Accidentally in Code

Tag: chaos

Teaching Chaos
Credit: flickr / Steve Jurvetson

My friend Linda teaches drawing at University (amongst a wide assortment of things), and she was explaining a fascinating exercise to me.

Requirements: white paper, charcoal, eraser, glue stick & tolerance for dirt.

This is all about developing lots of strategies for recovering from errors and changes, and stumbling upon expressive, aggressive marks and effects that you can integrate into your safe, well-observed drawing.

1.

Start drawing the model, large, over the whole page

Once everyone has a drawing well under way, committing to using the whole page, ask the model to change one thing about the pose, and ask the students to smudge out or erase the drawing as needed to incorporate the changed pose. Then ask the model to change again, and again. Eventually the students learn to use the smudges, ghosts and erasures as constructive marks in a drawing that combines observation and expression

Give them a couple of tries at that. First time, they will learn what can happen. Second time, they can start to leverage the effects, not just recover from them.

2.

Like that, but after a couple of changes to the pose, stop the students and tell them “Tear your drawing into two pieces and keep the one you like better. Crumple the other piece up and throw it away. Look at the piece you kept. If you like it all, keep it. Otherwise, tear that in two and keep the one you like better. Lather/rinse/repeat until you have a fragment of the original drawing, a fragment you like. Glue it onto a new page and keep drawing.”

3.

Like that, but then put a splodge of white tempera paint or gesso into the palm of everyone’s (non-working) hand. Have them use that as hand-painted “white-out” to make changes to the drawing. Students gradually discover that they can not just erase but blend in charcoal and apply paint as highlights and other constructive marks. Erasure, tearing and patching fragments together are all still in play.

4.

Now play with equally messy colour – water-soluble crayola markers. Draw for a while in colourful crayola markers, then spray with water until they bleed. Integrate white tempera paint (which never perfectly covers the marker, and often blends into it) as you go. Keep brush and black ink, and all the strategies above.

5.

One of the hardest, weirdest experiences is working on a drawing for longer than an hour. Of working on something, and stopping, and coming back to it the next day… and holy shit it’s like it was made by a whole other person, and you need to look it over and figure out what today’s artist wants to do with it next.

So let’s approximate that effect, fast-forward, in the classroom, with tag-team drawing

Arrange students in a circle around a subject (still life or model), start drawing in your choice of material. One they get something established on the whole page… stop. Have them leave the drawing, pick up supplies and move to the next drawing over. Tell them to “Look at it as if it were your own. What does it need next? Do that”. Next drawing, next drawing.

After adopting several drawings, have them come home to “their” drawing and look over the many marks and styles and changes that classmates have applied. Students then work over the whole drawing, including any of the strategies used above, to emphasise and reiterate the properties they like, downplay the things they don’t like, make some corrections and integrate the whole thing into one image

6.

If students are really risk-tolerant and energised by this approach, ask the very best ones to send the drawings one direction while the artists travel the other. The drawing no longer aligns with the viewpoint on the still life (or model) and students have more extreme changes to cope with, change or embrace.

7.

Then you give them long sustained poses with complete free will and let them apply what they’ve learned when they want to.

How Could We Increase The Tolerance for Chaos in Software Engineering?
1. Shifting Priorities. Assignment is a choose your own adventure – you have a list of features to add, and some discussion about priorities of each. There are a series of deadlines, and at each deadline you have to hand in a feature, but it’s up to you which. The catch – each new round of deadlines, the features and the priorities change. The worse the choices you make early on (most interesting feature instead of most important? Added bells and whistles instead of infrastructure?) the harder things will get.
2. Shifting People. Assignment is a series of features. After each deadline, you get someone else’s code. You lose marks for re-writing it unnecessarily. Added chaos – the features are not ordered.
Group work is supposed to teach this – or the experience of working with other people in a team, at least, and sometimes it works, but too often one person takes on the task of writing everything. Other students can then feel alienated and inadequate, view it as their failure to be the person doing all the work. It’s actually a failure of the exercise.
June 18, 2014
Need to be Dull to be Creative

Me, lying on a boat in the Whitsundays

For ages, I’ve been worrying about why I was feeling really low on creativity. It’s hard to pin point what changed – was work more demanding? Social life fuller? Too tired at the end of the day because I just do so much more physically (in Canada even with a pretty intense gym regime I was at around 3000 fuel points a day, it’s now 50% higher, nearly as much gym time, much more wondering around).

