Anna Koop

I’ve been listening to an audiobook of 168 hours and I have to say it is my current favourite of the genre. It has led me to ponder some misconceptions I’ve had about work, work/life balance, passion, etc. (I also have realized that organization and time management and self-help (of the practical and science-based kind) are another hobby of mine. Hence the categorization of this post. Optimization and studying systems . . .)

Anyway, I discovered that I’ve misunderstood two aphorisms: One, that you should follow your dreams (a.k.a. do what you love). Two, that happiness and satisfaction and passion are key to being good at what you do.

First, on following your dreams. Misunderstanding this is not totally my fault. The way it is presented is usually: Quit school and start a crafting business! Move to New York to become a writer! Enrol in acting classes! Lock yourself in your garret to paint! Identify what your dream is and then drop everything (including practical considerations of money, location, and time) to follow it in the most obvious instantiation.

So I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t particularly want to move to New York. Or quit school, for that matter. Or even spend every free moment writing. I happen to love learning and want to spend time on that, too. This led me to conclude that I wasn’t really dreaming of being a writer. There was no dream to follow because if I really wanted it, writing a novel (and getting it published) would be a consuming passion. Thus a more prosaic career path was my calling, and I’m all for people following their dreams if they want but I really hate not having money to pay the bills so that’s not for me.

Now, the other side: passion, finding your core competencies and what makes you excited. This misunderstanding is almost entirely down to my own peculiar (but not unique) tendency to downplay happiness. I conflated this with “Bloom where you’re planted” and twisted it into a stick, a demand to muster up passion for whatever I’m doing or else. In order to be good I had to be passionate and excited. A rather serious misordering: “you need to be passionate about what you are choosing to do.”

This, combined with twisted ideas about what I was allowed to be passionate about, turned disastrous and nearly drove me out of work I adore. Because surely being a researcher meant always thinking only about the topic you were researching, not this more general desire to Learn! All! The Things! (and then connect them). And definitely being a researcher was about successful discovery, not clear communication. Real (computer science) researchers were passionate about proofs, or programs, or scribblings on the whiteboard or maybe even hardware design. Not crafting sentences, not absorbing ideas (at least not without immediately turning them to work for your own ideas). And so on. I don’t think I could possibly uncover all the strange gotchas in my head that meant what I loved and was doing and feeling Didn’t Count. You can blame some on poor teaching or a restrictive “Protestant work ethic’’ or the disconnects in society about success and happiness. But the end result was that I would hear “passion leads to quality” as a criticism of my obsessions rather than a pointer for what to pursue. And it would mix with the “if-I-really-loved-this-I’d-love-only-this” interpretation of “follow your dreams” and it would all mean I was judged and found wanting.

Both of these skews miss the point that the key thing for making decisions is finding out the trivial and vague and recurring things you love. Not your dream in some epic sense (I am but the mistress of my muse) or in the sense of finding the right career label (I was born/called to be a Teacher) but in the sense of “Hey, I like reading. I am enjoying this. I like petting this cat, too. Isn’t the sun lovely?”

I can find some broad categories that I love (and am good at), but I get to them from looking at the specific things I enjoy, not decreeing that I-Am-Researcher-This-I-Love. I know that I love looking into (some) things, whether it’s what fibre to use for hypoallergenic wicking socks or the underlying causes of schizophrenia. I love experimenting (sometimes), whether with new craft materials or new update functions for my learning agent—both different cases of trying something out and seeing what happens. I love inventing things, from the helpful (I hope my knowledge representation research is promising for artificial intelligence) to the ridiculous (I tried to design a sock knitting machine but gave up because sourcing the parts was going to be a pain). I really like trying to explain things to people and understand other points of view. I like trying new things and I love creating things with my hands. Tiny things, especially. But not everything. I hate sewing, although sheet metal work is awesome.

None of these counted in “follow your dreams” or “be passionate about what you do” edicts because they weren’t real career-type things. They are not on anybody’s criteria for career inventories. But they keep coming up in my life, and I keep coming back to them. Sure, these could roughly fall under “researcher” when I target the general statement. But if I focus on the role, I try to shoe-horn myself into my preconceived ideas about what a researcher should be, rather than bending the role to my many loves.

