inside|circles

My chemistry has not been going well. Essentially nothing I’ve attempted in the last year has worked, which will make finding my next job very difficult. This has had me relatively stressed out with work for a number of months.

A bunch of people have been praying for me, specifically that I’ll find a breakthrough.

I really appreciate the sentiment. Maybe I’ve overthought this, but I’d like to make a humble request…

My life is easy. I’ve worked hard to do something I love but I’ve never had to overcome great hurdles, endure hardships or fight prejudice to get there. Every day I’m in a lab is a day I’m doing something I love. I get paid for it. I can support my family. My work is worthwhile (at least, I think it is). I develop my own ideas and follow them through. To pray for a breakthrough in my chemistry seems to me to be praying for a cherry on my massive, delicious cake.

The thing is, I could work harder. I could procrastinate less. I could be more organised, more efficient, more diligent. I could do more reactions.

So my request is, if you’re going to pray for me, pray for this: pray that I have the enthusiasm, determination, focus and stamina in my work so that if I do get a breakthrough, I will have damn well EARNED IT.

Each day I take my bike to work. This involves a short ride down the A57 to Manchester Piccadilly station, getting on a train to Leeds, and then a shorter ride up the hill to the university. Taking my bike on the train means I have to carry it through the stations at either end.

I’ve been impressed at how quickly my body has become accustomed to taking the weight directly on my right shoulder. The bike isn’t heavy, but it’s not soft and at first my shoulder became quite bruised in this routine and I found myself throwing spare t-shirts and hoodies over my shoulder before picking it up. But after a few weeks the shoulder figured out what the deal was and now I can carry that elegant lump of metal indefinitely while using both hands to do something else.

There has been, however, another interesting consequence of hauling my bike around in the same way day after day: I’ve developed a tattoo. While carrying, my right forearm comes into close proximity of the chain and sprocket at the pedals. No matter how well or often I clean it, the drivechain of the bike is always black with grease - a product of regular road riding. So, at least once a day my arm will come into contact with the chain and I’m left with a chain-shaped stamp to carry around for the rest of the day.

The marks only last a few days, but this happens regularly enough to leave me with a semi-permanent, shifting and morphing chain-imprint tattoo. At first it didn’t bother me but I’ve grown to like it. It’s something of an identifying mark, a pointer to how my daily routine and lifestyle immediately affects me. I am what I do.

I really like the basic idea of tattoos, personal personalisation. An immediate and visual insight into someone’s personality. It always bothers me how many people draw conclusions on a person’s character just on the basis that they have a tattoo, but that’s another rant.

But there are a few items in the feature set of tattoos that preclude me from getting one:

1. They are permanent. My personality, character and personal style at the age of 50 will not be the personality, character and style of the man I am today. Hell, my character today is not the same as it was a year or two ago and, indeed, changes on a daily basis depending on my mood. And wouldn’t it be cool if you could alter a tattoo as you go?
2. They age poorly. The skin is a temporary, changing organ, shedding dead cells and renewing itself very very quickly. It changes a lot over the years and tattoos do not fare well in this process. They end up looking like crap pretty quickly.
3. They are stationary. Stuck where nobody can see it or where everybody can see it. What if you don’t think it’s appropriate for a job interview, a tiny fraction of your life? Tough. You should have put it somewhere less visible, or not got it altogether.

So here’s where my new ‘tattoo’ really wins me over. It is none of the above. It’s constantly renewed and changing. It’s not permanent (I can always be careful to avoid contact with the chain if I need to brush up for something at the weekend), and it’s not stationary (although I don’t pay any attention to whether or not my arm touches the chain ever, nevermind where it touches the chain).

Which makes me wonder, has anyone ever come up with a real tattoo that functions in this way? Something that would operate like a temporary stamp, that could be altered in design and would be reapplied every few days, weeks or months (depending on preference). Not just a temporary tattoo, but a semi-permanent, slow motion, stop motion personal animation. Use of 3D printing and computer-aided generative design could result in some really interesting applications of this.

I should say, by way of clarification, that I don’t consider the smear of grease on my arm to approximate the style or purpose of a tattoo in any way. It doesn’t. It’s a smear of grease. It does, however, embody many of the features I would like in a real, proper tattoo (visable mark relating to some aspect of my character, semi-permanent, changeable, etc.).

http://sivers.org/fish

Fish don’t know they’re in water.
If you tried to explain it, they’d say, “Water? What’s water?”
They’re so surrounded by it, that it’s impossible to see.
They can’t see it until they get outside of it.

That article goes on to talk about culture. People can’t see their own culture until they are outside of it. This strikes a chord with me and relates to how I feel about experiencing other cultures.

I learned so much from living in Japan. I don’t just mean I learned a lot about Japan, its people and language: I learned a lot about myself. Sounds corny and vague but I’m serious, every day was a revelation. Huge things that everyone in my own culture takes for granted I quickly learned aren’t universal. Sometimes the polar opposite dominates.

That experience is a weird drug. You’re disconnected from yourself for a moment. You’re outside of the water.

If you’re careful, you can catch it - you can catch your brain making the double-take - those moments to go from ‘my world view is wrong’ to ‘my world view is redrawn’. It’s beautiful and inspiring and it makes you a new person every day.

Live in a foreign culture. I can’t recommend it enough.