Rhubarb Pie

He'll believe me in three months.

My friend just called me. He was just talking with someone who runs a professional society. She wants to create a blog for their field and thinks he'd be perfect for it. He's never blogged, but he likes the concept. He agreed. He's going to write the blog for their field! She has all the contacts! It'll be great!

Me: Awesome. How much is she paying you?
Friend: It isn't about that. It is about the chance to influence the field.
Me: Really? How much time are you thinking of spending on this?
Friend: We know it’ll take some time. Five or ten hours a week.
Me: (laughing) Dude. You just signed on for a minimum twenty-five hour a week unpaid job. If you are doing this to reach people, want to change the dialog in your field? That's a full time job or more. 

Friend: But she already has all the email lists and it will get unveiled at a big upcoming conference! It has a boost.
Me: Yep. But then they have to come back.

I've seen this a few times, where people who do not blog or read blogs think they should create blogs for some purpose. Couple years back, a respected thinktank advertised for a blogger. Every other person in their office has a Ph.D., but for the blogger they thought an undergraduate degree in Communications was enough. In addition to creating and filling the blog, the blogger was also supposed to handle IT at the office. I know they hired someone, but two years later that blog's not up yet. My friend and the person backing him have never blogged, and my guess is that they don't even read blogs. But they figure they know the topic and know people. They figure the blogging part won't be that hard.

Honestly. Blogging is a skill. We are several years into it, and it is settling out like every other endeavor. The people who do it well and last are the ones who put in work. If you see it done well somewhere, there is a lot of thought and attention behind that. In fact, you should probably estimate that it takes as much work to blog well as it does to do anything well. If you do not think you could draw well, or take professional photographs, or design dresses well without learning how and putting lots of time into it, then you should not think you can blog well without putting time in. The very good subject matter blogs are done by professionals now. There are some natural bloggers, but there are also no barriers to entry. If you're a natural, I suspect you're already blogging.

I'm not quite sure why people who aren't a part of blogland respect it so little that they think it can be done casually. It must not look like work to them. “What? You put up a couple links to some stuff and you write something short and catchy sometimes. Every now and then you write a long essay. You coin catchphrases. I think brilliant thoughts all day long. You just write them down. How much work can it be?” The answer, if you want to run a serious blog that is a major participant in the conversation is, a lot. You are crafting a body of work in public.  It is real work.

But here's the most important part. Non-bloggers and non-blogreaders never get this. The only thing that can keep you going is if you feel the call. If you are not driven to write by something within, you can't write a good blog¹. If you are driven to write, but not pulled to the blog format, you probably won't write a good blog either. You won't write an influential blog, that's for sure. Readers can tell and they have instantaneous easy exit at every second. The form requires too much small constant effort to fake. I see it all the time, journalists think they know about daily deadlines and writing, so they'll just cross over. People with big names want a new way to influence thought. Even if they're used to writing, they drop out. You specifically want to blog or you can't do it for long.

So, no. I don't think just anyone can blog. I think only people who want to blog can blog². If you do want to, you can, no matter where you're starting from. In some ways, you should. Blogging for a while will strengthen your voice and clear your thought and help your writing. In other ways, even if you do it well, you won't get that much from it in the end. You’ll have a portfolio of pieces that don’t translate well to other things, a record of a time of your life, a better sense of yourself, and relationships with good people out in the world. You might change some minds or help someone³, but you aren't guaranteed to find out if you do. It might help you professionally, maybe. Really, though? For all the effort it takes, the results are pretty intangible. Doing it, the writing itself, is most of the reward you will ever experience.

I will try to tell my friend this, that he's got to want the writing part and enjoy the work part, since that’s the only part of blogging that is a sure thing. I'll help him with the software and set-up; I'll give him as much advice as he wants. But I'm also going to tell him that he better want it the same way he’d want to play a sport or take up a hobby. If he doesn't, all the connections and support in the world aren't going to make his blog interesting. Readers aren't going to be more interested in his blog than he is. That's not how it works.

PICK ME!!! ME, ME, MEEEEE!

