Mea Vita: Carpe Diem: Life

Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts

Sunday, May 5, 2024

My Three Daily Life Goals

I just read Paul Nurse's book, "What is Life?" who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 2001 for his discoveries in protein molecules that control the division of cells in the cell cycle.

While reflecting on Nurse's book, I went through my personal notes on life. My personal notes are what Tiago Forte calls a 'second brain.' I came across my note on life from March 2013 where I detailed my daily goals.

Basically, when I wake up, I want my day to run as smoothly as possible while maintaining a responsibility to the long-term.

My Three Daily Goals in Life

1. I want to be happy.

2. I want to eradicate unhappiness in my life.

3. I want every day to run as smoothly as possible. No hassles.

Simplicity (the practice of minimalism) is key to my life philosophy.

Thursday, August 4, 2022

The Concept of Time

La Muse Verte Absinthe: A birthday gift to myself

Time is the school in which we learn,

Time is the fire in which we burn.

– Delmore Schwartz

On today, my birthday, I can't help but notice the passage of time.

But what is time? – I ask this question in a physical sense, not philosophically or metaphysically.

There are certain realities of time. While it is relative to space and energy, it moves at an absolute pace in any given frame of reference. Whether I'm here on Earth or outside an event horizon or traveling near the speed of light, time will always pass at the rate of one second, every second. In other words, when I look at my wristwatch, time will run perfectly normal, regardless of my motion.

We speak of time as being a fourth dimension of space, i.e. spacetime, but it's not "real" like the three dimensions of space. Rather, time is an emergent property. While we observe, in our personal experiences, cause and effect such as a glass breaking, we don't see that same, one way flow, at the subatomic level.

This is similar to ocean tides on Earth. There is no physical "tide property" of water. Tides only emerge when we collect a lot of it and introduce other forces such as gravity from the sun and moon along with the Earth's rotation, i.e. it's an emergent property.

What is Time?

Time is literally nothing more than the passage of events – it's neither energy nor physical. Think of it as hole flow in an electrical circuit. We measure time by the ticking of a watch's second hand. Imagine the universe's clock as the motion of atoms, such as an electron orbiting an atom's nucleus. The motion of matter marks time similar to a computer's clock ticking off cycles for the CPU. Different computer clocks move at different rates, and time also moves at different rates depending on how much energy is around it. In your frame of reference, a watch's second hand will always tick away one second, every second, no matter if you're at rest or moving close to the speed of light.

In the presence of huge amounts of energy, time literally slows down, from the perspective of an outside observer. This is simply due to the atoms, in the presence of large amounts of energy, struggling to move through this energy molasses. But, since all the atoms in this frame of reference experience the same slowing, everything looks normal. Imagine if all the clocks and watches (and atoms) in your home slowed down because they had dirt or grit in the "gears" – everything would continue to seem normal even though things are moving slower. But, to an outside observer, your passage of time would be different.

Time Travel?

So, is time travel is possible? Absolutely not. You can slow down how fast time passes, but that's about it; you can't speed it up. The concept of traveling through time to a different period makes as much sense as traveling through tides (or love, etc). While we know what causes the flow of the time or tides, it is, as I mentioned earlier, an emergent property.

For time travel to be possible, every particle in the universe would have to move in the opposite direction (backwards). Doing this would move the entire universe back to an earlier state that it was in. However, the atoms in your body would still need to move forward. So, while the universe is moving backwards, your being is moving forward and that would allow you to travel backwards in time. Then, at some point, to return to the present you left, you'd need to slow down all the particles in the universe and/or speed up the particle motion in your body to catch up.

Changing the state of the entire universe simply isn't possible. There is only one state of the universe, The Now.

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

The AI Challenge: Feeling and Understanding

A key goal of AI is to reproduce human behavior at scale. AI seeks to reason on input and explain on output while improving (learning) with each experience.

Computers are very good at processing data to turn it into information through logic. Computer systems can then store this information at a global level and attempt to turn it into knowlege by applying it locally. But it's currently very challenging for computers to turn knowledge into wisdom in a personal context.

