Pic via The Frisky

Yesterday afternoon my inbox brimmed with emails asking about the real identity of, as  Tasty Trixie put it, a faux ho blogger.

Basic story: A sex-worker/blogger writing under the name Alexa DiCarlo is getting some serious shit over stealing a soft-core porn performers pics to posting as her own and possibly not being an actual sex worker. Everyone is scrambling to point fingers and figure out the real identity of Alexa DiCarlo. She claimed in her posts to be studying in my graduate program (Sexuality Studies at SF State) and seems to have lifted information from the department profile of a fellow male graduate student.

For the record: there is no way this person is affiliated with my department. She knows a fair amount about sexuality studies but she constructed a syllabus of the History of Sexuality without including writings from Michel Foucault [Thanks Zoey for the cache link to Alexa's syllabus post]. History of Sexuality: An Introduction is one of the first sexual theory texts first year students read. No-one would leave Michel Foucault out of a basic sexuality reading list. This is tantamount to discussing the history of social labor movements without reading Karl Marx. Fail lady, fail.

I don’t know who this person is and the only thing I care about is that she is falsely claiming intellectual territory in Sexuality Studies at my university. Back off. Go fake yourself a life somewhere else.

What fascinates me is the myriad of ways humans behave behind the curtain of internet anonymity. We are free to create entire lives for ourselves, either wrought from our own imaginations or pieced together with the plundered  bits of others. Game worlds like Second Life exist for this very indulgence. Create yourself without limits.

Oddly, we tend to represent ourselves accurately on our internet profiles. This is one reason for the major backlash against writers like Alexa DiCarlo or even James Frey. We feel affronted when we accept another’s lie as truth.

Authenticity is important in our world, but especially important with sex. Transmen and especially transwomen discuss fears of others “outing” them. Gwen Araujo murderers defended their horrific actions by claiming a her “misrepresentation” caused their blind violent rage. A student who is a transgirl expressed this fear by saying, “Before I have my surgery I have to tell everyone I’m not really a girl. I don’t want to end up dead because people think I lied.”

The blogger shitstorm surrounding Alexa centers, in part, around her inauthentic sex worker claims. Other sex workers are angry that she appropriated another sex worker’s photographs and posted them as her own. Hence the term “faux ho”.

I admit that I would never devote so much energy into creating a false online persona. But I am sure many of us, at some point, indulged in fake sexual selves online. When I was 13 I used the internet for two things: 1) ordering bootleg tapes of my favorite performers and 2) engaging in cyber sex.

I never masturbated while cybering. The thought did not cross my mind. My delight came from the seemingly consequence-free playtime and sexual exploration. On IRCs I could play sexual hide and seek, touch other people, take off my clothes and nothing bad could happen to me. Everything prohibited in the real world was mine to experience online. No cultural prohibitions could restrain my sexual imagination.

In this light, maybe Alexa deserves a bit of sympathy because she may be engaging in games of self-invention that everyone else likes to play. She’s just really, really committed to that fantasy.

Boring Bad Boy Cliché

Every Sunday night I settle into my friend’s oversized couch to watch Dexter and Californication. We started the ritual Showtime meetings after discovering both series on DVD. Dexter continues to be amazing but Californication fell off the deep end. I accept the possibility that it may never resurface.

I knew of the show when it first hit the scene but without cable or motivation to internet hunt I never watched. My breaking point came after 4 people in one week exclaimed, “You study sex but you haven’t seen Californication!?” So I hit the video store to fulfill my obligation.

I LOVED the first season. Complex issues of sex, fidelity, taboos and relationships dominated the first season. Hank Moody (main character, bad boy asshat extraordinaire) served fine as a lens to explore these topics. I was enchanted.

But something happened. They wrote themselves into a corner by focusing on Hank’s chosen depravity instead of humanity’s potential depravity in lands with access to excess. Every female character became a mere prop for Hank Moody, two-dimensional figures with breasts and limited sexual desires trained on Mr. Moody.

There was potential there to talk about sex in broader terms. Becca, Hank’s eerily wise young daughter, has only passing observations on his sexual proclivities and accepts him unconditionally. Mia, the teenage sociopathic fame-whore that knowingly slept with Hank in the pilot episode, was an excellent character that writers ignored. What was her motivation? How did the rest of her sex life play out? Karen, Hank’s long-suffering partner and baby-momma, swung between tempered frustration and sweet adoration. Where were her emotions? What logic inside her mind kept her with Hank? What were her sexual desires for Bill (Mia’s father and the man she nearly married)? Then there was Marcy, the loud-mouth waxer married to Hank’s best bro, but we only saw minor character development and once she separated from her husband she faded into the background. I loved Marcy. I want to be her when I grow up.

The closest we came to character expansion was Marcy’s husband Charlie Runkle, Hank Moody’s best home-bro. We saw his sexually charged hubristic decline from high-power agent to BMW sales guy but nothing deeper. He still served as a prop man to Hank Moody.

If that series is to survive, the plotline needs to expand to talk about fornication in hedonistic southern California. In shorter parlance, they need to make the Californication show not the Hank Moody cliché  disaster show.

I explore.  Plain and simple, I like to look into things not commonly looked into.  I like to find out things that not everyone knows about.  Whether this exploration is into the depths of space itself, or into one of the wide array of professions throughout the game, it is something I want to peer into.  As with everything else it all boils down to one thing.  ISK.

Glimpse at Amarr Regional

Booster production is a mini-profession, and for those who want to engage in the activity, making combat boosters can be a daunting task at first.  From what I have gathered, before the Apocrypha expansion Booster production was somewhat of a mystery.  The thing is, booster production is an entirely player driven industry, there are no materials seeded in the market, the only exception are skillbooks and equipment.

Typically like any production you may want to do, basic essential material must be garnered and ready.  Depending on the type of combat booster you want to manufacture, may very well depend on what area within New Eden you would have to go.  Booster specific gas clouds are pretty much found in abundance in certain COSMO’s constellations, ranging through low sec and null sec.  However, there are chances of smaller deposits spawning in hi-sec systems but I have yet to come across one on my scanning interface.

“So what about the gas clouds in wormhole space?“

Fullerite gas clouds found in ladar sites within wormhole space are used for Tech 3 production.  The pirate and drug cartels have already discerned the uses for gas clouds found in known space, they have yet to fully understand the uses fullerite beyond Tech 3, as with the rest of New Eden.  The two types of gas clouds used in booster production are Mykoserocin and Cytoserocin.  Each type has a color attribute, which designates its purpose for whatever booster you want to produce.

