Project 35

I never notice how loud a place is until I have to record. In the moments before I just started to write, I heard the floorboards creek overhead, the water …

I never notice how loud a place is until I have to record. In the moments before I just started to write, I heard the floorboards creek overhead, the water drain into the sump pump, what sounded like a microwave turning on, a moving of the chair, and a faucet turning on. And the noises still continue!

If it were too quiet, I may feel uneasy—that something were off and maybe a bad thing were about to happen. However, I could record! But I may also think too much, drowning out the silence with my own internal orchestra—or actually, cacophony.

As I listen to the floorboards creek, I try to interpret what it means. It sounds as if someone is pacing back and forth—perhaps worried, or more likely, based on the time, hungry. I try to focus and yet, ha! To no avail. Or to some avail, because I’m still typing.

What was that?! A spring? What kind of metal coil do we have that makes that sound?

OK, back to the water and the sump pump, items moving across the kitchen floor, and me, just waiting for more.

I find that if I’m really focused, I may not even notice the sounds around me. If I’m in a conversation with someone, I can drown out so much of the music, the whooshing, the squeaking, and the pitter-pattering to hear what they’re saying. If it’s an internal conversation, even more so.

So while I wish it were quiet right now so that I could record audio more cleanly, I feel somewhat grateful that all of these noises reminded to be present. They helped me open my ears (if that’s possible) and pay attention to my immediate environment. Yes, I still hear the creaking floorboards, but I also just heard myself sigh. I hear my fingers click and clack on the keyboard. I hear beard fluffily announce itself as I stroke it.

Perhaps the idea of total silence is a myth and something that I wouldn’t want anyway. I feel grateful to be less in my head and more in my body—turns out sounds are probably important for being aware of one’s surroundings.

OK, why is someone walking on that part of the floor? Never heard that before!

I guess we can learn from all of our senses and I’m glad to be reminded I can still hear well. Enjoy it while I can.

I helped someone yesterday in muting the notifications on her phone. After she did it, said to me how dumb she felt. I replied that all of us are dumb …

I helped someone yesterday in muting the notifications on her phone. After she did it, said to me how dumb she felt. I replied that all of us are dumb in some things and smart in others.

I know this in my head and yet I struggle to know that in my body and in my heart. My dad told me that he has a friend who believes that COVID-19 is just the same as the flu—for me and my dad, it is obvious that COVID-19 is much worse than the flu, for many reasons, but especially because of exponential growth. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how people can’t understand exponential growth. It seems so simple.

But. I pause and realize that I know so much about exponential growth (and by so much, I mean very little in the scheme of things) because of the classes that I took in high school and especially in college. There weren’t many day-to-day experiences that taught me about it, other than stories about how quickly rabbits multiply. Where I really learned about it, I believe, is three-fold: 1) in calculus and 2) in electrical and computer engineering, talking about bits, and 3) in Silicon Valley and tech spaces.

I took calculus in high school and then went on to take multivariable calculus and differential equations in college. We dealt a lot with exponents, integrals, and other components, many of which I can’t recall off the top of my head. But we studied intensely constant rates of change, growing rates of change, and other elements that deal with exponential growth/decay.

I took a few classes in electrical and computer engineering that dealt a lot with computer bits—0’s and 1’s. We had to memorize 2 to various powers: 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, … 2^8, and so on. We played with exponents all the time.

I also learned about exponential growth in Silicon Valley. In building an app, I learned about how companies could grow from very few users to a huge number of users in a short time. If each person brings in two new people, it could grow huge.

Actually, a fourth! In political science, I learned about world population growth and how we keep creating more humans if each family has more than 2 kids, because if the replacement number is larger than the death number, then it keeps growing and can go very big very fast.

I say this because many many many people out there have not had these experiences. It doesn’t mean they are dumb in general, it may mean that they are just dumb in specific areas, as I’m dumb in many other areas—wiring a house, taking care of animals, heart surgery, changing diapers, etc.

I think sometimes I overlook others for not being smart in the thing that I’m smart in, without realizing they haven’t had the same experiences as I did.

I think I’m yawn deprived. When I look at other mammals, especially dogs and cats, I notice how they seem to yawn when they’re tired. They yawn before they fall …

I think I’m yawn deprived.

When I look at other mammals, especially dogs and cats, I notice how they seem to yawn when they’re tired. They yawn before they fall asleep. They yawn after they wake up. It’s not just other mammals, it’s baby humans as well. Rubbing the eyes and then yawning to indicate feeling tired, or so it seems.

But what if yawning doesn’t just mean that one is tired?

I remember reading a few years ago about what they call pandiculation. From what I remember, it is the stretch that comes with the yawn. Some studies were saying that it actually stretches out the—I think it was called—muscular sheath. The layer on top of the muscles that seems to act as the structural integrity on top of our bone and muscle structure. Perhaps the name is different and yet I think the function is the same.

A few years ago, I started doing what I called Yawn Yoga. It was simple: 1) breathe in as slowly as I possibly could for as long as I could, which would normally trigger a yawn 2) stretch while doing this. I was amazed at how quickly it improved my flexibility and fixed my posture. I went to the gym one morning and did some Yawn Yoga and when I returned, my roommate seemed shocked and asked, “What did you do? It looks like you have the posture of a gymnast.” I’ve never had good posture.

