Modern Tech

The internet is listening as you type; scraping your yet unpublished thoughts with JavaScript. Terabytes and terabytes of data are dumped onto the internet every single day. For profit and not for profit ventures alike scramble to segment your virtual page views into interactive client side dashboards, widgets, and modals, oh my. Engineers,  scientists, mathemeticians, business administrators, and bankers all know one thing - they want your metadata, and all they have to do for it is give you an app. With a single set of files - because that is really all an app is, right - they are in your phone. IN YOUR PHONE. It is not  a conspiracy. This is our modern reality. Just like a human tracks DNA through a room, so does your device track packets of metadata à la IP hopscotch, pinging like pong, all the while leaving a trail of trackable characteristics for software to guzzle down into a third party analytics integration. Yeah, baby. And at the end of the day we pay a lot of money for telecom; for tiny phones and high speed connections. Yeah, you know it's true. We are paying them to do it to us.

This prose is brought to you by Why Am I Still Awake Productions.

Self Love and Fitness Must Include Injury Prevention

I was cycling too fast on the streets of Amsterdam 2 weeks ago, and I hit another person's bike. I flew off my bike and made impact with my elbow and ribcage before (quite luckily) rolling out of it. No one hit their heads, thank the stars, but I will replace the other bike's rear wheel to the tune of €75. I got off cheaply, frankly.

What I miss most is my mobility and previously unbroken rib bones, so I am making a conscious decision to slow down while riding in the city, and replacing my normal workout with yoga for the next month. Most importantly, I finally got the message that injury prevention is equally as important as any other aspect of fitness. I am sick of losing time in my athletics simply because I was careless. Therefore I will be adding academic time to my athletics schedule for researching technique and injuries.

With patience, understanding, and yoga...I will become a better me.

How to be your own person

Don't wait around for anyone to do or give you anything. Be resourceful. Make your own money. Stick to your guns. Don't be afraid to make your own decisions, and do not be afraid to be wrong in them. If you are wrong, take it on the chin and keep going. Don't ask permission. Do not apologize unless you were rude. Do not get out of their way. Do not waver when your strength is insulted, they are only looking for weakness. No one is entitled to have you, to move you, possess you, block your way, or assume credit for any of your successes. You are mere humans; not gods, not monsters. You can belong to yourself, but you must be vigilant. You must prefer to stand alone than to sacrifice your independence for someone who would expect you to trade part of your identity for their help.

Fuel My Feminist Fire, Fuckface

Yesterday I was having a nice meal with a beautiful woman when two drunk and high men came and joined our booth without asking. The alpha dog of the two smugly slurred his broken English, and within two minutes or less was asking if we were lesbians. My companion, who does not actually identify as a lesbian (though we were on a date), had never experienced anything like this, and I could feel her tension swell without turning my head. I was friendly with him, in spite of his being a malicious idiot. I told him in no uncertain terms that I wanted to continue to enjoy the rugby game with her. Alone. He audaciously offered with a smile that he and his friend were invading, and I smiled broadly back in agreement, but he made no move to leave. Thing 2 then got up and walked away from us, and we felt a brief moment of accomplishment for that until he returned with the beers they left at the bar. So far we made no progress, and not knowing what else to do, my date started to rise as if she would leave me there with them. I clamped my palm down on her thigh and shook my head and told her we would get rid of them together. They basically had us trapped in a circular booth anyhow. During all of this, I am somehow still cool as a cucumber and smiling at my soon to be losing chess opponent. I asked him to please excuse us. He smiled back at me, considering my request, and said flatly, "No." I repeated myself more sternly, and he shook his head. I asked a third time raising my voice just enough that a woman at the next table overheard and actually jabbed him in the back of his shoulder telling him to get lost. He still refused to go. At this point the entire front half of this enormous Irish pub is looking at our table as I ask him repeatedly to excuse us, and finally our waiter comes and plants himself by my side and tells the guys to get out of the booth. Presumably because this instruction came from another male, they ultimately relent, and the malignant asshats return to the bar. My date and I are left there in a state of shock and disbelief. We are relieved but still feel unsafe, and monitor his movement in the public space until we are sure he is gone.