Gas Clouds - it's mostly bare

“ok ok, I get it already where do I start?“

Training.  Yea, I know.   As with everything in the game you need to acquire skills in order to do something.  In respect to strictly booster production, your looking at a couple of things.

• Gas Harvesting (Industry) – This skill allows you to fit and use a gas harvester module, without it you won’t be able to harvest gas.  You don’t need it if you buy your material straight off the market or through contracts.
• Astrometrics (Science) – This goes along with gas harvesting.  Since gas deposits are not like asteroid belts in systems, you have to find them through methods of exploration.  This skill is not primarily needed if you buy materials off the market, but it is nice to have it for other such exploration endeavors.  There are skills that build upon Astrometrics such as:  Astrometric Rangefinding, Astrometric Acquisition, and Astrometric Pinpointing.
• Drug Manufacturing (Industry) – This skill is required to operate drug labs where the final combat booster product is developed.
• Anchoring(Corporation Management) – Unless you have a partner who has this skill, you will need it to build your production station.

In respect to combat booster consumption, you will also need to train some skills if you plan to get high on your own supply.  For those that do not know, boosters are similar to implants in that they modify certain things and give bonus’.  However, be aware that combat boosters also give the user side effects which could be bad in some instances.  Here are skills for booster consumption:

• Biology (Science) – Biology lets you consume boosters.  Period.  You need to have it to use them.
• Nanite Control (Science) – This skill will help you reduce the side effects of boosters.  It must be noted that this skill is not cheap, and not seeded.
• Neurotoxin Recovery (Science) – Helps negate the side effects of combat boosters.  As for price and seed, I am currently unaware.
• Cybernetics (Science) – I added this skill because it is a requirement for using implants.  There are implants that allow you to reduce and negate the effects of combat boosters.  This skill is not required for booster consumption, however.

Now that we have all that jazzyness aside. Let’s take a look at the chemistry behind booster production.  The first step in booster production is obtaining a pure product.  Now, there are some markets I’ve noticed which sell this in Empire, but it is slight, I’ve only ever seen 1 or 2 types of pure product being sold on the market and not in any particularly useful amount.  Keep in mind that the people in New Eden who produce boosters, conserve and keep their product, simply because procuring it can take time.  After this article, I’m sure there will be some people angry at me for explaining trade secrets.

Pure and Uncut Booster Material...

Reactions

Reactions are done by combining 2 or more agents together to form 1 compound.  There are Simple Reactions and there are Complex Reactions.  Simple reactions are the first chemical combining process you take on the road to producing a booster.  To further specify, we will first take a look at Simple Biochemical Reactions.  Here is a list of what you need to have, in order to make a Simple Biochemical Reaction:

• A tower, preferably a large deathstar.  This is needed to anchor and run the other equipment with enough CPU and Grid.  Arm it, and defend this investment.
• Corporate Hangar Array – Dur.  You need a place to store your material stocks for input and output.  Very large operations can use a Large Ship Assembly Array however.  Gas material is heavy.  Corporate hangars have 1.4 million m3 of storage capacity, while the large assembly array has 18.5 million m3, and you can store anything in them. (Also good for storing large quantities of ore!).
• Simple Biochemical Reactor Array – This is your reactor which creates the simple reaction from input components and outputs a final simple product.
• x2 General Storage Silos, x1 Biochemical Silo, x1 Hazardous Material Silo – These silos will hold your input materials and output materials respectively.  General Storage Silos will store a required commodity product ( 1 for input, 1 for output).  The biochemical silo will store the harvested gas product(input), and the hazardous material silo will store your simple reaction(output).
• Reaction Blueprint – Depending on the type of booster you will be looking to produce, for any reaction your reactor needs a blueprint to tell it what to do.  Synth Booster reaction blueprints are not sold in the markets, they can be found via contracts.  Standard booster reaction blueprints are sold on the markets however.

Standard Booster Reaction Blueprints

Synth Booster reaction blueprints (Contracts)

Synth Booster -vs – Standard Booster

The way these two types of boosters are setup within New Eden I find weird.  Simple Synth booster reactions require Mykoserocin gas, while Simple Standard booster reactions require Cytoserocin gas.  Both gas types can be found on the market.  Synth booster reaction blueprints are not found on the market, while Standard booster reaction blueprints are.  Cytoserocin gas is more expensive than Mykoserocin gas, while Synth booster reaction blueprints are normally more expensive than the Standard counterpart.  You follow?

Also Synth boosters do not have strong or improved booster varieties, they are the bottom of the proverbial ‘crop’ in booster production, I mean c’mon they’re made through producing 1 simple reaction of garbage and gas.  It’s like finding out your weed was grown with people poop as fertilizer.

Setting up your equipment

As with all things at a POS, anchor your structures within storage access range of each other to make moving materials easy.  As well setup your storage silos near your reactor in an easy to understand position to upkeep.  For creating Pure Synth booster material, you only need x1 General Storage Silos, for Pure Standard boosters you will need x2. The way that I setup mine, is what makes the most common sense of chaining to me.  Here is a generic sideview image, as well as a screenshot to help you get a visualization of what I am talking about.

Generic Setup Sideview

Screenshot of setup

Accrue your Materials

First off, lets just say you want to make some Synth Mindflood.  Gather the needed gas material, you can find the type of gas you need by looking at the synth mindflood reaction blueprint show info dialog, and looking at the reaction tab.

As you can see, to create 30 units of Pure Synth Mindflood Booster you need 20 units of Garbage and 40 units of Malachite Mykoserocin gas.  Garbage is a very easily obtainable commodity item, it is a Trade Good, Industrial product, very cheap, and practically every NPC station is trying to get rid of it.  Remember that the amount of resources shown create only the amount of product shown.  Now take a look at a Standard Booster reaction:

Standard booster reactions call for Water, another easily obtainable commodity item.  Water can be found under Trade Goods and Consumer Products, it too is cheap and highly available.  Now as you can see in the standard reaction it calls for 20 units of Malachite Cytoserocin gas and 100 units of water.  As well unlike the Synth booster reaction, here there are two output items, water and the pure booster material.  This reaction will require 2 general storage silos, instead of only 1 like the Synth booster reaction.

