The philosophy and vision of an information junkie turned web designer. I echo alot of his thoughts.

Jeff Weiss

Lifestyle Change.

Now I understand something important.

I need to drastically change my lifestyle.

Since about Friday, I felt sick and almost puked several times. During that time, I reflected on my lifestyle and what things may contribute to my health problems.

There are alot of things. My relationship with my Dad is one of basically... animosity. He is very old-world in his views and believes that his children must follow his decrees as if his word was law. BULL-SHIT. I don't follow that idea. So we clash and I have no interest in dealing with him.

My relationship with my mom is on-and-off. She tries very hard and sometimes I don't appreciate that, only seeing her flaws.

My brother [four years older] is very manipulative and has told me on several occasions that he enjoys it. For this, I have a hard time seeing him as a sincere or even "good" person. I remember several times in my childhood when I felt physically threatened by him in a serious way and these are times that I still haven't entirely resolved in my mind.

I feel as though I have very few real friends and even during high school, I didn't have a social circle to support me. All these things, I think, have helped to create a very introverted, suppressed mind. I understand this now, and now I know that being alone has nothing to do with being strong.

Now that I have come to this new thought process, I know that what I have been living is not really life, but rather a shell of life. Vital functions, work, eat, sleep. Now it's time for me to learn to trust people and love openly, without worrying about the "repercussions". I also need to learn how to fully "be" myself and not think about what others think of me.

It's going to be hard, but this is what I have to do.

[In an official, very authoritative voice] Henceforth, this is and shall be. Heh.

Oh yeah. I think she's great!

Excerpted from a comment on slashdot:

A professor is teaching a philosophy course, and he explains to his class solopism, the theroy that reality is a creation in ones mind. After the lecture, several students rush up and introduce themselves to the professor and explain that the theroy was really intune with how they felt and its really opened their minds and they just wanted to tell him in person how the felt about his lecture ... to this the professor replies "That's wonderful, so rarely does one solipsist meet another."

And now, for something a little less impersonal...

I don't know what it is that allows my thoughts to form the way they do. It seems, much of the time, as if I don't relate to other people as they relate to each other.

I went to watch Akira on the big screen this past Friday night. Unfortunately me and the peeps I went with missed about ten minutes of it, ten of the most graphically intense minutes of the anime [the motorcycle gang fight scene]. No big stress b/c the rest of the movie was mad tight, as I expected. The sound was booming and finely detailed. A bit loud for my tastes, but whatever. Just more flavor ;)

As for the night itself, I had just gotten off of a pretty raw day at work, smoothing over some ruffled feathers after I slightly lost my temper [the first time in a relatively long time, as I look back on it] and said something that didn't exactly stroke my co-worker's ego the "right" way. I shall explicate:

I've been playing the role of intermediary between the management and the lower-level employees recently after I received an extremely modest raise and new responsibilities. Promoted from "web designer" to "web designer"+"technical writer", I was. I see it as a chance to do something non-code oriented, which will benefit me since my mind runs in many directions, and the "code monkey" lifestyle has begun to lose its luster.

I also decided to help this rather badly managed company to connect itself from within... by that I mean to give the employee-manager relations a boost.

For about a month or two, I took the cumulative knowledge gained from listening to the low-level employees gripe [and do nothing proactive about] the management problems that they constantly had to deal with, and I began compiling information about what each side [managers/employees] believed was the source of the problem.

To make a long story just a bit shorter, both sides are working together more closely due to some muckraking behind the scenes by moi. No one realizes the amount of work that it took to sort out all the rumors and nonsense, but I suppose being a force behind the action is enough praise for the time being. Another notch on my resume.

So this past Friday night, I was still on low burn due to the damage control incurred from my injurious bout of honesty in the face of one of the office people, and it was about an hour's commute by train and subway to get where I was going. I met my peeples and we quickened out to the theater, arriving a bit late as I mentioned. As I talked and listened on the way, I remember feeling that sense of detachment that I feel so often, as if looking out from behind my eyes. The words spilling from my friends' mouths were parsed by the mind, but possessed an artificial quality, almost as if they were explaining the essence of meaninglessness itself. Sound with subcritical velocity, just barely stopping in front of my consciousness, reverberating an inch from my desire to care.

Sometimes I feel as if others perceive me to be a cold person, and at times people tell me that this is in fact their first impression. I have other memories from another time, for another time. Keywords [to jog my memory later]: jamaican, girl, college, dorm, sunrise, study, dating, long-distance, argentina.

I am this way because my experiences have taught me to keep others as far away as I can while still giving the appearance of positive reinforcement that most social creatures so voraciously crave. Manipulation of emotions is the single most deplorable idea that I feel a human being can perpetrate, either on oneself or on others. And yet society seems built on insincerity. I can no more honestly express myself than can others accept my self expression.

And that is the problem. I am a mystery; how to create an interface that the world can accept? Do I care? Regardless of disconnection from mass society, I am still human... for the sake of my own mind, can I afford not to care? The world is a sea of information, and I have much to learn and contribute. The question is how.