This is my first time being publicly harassed as a visibly queer/butch woman in Europe, and the first time anywhere on earth for my date. She apologised profusely for attempting to leave me there. I told her that we were lucky; that if we had been in an isolated location, I might be telling this story to a lawyer. I feel guilty, because this would not have happened to her without me. I know it is not my fault, but these are the thoughts of a victim of an act of sexually charged bullying, and someone who has learned to cope with the fallout of being me and yet still wants to spare those around her from it.

In the aftermath, I am left to ponder his actions. He saw what he perceived to be two lesbians, and decided to "partake," pardon the expression. He would not listen to me, my date, or the woman behind him. This clearly demonstrates the theory that our society positions women as the property of men, to do with as they wish, and their behavior is only regulated by other men. What is the most disturbing to me now in hindsight is the way he looked at me, and that he felt so sure of his ability to predate us in the presence of literally hundreds of people. What do you do when you come across someone like that, except get as far away from them as possible? But what about the next pair of women he finds? Will they be so lucky?

Fuck. This is the work of the motherfucking patriarchy and experiences like this one only make me more determined than ever to see its total disassembly, piece by bloody piece.

Free Falling Abroad

Two days after I set foot in Europe for the first time, I attended an all employee meeting via conference call from my hotel in Utrecht, Netherlands. My probably stupid and brave, but heavily researched decision to move to this country site unseen happened just a few months prior when I signed a contract with an international consulting firm. They moved me to Europe. I got a raise in a stronger currency, and enjoyed the benefits of being a highly skilled migrant, of which there are many. So began my very promising adventure across the pond.

Then at that first all employee meeting, management announced that there was an acquisition. The company in which I entrusted my livelihood was acquired by a bigger, more established firm in NL that also had offices in London. As they say in the corporate world, I was "the last one in, and the first one out." By Dutch law, they actually don't have to supply you with a reason to let a person go during the probationary period, and they quoted exactly that line and verse from their legal code on the afternoon of my termination.

At first that day felt like a TKO. I was on the mat, bleeding and busted, unsure if I could get up and go on. I felt completely derailed and filled with self-doubt, but mostly I was afraid. It took me months to research and plan my move to Europe. If I had to return hastily to the U.S., I knew I would lose big.

I spent one entire day in full on panic mode. Then the next day I got to work. According to the IND (the Dutch immigration office), I had 90 days to find a suitable replacement for my employer, after which the opportunity to remain in this country would become exponentially more difficult and costly. The clock was already running against me.

What happened next will shock some of you, but I assure you that it is completely normal in my field, and particularly so in development hot spots like Amsterdam and Berlin and San Francisco, where there are not enough people who do what I do. What I am referring to is getting overnight feedback, and interviews set up for that very same week that I was let go from my previous job.

For the last 75 days I worked with both internal and external recruiters and have honestly lost track of all of the interviews of which I have been a part. Whether over Skype or in person, technical and non, formal or informal, I have done them all. I also developed a few single page apps in Angular, wrote jQuery widgets, and did a whole array of different coding assignments. From big corporations to budding start-ups, I met with them all. Suffice it to say, I picked a very good city to live in for my vocation, albeit challenging.

Just try to imagine - I spent 75 days of not knowing where I would be in six months. 75 days of flying blind. 75 days of worrying that I would throw thousands of dollars into a black hole just to get myself home, of recovering almost instantly from rejection, of selling myself confidently when inside I was completely freaked out. 75 days in a foreign country with no escape plan.

