ornoth

LOVE IT OR HATE IT, THE CAPS LOCK KEY IS A THING. AND IT’S DEFINITELY ONE OF MY THINGS! OR MAYBE ABOUT A HUNDRED OF MY THINGS…

THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO GET FULLY CHEESED OFF AT THE CAPS LOCK KEY, NESTLED NEATLY ON THEIR KEYBOARD’S HOME ROW BETWEEN THE TAB AND SHIFT KEYS.

THERE ARE ORGANIZATIONS DEVOTED TO THE KEY’S ERADICATION. GOOGLE EVEN BANNED IT FROM THEIR LINE OF CHROMEBOOK LAPTOPS, REPLACING THAT SPACE WITH (WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT FROM, GOOGLE?) A SEARCH BUTTON.

BUT EVERY DISPUTE HAS TWO SIDES, AS SHOWN BY A SIMPLE GOOGLE SEARCH FOR “TURN CHROMEBOOK CAPS LOCK ON”, WHICH RETURNS 114,000 RESULTS.

TO ME, THE ANGER TOWARD THE CAPS LOCK IS REMINISCENT OF THE HATRED DIRECTED TOWARD THAT OTHER ICON OF EARLY PERSONAL COMPUTING: THE COMIC SANS TYPEFACE.

BUT THAT WASN’T ALWAYS THE CASE. BACK IN MY CONSULTING DAYS, EVERY NEW CLIENT PROJECT MEANT SETTING UP A NEW LAPTOP, AND THE FIRST THING I DID WAS REMOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEYCAP. AT THE TIME, HATING ON THE CAPS LOCK KEY WAS JUST ONE OF MY PERFORMATIVE WAYS OF GETTING ATTENTION.

BUT SINCE THOSE MACHINES WENT BACK TO THE CLIENT AT THE END OF EACH PROJECT, I HAD TO HANG ONTO THAT KEYCAP, PUTTING IT BACK IN PLACE WHEN THE LAPTOP WAS RETURNED TO THE CLIENT.

AROUND THAT TIME I ALSO USED TO HANG OUT IN THE I.T. SUPPORT OFFICE, AND ONE DAY SPIED THEIR BOX OF BROKEN KEYBOARDS. HAVING ALREADY ESTABLISHED THE HABIT OF POCKETING AND SAVING CAPS LOCK KEYCAPS, I STARTED LIFTING THEM FROM DEAD KEYBOARDS, FROM MY OWN HOME COMPUTERS, AND ANYWHERE ELSE I COULD REASONABLY GET AWAY WITH IT.

AND SO, A COLLECTION WAS BORN.

SINCE I STOPPED WORKING, I NO LONGER GET AS MANY OPPORTUNITIES TO GROW MY CAPS LOCK COLLECTION.

BUT PERHAPS MORE IMPORTANTLY, MY QUIET HOME LIFE DOESN’T NEED THE IDIOSYNCRATIC, PERFORMATIVE BEHAVIOR THAT I RELIED UPON FOR ATTENTION BACK WHEN I WAS WORKING DIRECTLY WITH OTHER PEOPLE.

IN FACT, AS I TYPE THIS POST, THERE ARE CAPS LOCK KEYCAPS STILL FIRMLY AFFIXED TO MY BOTH MY MACBOOK AND MY WIRELESS MECHANICAL KEYBOARD, WHERE THEY’RE LIKELY TO STAY…

… UNTIL I’M DONE WITH THOSE DEVICES, OF COURSE! ONCE THEY’RE NO LONGER BEING USED, THEIR CAPS LOCK KEYCAPS WILL JOIN THE SCORES OF OTHERS HOUSED IN MY PERMANENT COLLECTION.

This is a question that has followed me for most of my life. From the college employer who had no idea what I did for him; to Inna’s family and friends who wonder how I spend my copious free time, since I don’t work. It’s a question even Inna herself can’t answer, despite having lived with me for six years!

That question – what do you do? – confuses me, because I make no secret of it; there’s evidence plastered all over my social media.