AI Challenge

The challenge with artificial intelligence (AI) is that computers are inherently thinking machines, trying to imitate humans. However, people are not thinking machines, we are feeling machines. Simply look at a baby which experiences life through feeling, not thinking. If a baby's hungry or tired, they cry. When a baby's entertained, they laugh.

Teaching a robot how to walk is vastly different than teaching a baby how to walk. Robots use precision (digital) logic to balance and walk while babies feel their way to becoming bipeds. I'm not advocating that people always go with gut feelings – there's an old saying, don't believe everything you think – but it seems that we need a more fundamental layer that's missing from AI.

Saturday, December 25, 2021

Adventures in Absinthe

Absinthe fountain

In 1912, absinthe was banned in the U.S., for about a century, due to the misperception that it was poisonous or caused hallucinations. Now, much like the old fashioned, absinthe has regained popularity in recent years and the experience is worth the effort.

Absinthe is a rare drink in that it's not mixed by a bartender. Instead, it's prepared by the consumer, at their table, through a ritual known as louching where cold water is dripped over a sugar cube into a glass with absinthe. High end absinthe is typically more than 130 proof, so adding three to five parts water enhances the flavor while turning it from a deep green to a cloudy green that almost seems to glow.

Absinthe spoons

Absinthe Ritual

Louching begins with pouring about an ounce of absinthe into an absinthe glass. These glasses usually have a reservoir, or marking, on the bottom to make measuring the proper amount simple. An absinthe spoon is placed on the top of the glass with a sugar cube. The absinthe spoon typically looks like a cake cutter or pie serving knife with decorative slits. Cold water is then dripped onto the sugar which passes through the spoon and into the glass. The sugar water and absinthe emulsify as they mix in the glass giving it a distinctive cloudy, green look with a flavor similar to anisette, sambuca, or ouzo. The absinthe spoon has a point which makes it easy to stir any undissolved sugar in the glass' reservoir. That's the entire ritual – now drink up.

Louching

PSA: Never light absinthe or the sugar cube on fire. That's the equivalent of chugging a shot of top shelf, premium tequila with a lick of salt and bite of lemon. A couple of movies, in recent times, showed absinthe being lit and it caught on faster than eating Tide Pods.

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Seven Weeks of Solitude

It's been more than seven weeks since I last left my home for any reason. (Technically, I did venture a few feet into the street to put out the trash.)

As bad as it seems to be cooped up for several weeks, it pales in comparison to spending a year out at sea. But, I can’t really complain since I have everything I could need or desire in my home and yard.

So, it was time for me to finally venture out. There's only so much sun I can get on my hammock.

Sunday, March 29, 2020

COVID-19 Soundtrack

The purpose of a soundtrack is to pair the mood to events through music. My favorite composer of the late 20th century is Philip Glass. His compositions arouse deep, longing emotions. When listening, I envision a great hero reaching for the heavens but falling painfully short.

Until the number of active cases dramatically decreases, this will get worse before it gets better. What gets me through each day is the knowledge that there's absolutely no doubt this first wave will end by summer. At one point, either enough people have contracted COVID-19 so there are no new hosts to infect, or we contain it through isolation and quarantine. Regardless, each day puts us one day closer to the peak and one day closer to resuming social activities.

COVID-19 Soundtrack

Looking back at how much better off we were last week elicits Opening:
http://mobile.joemoreno.com/Opening.mp3

Thinking about this current week evokes Facades:
http://mobile.joemoreno.com/Facades.mp3

Wondering about next week feels like Closing: http://mobile.joemoreno.com/Closing.mp3

Here are all three compositions, just shy of 20 minutes, in a single track:
http://mobile.joemoreno.com/CovidSoundtrack.m4a

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Happy Hour

Happy hour with friends, lovers, and coworkers.

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Getting the Message Across

The New Yorker published an article, yesterday about convincing Boomer parents to take the coronavirus serious.

I've had conversations with my octogenarian mother, but it's not really sinking in. My cousin and I have been discussing the same issue that our other cousins are facing with their parent's. It's the same response we're hearing from our parents, "We can't just stay at home. We need to go out" and "We get stir crazy if we sit home too long."