I just felt like I had no observation to make, no insight to share. And after spending all day every day on the computer, the last thing I wanted to do in the evening or weekend is spend time on the computer.

And so I stopped making for fun, and then I stopped writing, and I kept looking for things that would inspire me. A new book, a new art exhibit, a new adventure to a new place.

Sometimes it would work, I would wonder around, talk to people, feel inspired, but then not manage to make the time to actually do anything with that inspiration. The longer it went, the higher the hurdle was to overcome. If I haven’t written in ages, I forget how easy it is when I find a topic that I’ve already considered a lot, how the words just flow, and with them, if I’m lucky, extra insights.

I found the desire (as yet still un-acted upon) to code for fun, in the strangest place. I didn’t find it in a 2 week computer-free trip to Europe (I took a laptop, packed the wrong charger, and then just decided not to use it). I found it in New Zealand, after a week of no coding, but so much social activity and outreach to women.

The need to write came back to me when I realised my life is currently boring.

All this time, I thought what I needed was something exciting enough that I overcome the “resistance” and carve out the time I needed.

Actually, what I needed was calm.

May 31, 2013
It’s Not a Disaster

Credit: http://www.bighappyfunhouse.com/archives/11/03/30/14-54-33.html

Travel gives me a lot of time to think, the planes, the airports, the queues. And the jetlag – there’s no lonelier time than four in the morning, wherever you happen to be.

Probably clear from my last post that I’ve had a lot to think about, lately. Still going to have to be enigmatic and elusive (sorry!), but things are looking up.

Currently, I oscillate between fear that things can’t just work out the way it seems like they might, and this calm conviction that three months from now my life if going to be unrecognizable, and all this chaos and drama is going to turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

I’m not normally a big fan of poetry, but there is one poem that I like – One Art by Elizabeth Bishop.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

I think she is saying it is a disaster, but still. I find it comforting. It’s hard to feel your world falling to pieces around you; it’s hard to lose the things you cling to. Yes, it brings potential, but at 4am that doesn’t mean that you don’t want to cry – that loss seems insurmountable, at the loneliest time of day.

And I just let it be. OK, this is my worst case scenario. It is not, in fact, a disaster. And, interestingly, the more I activate my best-case scenario, the more the worst-case scenario seems like a precious thing that I don’t want to lose, either.

At 4am, I look at myself and realize that I are not the person I aspire to be. I know that in a different reality I might have talked about change a lot, but been unable to actually do it because I wouldn’t have wanted to let go of something. But the something is breaking apart, and as that happens – it tells me to go for it. It’s time.

May 9, 2012
Right Now Is Just Fine
Credit: Wikimedia.org

I travel completely chaotically. Most of the time I can’t remember where I’m staying (yay for free wifi at airports), I almost never exchange currency in advance, and I would never dream of arriving the “recommended” three hours before an international flight.

The thing is, I know it will never be as awful as taking the boat from Yantai to Dalian in China (I survived). And I will never cut it quite as fine as the time my friend got confused and thought my flight time from Munich airport was the time I needed to leave (I made it).

So, why worry? I’m neurotic about the location of my passport (rather than send it to the US for renewal I returned to the UK because I couldn’t cope with the thought of being without it), my wallet, and my phone and laptop, and now my Kindle (Amazon). Everything else can be replaced, or coped without. In China, I also worry about having enough hard cash, but that’s it.

My trip to Switzerland had me wondering if this was a good strategy, however. The breakfast snack served by Air Canada made me extremely nauseous, and then the following morning we rushed out the hotel before 6am for my boyfriend to make his flight. I had only the vaguest idea of where I was going, but it was ok – free wifi at Geneva airport to look it up! Then I realized the wheel on my suitcase was broken, it was draggable but a pain. But still, I worked out the ticketing system and got myself on a train (with time to pick up delicious croissant, natch) and rescue some unfortunate American that didn’t speak French. I had to change trains, but I got a ticket and found out which and boarded with minutes to spare. I honestly don’t know if the Swiss are just particularly efficient with lots of trains or whether I was ridiculously lucky, but I didn’t spend any time hanging about waiting!

