Tag: words

altschmerz – n. a sense of weariness with the same old problems that you’ve always had, the same boring issues and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for decades, which makes you want to spit them out and dig up some fresher pain you might have buried in your mental backyard.

Many of us deal with problems over and over in our lives. Sometimes we just don’t have the energy or power to change them. Sometime we don’t know what to do with them.

Over time, this can wear you down. For me, I have all sorts of problems, fortunately overshadowed by the amazing things I experience.

As an example, I struggle with anxiety when starting some projects. Not all, but there are some that I don’t complete well enough, or need repeated repairing, and I get challenged to find a new approach or even re-repair something. Sometimes these are things I’ve delayed fixing, sometimes they’re maintenance that creeps up again, sometimes a thing broke. I get anxious and feel challenged, I worry I don’t do well, I don’t want to start and get stuck or stop.

Rebuilding trailer hubs is one of those things. I can’t decide if maybe the trailer is bent too much, but these keep happening and I wish they didn’t.

I certainly have other problems, but relatively few. I deal with altschmerz well some days, and not well others.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

candling – v. intr. the habit of taking stock of your life on the occasion of your birthday, letting it serve as a kind of internal referendum on all your goals and qualities and relationships and accomplishments so far – which makes you want to dress a little nicer that day, as if you’re standing before a parole board that convenes once a year to adjudicate your release from childhood.

Such an interesting and contradictory definition, at least to me. I like the first part, taking stock, but it’s not as though I’m being judged by others. Of course, this is a dictionary of obscure sorrows.

Maybe even the “dress nicer” part makes sense to me, as that’s sorrow for me. I like to dress like a bum, or wear wild shirts, and just be comfortable. One of my bucket list items used to be to not wear ties anymore. However, as I age, and I see funerals, I accept it’s important to others I do so at times.

Enough sorry.

I used to do this, even in my 20s. I didn’t love attention or celebrations of me, especially on my birthday. They’ve always made me a little uncomfortable, which sounds funny coming from someone that does enjoy presenting and teaching people from a stage. However when I do that, I think it’s about others, and what I can do to help them.

Many birthdays I went off by myself, at least for part of a day. Biking or on a kayak/sailboard on the water earlier in life, hiking or skiing later, to take stock of where I was and what I wanted to do in life. What direction? I didn’t do a life quest, but I did try to think about the direction in which I wanted to move.

After getting married, I often used my birthday as a marker to decide if I was happy with my career and if I’d want to do something else. That’s helped me to decide when to continue on with a position and when to move.

I still do a bit of that, but my candling has become a more regular thing, often when I hear of someone having success in some way, or making a change, or sadly, when someone has passed. And I know often do so with my wife, discussing where I am and what life would be like if I changed something.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

agnosthesia – n. the state of now knowing how you really feel about something, which forces you to sift through clues hidden in your own behavior, as if you were some other person – noticing a twist of acid in your voice, an obscene amount of effort you put into something trifling, or an inexplicable weight on your shoulders that makes it difficult to get out of bed..

There are a lot of times I’m not sure how I really feel about something. Whether it’s something in the state of the world (politics, government, culture), or it’s a technical item. There are many cases where I’m just not sure. I have to stop and think outside myself, and often think about how I would react if things were structured one way vs. another.

In the tech world, I’ve often been a little uncomfortable with EULAs and software licensing, but I also don’t quite know if I would abandon most copyright/IP/patent/ etc. I’m not sure if I think the world (or my life/career) would be better or worse.

Sometimes it’s smaller, like the way someone else tries to teach me a topic or present an idea, or perhaps the way that an event is organized. I don’t pretend that I know better, and try to remember that I might go about the item/task/etc. differently, but I don’t know if I would. It’s easy to react, and much harder to make decisions and act without the benefit of hindsight.

I do use agnothesia, trying to step outside of my own emotions and feelings and look at what a situation or idea changes in me, as if I’m studying myself. I don’t often come to any resolution or learn anything, but it helps me to remember I’m just one person, part of a larger community and society, and life can be hard when you don’t have all the answers.

Or as I feel, many at all.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

koinophobia – n. the fear that you’ve lived an ordinary life.

The last one of the year. I’ve enjoyed reading through this dictionary, learning new (made up) words, and thinking about life. Hope you have as well.

What’s an ordinary life? I think that’s what life is for many of us, though we have lots of little ups and downs, joys and sorrows, important events to us.

When I was younger, like many, I think I wanted to be a professional athlete or a rock star or a movie star or someone famous. Later, as I went through school and the tech booms, I wanted to be a rich tech person.

None of those happened, but I’ve had an amazing life. I think in many ways, it’s very pedestrian, and I walk through my days doing ordinary and simple things. I work at a desk, I shop for groceries, I go to the gym, I fix things around the house, I feed horses on the ranch.

I am also blessed to travel for work and stand on stage in front of many people. However, lots of my friends do the same thing.

I know I’m famous in a very narrow, weird way, but I also very much enjoy my anonymity in most of my life. I appreciate the time I have with others in my family, friend group, and community, as someone just participating in life with them.

I have no koiniphobia, not because of my life, but because everyone I know has their own interesting, unique, exciting things in their life. We don’t need to be on stage or in the media to live a very unordinary life. That’s what life is.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows