Control Option Command

Time has always been subject of scrutiny and discourse, philosophy and theory, science and fiction. The very concept of time is frequently disputed as at best a faulty system to explain the sequencing of entropy and extropy based on certain recurring natural phenomenae; and at worst an imaginary crutch for our lack of ability to comprehend the world in more than three dimensions.

There is little controversy however concerning the fact that we perceive time as a real and measurable phenomenon. Artifacts from the Palaeolithic suggest that the moon was used to calculate time as early as 12,000, and possibly even 30,000 BCE. A multitude of different systems have been devised to measure, calculate and conceptualize time. The study of devices and systems to measure time is called Horology, and is a field broad enough to warrant museums, libraries and doctorates.
The act of arranging past events in ordered sequences is referred to as Chronology, while the conceptualizing of ordering and arranging future events is referred to as any one of planning, predicting, anticipating, divining, foretelling or hoping.

As a means of bringing some measure of order to the art of organizing future anticipated events several systems were devised to facilitate this process. These systems are known as calendars, and are typically agreed on as the official system for such measurements in a given society. That is; The sequence of days, weeks, months and years as well as the occurrence of any holidays or annually reoccurring events are predetermined by the official calendar.

In the western world the Gregorian calendar, decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, is the by far most common calendar in use. With a predetermined discrepancy of only 1 second per year, and one day every four years, the calendar divides the progression of time neatly into days, weeks, months and years; corresponding to the rotation of the earth on it’s own axis, cycles of the moon and the earths orbit of the sun.

The discrepancies mentioned means that there is, predictably, some few discrepancies in the amount of seconds in a year and the days of a month (although always the same month). However the remaining larger units of time, and their progression are static and as such even more of a central focus around which to organize, conceptualize and express measurement of time.

Take the week; A repeating cyclical pattern consisting of 7 days. It always start with the same day (sunday or monday according to region) and progresses from one day to the next until the week has come full circle, and thus starts again. If on a tuesday you inquire about when a certain event will occur, and you get the reply that it will occur the coming friday; You may safely assume that wednesday and thursday will pass between now (still, for the sake of argument: tuesday) and when said event is likely to happen.

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And that is why I haven’t finished your project yet.

Every once in a while in between loads of spam ¹ someone adds a thoughtful comment on a blog. Nothing particularly interesting to other readers perhaps, just a “Good job”, “Well put” or “Thanks for sharing”. It’s a wonderful thing to anyone that ever puts a bit of heart into a post and if you’re anything like me (and why wouldn’t you be?) you treasure these comments. We raise our voice, sadly, more often in disapproval than support, and the friendly nod or encouraging smile that is so inexpensive to give and so valuable to receive in meatspace is fraught with barriers on the internet. You may agree with someone in a heated discussion but not wish to get involved or publicly make a stand in the matter. You may not want to register or leave your email or you may just feel that wording your approval is too much of a hassle.

Call me a sucker for praise or an insecure sissy if you will, but there’s no denying the basic human need of positive feedback from your peers. Don’t take my word for it, take Maslows.

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Finally I’m allowed to talk about this.
A couple of months back my life took a turn for the strange. My girlfriend and I had for some months been trying to work through some problems in our relationship, and long story short we spent that weekend apart giving both of us some time to think, and that following monday we decided to go our separate ways. This was a friendly break-up mind you. We do love each other. We just can’t live together. (Although, ironically, we still do.) She’s a wonderful girl and I’m a bit worried about how I’ll get along without her.

We were scheduled to go to a wedding the next Saturday, and we joked about the alanity ¹ of it all. The joke got even more hilarious on friday when my now ex-girlfriend surprised me with a three-litre carton of wine and a pregnancy-test with a blue dot on it. ² Holy twist of fate Batman!

So long story short; We’ve been thinking a lot about what to do about this, and we’ve decided (unanimously) to keep it. Lord knows there’s enough kids out there with divorced parents (statistics say 50% of all marriages in Norway end in divorce), so you might even argue that it’d be an advantage to us that we already know we’ll have to work together on this despite of not being romantically involved anymore.

Of course there’s a lot stuff to be considered when making this decision. First and foremost of course is what I mentioned above. Apart from the consideration above, which of course was crucial, I also have some genetics to take into account. Depending on which site you’re visiting you may already know that I suffer from Bipolar Disorder ³ which is a hereditary disease. Melodramatic as it may sound it is a factor to consider when deciding to have children. It wasn’t too hard for me to decide that it’s not going to make a difference. First of all there’s a good chance it’ll be a non-issue. BP tends to skip a generation. Secondly I’d take great offense at any suggestion that it’d be better not to be born than to suffer from this disease. The only reason my condition has caused me real (and real they were) problems is that it was discovered so late and being aware of the signals I dare say my own experience and knowledge (and that of my ex-girlfriend, what with her having lived with me) should prevent that to be the case.

So am I ready for this? Of course I’m not, but I’m looking forward to it and although I’m scared shitless I’m pretty sure this’ll be the most interesting, devastating, exhilarating, amazing, trying, rewarding thing I’ve ever done.

Since starting this (these) blogs I’ve had a minimalist interim theme while getting around to designing my own. Minimalism be gone! (I do suffer from hypomania after all.) Finally I got this theme release ready. It’s a work in progress of course, but good enough for now.

There’s a few validation errors. One from an empty menu of pages being generated that I’m keeping around for whenever I want to write some, and some stuff from posts which I’ll blame on WordPress. For the most part though, it’s all kosher XHTML/CSS.

I had a real hard time getting started on this template. I guess maintaining both design skills and code skills is kind of beyond me. As such I’ll happily admit that the swirly stuff in the header is a purchased stock illustration that I’ve modified and bent to my purposes. Once I had that as a starting point the rest of the design happened pretty quickly.

For now IE6 is not supported. Not sure if it ever will be. I might just redirect those unfortunate to the old bare bones template rather than break my balls trying to hack my code into something that little monstrosity is able to render. If anyone knows a good WP-Plugin that takes care of that for me; Give a shout.

So anyway. Just a FYI. Carry on.

So where to begin…
Let’s begin like this: Hi. My name is Martin. Late twenties. Live-in girlfriend. Loving family. Good job. Bipolar disorder. Heavily medicated.

Why this blog? Well. I am a incredibly resourceful young basket case, or so my various therapists, doctors and psychiatrists would have me believe. So perhaps my writings here might be useful to someone. That would be the secondary purpose of this site.

The main purpose is that writing is very therapeutic to me. I concentrate better when I have to convey my message to someone else. It doesn’t matter whether this “someone else” is an actual person (although I’ll admit I’d be excited if this site attracted millions) or just the vast void that is the internet. As long as I feel I’m writing it with the purpose of explaining these things to someone else, that helps me organize my mind for myself.

If you’ll stay along for the ride, you’re more than welcome and if you should have some questions I’d love to hear from you, but I’m writing this stuff down for myself and google (who sees all and knows all. All hail our overlords google to whom no corner of the internet is unseen.)

I know, I know. The “I’m writing this for me not for you”-schtick has been the adage of new blogs since the dawn of times. In the beginning there was The Word. And The Word was “If I suck, I’ll pretend I don’t care, but if I don’t; Please give me money.” I suppose it’s true for me as well. I would love for someone to read this and get some meaning out of it, but it won’t shut me up if you don’t.

Shutting up never got nobody nowhere.

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