Young Hands Club

Upon scratching the surface in the review/plan mining process, I struck gold ((Literally first post I read upon clicking from Recent Posts, win.)) :

The main things that need to go in there are, in order: 1. things I assigned to you 2. things you want feedback on/help with 3. anything else that takes up a significant amount of your time.

I decided that was enough to start with, I’m on a deadline anyways.

1. Things my Master assigned me:

1. My series of posts adding meat to the bones of The Fabled Outlines.
   1. (1.5h) 2.1-2.2: Prospecting from Prospect Point : recollect the process and struggle of settling into the islands, the pleasure of making new friends and the refuge of sanity provided by calling the lead pool.
   2. (3h) 2.3.1-2.3.{3,9}: How many Banks in a Bank : describe the layers of asset custody and the layers of data custody of the bank’s infrastructure.
   3. (1.5h) 2.3.4-2.3.8: Learning to Work : Describe my n00bishness and how I worked through it with a good guide for the purpose.

2. Things I want feedback on/help with.

1. While Jacob referred to our business, JWRD Computing, as salt mining, I’m persuaded differently. It’s not just about the money ((Salary)), but the relationships. I see what we’re doing as people mining by showing our clients how to remove their computing handcuffs and through the process they may become Young Hands themselves. We have business plans and sales presentations as LaTex source, I’m going to work to port them to my blog and would like feedback on the approach we’re taking. I don’t have a good estimate for this at present, but will chip away and have a better estimate for delivery date by next week.
2. (3h) ((90 mins prep, 90 mins to converse.)) In observing the S.NSA pending liquidation in #t, #a and Trilema, some questions for asciilifeform have occurred to me that I don’t believe have been asked and I believe may help him ((As well as myself.)) process the situation. My interest is motivated by paying back what I have and is still quite small relative to what I’ve gained from reading him over the years. I’ll need to prepare myself with the relevant links beforehand. The two main clarifications I seek are his claim to lacking a self-image and what reads to me as a labor theory of value worldview that may be a cause of discounting management. What I want is permission to engage him in #a.
3. While the downsides of Panama have been duly noted, I’m motivated to write about my experience here as both a reflection on the 7 years I have on the ground as well as to help support Republican wire hoping and relocations outside the zone. I haven’t outlined this yet and supplementary to this plan to start chewing the Panamanian Civil Code.
4. I doubt this is the week for it, but I will underscore my interest in the The Qntra Journalism Short Course. Secondary to sharpening myself to contribute to tmsr, I think the process will enrich my ability ((Towards this end, I’m slowing chipping away at The Art of Nonfiction by Ayn Rand as I have it on my dead tree shelf, though I’m open to better alternatives.)) in producing the series of posts I already owe and beyond.

3. anything else that takes up a significant amount of your time.

