I ring the doorbell in your mind But it's locked from the outside

So much of my life I felt as if I was cursed, that no matter how hard I tried to change my life I was doomed to constantly disappoint my loved ones, to fail, to never being able to enjoy anything in my life. I felt like my father put this curse on me, to hold me down so that I would never be as good as him. I know this is irrational, because my dad loves me despite all of the epic differences we've had over the years, my twisted mind would blame everything on him when in fact I never had anyone to blame but myself for my problems. This curse generally manifested itself in my life through my monumentally low self esteem, God I'm in my late 30's and I'm still struggling with these low self esteem issues. I'm a married man and a father, and I'm still struggling with self doubt at every turn - and this crazy self image that sabotages all of my successes. Some examples: procrastination about my final class for my Master's at Northwestern spoils the one good thing I ever did academically.

Lately I've started to look at my life in a different way. I like to imagine that curse is 'over', and now my baby daughter has cast another spell on me. This time it's a 'positive curse' in which I'm forced to live up to someone else's high expectations of me. I shouldn't project so many irrational thoughts on my dad, he was my biggest supporter for most of my life, even when I didn't believe in myself anymore, he doesn't deserve to be maligned in such a way.

Book a week 2009 - 12/52 & 13/52

Last week I read Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, it was a light entertaining read. I found his ideas about bands and music fandom funny, occasionally insightful. This strikes me as the sort of book I would have been really inspired by when I was in college.

This week I'm reading POJOs in Action: Developing Enterprise Applications with Lightweight Frameworks, which seems like a nice juicy technical book about modern Java frameworks.

There you are and here I stand

Back at work, still feel sick. The fever's gone, but have a bit of a cough and some congestion. K.'s sick now, she took a sick day from work and is home with N.. We took N. to the hospital yesterday btw - she has a fever, we're supposed to monitor her all week and take her back if the fever doesn't dissipate by the end of the week. Poor baby. I think on some level she's probably enjoying not having to go to the day care and getting to spend the day in bed with Mommy. I come back to work and there's projects piling up to my eyeballs. I may have to start coming in over the weekend or something to keep up. I don't feel good about this. We have a class at the church tonight, for N's baptism next month. Feel stretched thin, and then when I do get some time to do something, I feel lazy and waste my time doing nothing on the internet.

At church they read this bit of Corinthians, that both reminded me of my wife and made me feel guilty for being such an asshole to her:

Love is patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong.

Would you believe more than 10 years ago, as a young man just out of college, I thought that today's post title would be the title of my novel? It's a throwaway line from 'The Wagon' by Dinosaur Jr. This may still be the title of my novel, although the veiled reference to my defiant stance against conformity will not mean the same thing anymore. I remember having really long hair, and telling my incredulous dad of my plans to write said novel over the dinner table. God I used to be so idealistic and clueless.

Fourteen years is a long winter

Taking a sick day from work today, have a really bad viral something or other. N. came back from day care last week with a virus and I immediately caught it - K. however is immune so far, due to her exposure to all kinds of childhood germs on the job. Now is not the best time for me to get sick, but there's nothing I can do about it. Had a really bad temperature over the weekend, bad cough, bad congestion and allergies. Felt like my head was burning up and there were a million tiny allergy insects running around my sinuses. N. had a bad fever as well, the same symptoms, of course we were really worried about her. I'm laying around today with her, watching her sleep, playing her cartoon videos on youtube, feeding her bottle when she cries. She's sleeping right now and I'm watching a documentary about Nico on youtube.

Have been all over the place lately. Have been too sick to get anything done, no reading, no programming. I tried to record some stuff but I'd make it halfway through a take then I'd cough and it would be ruined. I'll try again when I'm better in a couple of days. No working out - at least yesterday. Despite my fever we went to Wishbone for brunch - God that was good food. Coffee, eggs florentine, lemon poppyseed pancakes drizzled with cream and blueberry preserves. I'm hungry right now, but there's nothing in the fridge unless I want to cook something. K.'s supposed to be bringing some stuff home for dinner.

