It’s a lot to write about, so let me first set the scene.

Copyright: 2009, Florida Center for Instructional Technology.

I’ve been aware of anxiety’s presence in my life  since 2005 when I was working in the games industry and suffered my first panic attacks. Panic attacks are often the terrifying first sign that something is not quite right with how you’re thinking and are often triggered by extra stressors and things to worry about.

Looking back before 2005, I can recognise the beginnings of poor thinking habits that make me far more worried than should be normal. That said, working in games (the stress, the late hours etc) definitely provided a good trigger for overthinking and made it much harder to maintain good mental health.

I’d been working the ridiculous hours that somehow add to the glamour of technology jobs, particularly games development. Then I went to hear Greg Bourne deliver the Hawke Lecture and then spent the evening and next days in total terror of climate change. And that weekend I woke up so so sure that my heart and lungs were being squashed by everything that was wrong with myself and the world and that I was going to die.

One of the things to know about anxiety disorders is that you take a normal, healthy amount of concern required to manage a difficult situation, and multiply that by many factors of overthinking and add reactions evolved millions of years ago.  Evolutionarily anxiety worked for us like this: see a tiger pacing by, start thinking of places to hide or sticks to use as weapons, then release a bunch of adrenalin as you fought or fled. The problem is that tiger-appropriate adrenal responses – increased blood pressure and heart rate, restlessness and muscle tension are inappropriate for most modern challenges. Today, tigers aren’t an everyday threat, so a difficult situation might just involve applying for a new job or discussing a problem with a friend and normally we don’t need the fight or flight response in those situations.

Work and environmental and social collapse as a result of climate change are two of the main spaces where I see tigers and am always pretty sure things are going terribly, horribly wrong. See, it’s logical that work and enviromental contexts are both very important spaces in which you should be concerned about threats and make appropriate responses. The problem for people like myself is that the thinking gets stuck in the identifying threats mode far too much of the time and makes it harder to actually get anything done.

Luckily for me,  panic attacks are relatively few and far between but as with that first panic attack when they do appear, it’s to signal that I really do need to start paying attention to my mental health. Of course, there are other symptoms but despite being really quite serious they are easier to ignore than a feeling of imminent doom: -

• • holding your breath and grinding your teeth while emailing?
    this email had better be perfectly worded and leave no room for misinterpretation. That next email is far too scary to answer. I’d best ignore it.
• Feelings of mild paranoia while in face to face and online meetings?
  They’re going to realise I know nothing about doing this job, I’ll get fired and no-one will ever employ me again.
• Hiding in bed in the morning
  It’s not worth getting up, everything I do is worthless and I’m sure something terrible will happen if I even just go to the shops and have to speak German.
• Lying awake at night feeling very aware of all the things that could go wrong ever.
  I don’t have proper curtains, people will come to visit will see this,  tell Tim I’m an unfit fiance and he’ll break up with me and we’ll never live the rest of our lives with the happiness we deserve or the family we were meant to have and our children would have been born with major health issues anyway. Really, it’s all fucked so why even bother with the curtains let alone eating breakfast tomorrow?

In between panic attacks and weeks of feeling generally horrible and exhausted there are times when I feel totally fine: confident and powerful enough to change the world. I’ll be happy and calm, inspired and productive at work,  I meet new people without fear, leave the house and confidently speak poorly structured German, face the world and the future full on and trick myself and others into believing that everything is okay and will forever be amazing.

These days exist and they are what I want to have more of. Too much of the time though I’m not okay, I’m not getting things done in the way with the ease or capacity I should.

Sometimes I feel like a mouse being played with by a cat – the type of play where the cat seems to take a vicious delight in playing with the mouse and then seemingly ignores it before pouncing again. I’ll get over a phase of anxiety without much effort on my behalf and feel great. Then, weeks or months later I realise I’m not free of worry and I find myself hopeless, unproductive and tense again and I know that I never really solved the problem.

I’m hoping that by writing more publicly about anxiety I will actively do more to challenge my experience of this disorder and to follow through with the positive behaviours  and thinking changes that will help me improve. When I next return to this topic, I will write about how I hope to improve this situation, the tools I’ve used to good effect and the challenges with maintaining and setting good habits and living in the real world.

