The Shift Diaries

After days of laboring over:

• Changes to my website
• Writing and rewriting my contact page (what an opportunity for discounting and comparison!)
• Writing and rewriting the intro for the Shift Diaries (ditto)
• Editing and re-editing the e-mail that is the first entry
• Deciding to put the Shift Diaries in a blog instead of making it pages in my website (oh, yes, children, there are geeky differences
• Doing a lot of reading to get up to speed on blogs (I now hate the word ‘blog’ even more than I did before I decided to have one of my own.)
• Installing and configuring the blog
• Researching blog specific configuration issues that would only matter to a control freak geek (that would be me)
• Giving up, reluctantly, on that level of control due to losing some essential functionality (I think it’s essential–nothing is really clear at this point)
• Worrying that I haven’t put enough planning into the blog, since I have no experience in blogging that would provide a basis for any real planning
• Practicing wrangling the blog and posting to the blog
• Wondering how much more I need to know/configure before turning this loose on the world

I finally took a deep breath and published my altered website complete with links to the Shift Diaries blog. Whew!

Now, much as I feel driven to fill up the blog with entries RIGHT NOW, as though it were a newly completed model home that starts showing tomorrow, I’m also feeling a bit sick of everything blog-related at present. And as much as I also feel that I need to do more reading of WordPress (my blog software) documentation in order get past the innocent Babes in Blogland state I’m currently not enjoying, I’d really rather relax and read something lighter, like a new library book I requested, I am not myself these days, a memoir of a drag queen/advertising genius who lives with with a male prostitute. That sounds like such a refreshing lifestyle compared to mine.

Back in my obsessive days of coding, I would simply keep my butt in this chair and keep going. I’d flop into bed about midnight, get up at six, and get back to it. Time’s a-wastin’! The technology is changing as you sleep! Gotta keep moving or you’ll fall way, way, way behind.

But now, all I want to do is relax. Well, it’s not ALL I want to do, but I’m ready to relax some after a couple weeks of confronting my fears about putting myself out here for all the world to see.

Anne K. and I exchanged a few e-mails today about how we compare ourselves constantly, and in the world of computer professionals (as we geeks are referred to by those who hire us), comparison is rampant. Now, I’m no longer officially a member of that world, but I was for almost a decade. And I notice that I feel pangs of discomfort about not being up to my former level of completely geeked-out 24/7 geekiness.

I worry that some geek will look at my website that I designed and developed all by myself, and, instead of admiring my beautiful all-css/no tables layout (geek-speak for something kind of cool that is totally invisible to the average viewer of a web page), the visiting geek will sneer at the fact that I use FrontPage.

I worry that by using WordPress’s standard “theme” (the way the blog looks), I’m demonstrating a lack of geekish machismo.

I worry, in short, that I will be seen as lacking in geekish imagination and knowledge, that I’ll appear uninformed, ill-advised, misguided, and just plain ignorant. Or, as we geeks say about each other, “I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”

Since everything about this blog is Shift related (did I mention that I’ll be instigating a convention of capitalizing Shift when I’m talking about “the Shift” as opposed to when I mean “moving things to different positions”), and comparison is a major snare for so many of us, I thought it would be a good idea to simply put it out there that I’m comparing myself to real geeks and discounting myself for not being the geek I used to be.

I don’t even WANT to be the geek I used to be, but that doesn’t keep me from discounting myself for lowering the bar. If I would try harder, work harder, do a little more research, experiment some more, get in there and hack that code until things were just so, I’d be back in the ranks. The ranks I left because I came to find that world pointless and exhausting, plus I didn’t have a life while I was in it.

This is an example of the conflict we create for ourselves that Elias talks about: we make a choice and then beat ourselves up because of our choice. I chose to leave behind my life as a girl geek, but I don’t leave behind the standards and judgments and comparing and discounting that went with it.

There’s nothing to say about my current lack of bleeding edginess to the geeks “out there,” since we all know I’m only talking to myself. To myself I say, “I’m doing other things now. I’m still able to get in the loop the same way I always did, by doing research and experimening. I don’t have to compete in the geek arena. The absence of cool hacks to this or any other code I’m using does not need to imply that I’m lacking intelligence or drive.”

