Brian's World

Pants

Today I retired a my khaki colored pair of cargo pants.  It was slightly more emotion filled than I expected, assuming most people would just throw their pants in the trash can and move on with their lives.  I don’t want to sound stupid and claim to be attached to any specific items of my wardrobe, but they do help trigger memories for me that I’ve long since forgotten.

I can’t say I remember the first time I wore them, but I can assure you they were definitely Monday or Tuesday pants at first.  The fact that they were size 30×32 implied they were from the older collection of trousers I have, at least dating their debut back to Freshman year of college.  Since they weren’t white or another awkward color there’s a very high probability I wore them at least once, if not twice, a week during pants-wearing season, with the exception of the two summers I worked at jobs that required me to dress in non-cargo pants (but summer isn’t really pants wearing season anyways).

I haven’t enjoyed them as much over the past year or so, they were definitely getting short on me and their texture started to degrade.  Last year I remember transitioning them from Tuesdays into Wednesdays as I lost a few good shirts in the war, that was probably a good sign the end was near for them.   Unlike my primary pair of dark cargo pants, they didn’t seem to wear as much on the bottoms (in retrospect that may have been because of their limited length) and they also did a decent job holding their color for being washed with the frequency that comes with any pant that holds early-day-of-the-week slot in my wardrobe.  The pockets held up remarkable well too, I don’t recall doing any repair jobs to close holes and whatnot.

I won’t miss the lackluster texture or the limited length at all, I look forward to a crisper and long pair.  I certainly will miss the feeling of all the things I did in those pants, particularly the things that I’ve long since forgotten.  I filmed many a Senate Meeting in them during my early days at RPI, they’ve traveled with me back and forth from school to home over breaks, held my pencils and pens walking into tests / exams, and been there for holidays and visits with seldom seen friends.  I don’t have many specific memories of any of those things, but when I’d put those pants on I know they were there with me, one of the very small physical things that hasn’t changed in all these years.

My parents bought me some cargo pants for the holidays, so I didn’t go around pant-less today.  I actually had a very similar colored  pair waiting in the reserve clothing drawer ready to go today when the final button broke.  Yes, I could have sowed it on if I really wanted to, but the buttons had become sharp with age and I’d already relegated them Sundays due to their vertical challenges.  The new pair is too tight in the waist (or I’m fat at the moment) and seem much more like the recent khaki pants that someone glued big pockets on than actually purposefully designed cargo pants.

I need to start the hunt for a new pair of primaries; with this pair gone it feels like only a matter of time before the other one of my older pairs finally gives out on me.  The loss of that pair will be much more significant I suspect unless they go out in an act of glory somehow, but really I’d like them to just keep working as they currently do.  I find it comforting and kind of trusting to dawn a pair of pants in the morning that’s consistently been there when you’ve needed them or just been along for the ride.

Good night moon.

Deficiency

For close to a decade now people have been telling me how I don’t like fun.  In my years at high school being involved in the Tiger Times and the work we did in the cable studio my peers would often remark how I completely avoided participation in most teenage antics and was often responsible for issuing the cease and desist request after prolonged enjoyment.  At the time I justified this as needing to get things (aka a daily tv shown done) in a limited amount of time while maintaining some level of respect, but I’ve realized that was probably a very specific manifestation of the same thing that plagues me to this day.

Fast forward a few years to college, where I spent most of my non-academic time (and perhaps a bit of my academic time) working in very professional capacities designing web applications and writing software.  I figured that most people in college did stuff like this, and I think a lot of people do, but for me it was never just something on the list of things I do it was really all I did.  There were few weekends where I “went out” with friends, or relaxing just watching TV or a movie with others.  I didn’t wind down on a Friday night by playing video games or spectating a sporting event, I grab the easiest dinner possible and ssh somewhere to write more code.

I was lucky enough to surround myself with people in college who generally shared a strong work ethic, which meant that writing code on a Friday night might not  involve sitting alone in my dorm but instead manning my post in an office with 2-4 others.  It was nice knowing that I wasn’t completely unique in this regard, but I found that people have a path whereby they engage in some “fun” activities be it food, communal movies, recreational activities, etc.  In some aspects I wasn’t just involved in these work-ish activities, I was these work-ish things.  Where some people might frequent work on projects or spend hours on end studying before a big test they almost always unwind at the end or something along those lines; I’m approximately always working on things, there’s no unwind for me.  Sometimes this translated into “Brian hates fun” which is really just a misconstrued version of “Brian doesn’t understand fun.”