A number of memes have begun circulating to address this.

We're not asking you storm the beach on D-Day. We're just asking you to stay home and sit on the couch.

Do you really need to go out to buy such-and-such? Would you go out to get it in the middle of a hurricane? Would you go out to get it in the middle of a blizzard? We're in a blizzard right now where the snow is invisible and it can kill you.

For anyone to go in public either means infecting others or getting infected themselves.

The COVID-19 cases we see reported, today, in real-time, are actually from a about week ago since the virus takes four to 14 days to incubate.

This past weekend, Italy updated their medical protocols so that people over 80 years old do not get a ventilator; instead, they get morphine. There simply aren't enough ventilators and there's no reason why that can't happen here once we run out.

Sunday, January 26, 2020

Celebrity Server Overload: Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant died in the crash of a helicopter he chartered, this morning. TMZ.com broke the news and the load brought down the TMZ servers... they couldn't respond to the traffic. And now, hours after his death, his Wikipedia page is highly unresponsive as people visit and edit it.

I got my first taste of managing extreme server load when I worked at Apple, after a Steve Jobs Keynote speech. But we always anticipated that load. When Michael Jackson died, in 2009, I was working with my Adjix startup and even simple URL redirects overloaded my servers.

When a celebrity unexpectedly dies, server load goes through the roof. I call it Celebrity Server Overload. You can plan for it to happen, you just don't know when it will happen. But you can scale up as the traffic grows.

The other end of the spectrum is when a business is brand new – they have no experience on scaling up. Facebook could manage their growth, in the early days, because they brought on new users one college campus at a time. But even smart developers can't handle a high load, off the bat, without any past data points. We saw this with Twitter's fail whale and the launch of Obamacare. Semper paratus, or as we used to say in the Boy Scouts, Be Prepared.

Kobe Bryant: August 23, 1978 – January 26, 2020.

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Happy 2020! It's Good to be Alive!

Sometimes it's good to be "unremarkable."

As I labored through my sunset run, today, I recalled the military axiom, "Pain's a good thing, it means you're not dead.” Which reminded me that 20 years ago I had just finished my final round of chemotherapy for late-stage, widespread cancer (stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma).

My last chemo treatment was in December 1999 and, after five years of checkups, my prognosis was cured --- not remission, but fully cured --- to the point that I went back on active duty in the Marines in 2003 and deployed with them to East Africa in 2005. Today, it’s literally like I was never sick. I am lucky.

Human Being, Not Human Doing

Cancer, and my father's unexpected death in 2007, gave me a deeper insight and perspective on life. At that point, I realized I could take two or three years off from corporate America. But I didn't expect a few years to turn into more than a decade of retirement.

People ask me, "What did you do during all that time off?"

My answer's simple, "Nothing," followed up with, "What do you do on weekends? That's what I did most everyday."

Looking back, from one mile high.

Looking back on all that time off, I see that I learned how to be a human being instead of a human doing. While I did focus on my own personal projects like learning to fly, creative writing, and volunteering, it was my ability to be fulfilled while not accomplishing a single task, in a day. Some might call that lazy; I call it the simple life. La dolce vita.

While the pursuit of happiness is our unalienable right, it does require more than that to be fulfilled. It requires meaning and here's how to make meaning.

Carpe diem and live the dash.

Update: Something I completely failed to mention was I always knew my retirement wouldn't be permanent. Sooner or later, I'd have to return to full time work which I just did in August, and I'm loving it.

Friday, December 13, 2019

Cryotherapy

-225°F

I tried cryotherapy for the first time, today. It's basically the opposite of a sauna. Instead of extreme heat, it's extreme cold.

How cold? About -225°F. Yup, two hundred twenty-five degrees below zero for three minutes.

If pain's a good thing because it means you're not dead then I felt very alive at the end of my three minutes. The hairs on my legs were frosty brittle. I don't know if it had any health benefits – but what are the health benefits of a sauna or steam room? If heat is relaxing, then cold is invigorating.