I’ve lived overseas (on and off) for about 5 years now and it has always been with the knowledge that distance makes it much harder to maintain contact with family and friends. Either you’re here or you’re there, and despite the best intentions and the latest in technology it’s almost impossible to maintain or grow a relationship in the same way that realtime and realspace allows. There’s something about biorhythms, a shared physical environment, eating and drinking together that will always be more valuable than endless Skype conversations and email lists.

It’s one of the reasons why, even today, organisations still spend huge amounts of money and burn fossil fuels to organise face-to-face meetings and why for the last two years Tim and I spent weeks of time on train trips between Berlin and Linz. Luckily of course, I’m finally living in Linz and the tension that resulted from never being quite at home has begun to ease.

Being in a long-distance [romantic] relationship within the confines of Europe has also obscured the many other long-distance relationships that have evolved: all the many across Australia, to those scattered in Finland and Brussels, Newcastle Upon Tyne, the Norwegian bits of the Arctic Circle, Biggleswade, Sheffield, Brighton, Dunedin, London and beyond. Of course, now with the move to Linz, those who made up my community in Berlin are now more people far afield. Within my head when I think of these friends I also think of the people I’ve met briefly, desired as friends but have never had a full chance to become friends with.

So lately, as annoyed emails have begun to arrive from those I’ve neglected I’m trying to work out how to maintain these relationships, how to provide intermittent meaningful connections that transcend Facebook messages and work for those who are far less digitally embedded than I am.

Letters and packages I guess. I managed to send one off to Berlin yesterday.

That’s what’s been bugging me for the last week or so. Today though my tyrannies of distance are familial. My father has finally asked for me to come back home and visit him, sooner rather than later. He turned 76 last week and he’s been ill for ages, so this isn’t such a surprise.

I can remember when he rang up to tell me he’d been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis and that slowly, his lungs were scarring and being eaten away by a autoimmune response. I was in Helsinki at the time and even though my memory places me in the flat on Mechelininkatu I lived there in 2006. Somehow that timing feels wrong, maybe it was when I was back in 2008?

So for at least 3 years while I’ve been away there’s always been the knowledge that one day I’d have to go back home to hang out with Dad and not really know how long I’d be back in Adelaide for.

What’s amazing though is that for far longer than was expected, Dad’s lung capacity stayed strong. Based on advice from a doctor friend and responding to data from drug trials on rats, he started to take high levels of anti-oxidants and until recently his lungs were good. But at the end of last year he was hospitalised following a stomach flu and as seems to be the way, suddenly felt, I don’t know what. His age? Breathless?

Putting aside the fact that Dad is ill, I am looking forward to hanging out with him some more. As a child he preferred to teach me maths than play sports, but as I’ve grown older I realise how much he’s influenced me – to love science and to be more of an independent worker than an employee. Without a doubt, one of the reasons why I’m with Tim is that in many good ways he reminds me of my father.

So yeah, I don’t really know how to finish this post. I still need to work out the best tickets and how to fit this around work and how to manage being away from Linz  so soon after I arrived here.

Maybe it will give me more motivation to write postcards.

A couple of friends started to write their own lists and a couple even made it up to 100. Recently Pete Hindle, returned to his list of 50 things and updated it with comments as to what had been achieved and his current thoughts on his list. Pete almost died and so has a) a really good excuse for not finishing things on his list b) his life has changed drastically which definitely changed his opinion about some of his learning items. It will be interesting to see if the life changes I’ve gone through (finally meeting a good man, getting a job, getting another job, travelling away from Berlin a lot) have affected how I feel about items on my list.

100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About… Updated!

