Thanksgiving 2011

For quite a while now, I've felt dissatisfied with my life, that I'm just existing rather than actually living. Being lost in middle age is quite common, apparently. In fact, as I look around me at my friends who graduated the same time as I did, I see them all grinding away at their jobs, taking care of their families and just...well, existing. Just as I was merely existing.

Well, that was a few months back. Somehow or another, I must have decided to move away from that boring, mundane life because I have no recollection of saying to myself, "Enough is enough, let's start living!"

Today, I'm looking at what I'm doing and I'm...content. I'm doing quite a lot now:

• I've put myself out there with my bagpipe practice; in fact, I'm hoping to audition for a pipe band soon (where soon is sometime in a year or so).
• I'm also learning the ocarina and will be performing in-game.
• Oh, did I mention that I've joined a Live Action Role Play group? Yep, going to be performing in-game with my ocarina - should be glorious fun!
• At work, I've received authorization to look for internal transfer positions and I'm enrolled in management training.
• Professionally, I'm also working with a major organization in the States to open up an affiliate chapter for the branch of management I'm going to be involved in.

For the first time in my life, I can feel music flowing through me. I picked up an ocarina and within a day, I was able to play a tune of mid-level complexity. Finally, I can breathe beauty into this world once more!

I have a busy life. A crazy, stressful busy life but one where I'm contributing and where my contributions are valued for the most part. So for this Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for my dear family and being able to be a part of their lives but I'm also thankful for the fact that my life is full. No, I won't cure cancer or make some amazing discovery. My name isn't going to be in the history books. But I would hope that it will be in the hearts of the people I love and care for.

Full immersion

*** Note to my dear sis and possibly Susan - you may want to skip reading this post if you think you may want to join in sometime ***

Live action role-playing (LARP) folk don't get a lot of respect from the gaming community, mostly because of videos like these show things out of context. Even though I'm a geekette and proud of it, I've always found LARPers to be...well, kind of out there.

This past weekend, a dear friend from out of town traveled halfway across the country to attend a LARP event with the local group. She invited me to come along and although warning bells were going off, I decided to be a good sport and agreed to come.

The event started off with me getting very lost trying to find the unmarked campground through some very vague instructions. It wasn't a good sign, that.

When I got there, I was shown to the cabin I was going to be staying in. My heart sank. Now, you have to understand, I'm a city girl. That means that if I'm too far away from wi-fi access or can't find a Starbucks nearby, I'd be lost. This...was a cabin. A co-ed cabin. With bunk beds. Yeah...not impressed but I was warned I'd be roughing it this weekend, so I plonked my stuff on a bunk and got dressed in garb.

Oh yes, you have to dress in appropriate costume, which in this case was something roughly medieval European-ish. There was a nice chap in a Roman centurion uniform but aside from him, most other folk were pretty much what you'd find on the set of Lord of the Rings. Pretty elaborate costumes too, so these folk take it seriously.

The game officially started and as a new player, we had to roleplay coming into town. A town under constant attack by the local denizens of the dark. Y'know what? I've walked down dark trails a million times before in computer RPGs and if I were beset by monsters, I'd just kill them and move on. This...this was different. I was on a dark path strewn with rocks, shrubs, fallen tree trunks with no real sources of illumination other than a dim lantern. There were noises all around us where every rustle, every movement of the leaves may herald a sudden attack by the enemy. And attack us they did. Over and over again. We lost several people (i.e. their characters were killed during the attacks, not that they were truly lost in the real sense) culminating in a run back to town when it was clear we couldn't win. Coming into town was interesting as well, because we nearly got skewered by the town guards who thought we were the enemy. Tired, weary and half-frightened out of our wits, we made it back to town. Only to be attacked over and over again - the town wasn't safe at all.

