My brain has not been cooperating lately, but thankfully it seems to be taking a turn for the better these past couple of days.
Yesterday was the first day I was feeling good enough to get out of the house since Saturday, not including short trips to the BART station. Went to the library in the morning and helped my friend D move stuff in the afternoon. Amazing how a little fresh air can make everything better. The good company didn’t hurt either
When my brain is not working, it is very hard to get out of the house because I can not organize and implement the steps needed in order to leave the house. Things that should be happening automatically do not. Instead, it becomes a complex, often insurmountable task.
Steps needed to leave the house:
Remember that you are going to leave the house
Stop what you are doing
Get ready to leave
Put on jacket, gloves, etc.
Bring anything that is needed, i.e. backpack, library card
Don’t get sidetracked
Don’t start working again because you forgot you were going out
Think about destination or at least what direction to head out in
Don’t answer the phone because your client has a “quick question”.
If you do answer the phone, read the email, etc., do not think “This is easy. I will do it real fast before I leave.” because that will place you back at step 1.
Don’t get sidetracked
Say goodbye to cats and walk out the door
Speaking of being sidetracked, I almost forgot the 4 good things.
Good thing #1: K, aka Nikkyo, dings 70!
Congratulations K! We can finally quest together for real. Woo hoo
Good thing #3: FaceBook In Reality
Got a link to this in an email this morning. Cracked me up.
Good thing #4
Did I mention that I got out of the house yesterday? Old news by now. Good thing #4 is that I am going again out as soon as I complete the 10 steps listed above
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Maybe that is an unfair title. I think that most of the time, I am not an idiot. But there are a few things that I am repeatedly stupid about and no matter how many identically bad experiences I have, I do the same thing over and over again.
The first thing is having too many things going on at once. It does very bad things to me, but I think it is unavoidable. To stop it, I would need to stop working and learn how to be happy being even more broke than I already am. I am lucky to have help from people and be able to live a good life, but I want to be able to contribute my fair share. Plus, I am a geek and geeking costs money.
The second thing is insanely undercharging for my work. I learn things from one time to the next and try to avoid past mistakes, but it still happens almost every time. I am working on a project now that has easily taken 10x as long as I thought it would, and I was already providing a huge discount. I love the site and I really enjoy working with the client, but I am making about $2/hr. again. It is my own fault too. I was happy to provide the discount. In a short amount of time, the site was created and most of the content entered.
The organization had wanted a lot of features but did not have the budget for them. I provided a list of things that could be done for their budget and all was good.
Right around that same time, I started working on another site for an organization of a similar size and with similar needs. This organization had found a great online solution that would do everything my client wanted for a relatively small monthly fee. I told him about it and we switched the project over to the new system. My job was to design the site, build the template, and add content from the old site.
This is where I become an idiot.
I did not charge extra for this even though the site was practically finished in the original system. Why not? Because I thought that it was my “fault” that we switched systems because I suggested it. I am pretty sure that does not make any sense.
As I look at the itemized estimate that I sent, I realize that I had completely forgotten about it. The estimate was great. Stated exactly what was included and what was not and how much it would cost for things that were not included.
Since the price was so low, template customization was not included beyond the very basics. This was reinforced under the ‘Assumptions’ part of the estimate which states that the design is not custom. Since then, I have customized several templates heavily and built the final one from scratch, including custom images. I also threw in a flash slideshow.
I am very happy with the site and so is my client. There is still more work to be done, but it is near the end. I did not charge him extra for anything. I had told him that I would let him know if something would cost extra. Somehow, it never occurred to me to do this.
I like my client and his organization and knew they were on a budget. There is a part of me that really wants the site to be as good as possible with whatever system we are using, and that part of me took over the job. I could have stayed with the first system and never even mentioned the new one. The site would have been exactly what he contracted for. I also could have suggested converting to the new system as a separate project with a new estimate. I did not do either of those things.
