a year in review: 29

A month ago, I turned 29 years old.

Older, wrinklier people have told me that at this age, people begin to feel secure about their roles in the world, settle down, relax into place to prove and expand, and unfurl their roots into the ground. It’s not clear to me why older, wrinklier people like analogies to plants and making bread, but I think they were wrong. First, I don’t really aspire to be a tree or a baguette. Second, I don’t feel whatever level of security about myself or the world that is necessary to seriously think about settling down into a place, career, and a family. It might be the [Rina, insert coronavirus cliche here] or the fact that I have a few more years left of graduate school, but being 29 does not feel at all what I was told.

But I can’t complain. This was a good year. Thanks to the vaccine creators and distributors, I finally got to meet my friends and family safely. I am grateful that my favorite people have been blessed with good health this year. I had many warm meals, quiet moments of commiseration, and laughs with them. Thank you to everyone for being part of my 29th year.

Below is a review of my learning and personal development.

Physical Maintenance

Being sick made me healthier.

I’m proud to say that I took better care of myself this year, and it may be because of my migraines. I continue to take medication for them, but I also started taking notes on them (from my bed, not bothering to fix typos). The "mygrin_noots.txt" revealed that my migraines seem to happen when I am suffering from some combination of being poorly slept, poorly fed, poorly hydrated, and feeling bad generally. That is to say that they're moderately correlated with what I suspect reflect the later stages of burnout.

Thus, this year, I tried to figure out what dynamics seem to cause me to burn out, how to counter them, and how to prioritize my health, especially to reduce migraines. I gathered that one major contributor of burn out for me was the way I navigate social, professional, and academic environments. I love to take on new work if I feel it helps others or helps me to extend my abilities, but sometimes I can’t finish the work unless I decide to sleep less or eat only rice and broccoli. I often choose to do the work instead, but for some reason I am also always surprised that I burn out after only a week or two. When I put it in words like this it seems clearly silly.

However, I do understand that some of the professional and academic demands come from other people. My mentors or supervisors or teachers, the deadline deciders, love ambition, and I’ll be the one to say it: I don’t think they’re very good at knowing how long stuff takes. Either that, or they are expecting me to be late almost every time. In any case, this year, I have asked for extensions when I am burnt out and need to dedicate a few days to re-establish my routines and rest. Each time I ask for extensions, I feel less and less bad about it.

Finally, I have also made more time to celebrate being in this body. When I am burnt out, I feel strange in my own body, despite having inhabited it for 29 years. This year, I took myself out to walk and bike more, even in the winter when I didn't want to. I also started bouldering, which I had never tried before. I sense that I have more command over my limbs, and feel more at home in my meat case.

Psychological Maintenance

Being good at being awful is still being good at something.

A memory that I hope will be funny some day is when my therapist asked me what I thought was good about myself. I’m not sure how long the silence was, but it was long for me to become confused, awkward, embarrassed by my confusion and awkwardness, and then embarrassed at my own embarrassment. And it was long enough for her to say, "Oh? Is my Zoom working?" I told her that I didn't know the answer to the question, and she have me a little smile, “This is a hard one, I guess,” and thankfully moved on.

Finding the good in myself is still hard for me because I have a bully in my head, and she is persistent and nasty.

There was a moment this year that I thought I had destroyed her. I thought I finally had the retort that would make her recoil forever. I yelled it in her face until her voice was drowned out, and I thought I’d finally achieved peace.

Then, from her crumpled shadow, it emerged: a second nasty bully. She was ready to say whatever she needed to say at whatever volume was necessary to put me in my place. I couldn’t win. There was no winning. The emergence of the second bully implied that she could regenerate herself indefinitely. I would spend my lifetime fighting her and it would deplete me every single day until I died. It was bullies all the way down, and I would never see on what ground she stands to say what she does.

Or was it? How does she know all of this? I’ve been a private person my entire life. She knows things I’ve never said or typed, terrible thoughts I’ve entertained only when no one else was around in the private corners of my own mind. She couldn’t know unless she could literally read my mind.

But she can, or rather, I read it to her. 

It’s not that the bully regenerates herself indefinitely–it’s that I regenerate her. Not only does my mind create a nemesis for itself, it regenerates her continuously, sabotaging its efforts at peace existence.

I am frightened at my mind’s infinite capacity for torment. And I am frightened at my mind’s instinct to point it at itself, fully loaded.

How did she get so persistent? How is she so agile and precise? She could choose all the right memories, use them to make all the right inferences, and use these inferences to create the perfect theory as to why I am the most disgusting being in the universe. She brought evidence and solid reasoning. She could even generate multiple good explanations. If I waved one away, she gave another, and another, until I had no choice but to agree that yes, I am disgusting and should be ashamed. Her reasoning and explanation skills were indefeasible.

But, I generate her and she uses my memories as evidence–maybe this means that she uses my reasoning and explanations capacities too. It all makes sense. Theory-building, analyzing concepts, critiquing arguments, generating hypotheses, inferring generalizations: these are exactly the skills that I have been working almost every day to cultivate. I have improved in these areas especially in the past few years. It’s no wonder that I am good at generating imaginative, argumentative bullies.

I see two possible solutions.

1. I could make myself less good at the things I’m good at, so that she becomes weaker. I could stop putting effort into my work, allow myself to lower the quality standards for my thoughts, and avoid diving deeply into any area. This seems pretty obviously the wrong idea.
2. I could identify the reasons my mind generates bullies and address them. This involves retraining my mind to not generate bullies but to react in some less destructive way. This also involves figuring out what combination of situational and mental factors create the need for my mind to generate bullies. This will be a thorny, complicated puzzle. Luckily, it involves explanation building, which, I guess, is something I might be getting good at.

Personal and Professional Enjoyment

I need to think less.

My first goal was to sit at the piano every day. I failed. I hardly sat at the piano at all during the semester.

My second goal was write more, and specifically to publish several times before my next birthday on my blog. This year, I spent more time on this, and my mind is more organized for it. Sometimes I wrote “for an hour”, only to realize that I lost track of time and lunch was now three hours late. While I have written a few things over the course of the year, only one made it on to this blog. And to be honest, I gritted my teeth and pushed to finish it so that I could put it on my blog before my birthday. It went up only two days before the due date. My goal was to publish several times on this blog this year, so I technically failed. But there are worse ways to fail, I suppose.

My work and hobbies tend to be more cerebral, more thinky. My enjoyment of problem solving, sense-making, and learning is real. However, sometimes I need to rest this muscle, and let the other parts out to play and grow. Otherwise, I burn myself out and migraine myself into bed. This year, I did more of this by indulging more in less thinky hobbies, such as cooking and recreational, low-effort reading. This happened only a few times this year, but each time helped me to get unstuck from bed. God, I’ve missed reading fiction.

My third goal was to cultivate experimental skills, specifically in experimental design and method. I was able to do this to some extent, by attending more talks and conferences this year than in the past and by reading methods sections more thoroughly. This year, I got to learn more about the methods underlying memory and cognitive development research.

My final goal was to improve my ability to distinguish meaningful from less meaningful questions. This involved investigation into what kinds of questions ignited my spirits, unified my interests and values, and contributed productively to my field. This process involved consultations with my guts, my mind, and my mentors. This investigation is not finished, and my guts and mind tell me that I need to use trial-and-error to gather more information. However, this did help me identify the more probable and informative directions in the set of possibilities towards which to do trial-and-error. Now, the interests that I thought were disparate seem more clearly part of the same something. There is a thingy, a unifying thingy that is not yet perfectly defined and runs throughout, and I can tap into the unifying thingy to propel myself forward.

Civic Participation and Social Justice

My goal was to find ways to confront prejudice and discrimination and to better understand pain.

This year, I put more effort into mentorship. As a graduate student, I have several opportunities for mentorship, including mentorship of undergraduates with interests in graduate school and undergraduate students I teach. This year, I have had the opportunity to mentor an undergraduate student with high hopes for pursuing graduate work and dazzling potential.

I also leveraged my position as a teaching assistant to better understand and address some of the inequities I noticed in my classroom. In particular, some students have university know-how that others do not–while this is purely anecdotal, the students from historically marginalized backgrounds and who are the first in their families to attend university seem less likely to have this know-how. Know-how includes knowing how to identify and advocate for their needs relating to schooling, including asking for help and deadline extensions. I tried to put in extra effort to approach students delicately about subpar performance on assignments, to offer extensions, and to urge them to ask for help when they need it. While there is no way for me to be sure, my hope is that this treatment has helped to make important know-how more accessible.

This year, I prioritized my civic duties and voted in local elections. While I did follow some of the local issues, I could have put more effort into that this year.

Thirdly, I was able to donate more to causes I care about this year, despite my modest income.