So began a glorious weekend of roleplaying. I wasn't playing a fighting character so RP is pretty much all I can do. During the course of the weekend, I nearly got killed once (in-game, not for real) and saved dozens of lives. After the first night, it became a full-immersion event, something I never thought was possible. Fog rolled in during one of the nights too, adding a very real sense of creepiness to the environment. Words simply cannot describe how one feels when you're all alone in the forest, separated from your group, in pitch darkness only to hear the moan of a zombie right behind you. Dear gods, I was frightened out of my wits that weekend, so much so that I was dreading the fall of night because that was when they came.

Would I go back? Absolutely. Do I feel silly LARPing? Only for the first couple of hours. It's so well run that when I say full-immersion, I *mean* full immersion. The folks were amazing as well, both in-game and out-of-game. Even though it's make-believe, after surviving a massive in-game onslaught, you can't help but like the person who saved your in-game life, regardless of whether that's who she is in real life or not.

The one thing I have to be careful of is to keep my sense of balance and moderation - the full-immersion factor can confuse things a bit.

Mobile blogging

This is a short test blog entry to see if my mobile blogging app has been properly set up.

*makes odd waving gesture at you*

This is not the entry you are looking for. Move along. :)

When Googling fails

I'm a knowledge worker. For most of my life, I earned my keep by herding electrons into specific configurations to make something-or-another work a certain way. It's a little weird when I stop to think about it - the majority of what I've done isn't tangible, not directly. Yes, I've written device drivers that will translate physical movement to useful data. I've enabled people to shuffle electronic proxies of their wealth around. Almost everything I've done in my adult work life has been virtual.

So, when I recently discovered just how fun radio-controlled micro-helicopters can be, I dove into it with a passion. I am now the very proud owner of a red E-flite Blade MSR that I've named Anisoptera (dragonfly), or Ani for short. I'm having a hoot with it, although the kids are less enthusiastic as they quietly don their safety goggles and discreetly put away any high-value breakable toys of theirs whenever I throttle up Ani, usually with a giggle of delight.

This morning, a strong gust blew in through the screen doors as I was hovering Ani and blew her into a wall. It's the hardest crash she's had so far and I couldn't throttle down in time. When I picked her up, everything seemed fine other than a minor scratch to one of her main rotors. Unfortunately, when I tried taking off again, she banked uncontrollably to the left. Trimming didn't help. Nothing I did helped.

Even Googling didn't yield any answers. I had a horrible sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach. Now I knew I was in deep trouble. :(

So, I decided to return to basic principles and started running tests on Ani. Upon inspection, I discovered that the rotor disc appeared off-axis under power. I knew from normal operation that she was supposed to have a slightly off-axis rotor disc. Unfortunately, I didn't remember which side it was supposed to cant towards. However, I'm pretty sure by now that it's a misalignment except that I had no idea how to fix it. Oh well, back to basic principles again - I started tracing the mechanism from the rotor blades down to the main gear and motor. I did notice an unnatural slant to the entire rotor assembly from the swashplate up, so that eliminated my original knee-jerk panic response of "OMG, WE HAVE TO REPLACE THE MAIN ROTORS!!!"

I checked the main drive shaft to ensure it was straight; it was. The rest of the mechanism was pretty solid - it wasn't really meant to move and everything was screwed together quite well. Not finding any culprits, I started working my way back up, from the main gear to the rotors. Still nothing. Tired now, I took off my magnifying visor and made a cup of coffee. Returning to the worktable, I took a sip of my coffee, glanced at Ani...and there it was - the swashplate had popped out of alignment in the back with one of its very tiny securing nubby prongs completely outside of its seating fork. Very carefully and gently, I popped it back into place and went through power-up and takeoff procedures.

Ani's flying again. And the kids are scattering in her wake. It's a good day. :)

Paradigm shift

I'm turning some (large) multiple of 10 years of age this year. My birthday isn't for quite a few months yet but I like to plan ahead. :) Regardless, I'm doing my once-a-decade review of my life, which has the longest time-horizon of them all, a lookahead of 20 years in addition to a decade's worth of review.

