what do I believe?

How do I put the world together? It can't just be a mindless cumulative process. There is a narrative that shapes it. What is that narrative?

E.g. Cat Power believes that she is the way she is because of her astrological profile, her musical influences, the experiences she's had.

What do I believe and how does my world fit together based on that?  That is the difference between writing a journal and blogging. One is a data dump, and serves as an input to the analysis process. The other is the output of the analysis process.

pivot time

I couldn't wait to finish school, counting down the weeks to the last class and telling anyone who'd listen how awesome it was going to be when I was finally done. The final year had been grueling, all-consuming and murder on my waistline and dating life, and then, when I couldn't take anymore of it, it was over. As an added bonus Danette had come to live with me for a while while she and Jay figured things out.

For a couple of weeks things were really looking up: no more homework meant I could go out on weeknights; I had someone with whom to eat breakfast and go to the beach; I started biking to and from work and planning a camping trip to Acadia; I even got propositioned for sex in a forthright and not-creepy way by a cute guy at work. Then this week came along and FLUMP! I've been having headaches on the days when I ride my bike so I decided to take a break from it; my attention has been non-existent so I've been running on nothing but coffee while at work and sleeping poorly at night; I've been playing solitaire compulsively instead of working on a portfolio site or resume, basically reverting to school lifestyle, only without the excuse of having to do school work.

To make things worse Danette's been more and more down about being unemployed, a lack of progress between her and Jay, and not hearing from her former co-workers; and Clayton's been a total drag meowing at the door in the mornings. I also had a couple of sad conversations with my brother and father, who are not speaking to each other right now. It's unclear to me how accurate Max's assessment of Dad's business woes is, but it is plenty clear the effect it's having on the family: not only will Max not speak to Dad, but he's forbidden Mom from seeing his kids, "until Dad passes away and she shows signs of repentance."

All around me I see my life as a raft of intractable malaise. Aspects of my life that hadn't been going great but that I'd been ignoring because I was focused on school (like work and dating) turned right back around to hit me head on. In my own house there's cat hair and dirt everywhere, mitigated only by Danette's cleanliness and cat dander allergy. In my family there is dysfunction and anger. And in my body? I just went to my initial consultation at the fertility clinic this afternoon for a cold hard look into what my future might be made of.

Freezing eggs first entered by awareness a couple of years ago when Sunny, worried about her relationship with Chuck, had started looking into it. At the time I lacked the money and the necessary sense of urgency to look into it myself, and decided to put it off until I had finished school. Then this Summer Danette started talking about having a fertility evaluation, and then had one done while she and Jay were in London. Her results were sobering, showing a low follicle count, so when a much larger home equity line of credit came through than I needed to pay off my school bills, I decided to make an appointment of my own.

I had only thought about the proposition dispassionately up to now: you pay ten grand to freeze your eggs, and then you have insurance in case you try to get pregnant later but can't. But when you're in the doctor's office going over the statistics, percentages and risks, it's much different. The rates of conception for women 35 years of age undergoing IVF is lower than 50%. If I'm in excellent reproductive health, depending on my follicle count there'll be between 10 and 20 eggs to freeze, and some of those will be lost in the freeze/thaw process. Then there's the rate of IVF from frozen eggs from young donor eggs, which is about 85%. For my older eggs it'll be somewhat lower than that. And then there's any potential complications from multiple pregnancy, older pregnancy, and so on. So in the best of cases, if I have souped up ovaries putting out a majestic crop of 20 magnificent eggs, I'll still have only one shot at IVF with a 20 to 35 percent chance of pregnancy, with an elevated risk of genetic or developmental defects due to my age.

Suddenly my Mom's ill-phrased comment that I'm "copying" my aunt Julia started to chill me, as I thought of how hard she and Hyman had to work to get pregnant with Julian, and how hard they've had to work since to give him a good life. I don't know if I can do that. I don't know that it's worth taking that risk when there are (and will be) so many babies to adopt. But really, the thing that's taken all afternoon to really sink in, is how lonely I am. I don't want to have a child by myself. I don't want to get donor sperm just to improve the quality of my chances of having my own biological baby. I want a husband, a boyfriend, a partner in life. It'll be four years in September since Jason finally moved out, and that's long enough. I think I've proven that I can live alone. But I don't like it.

I've done it. finally.

Over the past two years I've told myself many times I was not going to waste any more time on Justin, but in all of those instances I never could bring myself to take that final step of really letting him go.

