A strange day full of dualities. I woke up from a dream early in the morning:
I was frantically finishing the game in front of the computer, finally I thought fuck it and put it out on Hacker News. I began receiving bug reports, and I desperately tried to address them, but I was being distracted by mom. I looked up and I realized I was back in my hometown in Puebla, Mexico. I can’t work here, too many distractions, I thought, so I packed up and took the bus to my former university.
The bus was an ancient diesel fuming DINA (the same bus I used to get to university) and it was exasperatingly slow. At some point it broke down, and the passengers as well as the driver went out. The keys were left on the ignition, so I jumped on the driver seat and turned the key. The bus rumbled and I resumed the journey. While crossing a bridge a pedestrian stepped into the road and I swerved to avoid hitting him. I was relieved yet I knew I wouldn’t have stopped if I had run over him.
Finally I arrived to the campus, and I encountered some friends from that time (whom are still great friends and I haven’t seen in years), and I thought I must hang out for at least a couple of minutes, it would just be so rude after so much time. They were on a tour through the new campus buildings and I was following along but utterly exasperated and thought the whole thing was pointless. I broke away without saying goodbye and went to the computer lab. I opened my laptop and begun working frantically… On the about me page.
Though I now see the dream with humor, I was horrified when I woke up because I knew what it meant: this is no new state, the ego is in charge again. I know that challenging its command only reaffirms his position, and inner violence leads to great loss. I sat down on the bed to meditate, and despite the state of inner turmoil I sensed I was meant to nurture the true self so that the ego would take its proper place in the whole affair.
I left home and headed for a library that opened earlier in the morning. The sun was just coming out, and the cold of the morning was piercing. I felt like a character of a Russian novel tormented by the misgivings of my own mind. The inner voice was louder than ever and impossible to shut up.
Work provided some relief, though I was trying to accomplish things for which I simply didn’t have enough presence of mind. Frustrated, I decided to create some stages which require less attention. I was trying to find a good example for the difference boolean operation, and I was stumped because this operation is seldom used, it’s easier to predict subtraction. If I have two groups where there’s overlap, say, doctors and runners, there’s four possibilities of combination:
- All doctors and all runners (Union)
- Doctors who are not runners (Subtract)
- Doctors who are runners (Intersect)
- Doctors who are not runners and runners who are not doctors (Difference)
In this way, two subtractions create the same result as one difference. But there’s a couple of cases where difference is godsend. In a flash of inspiration the perfect example came: the taijitu! (the yin-yang symbol in common parlance). I made if from scratch in Sketch, and then implemented it on the game. I put all the shapes on the stage and hit the difference button: boom, the taijitu appeared in a single operation! I was relieved and hit the gym soon later.
Exercise and engaged work put my mind in a much better place, I walked back home and difference was astounding, the ego had receded to a distant voice which I could easily quiet by focusing on the breath.
I had lunch and the had a nap. I dreamed again, this time that I working and I visited paper.js’s website, and there was an announcement for a new project called “textstyler”, and it was decorated with beautiful mandalas, and I was looking closely to try to understand how they had been built.
Then went back to the library and put in three hours of deep concentration, just as in my best days. I came back home happy, worked here more until I got sleepy, and was about to go to bed without writing today’s log simply because I forgot about it. A sure sign that the ego is no longer on the driver’s seat.