Winter Solstice – 2019

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A friend of mine said, “I can’t wait for your Solstice post,” and I hadn’t really been thinking of one. I’m so caught up in my own junk right now, and having that said to me really reminded me to pull my head out of my ass.

For one thing, there’s no light in there. Welcome to Solstice.

When I write about these things, I always write about what I’m going through at the moment, I just try to put my personal evolution on the page in a way that you guys can kind of follow it and take some steps if you want, or not, and I just try to be understood. I mean, that’s part of my personal damage, needing to be understood. It’s not your job to do that, but it does lead me to a place where I’m constantly explaining and trying. (Yeah. I’m sure it’s trying for you, too.)

Whatever. Anyway, the thing I’m working on right now is Competency.

A friend of mine brought up the stages of Competency once, and I never forgot them, even if I get the labels wrong. He said (and this differs slightly from what the internet says, but I like his definitions better….Unconscious Incompetency, Conscious Incompetency, XXX (the “hot week” syndrome), Conscious Competency, and Unconscious Competency.

Why does this matter? How does this relate to Solstice?

= = = = =

Well, first let’s talk about what they are. Unconscious Incompetency is living your life, having no idea that you’re doing anything wrong at all. Lots of people stay in this stage forever, and often they have no idea of consciously thinking about themselves. They’re still kind of sleeping, wondering why their life comes out the way it does, and usually blaming fate, or bad luck or what have you. They don’t really look at how their actions affect their lives, or where they can step forward to actually take control of it.

Conscious Incompetency is saying, “I know I’m doing something wrong…I just don’t know what it is.” There’s a period of self-examination, of trying to understand the mechanisms of your life, (or whatever particular problem you’re trying to solve, whether that’s a relationship, your job, your craft, whatever) and you just kind of look at it and try to figure out if there’s a way to do it better.

Stage XXX is the one I can’t remember the name for. He referred to it as “The Hot Week Syndrome,” meaning that suddenly, something is going right and you have NO idea what it is. You can’t duplicate it, because you haven’t figured it out, but something is now working that wasn’t working before, and all you can do is try to figure out what that thing is so you can do it more often.

Conscious Competency is the ability to do the right thing at the right time if you think about it and focus. You’ve now figured out what the right thing is, and you can do it at will, but it’s not automatic. It’s something you have to remind yourself to do, and sometimes you forget…but you can do something about it when you remember to do so.

Unconscious Competency means that you no longer have to think about it. You do the right thing automatically, it’s not even a process anymore, it’s just habit.

= = = = =

Until you get to the last stage, any of those things can feel pretty dark. You can lament about your life because you don’t know what’s going on, or you can beat yourself up about the fact that you don’t do the right thing automatically, you really have to focus, and what’s wrong with you that you have to even think about this stuff? Why isn’t this just in your head like the rest of the world seems to have?

I mean, first off, they don’t. They’re going through the stages just like you. But honestly, if you’re doing that, YOU’VE ALREADY GOTTEN INTO YOUR FOURTH STAGE. GO YOU. I mean, growing, changing, moving your world around…this is not easy stuff. You have to learn it, incorporate it, figure out how to fit it into your life. It’s work. If you have family and a job, it’s timing, too.

So I’m at this place where I’m trying to get back to the gym more often. I’m in the Hot Week section….sometimes I manage to get up and go, and sometimes I don’t, and I haven’t figured out why that is yet. There are some mornings where I get up and I COULD do it, I could just go, but I talk myself out of it…it’s too cold, I’ll be coming home with my hair wet, it’s too much work to carry all my stuff if I’m going to wash and dry it there….but last week I went in the snow. In the goddamned snow, cleaning off my car and everything. (I didn’t even bring much, and I came home with my hair wet, and wearing a dress with nothing underneath because I forgot to bring a bra and underwear. Nobody could see because I had a jacket on, but whatever…the point is that I went, even completely unprepared, and it was fine.) I don’t know why I managed to do it then, but not on other days when there isn’t snow. I haven’t figured out why this isn’t happening. I mean, I’m getting my sleep, I’m up early. I don’t know. I was going three times a week, then two, and now I’m struggling to not lose the one. I tell myself it’s Xmas, I have to work on presents so I can get them sent out before it’s too late, and there’s some validity to that. I mean, it’s not like people can postpone the holiday for my benefit. It’s just a thing I have to accommodate.

Anyway, Solstice is about the light at the end of the tunnel. The match that lights the candle or sparks the bonfire.

