as a sacred custom the way school is. It's also presented to the adult as a selfish, or at least of-self-interest, pursuit. There is no element of good-faith like there is in studying for a school class. Young students aren't really aware of what the private sector business world is like. They study based on trust. They are promised that studying is a good idea. It is never clear whether such study is an exercise of monetary self-interest, or one that is for the health and mental well-being of the student.

I think this is why making friends on the job is harder than making friends at school.

When I was in my 20s and working at my first job, there came a weekend when a lot of the young guys went on a snowboarding trip. I went with them. We were bonding but the friendships that formed from that company where way more strained and of-shaky-foundation than the friends I made in school.

My Friend from ISU

A long time ago, I was back in California after spending a year and a half at Iowa State University. I had graduated from college and had purchased my first car, a Toyota Camry Hybrid. They were kind of new at the time (2007ish).

A friend from ISU contacted me, saying he was coming to Los Angeles for a job fair. The job fair was going to be for jobs in Japan. This friend spoke Japanese (I don't recall how he learned it). He wasn't a native to Japan.

We coordinated schedules and I picked him up from the airport. I drove him to his hotel. Before leaving him there, we went out to eat. We went to a Shabu-Shabu place. We probably were in that restaurant for forty-five minutes. We took a couple of pictures. We didn't have smartphones in those days, so I probably was using a digital camera to take the photos.

I think this is what I am supposed to be looking forward to in friendship. I think this is what I am supposed to look for during my downtime from work. I don't remember what that friend and I talked about over dinner, but we must've talked about something.

Coding Lately

There was a time when I thought I didn’t want to let people down. I thought that coding as a hobby and means to get a job was a way to hold my friends on Twitch up.

I met a person on Twitch in March who I was in loose contact with and I didn’t want to let that person down. This pressure was something I felt in the middle of this month. But after going a week or so further, I changed my mind. I decided that the life I’d led in my 20s and 30s was enough to have shown this friend that I wasn’t a tool of a person. At that point, saying that I didn't want to let down my friends on Twitch wasn’t really valid anymore. I didn’t let my Twitch friends down. Why I work now is part of a different phase in my life. I don’t feel like making X dollars a month constitutes holding my friends up.

I had this recent weekend where I was watching a lot of dog and cat videos. I felt not well. When I finally started coding at the end of a day, I felt much better. Coding is what makes me happy.

Per unit time, there is a limited amount of things to do on YouTube, Discord, and Twitch. You can exhaust the content coming out of those machines in about 3 hours, and be starved for the next week. Coding is how I make my life interesting and how I provide conversation fodder.

I had this experience about a year and a half ago where I was working on this rather elite team. I was one of two coders on the team. But there were others attending the daily work meeting who were well-versed in a database system that the company used everywhere. One person in particular was a vice president at the company, which was a few hundred people large. He was both respected and feared, due in no small part to his combination of expertise and diligence.

One day he messaged me and we were talking about a programming req. I told him that I was watching music videos (which I was) and would resume working soon, to attend to the concern we were talking about. He didn't get mad at me. He didn't even balk.

This anecdote illustrates how I see programming. When you're a programmer, you are considered to be benevolent. You are considered to be so elite that (often) no one cares whether or not you wear a suit to work. No one cares if you take a break in the middle of the work day, beyond the lunch break. When the web servers are in panic mode at 11pm, you're expected to be working on them. But if the weather is fine, you can relax and work at your own pace.

At this point in my life, it's not obvious to me whether I will be able to continue my programming career. But I don't feel like I self-destructed. I don't really feel like moving into a different career is high on my list of priorities. Sometimes the world agrees with you, that you are doing good work. But this isn't guaranteed.

One can argue that I should be working so that I can secure financial stability for myself. But if the world got mad at me and no company wanted to hire me, at some point it's not my fault. I believe that I merit a nice paycheck, and that being able to afford my lunch should come easily to me. If the world disagrees, it isn't going to send a team of lawyers and other programmers to prove to me that I'm incompetent. I don't lie to myself about my programming past. I know when I've done good work and when I haven't. That no one sees me as a benevolent leader can be a peaceful disagreement between me and the world.

I program because I like it. Not because I want to be rich.

The Substance of Friendship

I think there is a substance that needs to be built for people to enjoy talking to each other. C.S. Lewis use to say that friendship required a "matrix of friendship" and I feel like I'm starting to recognize what he was talking about.

In mid-April, I went to a meeting of software developers organized via meetup.com. When I left, I connected with all of the people who had attended via LinkedIn. A few weeks afterwards, I messaged all of the attendees from that day via LinkedIn. In general the attendees didn't want to talk to me. I don't blame them. I'm not sure that I had much to say to them.

In February, I joined a couple of programming Discords. One was dead and the other did not gain my interest even though some people were talking in it. I left those programming Discords.