I suspect that people are confused because I don’t push myself and my interests forward in verbal conversations. I’m more of a listener, allowing others to guide the conversation, and will only talk about myself after people express interest in what I’m up to; although most people will naturally direct conversations toward their own interests.

And then some of my closer friends avoid delving into my interests because they know that once I do get that implicit permission, I’ll talk about them enthusiastically and at length. Kinda like when you open up one of my blogposts… There’s a reason why my writers’ group always cautioned new members with, “That’s Orny… Don’t encourage him.”

On a side note, my interests tend to be very long in duration and deep in nature. It might take a while before I commit myself to something, but when I decide to do it, I insist on doing it well and thoroughly. I will not half-ass anything I do; this is one of my core values as a person.

So let me attempt to answer that eternal question: what does Orny do, anyways?

Number one: cycling. I ride up to 10 or 20 hours a week, either solo, group rides, or major events, both outdoors as well as on the indoor trainer through the winter. And that doesn’t include time spent on bike cleaning, maintenance, repairs, and performance analysis. Cycling is my passion.

Number two: meditation. I spend 2-4 hours a week in meditation, and another couple hours listening to dhamma talks. About twice a month I lead two different meditation groups, and must put time into researching, developing, practicing, and delivering my own dhamma talks. Sometimes I’ll go off on weeklong silent retreats, and I’ve always got plenty of dhamma reading to do. The philosophy and practices behind Buddhism are a central part of who I am.

Number three: investing. My former employment at Sapient gave me enough capital to consider living free of the working world. However, that means my “full-time job” is to invest my finances wisely and safely, and provide financial advice to Inna. So I devote a ton of time to reading financial news and books about investing. I keep tabs on the market daily, both because I want to be aware of my opportunities and, frankly, I enjoy monitoring my success. Financial self-sufficiency and independence are life goals that were drilled into me by my parents.

Number four: the Pan-Mass Challenge. I’ve ridden this annual fundraiser for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute sixteen times and raised $119,000 for cancer research. You have no idea how much time that fundraising effort requires: the countless emails, tracking contacts (and writing my own database to manage it), chasing down corporate matching gifts, et cetera. For many years, it alone was a full time job from May through August. But this has been one of the most fulfilling things I have done.

Number five: learning Japanese. This winter I’ve put 10-15 hours a week into this newest intellectual challenge I’ve committed to. Characteristically, I’ve attacked it with energy and dedication. Academic learning and developing new skills are lifelong pleasures, and this is their current form. There’ll probably be a separate blogpost on this sometime later.

Number six: my relationship with Inna. It should go without saying that a lot of time goes into sharing our lives together and helping one another out. Partnership and family have always been a challenge for an introvert and loner like myself, so this is where a lot of work needs to happen.

So those are the big things.

Now fill in the remaining gaps with some of my more episodic background interests. Between my general and cycling blogs I write two or three dozen posts per year. I devote time to artistic interests in both photography and videography. I find time to enjoy a number of simulcast anime series and follow MLS soccer and the New England Revolution as well as the US national team.

And there’s always plenty of household duties. I’m fairly fastidious about my living conditions, and my responsibilities include vacuuming, laundry, garbage & recycling, car maintenance, computer maintenance, and cat feeding, grooming, litterbox, and exercise (if you only knew!). Plus grocery shopping and cooking for myself every day. And then in the background is researching our future move away from Pittsburgh.

That’s my life every day. If you ask me, I think the question shouldn’t be “What does Orny do?” but more like “How does Orny possibly do all that?”

A while back, I came across an article entitled “These are the bad things about early retirement that no one talks about” (sic).

Although I haven’t (to my knowledge) retired, I have some firsthand experience, having successfully avoided working for 11 of the past 18 years. And I don’t think the article contains any significant revelations.

Let’s look at the author’s five main points about early retirement, before I tell you the meaningful lessons I’ve learned from taking time off.

You will suffer an identity crisis for an unknown period.

I think this only applies if you largely derive your identity from your employer. In a time when corporations offer zero loyalty to employees, identifying with an ephemeral job is a dangerous, outdated delusion.

