368. Adaptations to Graduate School (Assessing Visceral Needs Before Quarter Starts, Maslow's Ladder, EusEcoNicheSpace)

In order to write, you first need to create a "mental buffer zone" to convince yourself to write--it's SAFE to write.

You have to be on top of things the FIRST WEEK of the quarter. WHY? The Quarter System is a NON-LINEAR SYSTEM. Just like your Mind. Just like a Film. Just like Climate Change. Just like the Colonization of an Island. Very small perturbations in the beginning of the system lead to drastically different end results. The quarter system is a product of its initial premises.

You have to be on top of the FIRST WEEK. The Quarter System is a NON-LINEAR SYSTEM: a Product of It’s Original Premises.

So, it's important to get into GOOD HABITS FROM THE START. Or the MACHINE will MOW YOU DOWN. You have to establish value in people, in courses, by the first week.

Same with AAAS. I will get out what I put in.

You also have to assess yourself and YOUR HABITS. Because during the quarter system, it can bulldoze you so fast that you can fall into vicious habits that can potentially last an ENTIRE QUARTER! It's very important to be MINDFUL of HABITS, because stress can transform these behaviors to MINDLESS-ADDICTIONS!

Every single time I am writing, I am shifting the baseline in my head. Every single time I emerge from my shell, my den of writing, I see the world in a new light, and I interact with people in a new way.

It's best never to put all your eggs in one basket, like investing all your values and love and hope and dreams into... just one person. It is best and better to come to know and love a place, not just a single person.

Getting to know a place is like getting to know a person, except perhaps a bit more overwhelming. Several more layers. It is best to come to know and love a place in its entirety, the layers of abiotika and biotika, the history of the land and the people, and the community and organization structure. It's best to have a cognitive map in holistic entirety, because you don't want to fall in the trap of embedding yourself deep in the mind of a person who ends up chewing you up and spitting you out in the first place.

A place like Santa Barbara is a mass accumulation effect of multiple characteristics, mass accumulation effect of several layers.

I must establish a solid, loving relationship with Santa Barbara--as a whole--before I return. Then I shall be safe... from the illusions of... you know who.

[I started writing an essay in the car through a voice recorder, so go find it and further elaborate it.]

I am staring at all of my vices and piles of papers on a bed and I am going to find a way to put them all away. I just made an extensive photography collage of eccentric NeoArt (as termed by my friend T) of some Vices of Graduate School Life. The fundamental Basal Components of Graduate Schoolisms. (I cannot interact with anyone who will not acknowledge my existence. I am strangled and then I am abandoned. Fxck that. Illusion of normalcy). I look at all these vices, and I do have a strange Candy-Insulin-Based lifestyle--one-meal-a-day-otherwise-pumped-with-small-increments-of-candy-and-caffeine-all-day-fighting-lion-tiger-state all the time. Eating three meals a day makes you lethargic and you hardly get any work done.

Suspended in a castle on a cloud. In academia, I am paid to think about things for 24-7 while everyone else is maintaining visceral operations of this society. And so... I feel guilty. That is why I work so hard. That is why I work so much. And my sister quizzes me. Everyone is working very hard. And so I shall do the same!

I can see the strong inter-relationships of visceral components of lifestyle: (1) breathing (2) drinking water (3) eating food (4) exercising (5) sleeping (6) making sure your family and roommates are okay--lots of HUGS, relaxation, lots and lots of hugs! (massages for replacement)--some people smoke lots of "weed" to relax... and (7) time for friends, etcetera.... If these basic needs are not met nor well-maintained, then you will have an absolutely shxtty day! Sheeks! That is what I say! And you can't have too many more shxtty days in your life, Vic! You don't even know if you will live till tomorrow! My goodness!

[This excerpt below was written back on October 31, 2008]

Some people need to make a to-do-list for survival--like myself--as if my mind needs to consciously march through some form of Evolutionary Maslow's Ladder--in which half the items on the to-do list are instinctive, and the other half of the items are actually mindful for everyone. Ideally, I would and should go through a self-checking system of basic needs once a week. But predictably, I easily forget. My mind drifts upon something else--many things else--I exist so much in my mind that I forget I have a body and that I need to maintain it a little better than I have--more particularly in the "grooming" needs (as family and friends have chewed me out on my "elaborate" t-shirt and shorts goodwill fashionware). I think I have been wearing the same clothes for a month... and scared to change....

Evolutioary derivation of Maslow's Ladder... like I need oxygen. Most organisms without oxygen are dead within a few minutes, except for a few little boogers of anaerobic bacteria.