Have I done as much as I had hoped to? Simply put, no. I lost sight of where I wanted my life to go when the kids entered my life and I've been merely existing since then. Of course, my life took a very strange sharp turn a few years back that was massively disruptive not only to myself but to my family. Thankfully, the paths we've taken has lead us to a stable and better place than where we were back then. It's been tough but we're there now.

Which leads me back to the central theme of my introspection: what now? Well, the most urgent need is for me to figure out what I want to do, career-wise. I have the following options:

1. Project management
2. Program management
3. Product management
4. Product development

Project management is what I had been doing previously. It's why I'm striving towards my PMP certification. Simply put, a project manager ensures that a project is successful and this is a lot tougher than it seems. Out of the lot, this is the most versatile option; there will always be a need for project managers. The detail-oriented side of me *loves* this role and it remains a very viable and solid choice.

Program management is what I'm currently doing. Getting my PMP is the first step towards getting my PgMP certification. The two are not directly related but having my PMP first establishes the foundation for the type of work that a program manager will run. A program manager ensures that projects directed at the same or similar strategic goal are managed as a program, where each project and its deliverables are coordinated efficiently to achieve the best possible program outcome. I *love* this role. It's a blend of operational and strategic needs that makes my heart sing with joy; it's air traffic control with projects and anyone who knows me knows how much I enjoy juggling things like that. I love managing complex systems and this is about as complex as it gets.

Product management was what I had been doing some time back. This is about taking a product and ensuring that it continues to delight its customers year over year, release after release. It deals with the needs of customer, understanding the market and staying one step ahead of the competition. When done well, it makes a product a household name, like 3M's Post-It notes, or Xerox machines or the iPhone. When done poorly...it can bring down a company. This tickles the part of me that wants to nurture and grow things. It gives me a nice comfy warm glowy feeling inside. It's still cerebral and detail-oriented but it also gives me warm fuzzy feelings.

New product development is what I'm supposed to be doing at the moment but due to several factors, it's not something I'm allowed to run with yet. NPD is about understanding the needs of the customer before the customer even knows they have a need. It's about bringing revolutionary products to market, things that will change our lives as we know it. The microwave oven is one example. Remote entry/locking systems for cars. Personal video recorders. All the little things that we now take for granted that we could not have conceived of 20 years ago. This position is one of the hardest to find employment for but with the right person in the right company, has the potential to change the world. This is the good bits of all three of the previous jobs rolled into one plus it allows me to let my imaginative and innovative self to roam free. If I found this position in the right company, I'd relocate to the ends of the world to do it.

So...what to do? Right now, I'm not sure but at least I have 4 options to choose from. I'm okay with where I am at the moment but this is not about the here and now, it's about where I want to be 20 years from now. I think I know but it'll be really tough to get there.

In the past, I've always separated what I love to do and what I did for work, thinking that if I worked on something I loved, I'd get bored with it eventually and that love would go away. Looking around, the truly great people, the ones who make a difference are the ones who work on what they love. I've now come to believe that I've been mistaken about this, that I should be working on what I love so I can bring all that passion and enthusiasm to bear and make a real difference. A significant paradigm shift, one which if I'm mistaken, might destroy part of what I love. I've decided to take the plunge though - I've always believed that if one is to burn, one might as well burn as brightly as possible even for just a short time rather than smouldering dimly for a longer time before extinguishing into darkness.

Stay tuned. I hope to make decent headway on my dreams over next few years.

Sneaking about

I've always enjoyed playing at stealth. When I was a child, my dad would take afternoon naps and, being the stereotypical Head of Household (tm), he decreed that Everyone Shall Be Quiet so he can have his forty winks. This decree was enforced by corporal punishment so I had a very strong incentive to comply.

Now, staying completely silent meant that all work and play stopped when my dad took his nap. Imagine me being a young, hyperactive sort - obviously, this didn't work for me. So, I learnt how to sneak about the house, tiptoeing quietly around, learning how to pluck specific toys out of whatever pile they were found in with nary a peep. I managed it quite well too and was only caught a handful of times, if that. Along the way, I learned how to be very nimble (good for sneaking around sleeping family members), how to muffle sound, how to open doors and drawers quietly and many other skills best suited for a career in cat burglary.

Fast forward a couple of decades and you'd find me an avid gamer as I fritted my precious private time away playing computer games while I was a university student. My favourite games have always been first-person sneakers and submarine simulations. I didn't really put it together back then but I really really REALLY derive a great deal of joy from sneaking about. Actually, as I'm typing this, I'm giggling softly to myself as I've just finished playing an old computer game that required a lot of tactical sneaking about to win.

Fast forward to the present day. I still play some computer games but not as much as before. I do sneak up on the kids quite a bit (all in fun) and more often than not, I'm successful in popping up behind them unnoticed. I try not to sneak up on them when they're carrying liquids though as it gets...messy. Of course, they try to sneak up on me too although they've mostly abandoned that in lieu of outflanking me instead. My ballet has allowed me to increase my level of stealthiness as I'm now almost back to where I was when I tiptoed around as a child trying not to wake my parents. However, where I derive the greatest amount of joy is in stealthily getting things done at work.

You see, I'm in an odd role that most folks in the company don't quite get. That's not entirely true, it's more like this:

• They understand that there are problems
• They understand that I'm there to fix said problems
• They know they can't fix their problems
  
• They know I can fix them because I've already fixed many long-standing issues
  
• They're not really comfortable with someone else (me) fixing their problems

So, I've had to stealthily fix the stickier problems without being seen as the one fixing them. In fact, the really sticky problems require no one to fix them, i.e. no attributable source for the fix. It's a bit of a joke because everyone knows I'm the one who's pulling the strings to solve the issues, it's just that they'd feel more comfortable if it wasn't someone outside their team that's fixing them.

Political stealthiness - it fills me with much squee! I'm not sure what all this says about me and how I tick but what the hey, my close friends already think I'm an odd duck so this probably won't shock them much.

Subcultures

I used to be an amateur astronomer. We're an odd bunch of people, nervously glancing at the sky as the evening approaches, muttering imprecations at clouds and obsessively checking the meteorological sites to see if there will be clear skies for the night. We'd rush home, pack our beloved telescopes and kit into our cars and brave the last bit of rush hour traffic for remote sites far away from the annoying city lights and its photonic pollution. When we arrived on the site, we'd set up our equipment, dig out our dinners and dined on food even as the mosquitoes dined on us. Those of us who are early birds will chit-chat about our recent observations or equipment, still glancing up every now and then to pray that the clouds stay away. Then, someone will quietly comment, "Yep, there's Sirius up there" and we'd all slowly scatter to our own stations to calibrate our now-cooled scopes. We're a solitary bunch, we brothers and sisters of sky science. As night falls, conversations stop or at least tone down to a near-inaudible mutter. There is the sky and there is you; we are all intimately aware and in awe of the fact that photons that have traveled billions of years over unimaginable distances will end their journey upon our retinas that night. We, all of us, are mesmerized by the terrible beauty that is our universe. Slowly, ever so slowly, one by one will quietly pack up and leave the area, making sure that no white light leaks anywhere to spoil the night vision of those remaining behind. Eventually, the last one packs up too and the night's session is over.

Our lives are intersections of the many subcultures that we belong to. Our workplace has a culture. Our families have our own cultural norms. Our hobbies have their own subculture. Each with its own rules, with its own rituals (whether we are conscious of them as ritual or not) and its own challenges and rewards. How many subcultures do you belong to? I suspect you may be somewhat surprised if you started counting...