Three minutes cost $25 and, without an appointment, I was in and out in less than 15 minutes. I only wore my underwear, gloves, and flip flops with socks (not exactly a fashion statement).

The woman administering my treatment, who coincidentally had the same last name as me, chatted with me throughout my session. Probably to make sure I didn't pass out. It was chilly.

Saturday, October 5, 2019

Tiny House: The Story Behind the Story

This past Tuesday, I was tickled when a local news TV station asked me to share my thoughts about a 200 sq ft furnished shed which was being offered for rent for more than $1,000/month.

Throughout this week, my interview was syndicated to about 100 news outlets. Friends and colleagues, some of whom I hadn't had contact with for many years, reached out to me to say that they saw it on CNN or San Jose Mercury News to name a few.

The Story Behind the Story

About six years ago, I learned that the story, behind the story, is sometimes as interesting as the story itself. Friends who contacted me wanted to know how I ended up on the news. Unlike last time, I did not contact the news. I was simply walking home from a local bakery, with some fresh bread, when I saw a guy recording himself on a video camera. Initially, since he was standing in front of a house with a "For Sale" post, I thought he was a real estate agent.

As I walked by, he asked me if I knew about the shed that was being offered for rent for more than $1,000/month. I told him that I heard about it, a day earlier, when the posting went viral on Reddit. He then introduced himself and asked if he could interview me for his story. Of course, I said yes. He placed a mic on my shirt, turned on the camera, and stood next to it while we had a casual conversation. And then, viola, I was on the Channel 10 Six O'Clock News.

Friday, April 26, 2019

No Nonsense Marketing

The Marines are excellent at no-nonsense marketing. It's about being direct and setting the expectation.

In June 1985, there was a TWA terrorist hijacking which was my Pearl Harbor moment. That was the moment when I pledged to join the Marines. I knew nothing about the military; not even the difference between the enlisted and officer ranks. But I wanted to do my part to make a difference.

The local recruiting office housed all four military services. The Marines' office was in the back, so I had to pass by the Army, Navy, and Air Force offices on my way. As soon as I walked in the front door, a soldier stopped to offer me help.

"I'm looking to join the Marines or something," I said, shrugging my shoulders as I said the last word.

"Or something? Have you considered the Army?" he asked as he guided me into his office. He could tell I was looking for a challenge so he fired up a 12" LaserDisc to show me exciting clips of Ranger and Airborne training. For about two hours, that afternoon, this Army recruiter told me about what the Army could be. He convinced me take the ASVAB military entrance exam, later that week.

After we finished, I left the Army office and headed to the Marines' recruiting office where I met SSgt Meehan; a Marine I remained in touch with to this very day. The SSgt, who, at 27 years of age seemed to have the wisdom and experience of a senior citizen. He sat me down next to his desk, lit his pipe, and said, "I don't have any fancy LaserDiscs to show you videos. At this point, I have no idea what you're qualified to do, so I can't make any promises. First you need to take the ASVAB. Before you do that, you have to take my 30 minute practice exam."

SSgt Meehan led me to a small room where a couple other potential recruits were taking exams. I don't recall the details of the exam, but it wasn't too difficult. When I completed it, the SSgt reviewed my answers and told me that we could proceed to official ASVAB as soon as he could schedule it.

"Can the same ASVAB exam results be used for all the military services?" I asked the SSgt.

"Yes."

I explained to him about my soft commitment with the Army.

"If you want to be a Marine then I would like you to schedule that test with me," replied SSgt Meehan.

As I headed out of the building, I stopped by the Army's office and gently backed out of my ASVAB commitment.

"I can tell," said the soldier I had spent two hours with, earlier that day. "You're gonna be a Marine."

In my mind, I was committed to joining the Marines and the SSgt's direct and practical approach was the icing on the cake.

Sunday, January 6, 2019

True Talent

True talent is a force multiplier that can’t be taught. Talented people aren’t driven by discipline. They are driven by passion and love. Discipline can be a part of it (Tiger Woods has to practice) but it's the talent that's most important.

As kids, we’re taught that skills are what we need to success in life, and that’s correct for the average person. But truly talented people are the ones who earn millions of dollars.

