2023-01-06 Journal Entry

🍃 Season: ❄️ Winter 🔆 Weekday: Friday 🗓 Date: January 6, 2023 📅 Week: Jan 2 – Jan 8, 2023

Good mooooorningggggggg San Francisco! I’m waking up early to type this. I mean, it’s not that early — it’s 6:50am as I’m typing this — but my sleep schedule has been way off lately, mostly filled with far more late nights than I would’ve liked and not nearly enough early mornings. Last night I tried to take some melatonin and go to bed earlier, but then when I woke up this morning I felt like I still wanted to sleep for a few more hours. I set my alarm for 5am but I didn’t really roll out of bed until 6. But hey, that’s better than nothing. Of course then I was slow going and easily distracted about eating breakfast, so then that took me another hour and now it’s nearly 7. I also want to meditate this morning as well — Morning pages, meditation, the ultimate power morning.

I also want to go to the zen center this afternoon and do the group meditations and service. I’m not bringing my phone this time! It’s staying home! One of my big anxieties about zen forms is that I’m getting in people’s way, and having my phone go off like it did last time is definitely getting in people’s way. Folks at SFZC are good about nudging you to bow at the right times or stand in the right place, but I don’t think there’s much they can do when your alarm goes off and causes a disturbance, so that one’s on me. I also realistically should get more comfortable sitting for longer periods with a mask on. For whatever reason, it seems to make my heart rate go up and makes my heartbeat really loud internally, which is a bit distressing when it happens. I try and sit and listen to it, but that’s also partially just because it’s so loud that it’s hard to listen to anything else.

I need to shave. I’m not even touching my face at the moment and I can feel just how itchy my two-day-old facial hair is.

Yawning is weird. I don’t really understand why we do it — I mean, I understand that when you’re tired you probably need more oxygen, but why not just breath faster? Why do we have to also like stretch and make these weird facial positions? Does yawning actually get exponentially more oxygen than a normal breath and I’m just missing it? Things to ponder.

I get distracted pretty easily by the internet. I just probably spend 10 minutes between the last paragraph and this one reading about a Ruby parser. Part of that is also probably some anxiety about being a Big Person in my career, or open source, or something. I also just think what some other folks are working on is pretty fun, so that’s cool and I’d like to be involved somehow. But also in the grand scheme of things, who really cares. Most of the things I’m thinking about aren’t exactly shortcuts to getting famous — nobody, at least not in the global sense, is going care that much that the Ruby parser is being rewritten — but they are interesting and fun to think about. I think that’s also a bit of a trap though: it’s the kind of work people refer to as “snacking,” things that are fun be comparatively low-impact. Like, imagine if the time we spent making the parser better was spent instead on making the language faster, giving better error messages, rewriting some of the shittier Ruby tooling (stares at Bundler) or something else. The parser is, in my opinion at least, just the thing that’s the most fun. Programmers fucking love working on parsers, it’s a little ridiculous. And I’m equally guilty of that.

Writing out 1500 words is both a lot of work and actually not that much. When I don’t feel like I have a ton to say, it feels like a slog, but realistically it’s only taking me about 20-30 minutes to do this if I stay focused, which in the grand scheme of things is pretty quick. I can see when this will feel like pulling teeth though — days where I’m most stressed about Other Things are days where I both (a) need Morning Pages the most and (b) am least likely to do them.

Random question, but what does Shopify actually get out of some of the projects they pay engineers for? Like what the fuck do they really get out of making the parser more maintainable? I get YJIT, I get contributing to the runtime performance, but if anything this project might actually make the parser slower, and it seems like there was already some work done to make parser errors better? Again, not saying it shouldn’t be done, but it does seem a bit weird to have someone working on it full time.

I’m awfully preoccupied with some random thoughts that don’t really matter huh. Thank you, thoughts, now be on your way then.

Not so much that having thoughts is bad thing, but they’re awfully exhausting, and they don’t matter too terribly much. But there’s also the flip side. I often feel terrible for “turning my brain off” and watching terrible television or drinking or doing things that feel dissociative. There’s the clear middle ground where your mind is present but not actively thinking, but thoughts are drugs in an infinite supply.

I’m still just sitting here typing until I get to 1500 words. More words, more words! Let them flow like mead, let them be merry and leap onto the page through my fingertips. May they dance like faeries and torment my poor Notion spreadsheets. May they whisper soft secrets in your ear like a lover’s tale, may they nudge you toward the keys to the kingdom, may they overthrow the shackles that bind them. I don’t know what that meant, but it sounded badass for a second there.

San Francisco has been terribly gloomy lately, with the constant rain and such. One of the main things I find lovely about this city is its consistently nice weather, so the days here and there of terrible weather make it somewhat depressing, but such is true for basically any city I suppose. The ratio of nice to not-nice days is just significantly higher (at least by my definitions of “nice,” which I know are not consistent with everyone’s).

Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, ever this way annoying thoughts come.

Blargh.

Typing typing, ever typing. Such is my lot in life, to type words onto hollow pages and have them echo back to me. May these words be happy, may these words be safe, may these words be at ease, may these words be free. Metta for my writing, lovingkindness towards the ramblings and nonsense in all directions, those that came before, those that are, and those that will come.

My book stacks are far too high, methinks. I’ve separated them into piles but now they just fill my living room, waiting to be read like a lover waiting for their partner to return from war. I don’t know.

Every time I meditate after having a ton of caffeine, I remember that caffeine is totally a drug. It makes everything all buzzy and vibrate-y. My eyes kinda twitch and I can feel my fingers shake. I think I’ve tricked myself into thinking that I’m not that affected by it, but I know that I am. This shit is like crack. Okay, well not really crack, but it is legitimately addicting and I totally will go through withdrawal at some point. So that sucks.

Alas, these Morning Pages come to an end as I ramble on for another one-hundred-and-fifty words here. These are turning out to be pleasant so far, something nice about getting my thoughts down on a page and also letting whatever weird thoughts pop into my brain land on a page somewhere. I see why it does somewhat quiet down the Censor part of your brain when you consistently do this, because I’m honestly not really thinking all that much about what I put onto the page before I type it. My thoughts kinda short-circuit the outer levels of my brain and go straight to muscle movements, it’s like the language part of my brain operates independently from the judgmental part. So that’s cool! Fifty more words weeeee, look at them fly, look at them go, like birds on a bright blue day, true and free and love and joy and all that is good and right in the world, off in the atmosphere, bringing laugh lines and crinkled eyes to all who see’em. I love you.

Exercise:

• I, Reese Williams, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
• I, Reese Williams, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
• I, Reese Williams, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
• I, Reese Williams, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
• I, Reese Williams, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
• I, Reese Williams, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
• I, Reese Williams, am a brilliant and prolific writer.
• I, Reese Williams, am a brilliant and prolific writer.

Blurts:

• Well I’m obviously not prolific, I don’t have anything published! I don’t even have anything finished!
• Brilliant? I can barely think outside my tiny little box.