Since I’ve always had a strong sense of personality outside the workplace, time off didn’t erode my identity. Instead, it gave me the opportunity and time to fully indulge in activities that I valued, which has been extremely rewarding.
You will be stuck in your head.

This problem will only arise if you cannot fill your free time with meaningful activities.

And even if you can’t, a little time for introspection is probably good for you. But free time usually amplifies our existing inclinations: if you are by nature content, in retirement you’ll find lots of contentment; whereas if you’re a doubtful or insecure type, you'll probably be plagued by lots of doubts and insecurities.
People will treat you like a weird misfit.

If you've lived a full life, you’re probably already used to stepping outside other people’s narrow-minded expectations of you.

But if you stayed comfortably “inside the box” that society expects, then don’t you think it’s high time you stepped out and tried life as a weird misfit? It’s a lot more interesting!
You’ll be disappointed that you aren’t much happier.

If you’re financially able to retire early, you've probably already discovered the importance of having rational expectations. But if not, let me clarify for you:

When you retire, you will have lots of free time and the ability to choose how you spend it. Unless you spend that time doing things that make you happy, you won’t be any happier in retirement than you were before.
You constantly wonder whether this is all there is to life.

Yes this is, in fact, all there is to life. And it’s a miracle! You have all the time in the world, financial security, complete freedom, and lots of resources to find how to make that time meaningful and rewarding. If you do nothing but sit on the couch waiting for the world to entertain you, you’re clearly doing it wrong!

So that’s my response to the author’s absurd early retirement handwringing. Let’s dismiss this amateur’s fear-mongering and talk about the real issues surrounding early retirement.

The inertia of rest is insidious.

To be fair, the article’s author kinda dances around this vital life lesson that everyone should bear in mind. Rest, comfort, and sticking with the familiar can be important elements of stability, and can help you break your enslavement to compulsive productivity. But rarely will they provide a sense of achievement, satisfaction, or lasting happiness. A rewarding life requires initiative and effort, not lethargy and passivity.
Manage your fear of running out of money.

There are probably a few people who don’t have to worry about money during their retirement, but for most of us managing our shrinking nest egg will be our single biggest preoccupation.

It’s important to spend time on financial planning, but it’s just as important to develop the emotional skill of setting those worries aside. Don’t fill all that hard-earned free time with worry, fretting, and panic.
Plan for medical expenses.

The biggest threat to our nest egg is healthcare. Unfortunately, our health—and the amount of money we need for it—are completely unknowable.

However, that doesn’t mean they’re unmanageable. As a reasonable person, you can soberly address the risks up front, become an informed consumer, obtain professional advice, stick to a plan, and cultivate the trust that you will be able to manage through whatever circumstances arise.
Find the right balance between thrift and indulgence.

Again with money! Though to be honest, these issues aren’t really about money itself, but about how you relate to it.

My point here is to find a way to relate to money that allows you to plan and feel secure about your future, while also putting your savings to use in service of your own happiness, whatever that looks like.

It might be travel; it might be charity; it might be assistance for your grandkids. But the important part is relating to your nest egg in a way that’s mature but not obsessive, and fulfilling but not shortsighted.

So there you have it. In a nutshell: take responsibility for how healthily you relate to your most precious resources: time, money, energy, and health.

It’ll surprise those of you who know me best, but aside from my 2016 mention of my condo sale, I haven’t posted about money at all in four or five years, mostly because “people get funny when you talk about munny…”

But since money is one of my six necessities for happiness, and because things are afoot in that department, I’m going to correct that with a two-part look at money and investing. This first part will be a retrospective covering the 25-year period from 1990 to 2015, and a followup post will discuss more recent developments since moving to Pittsburgh.

The Windfall

The event that kickstarted my savings was, of course, working at Sapient. I joined a startup of 120 people, and during the dot-com boom we grew to over 3,600 staff, went public in an IPO, and were added to the prestigious S&P 500. We were one of the biggest internet darlings, and my Sapient stock options made me a moderate but comfortable nest egg.