In 1996, the Chief of Naval Operations, who’s the most senior member of the U.S. Navy, committed suicide. The Navy didn't skip a beat. Michael Jackson dies, and hundreds of millions of dollars are lost in concert revenue. That's the difference between talent and skill.

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Happiness: The Unalienable Right

In September, I spoke at a memorial service for my fallen Naval Academy classmates. While writing down my thoughts, I speculated what our dearly departed would want for those they left behind. My conclusion was happiness.

USNA 1993 Reunion Brunch Following Our Memorial Service.

As my first piece of 2019, I thought it appropriate to talk about happiness this New Year's Day. It may seem like a minor thing, but it is an unalienable right proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.

We have life. We have liberty. Those rights were given to us. But it's up to us to pursue our individual happiness.

We all want to be happy. But the trick is figuring out how to achieve it. I've spoken a lot about simplicity, but that pertains to things like systems and products, not people.

While the recipe for happiness is simple, it does require some focus and attention.

Meaning

A life of happiness begins with making meaning, which is a very personal process. Making meaning and being happy requires a few things.

1. Belonging

In order to belong, you'll need candid relationships with others where you can be yourself, not your beliefs.

2. Purpose

Purpose is simply using your strengths to serve others. While a person can have multiple purposes, it's a personal choice regarding which ones to pursue.

3. Transcendence

Transcendence is simply something that lifts you to a higher calling. In its basic sense, transcendence is an existence or experience beyond typical. I don't mean it to represent metaphysical, paranormal, or supernatural.

A higher calling is something that drives a person beyond what's typical, due to their devotion to duty or expectation. It could be writing, religion, military, medicine, parenting, etc. It involves giving up personal gains for the greater good. As one example, it could be pro bono work like open-source coding or free legal advice.

4. Storytelling

Storytelling is the story you tell yourself, about yourself (and, perhaps, others). The beauty of telling your story is that you are the author and you can edit and change the story as you live it.

Armed with this knowledge, I encourage you to go out and perform all manner of things thereunto pertaining in order to be happy and live a meaningful life with a health dose of love.

Carpe diem.

⁂

The following is my memorial service speech.

U.S. Naval Academy Chapel.

We are here today to remember our classmates who are no longer with us.

SQUEEZE
And we are reminded that they each had to squeeze their entire life into a shorter period of time than we have been given. We’ve outlived them.

SAD
We sit here and allow ourselves to be sad.
And that’s OK.
We cannot separate our memory of them from the empty sadness it brings us.
To do otherwise would not be human or compassionate.
It’s OK to be sad.

INSPIRE
But we didn’t come here, this morning, to only be sad as we remember them.
When we look back at their lives, it should inspire us to enjoy our own life more.
It should remind us to live in the present.
To enjoy the moment.
To enjoy the simple things that we encounter every day.

DASH
We know the date our fallen classmates were born.
And we know the date that they left us.
And that their entire life;
All of our lives;
Is represented by that dash in between those two dates that define us.

LIFE IS SHORT
It's not only that life is so short, but also that we’re dead for so long.
So, what advice might our fallen classmates give us, today, after we leave our reunion and go home, back to our daily routines?

HAPPINESS
And my answer is happiness.
Whatever makes you happy while maintaining a responsibility to the long-term.
We don’t pay enough attention to our own happiness.
But it’s important.
We shouldn’t forget that our country was built for it, literally.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We have life.
We have liberty.
It’s up to each of us to pursue our happiness.

So, we remember our fallen classmates, today, with fondness, respect, and love; and with the sadness that they left us too early. And, as I mentioned earlier, it’s okay to allow yourself to be sad, this morning, and then pursue your own happiness while we live the dash between the two most important dates that define our lives.

Thank you and carpe diem.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

I'm Excited

Only twice has my Apple Watch warned me that my heart rate was elevated above 120 bpm while I was inactive. Now this may sound ridiculous, but both times it was caused by a personal "Apple" event.

The first time it happened I was standing still for awhile when I received a text message that my HomePod had been delivered to my doorstep on release day. I was initially concerned about my elevated heart rate, since this had never happened before. After some thought (and no chest pains or palpitations) I concluded it was the good news about the HomePod delivery that spiked my pulse.