I am confused. At this point, I am sure that the only chance I have of working is to work for myself. I am lucky to love what I do and to be good at it, but how long will I keep working for $2/hr.? All of my clients make way more money than I do and I doubt any would consider working for that price. I don’t know what to do. Everybody I talk to has tons of “Why don’t you just…” solutions. They make it sound so easy, but it is not. If I could just… I would!
Rehab might pay for me to take a 10 week business course with a “tutor” to come with me and translate afterwards. I wonder if that will help. I can barely imagine being in a class for 3 hrs. twice a week plus time with the tutor, but I feel like I have to try if given the opportunity.
K is very busy at work too. We have 4 sets of houseguests coming in the next 4 months. More things, but it will be nice to see everyone. I hope I can get all of my work done by then. Not likely since my folks are coming on Friday. Oy. I better get back to work now.
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Today is the 8 year anniversary of K’s and my first date (Thursday is our 4th wedding anniversary ). Difficult times and all, these have been the best 8 years of my life.
K has changed my life in so many ways and opened my mind and heart to possibilities that I never thought were possible.
Before I met K, I had never wanted to live with anyone other than random friends and strangers. I thought it would drive me insane and even thinking about it put me into an immediate state of panic. For some reason, that did not happen when I thought about living with K, and I have loved every minute of it since the first day she moved into my house in Berkeley (with aforementioned random friends and strangers). I have loved it even more since we have gotten our own house.
A few other things that have changed:
People that I care about now receive holiday and birthday cards.
I can be myself at home. For the most part, I am myself wherever I go, but much shyer and constantly aware of trying to appear normal. This means expending tremendous amounts of energy trying to focus on what is going on around me and making sure I don’t do things that make me look ‘weird’ even if they make me feel better, like rocking back and forth or jumping up and down.
I have done things that I would have never before thought possible like going to Europe and enjoying a surprise party.
There are many more things, but I will not list them all here. I will say that these kinds of things happen because of a kind of trust that I have never had before.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between truth, logic, and trust.
Over the years, I have learned that logic can be situational. That lesson has saved my sanity more times than I can count.
I do not necessarily need things to fit into my own logical framework, but I do need them to fit into SOME logical framework.
I have a lifelong fascination with World War II that is focused on trying to understand the conditions in the world that allowed the Nazi Party to come to power and exterminate over 10 million people and how the US could nearly wipe two entire cities and their mostly civilian populations off the face of the earth by dropping atomic bombs on them.
I have come to the point where I can understand the desperation that would allow people support the Nazis, and the fear of punishment or death combined with feeling powerless that would stop them from speaking up. I do not think I will ever understand the inhumanity of what the Nazis or US government did to so many innocent people.
This kind of situational logic can make sense of things that would otherwise seem completely illogical. Unfortunately, it can not make sense of everything.
One thing that I have learned from being with K for all these years is that there can be truth without logic. This has been one of the hardest things I have ever learned and it is still very difficult to accept it at times.
Here is an example:
Truth A: I tell K that I hate surprises and make her promise never to throw me a surprise party. She agrees.
Truth B: After knowing Truth A for years, K throws me a surprise birthday party.
When I think about this, it seems completely illogical. Why would she do something that I specifically asked her never to do?
But nothing is that simple. There are other truths to consider — other variables and frameworks that affect the situation:
Truth C: K loves me and wants me to be happy. She is aware of what is going on in my head and in my heart. She would never do anything to hurt me.
Based on my simple logic, these 3 truths can not coexist and all be true. But they are truths, so they are true. This tells me that I need to look outside of my own logical framework to understand. Understanding things is very important to me.
Variable 1: Internal logic - In a closed system, there can be internal logic. Every person has their own system of internal logic. It is closed in the way that everything affects it and you can not undo things that have already happened. It is open in the way that it is constantly changing as new information is entered into the system.
In the case of this example, Variable 1 is K’s internal logic. This is my interpretation of that logic at work:
Truths:
Lori does not like surprises and has asked never to have a surprise party.
Lori has had a very difficult year and has been much more isolated than usual from people.
Lori is sad and doesn’t understand why people would want to be friends with her because she doesn’t like to be with people very often and is not always so good keeping in touch with them.