1. Botany
   Hmmm. I haven’t yet learnt to identify plants using a taxonomy. So. No.
2. A musical instrument: guitar or cello
   Let’s just say that 360 days ago I was given a beautiful guitar and can barely play 3 chords. So this learning task is active, but moving slowly. Actually taking lessons might be the next step.
3. Haircutting
   I can cut boys’ hair if they have some curl to hide the mistakes. The mistakes aren’t as often or severe as they used to be. But I haven’t learnt any fancy techniques (yet).
4. How to make a sponge cake
   Really, why would I make a sponge when there are so many other amazing cakes to bake out there? Not Yet.
5. How to maintain my bicycle
   In general I’m better at working with bikes thanks to a couple of sessions at Regenbogen Fabrik’s bike workshop. But my bike in Berlin is not currently maintained – sadly the type of maintenance I know won’t make it better, it will just keep it existing for longer.
6. How to make bagels
   Nope. One day, when I’m making brunch for people. I do finally have a recipe I want to use.
7. Throat Singing
   Hah. I find the idea of throat singing fascinating, but I don’t want to learn it that much. Let’s just say I may have still wanted to impress my ex at this point.
8. Bookbinding
   Not yet. I don’t have anything I want to bind at the moment, and it’s pretty easy to get amazing notebooks in Berlin.
9. Basic Arabic
   Nada. But my amazing new flatmate is doing Islamic studies and she can write essays in Arabic.  I know who I’m going to ask for help.
10. How to make better Karelian pies
    I’ve not made a Karelian pie for ages. I think that visiting friends in Finland and buying Karelian pies has to be higher priority than making my own… I’m getting really good at making Spinach pancakes, one of my other Finnish food desires.
11. How to seed save from fruits like tomatoes
    I have nowhere to grow the tomato seeds that I’d save. Maybe not in 2011, but hopefully by 2012 I’ll have access to some proper garden space suitable for tomatoes.
12. Permaculture
    As above. Though I do like the idea that permaculture design principles can be applied to non-garden systems. See Fo.am: Groworld
13. Sociology basics
    This was related to the Friendship component of the DIY Masters. Sadly, the Friendship project was the most interesting, but has been the hardest lot of learning to start. I’m hoping that a related course will pop-up within P2PU one of these days.
14. Crocheting
    I need to sit down with someone who can crochet… I get the basics but get lost when I try to follow a pattern. In the world of crafts Knitting or Crochet is a question along the lines of Cats or Dogs and Tea or Coffee. I’d really like to crochet a granny rug like the one Claire from Loobylu is working on, but before I can do that I need to crochet one or two squares successfully.
15. Japanese rope work
    Ahem. Yep. I know more about this. Let’s just say that it’s a lot of fun.
16. Drums
    Guitar has to take priority. I don’t know if I was planning to start a one-girl band or something. I don’t think you can go from primary school recorder skills to multi-instrumentalist without practicing even one instrument.
17. Punctuation
    I don’t suck at using punctuation, but I’m not sure if I’m using it correctly all the time.
18. English grammar and editing
    Slowly working on improving my knowledge of this.
19. Basic electronics
    I don’t have anything I need or want to make at the moment. And electronics is a fairly empty skill to have if you’re not actively using it. I can make a light flash on an Arduino. I’m not sure if that’s even basic electronics though.
20. More screenprinting skills (especially light sensitive emulsion)\
    Nope. No time. But I have made some cool stencils for Time’s Up Boating Association.
21. Multi-coloured linocuts
    I finally bought myself some linocutting equipment and used it once to make a stamp for a gift. I did do multi-colour stencils. Does that count?
22. How to layout designs for laser cutting
    Not yet. As with electronics you need to have a project to work towards for this kind of stuff. I do finally have an idea of something that would actually be useful to make using a laser cutter…
23. Basic woodworking and carpentry
    I helped build a goddamn boat. Yes.
24. How to change a washer on a tap (relearn)
    I haven’t needed to change a washer lately. But when I do I will learn how to do it.
25. Pattern drafting, better skirts, shirts and trousers
    I made a skirt. I can’t imagine when I’m going to have the time to sew anything for at least a year. Yikes. But I am better at knitting socks now.
26. Typographic theory
    Nope.
27. Better CSS skills
    Slowly slowly. Not that you’d see evidence of this on my personal site.
28. Another CMS apart from WordPress, Drupal and perhaps Moodle
    I learnt how to use Silverstripe for my last job. It was great. I’m not convinced of the ease of use of Drupal and I’ve been on the student-end of Moodle. It sucks.
29. More knowledge about OS educational packages
    I’ll be helping out at the P2PU techsprint and have been doing a bit of work on a Personal Learning Environment (PLE). I’m really excited to see how Big Blue Button works.
30. Basic Esperanto
    Ne.
31. How to cut dogs’ toenails / claws without feeling icky.
    I don’t have a dog (yet).
32. Fishing: how to catch and clean a fish
    Yes! At least the head bopping kill bit and the cleaning up part.
33. Butchery: how to kill & dress a chicken
    Nope.
34. Basic charcuterie
    I’m good at eating bacon, but haven’t made any yet.
35. How to do a headstand / handstand in yoga
    No. But yesterday I downloaded a podcast which will apparently help me to master inversions.
36. Unicycle
    I wrote this when I was 29. Maybe I felt that street performance skills and the risks of broken bones were still a valid life choice.
37. Better knife skills for cooking
    I bought a sharper knife. This made the cutting easier and meant that I had to keep my fingers out of the blade’s way.
38. How to make the ex-beau’s chilli.
    I can spell A.S.S.H.O.L.E. now. And I can read recipes. Let me amend that to How to make good chilli.
39. How to make Mum’s tomato pie
    I have the recipe! Now to make it.
40. How to make baklava
    I live in Kreuzberg and am surrounded by Turkish stores. Learning how to make baklava right now would be a waste of baklava eating time.
41. How to write grant applications
    I figure this road to hell will enter my life soon. I also think that we might be developing a learning resource as part of the Free Culture Incubator workshop series.
42. How to write residency applications
    Not an artist. Maybe one day.
43. How to train a dog
    Still needing a dog to do this. One day. Apparently after our first child is born.
44. More Linux / Terminal commands
    sudo makemeasandwich -cupoftea
    no seriously, i can use VI now without even thinking about it.
    