The second time it happened I was halfway through a flight from San Jose to San Diego. I was reading several articles where Jony Ive was detailing the excitement he feels when tackling new problems as he explained his design process and philosophy. While reading his words, I could sense his excitement without realizing it and my Apple Watch alerted me to my spiked heart rate. I quickly reached the same conclusion as the previous time, plus, I tend to have a very high max heart rate that's over 200 bpm.

I guess I truly and deeply get excited over Apple. I'm sure there are others.

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Fear, Free Press, and the First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

– First Amendment to the United States Constitution

Foreword

We're at the point where entertainment has become more real than reality and we now suffer from information obesity.

Exercise: Fill in the blank:
"Houston, we__________ a problem."

Summary

TV news should make us better informed citizens; instead, it's making us unnecessarily more anxious. Here's why that is, and my personal solution for that problem.

Freedom of the Press

Why is a free press so important? Like the rest of the Constitution, its primary purpose is to give rights to individual citizens while limiting the power of the federal government. Freedom of the press is a key part of this right to prevent the government from interfering with the distribution of information and opinions.

Nowadays, it seems that the news has moved away from distributing information and, instead, it is predominantly supplying opinions disguised as news. Rather than telling citizens the facts, the media (especially cable TV news) seems to be telling people what to think, instead of how to think, which has the effect of dumbing us down.

The news media does this because we, as citizens, get lazy. Simply put, we now view TV news more as a form of entertainment than as a source of unbiased information. Journalists have, effectively, become agents of the news rather than reporters of it. Many so-called news reports on TV have been poisoned with opinions skewed to their audience's beliefs. This is clearly seen on both the left and right, liberal and conservative, Democratic and Republican slants on news articles causing more and more division among the population. Rather than a single pluralistic America, it's clear that there are commercial and political advantages to the businesses and organizations who participate in increasing this polarization. Their gains are our losses. While it might be easy to point a finger at one side, the reaction of the other side seems to do very little for détente. Rather than trying to empathetically understand another's view point, we, all to frequently, shoot back with reasons they're wrong. This causes the other party to become defensive and dig their heals in. Many times, the reality of both sides --- why both sides think their opinion is the right one --- has a lot to do with context and their time horizon; short-term thinking vs. long-term thinking. But that's only one small point of a bigger problem.

No Longer Informing Citizens

As Americans, we've become over-entertained with news resulting in us not becoming informed citizens.

Here's a test for anyone, from a casual news citizen to a TV "news junkie" (typically, news junkies are people who seem well-informed, usually due to a fear of missing out):

1. What information do you miss out on by getting your news from reading (articles online, in a newspaper, or magazine) instead of watching TV? (In other words, reading the news typically delivers information with more logic and less emotion compared to watching it, regardless if it's CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, etc.)

2. Even more importantly, how well-informed are we when we pick up a voting ballot for the first time?

For me, the answer to #2 is that I feel very uninformed. I have no idea who most of my local, state, and federal politicians are when their names appear on my ballot. I'm hard pressed to name more than a few members of my city council or county supervisors except for when I have direct contact with them. We know very little about our local politics for many reasons, such as it's boring or there's less advertising revenue from local news compared to national or international sensational stories; frequently, the latter have virtually no impact on us.

The rescue of the 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped in a cave in Thailand grabbed national attention. But why should I, as an American, living in San Diego, be more affected by a story in Thailand while ignoring the plight of the others in my own city? The answer to this question is important. In this article, NPR boiled the answer down to one word: Drama.

Drama is more entertaining than simple, important facts.

Reducing TV News Anxiety

How do we reduce the unnecessary anxiety we get from TV news? In order to do that, we have to consume less of it --- much less of it --- while focusing on more impactful news in our lives, which is the less entertaining local news.