On one hand that was just an unexpected windfall: a completely arbitrary gift from the heavens. On the other hand, I worked my ass off at Sapient for seven long years, and my coworkers did the same… That windfall was the result of our long hours, huge sacrifices, mental discipline, and collective business and technical acumen.

I was a pretty conservative stockholder. I never wrote covered calls against my Sapient stock (i.e. selling others the right to buy my stock at a particular future price), nor did I use my Sapient holdings to buy other equities on margin (i.e. borrowing against unrealized paper gains). Thus I avoided the pitfalls that claimed some of my coworkers’ fortunes when the internet bubble deflated. Some simply held their stock for too long and watched, paralyzed, as it spiraled into the shitter. Others got hit with margin calls, which forced them to sell their stock well below its peak.

I was a little bit wiser and a fair bit luckier. I knew buying on margin was stupid, and also that tying up 99 percent of my net worth in one volatile internet stock was even more stupid. Instead of thinking the stock could only go up, near the top of the bubble I decided to cash out most of my stock and use the proceeds to buy a condo. I attribute the fortuitous timing to blind luck, but financial wisdom drove my decision to move my tenuous paper gains into something less volatile, e.g. real estate.

Not that I wasn’t making big mistakes of my own. When I sold, I incurred a ludicrously heavy capital gains tax burden, which threw me into the dreaded Alternative Minimum Tax category. Then I compounded the problem by not knowing enough to file quarterly estimated taxes, which incurred substantial penalties. I know: “First World problem”. But let me tell you, writing an obscenely huge tax check to the government ranks as one of the most painful things I’ve ever done. Lesson learned!

Congratulations on Your New Mortgage!

Those who parrot conventional wisdom will tell you that carrying a mortgage is a smart way to force yourself to save money, and that you get great tax benefits by writing off your property taxes and mortgage interest payments. Then you sell your home for maybe 50 percent more than the original purchase price. Sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it?

It isn’t. Consider your expenses.

No one lends you money for free. When you add up all your mortgage payments, you’ll find that over the course of the loan, you pay back two to three times the amount you borrowed. That’s like going to the bank every week and depositing $300, but only being credited with a $120 deposit!

Then add on all the ancillary costs: local property taxes, mortgage insurance premiums, home insurance, condo fees, utilities like heat and water and sewer and electricity, maintenance and repair, and more. Now your 50 percent profit is looking mighty thin.

But you won’t see that 50 percent profit anyways. Remember that when you sell your home, you’ve also got to cover the real estate agent’s fee and closing costs. And if there’s still any profit left, don’t forget the tax the government will levy on your capital gain.

Sure, sometimes owning a home makes financial sense. But much of the time it doesn’t, and it’s a ludicrously inefficient way of saving for your future.

Unemployment, or “Quasi-Retirement”?

So after selling my stock, my main job became ensuring that I could pay for that mortgage lunacy. For the next decade, I bounced around five jobs, quitting twice, being laid off twice, and taking severance when one employer got bought out. That’s pertinent because I learned one of the most valuable financial lessons of my life after leaving Sapient due to my first layoff experience.

Being laid off ain’t so bad at first. You might get some severance pay, and you’ll get unemployment insurance checks. You might be able to get by for a while; I did. I even kept my mortgage payments up! But a year later I had a problem: how to pay the mortgage when both my severance and unemployment ran out?

About the same time, I realized something important while doing my post-layoff income taxes. My only income that year came from my severance and unemployment checks. Then, when I looked at my deductions, I got those promised mortgage interest and property tax deductions, which would offset about $25,000 worth of income. Basically, those huge deductions offset all of my meager income, which meant I owed zero taxes!

But with my severance gone and unemployment ending, I was in a really strange position. I had a huge liability to pay (my mortgage), but no income, and a huge $25,000 tax deduction which I couldn’t benefit from unless I had income! If only there was some way to apply the deductions to my mortgage payment…

That’s when I remembered my other big, forgotten asset: my retirement savings. There was plenty of cash in my 401k and IRA, but since I wasn’t retirement age, I would have to pay regular income taxes on anything I withdrew, plus a 10 percent penalty.