And how human infrastructures have been built to match individual needs--from coarse to finer resolution in specialization? Like the University is some kind of External Body Plan to match the Needs of my Internal Body and intensely demanding brain for stimulation? As if the human-built landscape were like wearing a "heavy coat" or mass-accumulation-construction of a "collective bower"? (mystical character bird)

So, right now, I am proceeding to pay neglected bills, shower, self-groom, clean up spews of pink-spotted golden trash ... for Halloween purposes....

I have also reached a SATURATION POINT in term of social maintenance. I am around too many people and thewere are very few relationships I can maintain such that seems to carry and hold meaning and value to them. As a result, I have been horrible in checking emails and returning phone calls.

But I also remember before I started college--back in high school--I didn't have any emails, nor did I own a cell phone--and I was a very happy person (in some respects)--at least in some dimensions to which are now immense aggravations.

This week I wanted to shoot my cell phone. It ended up dying the day before Obama was elected.

And to all the people out there who call me and I don't respond. I just wanted to say that I am sorry the quarter system makes me mentally flipped out and overall sick in the head.

It's not that I don't care about people. I just don't have the capacity to care about them. So I must embrace myself with those of immediate proximity--my housemates, my classmates, and my membership to the Westside Lovepillows Softball Team (which ended only being a two-week stint of horrid softball--me included, made two outs!), my only mental break from language systems and viewing reality only in vectors.

I have reached "Eusocial Ecological Supersaturation," as if my own existence is part of the Physics Superstring Theory. Ha ha. That was a butchered metaphor. Or maybe not. My "lack of mannerisms with others" is merely a bypproduct of supersaturation with communicative technologies and my inability to manage too many relationships with people.

Things are slipping. All the tiny things. Like burning CDs and paying $8 back. Slipping. Shifting. Slipping.

So, now I am proceeding to pay my bills, take a shower, and groom myself, which goes as so far to hair-brushing, leg-shaving, eyebrow-plucking, and overall Body Landscape Gardening. UH, I shall refrain from any further discussion.

Not to mention that my professor Dr. Sweet made me feel guilty for not "backing up any of my work on my computer, so I am proceeding to do that as well...."

[The blips below are separate entities from the ones above, and were written at different times of the quarter.]

Victoria is a series of INPUTS and OUTPUTS. Physical and mental inputs and outputs--with flow rates of mental and physical digestion and maximizing productivity in graduate school life. 12 or less hours of the day are catered toward visceral activities: breathing, drinking, eating, exercizing, sleeping, self and house maintenance, time with housemates-friends-family, traveling (may take more than 12 hours). And the other 12 hours are ideally for optimal "work" and "productivity habits" in association with graduate school--including courses. Last quarter didn't exactly work out so wonderfully as I would like. My last month was a massive spurt of disproportionate productivity. Maybe I will operate under those types of conditions.

Vic has several vices in concern of inputs-outputs: does not eat three meals a day. Places herself in a "hungry-fighting lion-tiger" mode by feeding herself "candy insulin and caffeine" in the form of Werther's Original and Xylitol TicTacs (almost test-tube-like as I had envisioned in high school) (as well as Trader Joes and Starbucks coffee) to sustain her productivity throughout the day. Vic has one big meal late at night. The food makes her sleepy--hence it acts as a purposeful sleeping pill (though some people say it's very bad to eat right before you fall asleep). Vic finds "strange strategies" just to convince herself to SIT DOWN nearly all day--of course with bouts of exercise. And eating three meals will not allow here to do that. Famous encounter with Dolf Seilacher: "Why are you not eating lunch?" And I said, "Because it will ruin my productivity levels in the afternoon." And I saw Chris and Seth squirm, as if they suddenly felt guilty for purchasing some heavy Mexican food at the fancy university diner.

So, now, I am hyper and high strung all day. There are costs to this behavior. I don't know if they are good or bad. I could be sacrificing my lungs with cigarette smoking. I could be amplifying my health problems in other ways--overeating--but instead the body parts that are taking the greatest toll for my behavioral patterns are my teeth. Dental work is a "whole other blog" not to be discussed right now. Drama in that.

It's interesting how all aspects of life have their "own distinct individual knobs" which can organize several thoughts in one's mind, but then again, start to realize the high degree of interdependence and inter-relatedness to all other facets of life--e.g. teeth is associated with food and studying habits and consequentially dentists and American Megacorporate Dogfood lifestyle and graduate school demands, etcetera.

So, I have heard, the Bren MESM (masters) students are a "breed of their own;" such is the perception of other students all around campus.

[The blips below are separate entities from the ones above, and were written at different times of the quarter.]

I hate the quarter system. It makes me a monster. It makes me a person I do not want to be. I am not proud to be.
**To a certain individual, I had been acting like a pompous xsshole. An absorbed bigot. More so out of ludicrous defense reflexes.
**To other individuals, I had not had the capacity to respond to emails or phone calls and act like I have been dropping off the planet.
**For other individuals, I have lagged 2-3 weeks in respones to the Environmental Defense Center to get the photgraphs out for the recent TGIF.

