awk awk

The awkward situation reflections went well. At least it felt like it went well. Probably because it feels good to think back about what COULD have been done in an ideal interaction. maybe I'll be able to get something out if them.

Awk 1
Presentation.  I basically recited directly from the slides. This lead to the audience ignoring me in the discussion section because I looked like I don't know/care what I'm doing.
better next time? prepare for the presentation. speak up and answer questions. be louder

Awk 2
Ran into a friend between classes.  It was awkward because we haven't hung out or attempted to hang out since last semester. Kind of like a silent break up, but with friends.  We made small talk and I gave a goofy goodbye, forgetting that she is a serious person.
better next time? state the obvious. "it's been a while; I guess we've been busy"

Awk 3
At a restaurant I ran into some colleagues while I was also on a date with Nancy. Initially I started talking to them and Nancy walked a few feet away. Then I said "Hey guys you should meet Nancy". They introduced themselves but then the conversation fell super flat...silence....
better next time? give some context "meet my date Nancy"or something...anything

Goals this week
-speak louder
       I noticed in recordings of my voice (for research project) I seem to be too softspoken
-give context
-keep recording awk situations and reflecting

fall down, get back up

I fell off the horse and I learned a few things
1. Wednesday is TERRIBLE for reflections.  It is the climax of my week with many classes due at the same time.
2. Virtues are vague.  I don't feel any satisfaction looking at a bunch of Xs.
3. This blog is lonely. Discussion is important (thanks Clark)

remedies are as follows
1. Reflection will now take place on Sundays.
2. I will set solid goals/activities for each week - documented in my pocket notebook and later transcribed
3. Reflections will now be accompanied by a live discussion with other, smart people.


This week's activity: Write down when an awkward situation happens and what I will do better next time.

thoughts on communication

Since I'm tracking it, I might as well think about what it is.

Communication is a two way street.  You can't really communicate if you don't listen, and you can't communicate if you don't speak honestly. 

Good listening covers: empathy, patience, and understanding

Good speaking covers: honesty, vulnerability, and (too a degree) courage

I think this will be good for me.  Passion was too self-centered and inwardly focused on its own, so communication will balance things nicely.




It still feels like I'm talking to myself here, so I promise to take the first person to comment here out for coffee in bloomington. $$$$$$$$$

Week3

New Semester is intense!

so tired that on the weekend I accomplished nothing...hence the 0s

goal achieved - 5/7 for passion yay!

For next week, I'm going to try tracking Connection as well.  Passion is so internal that I think connecting to others will help to balance out this tracking thing.

Tomorrow morning is the HCI/d Connect job fair haha

if I get 5/7 on both of these, I'll add another virtue to track =]

week2

Strangely enough, week 2 was an exact inverse of week 1...

Time to set some goals!
If I can get at least 5/7 days checked for passion, I will start tracking another thing. Hurray for self improvement!

Open ended reflection time:
It's been a long day so please bear with my scattered thoughts.

Passion is difficult.  It takes a lot of energy, but I do feel more satisfaction when I can mark an X down for those days. So we'll see how I feel once I reach my goal =]

I've finally started on my portfolio site. Eventually this blog will be incorporated into my freshly purchased domain and hosting.  It's gonna be sweeeeeeeet.

Classes are just warming up this week, and my schedule is trying to get settled.  The wild card right now is my A.I. teaching schedule.  All of the other A.I.'s are trying to take teaching lab times so that I get stuck with the grading, which would SUCK.  It's still somewhat flexible right now so I'm hoping to get a good balance of both.

I had some terrible impulse buys from nomorerack.com (don't go there if you have spare money).  I even bought a matching set of dragon underwear for my roommates and I...brotherhood will be had!

So for next week I'm going to try and do something I'm passionate about 5/7 days. If I do that, I can start tracking another thing!   ...maybe I should think of a reward for myself...nah...

coffee makes me poop

Section 1: This week's results! (not that exciting really)

X - I did something passionate that day

0 - I didn't...

Using binary results to mark something so amorphous as "did I do something passionate today" was more difficult than I'd expected.   I didn't do many activities explicitly belonging to the list of things I'm passionate about (music - art - tech), in part because this has been a time of relaxation and reflection, but also because my goal wasn't really to achieve something contrived like "do one passionate thing a day", just to start the habit of recording, so in that sense this week was a success; I tracked one virtue faithfully for one week!

I did on some level start judging myself for the failed days though.  Increased awareness of an attribute made me more conscious of it on a moment to moment basis.  I think this is because this is a new habit that I'm trying to pick up, and so I'm kind of hyper-aware of this tracking thing.  I'll see if this goes away as I get into the groove of this tracking thing more.

