Space Alert

I thought I might as well check a bunch of postures to see how they feel, so this morning I sat in a chair. Seemed basically fine, easier to keep sitting up rather than slouching for some reason.

I find I'm rationalizing far less often in a way that I explicitly notice at the time. (This leaves open the possibility I'm just becoming better at hiding it from myself, or becoming worse at noticing it.)

I wrote up almost all of the first game we played Saturday, so that's good, but I haven't been spending much time at all researching problem solving, so that's not.

Someone wrote me up a quick variant for Space Alert that supports 8-10 people. (http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/671699/a-second-expansion-some-ideas) I'll be playing that this Saturday. Space Alert in general would be fun to play with the LW crowd... so I'll bring that up.

Oh and another independent person came up to me again today and said she thought I'd lost weight, this silly lengthening the face with facial hair thing is ridiculous.

IFS

I'm pretty much locked into insight practice for a while unless I find a place I can go with air conditioning. It gets too warm to concentrate.

I signed up to give a talk at work on a project I did a few months ago, at the information flow level. This should be loads of goodness, especially if I can get other people to give similar talks.

I've been reading and doing a bit of practicing with the Internal Family Systems material. It's been fascinating so far. I have found several Protectors and an Exile, using Earley's terminology, including one very strange Protector. I got the image (metaphor ;)) of a spindly being that turned off a TV set which I was using to show situations to myself. It seemed right to call him Goofy as he brought up associations with Goofy. I am working in and around certain mildly traumatic events from my childhood during my parents' separation and divorce.

Schwartz and Earley's description of the Self feels remarkably similar to Anna's description of curiosity and Ingram's description of accepting and investigating whatever arises. Either they're all describing something similar or I'm being taken in.

Given me another month and I feel I'll be more confident.

Oh yes and I would like to buy 3-year poorly-priced options on Bitcoin plzkthx.

July 4th

Try things, right? Well, lying-down meditation in the morning isn't something I'll try again too soon. I didn't fall asleep but it required constant vigilance. Maybe it would have gone better somewhere other than my bed? Maybe. In any case I won't be doing that again 'til maybe I'm ready to investigate the sensations of falling asleep. ;)

Then: 4th of July party. Always epic, each year more so. We had about 30 people over at the Johnson's place in Bothell and the changes I have made since mini-camp are freaking clearly great for parties. I was in a state of mild shock for much of the time except it wasn't most of me that was in this state, only that part of me that I allowed to think meta during the party, the rest apparently did a great job being interesting and good looking and looking cool and stuff. And I mean each of those, separately, were far higher than they've been before. I got lots of compliments on how I looked, I had fun conversations with many people, some of whom I didn't really have on my "can have fun conversations with" radar, and I was quite comfortable lounging in a chair outside being the center of attention over 30% of the time in a circle of 4-10ish people for over an hour. Edit: that doesn't do justice to the long period of time during which I was choosing who I was most attracted to and Rohini and Ryan swapped shirts for me...

Also we collected more donations for next year's fireworks than we spent this year, already, and that doesn't count the amount David and I will spend next year...

People are here

I am continually surprised out how interesting insight meditation is. Especially sitting. I mean come on, I'm sitting very still for half an hour. How could that be interesting? Even though as I write this I realize I sit very still for much longer while watching a movie...

Today was in large part a Day Of Rest. After yesterday and with full knowledge that tomorrow's going to be crazy, I needed one. Still there were tons of people around 'cause of the 4th weekend and I did things with them, played games, had dinner, etc... but I skipped the hike and left gaming early, neither of which is at all characteristic.

Every time-unit or so, I did go clean up some of yesterday's mess. Now I have a couple stacks of papers to record and a hungry hungry hippos board to return; I'll get to one of those tomorrow but not both. :D

I looked at migrating to Wordpress but it seemed to take more than 5 minutes so I'll get to that later. One nice thing, I've gained enough self-knowledge to know that these "I'll do such-and-such later" statements are factual and a good idea, not just procrastination. I was kind of surprised to notice that.

Also: simply noting without rewarding did not lead anywhere down the mind-path toward desiring to clean the restroom. Starting now I will move to smile-rewarding and see where a week of that takes me.

Cognomancy

Insight today, with focus on separating physical and mental sensations. Then the meetup! Overall it went all right, with some high points and some parts that felt like they dragged. Actually I take that back, for a first attempt it actually went fantastic. But it took a lot more work to organize than I thought. Next time we're just playing whirlyball. :)

Afterwards, Pasta Freska and Commander. Now it's late, I'll write more about the meetup later.

Prep

This morning I felt as if I were at the back of my skull rather than behind my eyes, for maybe 5 minutes. Pretty weird... I basically spent all of my free time trying to get the last parts of the games/etc. tomorrow together. I finished the day with a bit more to do, but all of it pretty much known undones. I keep feeling slightly disappointed in the results because I know if I had another week the event could be better, but I think that's actually a rationalization - the real reason I'm disappointed is because I'm scared everyone will think it's lame. This is the haunted house problem, one part of me is actually pretty certain this is good.

Also I learned a brand-new awesome skill in preparation for tomorrow. And I'm writing this tomorrow so every time I write "this morning" or "tomorrow" I feel silly in a Playful way.

Too tired

Yep, I'm going to have to change some things around to get more sleep. This morning (Th) I was beginning concentration practice and felt very close to just sleeping several times, so I went to the other end and did some walking insight practice. Then David and I talked for half an hour - I've decided to ditch the 4th game for another, in its present incarnation it just doesn't work like I'd like.
I had trouble with The Experiment today and I'm not sure why.

I spoke with a dude at First Tech for a while, I've got concrete plans to get accounts and investments set up now.

At about 1:30 I realized I was sleep-deprived (as opposed to e.g. lunch-tired) and getting nothing done, so I went home to nap for 3h. Would this have been a good time to have some modafinil on hand?

John and I discussed meetups for an hour or so, coming up with several useful things like a control and experimental meetup, lists of topics we can present, and emailing people one-on-one.

I ironed out most (maybe all!) of the bugs with 2 of the games and now I'm set to write them out fully tomorrow. The third still needs additional scaling, and the fourth I have a version that will work if required but needs review since it hasn't been playtested or checked yet.