But if I only withdrew $30,000, that “income” would be completely offset by my mortgage deductions, plus my personal income tax exemption. Essentially, I could withdraw a certain amount from my retirement account, and—thanks to those mortgage deductions—pay *no income taxes on it at all*, just the 10 percent penalty! Then I could use that money to pay my mortgage, and everything would be copacetic!

Now, I wouldn’t advise normal people to raid their retirement account. But compared to my Sapient windfall, my IRA was a small part of my net worth. I always expected to finance my retirement with the proceeds from my Sapient stock (now tied up in my Back Bay condo), rather than my comparatively small “retirement” account. So it actually made sense to raid my IRA account.

That worked out so well that I took three years off between Sapient and my next job. I recharged my utterly depleted energy levels, did lots of biking, traveled, and generally just enjoyed the hell out of life. It felt like taking three years of my retirement and pulling them forward into my forties, when I could enjoy them more fully than if I were older. It was an immense, immense blessing.

And boy, did I internalize that lesson! When I went back to work, I dedicated myself to building up my savings, so that when I was laid off again in 2008, I could afford to take two years off without having to raid my retirement account. And another whole year off in 2014, when my employer was bought out. And I converted the majority of my IRA to a Roth IRA, a taxable event that was made easier by having no other income for that year, but large mortgage deductions.

To be honest, in the 16 years since Sapient let me go, I’ve spent more time unemployed than employed. Having the financial resources to take a year or two between jobs, bringing several years of my retirement forward, has been one of the greatest blessings and most valuable financial lessons of my life.

Taking Stock

After leaving Sapient, my financial life was mostly quiet, since most of my net worth was tied up in my condo. I did hold some money back, so that I had a little cash to invest elsewhere.

At first I tried my hand buying individual stocks, but being very uneducated about the market, I had mixed results at best. Looking back, I’m surprised at how many individual stocks I bought. At various points I held: Cardinal Health, Staples, Fleet Bank / BankBoston, gold miner Freeport McMoran, MBNA, and Sprint.

I never made real money on any of those stocks, and eventually accepted the fact that I was taking too much financial risk and not reaping any reward. And more than anything else, I wanted to keep those assets safe, so that they would cover my expenses if I had the opportunity to take time off between jobs. So I satisfied myself with the much safer alternative of just buying and holding less volatile mutual funds.

Paying the mortgage and shepherding my assets, alternating between work and time off: that’s how more than a decade would pass. That would change dramatically in 2016, but that part of the story will be told in my followup post: The Ghost of Munny Present…

A bitter old man won the lottery;
his days of reckless living were gone.
Amassed the sum of fifty million dollars,
but he had nothing to spend it on.

He said:

I want a little girl to call my own;
don’t even care if she is ugly.
An ornament to brighten up my home:
someone to love me for my money.

All the cash I have don’t help my failing pride;
I’ve been pretty lonely ever since my wife died.
Now it’s time to find myself a brand new bride!

Having always been a creature of habit,
he turned to the classified page,
started browsing through the single ads
to find a gold-digger one third his age.

He said: Now some of these don’t look that bad,
but I know how to do this better.
Displayed his wishes in a full-page ad;
he got a couple hundred letters.

The ad said:

I’m retired, I’m bored to tears and filthy rich.
Marry me, I’ll give you all the money you want, bitch.
You love a life of luxury, so let’s get hitched.

I want someone to love
  (someone to love me for my money).
I want someone to love
  (someone to love me for my money).
I’m a rich man and I got a nice car,
  ’cos you know I won the Lotto yesterday.

He thought his prayers had all been answered;
the wedding day was drawing near.
A young (cut-rate?) material girl:
she kissed him softly, whispered in his ear:

I can’t describe to you the way I feel,
I guess that love is what you call it.
I can’t be certain that my love’s for real
until you open up your wallet.