Moving beyond college was a hard context switch for me even if you disregard the whole across-the-country thing.  Most people I work with, even at the fairly progressive company I work for, work a well-defined set of hours where you can expect them to be very dedicated to work related activities.  While emails from people late into their localized night are common they’re much more maintenance style email than a substantial unit of work.  Very few people do stuff on the weekends, and I think the quantity of email I get between Friday @ 5pm and Sunday @ 4pm is less than I get some nights in the 6-8 hours I’m asleep.  But I’m not trying to criticize anyone’s work/life balance her, quite the contrary, that something I’m glad they’ve figured out and are good at.

I’m not good at that, and I don’t think it’s something that I can just figure out.  At work they are like here, go on a ski trip.  I politely decline, so logically I received an invite to another ski trip assuming I was too busy for the first one.  Nope, that’s not the reason why.  I enjoy skiing but see little purpose in engaging in it.  Last month there was a few nights of work related parties and stuff, while I made an appearance to get an award or two I wasn’t enjoying the free drinks or really hanging out with people.  This is how I act at most social scenes approximately ever; though I will fix upholstery from time to time too.  On a smaller scale I’ve observed my coworkers like to chat about their lives to each other, talking about who’s doing what on the weekends and such.  They’ve learned that it’s not really valuable to engage me in such discussions unless you want to hear about the latest programming adventures of Brian, which they sometimes do but I think most people try and enjoy lunch as the break-from-work time.

Unfortunately the few people in my life sometimes suffer as a result of the lack of fun that surrounds me.  When I get together with people we often work on projects (sometimes to their displeasure I feel) and the whole “lets do something fun” conversation never goes well when I’m involved in the planning stages.  I’m quite capable of being a participant if I make myself, but I’m not one to seek out, develop, and just-engage in commonly enjoyable experiences.  This doesn’t really upset me, I’m fairly content working approximately forever, but it’s particularly challenging to find people out there who share a similar, or even a fragment of a similar approach to things.

Good night moon.

Strike One

My previous entry, and some of my other writings of late, have failed to live up to the standards of some of my more classical entries.  I fear I may be loosing my edge here, or perhaps this Chromebook just is not as conducive to writing as my Thinkpad was.  Either way, I’m going to try and restore some sense of order here, presenting far more typical topics in the far more typical fashion.  My apologies for the diversion we’ve been on as of late.

Last I wrote I mentioned the fact that perhaps I moved so far out here to get away from everyone that cared about me or that I cared about.  I was never really good at the Oregon Trail game growing up (not that I actually played it for very long either), but if my memory is write the game presented the West as a wild frontier full of opportunity or something like that.  Staying East of the Mississippi, wherever the game would start wasn’t an option at all.  I wonder why.

Would the Pre-Worn Path not be an equally interesting game to try and stay alive in?  While purchasing supplies at outposts might not be the highlight like it is on the Oregonian counterpart, I’m confident that life in New England, the South, or even the Mid West would have presented its own unique set of challenges.  Maybe the to-be settlers aren’t actually looking for adventure, gold, freedom, or anything else that the Oregon Trail offers, but instead are just really bad at living where they currently are.  For all we know they could be fed up with politics, economics, or city life because it just hasn’t worked out well for them.  Heading out on the Oregon Trail is really the most feasible escape plan from all that, which makes me wonder even more what the game would have been like if there was an option to not actually go on the trail.

Maybe it’s too much to fit two games on the same floppy disk or something like that.  I wonder if the lives of the people that made it all the way to where ever they were going (was it even Oregon?) was all that they hoped it would be.  Did they ever think about the friends, family, and others they left back before setting out?  My guess is probably not, or at least not seriously.  Given the lackluster communication channels (aka writing letters to be carried buy a guy on a horse) it seemed unlikely that someone moving out weest would ever hear from anyone again.  I guess they never have to worry about declining a party invitation.

Good night moon.