45. How to talk about what I want and need with a partner without ending up crying all the time
    I am so good at this that I’m now engaged to be married.
46. Better German
    
    Yes it is better, but I’m not confident about it and still need to find time to attend more classes.
47. How to look after my heart better (emotionally, but physically too)
    See 45. Also I do exercise a lot more regularly.
48. How to start a project and stick with it
    I built a boat and knitted socks amongst other things. I think part of the trick here is choosing a project you actually are interested in working on.
49. Better money confidence – eg. how to invoice and get paid what I’m worth.
    Slowly, slowly. I still feel sick when I think about writing invoices, but at least I do it now.
50. How to make really good coffee / latte art – even if I can’t drink it.
    Not only does my flatmate know Arabic she is also an amazing barista. I know who I’ll get to teach me.
51. How to home brew beer.
    I realised that beer makes me depressed. My fiance doesn’t drink it either. I do like to help other people do homebrew, but I no longer see the need in learning to make it.
52. How to sail
    Yes! And I love it!
53. Falconry
    Really? I wanted to learn falconry?
54. How to make a great Manhattan
    I’m hoping to never work in a cocktail bar again. So this is very low priority.
55. How to make a whiskey sour
    Despite 54. I still like to drink whiskey sours. May still learn how to make this.
56. How to make the amazing soup dumplings from Shanghai
    I want a recipe, but have not yet found one that seems right.
57. How to pack light and look great with only a few clothes
    Slowly getting better at this. I really need to update my wardrobe. The only new clothes I seem to get are free Mozilla and P2PU tshirts.
58. Basic car maintenance
    I haven’t driven for almost two years now! But once I get back to driving more frequently this will have to be learnt.
59. How to prune roses
    Did I mention that I really want a garden?
60. How to prune fruit trees
    No really. One with fruit trees and roses. Crazy huh?
61. How to tune a guitar
    Yes! An electric tuner makes this so much easier. Electric tuners do not make it easier to get motivated to practice though.
62. Origami page fastening – no staples or paper clips
    Using a computer requires no paper fasteners. I actually pick up paper clips from the ground when I see them and then reuse them. And when I have readings from Uni I end up having to staple or bind them as there are so many pages.
63. Audio recording and editing to the level required for good podcasting
    Not yet.
64. Video recording and editing to the level required for good vodcasting
    I did actually do some vodcasts. So yes.
    Yep… I do need to make more videos…
65. What key I can sing in naturally / most easily
    How can I learn this? It would make transposing guitar tab a more directed exercise.
66. The value of my time
    It is valuable, but now I need to manage that valuable time a lot more effectively.
67. Better massage skills
    This doesn’t guarantee that other people can massage you any better. Sad but true.
68. Yoga exercises for my back
    Yep. Also, a laptop stand and a keyboard can make your life much more comfortable.
69. How to make an Iyengar style yoga bolster
    €55 at the Iyengar shop. Problem solved. Buying materials to make a heavy enough bolster would have cost just as much.
70. Meditation
    Since I don’t have a garden (yet) and have nothing to mindlessly weed I really do need to work on the meditation thing. Are there any non-sucky guided meditation podcasts out there?
71. Better public speaking
    I seem to engage my audience. I’m looking forward to more opportunities to improve on this.
72. Better Kitchener bind offs while knitting
    My socks have beautifully finished toes.
73. Better Illustrator / Inkscape / vector drawing skills
    Low priority.
74. Manual SLR Photography
    I just need to take more photos full stop, regardless of my manual skills.
75. How to say No to things I don’t really want to do.
    I’m getting way better at this.
76. Curry pastes from scratch
    Not yet, but what a good idea.
77. Plant grafting
    This comes under the heading of “Requires a garden space”. I’m getting pretty good at propagating pot plants but it’s not really equivalent to grafting an apple tree.
78. How to make Kway Teow
    I’m not sure that I even like Kway Teow anymore. Will have to research and eat some when I’m back in Adelaide.
79. How to make good laksa
    My urge to make Malaysian food is reduced to due to fairly lousy inspiration and supplies in Berlin. Making rocking Laksa would be awesome though.
80. Pasta making
    Just haven’t had the time.
81. Whittling
    This would be fun, but I’d rather knit.
82. How to be happy even when the sun isn’t shining
    Friends, drinking enough water, exercise, candles and fleeing to Australia over winter are all good remedies for this.
83. Belly dancing
    Not yet. Getting back into poledancing would be more interesting, but Berlin doesn’t seem to have classes in the same way Australia did.
84. Tai chi
    Nope.
85. Time management / project management software
    This would be really useful, but I have an aversion to Microsoft Project on moral grounds. Not sure what I should look at learning instead. Ideas?
86. A martial art
    Nope. I reckon tai chi would count though.
87. The rules of cricket
    I’m fleeing to an Australian summer. I’m going to make a lazy Boxing Day’s attempt at this.
88. The rules of football / soccer
    The World Cup and another season of Australian Rules have passed me by. Let’s just say I’m not interested at all.
89. How to be more self-reliant in a relationship
    A year and a half of a long-distance relationship mean that this is not an option. Yes.
90. Basic letterpress printing