Hospitals

I had my surgery a little over a week ago. I spent the night in the hospital and I'm now back at home to recover.

I've been in hospitals a lot. I'd really rather that I didn't. This time though, it was an elective surgical procedure so I chose to be there.

Being in a hospital causes me to have mixed feelings about it. Generally, being in a hospital is a bad thing and for the most part, it is. On the other hand, being in the hospital has also given my life back and in one case, gave me a whole new life. They're not places where I want to spend my summer holidays at but at the same time, I'm glad that when I needed to be there, it was there for me to be at.

There is always a chance that my life will end in a hospital, as it does for so many others. I guess that if I had to choose a way to go, passing on peacefully in my sleep would be at the top of my list but failing that, dying in the hospital isn't a bad way to go either - at least there's someone around who has pain management solutions available.

Surgery

I'm undergoing surgery today. I'm already in that zone where I can't eat or drink anything at all until the surgery is over. Unlike the previous ones (and there have been far too many), this one is an elective, meaning that I'm choosing to go for it instead of it being medically prescribed. Come to think of it, this is my first true elective surgery. Assuaging my conscience that I'm not truly a narcissist is the fact that in some areas of the world, it is a medically prescribed surgery (just not where I live) for folks like me.

I'm always nervous before I go in for surgery. I think everyone does. This time, it's weighing a little heavier on me because it's not strictly a necessity. Do I harbour doubts whether it's the right thing to do? Yes, but only a little bit - this is something I've been intending to do for years and it wasn't until recently that I realized that the dissatisfaction in not dealing with it was colouring other areas of my life and affecting my relationship with a few others.

It's expensive as all surgeries are. I'm really looking forward to getting things corrected though. Thinking positive thoughts for me today, please?

Dieting

I'm back on a diet again, this time in an effort to rein in my weight as well as prepare for my start in aerial silks. Over the last few months, I've been under intense stress at work and haven't been eating well which resulted in me gaining a few more pounds that I cared for.

It's nothing radical, a combination of calorie counting, portion management and exercise. In short, a general awareness of what I'm feeding myself with. It's served me well in the past as I'm not planning on dropping a lot of weight quickly but rather a gentle drop while my body adjusts. My goals this time are far more ambitious though so I'll be consulting my family doctor this time around.

I've been cutting down on the amount of meat I'm consuming and upping my portions of vegetables, fruits and grains. I'm *starving* but it doesn't feel too bad - this is expected as I'm exerting control over how much I eat. Surprisingly, I feel happier despite being hungry most of the time. I'm assuming this is a good thing.

I don't expect to be thin but being able to fit back into my dresses from 2 years back would be a nice goal, eh?

Courage (part 2)

Some of you have been asking what decision I've made and as this isn't going to stay private very long if all of you are asking, I figure I might as well bite the bullet and discuss it here.

I'm planning on doing some aerial training, specifically with tissu and rope. It'll require a high level of fitness so it's a goal within a goal for me. If you're not familiar with this form of performance art, here's an example. Of course, I'm not going to be able to do this anytime soon but it's my hope that I'll be able to do it eventually. Yes, I'm going to get proper training for it. No, I don't know if I'm fit enough to do it at all, so we'll have to see. This is a natural extension for me from ballet and I get to explore all three dimensions with it so it generates all sorts of *squee* feelings in me.

If I'm able to do this and do it well, I can finally say that running away with the circus will be a viable career choice. ;)

Courage

I've been doing a lot of introspection lately, mainly because I know I'm just drifting through life at the moment. I need objectives in order to be happy, even if it's something as simple as meeting a friend for coffee or sitting down and watching a show with my sister. It's funny, ever since we got a PVR, I've actually gotten less happy because I no longer had set times to watch a show as everything is now recorded for me. I've since realigned to the on-demand viewing model but it was rough until I figured it out.

The hardest part isn't asking oneself, "What do I want to do now?" In fact, that's the easiest part. No, the hardest part is the question, "Can I afford to do what I want to do?"

