You'll get that awful pun in just a second...

I'm working on (yet another) new illustration project. Or rather, I'm picking up work on an idea I had a while back.

I've been looking at Patreon for a while. I would LOVE to do something that allowed me to make some decent money on illustration stuff.

Here are the problems with that concept:

• I'm not that good. That's not an attempt at some kind of false humility. It's not an attempt to seek praise. It's fact. If you're feeling like jumping to my defense, please don't. Trust that this is an area where I am likely better versed than you. You'll note that I don't tell musicians whether they're good or not. I tell them whether I enjoy what they did. I'm certainly not qualified to say whether or not they're good at what they do. Same concept applies here.
• I'm driven to distraction. I don't know if things would be different if there would be a bajillion dollars on the line. So far, no one has offered me that much. In fact, I've pretty much only ever made $4 per drawing with exceptionally rare exceptions to that rule. Anyway - it's hard for me to stay motivated for anything more than 'quick hit' projects. One or two single character illustrations for a small gaming manual? No problem. The dozens and dozens of drawings for my own card game? Well, how long have I been working on them and they're not done yet?
  
• I like simple illustration work. This is significantly tied to that last item, but it also deserves its own point. I don't have any great desire to do uber in depth, full colored, fully rendered illustrations with complete backgrounds. The amount of hours required versus the reward (up to this point, we're talking purely personal here - see aforemented low paying gigs) has just not been in my favor.
  

With all of this in mind, I had a recommendation from someone on Google Plus: Paper Minis.

For those who might not be familiar: Paper minis are kinda what they sound like. You've likely seen the small lead miniatures that some gamers painstakingly paint and use to lay out their table top gaming sessions (think Dungeons and Dragons). Well, you can now buy plastic covers which allow you to take a small drawing (printout) and use that as your character, or in the case of the game master - the NPCs / monsters.

You put the paper minis into a stand - something like this.

Anyway, I thought I might give it a shot. It seems like the kind of thing that works on Patreon: give even a small amount and you get access to all the paper minis that I create (they will come out in sheets (PDFs) that you can print at home). Give a little more, and you'll be entered into monthly(?) drawings to get a free custom drawing. Give a lot? You'll get a custom drawing from me each month.

Dunno. There are probably bugs to be worked out, but I need to start to find them.

Which brings me to the title of this post. I really am ridiculously verbose sometimes.

This guy Bruce Gulke created a program called Tablesmith a long time ago. It allows you to create your own tables (think 'recipe') and randomly generate results from that table.

I love the program and paid for the 'registration key'. Something I very rarely do in this world of exceedingly functional freeware. I think it has uses far outside gaming for folks like writers and concept artists.

I created one to give me some quick descriptions to use for a starting set of characters to be used as the initial set of minis to describe the project to potential Patrons.

Below is a quick screen grab of some of my initial results.

I whipped up a Thai pizza tonight.

Ingredients:

1 large pizza dough ball. (Walk into a pizzeria and ask for a "dough ball." They will sell you one for around $3. Offer void at major national chains.)

1 red bell pepper
1 large onion
4-5 leaves of broccoli rabe
Olive oil
1/8 cup coconut milk
1 clove garlic

Preheat oven to 550 degrees. Seriously. Don't mess around, this is pizza.

Meanwhile, sautee onions in 2 tablespoons olive oil and a little salt until starting to brown.

Coarsely chop bell pepper, broccoli rabe and garlic. Toss in food processor and add coconut milk. Process briefly; don't let it completely homogenize.

Roll out dough ball. Stretch out onto pizza pan dusted with cornmeal to prevent sticking. 

Pour contents of food processor onto dough and spread around well.

Top with the onions. Bake for around 14 minutes or until allllmost blackening at the edges. (If your oven can't get to 550 degrees you may need to bake a little longer.)

Don't drown the pizza. This is the most common mistake and the reason you have to go easy on the coconut milk.

"Hey, don't you add any spices to this?" I find it's quite flavorful as-is, but sure, knock yourself out.

I'm seeing a lot of big-shot scientist talk about the probability that we live inside a simulation. I'm just a guy on the Internet who writes too much code, but... that's actually very relevant. So hear me out.

With all due respect... just as any computer can emulate any other computer, you can simulate a universe in a universe. But the performance hit is huge!

Yes, you can simulate certain physical processes in better than real time, but that's because you're taking liberties with stuff that doesn't matter to the highly specific question you're asking. When you simulate the stability of a bridge, you don't need to know if over a million years, a new species of slug would evolve to feed on the particular variety of bird poop that lands on that bridge.

But for the kind of open-ended simulation we imagine the aliens running, one in which we might emerge to wonder if we live inside it... shortcuts won't do.

Emulating, say, the Atari 2600 video game console is a much better analogy than simulating a bridge. For all of the games to work in your emulator, you must simulate every last wacky quirk of the original hardware, right down to the precise timing, because the people who wrote those games exploited every inch of that. And so does natural selection. If physics has a quirk that makes something just a little easier, evolution has probably exploited it, somewhere, sometime.

So if you want to simulate a universe that contains human brains, or something equally complex, in real time then you'll need hardware that beats the daylights out of the original hardware. That works for emulating video game consoles because modern computers are vastly faster. But all the aliens have to work with is a universe like the one they want to simulate.