It was a long strange trip. I did hear a lot of rejection, which was thankfully often coupled with valuable feedback. However, valuable though it was, I usually had to work to decipher it without becoming personally offended. One of the prime examples was realizing that the American tradition of keeping your resume short will not impress foreign hiring officials. They want to see everything you have ever done, in which case the more senior members of the field have many pages of experience.

Generally speaking, I got a lot of attention, and a lot of interviews, but getting to the offer stage was not a simple feat. The more iterations I repeated, the closer I got to the closing table. Then finally, one offer came, and then another, and then two more, but even then it wasn't over. The first company that made me a competitive offer ultimately did not end up signing me after I made a counter offer. That was a crippling blow. That was two weeks ago, and these last two offers came at the end of that same week that the first deal went south.

Ultimately, all of my hard work is going to be justly awarded. This week I finally signed with a new firm, and I am currently trying to relish in the slowly resonating tone of relief as it echos through all previous areas of unrest. I start back to work on Tuesday, and right now I am trying to give myself the latitude to do exactly what my life and my body need with this last weekend of freedom. Today is the second day since I signed the contract, and what I am finding is that I am completely fucking exhausted. I think I could sleep straight through the next few days if I let myself. That seems a bit extreme to me, so I have elected to compromise by keeping it close to home, trying to get some chores and errands done, while balancing that with watching films and spending time with my pets.

So that's what I've been doing.

Make Room for Love

It was two years ago exactly that I found myself slipping into the deepest sadness of my life. It was completely incapacitating. My life was not what I wanted it to be. I was not who I wanted to be. I was undergoing the most painful heartbreak I had yet known in my thirty-two years, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was swirling the drain. I lay in my bed for weeks, streaming my favorite cop TV show online. I lost a lot of weight from not eating. There was no physical activity. I was either laying in bed, or I was up for work, to eat, or to go to the bathroom. My apartment was a disaster. The cat hair completely took over. I was worse than a cliché. If there is any time in my life that deserves to be described as pathetic, it was then.

It was critical mass. I became so disgusted with myself that I finally awakened to the urgency with which I needed to change my situation. The first thing I had to do was take control. Up until then I believe I was merely a passive observer. I was not asserting my own intention on my life. My only problem was that I really could not get myself to care. I was just that sad. I could look at myself in the mirror and see it, but I was utterly helpless to undo it. Therefore I decided to start with the physical, knowing that it would distract me while also contributing to a holistic approach to my overall wellness. In short, heal the body and the mind will follow.

It worked. Seemingly overnight I went from couch to triathlon. I made so many physical changes that I truly look like a different person today than I was back then. My professional life saw a lot of changes as well. I spent just under a year each in two different positions doing commercial software development, before accepting an offer to relocate to Europe and work as an international consultant. As it turns out, being in control of your life has some serious perks. You find yourself going places you want to be, and becoming the things you find interesting and good. I was becoming someone I always dreamed of being: healthy, fit, and successful.

The last two years has also been the setting for a massive overhaul of my interpersonal relationships. I discovered quickly that some friends were quite satisfied with me being unhappy and defining myself by the opinions of others. Regarding this, I discovered so much about myself in therapy during that time, including discovering I was the victim of emotional abuse during my formative years. This past dysfunction manifests itself in me in many ways. Some problems I have still are that I blame myself for everything, and I am masterful with sacrificing my own needs in order to achieve or attain the approval of others. I also have since discovered new realms of my own anger. Fortunately, I continue to make great strides in these and other self-destructive behaviors, but I think these are defining moments in my emotional experience. They will forever be My Struggle. They say knowing is half the battle. In the meantime, I have seen the end of a great many unhealthy relationships during this period, and I continue to seek a balance between giving and receiving love.

This has been a period of isolation for me, and it has never felt so palpable as it was last night. I was in a packed nightclub, and I got this overwhelming sense that I had to get out of there. My new friend who invited me had already been demonstrating concern for me, as I was not taking well to the group of eight that we had assembled. When I told her I had to leave, she said, "Maybe you have been on your own for too long." I know she said it out of concern. I didn't react at the time, but it has really wormed its way into my subconscious mind, and might very well be the reason I felt the need to blog today.

