I’m so happy to consolidate the journal I made in Live Journal for several years with this site. The LJ site has gotten unwieldy and most of the people I was reading on it have moved to other platforms. It’s nice to get back the narrative of my life at that time. Very satisfying!
Author: Jennifer Kuntz
Focused on reading, making, learning and sharing. Professional information peddler.
Review: Disgraceland Podcast
In my hot blooded youth (late 80’s, early 90’s) I felt very strongly about music. I knew what I LOVED and what I HATED. The gift of a Walkman in my early teens was vital, as it allowed me to pour the necessary sounds into my ears at all times. The floor of my first car was littered with cassette tapes which the Columbia Record and Tape Club was happy to supply me. I’m sure my taste was eccentrically middlebrow, consisting of show tunes, 60’s pop and folk, 80’s new wave and hair metal and 90’s alt. rock. Listening to music was cathartic and exciting.
I was too essentially dorky to involve myself in any “scene”. (Frankly, the cool kids made me anxious.) But I loved to dance and to become reduced to an entirely listening being.
I did play an instrument (tuba) and performed throughout my teens in the wholesome, adult sanctioned groups that were considered appropriate. I learned about music, I played music and it was enjoyable. I embraced the innate absurdity of what I was doing and kept my primal feelings, the feelings that welled up when I listened to music tamped down behind an ironic wall. I didn’t allow my enjoyment of the art form to become a driving passion. I kind of regret that now. I miss the experience of making music.
I convinced myself that I liked music, but I wouldn’t live and die for it.
But there are those who would and that’s what Disgraceland is mostly about. It’s an examination of the intersections between music and crime. It is fascinating.
Host Jake Brennan puts together a new story every two weeks (mostly) and he examines, in lyrical prose, the ways that very talented humans can go wrong. Brennan’s narrative voice is understanding of human frailty. He presents what is known, takes a few educated guesses for the sake of clarity and drama, and leaves the listener to form their own conclusions. We sympathize with the inevitable victims, even though you do find yourself mentally urging them to back away, to do something to sidestep the fate that is all to easy to see coming.
I’ve enjoyed all the episodes so far, but the ones about Sid Vicious and Van Morrison are particularly well written. I highly recommend adding Disgraceland to your listening schedule.
Serendipity in Automation
Not all things are improved by automation. But I know that I am in a profession that is inching toward obsolescence (or being pushed toward transformation) by increasingly smarter machines. Right now Alexa, Siri, or Google’s AI can do about 20% of my job better than I can, because they have rapid access to a wider store of information (and they don’t get bored or irked when answering the same routine question repeatedly).
But for now I still have the human edge, I can intuit and extrapolate. I can weigh intangibles in the value of my sources. How quickly and adeptly does the author get to the point? How well do they answer the implied questions? And I can create content, build bridges to understanding, and provide clarity in the way I answer.
I think people are really only limited by their (un)willingness to keep learning. Change is unsettling. Growth is hard. Adapting is exhausting. But if you can learn to be excited about new ideas and information I think you sleep better at night. I’m not going to allow myself to avoid the future.
Approaches
So the Little Man has been having trouble getting out of bed in the morning. I can totally sympathize with that as I suffer from the same problem. But on a school/work morning we’ve gotta get up.
And he fights it. He hides under the covers and turns away. And won’t come out and won’t get dressed. I’m at a low ebb, myself, so an argument inevitably ensues and he usually loses screen rights for some portion of the day.
And we wind up leaving late anyway. So definitely not a win for anyone.
Well, this morning I tried something different. When he turned away and huddled under the covers, instead of yelling, I just pulled him out and sat him on my lap. He’s getting tall, my first-grader-for-two-more-weeks, but he cuddled up and I sang him silly songs and we got him dressed.
It took time, time I didn’t really have to spare, but it FELT better. And he was more willing to TRY to cooperate for the other parts of the morning routine. He still goes in the opposite direction when I push, slows down more when I urge him to speed up, but I think I realized that it can be different. He’s got better levers. I just have to find a better approach.
Scientific American–The Self Driven Child
Doing Things…that you don’t WANNA
I’ve been sitting on a big project at work because I know the execution of it is going to be excruciating. It’s a stack of purchase requests that will involve contracts and justifications and working with VERY unhelpful co-workers and I just don’t WANNA do it. It literally makes my skin crawl to think about it and while I know it’s part of my job, i just can’t bring myself to tackle it.
I really need concrete help more than a kick in the pants. It’s an amorphous thing right now and I think another person’s perspective could help me to make it more tangible. But I’m worried that by doing that I’m going to have to cope with the fact that I have been putting this off.
ADVICE FOR MYSELF
- 8 Tips for Tackling Procrastination
- 11 Ways to Overcome Procrastination
- The Little Trick That Will Stop Procrastination in its Tracks
First step–Organize the workspace
Something Obscure
So, inspiration did hit! I was listening to the new Androids and Aliens podcast from the Glass Cannon network folks and there was a great funny minute in the game that kind of called for a piece of fan art. Which I took my best shot at making. It’s rough. I had to reload and re-learn GIMP to make the elements work together and I know the design could be improved, but it’s a thing that I made.
Momentum
Coming back and going on can be the hardest thing. Setting up the project is fun. I’m satisfying that “learning new stuff” part of the brain. Keeping going is SO SO SO hard for me. I feel like I’m scraping the back of my brain to come up with ideas that are not trite or pointless. I have so many ideas for “projects”, but they all fall apart under the infinite dissection of ambition. It’s a problem of too many steps and none of them feeling like the first one, or the right one.
But I’m here. I’m putting my thoughts down. I’m refusing to censor myself (although a little revision is OK, right?) Next challenge. Don’t wait a week. Next post in two days. Friday, no matter what!
This is an Experiment
Consider it an attempt to let the inside voice out. To collect and store the thousand thoughts that come and die in the net of self-censorship. It’s a personal collection, curated to suit the personal audience and presented in hopes that others might also find value in what rests here.
It will become what it is.
The bathtime epic continues
Nat got into the big tub without protest tonight. He was OK being solo. As the embarrassing (for him) picture below demonstrates. He let daddy wash him down and had fun playing with his toys.
He was actually really fun to be with all day. I wonder if the recent spate of grumpies were the side-effects of the lingering cold we’ve all been having. I hope this weekend is a good one as I’d like to get out and have a nice family outing on Saturday.
This post is friends-locked for baby privacy.
Tiny plants
So the sun finally came out for a bit yesterday. It made a nice change from the unremitting cool and windy weather we’ve been having. And it activated the bugs in the yard in a big way. I’m going to have to put the mosquito repellent near the back door so we can all spray down if we’re going to be staying outside.
Also, I have a bathtub full of tiny plants! Out master bath tub is infrequently used and is right under the skylight, so it’s a great place to germinate seedlings. (And it IS a garden tub.) My plan is to get our second vemiculture planter finished this weekend and transplant the little seedlings into it, leaving some room in the top for possible future additions from the farmer’s market.
Nat’s ear is improving slowly. He’s still a little congested with whatever funk we’ve been passing around the house, but he’s not overly oppressed by it so we’re watching and treating it symptomatically as needed.
Sparkly Things 