So I’m looking at this saying, “Okay…I haven’t learned to put myself first consistently yet. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t. But these people with the presents…I love them too, and I want them to be happy and feel loved.” So maybe my light at the end of the tunnel is that, if I’m putting my self-maintenance on hold, it’s only because I love people, and because I can’t change an arbitrary date on a calendar. And there’s only one more week til that date happens. And then I can go back to working on me.

Technically, I shouldn’t be putting myself off at all, but if I’m going to, I can think of worse reasons than loving other people.

So what I’m saying to you guys is…what stage are you in with your junk? If you’re putting it off, are you doing it because of Love? I mean, maybe you should look at how far you’ve come…how much you’ve learned…how this moment right now isn’t your final destination…you’re still learning and growing, and there’s so many other things to learn and add to your knowledge base.

You’re okay right where you are. Not because this moment is perfect, but because it’s a snapshot of a movie…it’s a blurry picture of who you are because you aren’t sitting still. YOU ARE A WORK IN PROGRESS, and unless you are Unconsciously Incompetent (and if you’re reading this I know you aren’t, because I don’t hang out with those guys they make me nuts) you are an Unfinished Work of Art. Who you are at this moment isn’t going to be who you are next year. I mean, look at how far you’ve come. Look at who you were five years ago. (Or three, or two). To quote Chicha, “*gasp!* LOOK how MUCH you’ve GROWN!”

If you’re in motion, you’re good. I swear. And if you feel like you’re stagnating, I bet you dollars to donuts that your *life* has been still, but your brain is going a million miles an hour, judging yourself for all the things you feel like you should have done by now.

(Like you or anybody else could just flip a switch and do the right thing if you/they could find it. I mean, if it were that easy, wouldn’t we have all done that by now?)

So here’s the secret. You’re flipping it right now. Your arm is extended in the dark searching for matches. You’re judging yourself because it’s dark, but there’s a bunch of other people out there who are just huddling in the dark waiting for it to be over….YOU, goddamnit….YOU are out there feeling around for a match.

Don’t you tell me that’s nothing. That is huge. And you are doing SO MUCH MORE than the people who are just huddling, waiting for you to find it.

(Fuck those guys. If they need your light to function, they’re probably more likely to snuff you out anyway, because darkness is drawn to light. Watch for that. When you get it lit, they’ll blow it right the fuck out by accident. Don’t let them. Protect that thing.)

You just keep feeling around. You’ll find it. And when you do, just keep going.

*You don’t have to know what you’re doing for it to be valid.* You just have to keep trying to do it.

The next stage of competency starts here.

Blessed Solstice everyone. May you find a match and light a spark.

The evolution of Disney’s tech

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So, as someone who has been going repeatedly for a few years, who is also suspicious of big corporations, and who is really interested in how and why stuff works, I wanted to make a comment about this for people who haven’t gone as much.

This all started for me when Disney came out with something they called, “My Pal Mickey,” which was a stuffed animal that had a sensor in its nose. You could purchase or rent MPM, and if you rented him and took him with you in the parks, he would react to certain things by vibrating, and then if you squeezed his tummy he would say things. Rob was a little frustrated at the time because I wanted to rent one, but I like toys, I like gadgets (Aquarius much?) and I just wanted to see what was going on. So we rented it. (MPM would only say certain things in the parks, and I THINK perhaps during certain TV shows on the Disney channel, but I’m not certain of that.)

The first time it did anything I found significant was in Mickey’s Philharmagic….there’s a moment in the show when Donald gets sucked into a kind of black hole. There’s a lot of noise and light and he gets sucked in and everything goes black and goes silent. Mickey vibrated. I squeezed him and put him near my ear and he said, “Don’t worry. Donald is okay. The show will start again in a second,” and it did.

“Hmph!” I thought. “This could eliminate a bunch of crying in theaters. I could see where this would be useful for children who get frightened easily.” I was curious about the application, and thought it was pretty awesome.

Then we went to Animal Kingdom.

We have a route we take in AK because all the parks are essentially designed the same. When you enter the parks, they are designed to slow you down before you spread out to the rest of the parks. There are entertainers, stores, gadgets, food….all things to walk past before you get to the parks so that the rides don’t get flooded upon entry. If you know this, you can ignore it all and head straight to the ride that you’re trying to avoid a line for (currently at this writing, the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars land) but if you don’t know this you get easily distracted. It’s a sound strategy for park design, honestly, and certainly earns money….the stores are the first thing you see in, and the last thing you see out.