Cost in this case does not necessarily mean financial cost although everything costs money nowadays. Cost can mean many things. A few years ago, I took a less traveled fork on the road of life and ended up here. Along the way, I've lost a lot in making that decision but I've gained so much more in return. I'm far far happier for it, no regrets! Now, I'm on yet another fork on the road but this one's not anywhere near as dire.

Sometimes, it takes a major nudge to switch one's life onto another track, one that will hopefully bring more happiness. I recently made a very private decision that will bring a significant amount of physical risk but if I'm successful will let me live my life to its fullest. It took me over a year to mull it over but now that I've decided, it's brought delicious anticipation into my life once more, an enthusiasm that's been missing for years. The tricky part is that it's going to be expensive both in time, money and other resources. It'll only last me for a few years before I can't physically take it anymore but the memories will be sufficient to last a lifetime.

I'm refusing to take the safer road this time. I've done so repeatedly in the past and while I'm achieving my goals of having some semblance of financial flexibility, I've always wondered what would have happened had I taken the riskier path. Not this time. I want memories to brighten my last moments, occasional bursts of joy when my life was illuminated by being who I truly am.

Heroes (part 2)

I've taken a closer look at who I hold in high esteem, who the heroes are at this present point of my rather turbulent life. There was a time when it was men and women of power and authority. However, I think I've seen through the lie that power equates to safety; it does not and in some circumstances, radically increases the risk of harm. So these days, I seek simpler things, happiness being one of them. Preserving what's left of my integrity being another.

In that regard, I'm also coming to the realization that our heroes are far too human. Anyone we regard as a hero will fall eventually due to something they did. It's inevitable - we carry the seeds of our own fall within us as we are not perfect. So, do I have heroes? Yes...but they're not real ones. I'm discovering that as dangerous as it may be, the people I look up to simply don't exist in real life. They do exist in fiction and often in the most unlikeliest of places.

As an amateur astronomer, I'm quite aware that a lot of the constellations of the night sky have stories attached to them for they are often figures from mythology. I'm beginning to understand why we have myths - it provides us the fiction of what heroes should be so we have a model to emulate. It's here that things get dicey. If we're not careful about our attachment to heroes (if we chose to have heroes in the first place) then we are certain to come to harm or failure. After all, if we seek to emulate Icarus, I'd worry less about the risk of flying too close to the Sun but be more concerned about proving that gravity works yet again.

I have my own private heroes but I keep them behind a metaphorical pane of glass. I'm not perfect, they're not real and emulating them will just be plain stupid. Instead, I choose to draw strength and hope from the illusion that there are good people out there, that it is possible to go through life without compromising your integrity and that true love is out there, somewhere.

Yes, folks - I'm willingly deceiving myself...but from where I stand, falling into the pit of despair from the grind of daily life is far, far worse than this.

Heroes

I get teary-eyed when I watch movies these days. I didn't used to be like this but I've changed quite a bit from who I was not 5 years ago. There are two sentiments that always make me tear up: love and surmounting the previously-impossible. The final scenes in love stories where the two make up and kiss? I tear up. The launch scene in Apollo 13 when the Saturn V takes off from the pad? I tear up. Why? Not sure but someone accused me of being a hopeless romantic lately. Perhaps that's why.

I was pondering the increasing complexity of our world the other day and although we humans are still dealing with the same problems our forefathers have always dealt with, matters such as having shelter, food to eat and other such concerns in the physiological layer of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, everything else above that has risen in complexity. It used to be that employment meant you clean rooms as a maid or you serve tables at the local inn; jobs that have clear outcomes. These days, it's not as clear-cut. In my job, what I do doesn't yield results until anywhere from 18 to 60 months in the future. I have no immediate gratification and patience does start to wear thin. The closest analogy I have is being a sponsor of exploration expeditions during the age of sail. You finance ships and crew then you wait for years before you find out what they've discovered, if they return at all.