So it turns out that paying attention to what I’m enjoying NOW, in this moment, might be extraordinarily more important than what career I feel a strong affinity for or which program is most appealing. Why is this a strange thought to me? I’ve spent decades pondering career choices, and I’m thinking that time would have been better spent exploring and enjoying(although it was inevitable that I was doing that all along as well, to give myself *some* credit). The career guidance surveys that suggested poultry veterinarian, concrete sculptor, dentist all seem irrelevant now. This is what I’m really doing: grad school, AI research, writing, developing a home-based business, selling tiny things. There’s an odd man out there. But they’re what I love.

Life is strange.

or: Yet another way to get rid of writer’s block

This focus on sitting down and just writing, doing the best I can do with what I know now, can be seen as a switch from product to process. I don’t start by wondering about which section I’ll get done or principle I will refine. I start by breaking out the laptop and sitting down. And no matter what I actually do with the document—editing, free-writing, making diagrams, tracking down reference—progress has been made. And I know progress will be made tomorrow. So I will end up with a product although I never have to think about what that will be.

I think this is an advantage. Surely sometimes I need to think about the product I’m making. But it comes down much more to act of writing itself than the plan. And it stops me from tripping up over not knowing what the final product will be, or if this outline is really going to work in the end, or if this paragraph is necessary. If I have doubts about one area, work on another. If it ends up cut—oh well. It all works out in the end.

Jumping off the cliff before it’s in sight, in Julie Cameron’s terms. That’s what undue focus on product results in.

Very related to “just do the next thing” but I needed an extra jolt to get out of product-fixation.

Is the life where winning the lottery, finding out I had a terminal illness, or being given the opportunity to do exactly what I wanted to for a week wouldn’t change my plans.

Luckily enough, I think such a life is possible. Eudaimonia, indeed.

I just agreed to be on a panel about IT careers, to talk about my research. The audience is 40 Girl Guides between 11 and 17. So I got to thinking about what I found interesting at that age, which reminded me of when I decided science was for me.

Our school had a career day where they brought in a pretty wide range of people to talk about their jobs, and you picked which ones to go to based on the descriptions. I signed up for the High School teacher, Ducks Unlimited, and Marine Biologist sessions. There must have been others, but those are the ones I know. Teacher/scientist were always careers high on my list, and of course I wanted to swim with the dolphins. I blame (or thank) Madeleine L’Engle for that.

The thing I remember about the Marine Biologist was her showing a picture of a dolphin and then saying: “Yeah, we don’t really do that.” She went on to describe her research into algae. I remember pictures with dirty gallon buckets of goo and blurry Erlenmeyer flasks near lab-coated figures and a research station perched on a cliff with sea-spray drenching the windows. I remember the enthusiasm in her voice when she talked about the algae. I don’t remember many details, but I remember being convinced at the end of the day that research was for me.

So I’ll probably draw on that when I’m putting together my talk—say something about all the many interesting areas of AI research, but talk about my project and what I do each day. Maybe someone will recognize that even when it doesn’t involve magical portals and swimming with dolphins, research can be exciting and engrossing, a perfect career for them. And if not, they’ll at least see someone who loves their work.

The problem with being a night owl and starting work very late in the morning or early in the afternoon is that it’s late evening when it’s finally done. This is one of those irrefutable constants that still manages to surprise me, along with the saltiness of the ocean and how much faster it is to knit for babies than adults.

Try it out. Write it down. It’s the only sure way to know if it will work or get it out of the way if it isn’t going to.

I’m going through old notes and seeing how I tried a historic approach, a controversy story, a philosophical introduction—tried and ultimately rejected. But I didn’t really know what would work and what wouldn’t until I had the attempt on the page.

So, for future reference: just write.

I’m sensing a theme.

Mickle is helping on my New Year’s resolution to be more mindful by crawling onto my lap as I work and purring madly. When I stop to pet her, she makes cat-bliss-face, and her eyes are the colour of green labradorescence. I am lucky indeed.

I was thinking about ghosts the other day, in particular imagining how I would respond to someone who asked me if I believe in ghosts. (I believe this was prompted by the unfamiliar noises of the hotel we were staying in.) This imaginary person had a ghost story of their own and was sympathetic to the “science can’t explain everything” philosophy (doesn’t everyone have backstory to their imaginary conversation partners?).

So: belief in ghosts. I do and I don’t. I have grave doubts about the empirically-testable existence of a particular ghost haunting a particular place. But I am convinced of the ability of the human mind to experience wild and wonderful and individual things. So your grandmother’s tale of feeling a comforting presence late one night after your grandfather passed away, of her opening her eyes and seeing him standing there smiling down at her and then fading away into a bright light—I believe that she experienced that, whatever would have been measured and confirmed by instruments in the room. And the story of the dedicated student that still haunts the school paper’s newsroom, opening drawers and tramping around upstairs late at night when the building should be deserted—that story has power, and insisting that someone shouldn’t believe their lying ears is not always useful.

The problem is that people who believe in the (empirically-testable) existence of ghosts are not completely happy with the “I believe you experienced that.” response. And “I believe that something happened” is a little too gullible for extreme skeptics or hard-core logical positivists. But, being the indirect realist that I am, “I believe you experienced that, and it is not something that can be measured or reliably experience by me” is the most accurate thing I can say.

On to crystals: I love rocks. I have collected them one way or another since I was a child. I like the sparkly structures of crystals and the rich hues of gemstones and the smooth lines of river rocks and the cutting edges and flat planes of slate and all the images and letters and patterns that we find in perfectly ordinary stones. I am (in spite of the dreadlocks) emphatically not a believer in their mystical powers.

But I do believe in the power of symbolism and ritual and mental cues. So I have been contemplating ways of presenting this in an intellectually honest way. I do not think that putting my bit of kyanite near my computer will protect me from evil emanations, and I love my labradorite sample for its hidden aurora borealis, not for good luck and clarity of thought. But since I once used a ladybug sticker to remind myself to “just do the next thing”, I can certainly use rocks to remind myself to be mindful or calm or whatever affirmation is most important at the time. In fact, stopping to play with the labradorite and watch it glow might be a perfect antidote to thrashing.

And, being an incorrigible schemer, I’m thinking of ways to systematize this (personal) symbolism and make wire cages for different rocks and customizable stitch markers and keychains and a billion other plans. So it goes.

Still, labradorite for mindfulness works pretty well, since you have to play with it to catch its beauty. I’ll give that a go.

If you’re going to go for 3-ply using a plying ball, do not start with a 2-ply ball and a spindle full of singles. Start from 3 cops, 3 single-ply balls, or 3 spindles. Three individual strands being joined for the first time into the final plying ball.

The rest of the plying experience will be much more pleasant (read: possible) if you aren’t trying to keep the 2-ply properly aligned with the extra single.

In semi-related news, I have decided I need to do some more spinning projects from beginning to end before filling up all my spindles. Turns out spinning, plying, finishing, and using all intersect in complicated ways. Need more experience.

In unrelated news, I just had cereal for lunch. It was a stroke of genius. And my PDA will no longer turn on, so I have to finally give up the idea of using it for Windows-only audiobooks. Curses.

NB: I’ve been winding around pennies rather than starting with a butterfly. I might try Amelia’s way next time.

I had an epiphany yesterday. The kind I have had before and will probably have again, but it has to do with writing the proposal-that-won’t-die.

It is: It’s just a proposal. It’s just words. It is, in fact, words and ideas for which I have done a tremendous amount of preparation. All it is going to take now is writing time. If I learn nothing more, develop no new ideas, run no experiments, and even think no new thoughts—I’ll still have more than enough material for a proposal.

So. I got quite a bit done today by realizing that it isn’t such a big deal. Work, yes. But the kind of work that you can get done if you just show up and do what’s required. Fill in the gaps. Write a paragraph or sentence or page, then edit a paragraph or sentence or page. No big deal.

Like all epiphanies, it’s more in the feeling than in the words. I read all this last year in How to Write a Lot. It remains good advice. I’m back to feeling it in my bones.