Which reminds me that during my geek phase, I actually heard some people (very few, actually) discussing with pride their decision to cut back to working only 14 hours a day. If you didn’t work essentially ALL THE TIME (literally!), you were branded someone who didn’t take things seriously. That’s where I am now. I don’t take geekish things seriously.

But I’m taking other things seriously — ephemeral, invisible things like trying to get familiar einough with living the SHIFTY way of life so that I have a whole new set of automatic responses. Learning to deliberately direct my life according to how my PROCESS feels instead of being driven by outcomes. Learning to relax and trust myself.

It sounds pretty ridiculous when I say that. It’s still not an explanation that can be offered in social situations in response to that ever challenging question, “So, what have you been up to lately?”

“Oh, I’ve been practicing self acceptance diligently and trying to genuinely appreciate and acknowledge myself.”

No, not that…let’s see…

“I’ve been identifying my core truths and all the influences and associations connected with them. It’s been really enlightening!”

Hmm…I don’t think that’ll go down any better. Well, how about…

“I’ve been noticing all the ways I oppose and practicing reconfiguring my energy by using appreciation. It feels like I’m making some headway!”

Oh, that’ll make me sound completely bonkers!

All right, it seems I ought to stick with my usual evasive reply, “Oh, not much. Lots of weeding and mowing! Ha ha, those pesky weeks are everywhere! Spring has sprung it seems!”

Is this dodging the exposure bullet or is this simply common sense? Is there a way to talk about this stuff and what I’m focused on to people who don’t read Elias, listen to Abraham, or adore Seth? But it really seems to me that my choices over the past three or so years would make more sense to others if I had decided to try living off the land in the Alaskan wilderness, or gone off to India and moved into an ashram, or decided to prepare for some insanely extreme trek across Tibet, or done just about any bizarre thing that has somewhat recognizable parameters.

Oh, wait a minute…my choices haven’t made sense to me either. I can’t even explain myself to me. And there’s no denying that my choices would have made more sense to me if I’d done any of the usual strange things associated with journeys of self discovery.

So, what have I been up to lately?

“Oh, nothing particularly visible. Just trying to change my whole approach to life. And you? What have you been up to?”

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 13th, 2006 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Sharing experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

After days of laboring over:

• Changes to my website
• Writing and rewriting my contact page (what an opportunity for discounting and comparison!)
• Writing and rewriting the intro for the Shift Diaries (ditto)
• Editing and re-editing the e-mail that is the first entry
• Deciding to put the Shift Diaries in a blog instead of making it pages in my website (oh, yes, children, there are geeky differences
• Doing a lot of reading to get up to speed on blogs (I now hate the word ‘blog’ even more than I did before I decided to have one of my own.)
• Installing and configuring the blog
• Researching blog specific configuration issues that would only matter to a control freak geek (that would be me)
• Giving up, reluctantly, on that level of control due to losing some essential functionality (I think it’s essential–nothing is really clear at this point)
• Worrying that I haven’t put enough planning into the blog, since I have no experience in blogging that would provide a basis for any real planning
• Practicing wrangling the blog and posting to the blog
• Wondering how much more I need to know/configure before turning this loose on the world

I finally took a deep breath and published my altered website complete with links to the Shift Diaries blog. Whew!

Now, much as I feel driven to fill up the blog with entries RIGHT NOW, as though it were a newly completed model home that starts showing tomorrow, I’m also feeling a bit sick of everything blog-related at present. And as much as I also feel that I need to do more reading of WordPress (my blog software) documentation in order get past the innocent Babes in Blogland state I’m currently not enjoying, I’d really rather relax and read something lighter, like a new library book I requested, I am not myself these days, a memoir of a drag queen/advertising genius who lives with with a male prostitute. That sounds like such a refreshing lifestyle compared to mine.

Back in my obsessive days of coding, I would simply keep my butt in this chair and keep going. I’d flop into bed about midnight, get up at six, and get back to it. Time’s a-wastin’! The technology is changing as you sleep! Gotta keep moving or you’ll fall way, way, way behind.

But now, all I want to do is relax. Well, it’s not ALL I want to do, but I’m ready to relax some after a couple weeks of confronting my fears about putting myself out here for all the world to see.