I am definitely demonstrating improvement in my capacity for self-care, though it is awkward and lacking in grace. There is just no easy way for a doormat to stand up. Since that breakup I described at the beginning of this post, I participated in a gravely, perhaps even dangerously, dysfunctional relationship. I also allowed myself to completely fall for someone who was entirely unavailable to me in every way. (Loving the unavailable is another fun side effect of my childhood trauma.) So while there is definitely a great deal of improvement in my recent choices, I am aware that I'm still repeating negative patterns.

I have some new ideas for self-improvement, and they are moving to the forefront now. I know this is exactly what I need to be doing. Although I have hungered deeply for human contact as of late, I am not sure that I would make such a great companion right now. In fact, I'm pretty certain that I don't. I have just canceled at the last minute, a trip to the beach with a perfectly lovely Dutch neighbor of mine, and I'm not sure if it was too impolite for her to want to make plans with me again. While I will certainly see what I can do to make it up to her, unfortunately I must say, come what may, so be it. I am learning to obey my own whims, and that is the foundation upon which my emotional future rests. I have already seen a lot of carnage in this regard. I have to force myself to be optimistic that I will not be defined by this period. It is a catharsis.

So here I am, barreling through some fairly important achievements in my life, thinking how wonderful it would be to share them with someone. Meanwhile, I know that I'm just not ready. These two years of work are just the beginning. None of this was about just pulling myself from the jaws of depression, although that was definitely a valuable first step on this new path. It was just that: a first step. There is no destination on this journey, there is only a direction, and I have chosen the direction of continual self-improvement. With that comes the eternal suffering made famous by the French and German existentialists of my parents' age. In essence, if life is constant change, then we will always be in a little bit of pain. That is how we know we're alive.

But these relationships...

I did all the work on the physical, the professional, the personal, but somehow I have avoided truly engaging, just as I did last night when I left that overcrowded bar. The good news is that it's all going to change, just as everything else has. What is my edge today certainly will not be tomorrow. If you're wondering what the secret is, it's a simple lesson one can learn from any basic Yoga class. I start by finding an edge, and then I focus my will on it, realistically, and without judgment. I hold myself accountable there, and breathe deeply, Sometimes I imagine breathing air into that painful edge. Then I typically find that if I push up against that edge again, it has moved.

I will find love again. I know it will be beautiful and I will certainly know it when it comes my way. My heart has grown very much, and I am settling down and becoming more patient. I am shedding the shackles of my misspent youth. There is no more time for negativity. Now more than ever I have a discriminating sense of what is most important to me in this life, and when I am ready, but not a moment before, I will find a way to share it with someone again. Until then, I have work to do.

A story about love - The End

Slowly it happens. You fall from love's grip, and drop to the safety of your heart's ocean. You cannot observe it in progress, but you can mentally retrace the events. It starts with seeing your adored one with more clarity, and ends with release from the fear of losing them. It doesn't mean you no longer care, it just means you are free from your constant concern for them. It may not be graceful. These things usually aren't. That is okay. If your former flame is a reasonable person who is given the time and space to draw fair conclusions, perhaps your lack of grace can be forgiven. Perhaps the two of you can defy conventional wisdom and remain friends. It is entirely subjective though, and only time will tell what the future may or may not hold.

In the meantime, look around you, because you are now free. In fact, take a picture so you can commemorate the occasion. Be mindful. Accept yourself and your place in the universe just as you are. Know that this is a time in your life upon which you will reflect a great deal, so you should do your best to find enjoyment in it. It won't be too difficult considering the sense of relief you experience. Indeed there is sorrow for the loss, even if the lost thing is pain, but it is not worse than what you just finished enduring. You are through the worst of it.