So we were going to AK and taking our usual route, we spent the day in the parks, and then we were leaving when Mickey vibrated. He said, “We already saw all this stuff when we came in. There’s a secret route behind the waterfall! Let’s go that way!”

Thought one – There’s a secret route behind the waterfall? We’ve been here a zillion times! Why do we not know that? That’s pretty cool!

Thought two – WAIT. Disney is tracking me?

This had huge implications for the business. I realized that, at that moment, my entire day had been charted with that doll….what rides I went on. How long the wait times were. Anyplace I wanted to continue to spend time in…which stores….what stopped me….what didn’t…it was….

It was creepy.

So fast forward a few years. Disney provides wristbands if you stay on property. Instead of having a ticket, you scan your wristband. And they connect your credit card (if you want) to your wristband…so you scan it to pay instead of pulling out a card. It’s also your room key….so you can scan it to enter your room. It’s waterproof, so you can take it on the water rides. And nowadays it even stores your fast passes, so if you register for a ride between 1 and 2 pm, and it’s 12:59, when you scan to get in it tells the ride operator you can’t get on line for another minute yet. It’s the expansion of the MPM tech.

Convenient for sure. I mean, if I spend too much time on line, it lets the park know they need to open up something over there to get people moving faster. It also lets the park know that if I see the line is 90 minutes and I get on anyway, it tells them how much line I’m willing to tolerate to get on whatever I want to see. I get it. It makes sense from a business perspective…more information lets you better service your customers, and lets you cater your services to them. Disney is aaaall about customer service. If you register that it’s your wedding trip, every dinner reservation will be aware when you get there, and the servers will congratulate you without you having to say anything. It’s nice. Still creepy, but nice.

Then Star Wars Land (Hereafter referred to as GE for Galaxy’s Edge, or BSO for Black Spire Outpost) opened up, and deeply incorporated the Disney Play app.

So the neat thing about the play app is that it gives you things to do when you are on line. This is in most of the park areas no matter what land you are in (though in some places it’s just trivia questions) but in the Outpost, it’s incorporated into the landscape. The Millennium Falcon is there, and you can hack into it. It’s just a prop, you can’t enter it (though maybe the actors can) but if you hack into it, it steams or it revs up, or does whatever. You create an alternate persona, and you can choose a team, the First Order, the Rebels, the Neutrals, or the Scoundrels, and you can accept jobs from them to earn credits or pieces of blueprints or what have you. In GE it includes a translator (for alien signs, but also for recorded messages that can be translated) a scanner (to scan the barcodes of crates and discover the contents, sometimes that are being looked for by the Resistance or the First Order), a Hack app (which lets you hack into doors, ships like the MF, or other props) and a radio wave kind of hack thing, which you can use to eavesdrop on radio transmissions that are going through the park, if you are near any of the radio towers, or props, or whatever.

As you complete jobs, your ranking in your particular faction goes up. Also, in GE, the actors are no longer posing in a spot for a meet and greet. They are wandering through the outpost, sometimes Rebels, sometimes Kylo Ren and a few stormtroopers….and I’ve seen the stormtroopers stop guests to ask what they’re doing….and not necessarily in a nice way. More like, “I KNOW that’s a datapad. I want to know exactly what you’re DOING with it.”

Because now not only do they know where we are, but they know what faction we’re playing, and whether we have a ranking. And they may be searching for Rebel Spies.

Suddenly, it’s a little creepier, and a little cooler. Now I want to hack signals, but not get busted by the First Order.

And in the Meta….they know how much time I’m willing to run around and not be on rides, just scanning and completing jobs.

What’s the point of this whole thing I’m writing?

Well, They’re opening up a Star Wars themed hotel. It is being billed at present as if it were a cruise….you get on some kind of transporter that takes you off-world, and when you get there, there’s no windows or anything, because they need to keep the illusion that you’re on another planet. Everyone there is an actor. All of them have backstories. And while you’re on this trip, they have to have some way to keep you busy.

And this datapad thing at the Outpost is how they’re figuring out what we want. It’s how they will adjust their work at the hotel.

Everything Disney does, I’m learning, is a step to something else. And that’s cool when it’s for customer service. But I am naturally suspicious of big corporations. And Facebook tried to cater to me too….look where that went.

I don’t know how I feel about all this. it’s still creepy.

But it’s all amazingly cool, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to check out this hotel. I can’t help it. It’s the big, shiny, candy-colored package with a bow. I need to open it.

But I’m a tiny bit worried that it might be a little more like Hellraiser’s puzzle box.