The other night I saw some Youtube clips of Jarhead the movie. I ended up putting it on my monitor as I was setting up some development tools (tmux, golang, ruby, prezto, etc.) on a new computer.

Recently, I got a 49” monitor and with Microsoft Powertoys the paneling looks like this:

Monitor PowerToy Panels

Jarhead

So Jarhead via Netflix, was running on the leftmost panel instead of Youtube.

Here were some mental notes about the series of events:

  • protaganist is lost and life and joins military
  • protaganist’s regiment is a zoo of characters
    • demographically diverse
    • act wildly together
  • while in Afghanistan
    • the soldiers true purpose on behalf of the military/government is questionable
    • they weren’t as free as they thought (i.e no free speech to the press)
    • didn’t shoot a bullet once
    • while in Afghanistan soldiers are interviewed by press on who, what, and why they are personally there doing what they are doing
      • there was no commonality between their answers

Here are some thoughts I had about their circumstance:

  1. The soldiers service, was that - an economic service
    1. service cost: army will pay you a soldier’s wage
    2. service provided: be a soldier, that is
      • forego some liberties:
        • no free speech to press
        • surrender integrity (e.g pretend your gear works fine and be shoehorned into taking questionable pharmaceuticals)
        • the decision to sacrifice your life can be made without you
      • the portion of your life serviced to the military can be directed at things that aren’t meaningful to you, even morally agreeable or too ends that aren’t even useful (i.e being a soldier but not even shooting a bullet)

Iainhead

There was an echo of that movie in my own life.

  • I question the meaning I have in my corporate job/career
  • I resent the grunge work that isn’t personally useful (i.e soldiers wondering why they are protecting oil fields)
  • My justifications for working for a Company - seem as individualistic and orthogonal to the agenda of the company (i.e like when the soldiers were describing to the press why they were happy to be “there” [in Afghanistan] for the Military. The reporters question was so ill-defined something along the lines of: Are you happy to be here?. It asked for information about the soldier while referencing some intangible undefined concept here. Like does here mean in the current domestic political situation, or geographic coordinates, personal point in life, involvement in international affairs… The fact that it is unspecified seems to indicate how you feel isn’t particulary important to the affairs of the military or the military’s proxy-role on behalf of the people of USA).

The New Direction

There are things one wants to do in life - which I mentioned in my last blog post “Single Page Life”; and while we aim at them, they are subject to changing based on your circumstance.

I’m not really sure what makes up one circumstance… but it seems like at least one’s external environment: like the metereological disasters, monetary policy and international affairs are indeed apart.

To one’s circumstance, I would also add one’s mental frame. Again ill-defined, but one’s sense of purpose and meaning, their personality and whatever emotionally innervates one’s self.

With the beginning of a New Year, I find it culturally natural to reflect on what I want to do and why. What’s my circumstance and my mental frame.

The previous year - I questioned my ability to have the wherewithal to do what I thought was necessary. To execute. Can I action what I want. Over the last year, I’ve tried to clarify the ideas I thought were important and carry them out.

Centric to work this meant making devops pipeline changes, hoisting up ML/AI tools or even creating one or two myself, and integrating disparate pieces of engineering. On top of that rapidly developing and delivering several services and even doing a management stint all the while.

I made the goal of 2021 to ask myself about my ability and I have answered.

Being able to trust myself, I am now able to focus on what I would like to do with that abililty.

This year I would like to do what I want. It almost sounds flippant, like a joke; can’t I do that already, don’t I do that already?

This sort of existence question reminds of Black by Dave. I think what I like most about the song is the hope and opportunity is speaks of despite the circumstances and history. It doesn’t get hung up on defiance and while it spends time describing inequalities to me it ultimately uses it as a basis for what can still be achieved.

I’d want to dedicate a lot of time doing what is meaningful and sharing and socializing that experience with others.

As an informal list, here are somethings I want to do:

  • do math, do sports, go dining and travel
  • publish more to social media
  • blog
  • stream/make youtube videos about my experiences and things I find interesting