My first tattoo – sheesh – sometime in the middle of my time in San Diego (that makes it over 10 years ago…I got it in Hillcrest with a guy that was shaky – until the vibration of his needle cancelled out his shakes. His daughter, who couldn’t have been more than 10 years old, had quite a few tattoos too – it was a nice little establishment) was of a pair of ants. Kind of like the ones above, but not as violent looking.
I got it because of my love affair with the notion of social systems. Dumb agents collecting together, obeying sets of rules, creating an intelligent system. Kind of like neurons and this phenomena we call Mind.
Prelude and Ant Fugue from the GEB book I mentioned earlier were the main inspiration towards ants. I had really wanted to get Escher’s Ants on a Mobius Strip, but it seemed complicated, expensive, and the ants weren’t really communicating. Communication was the key to this after all. [Later on, I toyed with the idea of just getting little, ants placed around my body every now and then. Just so I could be a hit at picnics and such…but I haven’t gotten around to that yet…]
Communication was the reason that stands out in my mind as to why my parents got divorced too. Granted, I haven’t pried too much into the details, and “communication” is a pretty convenient rug to sweep things under, but, one can’t really argue that when systems, relationships, football games, whatever, break down, communication played a role in the break down.
So I value communication.
My father was a salesperson before retiring into Art. He values communcation. He used to critique lots of situations – trivial ones – and some of that rubbed off onto me where I notice these things. A guy working at Sears didn’t have the type of wrench my father was asking for? “He should have tried to sell me another one instead? I am here, I want to buy a wrench, a good salesperson would sell me a wrench.” To the more abstract, where he didn’t even know what he wanted, but still wanted the salesperson to sell him something, because, afterall, he was there to buy something. The salesperson should have tried harder to understand his issues, his needs, and provide a solution.
Perhaps it was cause we spent so much time in Sears and their salesforce maybe isn’t the most customer oriented. But growing up, I heard a lot of commentaries about sales pitches. Or, communication techniques. Even through college, my father was pushing Neural Linguistic Programming – which is a technique one can use to be a more effective communicator. He gave to book to Catherine to read, but when she found out the author was cleared of any wrong doing associated with his wife’s disappearance (murder?) and that it was suspected that he had used NLP on the jury, she hid the book from me.
So I value communication.
But it can be a hang up. Reading too much into what people say. How they said it. How could it have been worded differently? (Catherine’s really getting frustrated with the way I pause tv and critique writers and toss out other phrases…) How would I have said it? How would I have liked it said to me? When would be the right time to say something? And the biggest one – why they aren’t talking to me anymore…
Anyway, this past year, I’ve found that I’ve been struggling with some communications. It revolves around messages that I feel are good in heart, in spirit, but get delivered in a way that reduces their effectiveness. And I dwell on the technically poor aspects of the communication instead of embracing the message. Which clouds the message for me, and tends to make my feedback more negative than it should be, creating a negative feedback loop around a positive message.
I’ll spend this year trying to fix that.
Oh – and get under 210 pounds. Then in 2007, I could lose another 10 pounds and by late 2007, me and Sal can be crusing around the neighborhood. He’ll have a big wheel. I’ll have the green machine. Cause I had to wait a while before I got a green machine – and that’s an important lesson to learn. Hmm – in looking up that link, I find good news and bad news. Bad news – it’s sold out (but maybe not so bad, cause I’ve got 2 years before I really need it). Good news – they’ve upped the max weight to 225 pounds now. So I don’t need to wait for it. In fact, it can become part of my exercise routine. Oh, wait, now the bad news is bad news…