Once you have procured your blueprint and input materials its time to create a reaction.  Now for the sake of time, I am going to point you in the direction of the Eve Online Wiki for booster production, there it will show you how to manage the reactor through the processes tab at your control tower and how to link the silos together to create the reaction.

From there you should be able to easily figure out how to use the Drug lab and use the Booster Blueprint to create your final product to take to market.

Here is the link

I hope that this article has come in handy! Good Luck and fly safe.

Another blog I’d found from eons ago had a few fantastic updates in it.  Soon I’ll be posting some others that relate to Hunter Thompson from that blog, and I plan to work on them a bit to update the info, making one big entry about his death (I had originally posted three blogs regarding his death within the following days. This one was written four years ago:

===========================

The thing I don’t understand about people is the effect that another person has on them. I’m almost twenty six and I haven’t really even figured out how interactions between people really work. There’s some situations that I walk away from and think to myself what just happened? I’d like to take a year off of work and study reactions and counter-reactions in people, if only to wonder why everyone continuously messes up everyone else in a large and or small scale. Wars, Fights, Confusion, Firings, Molestation, Talking, Women, everything.

Everything revolves around a reaction and a counter-reaction in conversation form, or even glances, depending on the situation. I’m more prone to think that the popularity of someone is more dependant upon their reactions to things than what they look like, or who they’re friends with (consequently, a bevvy of good reactions to someone else could constitute why people are friends).

So how would people figure out to right wrongs? How would reactions get into a fixed state where there are no misunderstandings? It wouldn’t happen. People are too fixated on things that they like and dislike, which is where conversation starts, and reactions become the basis on how the conversation goes. I like this, you hate it. We both hate this, you like that. This food sucks, that girl’s cute.

I won’t even enter the area of religion, politics, or racism, mostly because the whole idea of those three being the brunt of everything that’s bad about reactions that counter-turns itself into something much larger kind of makes me say “Huh?”

Maybe, of course I’m thinking about this way too much, which is probably a reaction to the caffeine I’ve been inhaling today. In this case, writing this is the counter-reaction, and I haven’t even gotten into the science of Nuclear Reactions et al. Hm.

Following on from this post here, I thought I’d copy across a further comment. DF, having refused to answer any further comments by me, made this brief post on his blog.

In reply I said the following (shorn of comments at the beginning and end that situated the reply in its context, and that are therefore irrelevent here; please read the first half not as an attack on DF, but as a statement of what I am NOT saying, to elucidate what I AM saying in the latter half), which might make clearer what I was aiming at in my last post:

——–

You would feel less as though you were banging your head against the wall if you hadn’t built your own entirely fictional wall to bang your head against.

Yes, everyone sensible agrees (including any respectable critical theorist) that critical theorists should be damned – their job is to describe, not dictate.

But in this particular instance – what on earth are you taking? Nobody has ever said that “world-building” is the only ‘correct’ (whatever that may mean) term. You’ve said we’ve said it, repeatedly, and every time you’ve been corrected. If you kindly took the time to read anything that anyone else had written, you’d notice that your deluding yourself through the creation of ridiculous strawmen.

Likewise, nobody said to you that real places were not real – that would clearly be ludicrous. Again, this is a fiction dreamt up by yourself, seemingly in order to justify your refusal to engage with criticism.

Similarly, you did not address why non-fantasists might not like the term – which is a good thing, really, since nobody cares whether they like or use the term – but rather tried to establish that there was a distinction behind the use of the term, which is an entirely different point. As we’ve all said, there are differences in connotation between the terms, and that can explain differential patterns of usage – this is irrelevent to the question of whether there is a denotational distinction, as I’m sure you are aware, being an intelligent man, however much you have tried to conflate the two in this discussion.

Finally, it is utter nonsense to describe this as a battle against “the epic fantasy people”. Just because people at that board generally like the work of one particular epic fantasy writer does not make us ‘epic fantasy people’. In my own case, I’d say that currently my favourite books are One Hundred Years of Solitude, The God of Small Things, and Blindness; going more strictly into fantasy, I’d put the Silmarillion and the Book of the New Sun as the most impressive works in the genre; the best book I’ve read this year was A Canticle for Leibowitz. Most books I read, however, are philosophy books. I don’t see myself as a mere “epic fantasy person” – although unlike you I don’t see ‘epic fantasy’ as a term of abuse.

—

What IS being said? Some key points:

- “setting” and “world-building” may differ in connotation and/or register, but there is no clear-cut denotational distinction underlying this usage

- all stories are fictional stories; their events do not happen, their characters are not people in the way that you or I are, their settings cannot be walked through, their cultures do not grow outside the page, and the intricacies of their plots are dictated by the fiat of the author, not by the free will of the protagonists, nor by happenstance or by the will of God.

- consequently, the inhabitants of novels are merely simulacra and mimicries of things we have learnt of in the world. All things present in the imagination take their substance from the things of the world, albeit re-ordered and reconstituted into forms that need not replicate those seen in reality. All novels are simulations, and all contents of novels are reconstitutions of the real. There is thus no literary novel that is pure of invention – not even a report of a real occurence is the same as the occurence itself; and likewise, there is no fantasy that is pure of the real and the grounded; the only distinctions are quantitative. An unambiguous worldbuilder like Borges, a borderline writer like Garcia Marquez, and a ‘realist’ writer like Roy are all doing the same thing.

- this being so, “world-building” should not be scorned and used as the basis for insult and deprecation, by comparison to the behaviour of a favoured literary cadre. Borges, Tolkien and Wolfe are just as respectable in their project (however good or bad their execution) as Garcia Marquez, Roy, or Rushdie.

- similarly, paying great attention to setting (eg Borges, Tolkien) is no more “nerdish” than paying great attention to character, plot, or style (although an excessive attention to any, at the cost of the others, will likely make a work less accessible to a general audience; conversely, such works are likely to be praised by certain afficionados of that element; this is a matter of taste).

There’s been a discussion on world-building over at the Westeros forums; since I’ve posted here on the topic before, and since my contribution this time was from a different angle from last time, I thought it might be worth sharing. However, I don’t want to replicate an entire argument, some of which was a little technical, so he is just the major part of my ‘big post’ from the thread, which hopefully will be of interest even to people not involved in the argument itself.

