Lots of thinking about my place in the world

The losing-Galahad thing was worse because heisenbug was away on a long business trip at the time. While he was gone I hung out with other friends as much as I could (two of them have work situations way worse than mine, right now), and I flew under the radar with neither manager taking much of an interest in me or my group. That was nice, a few days there of just tying up loose ends.

I also got my new salary letter, in which the money jumped squarely into "what on earth are you expecting here?" territory. I've just been reading about the negative effects of overly-large rewards on performance (people freak out, freeze up and otherwise don't do well when too much is on the line) and, frankly, I think I'm going to ignore this new number and keep telling myself I made what I did two raises ago. If I overthink, if I ask myself things like "did I do $X worth of work for Zillian today?", I could freeze right up. (Amusing note: I apparently make less than any other senior software engineer known to one of my friends, out of five or six. Okay, whatever).

In between bouts of working through Portal 2 and working through the Perplexus Epic, I've been reading books about braaaaaaaaains. Most interesting so far was Connected, which got me thinking more clinically about my place in the social network than I probably have since high school. (Note: it's light on math, not even mentioning the power law of naturally-occurring networks, so I'd recommend also reading Linked if you plan to read this one)

It made me think of many examples from recent life in which ideas have flowed through me on their way through the network... Perplexus addiction leaping from a co-worker, to me, to bluechromis. Or information about a certain frozen yogurt shop in Harvard Square navigating one of those links the other way: starting with bluechromis last weekend and going through me to Stencil, and heading toward her partner at a quite respectable clip.

Interesting bits:

• How we act and behave, and the things we do, can affect our friends a lot and their friends somewhat less and their friends less, but still measurably. After that, nothing. But still, three degrees! Thinking of this makes me want to be a good friend, and to act better, and in general to try to pass on the good stuff rather than the bad stuff. Like it or not, we are all role models.


• People do better not just as a function of how many connections (read: "close friends") they have, but also according to how well those friends are interconnected, and how many friends the friends have. Two people can each have four close friends, but one can be right in the dense center of the social network while another (friends with two otherwise-loners and one more person who has another friend, maybe) can be way out on the edge of a graph. Unless we're studying the spread of STDs, the first one is likely to be better off.


• At last, a possible reason why a relationship with a cat might not always be as valuable as a relationship with a human being. Cats can be close friends, and the relationship can be reciprocated, and (in our house, anyway) can also provide me with that sense of being in a fully-connected lovey group where everyone knows everyone else. But they are not likely to introduce me to others, find me a new job, tell me about a good book or in general connect me to the rest of the network.


• At last, a convincing use for the idea of God. It turns out that when people humanize God -- and many people do draw him/her/it into their social graph of close connections -- everyone else in the same religion is also seen as connected to God, and therefore is a friend-of-a-friend. It's easy to see how this dynamic could serve to unify a group that is initially far-flung, and encourage new connections to be made and ultimately increase cooperation quite a bit.

I am actually pretty well connected at work. I could become more so. I could perhaps do a better job of explicitly befriending the folks at the center -- my new boss is one of these -- and/or encouraging my connections to connect with each other.

Quo vadis, neck?

The left side of my neck has been hurt now for a LOT longer than I like to think about, probably a couple of months. It's tied together with some pec tightness and something near my shoulder blade, but I mostly feel it in my levator scapularis.

I knew yoga made it worse. I knew kettlebell workouts made it better. I knew it was capable of withstanding quite a few massages and clinging to life like a limpet.

Last Friday's yoga class was clearly the last straw for it. I spent a lot of Saturday on the couch trying all kinds of pain-killing and muscle-relaxing strategies, swearing off yoga and just swearing. (Also falling asleep with a cat on me and a good book in my hand). Out of everything -- cardio, ibuprofen, self-massage, gentle motion, drinking, resting -- I'd have to say alcohol does the best muscle-relaxing. Sunday was better -- I did kettlebells with lots of extra emphasis on the fluid, swingy movements. Today I think I'm resting again.

I also just realized I think the culprit is upward facing dog. As of today, if I extend my arms or elbows down by my sides and a little bit back and press them downward, it hurts: my lats pulling on and (over)stretching the tight little muscle in my neck, which is totally overpowered and can easily get pulled.

So do I try a vinyasa class in which I avoid up dog entirely and see what happens, or simply swear off yoga for a month -- knowing that whatever the bad thing is assuredly DOES happen in yoga at some point and must be avoided? At the moment it feels too risky to experiment. I want to be okay so that I can focus on handstands this summer. And -- am I being reasonable here? -- pressing up over my head doesn't irritate what I currently have going on.

I'm leaning hard toward shelling out the $900 for three months of online coaching from Ido Portal. I know what you're thinking: that's expensive. If I hadn't met him / worked with him in person fortwo evenings I might wonder if this was a scam, but I did. He's the real thing, both for teaching and doing. I got interested in this after seeing a video by one of his students, which is not particularly artsy but shows a static 60 second handstand after 3 months of this same online coaching. The guy claims his previous PR was about 5 seconds. Anyway, this is Ido:

He requires a monthly video submission for review, which seems good to me: real accountability.

Here I am last weekend doing a spotted, mostly controlled press-down. Thanks to the youtube video editor for letting me stabilize and crop this online... that was actually pretty nice.