Objectives for the Upcoming Year

Civic Participation

1. Continue mentorship, especially for students who may not have as good access to mentorship, and aim to make knowhow more accessible to those in my classroom.

2. Follow local issues more closely, and advocate for groups in need in my area.

3. Donate.

Physical maintenance + Personal Enjoyment

Make time for less thinky enjoyment

As described above, much of my work and hobbies are cerebral, and a great deal of the reading, writing, meeting, and figuring involved in these happen in a chair and being very solemn. On the other hand, my less thinky hobbies involve standing, walking, biking, tasting, and laughing. Making time for less thinky enjoyment will help me to reacquaint myself with my body and to maintain it. Doing so will necessitate setting boundaries on my time spent on cerebral activity, as well as the time spent on less thinky unenjoyment (e.g. scrolling in intrigue through the stream of materialism and doom online). I hope that this will help me keep healthy, even in the winter when I don’t feel like moving, but also that this reduces the burnout that inevitably overcome me several times a year.

Psychological Maintenance

Console my bully.

I can’t defeat her, so reprimanding her doesn’t work. I can’t make her small without making myself small, and frankly that hasn’t worked for me, even when I wanted it to. The best I can do is figure out why she’s here, and to help her feel better about it. Borne of my mind, she is my mind’s child, and I should take care of her.

Professional Enjoyment

1. Practice choosing meaningful questions. This requires both introspection and action, as well as a sense for when to apply each.

2. Look for professional environments that help me to cultivate the knowledge and skills necessary to answer the questions I want to answer. It’s great to have a job that pays my rent, but it may also be possible to have work that gives me opportunities to grow, specifically in the ways I want to grow. This means I need to be choosy about the opportunities around me.

3. Work hard selectively, and settle for acceptable quality deliberately.

Alright, this is good enough. No more. I’m hungry, and I’d like to go for a walk.

Rina

programming, rude squirrels, and meditations on learning

Programming still makes me feel like a dunce.

I stare at the display of my computer. Its bluish light reflects off my corneas, but I am not seeing the bluish light. The words on the screen denote a script that I have been trying to write for a couple of hours. It should help me organize a data structure with different forms of a survey I am using, along with the questions, answer choices, and correct answers. It also should create unique IDs for the questions and answers. But the code isn’t quite done. My fingers brush circles on the table. Its surface is subtly bumpy. I’m not sure of what the next step is. I draw paths on the surface between the circles according to my planned trip through code-space.

Actually, one more push of work might be enough.

The letters on the screen denote the items and the groups to which they belong. The lines of text are staggered in order to represent this nesting of groups. That is, question represents a question on the developed survey, and question has several properties. question_text denotes the text of the question, question_difficulty denotes the difficulty of the question, choices is a list denoting possible answers, and answer denotes the correct answer. Each question is in a list called question_list, which is in turn a property called form_questions of a larger group called form, which also has a form_number and grade_level. Each form is in a list called all_forms. Each question of course inherits a form number and grade level by virtue of being in the form that it is in.

To create an ID number for each question, we first need to make an ID property for the question which will later be filled in with a value. To generate the right value, we approach this list of forms. As we enter the outer layer of abstraction, there are different properties, one of which is a list. Items in the list cycle past until the correct item is reached and selected. Then, we can enter to a deeper level of abstraction. Namely, that item has more properties, including lists, each with their own items which whizz past until the appropriate item is selected and lights up. This item has yet another set of unique properties. The correct properties are now selected. In the distance through the translucent layers, a faint glow flickers on. The connection appears stable.

A muted, repetitive sound. A sound? The innermost layer of abstraction deflates and recedes into a small speck as my submerged head zooms outwards away from it, passing through the next layer of abstraction. My head passes through the next layer and then the next, back out past the inner workings baked into each level like a synthetic glutinous cake, the pressure around my head reducing with each of the levels, which squelch past until my head finally resurfaces with a final jerk of my neck. The muffled beeps are coming from my alarm. I shake my head, flicking the remnants of colorful abstraction goop out of my ears, which return to full functionality and flinch at the alarm. These are some terrible beeps. I turn off my alarm. In the absence of terrible beeps, my ears pick up the whirring of the computer’s fan hard at work. I blink. I’m at my desk with its barely bumpy surface. The words denote my progress on my script.

I should save my progress. A few more clicks of the keyboard and my script is saved, computer off, and with a bit more stumbling I am at the door, slipping on shoes. It is time for my scheduled walk. I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything. I think I’ve got everything I need.

I forgot: it’s pleasant today. My eyes take a moment to adjust to the sunlight when I step outside and start my usual walking route. The birds greet me as I cross the street toward their tree. The tree beckons the breeze with its branches, and the breeze nuzzles my cheek.

Sure, this was hard work for me because I am still a novice programmer. Honestly, part of me twists itself up knowing that I didn’t have to spend so much time on this. I might have finished more quickly if I did it all manually instead of programming at all. But I want to get good at this. I know that a more experienced programmer could probably finish this script I spent hours on today within around thirty minutes. They have a rich system of concepts and rules crystalized in their minds, ingrained in their fingertips. Those are the same concepts and rules that I still struggle with. Some days, it’s impossible to believe that if I just practice, I could have that system too. I know that the only way to get that expert knowledge is to leap into the depths, gain experience, and then organize it in my mind, reorganize it, and reorganize it again. And yet, as a novice, I often don’t have the knowledge to know if I’m making any progress. Learning deeply is a huge, uncertain investment, and I’ll admit I find it intimidating.

By the same token, the strenuous and unstable nature of learning also makes it totally transformative. When I emerge from doing this type of learning, I feel my life change fundamentally. I can use my new knowledge to reformulate problems that were previously incomprehensible and find solutions to them. I learn a new set of values and develop new habits in accordance with them. It even transforms my basic perceptions. Things have attributes that I didn’t see before, and I become attuned to this additional dimension in my environment. I don’t mean to make this sound mystical. Maybe if I describe the phases of learning I cycle through, it’ll make more sense. Consider the following analogy.

PHASE ONE: DISARRAY AND HYPERFOCUS

Descent

In the first phase of learning deeply, I adjust my goggles, take one last breath, and dive. When I open my eyes, I am in a strange realm, surrounded by strange shapes, textures, and colors. Everything seems at once in organic, dynamic unity and in completely incomprehensible formlessness. This duality becomes increasingly evident as I dive deeper. Everything is new. I cannot tell where one object ends and another begins. I don’t know what I’m looking at, I don’t know where to look, I don’t know how to look. My eyes narrow, focused, to try to find similarities between objects. At some point, they have glazed over in their overwhelm.

Then, I start to recognize objects that I saw before. There are duplicates, quite a few actually. I think I’ve seen most of the objects this place has at this point. Most of them are familiar or at least similar to the objects I’ve already seen, just a different color or size. Now that I have a sense of the variability in color, size, shape, and other attributes, I can imagine what other kinds of objects could be here. Also, it seems like certain types of objects are consistently close to each other down here. I wonder if that’s a coincidence. When I search around for one of the objects, the connected object is always in close proximity. These two objects must be connected in some way. This might be a pattern. The two objects are close together when the arm of the first one is moving in the direction of the other object.

But, when I simulate this potential relation between the two objects, incorporating the variability in object arms and the pattern with arm direction, something feels missing. What makes the object’s arm point in the direction of the other object? Is the second object drawn in some way to the first object’s arm? Or does the first object’s arm detect the second object, and then direct itself towards the second object? Or is there some other outside factor that influences the behavior of these objects and their arms? Wow, there’s a huge cluster of these objects over there! What is happening?

What I’m trying to get at is that, in the first phase of learning deeply, I dive headfirst into a new area and absorb as much information as I can. Then I can group objects based on whether they are similar or different in a particular way. This way of being similar or different between objects can be summarized as an attribute, such as shape or color. An attribute “flattens”, or reduces dimensionality of, the problem space. I can also start to see relations between objects based on their attributes and mentally simulate these relations to generate possible explanations. I can look around and collect information to confirm or disconfirm these patterns. 

 

Patterns allow me to abstract from my experience, that is, to flatten my experience into concepts and rules that I can carry in my pocket back to the surface. When my pockets are full enough, my expedition is complete, and I can start to make my way back to the surface.

Phase One, the descent phase, requires my mental resources to hyperfocus on the objects in the environment: observing, detecting similarities and differences, hypothesizing relations, and testing beliefs. In order for hyperfocus to be possible, another cognitive task needs to occur in the background: suspension of doubt and indirectly related knowledge. My mind is temporarily suppressing my other indirectly related knowledge which could distract me from understanding the information in front of me or induce undue doubt in the patterns that I perceive. This suspension helps me to maximize my focus on the information in front of me, to be open-minded and to give it the best chance possible. As I begin floating back to the surface, the cognitive load of learning reduces, and the mental force suspending my other knowledge and doubt begins to loosen. Memories of previous expeditions flit back into my consciousness.