Would be nice, but I don’t have a press.

91. How to run a small business
    I guess I’m trying to do this as I’m now contracting my work as a freelancer. It is so hard learning this in a non-English context.
92. Basic upholstery
    I keep on finding neat chairs that would be better recovered but am not finding any fabric in Berlin that I’d like to use. Still quite a practical skill but low prioirity.
93. Repeating fabric designs
    I think I wanted to learn the vector skills (73) and screenprinting stuff (20) in order to achieve this. It’s still interesting and I did a little of it working with Sprout Design back in 2007. Now I think I’d rather just buy someone else’s nice fabric and sew with that.
94. CPR refresher course
    No. Please don’t hurt yourself near me as my First Aid Certificate is well out of date.
95. Forest / countryside gleaning
    Getting better at this in Austrian contexts. Berlin’s offerings are often dog and human pee laden.
96. Food canning / preserving
    I made jam last year! I’d love to do some more canning. This summer I was far too busy and barely at home.
97. That martial arts type thing where someone kinda rolls their body up to standing.
    Why? It would be cool, but I can’t imagine when I’d use this skill. Obviously I wanted to do this for a cool recovery when I’d fallen off a unicycle.
98. How to be content with what I’ve got
    I am so happy with my life. I guess I’ve learnt how to do this, but I’ve also learnt to look for opportunity too.
99. How to write at an academic level
    I got an HD for my last assignment, but I just want to be able to articulate ideas clearly.
100. Better research skills: databases, academic journals and articles, Google scholar etc.
     Slowly slowly. I must work on my boolean search skills.

Phew. I reckon updating this list took more time than writing it the first time around!

the short story – adieu paris – that led me to helsinki

and the books of neal stephenson, particularly anathem (in which a character named jules verne floats through space)

#2 On Friends and Mindapples from battlecat on Vimeo.

My latest vodcast – as recorded on May 29th, 2009.

I only just realised that I could have included links to bands, projects and friends using the amazing power of titles.

Oh well.