1. (18h) JWRD : 3h of management, including review of last month. 11h ((4 90 minute sessions + 2.5h of commute (walking) + 2.5h prep and review.)) of session preparation and delivery. 5h of local relationship development ((One meeting scheduled, many follow up emails to send. Being a holiday here, locals won’t work again until Wednesday.)) .
2. (3.5h) ((2hr presentation + dinner with the crew afterwards.)) Junto : Part 1 of a presentation series summarizing Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.
3. Dorion Mode : Blogs I’ve not publicly promised, but have come to mind and I have motivation to write.
1. (2.5h) Timing is everything, perfection unattainable : A review with annotations/links of the heavy #o conversations, October 16th and October 29th in particular.
2. (1.5h) The Scroll Marked I: Becoming a slave to good habits. I’ve read The Greatest Salesman in the World prior, and have decided to pick up the Scrolls again. Annotate Scroll I.
4. (21h) Following the forum and conversing when it’s my time. I’m planning to block off 14:00-15:30 ((9-10:30 local time)) and 19:00-20:30 UTC to properly eat and engage the logs and blogs. Not sure if this is enough time, but my premise is working in blocks will maximize my focus and mitigate getting lost in the forum.
5. (7h) ((30 mins in morning, 30 mins before sleep)) Daily Review/Preview to start up, wind down day.
6. (3h) Weekly review/preview ((This week’s took multiples longer, with the review covering a longer space and not having a prior published plan to use as skeleton. I expect this weeks plan to serve as a skeleton for next week because this planning muscle is weak at present.)) .
7. (5h 15m) 45 minutes of exercise each morning.
8. (5h 50m) 20 min Spanish ((With so many English speakers in Panama and English heavy work, gotta keep the gears greased.)) , 30 min French each morning ((Currently halfway through Pimsler L1, audio heavy with reading supplement course. Reaching out to French speakers locally.)) .
9. Finalize year-end travel plans. Paternal side of family gets together the 28th of Nov (Thanksgiving) in Vermont. Maternal side has trip to Hawaii booked Dec 26th-Jan 6th ((An island cruise the 27th to 4th with travel bookends.)) . Rather than make a trip back to Panama in between, the plan is to stay there for December. I’ll be able to progress JWRD work ((I have meat-WoT prospects there; thought one was going to start the 18th, but he punted to 2020.)) , chew through my blog backlog and keep up with the forum. I do plan to take advantage of the elements ((One who grew up with seasons longs for the cold after too long in the tropics.)) , which includes being in the woods a couple days to deer hunt ((I have a blog in mind for my appreciation for hunting, will include pics !)) and on the mountain for a ski. In December, I’ll likely make a trip south to visit my sister in Maryland and asciilifeform for a tea, assuming he’ll meet me. The trip south will likely include a weekend stopover in New York City to see friends ((One of which works at a fiat funds of funds and managed to buy Bitcoin in 2012ish, which he told me about in late 2013.)) .

Summary

The lists above mark out 76.5 hours + 49 hours of sleep make 125.5 hours allocated of the 168, leaving 42.5 h. For now, I’m satisfied with leaving it here, documenting how well the above estimations pan out in next weeks review and adjusting as needed. I’m using Jacob’s clocking tool to track how I spend the coins of my time.

Before diving into my first review here, I think noting my review process would be helpful because while the text is important, how the text comes to be is perhaps more important.

The Review Process

1. My first question to answer was subject and theme. What does the review involve ? To which which I answered, the flow of events ((Including the negative space where possible.)) and how I changed.
2. From there, I made an outline from memory.
3. I used the outline to reread relevant logs and blogs to expand the outline.
4. I allowed the outline to provide structure for the subconscious to fill in the gaps for a draft ((This time I did it all in the mp-wp editor, which means I don’t have my draft outlines ; I’m thinking next time it may be helpful to do in text editor on local disk, as doing locally will provide me a my history of outlining skill.)).
5. Edit the draft.
6. Proof read to correct and clarify.
7. Take a walk/do some push ups/whatever to take a break.
8. Give one last scan and publish.

As for the negative space, I’ve not read through all the review and plan posts and comments yet here on Young Hands. I reckon that ought to be included in my plan for the week to come.

The Review

After embodying the lurking log reader for years, I made the leap into #ossasepia to be immediately confronted with the costs of remaining in the shadows. While I’d been reading the Lady Marquess Eulora, Diana Coman for years, and applied essentially immediately, I had nothing on the public web to show her for context about myself. I offered to spill my guts in the channel and make a later pass on my to be installed blog with a closer look at the flow of events. The conversation flowed until we reached a sore spot and I spun at the keyboard for ~10 minutes, killing the conversation, to be resumed later in the week while I set up my blog.

By then, the damned had gone dumb rendering my Rockchip from Pizarro unusable and Jacob Welsh had moved onto the spinning up a shared mp-wp instance on the machine now hosting both our blogs. Since he’d done a lot of the legwork, I was left with some minor configurations following the install for Dorion Mode to be ready.

I wrote Saturday and Sunday and published, Simple Steps: Part 1 School Spirit Sunday evening my time. While it took a while to get it out, I enjoyed the process and looked forward to continuing to push through on the narrative to the present. I claimed on Monday, October 21st, I’d be through the series by the coming Sunday after four more posts.

