May was mostly a blur. I spent a wonderful week at the Monastery, worked my way through a fantastic cold, and wrote a lot of code. There was much more weariness than I would have liked, but that’s May.

June promises to be full-on in its own way as a project drives towards an early July milestone. Despite previous expectations there’s been no letup in the volume of work; if anything it’s getting heavier. I’m doing what I can to stay healthy, energetic, and alert enough to be creative and clever for long stretches each day. August will cool down a little bit so I can have more time for other pursuits.

The other pursuit in my mind right now is fretted string instruments. I’m playing the heck out of the guitar, and have started taking a serious look the electric bass. I bought a cheap-o starter bass years ago in a fit of madness which I’ve dusted off and started rocking on. There is something intensely satisfying about pushing out a solid groove. I know it would be much better with a band, though; I miss making music with other people.

“You know what you want!”

“Sometimes. Most of the time I have no idea what I want.”

“I’m in that boat, man.”

“It’s a big boat.”

“Yeah, the love boat.”

The unknowable future, enticing and terrifying as it can be, still offers this gift: there are choices to be made, forks in the road to go down. The past offers none of that; the choices for better or worse are frozen in time, to be replayed over and over again in memory.

There are so many wonderful moments in the past, scenes that almost make me cry with joy. And, of course, there are the horrible moments, things that I’d move heaven and earth to change if I could. There is some consolation that I was doing my best at the time, but it doesn’t change the reality that mistakes were made, and that in the course of my life I’ve hurt myself and others more times than I’d prefer to remember.

But we’re stuck with what we’ve done. That’s how it goes.

I must let the past inform the present, so that if there’s the chance I can act with another ounce of skill, I can create nourishing and good ripples as I go through life instead of a wake of sorrow. But if I’m too mired in memories of the past, it has the exact opposite effect; it deprives me of the one place in time I can truly make a difference – now.

We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze.

— Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

• After 9 months my foot is starting to feel normal again, though hiking in rough terrain still is a problem. I doubt I’ll ever do any serious distance running again.
• Yesterday I bench pressed 98% of my body weight.
• I haven’t checked Twitter in weeks and weeks, and I don’t miss it at all.
• It’s nearly 3 years since I started up on the guitar.

Back from a weekend sesshin. Only one full day of schedule, so no time to wait for things to settle – no room for anything but effort from the very first breath. I gave it my best shot, and that’s all I can do.

There is something infinitely comfortable about deep silence and stillness. It’s not what we take for silence usually, that awkward waiting-room feeling that happens between one thing and another, but a thing in itself, alive and vibrant. I wish everyone could experience it, if only once.

But I’d rather not talk about that right now. Some things, you know, if you say them, it makes them not true?

— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

At times, when I say something in attempts to be clear, it feels like I’m taking a sliver of my mind, encasing it in amber, and popping it onto a shelf. At that point I have something I can examine carefully, share with others, and point to when I need a reference of some sort.

But the problem is that it’s not my mind now. It’s not even my mind then – it’s only a very small sliver of it at the time it was created. It never was, never will, come close to expressing my mind. And yet, it is so very easy to take that collection of frozen thoughts to be the entirety of who I am.

When I’m honest with myself, I know I’ve created exhibits on myself and everyone I know, and they’re all there, preserved in amber on their shelves. I am like this, he is like that. I think this about that. And I’m constantly mediating my experience with myself and everything else through the reference point of my collections.

When I listen to myself, I know that I don’t want to live this way. I don’t want to live a frozen life. But I don’t know what to do. Should I lock the cabinets and never come back? Smash the collection and hold a wake? Sit quietly and wait for the amber to disintegrate of its own accord? I truly don’t know.

When the need is large, it is used largely.
When the need is small, it is used in a small way.
Thus, no creature ever comes short of its own completeness.

— Master Dogen, Shobogenzo Genjokoan

In the movies, if you have two or more short people/animals/etc trying to sneak past a guard, they will stack up and don a trenchcoat, pretending to be one normal-sized, slightly wobbly person. Sometimes it even works.