It is true, my dear, what you have long suspected.  I am a woman who spontaneously accosts pleasant acquaintances with talk of a Constitutional Convention.  I can't help it.  Since I read about the idea of holding a convention to revise the state Constitution, I've loved the idea of having a system of governance for my state that isn't a horrible overgrown mishmash.  I wrote before about how accumulated code turns into a maddeningly dense thicket, but on top of that, we've made some choices that make it nearly impossible to run the state. 

We have this proposition system¹, you know, and any propositions that get passed become part of our Constitution.  They aren't even statutes that legislatures could amend.  Our Constitution is one hundred and fifty-ish pages long.  There are a couple famous anti-tax propositions, which I don't like because they seem to have given Californians the idea that infrastructure and services should be free.  But setting aside specific anti-tax measures, there's the fact that so many propositions deal specifically with the budget that the legislature doesn't have any room to create a good budget.  People vote in designated expenditures, so that gas taxes must go for road building, for example.  They vote for bonds, which is great, but expensive down the line.  The state budget must be balanced, we can't run a deficit; it requires a two-thirds majority to raise taxes.  So the budget part is a mess².  Other propositions influence the budget as well.  We passed Three Strikes, so we have to pay a lot to incarcerate people.  We passed term limits, which solved the problem of extraordinarily powerful incumbency.  It also solved the problem of legislator expertise, long-range planning and learned budgeting skills.  There's no shortage of examples.  The California Constitution is a mess.

I absolutely love the idea of a Constitutional Convention focused specifically on governance.  I love it for all sorts of reasons.  First, because I believe governance can be done well and if we're going to have mechanisms and institutions running my state, they should be good ones.  Or at least not horrendously tangled ones.  Second because how often do we get a chance to pull back and say "the process itself, is it working?"  I mean, it is pretty common to decide that an outcome was good or bad.  But if you're running a state, it is hard to take a step back and say "this thing that we do every day that we know all the work-arounds for, that we've adjusted to.  Do we actually like it?  Are we getting results despite it or because of it?"  Third, I love the idea of working in a system that is designed to do something.

My biggest fear for a Constitutional Convention isn't that it will get carried away and try to solve everything.  My fear for a Convention is that people won't think about what the government of California should do.  Maybe they'll³ correct a few conspicuous problems and call it a day.  But a document that sets our government in motion should have a goal.  The goal could be to rein in those crazy Californians.  It could be to promote equity.  It could be to get the most out of every tax dollar.  It could be to minimize fear.  It could be to promote business and jobs in the state.  The Constitution could promote happiness or austerity or community or security.  It could be to develop wealth.  It could be whatever the delegates choose.  But they should choose something and then design a system that accomplishes that.  I'd be so disappointed if a Constitutional Convention wrote a document that effectively extended status quo without ever thinking about why.

So yeah.  I have been talking to people about a Constitutional Convention for California.  But not as much as I've been thinking about it.

Lifting.

I started weightlifting in September last year. I didn’t have any expectations for it. My thoughts on weightlifting were the same as I hear from all my sports-doing friends. You lift weights to improve your real sport, not as an activity in its own right. Real good for you, that weightlifting, but so boring. I mean, reps of rows and curls? The early gains are fun, but weightlifting is monotonous and pointless. But more and more in the evenings, when it was time to pack up for our Ultimate pick-up game I didn’t want to.  I had loved Ultimate so very much, but I was drifting away.  I didn’t know if I would go back to it, but I knew I was out of shape and I figured that weightlifting would prepare me for whatever real sport I did next.

There wasn’t any question about which gym I’d go to. I’d watched it open several years ago, the alterno, non-chain gym. The one with all the plants and no mirrors and the revolving art show. I didn’t even consider any other gyms or shop around, so I got incredibly lucky. They are very serious about everyone developing full strength and full movement. Everyone is all friendly and nice, and they expect everyone who walks in to lift heavy shit. 

I had no idea, wouldn’t have predicted it myself, but it turns out that I really like to lift heavy things. It suits me perfectly. First, it is super technical. When you’re picking up the heaviest things you can, every single piece of your body alignment matters. A year into it, there is still more to a single bench press than I can hold in my head on each attempt. I still haven’t mastered my form for the three major lifts; I still have to concentrate on a couple things each time. If I internalize those, the rest of the list of things to improve is blissfully long. I’ve always been a technician*, so this is great. I suppose that if I ever get good at deadlift, bench press and squats, I could move up to the actually hard moves, the olympic lifts, where you jump under the bar. Second, it is fast. I’ll never understand you people who run or cycle long distances. I just plain don’t have the discipline for that. All out exertion for a few seconds is way better.