Background: somebody reported the views of a friend, that “He saw worldbuilding as completely pointless, and claims to be naturally averse to any writer known for using it.” People chimed in on both sides; the discussion turned to whether we could distinguish clearly between ’setting’ (respectable, literary) and ‘world-building’ (“the clomping foot of nerdism”, despicable, weird, pointless). The obvious spectre in the room is Harrison (and cohort). Most prominently on the Harrison side was, as usual, Dylanfantasy, here “DF”, writer of the OF Blog of the Fallen (see links to the left).

I hope that the specifics of the argument are not required to understand the below, which should be read as a series of rebuttals of arguments against world building, and against the claim that world-building and setting are the same thing.

————————-

Some specific points:

- No, stories do not ‘take place in’ New York. They take place in a fictional world of the author’s creation. An illustration from Chesterton: in London, if you take the Tube, once you have passed Sloane Square, you know the next station “must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria.” But when a character in a novel passes Sloane Square, the next station can be whatever the author wishes. Now, oftentimes the author will restrain themselves to the expected, allowing Victoria to arrive as it does in reality – but in reality, this arrival in necessary, and in the fictional world of the novel, the arrival is contingent upon authorial fiat. The same fact in the same world cannot be both contingent and necessary – therefore, the story, however mimetic in appearance, is not in reality occuring in London, anymore than the stories about the Shire in reality occur in the Home Counties. In one case, the author has chosen to follow more closely certain facets of reality; in the other, they have deviated more greatly into their imaginations. But the same occurs to some extent in every novel: we do not say a writer is ‘a nerd’ because they have deviated from historical characters, or even because they have added or subtracted events in a dramatised historical account. And as others have pointed out, even if we confine ourselves to ‘the world’ (the series of ‘facts’ regarding geography, society, culture and history presented by the story), there is no clear dividing line between you and us.

- DF is being disingenuous in his focus upon terminology. So the phrase ‘world-building’ was invented more recently than ’setting’? Fine – I don’t really see why that means the former shouldn’t replace the latter, but let’s grant that it shouldn’t. There still remains the fact that this is a confusion of “X is Y” with “X should be called Y”. I can say quite easily that a certain animal is an avian without denying that it is a bird, and without saying that the term avian should replace the term “bird”; nobody cares whether you call it “setting” or “world-building”, only that you don’t falsely demarcate, for essentially political/social reasons, between the two.

- Nor is it honest to argue that this synonymy makes either term redundant: I think we are all away that a word may differ markedly in connotation, intension/comprehension, sense or Sinn (or insert alternative terminology here), while having exactly the same denotation, reference, extension or Bedeutung. [Indeed, the words 'denotation', 'reference' and 'extension' all have approximately the same Bedeutung, interchangeable in most writers, yet all differ in connotation and sense). The words 'setting' and 'world-building' call attention to different elements and significations of the same activity (the former tends to call attention to the activity in passive form as the mirror or support of other narrative activities, while the latter tends to attract notice to the activity in active form as a work of art and effort and skill in its own right); I think this is an asset, compared to other activities in narration, such as "characterisation", where the one word must stand for both aspects; but since every work has setting/world-building, and whenever the activity exists it has both aspects, dividing the words between genres rather than aspects is impoverishing our language by taking away a useful distinction and wasting a perfectly serviceable word for no apparent other reason than social manoeuvreing...

- "setting/world-building" is only the name we give to the part of the narrative activity particularly concerned with certain elements of the story: imitations of geographical awareness, imitations of historical retellings, imitations of cultural nuances, imitations of social potentials; imitations of all those things that shape the plot and the character that cannot be described through the stream of consciousness. Why is it less legitimate to play with these potentialities than with the potentialities of conscious choice? "World-building" is interesting to me because it is a mirror on the fascinating portions of the world: culture, society, history. The fact that the modern Anglo-American "Analytic" tradition extols rational agent theories so greatly that any attempt to address the particularity of the character's moment as the fundament and touchstone of their historically-embodied conscious activity is a lamentable reflection on the close-mindedness of the ideology, and itself a moment in history that will no doubt pass away - a moment of striving for an ungraspable solidity.*

- DF makes the argument that in Literature, apparent 'fantasy' is really a reference to a disguised reality - Rushdie and Garcia Marquez are talking about the real world through a series of metaphors. Fair enough - but what do you think that fantasy is about? I don't just mean the obvious point, made already, that all the elements of a fantasy, like the elements of a dream, find their origin in our waking lives, but the more precise point, that authors classed as "fantastical" are just as interested in the world as any other authors - or at least there can be. Some, no doubt, are interested only in escape and delusion, as no doubt are certain writers of spy novels and historical romances; but it is a wrong to blackball fantasy as it is to blackball all novels that have elements of romance. Have you read the Book of the New Sun, and the Lord of the Rings, and Foundation, and A Canticle for Leibowitz - and if so, can you honestly, truthfully, honourably stand in public and say that their writers have no interest in real world themes, have no metaphors or messages in mind, have no desire to talk about reality through their works? If you can, I can only congratulate you on having achieved a simplicity in your views that must be the result of great personal effort, since no reader could be so tone-deaf as to fail to hear these harmonies purely by accident - only determination and grit could allow anybody to veer so far from reality without the slightest quaver of uncertainty.

- A fantasy is like a lucid dream that has been shared. It has the mechanics of a dream, and is no less useful for our psychology.

- If, returning to an earlier point, it is acknowledged that, for example, culture may have some influence upon the individual, and consequently that it might be interesting to examine culture - what other option is there but an experiment? A description of a single case is no examination, howeverso accurate. And in an experiment, for what reason must our tests be confined to the mundane, the 'real', the conventional, the known, the already-occured - no, there is some value to more ambitious, more problematic, analysis. And if it is to be allowed that we can indulge in fantasy - what, are we meant to suddenly eschew all reason? Some people seem to think that once we have abandoned the limits of reality (as paradoxically conceived for social purposes), we should abandon all limits - causality, coherency, consistency, continuity - and revel in our power of authorial fiat. Such chaos is exciting, but dull, and shows us little. The further we go from the sure ground of experience, the more care we should take with our footfalls - we should construct carefully in the wilderness if we are to create what is to last, because we are not sheltered by the lee of the surrounding buildings. Or to put it in a more naturalist way - when we experiment, we change one factor and keep the others all the same. No data derives from changing all of the conditions at once! I don't think world-building needs to be so rigid as to limit itself to only one dimension at a time (indeed, it is not possible - each change makes other changes), but the general aesthetic should (for this motivation, which is only one of several - but a legitimate one, and not one that is to be trivialised as a clomping foot of any description) be one of restraint. when we ask "how does X affect Y", we have to pay attention, greatly, to the details of X. [And this hold true both in 'expansive' fantasy, where the fantastic elements are themselves the protasis, and in 'permissive' fantasy, where the fantastic elements exist to allow the protasis to take effect more freely and clearly]