He said:

Don’t pretend to love me, ’cos my heart won’t bleed.
All your stinkin’ sentiment: it ain’t what I need.
I don’t want affection; I just want your greed!

I want someone to love
  (someone to love me for my money).
I want someone to love
  (someone to love me for my money).
Let’s get hitched girl, ’cos I got a nice car
  and I wanna give my money all away.

Extravagance became a necessity;
he was always there to foot the bill.
But she really put her foot in her mouth
when she suggested that he write his will.

He bellowed: Up til now I’ve been so kind
and on my kindness you depended.
But I’m not gonna give you one thin dime
if I’m not there to watch you spend it!

Ain’t you learned that nothin’ ever comes for free?
So shut your mouth, ’cos when I die I’m taking it with me.
Sprinkle all the ashes ’round a shady tree…

Gangster Fun
Someone To Love Me (For My Money)

The date: August 2008. Ornoth pulls the trigger on a $10,000 stock deal, adding 100 shares of copper and gold miner Freeport McMoRan (FCX) to his qualified retirement fund.

Well done!

Three months later, the stock has plummeted 83 percent: from $92 a share to just $15. My $10,000 investment is only worth $1,500, having lost $9,000 of value in the banking collapse of 2008.

Timing… I has it!

Since then, the stock has slowly recovered in sporadic fits and starts. But today I was able to sell those 100 shares of FCX off at $92: a wash sale. It took 22 months—two years—for the stock to finally regain the value it lost in those first 3 months. Or you could look at it this way: in the two years since that 2008 low, the stock has appreciated 586 percent, and I just locked in that “gain”.

Wow. That was one scary ride. Jane, stop this crazy thing!

Haven’t been inspired to write much lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle. So I guess it’s time for another potpourri posting. I’ll try to be brief, although there are a lot of little things to go over, and a few lengthy ones.

Everyone always asks me about employment first, so… I haven’t found anything yet. I haven’t been too worried about that, since you learn as a consultant to save during good times to get through the bad, and there’s nothing like taking a year or two of your retirement when you’re young enough to get out and enjoy it. At the same time, it’s really time to make this a top priority, now that summer’s over.

However, it amused me to no end to find a TED talk by a designer who totally espoused my beliefs about taking time off during one’s working years, and demonstrated some fabulous design work that came as a result. Check out the nice, eloquent, short talk here.

Ironically, my net worth right now—nearly a year after being laid off—is the highest it’s been in seven years. More surprising still is that if I go back to the last time my net worth was this high, it was December 2002, about a year after I was laid off from Sapient. What is it about being laid off that causes me to get richer, when one would normally expect one’s savings to be depleted in no time?

Well, actually it makes sense. Tech and consulting layoffs correllate pretty closely with stock market bottoms, and the market usually recovers nicely in the following twelve months. So although my savings has eroded somewhat, my mutual funds have appreciated much more. So remember: buy stocks whenever I lose my job!

The next most common inquiry concerns biking, and I have such a tale of woe about the incompetence of my bike shop. Sparing you the details, my bike has been in and out of the shop since the Fourth of July, and has been completely out of commission since early August, while two major components were shipped back their manufacturers (one of them twice).

Meanwhile, I’d been putting a lot of miles on my Bike Friday folding bike, including my first century ride on it. The folder isn’t bad, although I will complain that it’s heavy, which means I can’t climb hills as well on it.

Thankfully, I just got the reassembled bike back from the shop, and after all that travail, it’s running fine. Just in time for cold weather, of course. There’s a lengthy writeup about the whole long ordeal here.

Since I measure my cycling year from mid-October to mid-October, I just concluded my 2008-2009 season. I wound up with 4,000 miles on the road and about 500 more on the indoor trainer. With five centuries under my belt, it was a really good year.

In other news, Boston’s bike coordinator has targeted my street, Commonwealth Ave, for some very non-standard bike lanes. I’ll be curious to see how they pan out.

The deadline for PMC fundraising has passed, and this year I raised a total of $8,266, which is pretty good for a recession year. My lifetime total is now $52,657. The check presentation isn’t until December 5th this year.