Jacob also posted on Sunday and was a bit down on Monday when the enumeration of his technical work these last years was put to the side in lieu of curiosity about his weak arm. While he was thinking this weak arm was only a couple years in the making, it dawned on me that environment and his passions had contributed to this process being in development for most of his life. We had a long conversation Monday night discussing the depths over Cervezas at La Rana Dorada ((Local brew pub, means golden frog.)), which I reckon put him on good track for his interview/conversation with her Ladyship Tuesday.

My Tuesday involved further continuing my blogging quest, with one eye in the afternoon witnessing Jacob go through sharing his story through conversation and ultimately being accepted to this here Young Hands Club. We enjoyed a more celebratory than normal meal following our Tuesday night Junto (( While there’s quite a lot to be pissed off about living during these dark modern ages, it’s important to celebrate all wins, lest one becomes sad.)).

By Wednesday, I was back to flexing my blogging muscles to quickly realize I had some lumps to take from incorrectly discounting the complexity of the task at hand. I took a further step back to reflect and found curiosity in why I’d made the commitment in the first place. Was the commitment driven to protect a weak arm of my own ? I distilled my thoughts into an article of its own and was relieved at the patient yet assertive response I received.

I did as instructed over Saturday and Sunday and typed my handwritten outlines into blog format, while clarifying and expanding as thoughts arose through the process. I published the fabled outlines Sunday evening my time with quite a sense of relief.

The primary relief has been that of coming out of the shadows and opening myself up in the sunlight. I had been carrying the burden of imagining how my betters may judge me. My alter-ego ((I use this in the sense of false self. Whereas the ego processes reality, the alter-ego or false self, hallucinates a narrative as a short term coping mechanism for what it imagines reality may reveal.)) tended to assume a negative and beat me up ((From which the dorion-rule was coined.)) from the “safety” of the shadows. Sharing my history in a space explicitly visible to my bettors has allowed them, for the first time, to judge for themselves and liberated me from the hallucination of evasion.

The secondary relief has been the integrative nature of the blogging medium. I’ve found this relief to be similar to the sense I experienced when I picked up the habit of journaling. While I’ve found the practice of journaling to support one in processing his own experience across time and relate to himself, my method for doing so had been handwritten journals. While I’ve shared these with family and friends over the years, the blogging medium gives one much more leverage in comparison. For one, the linking and text search inherent to the blog allow for a referencing and sourcing ((On sourcing and referencing, can’t forget about that lesson I learned.)) tapestry to be weaved. For another, blogging engages the world and allows the article to unfold in the comments. These elements make the blog a greater integration medium, and what is a healthy mind if not an integrating process ?

I entered Tuesday’s interview/conversation with the liberating sense of acceptance. While I certainly preferred being taken in, I was rather certain there’d be no worse case of interdiction issued between myself and Jacob in the process. The worst case in my mind was I’d not be accepted now and I’d get my act together and reapply in 6 months or whatever ((I didn’t have anything to stand on that this scenario was possible, decided to stand on it anyway and control what I could control, which was to be present and communicate clearly.)). The ~3 hour conversation passed in a blink with the only tension stemming from the stakes being high and lack of practice delivering timely responses through the medium over such an interval. This was good tension, it signifies I’m on the edge growth requires. I walked away from the conversation energized and Jacob and I proceeded to have a few celebratory rounds with some Junto members.

While tribulations in TMSR these past weeks ((I registered in the WoT in July to see #trilema go dark a couple weeks later, followed by Pizarro and now currently processing seemingly irreconcilable differences between Mircea and Stanislov.)) haven’t been ideal, they are what they are. All I can do is prepare myself one step at a time to level up for opportunities with greater responsibilities, whatever they may be ((I did read BingoBoingo proposal for the Qntra jounraling short course. While interesting, the degree of change I’m going through at present indicates to me I need to be careful about not overextending myself. My coming plan for the week ahead will begin to approach that challenge.)).