PHASE TWO: INTEGRATING PREVIOUS EXPEDITIONS

Ascent

A few miles away is the spot where I did another expedition months ago. That time, I was surrounded by strange objects with a completely different shape from the ones from this dive. They were huge. Those objects were covered in little tuber-shaped appendages which were changing color. I thought my eyes were malfunctioning. Actually, I now recall noticing that, as in this trip, the objects sometimes came in pairs. In particular, the appendages of paired objects were a milky blue color, unlike the color-shifting appendages of the other objects. Although the objects seemed different, there are similarities between the previous and current expeditions. Both of these environments are home to objects that seem to be trying to find a partner. And they’re not that far away from each other, just a few miles. Maybe there was something in the environment, some mechanism that could account for this. I wonder why color was relevant in the last expedition, while the arm direction was relevant this time.

In this phase, the new patterns or rules that I learn in one context start to trigger memories of other patterns in other contexts. I can start to integrate the new patterns with the other patterns I learned in the past by finding similarities or differences in the pattern itself or between the contexts in which the patterns emerged. Similarities between patterns or contexts help me to create a general rule that seems to apply in both contexts. This is valuable because I can try to generalize the rule, to start to imagine what kinds of environments I might observe the pattern in, even if I haven’t observed that environment before. On the other hand, noting differences is also useful, because I can question what mechanisms could bring about these differences. This information helps me to identify important distinctions that I might observe in other contexts, which would inform my theory.

This remembering process is integral to consolidating and reorganizing specific knowledge into more general structures that could be used in multiple contexts. Having these more general concept structures, including general rules and relevant distinctions, allows me to think of new questions to ask, which can motivate subsequent expeditions. They can also forge new connections that spark creativity. Successful integration of new information deepens my understanding of phenomena I learned about in the past. The infrastructure between concepts in my mind transforms and sees a boost in connectivity. To the extent that my mental life depends on the infrastructure of concepts, my mental life thereby transforms.

In other words, learning deeply is transformative for me in part because of the nature of the phases in the learning process: hyperfocused sensemaking and comparison-based integration with previous experience. These two phases differ in two key ways. Phase 1 has a narrow scope in my mind and requires utmost focus to make sense of the seeming chaos of information. On the other hand, Phase 2 has a larger scope encompassing the new learning as well as memory of previous learning that might be relevant. Phase 2 also requires a relaxing of focus on internal workings of concepts in order to freely notice new similarities and differences. They each have their benefits, but their benefit together outweighs the sum of the individual benefits.

Inability to move from Phase 1 to Phase 2 results in learning of information that is not integrated with my prior experiences and knowledge. The new information doesn’t feel relevant to anything else that I have learned. It does not spark novel questions, it does not boost connectivity, and it does not induce creativity. Spending time only in Phase 1 is not only unproductive, but also disconcerting. Once the novelty of learning new things ebbs away, I get a nagging sense that the new information is not useful or meaningful to me. It’s important that I spend some time allowing my mind to wander off after Phase 1, for it will come back with memories that are, in some way, relevant to my new knowledge. Making connections to these memories will make this learning meaningful with respect to other concepts and phenomena.

On the other hand, spending time only in Phase 2 and no time in Phase 1 stunts my learning. If all I do is scour for relations between information I already know, then I will eventually reach a point at which I can’t think of any more, and any new relation I can think of will be relatively unimportant and stale. The issue is that I will be out of new material from which to abstract concepts and relations. This can only be by going on new expeditions. Phase 1 expeditions require intense focus, but the return is fertile experience, ripe with potential to enliven my concepts and theories in Phase 2.

This learning process requires that I operate my cognitive faculties at full capacity. I start to lose track of what time it is or how long I have been working. I lose touch even with my bodily sensation and surroundings. The bluish tinge of my computer display, the texture of my desk top, the pain growing in my unwisely angled neck. All is suspended, inhibited so that mental resources can be fully allocated to learning.

Even my sense of self disappears. Although the reality is that I am trying to understand and learn a new thing, I lose awareness of my self as an agent that is trying to understand. There are not two separate entities, a mysterious phenomenon and me (the observer trying to understand it)—rather, there is a continuity between the thing and me, and in light of this continuity, in that moment, me, my body, my passage through time, my agenthood are all unimportant. All there is, is the thing at hand. I “become” it, embody it. As I learn its inclinations, its ambitions, its observations, its limitations, these become, in a sense, my inclinations, my ambitions, my observations, and my limitations. I am lastingly transformed.

Hang on. Did you hear that? What on earth is that sound? The breeze ruffles the leaves. There it is again, that squawking sound! It came from up there above me in the tree by that squirrel! The squirrel looks me dead in the face, opens its mouth, and squawks again. “Excuse me?” I am not one to be condescended to, and I could tell from his eyes that he was sizing me up. He squawks again. The nerve. Does he not realize that before he shouted at me, I had been thinking? Or is it that he doesn’t care? He doesn’t care that I’ve got things to do, thoughts to think, work to complete? He is a rude squirrel. I glare at him. The rude squirrel glares back.

My eyes narrow at the wind. The rude squirrel seems oblivious to it (as well as all of the other important things in the world).

I can see my reflection in his unrepentent eyeballs. My eye is twitching and now I can’t help but admit that my face looks ridiculous.

I’m a moron. Of course this squirrel doesn’t care about interrupting my thoughts. This squirrel doesn’t care about me. To the squirrel, I’m a strange animal, too large an animal to be a friend and too slow to be a foe. With one final squawk, the squirrel turns its puffy tail on me and scurries up the tree.

I’ve even had my earphones in the whole time without playing any music. When I’m in my thoughts like this, it’s easy to put everything else on autopilot, which I guess means talking back to rodents. The wind is picking up. The sky is preparing to change from baby blue to velvet purple. It’s probably time to make my way home. It’ll be dinner time soon.

I don’t even remember what I was–oh right. Yes, OK. So, when I am learning deeply, especially about new topics, I seem to lose myself. While this can be an, exhilarating, transformative experience, it can have negative consequences.

When I embody the phenomenon, connection to myself disappears, and so does my control over myself. This lack of personal awareness and control allows me to plunge into a new territory with an open mind and to absorb as much as I can. But, this also makes me do silly things (like seeing malice in the eyes of innocent squirrels) and worse. If I spend days on learning deeply and nothing else, conceptual goop perpetually in my ears, I lose track of the fact that I’m lacking nutrients, sleep, or exercise. I forget to do leisure reading, socialize, and make and consume art, the things that maintain and delight my being. This doesn’t work because in the long term, my being is all that I am. Sure, I may be transformed in some way by my new knowledge, but the other more foundational facets of my being are being neglected. The weakened foundation renders the other facets of my life, including my thoughts, simulations, and concepts, lifeless. My first-person experience loses continuity and coherence. Unless I can remember who I am and why I am learning in the first place, it all feels meaningless.

PHASE 3: REMEMBERING THE SELF

To shore

In this phase, I come to my senses.

I’ve floated back up, almost to the surface, and realize that work is over for the day. My head emerges from the water and blink the salt water out of my eyes. My arms and legs feel shaky and heavy. Diving is serious business and puts a lot of strain on these muscles. They need time to recuperate. More than anything else though, I’m hungry. Actually, I’m ravenous. Time to go home.

As soon as I get home, I heat up some soup and rice and sit at my table. My arms flop down at my sides. My muscles release and slump. I’m glad that dinner was pre-prepared, and so are my floppy muscles. Eating at the end of a long day always makes me feel better. Today was definitely a long day. I reflect on what I learned. I am feeling content about my work today and proud of my progress. There are times when I am also ashamed of the clumsier moments of my work and try not to think too hard about it. But most days, I feel proud of what I’ve accomplished. A few more expeditions and maybe I’ll have enough information to write up a report about the trends I’ve noticed in my dives. Tomorrow, I can start planning the next expedition, and then maybe by the end of the next month I can start writing. For now, my ears are begging to listen to music. I would also like to call my grandmother. Maybe I can read a short story before bed.

The final phase of learning deeply involves mindful healing and careful introspection. This includes reflecting on the learning process, including successes and mishaps, and how they relate to my ambitions, as well as attending to my more basic physical, emotional, and social needs. In Phase 1, my attention is hyperfocused on a narrow scope, a specific phenomenon. In Phase 2, my attention becomes broader to include a larger scope, such as prior knowledge and experience. In Phase 3, my attention is distributed or diffused across an even broader scope, my entire first-person experience in that moment.

