At risk of giving away the book's content to people who might read it and at risk of scaring people away from the book who would otherwise read it, I will divulge the thesis in it, as I understood it. The main idea is the body will generate pain as a coping mechanism to distract a person from uncomfortable emotion. I am not going to give the author's explanation any justice so I will restate my recommendation that you read the book, but he explains that the unconscious (subconscious) mind generates several thoughts and as the thoughts try to surface, in some cases, our bodies will use pain as a way to prevent the ideas from surfacing to the conscious mind. If there is a great enough magnitude of pain even the most unpleasant emotions can be blocked. The primary emotion he focuses on in the book is anger. When I first read it I thought I had wasted money on the book. I thought to myself, "that's a ridiculous idea, I'm never angry, how could anger be causing me any pain?". Of course after a little bit, the light went on. I am never angry because my conscious mind is never realizing the anger because my body will attack itself to prevent the anger from surfacing.
That lead me to the next book I found quite profound, "Anger Management for Dummies." I am normally much to proud of my intellect to buy, or be caught reading, "For Dummies" books, however referring back to my last entry, a purpose of pain may well be that it is humbling. Anything that might be of any use in freeing me from the pain I was in was very welcome. Actually, I will admit that I have read other "For Dummies" books, and even though I really hate the title, the series is extremely well written. The "Anger Management for Dummies" book referenced the "Mind-Body Connection" book a couple of times and brought up other health links to anger as well. After reading the books I gained a new insight into the link between a person's emotional health and their physical health. I am almost to the point that I believe that the start to the cure for almost any ailment begins with addressing emotional issues. Amazingly enough that even includes things like broken arms and sprained ankles. There have been studies which show a person is up to 12 times more likely to have a work place accident if they are very angry.
I don't have a firm enough understanding of the psychology of anger to give it really good treatment here just off the top of my head, but I will say that anger isn't quite what I thought it was. Before my reading I thought of anger in terms of being angry at someone. The feeling is much broader than that. Anger is a root of disappointment, jealousy, frustration and a lot of other emotions. In fact as I understand it any intensity in an emotion could be rooted in anger. I didn't ever get a finger put directly on what the source of my anger was that was causing my back pain, but as the "Mind-Body Connection" book states a person doesn't really need to, they only need to know that their pain is caused by the body trying to avoid uncomfortable emotion from surfacing. My best guess is that the emotion that I was trying to block was tied to stress around getting ready to move into uncertain circumstances and getting close to releasing the Spelling Castle game. I have tried to explain a couple of times in the blog how and why the release of the Spelling Castle is difficult emotionally, but frankly I don't really know myself, so it is probably even more confusing to the reader. The emotional difficulty is a weird mix of being afraid of failure and afraid of success at the same time. Right now I believe I have worked through the emotion (life sometimes works better when you lie yourself) and am limited to tactical business items that need to be resolved before game release. The game still does have a couple of bugs which I believe are still blocking to a sensible release.
Skipping details of some personal items... ha, I'll bet you didn't think I did that in here :-) I will say that any anxiety I had when leaving Oregon was well justified. Life has felt like I was the ball in a pinball game ever since I got here. Plans have seemed to go back and forth at very violent extremes. Work on the game came to almost a complete stand still between recovering from back pain only to get a really nasty case of flu and then get buried in a lot of home improvement chores. After more than a month I am finally making progress on the game again. So the fall out from my ride through the pin ball machine is that the plan to travel to Texas and possibly on to Florida this winter was replaced by a play to stay in Rexburg on my parent's land indefinitely and freeze our
We are excited with the idea of starting a small family farm. The land in Thornton (which by postal addresses is part of Rexburg, but still remains its own township) offers a way that we can get a few chickens, maybe some ducks and possibly a pig without having to shell out for a large mortgage. We have a very nice camp site here which, with some amazing help from my dad, has become even nicer. We did two major home improvement projects. The first was to tie our water supply to my parent's new well by installing two freeze- free hydrants. We really only needed one, but it made sense to put in the other while we had a big hole in the ground. The big hole in the ground was by far my favorite part of the project. We rented a small track hoe which I used to dig the 5 foot deep 200 foot long trench needed to connect the water lines. The digging took longer than we expected and I wound up needing to rent the track hoe half a day longer than anticipated. That dampened my enjoyment of the project a little, but as I told my dad the real expense in the project wasn't the $300 I spent renting the track hoe, the real expense was the need I created in my mind to own such a nifty little toy. So despite what QuickBooks says, I put the project cost of installing my water line at around $25,000. Fortunately $24,300 of that is deferrable expense.