K’s Internal Logic (as interpreted by me):
It is Lori’s 40th birthday and it needs to have a proper celebration.
Lori has friends that love her just the way she is. There are reasons for this that Lori easily forgets when she is feeling bad.
I will throw her a surprise 40th birthday party so that she will know that she has friends who care about her. I will do it in the least stressful way possible - Have the party at home. No one yells surprise.
It will make Lori happy.
In this framework, it is completely logical to throw me a surprise birthday party. Even though it was totally outside of my own logical framework, the party had its intended effect. It made me happy. I had a great time and I was reminded that I have great friends that care about me.
My own completely logical logic would not have led to these conclusions. Sometimes, logic is not completely logical, especially when there are human beings involved. It is things like this that make life very confusing.
Thinking about all of this makes me realize the importance of logic and truth and how it can be especially important to autistic people that have a hard time deciphering hidden information. By hidden, I mean that it is never communicated directly. This missing information can be the difference between understanding and trusting someone, and isolation from people because of not understanding or trusting them.
To a person who takes things literally and is not so good at ‘reading between the lines’, understanding the logical framework of something can be very important. It seems to me like many people automatically understand things based on a shared logical framework that I have never had. It is the framework of human interaction and includes a set of common beliefs that seem illogical to a person who is not operating within this framework. I am not sure if other people have to work so hard to make sense of these things or if making sense of them is even so important to other people.
K is a person who makes sense to me and a person who understands me. That is a rare and beautiful thing and there is not a moment when I do not know how lucky I am.
One more reason why K rules — She just got us tickets to the sold out Grateful Dead show (to support Barack Obama) at the Warfield tonight! She checked online because sometimes they release tickets on the day of the show. Genius! The show was sold out again a few minutes later.
Happy Anniversary, K!
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Today is my birthday. Makes me happy K took me to see Phil Lesh and Friends in the city (SF) on Saturday night to celebrate and today we will celebrate again. Not exactly sure how yet, but I do know that birthday cake will be involved. If it is not raining we will go and walk around the by the water. It is very wet outside at the moment and the sky is dark, but it is not raining. I will assume that means it will be a nice day. It is a glass half full kind of day.
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I am too busy. I suck at being busy. It is my worst thing and it always ends badly. I am not sure how to not be busy. It is a vicious cycle. As soon as I start feeling better, I want to do things. All the things that I can’t do when I am sick. I want to work. I want to play. Sometimes, I even want to see people.
I was sick for so long. First a year of bad meds and then cat scratch fever. I was lucky that the meds thing got straightened out before the CSF, but it is only very recently that I can enjoy it. Suddenly, I find myself feeling great! I still get tired and confused, but that is ok. It is part of how I am. After such a long time of not being able to do things that I wanted to, I feel like it is a race for time to do them now that I am feeling good. I would love to think it will always be like this, but the truth is that it is not and never has been.
The thing is, I think it could be like this most of the time if I didn’t have stress. I know that is impossible, but it would be possible to have much less stress. Only problem with that is I would be stuck not doing anything I want to do again. I am stressed by working. I am stressed by traveling. I am stressed by being around people. My brain gets overloaded and bad things happen. I get sick. The screaming in my head that is kept in the background by the meds gets louder. My brain shuts down. I twitch like crazy. I become miserable and useless.
I have no idea what to do about this. I want to work so badly. I love what I do. It is like being paid for doing puzzles and arts and crafts. When I code, my brain is in a happy place. Everything makes sense. It has to. As an added bonus, I get to take that code and turn it into a (hopefully) beautiful thing to look at. I am not a graphic artist by any means, so even the art part is like a puzzle. I combine graphic art made by actual artists, with photoshop skills and an eye for detail, and create an entirely new thing that never existed before. What’s not to love?