In Phase 3, my mental resources are directed from the outside world back to me. This allows me to become aware of how my body and mind feel. This information is important because it helps me to identify what I need to do next. In the short term, I may need to eat, sleep, call a friend or my family, write a scathing email (and not send it), sit in solitude, reassure myself of my abilities, or devour some celebratory potato chips. I also reflect on decisions or actions that I may need to make in the long term. For example, I might realize that I would like to change my topic of research. Alternatively, I may find that I am captivated by my topic of research and would like to pursue it by taking on new research methods or developing my own. I may find that I want to spend less time on work and more time contributing to social justice causes.

Phase 3 gives me space to perform personal maintenance, but it also helps me to establish or see the coherence in my life’s events. The shift from Phase 1 to Phase 2 helps me to see the coherence or conceptual continuity between the new thing I learned and the old things I learned in the past. That is, these deep diving expeditions in learning aren’t just weird arbitrary tasks; they relate in important ways to other things I have learned and done. In the same way, the shift from these two phases to Phase 3 brings to light the fact that I am not just learning or working hard for no reason, but because learning and working help me to pursue my curiosities and acheive my goals. That is, learning has a context: me, the learner. Contextualizing the act of learning in me specifically creates a continuous, coherent story from the events in the life of an agent with goals moving through time.

If I spend too much time in Phases 1 and 2, I lose my self, I become tired, and my life starts to feel disjointed and incoherent. I don’t remember why I cared to do the things I do in the first place, but I still do them. The seeming lack of reason behind my behavior makes wonder if I am crazy. My physical or emotional needs start to accumulate, and I become perpetually tired. On the other hand, if I spend all of my time in Phase 3, I become very well attuned to any shifts in states in myself, but I cannot transform myself with experiences or learning and cannot gain insight from my knowledge structures. I fall out of the practice of learning deeply or making connections, and I cower at the prospect of learning, analyzing, or deliberating. The best way to facilitate my learning seems to be to cycle naturally through these phases.

Again, consider the acuity or depth of attention on one hand and breadth or size of scope of attention on the other. In Phase 1, my focus is deep and the scope is small. This is a tradeoff needed because attention is a scarce resource. Spending an entire day in Phase 1 would look like a long, skinny cylinder. In Phase 2, focus is less deep, but there is greater breadth, as connections between different concepts are made. Spending an entire day in Phase 2 looks like a shorter, more stout cylinder. In Phase 3, focus is completely diffused, not hyperfocused or fixated, across my personal experience, a large breadth. Spending time here looks like a large flat cylinder, like a coin. The volume represents the amount of learning achieved. If I try to do all three, but without taking breaks in between, my day looks like three cylinders stacked on top of each other. The volume of this is the sum of the three component parts.

Being able to move between these three phases routinely establishes continuity between them, filling in the gaps between cylinders, and this looks more like a cone. This cone has the virtue of capturing differently sized scopes, while also capturing different depths of focus. By virtue of being a more continuous shape, it also has a larger volume.

Of course, in practice, learning doesn’t always happen from Phase 1 to 2 to 3. It can oscillate between them. My goal here is mostly to define three important phases of learning, and to emphasize the need for cohesion in moving between them.

What I am trying to say is that cone-shaped learning allows me to learn deeply, widely, and meaningfully. Cone-shaped learning is more meaningful and more sustainable way to learn and grow and be, because I can move between phases with cohesive transitions. I can’t always seem to get through all of these phases in a day—it usually takes a week or more—but even just nudging myself between them using alarms has helped.

It’s definitely helped today. I think I’ve learned a lot: I finished a new script and practiced moving through levels of abstraction in code. I think I can be proud of my work. I shuffle across the grass to get the mud off my shoes. No mail today. My stomach moans. I guess I’m starving. When I open the door, my nostrils are not met by the smell of freshly cooked rice. Damn it to hell. I forgot to start the rice cooker before my walk. I wish that squirrel yelled at me sooner. I am a dunce indeed.

a year in review: 28

Regarding the 27th year

On my birthday, I take some time to reflect on my year, to thank the people in my life (thank you all), and to highlight new goals for next year.

To say that this year has been eventful would be a monumental understatement. I will skip a description of the year’s events because these essays always tend to be too long. Below, I track my progress on my personal objectives (personal maintenance and growth) and lay out new objectives for my 28th year.

Physical Maintenance

I managed to get more sleep at reasonable hours this year. I don’t know what allowed this to happen, but it did. This improved my life exponentially.

I have started taking migraine medication. That is all.

I exercised and stretched more than I did last year. However, I did so far less frequently during the winter. During the school year, my weekly tasks increase multiply. Whenever I get overwhelmed with work, exercise is the first routine I neglect. My guess is that my tendency to feel fatigued or weak in the winter is partly due to lack of exercise. This year has seen progress, but there is still room to grow.

Psychological Maintenance

Last year, I hoped that I would bully myself less. Unfortunately, I don’t think I managed that this year.

I have a bully inside of my head. Sometimes I just let it bully me. In particular, I can’t seem to stop the bullying on days when I haven’t slept. On those days, I wake up, eat breakfast, and soon after that I notice that the bully’s voice is somehow amplified in my head. I try to take the microphone away from her but I’m too tired and she puts up a pretty good fight. She has a lot of mean things to say. Sometimes it makes me cry. Sometimes I cry all day and I cannot stop until I fall sleep. Sometimes she will stop if I ask, but most of the time she doesn’t, and if she does, it’s not for long. She doesn’t want to stop. But I’ve also learned that if I ask her questions, sometimes she responds with unforeseen honesty.

I’ve actually gotten to know her a little bit. I think she is scared for me. She just doesn’t want me to get my hopes up. The sad thing is that if you listen to her with even a slightly critical eye, you’d see that she says a lot of the same things over and over again without much substantiation. And yet she thinks that it’s all true and that I should know about it. To be frank, I pity her immensely.

I’ve been doing what I can to reassure her that she’s wrong about the world. Thanks to getting better sleep, taking some time to myself, and hearing feedback from the kindly people in my life, I’ve gathered the world is a forgiving place. I have flaws, pardon me, many flaws, as my little bully has pointed out for me, but many times, the world forgives. Somehow, people look past my many imperfections. I’m truly indebted to-

Ah, see? I was about to continue about how I felt that people generally have been forgiving and kind to me, but I could feel the microphone slipping from my grasp and I know this means I need to snatch it back from my little bully. She tugs sometimes. I should correct myself. I shouldn’t say that the world is a forgiving place per se--this would imply that the world percieves my flaws (yes yes, my many flaws, shh my little bully) and goes out of its way to issue me a pardon. I gathered this year that this is not how it works. Many of my supposed flaws are hardly perceived by the world, and if they are, they are perceived more often as neutral properties or quirks or sometimes--to my sincere astonishment--as sweet or charming qualities. I have much to learn about the world, but it is hardly the reproving, zero-sum-game environment that my little bully seems to think. Its people are warm and gentle and generous with their smiles and laughter. This means that I need to think more critically about what my flaws are. Some of my flaws are in fact true flaws. Some of them are not, but are unconventional or are deemed by me to be unpreferable for whatever reason (which may or may not be valid). If I want to grow, I need to deliberate before judging certain qualities about myself to be flaws.

This deliberation happens (would ideally happen) when I’m not tired. I would also ideally try to remind myself when I am not tired about the warmth in the world. Whenever the little bully snatches the microphone, she talks so much, and I am easily persuaded. I try to remind myself of what is true when I’m not tired so that I can withstand her bullying when I am tired. Because it’s true. It really is. The world is warm, and I will generally be treated with kindness, and my dignity will be respected. And on top of that, I deserve basic kindness and dignity. It’s true. It really is.

Civic Participation

In fact, everyone is entitled to the kindness and sincerity that I can have. Sadly, my access to the kindness and sincerity of the world is not always extended to other people. This asymmetry is so stark that access like mine is called a privilege. Entire groups of people are oppressed in my countries because of things that are entirely out of their control: their race, ethnicity, first language, socio-economic status at birth, gender (or lack of gender) identity, sexuality (or lack of sexuality), and more.

The reason that I deserve kindness and dignity is not that I’m special. I am not special--in fact, I am ordinary by all relevant measures. There is no virtue in my mixed race, English-Japanese speaking, middle class background. My background isn’t what justifies my deserving basic kindness. I deserve this because I am a human being. The fact is that the current systems of power deprive people of the kindness and dignity they deserve and thus do violence to their humanity.