- it’s a tangent, but philosophically I think DF is on extremely shaky ground. It’s highly tendentious to claim that we can distinguish between “New York” as a ‘real thing’ and the “aspects” of New York that include all the facts about it (its geography, its freedom from werewolves, its history, and so forth). All these “aspects” can be taken away from an account of New York; all of them can be added to an account of Minas Tirith. When all the aspects have been transferred, what remains of “New York” to make it “real” and “setting”, and what remains of Minas Tirith to mark it as fantasy and “world-building”? The name? But the name can be transferred as well; the name can be transferred even more easily; it is only a trivial accident of history, an aspect of an aspect, the work of a single plebiscite or mayoral decree to alter; it is far more trivial as an emblem of the real than the presence or absence of werewolves. There’s an old philosophical analogy to theis view of “reality” as opposed to “aspects”, but I can’t remember who said it – Ramsay, perhaps? The “realist” in this sense is a man who tries to take the clothes off a stick-figure – when the skirt lines are rubbed out, we do not see the “real” woman beneath.

*[the literature/genre distinction is a pathology of a divided will - a will for truth expressed through naturalism and realism that scorns the fantastic and the problematising, and at the same time a will for truth through art that does not permit certain works to be entirely derided; consequently, that part of the undivided subject-matter that comes to the attention of the smaller, 'artistic' realisation of the social will is classed in one way, and made respectable (to the artistic, if not to the naturalist majority, who in general retain some respect for the artists themselves but very little for the work they praise), while that part that comes to the attention primarily of the larger, naturalistic realisation is classed in another, and derided]

—–

Incidentally, last time this came up, here’s what I said. It takes a different approach entirely from this post, and is more personal; some of it may not be strictly compatible with what I’ve said here; blame this on rhetoric, complexity of personality, or the passage of time.

—–

Appropriate, I think, to end the post with a quote from a fantasy (he goes so far as to subtitle it “A Nightmare”), where the hero, Syme, stands up for a particular mentality against Another Mentality. Although it was originally talking about the real world (or the real world of the Nightmare, which, we must all admit, is so far from the world we inhabit that it is deceitful to even call it reality, though it fulfills all the criteria of Literature), I think it stands just as well for fantasy (just as things said in a fantastical setting have signficance for the real world):

“‘It is you who are unpoetical,’ replied the poet Syme. ‘If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street, or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose, let me read a time-table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!’

‘I tell you,’ went on Syme with passion, ‘that every time a train comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of hair-breadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word “Victoria”, it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed “Victoria”; it is the victory of Adam.’ “

So I’ve spoken to a few people about their initial impressions of this project and got back a mixed response.

To be honest I wasn’t sure exactly how I was expecting people to react, I just know I found the different responses interesting.

Personally I have very mixed feelings. Part of me is concerned I just won’t be able to keep interest in this thing long enough to see it through right the way to the end (see post no. 2 for a catalogue of how lazy I am!) and another, bigger, part of me is just terrified of what’s going to happen. Once out of the closet there is no going back, no more pretending and no more feigned ignorance. I just don’t know how people are going to react when they find out I’m gay.

Well, that’s not strictly true. I know how a few people are going to react…

Some are going to freak out. This I know for sure (in particular I’ve had some really angry emails from people I got accidently outed to a while back. I managed to talk a certain person into thinking it was just a big joke and now they’re happy as a clam. I guess that should bother me more than it does but I’m used to it). These people are going to have to either get over it or we’re going to part company. I’ll be sad but I probably could live without their friendship.

Some people aren’t going to be surprised. These will be the people who always suspected (or were told by people who knew and were asked to keep it quiet, grr). These people will probably wonder why I’m making such a big fuss over such a little thing. I will be intensely grateful to these people.

Some people are going to react poorly, and then will move on. I suspect my dad may fall into this category. He’s a laid back guy at heart, but really not the biggest fan of the gays. Although I think lesbians might be slightly more acceptable than gay men. I’m not 100% sure about that though. I could be completely mis-predicting him and he could react worst of all! Such are the joys of second guessing!

And then there are the people who are going to react really badly. These people include my mother and my grandparents. The grandparents thing I can’t really help. I think it’s a generational issue and they’ll just have to deal with it by themselves. If the casual and passing comments of raging homophobia I hear tossed around by these people are anything to go by, let’s just say I don’t think they’ll be approving of my lifestyle choice… Most of this group I don’t see that often and maybe that won’t be such a bad thing. My mother, on the other hand, is going to be a problem unto herself. I’m preparing a separate post all itself to deal with her attitudes.

And then there is the list of people who I don’t want to find out ever. And I really mean ever. One of my housemates falls onto this list. She’s Muslim and I think it would actually destroy all semblance of friendship we have if she was to ever find out I was gay. And we’re such good friends, and have been for such a long time, that I don’t want this to happen. I would rather pretend to be happily heterosexually single for the rest of my life than have her go off the deep end because I like other women. And I know that if I go through with this project that can never happen. She will find out. Someone will tell her. This kind of scares me. A lot.

However, this was supposed to be a post about how people reacted when I told them about the blog, not how I think people will react to the big news itself. So I should probably get back on track…

I had some people say that while they were cautiously optimistic for the blog, they were a little apprehensive of doing something like this to a deadline (even such a long one as this). I guess they’re concerned that I might rush into something I’ll regret or somehow everything will backfire and turn into a small (or large) disaster. I too have these fears. But part of the reason for me doing this so publicly, is to force myself to actually make the effort. I know I could go on with a charade of heterosexuality indefinitely but I wouldn’t be happy. And I don’t want to spend the most exciting years of my life, my twenties, living in regret and discomfort. Better out than in and all that jazz.

I also think it would make quite a nice ‘coming out’ story, having this to remember all the little ups and downs. The reactions (correctly guessed or not so) and the things that surprised me. I can’t recall an example where someone has done something like this before, and I like to think I could do a good job. Or I hope so anyway!