But, my suitcase was driving me nuts and I was stressing that the wheel would give out completely. Also, I was doubting myself – should I have had a plan? Was my boyfriend and I deciding on impulse on Thursday that we would have a date in Geneva insane? Would my flight on Wednesday be cutting it too fine? How was I going to write my first academic talk when it turns out my co-supervisor won’t be there to get some insight from?

And then, as we headed upwards towards the mountains I looked out the window. And realized that 1. Switzerland is so very beautiful. And 2. Right now, is just fine.

And then, y’know I got off the train and followed a mis-signposted road and got a bit lost. And came in to discover that whilst I received a receipt the conference organizers didn’t receive proof that I’d paid and had a huge drama trying to connect to the internet… and ended up sleeping through the afternoon’s sessions.

But that feeling hasn’t left me. Right now, is just fine. And I like travelling chaotically because it is always fine. I challenge myself – and then I make it work. I have been to a lot of places, and experienced a lot of awesome things. My last passport had stamps or visas on nearly every page and my new one has extra pages – it represents the possibilities – the places I’ll go, the adventures I’ll have. In all the stress and the chaos and the frustration with constantly packing-or-unpacking, and living in the same few outfits because honestly I can’t remember what else is in my closet it all became not-fun anymore. And people would say, “Oh Switzerland? You’re so lucky!” And I would look on in bewilderment because it felt like all I was seeing was airports and hotels and how is it lucky to go to a ski resort and not ski?

I’m ready – so ready – for this period of intense jittering about to end. And frustrated, by the idea that I keep seeing that says, “you’re doing what you need to do, you are who you need to be” because sometimes it’s time to change and it doesn’t really matter if someone else thinks my life is glamourous or exciting if I feel like I’m losing my mind.

But this moment, this moment is fine.

I love books, I read a lot – even more now I have my Kindle (Amazon), and it seems like I mange to read the books that contain the message I need to hear. Recently, there have been two. The Power of Now, and Goal-Free Living (both Amazon).

I was frustrated by The Power of Now. It was too fuzzy and spiritual for me to take some parts of it seriously, although I much enjoyed the quote: “I have had three zen masters, all of them cats”. But I did get some things out of it.
1. To be present, just focus on whatever it is you’re doing right now. I find this calming. Instead of running from one place to another thinking about what I’m grabbing and where I’m going, I’m just walking.
2. You are not your life situation.
3. I was also interested by the mind-creation of drama, although I don’t have a concrete conclusion I’m drawing from that.
Goal free living is a short, easy, but mind opening read. I really recommend it (and thanks to Rachelle for recommending it to me!) The eight principles of goal-free living are:
1. Use a compass, not a map
2. Trust that you are never lost
3. Remember that opportunity knocks often, but sometimes softly
4. Want what you have
5. Seek out adventure
6. Become a people magnet
7. Embrace your limits
8. Remain detached
Anyway, after all of this – I’ve learned in the midst of chaos, in the midst of change, I need to take a deep breath and appreciate right now, whatever it contains. I hope right now is looking good to you, too.
January 25, 2011
In Search of Stability

Credit: Bao Pham / http://bao22.blogspot.com/

Last night, I was on the phone to my friend whilst I was pottering about unpacking my apartment, and he said:

“Have you taken anything? You’ve not been happy like this without meds in a while”

(To clarify, I have strong painkillers because of wrenching my shoulder in February – which is still causing me pain)

I hadn’t taken anything. I just feel semi-settled and un-rushed for the first time in 3 months. And I feel guilty, because I worry I’ve been complaining about my life when my life is awesome.

Oh no, I got my dream job and I have to move to a cool new city. Damn life is hard. Wow, I met so many cool people in Ottawa that I have to actually spend time with them before I go. Sucks to be me. Why are people continually presenting great opportunities to me? How frickin’ unreasonable are they?

If you’ve wanted to give me a good shaking lately, I totally empathize. I kinda want to give last-week-me a good shaking too.

Change is hard. At the Risk Taking Workshop at GHC, Dee talks about people’s change cycles. Most people were about 2 years. I came it at 6 months.