This also seems to be the year I started sea kayaking. After expeditions with my brother and my CIMC friends, I also spent three hours recently on a very choppy Charles River basin, having rented from Charles River Canoe & Kayak’s new Kendall Square location. My obliques got a real heavy workout. Once I’ve got an income, I really do have to start thinking about picking up a boat. Meanwhile, I’m looking into my storage options, which are limited in my condo.

Indoors, I recently re-read Alan Watts’ "Wisdom of Insecurity", an awesome little tome that was my first serious exposure to Buddhist philosophy, back in January 2003 (original review). I’ve also just re-read Robert Anton Wilson’s 1975 "Illuminatus!" trilogy, which was interesting, especially when some of the details of his dystopian future turn out to be accurate predictions of policies enacted by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11. Here’s an excerpt:

"Their grip on Washington is still pretty precarious. […] If they showed their hand now and went totalitarian all the way, there would be a revolution. Middle-roaders would rise up with right-wingers, and left-libertarians, and [they] aren’t powerful enough to withstand that kind of massive revolution. But they can rule by fraud, and by fraud eventually acquire access to the tools they need to finish the job of killing off the Constitution."

"What sort of tools?"

"More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. […] The people reason—or are manipulated into reasoning—that the entire populace must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can’t be trusted."

Online, I’ve put some time into finally revamping OrnothLand. The new version can be seen at http://www.ornoth.com/. I was pleased to be able to easily include my most recent Twitter tweet, Livejournal blog and cycling blog posts, and Flickr photograph by parsing their RSS feeds. And I’ve implemented (although not perfected) long-desired features like the ability to search through past entries as well as see only what’s new since your last visit.

A couple notes on Facebook, while I’m here. A while ago I stopped getting notifications when a friend added another friend to their list. I miss that feature, which was sacrificed to one of Facebook’s rewrites; however, now it seems to be about to come back. On the other hand, I also recently stopped getting notifications every time a friend took a quiz or took an action in one of their applications, and I have to say that’s been a godsend, and saved several inane people from being un-friended. I’d already manually ignored 787 applications, but I haven’t added to that list in several weeks.

I’ve also spent some of my free time expanding my cooking repertoire, which has paid nice dividends. I started with basic stuff that I’ve cooked before but hadn’t in years, like roasted beets, roasted potatoes, sour cream cookies, tollhouse cookies, brownies, and my family’s traditional spaghetti sauce, which I modified to include a bit more heat. I added steamed broccoli to the list of things I’d make, and I continue to experiment to figure out how to make stir-fry that doesn’t produce allergic headaches. Sadly, I think garlic and onions are the culprits. I also just made Hi-Rise Bakery’s vanilla loaf, which came out nicely, but boy is that one expensive piece of bread!

People often ask about Grady… He’s doing okay. Nothing really to mention there. He’s mellowed out a bit, even to the point of tolerating being held, but he’s still quite the little athletic hunter, especially when it comes to wadded up balls of paper. I should probably take and post some more pictures of him.

Speaking of photos, this photo of mine will be displayed in two five foot long resin displays at the Red Rock Canyon Visitor’s Center outside Las Vegas. Very cool thing to add to the resume/portfolio, and it’s another paying client. And made another photo expedition to the top of Boston’s Custom House tower; results (here).

On a side note, my friend Inna is DJing a show on Duquesne student radio. Visit wdsr.org Fridays from 5-7pm.

Closer to home, this is a big year for Boston politics. There’s a big mayoral vote this year, plus the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.

The autumnal equinox has passed, which means the end of summer, which I hate to see go. The fourth quarter is always the worst time of year for me, starting with my birthday, which as usual I’ll thank you not to observe. I’ve been kicking around ideas of what to do, but I suspect it’ll look a lot like last year’s observance… hopefully with the same result!

