This weekend was the rumble. It was 48 hours of coding madness, and it was a blast. We had so much fun. You can find our app here. You’ll need an OpenID account to access it. I recommend ClaimID. Apparently the Flickr and AOL OpenID interfaces don’t work with our app. (fixed!)

Considering that we only had 48 hours, a team member who had to bail halfway through due to other plans, a team member or two who might’ve been a bit rusty on Rails and/or git development, and no designer (except for my gimpy designing skills), I think we did a pretty kick-ass job. We were running on as little sleep as we could get away with. A couple of us brought sleeping bags and slept in the office. It was pretty awesome.

I think that our app is probably a little bit above average as far as all the apps people came up with, but there are some AMAZING apps out there, so I’ll be pretty surprised if we place. But man, it was so much fun. At the very least, we have a great start to an application that has a lot of potential to be really cool. If you’re feeling generous, go register to vote at the Rails Rumble website, and vote for us! =)

Everyone on our team took today off work. I caught up on sleep a little bit last night, but I’m still behind. I’m probably going to crash pretty soon, as I’m still exhausted. (more…)

One thing I’ve learned about mental health over the years is that it’s important to be proactive. Figure out what your subconscious needs and act on it. It’s way better than not doing anything. Basically the reason I try to be proactive is because the alternative really, really sucks. Anxiety, shortness of breath, muscle cramps, bad news all around.

Lately it has started to get bad. My anxiety isn’t really bad yet, but it’s getting there. On the way to work today I decided that I needed to do something about it, and that decision alone made me feel a little better.

The story for what’s going on with me right now goes back a few years, maybe even longer than that. Over the past few years since I graduated from college, one by one my closest friends have “let me down”. Maybe they were a little insensitive to my feelings, or maybe there wasn’t quite enough communication. It’s been a cycle. I rely too heavily on one of my friends, and then they pull away from me a little bit to pursue a girlfriend or a job, and my equilibrium gets fucked up.

I blamed lots of things. I blamed them for abandoning me. I blamed their girlfriends for taking my friends away from me. I blamed myself for relying on them too much. But in the end, blaming people doesn’t solve anything. The real reasons why I felt hurt or betrayed or abandoned or whatever is because I counted on them for things that humans just can’t possible provide me enough of: security and self-esteem.

People fail. That’s just how we are. We fail. Friends fail. Parents fail. Children fail. Everyone fails sometimes. So if everyone fails, who can I rely on? The only logical answer left to me, is God. I’ve maybe been to a church service once or twice in the last 6 or 7 years, and I’ve been generally happier as a result of not going. But I think it’s time to give it a shot again, because I don’t really know what else to do.

A month ago Mitch was talking about just this topic, and it stirred a little something in my spirit. I don’t really know what’s going to happen, but I’m tired of being anxious. I still don’t like a lot of things about church, like the legalism and the political and emotional bullshit, but I’m going to try to go to a few different churches and see what happens. The first step I made to get help when I was depressed after high school was really hard, too, but eventually it changed my life for the better.

I’ve felt this coming on for a long time, and I knew it would happen eventually. I knew I would go back to God eventually when all of my pain from high school maybe started to scar over. When I had maybe unlearned some of the poison that was put into me by legalism. And maybe this is the time for it to happen. I’m a little bit wary, but I’m also a little bit excited to be free from this.

~

In other news, I discovered the band Justice the other day when I was listening to Marketplace on NPR. I dig them. Kudos to NPR for playing kick-ass music. Funnily enough, Justice is from France, and so is Daft Punk, and so is AIR. Why are so many bands I like coming from France?!

I played pick-up ultimate frisbee tonight at Belmont with a bunch of freshmen. The school year just started a week ago. It was a lot of fun. The freshmen guys and girls were good people. There’s still that one douche bag upperclassmen, but hey, 1 out of 30 isn’t so bad. Compared to summer league, 1:30 is a great ratio (as opposed to like 1:5).

I met a lot of people, which I haven’t done in a long time. Most of the time I don’t even try to learn the names of new people that show up, but tonight was different. There’s something about being around a group of people who are in a new college environment and eager to meet people. It’s easier for me to meet people when cliques haven’t already formed.

It made me almost feel like I was part of the dorm family again. Like I belonged again. I know that’s not the best thing to say, since I have great friends. But this was different.

I also realized how much I like encouraging people. Frisbee gives me an avenue to do that. When someone drops a pass, “Hey, good try man, no worries.” I can only really be encouraging when I feel encouraged myself, and tonight was the first time I felt that way in a good amount of time. For the past month or so I’ve been a little sad. Always a little sadness underneath it all. Tonight there was no sadness; at least while I was out there playing.

I know that I can’t go back to college and live in a dorm again. That life is over and gone. But maybe I can learn to encourage people who need it. One day, perhaps years from now, maybe I’ll have what it takes to be a counselor. Or a teacher.

It felt good to be encouraged again. To be around people that are trying to find their way in a new situation made me feel a little better subconsciously I guess, because I’m still trying to find my way. Still fighting it.

I hung out with some people tonight to watch the Olympics. When I left, I felt a sense of failure. I’m not happy about my behavior lately. I feel like I let myself down. No matter what I tell myself about how I shouldn’t do this or that, it doesn’t matter if I don’t subconsciously understand the reasoning.

The fact is, I’ve been kind of desperate for social approval. I try to prove how much I know. I feel the urge to let it be known that I have something intelligent to contribute to the conversation. I’ve caught myself exaggerating slightly. I’ve been doing the very things that I hated a few months ago. I still hate those things. Now that hate is directed at myself, by me.

What’s the solution? The scary thing is, I don’t know. This is a self-esteem issue, and self-esteem cannot come from other people. My cycle lately has been to spend time with people, and then go a week or so before I hang out again because I hated how I acted the last time. Maybe it’s time again to start using the techniques I learned in counseling. Reprogramming. Telling myself that I don’t need other people’s approval, that I belong in the world as much as anyone else, that I’m okay the way I am. Eventually my subconscious will start to believe those things, and I’ll feel better again.

I have an inkling about what caused my self-esteem drop. It could be a couple of things, but I think I have a good guess at what the real cause is. My guess is that it has to do with what I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. I don’t think I ever really dealt with it properly, and I withdrew. I need to reconcile with myself.

I need to get to bed. I haven’t had enough sleep the past few nights.

Lately I’ve been more eager to say what’s on my mind in a social setting. What bothers me is that sometimes I do it at the expense of someone else. It’s kind of new for me, being so socially charged. I think it’s because of living alone. I have more stored up social energy now, because when I go home for the day I don’t have to talk to anyone. So when I hang out with my friends now, I have so much to say that I think I’ve been overpowering others. I’m trying to make an effort to stop.

It happens at work sometimes, too. From the stories I’ve told and the way I talk, I think the biostatisticians think that I’m a slacker and that I don’t respect the people I work for on my projects. I’ve kind of presented the hooligan side of myself to them, and I think I might have subconsciously done that on purpose. Whenever I feel like things are too formal or too “nice”, I feel the need to break out. When things aren’t “real” enough, I try to inject some reality into the situation. And work tends to be a bit too formal for my taste, at least whenever we hang out with some of the statisticians my age.

Who knows.

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