Have been in a very dark mood lately, maybe the sickness has something to do with it - they come on at around the same time. I feel like I know a hundred songs but I won't really know them fully unless I record them. I feel like I won't be able to write a really good original song until I master the songs by other people that are in my head. That really has nothing to do with my dark mood, which has everything to do with frustration at my inability to change in the face of all the demands life is pressing on me. Noone loved Nico, and Nico loved noone. I thought that I was like Nico, for a while, a long while. And then I met my wife and I knew how easy it was to be loved, and how difficult it was to be loved unconditionally. I can never live up to it and keep tearing down images she has of me.

When N. is happy, she makes a growling noise like a small animal, like a baby bear or something like that. It's really amusing. Sometimes when she sits up she seems like a little meerkat. We wake up, I bounce her on my chest a little, feed her, we growl at each other, I carry her around the house while she growls at me. Funny stuff. K. just called - she is getting sick too, she says. So there's a chance we may all be laying around the house tomorrow. I made a photo slide show in iMovie about our recent trip to San Francisco. I had a great time on that trip, I'll always remember it.

Ulrich Schnauss - A Letter From Home

I first heard of Ulrich Schnauss when I dl'd his album off of somebody on Slsk whose tastes I enjoyed. I was surprised at how good his first couple albums were - they seemed unique in relation to most current electronic music in that they seem more concerned with composition than with production tricks. We wound up seeing him a couple years ago when he opened for M83.


Ulrich Schnauss - A Letter From Home

It pays to talk to noone

We had an emergency medical situation with the baby last week on vacation, it kind of spoiled the trip for me. We're back now, we're both still feeling jetlagged, the baby's fine - she just gave us a scare. Santa Clara was semi boring, but I learned a lot at the conference, felt inspired at the time but now I just feel really tired. San Fran - what we got to see of it - was really cool, I still feel like NYC and LA are cooler places to live, and I still kind of prefer Chicago although as I grow older I become more intolerant of the winters. I had to move offices the past couple of days so everything's been up in the air. Feeling drained. I found out today that I missed the registration deadline for my upcoming 10k race, so I'll have to sign up for another race that takes place in April. I'm just continuing on out of sheer habit, with my reading, with my running and training, with work. Still have faith that good things will eventually happen. Party at a friend's house on Saturday. Probably the few things in life that truly make me happy at this point - my wife and baby, playing guitar, music.

I remember being young but feeling old, not worrying about anything although I should have been worried about everything. Laying awake at night on a bed of clothes and unopened mail, not knowing what was going to happen to me, stuck in time while people all around me were passing me by, a joke to people who knew me but living this idealized life that existed only in my head. We are writing our future every minute of the day, what I wish I knew back then was that you can choose to stop at any point and declare this is the point at which I'm going to turn my life around, it's never too late - would I still feel this way if I was 60? My guess is yes but my goals would be different and have more to do with making peace with the past. I don't feel the need anymore to make peace with the past, I want to live fully in the present and conquer the future. That point came for me when I decided I loved my wife and we had a child. And it's been a gradual unfolding process as I unlock my mind. I feel my life turning gradually on its crooked axis. I had a dream that I played piano, and everything my hands did on the keyboard produced beautiful music. And our culture fills me with trepidation, not only for me but for my daughter.

I need to start recording myself again, it will be hard when J. comes to store my electric guitars, amp, and pedals at his place, so we can make room for N. And I really want to get a group together or at least start playing out again - and this time I'll actually be good. But older, and not so good looking. I go running and I play the same song on repeat for miles. I get obsessed with music that way, sometimes it's a song, sometimes it's an album. None of the cunts I grew up with would understand the things that I value, and what it is that I do. They've let public school, then college, then work, completely kill the creative process for them. I don't care if I never fit in, it doesn't matter anymore.