I hate myself.
And then, I myself am trying to keep up with my thoughts?
Trying to keep up with other people? Too many of them?
Trying to "make" progress in my life? Whatever that means?
My teeth are at stake again!

The Quarter System makes me a careless individual. I can only manage and maintain so much and the rest slips through my fingers... and it's just a matter of how much slips... whether I stay afloat... or fall to my doom....

124. Blue Horizons Continued: A Zen of Student Housing, and Housing in General

I am a bit sleep-deprived so, I will try my best to remain coherent... a far cry from eloquent. So, basically, there is this saying that revolved around the idea of "divorcing school and work from home," when I argue that this divorce is nearly IMPOSSIBLE. They both feed off each other tremendously--issues from home can impact how one functions at work or school, and events in a professional/public place can tremendously impact transactions at home (View 1, above).

The way how I think about these issues can be summarized as the "Conditional Ecological Mind." Or more the standard psychological paradigm of "Maslow's Ladder." There are quite a few stipulations of the Conditional Ecological Mind (CEM, new acronym, as usual...): (1) all life factors are greatly intertwined and impossible to divorce (as I have learned through my trials of disorder in high school) (2) if basic required needs are not met (from a momentary to daily basis) (usually "home" activities, takes about 12 hours a day to perform all necessary tasks e.g. breathe, drink, eat, sleep, exercise, groom, maintain social stability within kin), then you will have limited, diminished, or no ability at all to focus on optional "higher-functioning tasks" (e.g. schoolwork, job performance) (which ultimately bring home the dough that allow you to maintain your basic, required needs for survival). So, on a good schoolwork day for me, I am able to devote 12 hours of my time towards "intellectual entertainment / academic jigsaw-puzzling" given that the other 12 hours I have slept well, eaten well, exercised, maintained basic health, remained in good terms with family members, housemates, friends, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...."

A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Art Sylvester emphasized that thinking about the environment is a "luxury" on its own. Most people are struggling day-to-day, just trying to get enough to survive and stay afloat. They don't have time to think longer term and bigger picture. They're just good surviving organisms. I agreed with Dr. Sylvester. I was at that point to, living the moment, but without any context or understanding that moment's relative past, and that moment's relative projection into the future. I told him I could get my basic life tasks done in 12 hours. And I have 12 hours free every single day to do something useful for myself and for this system. Even with these 12 hours I have lots of options--ranging from watching television, mindlessly surfing the internet, or even rotting my neurons through drug and alcohol consumption. But I chose a certain road... I suppose a road less taken... environmental multi-media and environmental problem-solving. Thinking about the environment is indeed a luxury... not a physical luxury, but an intellectual-mental luxury. So? I might as well not feel guilty and take advantage of this free space and time, allocated to optimized my own survival and sanity, as well as others' and this planet's. Hence again, this is the CONDITIONAL ECOLOGICAL MIND and how this concept can be useful to understand the discoordination of environmental problem-solving and change.

So, given the conditional ecological mind, I do several things in my life. If I show up to school, required to do a certain task under a personally stressful condition (lack of sleep, had family problems), I announce to the group I am working with my "physiological/pscyhological disclaimer." I first state that I am in a certain condition that might make me less functional or useful, and then I proceed to perform the task. Actually, stating my physiological disclaimer actually helps me focus better at school!

And again, why homeless people oftentimes cannot perform higher functioning tasks. A "home" is like a self-carved territory or microcosmal region that optimizes your acquisition of resources and optimizes foraging, safety, and self-maintenance. The modern home: a few minute drive from the grocery store, a few feet from the refrigerator, the bed, the shower, and the toilet. Pretty good, spatially optimized set-up. But when you are a homeless/nomad, you have no location to acquire such resources so you spend much more time trekking known/unknown space just to acquire resources and satisfy basic needs. Such are my days car camping in the Subaru. Takes a while to find a restroom, a place to clean up, a place to buy decent food... traveling is inherently inefficient.

The Zen of Student Housing: Bills. My freshman year at UC Davis, I made a simple epiphany. Now that I am "free from my parents," who are a few hundred miles away, I am still not "free." I still have "strings attached" to the surrounding region. For example, I still had to pay "bills" at my house/apartment. Bills on water, trash, energy, technological communications... from these companies that were either close or far away. So, I drew these "ecological strings" attaching my own mind to these "bills" which are then sent to "companies" that provide basic resources. My freshman year at UC Davis were full of simple epiphanies, such as these. The other two that pop out of my mind were (1) Vic's theory of Technological Laziness and (2) Humans are as interesting as their environments, and the environment is as interesting as the humans that live there. As for UC Davis, the environment is boring and flat... and the humans there were largely zombified white toast. Haven't been there since my freshman year. One day.... As for Santa Barbara, the people here are as healthy and as diverse and dynamic and energetic as the landscape around us. It's not a "pristine nature" but there's lots of open space....