What will I do differently this next week?  Nothing.  The first week of this regiment went well, but I don't want to get overconfident with this success and bite off more than I can chew, especially with classes starting next week.   

[EDIT] I will start posting thoughts throughout the week because wrapping all this reflection into one monster post is a bit excessive...

Section 2: misc. thoughts on this week

I'm kind of getting a bit stir crazy.  The polar vortex caused subzero weather so I've been trapped at my home with no visitors for most of this week.  I'm also out of fresh veggies, so my food consists mostly of protein powder, eggs, and canned soup.  It could be much worse.  

I've also started up a habit of mixing hot chocolate powder into my coffee - a delicious combination that caused the title of this post.

I started reading two books "Models: Attract Women Through Honesty" (because duh) and "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

MODELS

I'm 3/4 of the way through Models and it was a pretty good book.  The thesis is that attraction between a man and woman depend on the man being less invested(needy) in the outcome than the woman.  The paradox that this normally leads to is as follows: doing nothing (being less invested and less needy) usually leads to a dude sitting alone in is room with no girls :'[  Going out and actually trying to attract a girl makes you seem MORE invested and needy, so that also leads to no girls... The proposed solution to this is vulnerability through honesty.  By being totally honest about who you are and what your intentions are as a man, you show that you are not highly invested in the outcome (not needy).  This involves a lot of soul searching and finding your own "truth" as a person.  In short finding your personal truth->honesty->vulnerability->no neediness->attraction.  

That summary could have gone better...

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 

is a philosophical book about values. The speaker weaves back and forth between an account of a motorcycle journey he is taking with a few friends + son, and internal musings on his identity issues/philosophy about current problematic divides between the classic(left brain) and romantic(right brain) modes of thinking.  He keeps hinting at a solution to the divide that he will expound upon later, but hasn't done much more than set up the backdrop of concepts so far - I'm only on page 77/192.

The form of this book is interesting though.  He delivers it as a "chautauqua" which is a kind of adult learning event.  It is somewhere between a novel, biography, and an essay, which I hope will have something to do with his final message.  I will give SUPER props to him if the form of his delivery is itself an example because that is as effective as it is difficult to achieve...

NIKITA

Is a 2010 spy series driven by a smoking hot female lead who much resembles the girl who recommended it to me.  I watched the entire first season in 2 days.  That's 15 hours of netflix, 11 of which happened in a single day.  

I'm equally proud and disgusted with myself.

The characters are certainly easy on the eyes, combined with fast paced action and high tension makes the show engaging to watch.  

My biggest complaint is the slow pace of character development.  Nikita herself is kind of dull, not displaying any changes or surprising internal conflict really until the last two episodes...she also makes like 0 mistakes until the last two episodes, making the majority of the season rather predictable.  I try not to go too hard though, because this show is more about the sexy spy action than some sort of deep moving emotional statement...

The supporting characters make up for this by changing their minds about what side they are on as they are betrayed or as information gets revealed to them.  I even think that the evil characters (Percy and Amanda) were more interesting than the good ones (Michael, Alex, and John) because their behavior was surprising and kept me guessing as to what they have planned and what their actual motives are. 

[spoilers ahead]

The middle section of the season had me losing interest for a bit because gradually... Percy appeared to be getting dumber.  Nikita originally had doubly layered plans to explain why she was always getting ahead of Percy.  Falsely planted holes in Percy's security.  Once these holes were filled (killed)...Nikita still kept ahead of Percy and he didn't seem to care.  This broke character continuity for me and I lost interest in the underlying story, watching just for the action and side stories.  But then BOOM. In the last two episodes it all gets tied together and Percy makes a comeback.  He WAS aware of everything and had been planning around Nikita the whole time.  He was a brilliant villain, and from what I can tell he should have won if not for one fault.  

The ultimate reason he failed though was because he was an asshole.  No one liked him.  His superiors.  His right hand man.  His tech nerd.  His therapist.  He was a dick who used everyone for his own gain and was then betrayed by those closest to him.

First Post!

Hi this is Jordan.

Starting on January 1st, 2014, and updating every Wednesday, this public blog is where I will reflect weekly on jordanplus - my personal development project.

This is the start of a slow change process, so it will likely change and evolve as I try out various things, but the first think I am going to try is an "applied ethics" project. The form will be much like Benjamin Franklin's thirteen virtues daily tracking system that you can read about here.

Tracking thirteen things I think is too ambitious in my current situation so I'm going to start by just tracking one thing - Passion.

Specifically, I'm going to check whether or not I am engaged in an activity that I am passionate about on a daily basis.  This would include my (exercise), guitar, sketching, gaming, dancing ... the list goes on.   Heck it may even be something that I've never done before.

I welcome any comments or questions!