October and November look to be very busy at the sangha, as there are two big events coming up. In October I’m participating in a metta (lovingkindness) practice group. I’ve sometimes scoffed at metta practice for being simplistic and pointless, but at the same time, all the challenges I encounter in my practice are pointing me in that direction. So this’ll be an interesting experiment. And there’s also the annual Sandwich Retreat in early November, which is always revelatory. You can of course expect writeups. And there are several interesting topics and speakers at CIMC’s Wednesday evening dharma talks. So it’s going to be an intense couple months of sitting motionlessly with one’s eyes closed.

That’ll be quite a change, tho. The center was closed for their usual summer hiatus, and until recently I’d seen very few of the people in my dharma circle since July. I miss that. Unfortunately, the previously copacetic dynamic has deteriorated after some of the usual adolescent antics. It saddens me, even though I know that change is, of course, inevitable.

I should take a second to record a couple interesting tidbits from the most recent talk, given by John Peacock. There were three key points he made that resonated with me, each from a context outside Buddhism, in addition to coming from completely separate contexts from each other.

One of his main points was to approach life with a sense of wonder, to see things deeply and anew as they are encountered. By looking at a tree and seeing "a tree", our minds see little more than our pre-existing conceptual model of "a tree", rather than the specific instance before us, which might differ radically from that mental construct, and is certainly much more vibrant and alive. This obscures reality and inhibits one’s ability to see special and meaningful details that make this tree unique. It’s these kinds of penetrative insights that also give a fiction writer the experience and the vocabulary to build a compelling mental image of a scene, which is a belief I’ve held strongly since writing an article about Tolkien’s use of vocabulary for a fanzine thirty-five years ago. You can see one incarnation of that particular rant on the DargonZine site, at http://www.dargonzine.org/dpww/docs/wonder.txt. So you can imagine how John’s words about wonder and careful observation resonated with me.

Another interesting bit was John’s response to a question I asked that went something like this:

Having a background in Tibetan Buddhism as well as Theravada and IMS, you seem singularly qualified to speak on the topic of viewing Buddhism along a continuum from extremely rational and scientific to extremely superstitious and ritualized. I don’t know how it is at IMS or Oxford, where you teach, but here at CIMC we hear almost nothing about jhana (concentration) practice, despite the fact that it is very heavily emphasized in the Pali canon. Where on that spectrum do you see jhana practice falling?

The response was that jhana practice is useful in developing concentration, but he seemed skeptical about the existence of the specific sublime mind states described in the suttas. He also said that the suttas actually equivocate, pointing specifically to Majjhima Nikaya Sutta 26, the Ariyapariyesana Sutta (The Noble Search). That sutta includes the Buddha’s unsatisfying search for enlightenment by studying under other Indian teachers, many of whom taught concentration practice. So the canon seems to imply that concentration practice is helpful, but not sufficient.

Finally, John was presented with the standard Buddhist question that sets Buddhist virtues of patience and acceptance of life as it is against the human desire to correct injustice and make progress (positive change) in the world. The answer is, of course, that wise action is virtous, but the important factors are that one perform such actions with a wholesome intent rather than coming from a place of aversion, and that one must perform all actions without becoming so attached to a specific result that it causes suffering if it does not come about. This relates very closely to managing one’s expectations. I first learned the importance of expectation management in my professional consulting career at Sapient, where common knowledge held that one should always under-promise and over-deliver, so as to always exceed clients’ expectations. A yogi should bring that same attitude to the actions they take in the world, letting go of the attachment to a particular outcome, and being delighted if things transpire in a positive way.

Finally, I’ve taken a bit of time to do some formal goal-setting for 2010. Here’s what I’ve got:

Get a new job
Travel to the Bay Area and:
- Participate in the annual Buddhist Bicycle Pilgrimage
- Meet and thank Gil Fronsdal
- Hang out with some of my friends in the area
Complete my 10th Pan-Mass Challenge
- Possibly crossing the entire state by starting in New York State
- Exceed $60,000 lifetime fundraising
- 5th consecutive heavy hitter
Participate in at least one week-long residential meditation retreat

So those are some of the things that have transpired over the past couple months. Although my cycling blog will be a bit less active in coming months, hopefully this one will get a little more attention, even if it may not be the most exciting reading in the world.

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