Book a week 2009 - 11/52

I'm not sure if I've already read this book or not, but this week's book is Learning XML, Second Edition (Paperback). Should be a good quick read, mostly refresher material. I'm mainly looking to brush up on my XML as a lot of the stuff I intend to do with Spring and Hibernate in the future tends to use XML config files or Java annotations.

An Ennigramatic Dream

Initial sense that people in California are a lot nicer than people in Chicago, certain a lot nicer than people on the east coast. A hearty greeting from the people in the elevator, from the guy sitting next to me on the plane.

The roads are wider here, it's legal to uturn, the street crossing lights tweet at you like a bird when it's ok to walk.

Geeks, it's already six in the morning but I can feel the geeks coming out of hiding. My people! I have a love hate relationship with 'my people'. I feel a part of them, but separate from them. I admire the intellectualism, the unpretentiousness, the focus on innovation, the humor (my people are funny, we are the funny behind the internets). I do sometimes wish that they'd present themselves better, take some time to attend to their physical fitness and their clothes, not be so damn, well, geeky.

My typical day here goes something like: wake up around 6, go downstairs to the hotel bar/restaurant area and grab coffee. Then seminar starts at 8:30, there are 1-2 classes in the morning til noon, then lunch, then more seminar til 5 in the afternoon. I can't wait til K. and N. arrive tonight - I can't stand being alone these days, drives me crazy. At night I work out at the hotel gym, have a couple drinks at the hotel bar, usually wine, ordering room service, which is expensive but a nice luxury. The important thing is being as present as possible at the seminar. Been loving this really, despite the place being too cold, and some of the speakers being boring. Learning a lot, learning a lot about what I don't know, learning a lot about how what I know and what we do on the job is hopelessly out of date. Feel inspired to go home and read 50 books and lock myself in my room and program. Have not gone outside much, except to run a little bit. This place is an industrial wasteland - there's not many restaurants or stores within walking distance, you have to wait forever for the lights to change.

Book a week 2009 - 10/52

I picked up How to Become CEO: The Rules for Rising to the Top of Any Organization while waiting for my plane at O'Hare airport. Seemed like a light read, I need a light read this week as I will be pretty occupied with a software development seminar this week - but at the same time seemed to provide a lot of practical career advice.

A man, extremely lazy, exhumes the cooked pigeon, his words indignant because it was cooked wrong

Brain extremely fuzzy, difficult to concentrate. The only immediately goal I'm going to give myself is the completion of this blog entry in my frenzied state. Playing Two Librans as I type this in my hotel room at the Hyatt Santa Clara. I have not seen warm spring weather in what seems like ages - the last time I noticed it was warm enough for children to go swimming in the pool my baby was not even born. That was another lifetime ago. My legs are weary as I ran six miles last night, I'll run another 4 miles today and it will be an adventure to fun outside in the spring weather in a city that is unfamiliar to me. Have been noticing that I look slim in clothes, even though I feel fat sometimes when I contemplate my naked body.

I cooked dinner for my mother in law and wife, and fed N. a vanilla cupcake for her six month birthday while K. and her mom took pictures. Something about the new brand of baby wipes gave her a rash and we had to bathe her in the sink. N.'s personality is developing - she is funny, teasing, jokey, energetic and very curious. Many people comment on her beauty. She seems beautiful to me but I'd feel the same regardless if it were true. I take some pride in it regardless. I write to pass the time, and I notice the Tracey Jordan Google video link is my most popular blog post. I write to entertain myself and to entertain my future self who may one day read these words and take satisfaction that I bothered to write down certain things that might otherwise be forgotten.

