August 6, 2001
-
Still sluggish. Wrote a log entry yesterday but lost it before finishing; my system crashed, probably because I had too many windows open. I like to cross-check info, look up references, include links — I get greedy.
Got to the National Slam Finals Saturday night. Maya del Valle from New York took first place in the individuals category, the first Latina to do so in the history of the National Slams. The team from Dallas won in the groups category. Seattle made it all the way to the Finals: Shawn V. of Seattle placed third in the individuals category and the Seattle team placed third in the groups category.
Got home well after midnight Saturday and was pretty well drained all Sunday, only activity computer work and reading. Should have been at a meeting this morning (Monday), I'm on the computer instead. Typical for this point in my cycle; not up to a lot physically, but I can get up to a lot mentally and I want to because then I don't feel the physical pain that goes along with this part of the cycle.
Yesterday I wrote my review of Planet of the Apes. Other work in progress, I started to list it and it sounded boring, I'll post links when it's done.
Saturday I found out what happened on the Real Change website; space problems. Unfortunately, the Imac crashed before I could get into Dreamweaver and see how many unused files we have. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: DO NOT USE NORTON DISK DOCTOR ON AN IMAC. No, I wasn't the one who did it, I'm glad because dealing with all the folks in the computer workshop who were frustrated by not being able to get into Shared Files was bad enough.
Hopefully the Imac will be revived by tonight, and I'll be revived enough to work on it.
I'll close with thoughts stimulated by catana's refreshingly speculative musings.
Both the National Poetry Slams and Weblogs remind me of how important the drive for approval and recognition is in our lives.
This isn't a bad thing. The urge for approval and recognition is a species survival trait as well as an individual survival trait.
If we all really didn't care what anybody else thought of us, we'd all have been eaten by bears while we tried to knock each other's skulls in over who got the best bit of the mastodon.My mother used to say that nature made babies so cute because otherwise parents would strangle all their offspring in infancy. Infancy is also where we learned to use the offer or withdrawal of approval to get what we want and punish people for ignoring us. Human infants had to compete for attention against things like finding the next mastodon, running away from the bear, and the attractions of mating.
If we had been able to monopolize Mama too effectively, we would have been the last child born, the bear would have eaten us, and it would have been a good thing 'cause we'd have starved to death anyway. If all we cared about was the attention and approval of others, all that the archaeologists of Beta Aptrix would have found of humanity would be a bunch of apes sitting around in a circle preening at each other.
It's all a matter of balance.
Comments (1)
As I read this entry I was thinking "It's a matter of balance." and there it was! We've come a long way from a time when everything in the wiring was concerned with simple physical survival. But survival now requires long-term thinking, a better balance between old survivalist instrincts and the forethought and broader view of our current complexity. But where, if anywhere, is this being encouraged?
Comments are closed.