Perhaps I like change more than most, but the process of changing I find stressful. So I do things like book a flight to Canada and move with a week’s notice because my visa finally arrived. Or make a snap decision to give up my apartment because it was bought and I realized I wasn’t getting a TA. These things drag me, kicking and screaming, through the change process and then I sit in my new apartment, surrounded by boxes, and think,

Why on earth was I getting so worked up about that?

And then I make it work. So far, it’s always been fine. I’ve only been in KW a few days, but I know I’m going to be fine here too.

Maggie is a 3rd culture kid, and so something we had in common and talked about this summer is this feeling of not quite belonging anywhere, and not really knowing where home is. I’m from the UK, but for a number of reasons (many political) I can’t see myself going back there. Brits think I sound Canadian. Canadians think I sound British. Canada has been good to me, but I don’t think I can live permanently in North America – I find it too homogeneous, and miss the culture and diversity of Europe. How you can get on a plane and get off an hour later somewhere with different food, different values, different language…

Feeling that life is in a permanent state of flux, it’s easy to seek out something stable to cling to. A popular way to do that is with a relationship – because it seems like a binary variable, 0 or 1. So you set that bit. And then discover there are any of a million states your relationship can be in, some which add to your stability… and many that do not. For me, I have never wanted to buy an apartment so much as when my ex was making me miserable.

If I feel the need for stability, I think the thing to do is recognize why. Some new stress or something unknown? Is it just hard to be in a new place? Realizing this, I’m trying to find my stability somewhere else.

Credit: flickr / tomster0

In little things, like being a regular at a favourite restaurant or coffee shop, or the Clinique counter (leaving the Clinique counter at Sears in the Rideau caused me much devastation). In routine – gym first thing, or (currently) work in coffee shop in the morning, errands in the afternoon, unpack in the evening.

In bigger things – like good friends that stay constant wherever you live, in doing what I love.

When these fail, a trip “home” reminds me why I left in the first place.

Since I’m staying on a work visa, people keep asking me if I’m staying “permenantly” – I joke that I don’t stay anywhere permanently. Being a bit of a nomad has some challenges, but ultimately I love the adventure. The stress of the process of change I find hard, but the thrill of making it work – that makes it all worthwhile.

November 4, 2010
Sharing Lessons From Stories We Can’t Tell

Credit: flickr / icedsoul photography .:teymur madjderey

Last week, I wrote that things have been a little bonkers lately. I have not spent seven days straight in Ottawa since the start of August and I’m stressed, discombobulated, and overwhelmed.

Normally, I figure things about by writing about them. Lots of work on? How can I be more organized/better at delegating/manage my time most effectively? Screwed something up? How can I do better next time? Working something out? What can I share as I go?

However, lately there’s been a number of things on my mind that I can’t write about – either because I’m not ready, or I don’t want to share someone else’s business, or because my writing about the situation would make something difficult and stressful worse. So the other day, Sacha and I had a long mentoring chat – which was great. I opened up about a bunch of things that had been bothering me and she was really helpful.

Something that we both touched on, though, was in these situations, you want to share what you’re learning but for whatever reason it’s hard. Sacha doesn’t publish everything she writes, but I don’t journal – I write to share. This is good because it motivates me to find a way to tell the story in such a way that I can share it, but in some situations that’s not possible – what then?

Perhaps we can share some high level observations, and the story – retell that later, when it’s less close to home. Here are some things I’ve been learning.

People will think what they want to think. If someone has made up their mind, it’s hard to change it. I’ve been in a situation lately where someone has made up their mind that I’m the bad guy and in doing so they’ve almost proved themselves right. I’ve been working very hard to be reasonable and not to react, but their determination that I must be against them means that anything I do – or don’t do – is inserted in the picture of “evil Cate”. I don’t understand why someone would live like that – it’s exhausting.

Don’t beat yourself up for your priorities at the time. I was stressing that I wasn’t living by my values – being truly “outside the box” (Leadership and Self-Deception, The Anatomy of Peace – both Amazon). Sacha asked me what more I could have done to make the situation better, and obviously some things sprang to mind – there’s always more you can do to make any situation better. However we talked about my priorities at the time where me doing something would have been helpful and I had more important things going on than this person’s drama. My priorities then have influenced this outcome – I can’t change that, and wouldn’t want to.