This is how my mind feels today, as if I’m full of many little creatures (I’m imagining hamsters) who have taken the shape of “Jeffrey” and are doing a very convincing job of playing the role. Shake me a bit, and they all come crashing down in a pile, and what’s left? That’s what I want to find out.

By “finding out,” I don’t just mean getting an answer. Just getting the answer doesn’t satisfy. It’s like wanting to know how it feels to be a great guitar player? How do you really do that? By becoming a great guitar player. You can’t really know by reading a lot about guitar players, or going to shows, or 5-starring every song on Expert on Guitar Hero. The only way to know is to embody the answer with your own body.

And that’s what I want. I want to take my hamster-filled hands, shake myself, and see – no, be – what is left when the critters vacate the premises.

I was up around 3:30 this morning, and have been working steadily since around 4, with breaks for a quick shopping trip and a nap. I got a ton done, and feel very confident about the next week’s work. Right now, however, I’m exhausted and am looking forward to a hot shower and an early bedtime.

The first week of ango has just concluded and I feel in many ways like I just started settling into it. This ango has a different energy than the others I’ve participated in; it seems to be pervading my life more completely this time around.

While I’d love for Spring to be right around the corner, Winter has other ideas.

I used to be a big fan of Instant Messaging, but it’s fallen from my favor in recent years. As it stands now, I have my client on for a short fraction of every day. My list of buddies is down to the low single digits, and I’m not going to be adding anyone new. Hopefully in the near future, I’ll be able to eliminate it entirely from my workflow.

Why the hate? Here’s my gripe:

1. It’s Distracting

When I’m deep into something, or trying to get deep into something, it doesn’t take much to jostle me out of it. Having an IM pop up on my screen demands my immediate attention, if only to ignore it for the time being. It might feel like just a little nudge, but I was surprised, when I paid careful attention, at the huge influx of thoughts and feelings that came along with it. Thoughts about my relationship with the person, under what conditions did we last talk, any ongoing obligations, and so forth. Even if you don’t feel it, I’m fairly sure all of that is still there.

2. It’s Diffusing

When I’m messaging with someone, I can almost guarantee that the person I’m talking with isn’t paying me full attention. Even if they are, if they’re weaving it in between other IMs and whatever else they’re doing. It’s akin to having dinner with someone who is eating, taking phone calls, and texting. No matter how much you like the person, it’s a toll. And perhaps more importantly, communication suffers.

If I’m having an IM conversation with someone, I can choose to either give it my full attention and drop everything else I’m doing (try it sometime!), or do my best to stay present as I weave it in through the rest of what I’m doing. If I choose the latter, I’m choosing to diffuse my attention, and my ability to fully pay attention and be present suffers.

For me, it comes down to this basic idea: multitasking damages me, my work, and the people I am multitasking with. Even if it’s just in small ways, it’s enough. Small things spread, and pretty soon become larger. When I’m multitasking and not paying incredibly close attention, I’m not as clear, productive, and precise as I think I am.

Of course, IM isn’t the only technology that’s capable of distraction and diffusion. Twitter, which I still enjoy, I’ve taken to checking only once a day, because again, it is a series of small, slight distractions that build up. My mail client checks at 15 minute intervals these days, which is the shortest span of time I can realistically handle given what I do (I’d love to be able to check my mail only twice a day!).

Perhaps I’m becoming a luddite, it certainly is possible. But to my mind, it seems that I’m looking deeply into what technology offers me, and what price it extracts.

I was working on a design this week, and settled in on a particular idea, that was a little more gritty and dark than what I usually do. My stuff is minimal, as my portfolio can testify to, but once I got carried away with the idea, I kept on working until I ended up with something unlike what I’ve ever done before. Some of the design choices were… let’s just say unwise.

And it sucked, a lot. I wasn’t all that happy with it at first, and then it just got worse. I think I could salvage the design, but it’s been scrapped to the rubbish bin, and that’s for the best.

I think my lesson for this is that if I’m not really drawing from the core of my self, the end result is going to be passable at best.