And, heaven forbid, this thing might actually (eventually) have some useful advice for other people. Or at least be a ‘How Not To’ Guide to Coming Out if tits rocket skyward. I don’t mind, it’s all a bit experimental and haphazard, a little bit Dada in its approach. But then this blog is primarily for my benefit, not anyone else’s. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.

Most other people have been equally excited by this project, mainly for the reasons mentioned above. It’s something weird, a little bit left field, a little bit controversial and a little bit like watching a car wreck, you want to look away but you can’t help yourself.

Well guys, I hope you enjoy the ride!

SULTAN KUDARAT STATE UNIVERSITY

In your own perception,does the building block of computer storage repletes the condition of the PC?

In Partial fullfilment of the Course In MMIT/MBA, Presented this Report to the Faculty of SKSU

By: Louie Anthony J. Delgado-MMIT/MBA

Professor: Dr. Arnold M. Fuentes

The advantage of the replete the condition of the PC (Personal Computer), it can store more data and to enhance the speed of the Personal Computer (PC).

PC may enhance the speed by booting in start, loading and opening the file. It can load the file or application quickly, it can customize or maximize the appearance and of the PC. In terms of loading the games or heavy application the computer respond quickly and load up easily. More data and application may install and stored in the PC.

PC can open more applications or work a multiple tasking. Example: if you are open a heavy application like video editing or photo editing you can also open and play the game applications

The disadvantage of the replete the condition of the PC (Personal Computer) own my perceptions, PC maybe overheat because of higher or maximum speed of computer storage. Pc maybe crushes or hang-up easily.

It can open more applications or games but also it hang-up or maybe computer will not respond and cant load easily. It can stores more data but you need to organize the them in order to select the file you want to open or delete.

-EiUoL

I stood in a long queue in Ealing Broadway Station after work yesterday for this morning’s Heathrow Connect tickets. A group of 15-20 carolers were singing Silent Night and shaking cans of charity change. I waited and watched people walk through the barriers or down the steps, in from the cold.

People had such varied reactions. A few brave and festive souls joined in and sang along, a couple of them stopped to watch pretending to be preoccupied with digging through a handbag, some smiled quietly to themselves, others looked completely miserable and a lot of them walked by pretending not to even notice as is a typical London reaction to most things that would strike up curiosity in a smaller town like in upstate New York where I grew up.

When Jingle Bells started, I walked up the steps into the chill of Winter London air tinged with cigarette smoke and kebabs from the shop on the corner. I tossed my scarf around my neck for the walk home and thought about all the different ways London can get under people’s skin.

“While faith makes all things possible, it is love that makes all things easy.”

-Evan H. Hopkins

I beg to disagree. I have loved. I have felt a lot of things for a lot of people, and they were never easy feelings. I loved a lot of people, and it was never easy. For me, love is never easy. Love may make things worthwhile. But easy? That’s one thing that love isn’t.

I guess I don’t see how releasing work for free, say an author’s short story, on a website is a bad idea.

An article up at Publishing Perspectives about a new book gives little other information than it is being released for free.

There was no mention on [the author's] blog about the book coming out in print with a publisher.

They then make this jump:

Are the rights available? Would anyone want to publish a print edition after the free e-book version has been so widely spread?

Whether the rights are available, a fair question. Whether a publisher would consider pursuing a story that was once a self-published ebook, however, seems a no-brainer to me.

Why should it matter if, because of the lack of publisher support, someone opens up their work in whatever way they can?  It just seems obvious that a popular free book with many fans will start out with a bigger fan base, a market, which is what publishers should want.

The article closes by suggesting only authors who are already well-known should travel the path of the self-published ebook.  I understand that it would be totally safe for a writer like Stephen King to release a free ebook and it would only bloat his paycheck, but that doesn’t mean releasing unknown material is dangerous.

I suppose in the end it’s a personal issue.  Some would probably be fine putting up their magnum opus for free, just to get it into the world.  Others might want to put up smaller pieces, sort of tastes to get people interested.  And still others might just want to put up a blurb from the publisher and a link to Amazon.

It’s a bit chaotic now, sure, but being too afraid of the present will probably have undesirable impacts on the future.

Seth Godin’s What Matters Now for Free

I’ve often struggled with how unnatural letters and words are.  They make up the most basic, crude form of expression, which makes me question how much they can really describe.  How can the word ‘bird’ adequately represent an animal that glides over our heads, no doubt in a sensation that is totally unfathomable to us?

This article doesn’t really answer that question, but it does shed some light on how an ox’s head became the letter A, that is, how language is literally constructed from our perceptions of the world around us. OnFiction has a review up of the French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene’s theory that the construction of language is the recycled interpretation of how we first perceive the world.  Dehaene proposes that words and letters are in fact immensely stylized.  Arguing against my fear that language is separate from true representation,  he suggests that that they are our perception of the world stylized into building blocks of communication. For example, the ox head:

In the earliest discovered Semitic writing (Proto-Sinaitic, from about 1700 BCE), the pictogram for an ox became a circle with two curved lines coming out of its top (for horns). It is a stylized version of something not very different from the Lascaux ox-head. In Phoenician, a writing system that descended from Proto-Sinaitic, a further stylization occurred: the curved lines became straight, and the character was rotated through 90 degrees, so that it looks like an A lying on its side. Written Greek derived from Phoenician, and in it a further 90 degree rotation occurred to produce A, alpha, and the same shape carried into the letter A in Latin which, of course, is still with us in English.

I like the idea that words and characters need to be constructed with shapes that we find around us.  It lends to the idea that language is physical, real and not a mental fabrication.  It doesn’t completely resolve my concern with words being separate from actual representation, but it is, in a way, satisfying to know that at least the basis for language may not be a complete farce.

Reading by Neural Recycling

“You know, for the baby album.” the OB says to us as she hands the ultrasound pictures over.  Some of you may have already seen a peek at Vegas over at my wife’s blog, but just in case you missed it – here’s another couple of 12 week ultrasound picture for Google images:

We’re in the throes of telling people now, which is both exhilarating, liberating, and exhausting.  I still don’t know how to react when the straight ladies squeal and shake their hands.  So far, I think I’ve squealed back.  So unlike me… the squealing.