The mental parts of weightlifting are just right for me, and it seems my body is pretty good for the physical parts of weightlifting. With no training, I walked in there strong. I wouldn’t have known, because I had no reference for what is a little weight and a lot of weight. But people would do asides to each other, or notice my bar and their eyebrows would go up. I eventually caught that if other women joined my workouts, the trainer would set their high weights at surprisingly low numbers. Now I gloat about being freakishly strong and make sure to point it out at any lull in a conversation. But I didn’t know it at first. 

So I settled into weightlifting. Within a couple months I knew I’d found my next thing. The feeling was back, the feeling of wanting the evening to come so I could go to my sport. The abiding interest and the show-offy feeling of being a promising new student. I’ve got strong monomaniacal tendencies; when I did tkd and Ultimate they were all-consuming. I hope that intensity is fading with age, because I don’t need the swirly eyes again, but it seems like I’ve found a pretty good cult to be in for ten years. I like the people so far. The goal, to be very strong, turns out to be handy in real life. I heft stuff and growing boys and move big things with noticeably less effort*.  So I’m in love with an activity again and happy it is a rich and useful one. The only other interesting part is how my body has changed.

 

 

 

 

*Which is why I am positive I can teach anyone to throw a disc.

**If this is how you always live, men, you have no idea how relatively convenient and easy it makes life. Or, if you haven’t thought about it, you have no idea how hard the women who do the same things (grocery shopping, handywork around the house) as you are working. Of course, if they’ve given up in favor of your doing it, I’d rather they started building strength.

Lifting and losing.

I’ve done sports at different levels of activity my whole life and predictably, my weight has varied conversely. I don’t get too worked up about this. I’m never really thin, but my shoulders are broad and I have big haunches from spending my childhood in a deep lunge. These make me sortof hourglassy. The range where I look like an unremarkably sized person spans tens of pounds. But I was definitely at the top of that range when I started weightlifting. Deeply resentful at spending my thought on something so fucking boring, I figured I should accompany the weightlifting with modest efforts at weight loss.

I’m not willing to do much about weight loss. I did too much of that when I was making weight for tkd competitions, and besides, I love eating. But I grudgingly figured I could maybe try portion control, and I happily did the part I always like, which is work out like an animal. My trainer forbade me from weighing myself more than once a month (which is twelve times a year more than I’d done since I quit tkd). So I switched to more protein and ate slightly less and sortof wondered whether it was working. Without weighing myself, I tried to find other gauges.

That didn’t work. I’m definitely on board with not weighing myself often. But all the ways I tried to tell what my body was doing disagreed with each other. They were all haphazard and subjective, and they always countered each other. Looked good in glimpses in windows and mirrors? Clothes would feel tighter. Didn’t eat much? Felt heavy and sluggish. Felt great, light and springy, clothes loose? Scale said I was heavier that month. Running my hands over my body, felt bulgy and fleshy? Looked thinner in mirrors, got compliments. It wasn’t so much that I cared whether the indicators were going up or down, but the fact that they never agreed frustrated me to tears.* The best thing I did was find a physiology professor at Sac State with a dunk tank, someone who could tell me my BMI.

The other thing that happened that was frustrating and baffling was that my numbers, the weight I was lifting on the big lifts, weren’t going up. I thought they would go up! That’s the fun part, right? The big early gains! My push-ups are looking sweet. My box jumps are getting higher. I’m so close to a pull-up! But my max deadlift gained five pounds in nine months. That sucked. I walked into that gym a beast and a year later I’m the same beast? How does that work, especially when I feel stronger at daily stuff?

It was the physiology professor who sorted things out for me. I’ve been to the dunk tank three times, once in January, once in May and once in August.  I’ve lost twenty-five pounds of fat and gained one pound of muscle. He told me to be patient. He said not to expect big gains in strength as long as I’m losing weight, because it is so hard to build muscle in calorie deficit. He compliments my trainer, says it is unusual to gain any muscle while losing weight. He picked a target BMI for me and a corresponding goal weight. Since that turned out to be my off-season college weight, it sounds reasonable to me.  Now I have appointments with him every three months.