Sometimes, people in poverty deliberate whether to stop purchasing life-saving medication so they can have enough money to spend on their childrens’ food (here). Sometimes, people with severe substance use disorders hide in pain (here) for fear of being shamed or being thrown in jail. Some of them die, some, completely alone. Sometimes, people who have finally discovered and accepted identities that make them feel most like themselves are ostracized, pointed at, and jeered at. Some are disowned and lose access to food, shelter, and health insurance. Some face aggression, from snide remarks to physical violence, even murder (here). Sometimes, Black parents in the U.S. try to find the words to explain to their children that the government does not always protect them (here), that the people are protesting because a policeman--yes, the ones hired by the state--took another Black life, that there is still no justice for Breonna Taylor. It’s hardly surprising that so many people feel completely betrayed by government and its institutions, failed by schools, abandoned by the group to which which should be their home.

Some people have spent their entire lives fighting for rights. Some have died before seeing the fruits of their labor or enjoying their due liberties.

What can someone like me do about this? Previously, but more actively this year, I became committed to listening when I can to people who are in pain. This is because the people’s pain is real and it’s important. Pain of being robbed of deserved life, liberty, and dignity is real. No one deserves to feel this pain alone. People in pain deserve to be seen and to have their humanity acknowledged.

One way to do this is to read good journalism, opinion pieces, and life stories. Since becoming engrossed in my own work as I started graduate school, I found I was not reading as much about my community, countries, and world as I did before. This is because my own life changed vastly and I needed to acclimate. However, I have committed more of my time to reading about others’ lives, especially local and regional news and issues this year.

Actively learning more about the people of my community, my countries, and the world is how I learn about their everyday lives, acknowledge their humanity, and find out what I can do to help those without access to the lives they deserve. Committing more time to this has prompted me to do more to support, including giving more donations. It was also the impetus for reconsidering my role in these systems: how I may be contributing to them through the way I speak, the ways I might enable them by not speaking, the way I teach as a teacher’s assistant, the way I think about and conduct research as a research assistant. It has also prompted me to demand efforts toward systemic change of the leaders of the institutions I am a part of, to protest systemic inequity, and to use my civic responsibilities to vote for systemic change.

Personal and Professional Enjoyment

Especially after consecutive days dedicated to completing a lot of assigned work, I submit my work and lie on the floor. A slimy dread seeps into my stomach. I am free, finally free for the day, and yet… I pace around my room, glance through my phone, dust the surfaces… Maybe I should eat something? I’ve lived 28 years now in this body, and I still sometimes lose track of what makes it happy.

This year, I dedicated less of my free time to parttaking in the mindless scroll, and more time to playing the piano, writing, cooking, and learning for fun. In lieu of writing essays about each of these hobbies, I will say that engaging in these activities, honing my skills, and accumulating knowledge about them exhilerates me. There are times that I’ve been shocked to realize that I’ve been practicing the same few measures of a piece on the piano for an hour. And somehow, even after all of that deliberate practice, I feel a surge of bliss rather than internet browsing malaise.

Similarly, doing meaningful work, work that allows me to repurpose my prior knowledge for something new, to learn a useful skill, to add to my knowledge or reorganize it with novel concepts and structures, makes my eyes light up. I can feel it. I can sit for hours to tinker with it. I ponder about it when I take a break to use the bathroom. I sometimes stand up to jump around in glee while reading papers. Obviously not all of my work is like this, but some of it is, and I am trying to keep track of this so that I can return to this work when I have time.

Meaningful work/play, whether it is deliberate practice during my free time or parts of my work as a graduate student, makes me feel grounded in who I am. This year, I identified some hobbies and areas within my professional life that make me feel alive.

Objectives for the New Year

Civic Participation

Next year, I hope to find more ways for me to confront systemic prejudice and discrimination and to understand and address pain. As a graduate student on a modest stipend, I don’t have much power, but there are still things I can do to help. I will find ways to make my everyday life more efficient so that I have more time and resources to give back to the world.

Physical Maintenance

1. This year, I will continue trying to go to bed on time and prioritize sleeping enough.

2. I will also take my migraine medication when I need it.

3. I will celebrate my body by playing in it: dancing, jumping, and wiggling for laughs. I will cultivate my body’s potential by exercising and stretching its muscles in the summer, as I have been doing, but also in the winter.

Psychological Maintenance

1. This year, I will make time to acknowledge the good in the world, its people, and myself. It just does not do to try to tap into this knowledge when I am a curlicue on the floor. Resilience against the little bully’s taunting will be nurtured on the days when I feel well. I hope to make time for undistracted reflection on good a few times a week.

2. I will also continue practicing asking for help.

Personal and Professional Enjoyment

1. This year, I will continue to cultivate my hobbies: music and writing. This means sitting at the piano every day. Even five minutes a day is acceptable. This also means jotting notes and full thoughts. Improvements on my note-taking system should allow easy access to take or edit notes. If I find ideas I want to develop, I will refine the wording and style and try to publish multiple essays this year on this site.

2. I will continue to cultivate my research skills. During my first years of graduate schooling, I have become faster at reading, more proficient at verbal communication and discussion with colleagues, and more knowledgable about empirical methods. This year, I would like to become proficient at designing experiments and stimuli. In order to do so, I will pay closer attention to the method sections when I read scientific papers, particularly to stimuli development. Developing experimental stimuli for homework in my courses is another way to practice this skill in a low stakes environment.

This year, I would also like to learn to better distinguish meaningful from less meaningful research questions. I can do this by identifying which researched constructs in particular captivate me and thinking about how they could be unified. This will involve extensive reading to actually understand the existing theories about these constructs.

Finally: More music, more film, more art.
More walks. More belly laughs.
More reading about animals and plants.
More explicit adoration.
More mischief.
More bicycling.
More phone calls.
More community.

Love and peace,

Rina

a year in review: 26

I started writing this on my birthday. I've found myself really, really bored of introspection lately, and I finished this only through brute force. This is an account of my 26th year, an assessment of personal progress, and a blueprint of new goals.

Last year I focused on developing a plan for action and constructing a solid foundation of habits for the next year. Leaving room for unanticipated happenings, I tried to refine the questions I was interested in answering and the values and objectives that guided them, and then searched for researchers who could help me to approach those questions. It didn’t take much introspection to realize that going through with this plan would be trying, and if I wanted to maintain my health during this turbulence, I needed to be able to better take care of myself even when I was on autopilot. Accordingly, I spent some time paying close attention to myself and my everyday behavior and deliberately started to develop healthier habits.

This year, I started to execute the plan. I applied to schools that seemed to be enriching places to learn and to approach my questions of interest. A few months later, I received notifications of acceptance and began making plans to move.

There were, as I anticipated, some unanticipated happenings. This past year, I had to say farewell forever to some of my closest relatives, two who had lived long lives and one who departed from this world too early. I also got to celebrate their terrific adventures and their beautiful beings in the company of my relatives. I made a quick note to myself that I would like for there to be plenty of food and alcohol at my funeral.

Before I felt ready, I drank my last coffee at my favorite back-alley coffee shop. I watched the sunset one last time at Greenlake. I submitted my letter of resignation to my workplace of almost three and a half years. I waved some teary goodbyes to the people and places that nurtured me from when I was a fearful, hunched-over adolescent of almost 18 until I was a thoroughly bruised (thank you, children I worked with) but hopeful girl of almost 26.

And then, it was time. I uprooted my life and repotted it in Minneapolis. I think a lot of the roots survived and are just now starting to acclimate to the new soil.

Considering the amount of changes, things have gone well so far. This is large part thanks to the kind people around me.Many people have been so generous with their ears and wisdom and so patient with my silliness and clumsiness. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Here, I’ll review some of the progress I have made on some of the goals I set for myself last year. Then, I will unroll some of the objectives for my 27th year.

Physical Maintenance

My schedule was fairly routine for a majority of the past year, and I enjoyed a mostly consistent sleeping schedule. However, when school started in September, my schedule changed completely, and I have been finding it difficult to adjust. In fact, there were weeks this autumn in which I slept for two three-hour periods throughout the day for several days at a time. During this time, I couldn’t think of interesting things to say, I couldn’t focus on readings, and I couldn’t seem to think about anything without fixating on its uglier facets. My sleep routine goal has unfortunately not been met, and it is negatively affecting my life.

This collapse of my routine also affected my exercising. Until I moved in autumn, I was happily doing rigorous exercise for 30 minutes or more about five days a week. In autumn, this routine completely imploded because navigating a novel environment and sleeping poorly depleted me of my energy. For the last two months of this past year, I rode my bicycle or walked to and from school but did hardly any other form of rigorous exercise.