My friend Marc, is the writer behind http://www.un-understand.co.uk.
The Australian band I mentioned was Brillig http://www.brillig.com.au.
And my friend Andy Gibson http://sociability.org.uk is the founder of Mindapples http://mindapples.org!

the first battlecat vlog post… from battlecat on Vimeo.

Self-centered personal blogging ahoy!

I’m playing with my gifted video camera and the idea of different levels of honesty, intimacy and immediacy afforded by edited text and unedited video.

Also, I’m in the middle of trying to work out what happens next in my crazy life. Writing hasn’t worked so far. Maybe talking to an inanimate object will help?

So anyway the challenge is to know (with more certainty) by August, what I do next in my life. I’m not sure if I make much sense in the video.

What happens if you begin to think about tying string to moments and people? (from the Heroes wiki - http://heroeswiki.com)

A slightly trivial example is that I was listening to an In Our Time podcast on the history of Heat the other day and my immediate response was “XKCD!”

There have been moments when the potential world of knowledge seems to concurrently shrink and expand as I make connections between seemingly disparate topics such as a war in Congo being related to minerals running out. A connection is made, but it opens up so many more questions and things to learn.

Other people are thinking this way and are developing tools with which to record these connections. We can connect the people we know in networked graphs and record similarities between musical artists. We can draw mindmaps on pieces of paper, or represent them visually through software like The Brain or connect topics with tags as on delicious.

But how can we make and represent these connections in the real world?

When I meet a person who has a similar interest to someone I already know, I immediately want to introduce them so that they can benefit from their ideas.

That’s one way of making a connection, but besides that introduction being recorded by electronic social media such as Facebook how could these connections (and their history) be recorded and ‘tagged’ physically?

I guess part of this thought comes from a fear/worry that if the internet suddenly ceased to exist I would have no connection to the 450+ people I am connected to on Facebook.

If that situation occurred, would I really care? Are all relationships meaningful enough to be recorded in the real world?

Should I tie thousands of kilometres of string to the people I care about and am interested in, or do I take a photo? Should I send 471 postcards a day letting people know my status, and would they send a postcard back?

To that end, for 150 Things I’m thinking a lot about making tangible tokens as a way of recording the relationships I have with people.

Seriously, it’s fortunate that I live alone otherwise I’d probably be up for manslaughter charges as a result of me destroying anyone who crossed my path earlier in the day.

For a young woman who is trying to increase the amount of happiness and joy in her daily life and making an attempt to spread positive feelings to the world at large – yesterday did not bring a good mental space at all.

You know what, I’m beginning to [re]learn that holding back from discussing issues for the sake of avoiding potential conflict is not always a good thing – even if it maintains a sense of order at the time. Those bits of frustration with the world at large and people nearby just build up and get stored away around one’s shoulders – kind of like the hump on a camel’s back. Of course – a camel’s hump has a positive moisture and fat storage purpose – but still, the irritation storage hump looks just as ungainly.

Oh! I admit that there was a whole lot more at work in yesterday’s hideousness than just held back conflict, boys of course, too much work lately and not enough sleep or good things like gardening and creating. I hold myself to some ridiculously stupid standards. And there’s always there’s the frustration that ‘most everyone else in the world is letting things get more fucked up and the few who make the effort are going to be left in the rubble with nothing to show for their lives. All of those things go into humps of their own – and not the sexy lady lump kind.

Eventually I guess you just have days when there’s too much stuff that you’re carrying around – and you just have to give into the weight and sleep the day away.

Luckily, [as this metaphor is getting kind of tired] – some of the particular straws that broke The Camel of Peace and Serenity’s back yesterday have been picked up and swept away. And you know what – The Camel of Peace and Serenity ultimately shouldn’t be burdened with a hump of negativeness, if it’s going to stockpile anything, it’s going to stockpile more goodness.

I have to admit that despite working in the games industry – I don’t really play games that often. Though, working on the principle that the DS has converted a lot of non-gamers to addicts I thought it might be a worthwhile tax deduction. But the DS isn’t just for games as I’ll be getting the web browser eventually, and one of those brain training types of games as well as Animal Crossing.

Luckily Nintendo industrial design is almost in the same league as Apple – so my shiny black DS will sit very happily alongside my iPod and presumably a black MacBook sometime in the future.

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