Probably the saddest song I’ve ever heard is Barry Manilow’s “Weekend in New England”. I was listening to Pandora earlier when the song played. It’s not just the lyrics that make it sad. The melody of the song itself is already a tear-jerker. I don’t know exactly what it is that makes me sad too. I actually don’t identify with the song because the story does not apply to me at all. However, merely listening to it makes me want to stop and think only of sad thoughts .

The lyrics are not nearly as heartbroken as “Somewhere Down the Road”. This song holds so much uncertainty, but for the other song, goodye was really inevitable. Still, this song is really the saddest. There’s a line in the song that says, “last night I wave goodbye, now it seems years”. I think it just shows that whenever we are separated from the person we love, the time we spend being apart feels so long.

So many of us have been through this. Situations may be different, but we have all experienced the pain of being away from the ones we love. Yes, it feels like eternity. Sometimes, we fight with those we love, and we need some time apart. Sometimes, we need to be away from them for a bigger reason than a mere fight. Whatever the reason is, time always feels so slow. The waiting feels like eternity. Waiting seems to be the most painful part when you’re away.

Another line from the song that I like goes like this: “time in New England took me away to long, rocky beaches and you by the bay.” I also think this line is true, and this happens to almost all of us. When we try so much to be away from people, to think or move on, we get swept away by the new places that we go to. The new things and new faces we come across take our mind off the things that we are running away from. But after all the thrill, underneath all the chaos, we always go back to that one person who can comfort us and make us happy.

When we take a time off, we try so hard to forget. We try to forget the hurts, the people, the responsibilities. In doing so, we fail to notice that what always brings us back are the things that we run away from. When we lose ourselves too much in the effort of moving on, the things that keep us on the ground are always those things that we don’t expect to do so. Then, when we realize what we really need, we always come running back. Sometimes, we return to things that have already become unfamiliar, things that have slowly evolved into something else during our absence. Sometimes, we go back and find out that there’s already nothing there, that nothing’s waiting for us anymore.

This is what makes the song such a sad one. It’s the uncertainty of things. We can never tell what happens tomorrow, or even a couple of minutes from now. We can’t ever foretell what’s in store for us, and I believe that’s the scariest and saddest part of this life.

To balance it, the song is not totally just a waste of tears. If we understand the lyrics, we will find that even if the song cries out loud with sadness, it is also a hopeful song. The song is hopeful because even if the singer is not sure when he will be reunited with his love, he knows that they will still be together in the future, but he’s just not sure when that time is.

As for us real people, this is what makes us move one with our lives. It is the hope that someday, everything will happen in its own time. If we are far from the person we love right now, we all have this hope that someday soon, we will be with that person again. Yes, love leaves, and sometimes love stays out of our reach. But there is always one thing that makes us keep believeing in it. It is the hope that love will never be forever out of grasp, and this is why love songs are always a hit.

This is how you create change?

This post is not about sex. This post is about San Francisco State University, the place where I study and teach sex. The one university with professors that inspired me to learn, to explore the world and use my knowledge for good.

This post is about the misguided students that trashed the business building on Wednesday in a petulant act of protest.

Dear Protesters,

I get it. The university system is crumbling. I’m a graduate student there, studying also at the downtown campus, and I screamed more than a few times over my hiked fees and drastic pay cut.  I support protests and demonstrations, but what you did? You acted like children and made ridiculous demands that sounded like hostage negotiations.

Do not compare yourselves to major political movements. Do not liken yourselves to protesters willing to die for their causes. You guys actually demanded that the university turn the heat on before you would even consider negotiating. Weak.

Your collective actions demean meaningful protest and embarrass this generation. You experience history in sound bites and iconic imagery, removed from the complicated contexts of the era and political climate in which they occurred. The only message you take is that the man is bad and you need to fuck shit up.

That shit you fucked up? We all pay. Students, professors, everyone. The university system has already lost millions in funding, far more than Robert Corrigan’s six figure salary. (A salary, I might add, earned from years of service and dedication to higher education.) You added to this toll on Wednesday because, why? Did building occupation seem like the neat thing to do? What did you hope to accomplish?

Your list of ultimatums illuminates your naivety. You demanded:

“That student loans be forgiven” and “That education, from kindergarten to PHD, be free of charge.” Education costs money. I’m guessing you wouldn’t know about that because I sense you do not have jobs. How else can you spend the middle of the week vandalizing a building while locked inside?

“That the imperialist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Gaza are ended, and that money is used to feed and clothe the poor.” Iraq I’ll give you, and I know nothing about Pakistan or Gaza, but do you even understand what is going on in Afghanistan? Do you really think blogging your tantrum from inside of a university building will end the wars? The world is much bigger than you realize and conflict more complex. War is tragic, indeed, but armed conflict is sometimes necessary. I do not want war. We need to end war. Your time  is better spent understanding how to prevent war, not kicking and screaming about immediate withdrawal.

“We demand that the presidents of the universities and the trustees have their salaries redused [sic] to the level of janitors.” What motivation is there to work harder than others and dedicate your life when you are not compensated accordingly? Everyone should receive proper pay for their skills.

I could go on and on with this list but I will end with your most ridiculous demand of all: “That no disciplinary action be taken against us for our action.”

What. The. Fuck. You want to demonstrate but lack the courage of your convictions to risk punishment? In many other countries, even in the recent history of our country, the government would shoot you. No negotiations. Just a bullet to your head or torso. And you demand impunity?

Your hearts are in the right place. Your motives are questionable. Your actions disgraceful. I am sometimes ashamed of my fellow students who seek meaning and action in the world without working towards personal development and educational accomplishments. I work as a teaching assistant and have seen my fair share of students complaining about a 50 page reading assignment that week. Students that would rather sit around and drink or surf the internet than seize the opportunity to become educated.

We are a spoiled bunch. Generations before us shed their blood to pave paths on which we could walk, protest and demonstrate. Leaders before us sacrificed a great many things for our basic civil rights. We treat these rights shamefully.

Fight the inequalities in our system. Rail against them, but do so with purpose and meaning. Do not demand the world conform to your desires. Create solutions to the problems instead of demanding someone else take care of them. Educate yourselves to understand the nuances of politics so that you may truly change this system.

There is corruption. There are major problems. But this is not some battle between those with power and those without. Rally taxpayers to invest in our future again. Protest at the capital. Hell, protest at board members’ houses.