On a more positive note, I have managed to maintain a nutritious, fun diet. Food appreciation has been central to my everyday life ever since I was a child, and I am proud to say that I maintain this even today—I had a flaky, fluffy croissant for breakfast by the way, thank you for asking. I regularly get to munch happily on a well-balanced, exciting array of foods. This has not changed much since last year, but more recently it seems that by the time I know what my body needs, I am already reaching for it, almost instinctively. This habit, which previously required a nontrivial amount of cognitive effort, has become mostly intuitive. I am humbled by my body’s ability to internalize this habit and allow this shift from deliberation to automation.

Psychological Maintenance

Next, I have a slightly more nuanced understanding of my feelings and moods. I have found it less difficult to shift my attention to my feelings and then to sit quietly and observe the tension in my jaw, the tightness of my guts, and the bounciness of my thoughts. The categorization of my feelings based on those observations has been more precise; I have a larger selection of categories than I did last year, and I categorize more accurately. With a more fine-grained set of categories sprouted new combinations of coping skills and expectations.

One such expectation is the understanding that sometimes, feelings cannot be dealt with and squared away completely. Sometimes, I need to expect that all I can do is mitigate the feeling enough, just enough that I can treat others respectfully and perform my duties sufficiently well. This means that when I cannot alleviate emotional pain entirely, I must not put further burden upon myself by being alarmed, and I must not be angry with myself for being unable to accomplish an impossible task.

Rather, the most appropriate course of action is to soberly acknowledge my limitations. Since this acknowledgement simply constitutes learning new facts about myself, I would ideally feel neutral about it, the way I might feel learning a fact about the Andromeda Galaxy or tree frogs or something; however, I think it is also not unreasonable to feel frustrated or even stunned at being hit in the face with my limitations. I should just be careful that I don’t weaponize these negative feelings about my incompetence to bully myself.

My next goal was to probe more into my long-term anxieties and insecurities. I have been doing this by asking myself probing questions and carefully angled follow up questions until the insecurity feels precise, and then trying to untangle memories to pry out the critical ones that formed the insecurity. The hardest part of this procedure is trying to quiet the panicked warnings from my viscera to stop, but this has gotten slightly easier with practice. Performing what felt like surgery on my own emotions has honestly been agonizing, but it helped me to synthesize my thoughts, emotions, and forgotten memories.

Here are three insights that came from this synthesis:

1) Many insecurities start from little moments, but ruminating on them turns them into monstrosities. If I think hard, I can point to certain memories in which someone, whose judgement I trusted or whose approval I wanted, told me something that caused me to fixate on some strange detail, to make bizarre assumptions, or to be unduly self-conscious. I started to obsess over the notion that my values were incorrectly calibrated and that I must be dumb or depraved. Quite a few of these ideas were hurtful and absurd, and adopting them has contorted parts of my worldview.

2) I can counter the effects of rumination by questioning the insecurity and the authority of the person who brought it to my attention. In addition to questioning the veracity of the insecurity, I explored the reasons and contexts that led some people to say things that were so inappropriate. Maybe they needed to vent some unrelated frustration or were trying to impress someone nearby by seeming witty and edgy. This obviously does not absolve them of their rude behavior or justify what they said. It only contextualizes and delegitimizes their comments, which dislodges the insecurities from their nests and allows me to slowly remedy the infected parts of my worldview.

3) A surprising ratio of my thoughts about myself are not actually mine, and taking ownership and maintenance responsibilities of my identity will require hard work. This examination of my insecurities made me realize how much I identify even with off-hand comments and snide remarks by other people. I become careless and indiscriminately accept outside judgement, I am kind of embarrassed to say, with hardly any hesitation. This goal of developing a more accurate self-concept thus proved to be a more sizable undertaking than I anticipated. Still, this year, I made some headway by reevaluating a few of my self-beliefs and starting to write them down: where I came from, what I believe, what I value, and what I want. Most of these things are still vague, but I can fidget with them until things seem right.

Social Skills

I’ve started delving into some heavy territory, so here is an intermission peanut.

This year, one goal was to get used to casual group social situations. This year, I pushed myself into situations where I was one of group. I feel more a tiny bit more comfortable with having fun in public. Through exposure, I am slowly getting used to it. Thank you to the people who are so pleasant and hold my hand in these situations even though I am a silly, nervous girl and have sweaty palms.

Relationships

This year, I acknowledged just how hard it is for me to let people come close to me. I also acknowledged that this is something that I deeply, deeply desire.

I found freedom and empowerment in being a kind of elusive character. Not talking about my inner life to people meant that no one would know what I am doing or even what I am trying to do, and therefore that no one could judge me, and no one could try to get in my way. However, over the past few years and this year especially, I realized that this also meant that I could never truly collaborate with anyone and I could never share the joy of success with anyone. I further realized that I wanted to play with people, grow with people, and adventure the world with people. This means that I need to let people get close enough to see me.

This year, I admitted that I am intensely afraid of being seen.

This year, I also squeezed my eyes shut and dove.

I got water in my eyes, and sometimes it burns. And to be honest, I still feel kind of afraid some of the time. But I got to splash around in the water and explore its depths with some of my favorite people in the world.

Thank you again to the wonderful people around me for your feedback and encouragement.

Objectives for the New Year

Civic Participation

Last year, I identified a problem: I stopped paying attention to the news because I was tired of getting into fruitless, time-consuming arguments. This year, I managed to get back into reading the news, but I’m still not as well informed as I want to be. In particular, I noticed that my main difficulties are: 1) not knowing the names of noteworthy politicians, 2) not paying attention to state-level issues, and 3) reading opinion pieces with a less critical eye when the headline sounds agreeable to me.

Next year, I would like to read the news in a way that addresses those problems:

1) making note of the names, positions, and parties of noteworthy politicians, in addition to their positions

2) learning more about the key issues in Minnesota state

3) being devil’s advocate while I read opinion pieces that sound agreeable to me and reading more opinion pieces with titles that are not as agreeable

Physical Maintenance

1) This year, I would like to figure out how I can go to bed at a reasonable hour. I’m at a complete loss as to how to train myself to do this. My inkling is that one way to start is to set an alarm to go to bed at a certain hour. It’s so easy to get sucked into things or just waste time until the wee hours if I’m uninterrupted by some voice of reason (and sometimes I ignore her—just ask my mom).

2) I would also like to add more rigorous exercise and more stretching to my routines. Even doing five minutes of exercise or stretching at random points throughout the day seems to make me feel better instantaneously and also make my life significantly better overall.

Psychological Maintenance

1) I would like to continue to get a more accurate understanding of who I am, what I want, and what my capabilities are.

2) I would like to bully myself less. This year, I will continue to make the voice of reason in my head louder and more assertive. I am not optimistic that I will ever entirely eliminate the bullying voices, but I know I have the capacity to argue with them. This year, I tried (with some success) to notice the moments when reasonable self-criticism devolved into unreasonable self-torment. There are some notable differences in the tone and language used in each of these categories of thought. I identified some of the functions that the bullying voice may have, and then started developing arguments for why the voice doesn’t perform its function or has a misguided purpose entirely. I made an effort to start engaging in conversation with the bullying voice using these arguments when I could muster the energy. This year, I would like to continue this arguing practice to increase my emotional endurance.

3) Lastly, this year I would like to start asking people for help. As I acknowledged above, there is a limit to the amount of emotional burden I can shoulder at any point in time. I mentioned above that I should not be alarmed if I cannot square away all of my feelings as long as I am able to be respectful to others and function. The truth is that sometimes, there is enough emotional burden that the amount is beyond my threshold, and as a result I am not able to function. In these times, I tend to thrash around, trying to wrestle with a situation that is clearly beyond my limits, until I crumple on to the floor in an exhausted, crying heap. In these times, I should instead ask someone for help. I'm not exactly sure why, but asking for help in emotionally trying circumstances feels really counterintuitive to me. However, I know that thrashing is taking a toll on my everyday life, so I have to grit my teeth and do the counterintuitive thing. I’m glad I have maintained good relationships with kind and generous people who would probably help me if they knew I wanted it.

Fun Things To Do This Year (YAAAAY)

I want to make more music.
I want to have more fun in public with reckless abandon.
I want to point my eyes and ears at more art.
I want to develop more yummy recipes.
I want to laugh loudly and be mischievous with people.
I want to explore on my bicycle.
I want to look for some cool ass bugs.
I want to read everything I can about cool ideas.
I want to talk to people about them.
I am exhilarated to be alive for my 27th year.

Fuck this shit. I’m so, so, so bored of introspection. I’m going outside.


Love and peace,

Rina

a year in review: 25

A few years ago, I started using my birthday to reflect upon the past year and cross-check my progress in personal development objectives, and to take a moment to appreciate the people who have been supportive of me.