I just did that today. I told him we can no longer be friends. As expected, he played a position of "strength," saying, "Okay." Then he asked, not very forcefully, for an explanation. I told him I didn't feel good about our relationship; that I'd always want more and that he would never give it to me; and that I've felt pretty good during these last two weeks when he's been too busy to hang out. While we were driving back to the office afterwards I went over in my mind what the deeper reasons are: his narcissism, the way he's treated me poorly, his complete lack of empathy, and decided at each point that it was not important or helpful to share any of this with him.

I did shed some tears as we drove back in silence and I realized that even in this moment I was the one in pain, and I knew that I could not have done this had it not been for the fortuitous two week break in our contact. I feel so much lighter now that going up to sit at the front desk all afternoon is a relief.

I hope this time it sticks.

because it's hard

I shouldn't be surprised to see that my last post was in January. Spring semester was insane, and it's not like I've been falling all over myself to post since the semester ended. Still, it can't hurt to do a mid-year mind check.

After putting off life and a half because of school exhaustion things have started to catch up with me. I finally seem to have a handle on my financial situation after trimming my visits with Dr. Feldman back to twice a month and getting an infusion of cash from Dad. I might actually be able to pay off my credit cards and start saving again. And/or get hookups installed for the washer and dryer. Win-win.

Also taking care of taxes, finally, with the property assessor knocking down my door and the threat of a revoked residential exemption in the air. I have about a month to get it all squared away, whatever the costs. The time for avoidance has come and gone and now it's for real. I have a date with a CPA on Friday to get the ball rolling. A year-old house sale in Brazil, and various business loans coming in and out of accounts I know nothing about make me queasy but what else am I going to do? Last year, when I was plenty on top of things, my CPA got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and retired. Now, with the summer off of school, time has come to wrap this baby up.

And speaking of baby, Clayton's due back in for another $800 X-ray. Poor little guy. Hates the vet and freaks himself out beyond all reason. I wish there was another way. He has been doing better lately, though. The wet food, or perhaps the absence of chicken in the wet food, seems to be doing him good. Maybe the news will be good and he can go home with another prescription rather than a scheduled return for a lobectomy. Oof. I can't even think about it. Let's hope for the best, I guess.

My other baby, the Matrix, is due for service after my nearmiss on the highway. Hopefully I haven't wrecked the alignment or bent any axles out of shape. Additional concerns brought to me by Michelle Mauro of Commerce Insurance who seems incapable of getting back to me with any kind of update about my deductible. I certainly hope this is only incompetence rather than intentional business practice.

Vitamin D level check, checking in with Dr. Winger, and visiting the root canal specialist have all fallen off the first tier of priorities. I guess my health will be on the docket for the second half of August, after I get back from Brazil. Likewise, dating.

like clockwork

late january is a such a bitch to me. for the past three years that i can remember i'll come back from California feeling good and doing fine and the year starts out well enough. I make plans and resolutions and then, right around my birthday things start to suck. last year it was the Mike and Judy show; the year before it was the Andy nonsense. but this year? I was so on track, being so good socially, putting my best foot forward towards school and all that, and still the same thing is happening again: I feel more and more tired, stuttery and pessimistic every day.

i can't let this happen! if it means i have to dramatically up my medication, embark on a rigorous diet and gym routine and stop watching tv altogether that's what I'll have to to. it's unacceptable to lose any more time to depression. especially at 37 when I have to make so many things happen! so there: a new resolution: fight depression! Grrrr!

staying intentional

it's pretty boiler plate as resolutions go: stay focused, don't procrastinate, follow through. the trick will be sticking to it. here are some specific areas I had in mind when resolving to do this:

work: there are too many days when i come into work and don't know what to do with myself, and too many other days when i have a list of things i'm not excited about doing. while in the past i've sort of dragged my feet until things eventually got done without ever committing fully to the task i'm deciding now that i'll do things differently from here on out. i've determined empirically that it's less painful and takes less effort to do things intentionally than while dragging my feet.

school: last year was kind of a wash. i barely made it through intelligent interfaces, which was a pretty easy class, and let that final paper drag on to the utter limits of my sanity. if i'd just started it two days sooner and had managed to turn something in i'm sure the resulting grade would have been the same (B+) but my summer would have been much more relaxed. when the fall came and I started on the java class the paper was still hanging over me and the malaise of it seemed to spread. gone was the high stakes feeling of the previous fall, when i spent days in the library doing research and churning out papers. granted the material was difficult and unfamiliar to me, but i was overwhelmed almost from the start. i don't know that I could have done better in a different frame of mind, but i might have been able to be more objective sooner as to my place in the class and might have dropped it sooner, again incurring less exhaustion and pain.