At the very least, be creative in raising awareness instead of copying moves from protesters past with no thought to efficacy. You make us all look bad.

Telling everyone we know about the pregnancy has been a tiring five-day PR roll-out.  Well, it started far more than five days ago,as you know, when we initially told close friends and family.  Those folks kept their trap shut as long as they could (varying times per person) and eventually told other people.  You know… my mom told that lady at church; her mom told a few neighbors.  But for the masses, this baby has been kept under lock and key.

Oh but now – now everyone knows.  A timeline for you, if you will:

Friday:  Sonogram reveals averagey average baby.  I tell one co-worker and my boss.
Saturday:  Not so much telling, but an exhausting day spent registering (a whole other post).
Sunday:  Holiday newsletter was emailed to friends and family (otherwise known as, people who would have been grouchy to find out news of this caliber on Facebook).
Monday:  Morning meeting with HR, afternoon spent telling boss’ boss and other co-workers.
Tuesday:  A timed attack on Facebook – a one-two punch of her status update, followed by my update (and obligatory posting of ultrasound picture as my profile picture).  Dozens of status “like’s”, Congratulations, Wow’s, and one HOLY SHIT! later, everyone from former and current co-workers, and high school and college friends have been dutifully notified.

Phew.

On another note, the past few nights have been rough sleep-wise, due to some combination of nausea, having to pee every hour, and a lot of gurgling activity inside which is most likely the result of the hammering and scaffolding that is being erected in my uterus to support what is yet to come.  I swear, at some point I could smell sawdust.  My belly is getting weirdly hard, which is also creepy exciting.

Life happens every minute of the day. Life has been happening to you since the day that you were born. The current emotional and psychological space that you are in is the combination of these experiences and most importantly your reaction to these experiences. It has often been said that “its’ not what happens that has a lasting impact, it’s how you react to what happens.” I know I have been guilty of overreacting a number of times in my life and most recently, I have been a self-proclaimed “Overreactor.” Prior to this period, I was an underreactor; there weren’t too many things that could derive a reaction from me because I did not care about too many things and too many people. The interesting thing during that time was that I was a bit mor content than I am now.

After interacting in life and in therapy with hundreds of clients, I have come to realize that the way that people in general react to things, has th greatest impact on their current functioning. Granted, the majority of people who are functioning below their optimal level are reacting t negative events that have happened to them and that do warrant a negative reaction. Many of us are stuck in a pattern of reacting in the same ways that we have always reacted even though things are constantly changing. We get angry when our friends/parents/colleague/whoever says something that our parents used to say when we were children. We react in the same way we did when we were young and end up stuck in the belief that we cannot get over it. I am not saying that our past should have no impact; instead our past should teach us that we are strong and resilient; that we can overcome anything and still thrive. We keep ourselves saddled down with sad stories and fears that outweigh the innate power that we possess by just being human. We let our emotions run our lives and react in self-defeating, disempowering ways that only serve to remind us that we’re not who we want to be. Well, the truth is your reactions are the most powerful things that guide your life right now. If you change how to react to the things that happen in your daily life, you can change the life that you experience. Nothing is more important than what you do when something bad (i.e. unexpected, disappointing, distressing, challenging etc) happens in your life. Your reactions show you where you are in your journey; they show you whether or not you understand the fundamental idea of living–that nothing stays the same ever. If we can grasp that idea and respond likewise, then we will set ourselves on a path to actually live, embrace life, look fear in the face and do what we want anyway, smile at challenges, help someone else to grow and leave a legacy worthy of emulation. Life is hard, life is unfair but life can be the most interesting, exciting game that you ever play, if you change how you react to the things that come your way. Just think about it, your thoughts are the most important determinant of what you experience and your reactions are the most important determinant of how you experience life.

So how do you change your reactions??

You look at the ways that you have always reacted and examine them to see if they serve your highest good. Is this the way that you want to react to this situation. Ask yourself about the impact that your reaction will have on your self-esteem; when you react in this way, do you feel good about who you are and where you want to go? Does this reaction help you or hurt you on your path to development?

• Think about someone you admire, a behavior role-model. If this person was in your situation, how would he/she react? Why would this person react that way? What do they know that you have not yet accepted?  How can you change your thoughts and behavior to come in line with this lesson?
• Ask yourself if you need additional help to change your reactions. There is power in admitting that you don’t yet know how to do something well and that you would like to learn.
• Practice. Practice. Practice. It took years to develop the reactions that you currently have’ it’s going to take a while to develop new reactions.
• Acknowledge that effort is as important as outcome. Although you may want to see changes now, most times these immediate results are not long-lasting and you will slip back into a reaction that you want to overcome. What do you do when that happens? You acknowledge that you still have more work to do and then you continue to do it. Making mistakes does not mean all is lost, it means your mind still remembers what you used to do and requires more effort and time to change. DO NOT get down on yourself and give up. Remember how you felt the first time you succeeded!
• Redefine what it means for you to succeed. My definition of success is not the same as anyone else’s. Yours should not be either. In therapy, I have to remember that sometimes, little tiny changes are successes in their own right. I have to remind others that slight changes can make all the difference and sometimes if we wait on big successes alone, we’ll never feel successful.
• Measure the changes that you make in relative not absolute terms. Don’t undervalue the small changes that you have made so far. Changing your reactions is not an easy task and it may seem overwhelming at first because after all, you’ve reacted in these ways for a long time.  So begin with a tweak of your usual reaction. Then ask yourself: Compared to where I was before, did anything change? Yes and has it made any difference at all? If it has celebrate that!! Next, if you could make one little tweak to improve that, what would the tweak be? It you continue making these small tweaks, they will add up to big changes after a while. Continue to strive for the change you want and maybe you will get to a point where the small changes that you have achieved will be good enough and you won’t need the really big change.
• Try 30 day trial periods: I read about  this concept on a blog a couple of years ago and have seen various versions on the web since. Pick a situation that you would like to react differently to, maybe the way you get upset when your significant other doesn’t do what you expect or even in the way that you like them to do it. Normally, you would get angry and nag or whine or argue, but for your 30 day trial, you’re going to choose a different reaction. Maybe you could not say anything about it or just appreciate the way that they did it. It saves you emotional energy and makes the other person feel like he/she can be him/herself. After 30 days you can stop if it doesn’t work for you and try something else but at least give yourself 30 days.

Well, thank you for reading. Namaste!!