Other people have no concept of what your priorities are, or what your schedule looks like. One of my friends had been part of the situation and I was a little upset because I felt that he was buying into this person’s perception of me and my actions. Once we had a chance to talk and I had started explaining the separation between my actions as a facilitator and my personal views and he also realized just how much I’d had going on the last couple of months, his attitude changed and things are better between us now.

I’ve not been to the chiropractor since I got back from the UK because she will tell me I should come in 3 times a week and I just can’t do that when I’m flitting about so much! Meanwhile, Goodlife forced me to buy 60 training sessions and promised to sell any I had over because the assumption was that like other people I was exaggerating about how much I was flitting about. In fact, it ended up being an underestimate because new things came up and so I’m calling that promise in!

You can say “I haven’t spent seven straight days at home for the last two months”, but unless someone has/does live like that they have no clue what that means in terms of living. For me, going to the chiropractor is useful, but it’s not my number 1 priority. And when number 1 priority stuff isn’t happening, stuff that isn’t a number 1 priority sure isn’t.

Make a plan. Sacha quickly picked up on the fact that a big part of what was stressing me was the uncertainty. If X is happening, OK – I’ll take care of that. If Y – sure, I can work with that. Not knowing, though, is way more difficult.

So much of what we stress about doesn’t really matter. In the big picture, it doesn’t really matter if your sheets clash with your wall for a couple of weeks. A thesis is a big project – a couple of days in the midst of rushing probably won’t make a big difference. It’s sad that some friendships end, but hardly the end of the world. It’s horrible to be discussed behind your back, but the people who know who you really are won’t buy the stuff that isn’t true for more than a moment, if that. People disagree – and mostly we manage to rub along anyway.

And the final, biggest thing I’m realizing – you always think there is more time, until there is not. Are you living by your values, investing in the relationships that matter and living your life today? Because eventually, everything ends and everyone leaves. And the things we did not do… we better hope and work so that they are not the truly important things, that we never got around to making room for in our lives.

September 29, 2010
Chaos

Credit: flickr / kevindooley

Last week, I returned to Canada and signed and sent in my offer letter from Google. Then, 3 days later I rushed off to Kitchener to find an apartment.

Because I didn’t get a TA at uOttawa (stupid union, and yes, I have noticed the irony and hilarity of – offer from Google, no TA from UO), I’ve decided to relocate earlier because the cost of living in KW is lower and it’s unpleasant to move in December.

I stopped by the Google office to get my police check form signed and they gave me a t-shirt. I love it! This is really happening! I’m still in shock, and alternating between excitement and freaking out about going to work with such amazing and smart people. Periodically, I panic that I don’t know how to code Google docs, and then reassure myself that no-one expects me to come in knowing how to do that (right? Right?!?!)

Meanwhile, I’m heading to GHC 2010 next week, and Boston sometime later in the month, I’m giving two talks in October (I think – the earliest one is unconfirmed and I have no clue what I’m talking about). I need to pack up my life into boxes and move. I need to say goodbye to everyone. I also need to work on my thesis. I really need a haircut.

Meanwhile, there is a family issue that is really horrible and upsetting (I can’t write about it right now) and because of that it’s difficult to plan times of things. Also, I’ve been dealing with some conflict and having just finished The Anatomy of Peace (Amazon) I’m also having a crisis that I’m not truly living outside of the box in accordance with my values. Sometime soon I’m going to work out how to write about that, too.

I don’t think I’ve spent a week straight at home since early August. All this rushing about is making me feel like I’m going slightly crazy, and without the structure of an office and expected times to be there it’s hard to be productive on my thesis – especially after a summer off.

In times of stress, it’s really important to prioritize. I’m aiming to give myself some structure by working out first thing in the morning, and will try and spend my days in the office. I’m also throwing my posting schedule out the window.

Just a heads up. Expect to hear from me here but perhaps not on the same Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday schedule that I’ve been on during the summer. Don’t expect prompt replies to email. Do expect bad hair.

That is all. Advice welcome!

September 24, 2010