I have some more weight to lose. Not as much as I’ve already lost. I’d like to be done with that by the end of the year, because frankly, having a weightloss perspective on food is fucking boring. So, you know. Working out really hard and eating less is working. The only other interesting part has been my appearance, which maybe I’ll tell you about another day.

 

 

*This finally went away this summer. Turns out that was because my weight has held steady since May. This is fine. I was grateful for consistency between my guesses at indicators and my weighed results. Also, since my weight has been holding steady, I was able to lift ten more pounds on my deadlift.

Abundance to Scarcity

I’ve been going to climate change meetings a lot, and started to notice this one guy as super sharp and knowledgeable and insightful.  Everything he says is relevant and he doesn’t talk just to talk.  I’ve been really impressed with him, and then yesterday he said something I’ve thought too!  En route to another comment, he mentioned that we just spent a century optimizing our infrastructure and farms and cities to our old climate.  (Then he said that the climate will be changing too fast for us to do that for another few centuries, so instead of optimizing like the engineers neeeeeeed to do in their souls, we’re going to have to move to a new approach, designing for flexibility and resiliency instead of maximization.)

Then, in the hallway later, he said one of my comments was good, which was all the excuse I need to unload on him.  Way too fast, I said disjointed pieces of all of this:

He’s right about how we optimized to our former climate!  It would be expensive for us to transition to anything different, even a more generous regime.  But we aren’t moving to a more generous regime.  We’re moving from abundance to scarcity.

Abundance (partly because the world was so rich back when we had all that timber and oil and big fish and groundwater and partly because there were so few people) used to be the rule, but I think we moved out of the Age of Abundance into the Age of Information back in the mid-seventies.  That’s when we started writing plans. All those plans, those three-inch thick documents.  Timber Harvest Plans.  Habitat Conservation Plans.  EIRs and EISs.  Water Management Plans.  Grazing Plans.  Biological Opinions.  People thought they were writing those plans for one project or another, but taken together, I think they were the entry fee into the Age of Information.  They were the first pieces of infrastructure in this new era, just like rail lines and assembly lines were for the manufacturing age¹. 

We only lived in the Information Era for about thirty years, and we didn’t even get good at it.  We’re still figuring out things like how to use GIS all the time, and collect enough LIDAR data and give citizens easy access to rich information.  We’re only barely starting to understand how to present it.  On the whole, we’re could have used another fifty years to collect information and do things with it². But climate change is now, and climate change forces us into the Age of Management.  From here on out, the unmanaged default is going to suck.

From now on, we have to manage things.  A lot.   Up and down the scale, we’re going to have to finesse the details.  Individual people have to plan trips, find the shortest route and combine errands.  Cities will have to count the greenhouse gas emissions of new development.  Reservoir operators are going to have to plan water releases to the daily weather.  We aren’t rich any more and we will have to pay fine-grained attention.

Once most are fed and sheltered, the true privilege of being rich is mindlessness, Tom and Daisy’s famous carelessness.  That was how America lived from the fifties to the nineties, but that’s over now.  In the Age of Management, we move into constant planning, deliberating, choosing and implementing.  All the time.  It is better than not doing that (because the alternative is Katrina-like collapses), but it is a burden.  It also makes me wonder if over the next few decades, our limiting ingredient is going to be thought.  Each of us will be paying this thought-debt in our personal lives, as we adjust and scrounge and figure out how to live like this.  But the big problems will take just as much care.  We can solve any of them, when we must, with lots and lots of thought and implementation.  But there are so many coming, at once, and we will have to think very hard about all of them.  Maybe I’m completely off-base and labor will be the problem.  Or physical capital.  But I’m not sure of that.  Sometimes when I go to a lot of meetings and read lots of newspapers and blogs and comments, I get worried.  When I see how little dense thought is out there, how much is cribbed or facile or rationalizing, I wonder if we have enough sheer thought to find the least-painful way into our new world³.

UPDATE:  Reader Todd sent me a copy of Jeremy Grantham's GMO Quarterly letter, which hits on some of the same themes.  I liked the essay about the Age of Limitation, starting on page 8.  Thanks!