I fall asleep immediately, and am assaulted by vivid dreams that feel like episodes of deja vu. I think I am dreaming the same episodes repeatedly but I forget most of my dreams upon waking. I am having vivid sex dreams involving nature and especially bodies of water. I dreamt of sitting at my desk, working on a particular project at work many months before actually experiencing it. I dreamt that I had an almost preternatural skill at playing the piano - it was as if anything my hands did on the keyboard produced perfectly formed musical ideas - this is of course not the case in real life, but my wife interprets this to mean that I am in control. This is of course not the case in real life - BUT I'M GETTING CLOSE. One thing I thank God for is the gift of music, and the audacious idea he planted in my head years ago to stick with it despite the apparent futility of learning another instrument and getting involved in music again. The other day I attempted to play a piece of music that seemed almost impossible for me to play a couple of years ago and I realized that it was easy for me to play, and I thought that I must be good if this piece was easy for me, and I thought that I am at least as good if not better than people making music that gets played on the radio. I take great pride in my guitar skills, it's a great source of joy for me and I think my wife also enjoys it.

I am always tired due to the constant training, and yet I am still unsatisfied with my body, I wonder if this is the human condition. I wake up early almost instinctively and pack for my 8 day trip to the developer conference in San Francisco - actually Santa Clara, San Jose airport, and Silicon Valley. I pack, drink coffee, and K. drives me to O'Hare and gives me a kiss and waves to me as I check my bags at curbside checkin and board an American Airlines jet bound for California. On the 4 hour plane ride I drink 2 glasses of red wine, read two Newsweek magazines in their entirety and half of a novel. I watch the snowcapped mountains and verdant green suburban expanse of Northern California unfolds beneath the plane as we make our descent. I walk through the San Jose airport, which is indistinguishable from the airports I passed through on my last 3 business trips. I take a cab to the hotel, check in, and drink some more at the hotel bar, call my wife, then go back to my room and take a short nap. I awake to the sight of the industrial office park wasteland that is Santa Clara outside my window. Yahoo, Google, Apple, Cisco, Nortel, Citrix, Brocade are all here. I'm about to throw on some shorts and go jogging, but I'll check in later. I know I'm going to miss my family but they will meet me here eventually.

Book a week 2009 - 9/52

This week's book is Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, supposedly Obama's favorite book. It's about relationships between fathers and sons. This should be interesting as I'm a new dad. This will be my first fiction book in several years.

Woe to thee o land if thy king is a child

L. and N. are staying with us for a few days to look after N. while her grandparents are out of the country. Last night we took them to Lincoln Square for dinner and ice cream, then they went with us to interview the new day care people that K.'s friend A. recommended to us. A bunch of really nice Greek grandmas. So there's a possibility that N. will be going to this place instead of her grandma, as it may be too hard for her grandma to look after her with my dad being sick and the two crazy dogs. We were thinking - if everything happens for a reason, maybe God didn't want N. crawling around on the floor with those two crazy dogs who get into huge scratching fights with each other all the time. Hell, I was scratched up pretty good a couple times over the years. Then I went to my parents and drove them and their friends to the airport where they'll fly to the Philippines for 3 weeks. They should have fun, I think they're going to lay on the beach and play golf.

The weather is warming up. I'm coming off a period of really low energy starting last week around the time we went out to dinner with J. and C. I was just down, I skipped working out, didn't read that much, didn't want to clean around the house, was having trouble with work. It got so bad I scheduled an emergency appointment with J. to talk about it. I think I'm feeling better now. I've had more energy the past couple of days - I've been training again in the mornings, it helps that it's not so brutally cold these days. I just got really sick of waking up and having to face sub zero temps first thing in the morning. Relationships with my family are still very good. K. and I are tighter than ever. I'm always amazed at what a wonderful person she is. I don't think I could've gotten through some of the really difficult gotchas life's thrown at me in the past couple of weeks that I haven't even mentioned in this blog because they're too personal, without K. L.'s birthday last week, feeling a little more connected to my brother, which I'm happy about. N. is crawling a lot these days, it's funny watching her learn to climb on things.

Frustrated with a project at work, that's the thing that's really bringing me down lately. We also still have to finish our budget for the end of last month. It's just too busy - we have 2 houseguests now, I'm moving offices, then I leave this weekend for San Francisco, then mother in law comes in for a week. Looking forward to the developer's conference, I'm going to really try to learn a lot while I'm there. I may even get a head start on the java certification I plan to study for this year.