This year, many kind people have offered me their encouragement and guidance, and have so genuinely engaged in discussion with me. Their open-minded listening and honest feedback have undoubtedly facilitated my personal development into a stronger and less fearful person. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

This past year, I have quietly and steadily made progress on the personal development projects that I resolved to dedicate effort to on my last birthday.

Physical Maintenance

Firstly, on a light-hearted note, I have successfully kicked the habit of biting my fingernails. (Just for clarification, toenail-biting has never been a problem.) I have stopped biting my fingernails because I started clipping my fingernails once a week. In turn, I started clipping my fingernails weekly because I now play the piano almost every day, and I cannot tolerate the click-clicking that happens when I forget to clip them.

Secondly, I have managed to develop better sleeping and eating habits on average than I did last year. There is so much comfort and nourishment in routine. Especially with a job that sometimes starts early in the morning and sometimes ends late at night, finding a sleep schedule has been a challenging endeavor. It still is, but it has definitely improved this year. I haven’t gone to bed after 4am in a long time.

I have found a diet made up of a set of nutritious and satisfying foods which I eat almost every day. I decided upon these foods by consciously observing how my body feels when it is lacking certain nutrients, minerals, or fats, and after eating a certain food. Over time, I noticed that certain foods such as spinach and tofu make my body feel good, especially when eaten at certain meals during the day. Little by little, through casual experimentation, I have developed a happy diet that satisfies my body’s needs, is tasty, and is pleasing to the eye. I hope that by better understanding how my body feels when it needs something in particular and which foods satisfy each need, I can more cheaply and efficiently maintain my physical health.

Thirdly, I am slowly increasing my physical endurance and flexibility, and have slightly improved my posture. Because I do not have a car, I commute via public transportation and walking. I actually enjoy walking, and I also sometimes do it for fun. Additionally, I have tried my best to integrate more rigorous exercise into my routine, by opting to take the stairs and by doing some body-weight exercise.

Psychological Maintenance

I took a similar approach to developing a diet for my mental health also. During the past year, I developed a more accurate, nuanced understanding of my emotions and moods. By paying close attention to physical symptoms and behaviors, I became better at identifying my emotions while I was feeling them. As a result of becoming conscious of my feelings, I also grew more aware of what kinds of coping mechanisms I subconsciously gravitated towards for each emotion. In turn, I have identified coping mechanisms that are unhealthy or counterproductive, and started testing out new coping mechanisms and building habits to employ the mechanisms that worked. I still have a lot to learn here, but building these habits has positively impacted other facets of my life.

In better understanding these different emotions and moods, and making note of what kinds of situations elicited them, I noticed that some of these recur so predictably that this seems to indicate longer-standing and more deeply-rooted anxieties or insecurities. Very gradually, I have started to slowly pick them apart in hopes of understanding them better.

Increasing my understanding of my moods, beginning to probe at the patterns and trends, and learning what kinds of coping mechanisms are effective for me has in turn strengthened my sense of agency.

Social Skills

I have talked to people more. On purpose. And even enjoyed it. (Though not all the time.)

Next, in conjunction with my improved cognizance of my emotions, I also made a conscious effort to practice expressing my emotions and beliefs as directly and coherently as possible. As someone who habitually reads between the lines, and tends to be shy and somewhat emotionally reserved, I have until now experienced numerous occasions in which messages that I try to send implicitly or circuitously have either gone entirely unnoticed or been disregarded as unimportant. When this kind of incomplete communication occurs repeatedly, the feelings of being understood or cared for start to lessen, and consequently relationships often suffer. In an attempt to prevent this, I have been trying to find a method of communication that is direct and clear, but also polite and kind. I haven’t perfected this yet, but I have clearly taken a few steps forward from where I stood last year.

Thirdly, I know that I am well practiced at skills of genuine and respectful listening, analysis, and response in deep, more serious conversations. Emotional regulation in conversations that can be highly emotional and formulating organized, logical responses in discussion and debate are skills that I have been exercising consciously for a long time. This year I made a point of trying to model these skills in discussions or debates I had with others, both in person and online, in hopes that the people around me would notice the benefits of having these skills and develop them too.

Last of all, thanks to my Japanese friends and conversation partner and my family and relatives, I had many chances to use and improve my spoken Japanese.

Other Improvements

I modified my bathing habits to reduce my water usage.

I have reduced the amount of meats and dairies I consume.

Most objects in my apartment now have a "home" where they belong when not in use, which has resulted in a more organized space in which to live.

Objects that require periodic care have received that care more often than before. I have committed more time to applying oil and polish to my shoes, washing and ironing my clothes more carefully, and cleaning my apartment routinely.

I call to check up on my parents and relatives more often.

Areas that Still Need Work and New Objectives for the Next Year

Social Skills

I want to get used to casual group social situations.

I would also like to learn how to lead conversations. As someone who grew up as an only child who opted to read, play, or go fishing alone on the weekends, and someone who is more of a “listener”, I have a hard time in conversations in which the other party does not actively direct conversation or conjure topics to discuss. Consequently, I think I sometimes come off as boring or as cold and uninterested in the other party. Most times, none of these are accurate representations of me, so I will start practicing taking the reigns in conversations when it seems appropriate.

Participation in Civil Society

I noticed this problem when it reached its peak in November, around the time of the U.S. Presidential Election. I have been highly opinionated and fairly well-informed about domestic politics since early in high school, and engagement in civic discourse is an activity that I have always understood as important. In fact, I firmly believe that participation in civil society is one of my responsibilities as an of-age citizen with suffrage. However, after this past election, I found myself obsessively debating people I have never met online and reading as much as I could to stay on top of the latest issues—sometimes for five hours a day. Engagement to this extent was deleterious to my well-being.

It completely consumed my time and energy. The opportunity cost of spending an additional hour on these activities was immense. I could have been studying something more meaningful, discussing something important with someone who actually cares and listens, or just cooking, sleeping, or cleaning. Even when I wasn’t actively participating in online debate or reading, I was thinking about the issues and fuming with frustration about it. Too much time, energy, and concern was expended in that realm.

And then, completely fed up with it all, I withdrew from it almost entirely for over 6 months, even though I was aware that this is an abdication of my responsibilities as a voting citizen. This year, I would like to figure out some middle ground in which I can engage enough to be an informed and responsible voter, advocate, and participant in discourse, without devoting all of my waking hours to it.

Physical Maintenance

I will continue eating well, sleeping well, and continue integrating more rigorous exercise into my day-to-day.

As noted above, my ability to maintain my physical health has significantly improved. However, developing those habits required extra time and effort, which in turn caused me to decrease my work load. This year, I would like to continue exercising these new routines while gradually restoring my workload to it’s original size; eventually, I would like to add even more responsibilities to it so that I can work more, study more, and play more.

Psychological Maintenance

Some of my goals in this realm for this coming year are an extension of my endeavors this past year. These include: 1) to continue developing a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of feelings and moods, and 2) to probe further into long-term anxieties and insecurities with the aim of understanding how they developed and how they impact my beliefs and behavior now.

Additionally, I would like to learn how to notice and acknowledge my hard work, and take the appropriate amount of credit for achievement or improvement. It seems that my failure to do this thus far has been perceived by others as an endearing sort of humility. While I do not disagree that humility is honorable to some extent, in my case, my inability to acknowledge hard work or achievement has negatively impacted my self concept and sense of agency.

This leads me to a more comprehensive objective. My hope is that, in continuing to progress towards the goals above, I will be able to establish a more accurate self concept. Theoretically, having a more accurate self concept would have significant implications for my professional and academic endeavors, and even for my social and private lives.

I think those implications would be particularly powerful if I could meet that objective in conjunction with the development of greater discipline, specifically the discipline to reasonably explore all options in a decision. Because I am impatient and a bit lazy, I have a habit of deeply analyzing one or two options out of many more because meticulous examination of all options is a lot of work. Unsurprisingly, this results in haphazard decision making.

Because I am capable of analyzing one or two options thoroughly, I know that I am cognitively capable. This leads me to believe that the issue must be dispositional. My hope is to consciously develop the discipline to critically survey many options in serious decisions. Having this discipline, in tandem with accurate self concept, should theoretically allow me to make more responsible decisions and undertake more responsibilities.

Other Goals

I would like to learn how to be a more ethical consumer. I have always been averse to shopping (aside from grocery shopping), so excessive consumption has never been a problem for me. In the past few years, I also consciously bought products of higher quality, especially clothing and shoes, so that I do not have to shop as frequently. Additionally, I have also never owned a car because the public transportation in my area is convenient, and because I am trying to reduce my carbon footprint. I also grew up separating the garbage and recycling and continue this practice today.

However, I would like to find more ways to reduce my environmental impact and also to support companies that are ethical, cruelty-free, and eco-friendly. This next year, when it is time comes to replace my possessions (particularly cosmetics and cleaning products), I will aim to replace them with items from these kinds of companies.