What has all this got to do with the topic of this post? Simple: we have no real heroes anymore. We have no heroes because our world has grown far too complex for any single person to be a hero. There was a time when you could earn a name for yourself as being an amazing software developer back in the days when you could code a game or application all on your own. These days, you'll be fortunate if you can code something marketable even with a full team of developers. The days when individuals can make a difference are gone. It doesn't mean that we can't do anything nor does it mean we should stop trying. It does mean that it's much harder to make a difference.

We have no heroes also because we have become equally as sophisticated. There was a time when war heroes can command ticker-tape parades for killing the enemy or some act of valour. The fact that they may be alcoholics or that they beat their wife or that they're as racist as they come wouldn't matter because in the end, we adore them for the one thing they do best. That's not the case anymore. Our war heroes of the past have been replaced by sports heroes but even then, most of their adoration becomes tarnished over time by alleged drug use or some such affront to societal norms.

We have no heroes because we've outgrown them. We've become a society where our confidence in ourselves no longer bear any resemblance to what we can really do. If you don't believe me, go talk with any teenager. We've gotten soft, become used to the comforts of civilization without ever having to earn it. Do you know how your car works? Do you know why your food heats up when you put it into the microwave? Do you know who your local government representative is? Do you know what your child is being taught in school? Do you know where your food comes from? Do you even know how to cook these days, where cooking does not mean dumping a box of KD into boiling water or sticking in a TV dinner into the microwave?

Why does it matter? Maybe it's just the march of civilization. Perhaps this is the natural progression of a technological civilization.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps we've gone down the wrong evolutionary path in our societal growth.

I need heroes. Even if that hero is my husband. Even if that hero is my co-worker. I need to believe that not all of us have succumbed to the mediocrity that is pervasive in our modern society. Why are heroes important? Simple: they give us hope.

Mortality

Every now and then, I'd get a little melancholy and ponder my place in the universe. Fact is, we're all here for far less than the blink of an eye as the universe goes. During that brief period, all we can do is impact those around us, being positively or negatively.

When I was young, the days seemed plentiful. I looked eagerly to my birthdays, the only time in the year when I got presents of toys and whatnot (we didn't celebrate Christmas). All I wanted to do was for the days to pass quickly. Now, in the latter part of my middle age, I'm starting to face the fact that I'm mortal, that someday, Death will come to me and take me away.

I'm not sure I'm afraid of that. I view it with some anxiety, of course. If we do disappear into nothingness, that wouldn't be too bad. If we get parsed into heaven, hell or some other place within the spectrum of good and evil, at least there is some closure. I suspect that death is something altogether different. Occam's Razor says that we simply...stop existing. That there isn't an afterlife. Once our time here has come and gone, that's pretty much it. I've experienced enough to know that science doesn't answer everything. While I'm not willing to believe in superstition lest they take away my status as a Handmaiden of Science (tm), I'm also not entirely willing to believe that oblivion awaits.

It's hard to explain how I feel simply because my feelings are very conflicted. There is a part of me that welcomes the end of this hardship and toil we go through in this existence of ours. I don't discount that perhaps there may be other kinds of hardship and toil awaiting us after this life but I don't know what they are. My loved ones know what my ideal afterlife would look like, if there is an afterlife. All I can do is to hope that I end up there.

Viewing one's mortality every now and then is a good thing, I think. It gives me perspective on what I'm doing. Does my job matter? Yes...but not in the long run. It pays the bills but it doesn't prepare my kids for the life they're going to have. Do my hobbies matter? Yes...but only to me, unless if I make some amazing new discovery that will benefit humankind, like solving the mysteries of the universe or at the very least, figuring out how to get the caramel into the Caramilk bar.

Our existence matters...and it doesn't. All I can do is to make the best choices I can make for not only myself but for those I care for.