The first step I took, many years ago, was to simply not subscribe to any TV services (I only have an Internet cable subscription). This Vox video explains how TV news sucks us in especially during terrorist attacks or mass shootings. We get spun up, full of emotions and fear, which typically causes us to think irrationally. Everyone, from the NRA to the Brady Campaign (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.) wants to reduce school mass shootings. While this is of paramount importance, we seem to overlook any significant effort to reduce the number of child deaths, each day, due to car accidents which far exceeds the number of mass shooting child deaths. Child car deaths only seems to come to a mind when we, as a parent, become concerned about our teenage kid and their fresh, new driver license.

Since I don't have live TV news, I simply read my news online. Lately, I've started to watch short clips on the Apple TV Twitter app (which behaves significantly different than Twitter on the web or the Twitter mobile app). However, I've noticed that even these short video news clips on Twitter raise my level of anxiety without providing any actionable news; and these clips certainly don't make it easier for me to pick candidates on my voting ballot.

Simply ask yourself why you're watching so much news? Are the key politicians that you constantly see in the national news helping to change your opinion; or is that news simply reaffirming your past voting decision which is something that you can't go back and undo?

Sunday, July 29, 2018

Unhealthy Mental Health

A silver-painted woman with mental health issues

The Past

Over the past few years, I watched a friend's mental health deteriorate to the point he could no longer live with his wife and kids. He ended up living on the streets, trying to get by. This is the second time, in a decade where this has happened to him. Both times, his paranoid schizophrenia improved, significantly, after he was arrested and institutionalized at a mental health facility for months of treatment.

After his most recent recovery, I bumped into him in Cupertino where we spoke for about ten minutes. He's never acknowledged any hint of his mental health issues – in other words, denial.

The Present

One key symptom that seems to make mental health worse, for the individual, is denial – a failure to even acknowledge there's an issue. A person's private life should remain as private as the individual wants it to be. However, relationships imply responsibilities. If a person is unable to maintain a friendship, then the friendship will fade away.

The part that frustrates me is I have to guess why people, with unacknowledged mental health issues, act the way that they do. From my point of view, it begins when they can't speak on the phone, even though they used to. Although texting helps, it can be hours or days until even a simple text message is answered.

I count myself as very fortunate that I don't "stress out." Knock on wood, but I have yet to experience depression, anxiety, a panic attack, etc. Many years ago, I would have attributed this to my Marine Corps experiences where I had to learn to handle many different situations that my civilian peer age group did not. Today, I realize that I'm simply very lucky.

How could Robin Williams succumb to depression? Replace the word 'depression' with 'cancer' and no one would even ask. But, mental health issues have so much stigma that individuals don't want to acknowledge it, let alone discuss it with others.

When I was faced with a life threating illness, I told as many of my friends and relatives that I could. My thinking was, "If I was a friend or relative, I would want to know that Joe's sick."

The Future

I currently have several very close relatives and friends, that I've know my entire adult life, who have some type of debilitating mental health issue which is completely unacknowledged. In two cases, it's worsened by alcoholism, which is another disease that is too frequently ignored. I now recognize the pattern. They lose touch, usually completely, and can't communicate. It seems to begin with a social anxiety. Very frequently, plans – even plans they've initiated – get abruptly cancelled with no explanation.

Now, I try to figure out what to do to help and my conclusion is that I can do very little, especially when they refuse to engage in any type of even light social conversation. For those I know who have admitted their mental health issues to me, it's much easier for me to lend a sympathetic ear. For the others, it's easy for me to mistakenly think that their condition is their fault and it's hard for me to sit back and watch the downward spiral.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

How to Turn Anxiety Into Excitement

I'm coaching some speakers for next week's San Diego Startup Week 2018. It's not practical to think you can move from anxiety to calmness, no matter what you tell yourself.

But, this video discusses a realistic solution that simply involves saying, aloud, "I am excited," which redirects your anxiety. Give it a try, it can't hurt.

Monday, June 4, 2018

Rock 'n' Roll Marathon Fun

Yesterday, I had a little fun at the San Diego Rock 'n' Roll Marathon with this video trick I saw a few years ago. This technique simply required someone to follow me as I walked backward while others walked and ran by me. A quick import into iMovie on my desktop, followed by choosing the rewind effect, produced the following video.