Typical Ecological Strings Attached "Bills" for Student Housing: (1) water and trash (2) electric (3) gas (4) phone (5) cable / internet (6) parking (maybe)... and others? Basic (7) rent just to even occupy a territory of optimized resource acquisition.

So, given the Zen of Student Housing, what was so unstable that happened this summer? (1) I was living alone, which made me socially unstable and hypercreative (the positive aspect is that it made me bond with people in the rock crab film more so than if I had housemates). (2) I had unstable housing, such that I had to move within the last ten crucial days of the Blue Horizons program. I had all this "mental energy" (as Denise Bellanger calls it) wrapped around issues of basic maintenance rather than optimizing productivity toward finishing the rock crab film. Things ultimately worked out....

I do admit that some people optimize productivity at school or work as a form of denial or psychological displacement / distraction of energy from one dysfunction in their life or surroundings to another. For example, I know a few scientists who have family problems, but instead of dealing with them (maybe they didn't have the capacity to deal with them), they channeled all their energy to their work as a form of distraction. Another situation is I know that some sadistic French guy was extremely productive as a scientist, hiding out in a basement all during World War II figuring out the metamorphic life cycle of insects. What does this say? Honestly, I don't think I can do that. My mind is too integrated to be able to deny the existence of a problem of one life element. It would impact everything else in my life too much. But men, since they are more linear in reasoning (more neurons but less interconnected) and have the capacity to go through long bouts of tunnel vision, they have the capacity to do this "displacement/denial" behavior much more than females. This is just a casual observation based on my experience and systematic observation of male and female behavior on a daily basis.

To resume the Zen of Student Housing, I think it would be an interesting, amusing exercise to do a comparative history of Victoria's student housing situations, from the nerve-wracking UC Davis dorms (living with a slug of a roommate) to the heavenly Santa Ynez Apartments at UC Santa Barbara to my current housing situation with Julie, Kyle, Karl out in the boonies of Goleta (everything's great... except for the commute....) to the excessively communal living in Costa Rica (rooming with the most hyper character of the group) to the undergrad slums of Isla Vista: my sister Jenny's 6691 Sabado Tarde Party Central experience (live television of drunk college kids through the livingroom window, especially Friday and Saturday night), and the nightmare living situation residing in the living room with a Christian freak and her fiance, combined with sharing a room with a moody econ girl, David (a bitter mathematician), and Sean (a molecular biology stoner who used my big shiny red apples as bongs) (both David and Sean and I were graduates of the ARC Summer Research Program in 2001) (at one point, dishes were piled up in the sink for 8 weeks!). Two quarters of misery during my junior year... David had a crush on my good friend Maysha, which made things worse.... Then there's the whole drama of living with my parents, Jean and Chuck, a quarter out in the cowsmelling town of Norco (dairy farms converted to track housing) and sleeping in the living room at UCLA in a one-bedroom apartment with three girls right along fraternity row.... Well yes, I think this would be a very interesting, philosophically comical essay on comparative housing situations and why I was able to do very well in school during some housing situations and why I struggled to barely get by during other unstable situations.... It's kind of where I get my motto:

"Santa Barbara is a place where you can forget the rest of the world exists.
Riverside is a place where you chronically PRAY that the the rest of the world exists.
Davis is a place where you need to chronically, PHYSICALLY VERIFY that the rest of the world exists.
Los Angeles is the "world," but if the world is going to hxll, Los Angeles is going there first.
Reprhased: Los Angeles is a nice place to visit but a great place to leave!"

Such is a good summary of the regional influence of my California housing hopping experiences.

In short, the CONDITIONAL ECOLOGICAL MIND (A REHASH OF MASLOW'S LADDER): IN ORDER TO OPTIMIZE SELF-SYSTEM PRODUCTIVITY, ONE MUST HAVE ACCESS TO AND HAVE THE ABILITY TO MAINTAIN BASIC STABILITY. 12 HOURS OF THE DAY TO SATISFY BASIC NEEDS. 12 HOURS OF THE DAY TO MAXIMIZE FOCUS. A HISTORY OF EXPERIENCES THAT ARE RESOLVED. AND A FUTURE BUFFER ZONE. THEN YOU CAN OPTIMIZE PRODUCTIVITY AND CREATIVITY. SPHERES STRINGS OF BASIC MAINTENANCE (repetition element) AND SPHERES-STRINGS OF INNOVATION (breaking routine, inventing new things).

Vic needs to refer to this blog for a philosophical short film.