Anne K. and I exchanged a few e-mails today about how we compare ourselves constantly, and in the world of computer professionals (as we geeks are referred to by those who hire us), comparison is rampant. Now, I’m no longer officially a member of that world, but I was for almost a decade. And I notice that I feel pangs of discomfort about not being up to my former level of completely geeked-out 24/7 geekiness.

I worry that some geek will look at my website that I designed and developed all by myself, and, instead of admiring my beautiful all-css/no tables layout (geek-speak for something kind of cool that is totally invisible to the average viewer of a web page), the visiting geek will sneer at the fact that I use FrontPage.

I worry that by using WordPress’s standard “theme” (the way the blog looks), I’m demonstrating a lack of geekish machismo.

I worry, in short, that I will be seen as lacking in geekish imagination and knowledge, that I’ll appear uninformed, ill-advised, misguided, and just plain ignorant. Or, as we geeks say about each other, “I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”

Since everything about this blog is Shift related (did I mention that I’ll be instigating a convention of capitalizing Shift when I’m talking about “the Shift” as opposed to when I mean “moving things to different positions”), and comparison is a major snare for so many of us, I thought it would be a good idea to simply put it out there that I’m comparing myself to real geeks and discounting myself for not being the geek I used to be.

I don’t even WANT to be the geek I used to be, but that doesn’t keep me from discounting myself for lowering the bar. If I would try harder, work harder, do a little more research, experiment some more, get in there and hack that code until things were just so, I’d be back in the ranks. The ranks I left because I came to find that world pointless and exhausting, plus I didn’t have a life while I was in it.

This is an example of the conflict we create for ourselves that Elias talks about: we make a choice and then beat ourselves up because of our choice. I chose to leave behind my life as a girl geek, but I don’t leave behind the standards and judgments and comparing and discounting that went with it.

There’s nothing to say about my current lack of bleeding edginess to the geeks “out there,” since we all know I’m only talking to myself. To myself I say, “I’m doing other things now. I’m still able to get in the loop the same way I always did, by doing research and experimening. I don’t have to compete in the geek arena. The absence of cool hacks to this or any other code I’m using does not need to imply that I’m lacking intelligence or drive.”

Which reminds me that during my geek phase, I actually heard some people (very few, actually) discussing with pride their decision to cut back to working only 14 hours a day. If you didn’t work essentially ALL THE TIME (literally!), you were branded someone who didn’t take things seriously. That’s where I am now. I don’t take geekish things seriously.

But I’m taking other things seriously — ephemeral, invisible things like trying to get familiar einough with living the SHIFTY way of life so that I have a whole new set of automatic responses. Learning to deliberately direct my life according to how my PROCESS feels instead of being driven by outcomes. Learning to relax and trust myself.

It sounds pretty ridiculous when I say that. It’s still not an explanation that can be offered in social situations in response to that ever challenging question, “So, what have you been up to lately?”

“Oh, I’ve been practicing self acceptance diligently and trying to genuinely appreciate and acknowledge myself.”

No, not that…let’s see…

“I’ve been identifying my core truths and all the influences and associations connected with them. It’s been really enlightening!”

Hmm…I don’t think that’ll go down any better. Well, how about…

“I’ve been noticing all the ways I oppose and practicing reconfiguring my energy by using appreciation. It feels like I’m making some headway!”

Oh, that’ll make me sound completely bonkers!

All right, it seems I ought to stick with my usual evasive reply, “Oh, not much. Lots of weeding and mowing! Ha ha, those pesky weeks are everywhere! Spring has sprung it seems!”

Is this dodging the exposure bullet or is this simply common sense? Is there a way to talk about this stuff and what I’m focused on to people who don’t read Elias, listen to Abraham, or adore Seth? But it really seems to me that my choices over the past three or so years would make more sense to others if I had decided to try living off the land in the Alaskan wilderness, or gone off to India and moved into an ashram, or decided to prepare for some insanely extreme trek across Tibet, or done just about any bizarre thing that has somewhat recognizable parameters.

Oh, wait a minute…my choices haven’t made sense to me either. I can’t even explain myself to me. And there’s no denying that my choices would have made more sense to me if I’d done any of the usual strange things associated with journeys of self discovery.

So, what have I been up to lately?

“Oh, nothing particularly visible. Just trying to change my whole approach to life. And you? What have you been up to?”

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 13th, 2006 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Sharing experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.