I was wanting to go to Florida to see my niece Hannah and the rest of my family for a whole year, but couldn’t because of being too sick. Then all of a sudden, I was okay to travel. It is a rare and beautiful thing. There was no way I wasn’t going to Florida. The trip (airplane, etc.) went pretty well thanks to Dramamine and, as always, being with Karen made everything better and more fun. Being in Florida was even okay. I love my family, but I hate Florida. I can’t deal with the hot and humid weather. We completely lucked out with that. Not insanely hot or humid. Last time I was there, I couldn’t even stand to be outside for more than a minute. Got instantly exhausted and dizzy.
It was really great to see my family. Hannah is beyond the legal limits of cute. It was so nice to get to know her better and see her sweet smile. I really loved getting to see her with my brother, sister-in-law, and parents too. They are a family. I am so glad they live so close to each other. Sometimes it is hard living so far away. Sometimes I wish Florida was in Nevada. My cousin Eric was there too. It is always nice to see him and my aunt Wilma and uncle Pat too. Sarah’s (sister-in-law) family was there too. It was nice to see them too. So nice, that we brought her sister Sam back with us. She will be going to acupuncture school in Berkeley starting in January and has been staying with us this past week. She magically found a great place to live in Berkeley on her fist try and will be moving in today.
Bad Apples
Haven’t had enough rambling yet? Then on to the saga of the bad imacs. Me, my dad, and my brother all got new aluminum imacs last month. 2 out of 3 of them were duds. There was a problem with the ATI graphics cards. The whole computer was unstable because of it. Black screens, blue screens, strange graphics, freezing, etc. Windows X 10.5? There has been a firmware update for the graphics cards released that appears to fix the problem for most, if not all, people. Thankfully, my brother’s was fine from the start. Both me and my dad returned our computers and got brand new replacements. All is good now.
The new imac came with Leopard and now that it works, I have been loving it! The screen is huge! Not only is it 24″, but I have been using Spaces, a new feature of Leopard where you can have several “desktops” and easily switch between them. For example I can have photoshop open in one desktop, giving it the entire screen to itself, mail and safari open in another, Firefox and BBedit in another, etc.
Time Machine is totally cool too. I can’t even believe how easy it is to back up. You plug in the external drive and the mac asks if you want to use it for Time Machine. You click ‘yes’. That is it. Your hard drive is being backed up every hour and saving daily, weekly, and monthly backups for as far back in time as the drive will allow. When it gets full, it asks if you would like it to delete the oldest backups to make room. Unbelievable! I will still make daily clones as soon as super duper is Leopard ready, but Time Machine offers a different kind of backup that is easier to use, automatic, and frequent.
Just a few more things to ramble about before I go…
K - I am so very proud of K! She has been saving the world as always. In recognition of her hard work, she has gotten a promotion at work and is now a supervisor, which is the direction she has been wanting to go. Congratulations K! It makes me happy to know that people will have an opportunity to learn from her and benefit from her years of experience.
Warcrack - Shikibee has joined a new guild and is about to ding level 50.
Rehab - I am meeting with someone once a week who will help me research if there are jobs available where I can do contract work from home or with a very flexible schedule. I would really like that. Freelancing is great because I set my own hours and don’t have to answer to anyone except my clients, but I work all the time and barely make any money.
If I did contracted work instead, someone else would be dealing with the clients, setting the prices, and all of the other business related things that I can not do. Even splitting the money with an agency or other company, it is very likely that I would make more money than I do now. I hope something like that could work out. I was hoping that I could keep my current clients and stop taking new freelance jobs if there were contract jobs available instead.
Wordpress 2.3 Update - This one went much more smoothly than the last two. I wish there was a way to manage tags, but from what I understand, the dev team is waiting to find out what people want rather than starting with a ton of features that people may or may not use and then having to change them later. I am looking forward to 2.4 and the new admin changes.
Joomla 1.5 - I am working on a new client site with Joomla 1.5 RC3. It has been very stable and the code is MUCH cleaner than before. I love the new templating system and look forward to its final release and the updated extensions that will follow. If you are planning to integrate any kind of forums into your site, stay with 1.0.x for now.
phpBB3 - Love it! Tons of improvements over phpBB2. Current release is RC8. This update has been a long time in the making. I am hoping that converting from older version will not be total hell.
I have finally run out of things to ramble about for now
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