I think at some point it started to scare me though. I could feel me jaw rearranging itself, so much so that when I closed my mouth, my teeth aligned in a different fashion. I worried that perhaps it gave me flexibility too fast, that my body wasn’t used to it, and I would cause myself injury. So I mostly stopped. I also seemed to think that it was more of a repair action, and that if I needed it, I was doing something else wrong in life to feel so tight.

Yet this morning I realized that I woke up and didn’t really yawn. Come to think about it, last night before going to bed, I don’t think I yawned much. I often use the phone and am mentally moving quickly before bed, and then when I wake up, especially with this writing schedule, I start moving quick immediately. I think I keep forgetting to yawn.

There’s also the cultural aspect of how yawning is 1) contagious and 2) often seen as rude. It can show disrespect to someone who is speaking, insinuating that they are tiring, not that one is tired.

Regardless, I want to yawn more. I think it’s good for the body, the soul, and really, somewhat fun. And it’s such a simple fix, I think.

So I’ll end this writing with a yawn.

I spoke with my accountability buddy earlier and it helped me see my life from a different angle. For this book-writing group, we have been assigned an accountability buddy and …

I spoke with my accountability buddy earlier and it helped me see my life from a different angle. For this book-writing group, we have been assigned an accountability buddy and I wasn’t sure how it would go—as I don’t like to be told to work harder, I yell at myself enough for that—and was pleasantly surprised. He helped me reflect on how sometimes I may hurt people without realizing it.

I’m thinking back through my life and I remember the times when people have broken my heart. Falling in love and having the girl break up with me. I think having a girl lie to me about being pregnant. Getting rejected from certain colleges or job opportunities. In this moment, I pause and ask whether those people knew how much what they did hurt me.

I ask this because I often don’t know how much I’ve hurt others. I was talking with a girl earlier today and I commented on a photo of her baby and she said, “It could have been our baby.” It confused me to hear this, as, I wasn’t sure she liked me that much. I mean, I had my ideas about it, but at one point she blocked me on the phone and stopped talking to me for months. Her saying this today, especially after the conversation I had earlier, made me wonder how much pain I may have caused this girl.

I think I often overlook how much women have liked me. Perhaps it comes from a place of me feeling insecure for many of my years about my physical appearance, about my bank account, my sense of fashion, or many other things. I just often didn’t think women liked me. Or maybe I just didn’t read the signs—that they would be very indirect about it and for me, I would assume no instead of assuming yes.

When I pause and reflect on the qualities I like about myself—learning quickly, connecting quickly, talking about almost anything with anyone—I realize that maybe I’ve been wrong. And then I start to think about all the women I may have hurt that may not have said it to me but definitely felt it. The ones who wanted an exclusive relationship with me. The ones who wanted to marry me. The ones who wanted me to say to them, “I love you.”

I feel a bit embarrassed and frustrated with myself for not seeing it. Even more, I feel sad that I could have brought so much pain to people without knowing it. While I believe it wasn’t my intention, it still may have brought deep pain, that perhaps some of them still carry with them, as I carry other unresolved pain within me.

To all of those women out there who I may have hurt, raised expectations and dropped out of the picture, or overlooked, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you and yet, sometimes, it doesn’t matter.

I think I spend a lot of my time trying to understand others. I try to understand what they’re thinking, what they want, who they are. And more often than …

I think I spend a lot of my time trying to understand others. I try to understand what they’re thinking, what they want, who they are. And more often than not, I fail—which makes me try even harder. I want to get them, to agree, to have that aha moment. And yet it so often eludes me.

This happens in all sorts of relationships—with family, romantic partners, friends, coworkers, etc—and in all sorts of topics—politics, business, religion, culture, habits, etc.

In the last few days, I’ve struggled to understand two of my friends, who have, what seem to be, polar opposite political perspectives. More specifically, one of them despises Trump and the other is very grateful that he is president—or so it seems, again, I still don’t think I’m understanding it well.

I want to know why someone despises the man so much. Yes, I disagree with many of his behaviors and yes I do not think his skills and abilities are the kind that I want to see in someone in that position. I strongly don’t want him in that position. And yet, I don’t despise the man, I think he just would be happier in life and make most of us a lot happier in life if he were in a different role in society. However, for my friend, it seems (again, I don’t know) as if he believe he is the devil incarnate.

On the opposite side, my other friend seems to defend his every move. Yes, I think Trump has certain policies and behaviors that have helped the country, or rather, I could see how someone would believe that. I don’t understand how he doesn’t seem to see any faults with Trump. I mean, I believe we all make mistakes, we all have strengths and weaknesses, we all succeed and fail on different things. And yet he doesn’t appear to believe that—again, I could be very wrong.

Maybe the solution isn’t for me to understand them, but to love them. I think the two actually oppose each other sometimes. As I try to understand someone, I try to be certain about who they are—I try to own them, in a weird way. However, when I try to love them, I try to let go of our differences and appreciate them for our similarities—I try to embrace them.

Maybe this approach of trying to connect with them, instead of trying to know them, will help me feel closer to them. At the end of the day, I’ll never know anyone, but I sure hope to love them anyway—or at least try.