My apartment complex only separates recycling and garbage, but I hope to find a way to separate compost from my garbage. ~

That sums up my personal development goals for this year. Of course certain objectives may be altered, added to, or removed completely, but as of now, I am excited to improve in these areas, and to grow up a little bit more.

Thank you again to the people who supported me this year. I may not always make it blatantly obvious, but I do take your feedback seriously, and I have learned a lot from you.

And, full stop, or whatever.

Love and Peace,

Rina

dear racho: loneliness

This is an open letter in response to Rachel's letter.
~

Dear Racho,

Thank you for your letter. It seems that you have been put through a lot lately, and I’m sorry that life has been hard; at the same time, good for you for being resilient (as you have been since I knew you) and taking your hard times as opportunities for personal growth.

I am in complete agreement with you that not being friends with someone doesn’t imply that you don’t care about them. In fact, I care about a the wellbeing of people that I’ve never met, and I’m sure you do too. Additionally, letting a friendship with someone "run its course" does not imply that you are secretly wishing that person’s demise. There are so many variables to investigate in each case that it’s hard to establish any universal rules, so I have decided not to try.

You said that you noticed some errors in your understanding of friendship and re-conceptualized friendship to include reciprocated trust and respect. Loneliness, then, is the feeling that you are not being respected, trusted, and cared for (I added that last one, but I’m guessing you’d agree). Its symptoms are both psychological and physical, including both sadness and fatigue. Loneliness affects our bodies and minds so intensely not because we are “weak” or “lack independence,” but because human interaction and social stability are fundamental human needs, comparable to food and shelter.

Humans are not meant to live in solitude; on the contrary, we need to know that we are part of a tribe, caring for others who care for us. Studies in both neuroscience and evolutionary science corroborate the idea that human beings have a need for deep human interactions and being part of a group. fMRI studies have shown that isolation and rejection activate the same cortexes in the brain associated with physical pain. Similarly, comforting people in distress and performing charitable acts have been shown to activate the reward centers of the brain. In this way, our mood may relate importantly to our social lives. These findings are said to support theories in evolutionary science which posit that being social in this way has had evolutionary advantages, such as a more plentiful food supply as a result of division of labor. Thus, the desire for a trusty “squad” (as I guess our generation has decided to call it) is not indicative of weakness or dependence, but actually a part of the human condition. We have no choice but to acclimate to it, and do what we can to meet our needs.

The problem today is that modern life exacerbates loneliness the more you participate in it. We traverse the globe to pursue higher education, and then move homes again to pursue our careers. Sometimes our jobs make us move every month. This makes it nearly impossible to establish a physical home base from which to maintain our relationships. The big conundrum is that we have desires to participate in modern life and to lead healthy social lives, two desires which compete with each other. Learning how to reconcile these two needs in the modern world is just something that our generation needs to suss out.

The question becomes: how do I reconcile my desires to maintain my squad and my desire to pursue an active career in the modern world? This seems difficult because the easiest way to establish trust and respect (the essential properties of friendship, as defined by you) is through physical proximity and frequent interaction; however, they are necessary only if this is the only means for establishing trust and respect. Then, the question you need to answer is whether there other methods that are sufficient.

Maybe I can help in answering this question by describing my childhood, and how it informed my ways of maintaining relationships today. Growing up in Hawaii with zero relatives on the island (aside from my parents) was an experience that I think is a bit different from what a lot of kids in Hawaii experience. I always heard about my friends’ annual family gatherings where hundreds of relatives met and held a party at one relative’s home. I have not really experienced that before.

It felt more like my family was in some kind of space shuttle. We ate, slept, and lived in the space shuttle. We had our own strange language, a mixture of Japanese and English. Our space shuttle floated about in space, removed from any one planet. We were suspended in the void. Aside from the occasional muffled sounds of pop music from the distant planets, we heard only the gentle whirring of the shuttle’s propellers.

We did however frequently visit other planets. On weekday mornings, the space shuttle stopped at planet Hawaii in the village of School, where I spent about 10 hours a day, studying various subjects and talking to friends and teachers. Once a year, the space shuttle landed on Washington planet, where my aunt and grandparents were. The population on this planet mostly spoke English, and they loved cooked salmon of the nearby planet Alaska as well as coffee. Every other summer, the space shuttle went to planet Japan where my other grandparents and aunt and uncle, as well as my parents’ friends and former coworkers were. Here, the populace spoke Japanese and ate cooked and raw fish.

The three of us were always entering a new destination into the navigation function of the shuttle and rocketing all over space, to places where we had friends and relatives who were happy to see us and went out with us to gorgeous attractions and establishments with delicious foods. Sometimes, these people even came to our space shuttle, and we took them to different attractions on planet Hawaii, which was the planet we frequented the most. Sometimes, usually at the end of the year, messages from these people were transmitted to our space shuttle too. If we ever wanted to hear someone’s voice, we just bloop-blooped a couple buttons in the space shuttle to utilize a contraption that allowed us to converse with him or her. In fact, because inter-planetary travel was so costly in both time and money, my parents made it part of our routine to frequently bloop our relatives and friends.

When I turned eighteen, I moved into a new space shuttle of my own. I still live there, floating about and listening in the silent void to the familiar whir of the propeller. Although I now station my space shuttle on planet Washington, I still visit planet Hawaii to meet with my parents on their old shuttle, and I still visit planet Japan. However, I do not have my parents in my shuttle to bloop my relatives and friends for me, and I have noticed that I forget to do it all the time. In fact I firmly believe that I probably would not do it at all unless I am periodically reminded of it; this isn’t because I don’t find conversing with them to be meaningful, but because operating my space shuttle is arduous work, and time passes by so quickly that I simply forget. After enough time passes without interacting with them, I notice that I am lonely. Now I set my devices to periodically remind me to communicate with the people I care about. Space shuttles are remarkably advanced in their ability to give me reminders!

This isn’t to imply that my childhood was some kind of futuristic fantasy, or that I was a delusional child (though you are welcome to make that argument if you so wish). I guess what I mean to say is that, growing up, even though it felt like my family and I were often removed in many ways from society, and even though the people that are dear to us were not in close proximity to us, I never really felt lonely, with respect to my family and relatives. My family made a habit of routinely utilizing the technology needed to contact and visit our faraway loved ones, and through this contact I knew that these people cared about us. I have tried my best to do this now that I am on my own, though building that routine is not easy. Sometimes I do become lonely because my habits are not yet firmly developed.

Yes, it’s hard and irksome to have to reincorporate these technologies in a new way, but it can certainly be done over time. So maybe you have to habitually utilize Skype or FaceTime, maybe on a weekly basis. Making new habits is annoying, but that is one significant way we can resolve the competing desires problem. Aside from what you have already been doing, such as taking your medication when necessary and and building your professional network, building a routine for communicating with long-distance friends can significantly help you to continue thriving and growing in the modern world without becoming too lonely.

Anyway, I am a mere bloop away, whenever needed.

Rina

dear racho: motivation

Dear Racho,

I write you this time because I have been a bit down.

Lately, I have been trying to study education and psychology on my own and in classes, with the goal of finding a field that aligns with my interests and objectives. I have developed a bigger library of information and theories in those fields, but for some reason, even with these new concepts and vocabulary, I have a hard time expressing my ideas in ways that are not too vague or abstract. They are just fuzzy little ideas that seem trivial.

This inability to eloquently express my ideas REALLY REALLY SUCKS because this has made it impossible to build upon and improve them. Building upon and improving my ideas are precisely what I want to do, so I'm sure you can imagine that this has affected me to an unimaginable degree. It seems silly when I write it out. I can't seem to find the right words.

Yesterday, I convinced myself that I was a failure because I could not remember the last time I had an interesting thought.

For the past two months, I have had moments when I felt the passion and excitement to read and to learn, but most of the time, I have felt more like I am just walking on a treadmill, looking at the same scenery, not going anywhere, just getting tired and slowly rotting away.

Yesterday, I came to the conclusion that I am sad because I feel like I've failed, and that in turn is maybe because I identify too much with my ability to think and not enough with other things. Previously, I have found a lot of meaning and enjoyment in listening to and playing music, learning about international affairs, and listening closely and trying to help others. I wonder if spending some time doing these will restore some vitality or sense of purpose or whatever is supposed to help, and maybe I can give my wilted thoughts a second chance.

I want to work hard and learn. But I am weary. And I don't know how to restore some of the...I don't know... thing, the motivating thing.

I guess I wanted to ask you: What do you do when you feel lost? What do you do when it feels like the hard work is fruitless?

I would really appreciate your thoughts.

Thank you, friend.

Love and Peace,



Rina