The second major improvement project we did was to add a little eight foot by eight foot enclosed porch to the front of the trailer. As accustomed as we are to the small space in the trailer, the need for winter clothing really overruns us. Adding the porch has given us a great place to hang heavy coats and a double entry to minimize the effects of the cold during ingress and egress, which anyone with kids understands can happen with an average interval of about 45 seconds during the active part of a day. So far the little porch is an outstanding success. We have insulated it and have a catalytic propane heater which we run in it. In fact, I am out on the porch now typing as the family is still sleeping. It is very nice to keep the shoe mess out of the trailer and we have been able to keep cozy and warm even with temperatures dropping into double digit negatives.
Now to the negatives of negative temperatures... We have not been entirely successful in our combat there. I think through the course of the last couple of weeks we have frozen every pipe possible to freeze. Fortunately, to date, the only one we have broken was an external drain pipe. The current cold snap is over, for my friends in warm places, cold snap over means our low temperatures are above 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-17.8 degrees Celsius). We may see one or two highs above freezing, but I am not holding my breath. We were thinking that our plans to get four seasons out of our three season RV were going to fail because it really is so difficult to keep pipes thawed when temperatures drop below zero. However, we decided that we do want to stick to the plan of being in Idaho through the winter and that during break from the most bitter cold I am going to install a few extra circuits to run strategically placed heaters. I will stress that we are very warm and comfortable inside even in the most bitter cold, it is simply that it is a very difficult living situation when the toilet won't flush because the drain is blocked with ice.
My in-laws have graciously offered us their basement if we do indeed find that we cannot win the battle of the cold. So with that as a fall back plan we are going to persist in our idea of staying here, thinking that the worst that happens is we need to make a hurried move.
I still don't fully understand all of the details of our decision to stay in Idaho. I know a lot of it has to do with tactical issues such as time and money management (we loose a lot of both time and money moving) and a lot of it has to do with enjoying being around both sets of grandparents for the kids. First and foremost, every time Lexie and I talk about it and pray about it, staying seems like the right thing to do, or at least leaving doesn't seem like the right thing to do.
I have applied for a position at the local university BYU-Idaho to work in the IT department as an application analyst. I have been very conflicted about the idea of returning to a traditional job in that the time and mental commitment required by a full time job will be a great hindrance to my game development. The hindrance to my game development however isn't the big issue. The big issue is the hindrance to my life that is implied by the hindrance to the game development. So there, I've said it, or written it rather. The game development is my life. Fail at the game development and I've failed at my life. OK I just gained some clearer insight to some possible sources of anger. Failing at life could really leave a person feeling foul. Really, I don't consciously believe that if the game doesn't sell 1 million copies my life failed. I do however believe that if I quit and don't put every energy I have into making my life meaningful to myself and others I will have failed. If I let fear overcome me in my pursuit of what I believe to be right, I will have failed.
I really want something from my life. I don't exactly know what it is, but I want to have a positive impact on the world. The Spelling Castle, although just a cheesy little computer game, fits that in its own way. I hope I can do more than just that, but it is very representative of what I want. So with that decision to return to traditional work really is at odds. I have been highly selective about where I will apply. This has nothing to do with an aversion to work. It has everything to do with wanting to be sure that fruits of my efforts are in line with the goals of my life. If shoveling manure moves me toward my life goals I will be shoveling manure, in fact, as stated earlier, that is the plan for this spring and summer. Working at BYUI is very attractive because I love the school and the church that owns it. It is very exciting to think about the opportunity to make both better through my efforts. I think the position is a great fit with my skills and talents. So with that said, I believe that given an offer I will accept the position. I believe in fact that I may do much better in my marketing efforts if I can use my skills and talents to do something I actually understand, and then contract the marketing efforts. It is very heavily on my mind that this position may be the reason we have felt so strongly impressed to stay in Idaho. Back to my life in the pinball machine reference, I have thought that about other things that were not the case, so I don't really know, but I still entertain the idea that it could be.
I really don't know what my chances of getting the BYUI job are, I just believe that if it is supposed to happen it will happen. I've heard several stories of open job positions getting assaulted with hundreds of resumes. Rexburg isn't exactly overflowing with salaried positions. We passed two days that I believed were the last possible day for me to expect a phone call for an interview. After passing the first day I phoned trying not cry asking if my application had been over looked (I did succeed in not crying). I was assured that there was another week of application review. I spent the next week wondering if I had done something atrocious on my resume like misspell the name of the school, BYUI, nope, I think I got that... was my GPA too low?... my experience not deemed relevant?... and so on. Late in the next week I had fully resolved that it was time to move on and that application to full time work was a mistake in that it distracted resource from game development and I was a fool for even looking at it. So of course, with that fully resolved in my mind, I received a call Friday afternoon asking me to come in for a job interview after the holiday break January 14, 2010. Now I am off the pin ball paddle headed up the ramp toward the bell thinking that getting the BYUI position would be wonderful.