Talking about tech in the name of friendship is kind of strange. IT is a job and its application is scattered across space via fiber optic cables. Why would we setup tech discussions when we already have to worry about that at our jobs? How is talking about tech an example of substance? Can't anyone just login to the Internet and Google whatever tech topic they are interested in, rather than depending on a coordinated meeting? For example, if I want to learn about Golang, I can just start programming in Golang and lookup things on the Internet as I encounter barriers. There is no need to wait for, and go to, a tech meetup and talk there with the attendees about whatever programming obstacles I am encountering while learning Golang.

I have one friend who I occasionally talk to about tech, but we used to work together. When we worked together, we got to know each other across some points of drama and others of technical challenge. That background has provided a substance of friendship.

I joined a KPop Discord and I am at least motivated to talk to the people there. I dislike IT people by default because in this world, intelligence is seen as a weapon instead of something that places you into a high rank in the formation that is a nation. This is a part of the reason I didn't stick around in the tech Discords I mentioned above. But KPop is still a rebellion in the west. It thus provides a substance for conversation. I've enjoyed some of the exchanges I've had in the KPop Discord.

I have no interest in Twitch channel Discords. I've been in one in the past and don't want to go back to that experience. A Twitch channel Discord, to me, does not provide a backing substance for conversation. If anything, it takes away from the backing substance by diluting the weight of your sentences. This is not to say that I don't find Twitch to be an environment for conversation. I do. But I do not see channel Discords as an extension of the substance I've built inside of Twitch chat. I've built substance using bit donations, and also from the fact that I've played video games to show my honor.

People who are gregariously friendly without first waiting on the substance of friendship to provide a grounds for conversation, are annoying. You won't recognize this if you're a dullard or lonely, but if you perceive life to be a contest of perseverance, then conversation without a backing substance of friendship is not interesting.

Where Honor Starts

I am told that waiting to die is a condition to be avoided. But I feel like I am waiting to die all the time. I feel this way even though I am applying myself to work tasks. I don't want to rot in a puddle of my own vomit but I still feel like I am waiting to die. I feel like I am among the most irrelevant people inhabiting this earth.

I sometimes feel like my career has had unfair bounds around it, and this feeling damages my motivation to keep working. I start to feel like one of the characters Ayn Rand favors in Atlas Shrugged. But, when I see that life is depressing, and that work is the only way I can make it not so, then I am able to get motivated to work again. Work is how I keep my life interesting.

Honor starts with the recognition that life is depressing.

When we (I) hear the word honor, I have a knee-jerk reaction which is to picture a Japanese samurai. Such was an honorable life, right? I don't think honor should be associated so firmly with such a stereotype, though. If you simply recognize that life is depressing and walk forward through it anyway, illuminating what's around you as you go, then you are as honorable as that samurai.

The Lord of the Rings franchise and the character of Gandalf was a reminder of this second type of peaceful honor. Gandalf used to say that Hobbits were a source of courage for him. At the end of the Hobbit, Thorin tells Bilbo to go "back to his books" and to plant his trees. Thorin sees in Bilbo plenty of honor.

You Click One Corgi Butt Video

A couple days ago I was cruising around YouTube and I came across a video thumbnail that claimed to be about a Welsh Corgi twerking. The thumbnail showed a corgi from behind. I was curious so I clicked on the video. As promised, it was a video of a corgi appearing to twerk. It was shaking its booty in front of the camera. I tried to determine that the video was fake but it looked legitimate.

I went on with my life.

But in the past 48 hours, YouTube has recommended 3 corgi butt videos (or maybe two but one twice). YouTube decided that I'm really into corgi butts now.

:/

Introverted Nerds at Bars

I was watching this YouTube video once where it said that if you are an introverted nerd, you should not bother going out to a bar to try to find a romantic interest. That was deemed to be not the element of such a person.

I forced myself to go to bars and clubs for a period of time. I'd go and I'd try to talk to people, including pretty girls. I'd try to get the phone number of a girl if I thought she was pretty. This never really went anywhere and after about a year and a half I dropped the practice.

While I was doing it, it felt like a job to me. At the end of it, when I'd see a woman standing there, I couldn't come up with a sincere reason for why I was starting a conversation with her.

I remember one time, I started talking to this couple about Japanese history. I was reading about it, and thought I'd talk about what I was doing with my time. It was very strange. I felt like I was being a buzzkill given the environment.

I remember one time, at a strip club, I intentionally talked to one stripper about how I would buy Brita water filters and use that to obtain drinking water. She took up the conversation and replied with how she obtained drinking water via water bottles, and I felt immediately bad for having creating the topic.

I guess when I talk to people I feel obligated to be discussing a grand mission.

When I was finishing college, I did consulting for a psychology department. I was programming a small visual experiment for them. It leveraged OpenGL and just rendered a couple of rectangular slabs in different placements. I overheard the grad students talking about their professor. They said he would talk about psychology all the time. I thought that surely, a well-rounded man should know how to "cut loose" and just have fun when work is done for the week.

I don't really worry about whether I am a social person or not.

Coming to Terms with the Work in Front of Me

On approximately March 3rd, I made a good-size donation of money to a streamer on twitch.tv. Twitch, over at www.twitch.tv, is a place where streamers can play videos games with a web cam focused on themselves, and audience members (like me) can watch them react to the video game they're playing. There is a chatroom where the streamer can read messages that I type. Others in the chat also type in messages. So there is communication going back and forth.

Over the years, I have donated a lot of money to streamers on twitch. I've made a couple sizable donations to male streamers, but most of my donations have gone toward female streamers.

Sometimes the reason I donate is because the streamer provides an environment wherein I can find attention. I mostly do not care that much about what other chatters are saying. Mostly, I care about what the streamer has to say to me. That's been true for awhile.

When I donated to the streamer on March 3rd, she got happy. She is young and friendly and she thanked me. She also asked me how I was doing.

There is a specific situation that arose leading up to that day, which is that I finally was able to overcome much of my fear of studying. So, there was something I wanted to celebrate.

Many, many times I have donated to a young female streamer on twitch because I feel like having someone to celebrate a good thing in my life. The attention that I get gives me a high. Years ago, I used to frequent strip clubs and when I would buy a VIP dance from a stripper, I would get a high. I felt at those times like I was in a symbiotic relationship with the stripper: I was paying her to entertain me and excite me. Afterwards, the stripper almost always said thank you. Sometimes I got a kiss on the cheek.

I stopped attending strip clubs in 2017, but at the same time I took up donating to women on twitch. Again, I felt like I was in a symbiotic relationship with the women there. I would support their streaming in exchange for their moral support of my life.

Today, I got up and did a couple hours of studying. Last night I did five hours of programming and two hours of studying. I am putting all of this effort into my skillset as a programmer because I want to be independent again some day. I want to show that I can support myself. I want to thrive as a programmer. I don't want to live paycheck to paycheck. I want to have a savings account.

Mentally, I've reached a point where I am really losing my desire to seek the company of streamers on twitch. I've worked about 30 hours during the past 7 days. I haven't earned any money for that effort. Yet, I know it is what I want to do. How is it that I am able to do this?

To cut closer to the chase, do I want to continue to celebrate my motivation to work with streamers on twitch? What for? I could, if I wanted, uncork some more money and donate again to someone in the near future. I could share the positive news with them that I am working diligently, and that this is something that I am proud of. But what for? They can respond "Hey that's great Mike!" but how would that make my life any better? How would they be informing me of anything I don't already know?

Forget about work for a second. Today I had tacos from Chipotle. Do I want to share this fact with a streamer on twitch? What for? What do I care whether they share or do not share my appreciation for chicken tacos. When I take a bite of a taco at Chipotle, and I chew on it, I can taste the chicken in my mouth, and I feel happy. How is someone else's opinion of tacos going to make me any happier?

These arguments I'm making didn't used to be effective. But tonight I feel exhausted of something. I just don't see the point in seeking praise from other people about what I am doing in my life anymore. I am incredibly confident that I am doing everything in my power to take care of myself. I wasn't working 30 hours a week two months ago. But I am now. I'm doing it for no pay. And a sizable portion of that work is just me studying my computer textbooks. This is a lot of stress for me to be taking on but I'm doing it.

The fact that I'm doing as well as I am - motivation-wise - has made me question my old longings for companionship or support. I am mostly thinking of the support of young, pretty women when I say this, but it goes just as much for men too. I don't feel like my life will be better if I find out a male peer or female peer endorses Chipotle tacos.

I had a special experience a few months ago when my sister offered her perspective to me during a stressful situation, and that experience really made me see how friendship could be a boon in my life. But there is distance between that, and the moral support that I've been describing above. I feel like I am mostly feeling a sense of loss when it comes to having moral support. I feel apathetic about it, as you can see from what I've written.

There is a group of software developers that hold meetings coordinated through meetup.com. I plan to attend those meetings, in the hopes of making friends. I tried to attend one a couple weeks ago but there was some miscommunication about our virtual meeting room. The group is all local people. So this could lead to something for me.

I don't know what I'm going to have to say to the people at these meetings. I guess conversation is easy enough to make, but are they going to help me with my work? No. Work is what I have to perform. Work is how I can gain money and support myself. Friends can help you move from one place of living to another, but so can movers if you pay them.

I really like how entertaining a young, pretty woman can be. This is a big reason I like K-Pop as much as I do. I go on YouTube and watch K-Pop music videos a lot. It's very easy. It's conversationless, too.

I don't know what I have to say to an attractive woman anymore. Now in particular, since I seem to have come to terms with the need to perform in my career. It's very obvious to me, the path forward to gain employment again. I think it's obvious to most people, but so many of us want to party in the name of comfort to relieve ourselves from stress. I am regaining a certain arrogance that I used to have when I was younger. The pressure of life is me. It's not some employer. It's not the threat of financial difficulty. It's me. I'm the one who makes me work. Not need. Not fear. Fear is what I proactively overcome, now.

And so this is where I find myself.