Unsubscribing from All the Things

I reside in the home of consumerism and have been swept up in the ease at which everything comes to me in this country and specifically in Seattle, the home of delivery.

In my ongoing quest to consume less, I looked at where I am exposed to advertising which has so much say in what I buy. If you say it doesn't then I call bullshit on that.

The answer was in email and on Facebook.

I proceeded to unsubscribe from every email sent to me by a business. This has had me realise that they lie and keep sending stuff to you over and over until Google mail helps you unsubscribe. Yes, they mark those jerks as spam.

The second avenue is Facebook. I've stopped liking my friend's statuses that mention a brand of any kind. I'm also leaving all groups that are selling me something.

This has changed what I read in a day. Lets see what happens in a week.

Acceptance Criteria

In software engineering we have a way of working that we refer to as "agile." It means that we behave in a way that makes it easier for us to adapt to change.

I often joke that I work as an agent of change so that I can make others change and not myself :)

There is an idea we work around that says that before we start any task, we must define upfront how we will know that a task is completed.

We call this the Acceptance Criteria.

Today, I applied this concept to a life situation and it helped me accept that what I thought was a case of friendship was really no more than a case of me being played.

As readers of this blog well know, I can be easily be convinced that 'gullible' has been removed from the Oxford English Dictionary. This often underwrites my tendency to believe people when they tell me something and that they are not lying to me. As a logician, I see the flaw in this statement immediately but apparently not in reality.

The acceptance criteria today involved checking what it means for someone to actually care for me. A friend for instance. A person who cares about how they make me feel and care that I am not made sad by their actions. A person who takes the time to understand where I am coming from. A person who gives me the benefit of the doubt. A person who would not act against me, no matter the situation.

Application of said criteria resulted in a fail.

I am a good friend. I am learning that I can not expect that from everyone.

Why I Run

The last six months have seen me start jogging again. It does involve a lot of walking but I run more now than I ever did before. Even on those cold mornings and dark wet evenings, I run.

I run because it makes my heart beat fast. Then I need to breathe. All I can think about is breathing. The rest of the world disappears and so do the thoughts in my head.

I run to stop thinking.

Stop thinking of the words written, those long ago peripheral glances and the silence. The deafening, wounding unending silence that feeds my pensive sadness.

There is an odd point when running where I feel myself coming up to the final few metres and my body is begging to stop but my brain doesn't want to. My brain doesn't want to because then it will start thinking again and that never ends well. Too much introspection is never a good thing.

So I keep on running.