dating: no more putting off dating because i don't feel like it. no more wasting time with justin. no more excuses. it's a simple proposition: in order to meet the right person i have to go out and meet more people. even my own method of data analytics-driven dating requires data points. so that's it. more dates. more writing, more pictures, more sites, activities and people.

socializing: just be better at it. there are so many times when i haven't felt capable of socializing, or capable of enjoying socializing. i just upped my citalopram dose because i'd been experiencing symptoms of a serotonergic deficiency (stuttering, mis-firing thoughts, physical clumsiness, slowed reflexes). i have a few leads in danette and anne, and i need to decide whether to put work into liza. she's perfectly nice, but i always come away feeling like it was not a fit. maybe there's something to that. but i have to make a decision about it rather than letting things just fall wherever.

money: no more indulgence shopping! i can't afford it. i have a mortgage, school, psychotherapy and an asthmatic kitty to take care of. there are myriad home improvement projects calling out to me but i'm just going to have to pace myself. i'm starting the year off on a note of austerity and will have to manage my budget observantly.

that's all for now. it's simple, straight-forward and absolutely not my strong suit. good luck to me!

Justin sucks

What's more, I suck for wasting my time on that time waster. So no more of that. I have too much I need to do this week and in the rest of my life to spend another iota on his shit. If he's too wrapped up in himself to relate to me I need to move on to more productive endeavors.

Like my stupid ass recommender system paper. That thing's been dragging along like a poor unfortunate animal caught in my life's wheel well. I need to come to a full stop and put it out of its misery once and for all. I have six days in which to do this. I need a plan simple and sensible enough to bring me through the next six days with a paper to turn in at the other end.

How about this: I know I work better in the mornings so I'll reserve two hours every morning this workweek from 8 to 10am. Then I have to come into work, but if nothing is going on I can write at my desk. I cannot, however, read at my desk. Not the way I like to read, with hi-lighted papers sprawled all over the place. So the reading I'll have to do at home or on screen. I'll need a way to take notes, both here and at home. I kind of suck at that, so maybe a stack of cards is the best I'm going to do here. Hopefully it won't get too far out of control and I'll be able to use them as visual tools.

So that gets me to lunch. I guess depending on how I'm doing it might be best to eat lunch at my desk to keep working; or maybe I'll need a break so as not to burn out. I'll have to see how that goes. Methylphenidate will have to be at the beginning of each day of this plan. So let's say I get another couple hours in during the afternoon. I can go home and nap or chill for an hour and do another hour or two after dinner.

Add it all up:

(3 days x)
2 hours in the morning
1 hour at work before/during lunch
2 hours after lunch
2 hours after dinner

-2 hours Thursday for Dr Feldman
2 weekend days (~4 hours each)

19 + 8 = 27 hours

Let's say I can divide the paper into two parts:

1. recommenders overview
2. Jinni

However I slice it, recommenders is going to be shorter than Jinni, so I'll give it 9 hours. That means reading, parsing, writing, editing all have to happen within those 9 hours. That leaves 18 hours for the Jinni part, during which I'll have to figure out what algorithms make the most sense for it, and justify my choices. This means the bulk of the reading. I'll have to sift through all the literature I can get my hands on here. When I take into account how much harder it is to write when references have to support everything I think maybe the breakdown should be:

3 hours: recommender systems reading
3 hours: recommender systems writing
3 hours: recommender systems referencing
6 hours: Jinni reading
6 hours: Jinni writing
6 hours: Jinni referencing

How best to break this up over the next 6 days? Since I've already written a general overview of recommender systems and can basically polish that to the end of time and still not be very happy I'm going to say forget it for now. I need to focus on the meat of the matter: how Jinni works. It is, after all, what I've been avoiding dealing with all this time.

So reading on Jinni is the first task. I'll need all my clarity for it too, so I'll allocate the mornings to figuring this out. If it becomes too confusing I can switch to recommender stuff as a break. When do I absolutely have to be done with Jinni reading? I'm going to say by the weekend I have to have it under control. I have to have at least the movie genome figured out good and solid. I'm thinking this time around the goal is to have as clear an understanding as possible before starting to write. The other way certainly didn't work.

After this weekend I can reflect on my social and romantic lives and start worrying about Xmas shopping. For now, I'm putting on the blinders.