So the beings running the simulation would have to wait, oh, let's say 100 years to see the results of one year, and that's optimistic. And the simulation would consume far more resources than the real thing.

You can trade off the latter for the former somewhat by running the simulation in parallel, because things can't interact with each other instantaneously at a vast distance. But you're definitely going to pay a huge price in terms of time, resources or both. 

Yes, they could be immortal and have the ability to slow their own perceptions of time. But it would still be much less of a hassle to set up the conditions that interest them on a real planet and just watch.

One problem with my "just use a control Earth and an experimental Earth" option is that it wouldn't allow you to experiment with different physical laws. I suppose it's conceivable that our hella-powerful aliens really, really want to know what evolves when the speed of light is, for instance, 299,792,459 meters per second.

But do they want to know that badly enough to tie up the resources of an entire galactic spiral arm in order to simulate one solar system? I doubt it. I think they want to ask more interesting questions.

And if they do ask more interesting questions... and if we're living in their simulation... that means the aliens live in a universe with significantly different physical laws than ours. And yes, that means it could be a universe where simulating things is easy — for some reason that seems absurd to me but makes sense given their totally different physics.

But that effectively puts us in the realm of metaphysics. How is running on a simulation inside a computer in an unrecognizable, unknowable universe different, from our standpoint, from the universe being the product of an unfathomable supreme being or natural process?

Fear is one answer. Science fiction authors speculate about the aliens getting bored and pulling the plug on the simulation, the aliens running out of funding and pulling the plug, or the simulation being inaccurate and one day calling an undefined function and shutting itself down. 

But if their fundamental physical laws are unknowably different than ours, then the usual scary speculations are not relevant because we don't know if people and programs in their universe actually have such tendencies, or completely different tendencies, such as just getting more awesome over time. Loosely speaking, we don't know if the laws of thermodynamics apply, or apply backwards, or emit golf-club particles on alternate Thursdays. Maybe the computer and the program both arose spontaneously because their native universe is like that. Who knows?

This throws a monkey wrench in the already sketchy machinery of trying to estimate the odds we live in a simulation in a way that has meaningful implications for us. Either the "host universe" simulating us is similar to ours, which makes it extremely difficult and expensive to simulate us, to the point where they would almost certainly just set aside some planets to watch instead... or it is dissimilar from ours, in which case there is no way of guessing at the future of the simulation because none of our assumptions hold. 

So I think Neil deGrasse Tyson is wrong. Sort of.

But hey, I'm prepared to be corrected.

for science.

Because of this.

So, panic attacks. I get 'em. They became a part of my life again a year ago, and I can expect one once every six weeks.

A Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, one arrived while I was in the Verizon store, staring at the wall of phone accessories while waiting to pick up my new phone. I was happy walking into the joint, for not only was I about to have a new toy, a glowing hand-held communication & porn machine, I was also about to spend the weekend looking after one of the best dogs in the world. I was in a happy place. But then - to make a long story short - I wasn't. 

We got outta there as soon as we could - i.e., once we got our damn phones - and I was able to mostly recover before our gig that night. (Yep, a gig. My timing sucks.) By Monday, my brain was back to normal (for me). Soon enough, it was time to return to the Verizon store.

And oh, shit.

Just thinking about the Verizon store, picturing that cursed wall of accessories while imagining facing the friendly but Sales-101 people, was giving me another fucking panic attack. And fuck. That. As I tried to calmly let Jill know the thought of returning to the store was getting to me, my voice cracked, everything went blurry, and once again, tension overrode reason.

I did two good things: I went to the store anyway for a successful purchase of phone cases, and soon as I could, I called my therapist. 

I can live with panic attacks. In fact, for a while, they're kind of neat. Sure, they eventually turn terrifying, and they sure are inconvenient. But every six weeks? That's not too bad. My life can accommodate that. 

But. An attack caused by considering returning to the location of the last attack? That there is some bullshit. And I'm not having it. So let's see what the good doctor can do.

Here, in the simplest, shortest way possible, is what said doctor told me:

• Remember when I said panic attacks are kind of neat? (No? Geez, it was only, like, 80 words ago.) Well, what if I was able to think of them as neat while I was having them?
• Panic is tension. By trying to calm down, you are pushing against your panic, and what do you create when you push against something? Tension. You feed the panic by fighting it, even by fighting with "peaceful" tools like meditation and grounding exercises.
• I told my therapist I experience good anxiety and bad anxiety. The good, I explained, is the kind I feed on when I'm about to perform for people; I can turn it into focused energy and let it drive my performance. The bad, of course, is the stuff of attacks - chaotic and unfocused, it makes me feel out of control, sending me into a mess of emotions while making my body shake, sweat, and twitch uncontrollably.
  Doctor: "Matt, good anxiety and bad anxiety are exactly the same. There's only one kind. It's your perception that makes it good or bad."
  Me:  =0

I used to meditate, I found it a great exercise in both relaxation and humility, because as it turns out it's really fucking difficult to just sit and focus on your breathing without thinking. I think it's ultimately about acceptance - accepting who you are, where you are in the moment, what you're feeling, what you're thinking. I was thinking I should really get back to meditating when this happened:

"How about you have a panic attack now?"

Wait, what?

"What if I were to induce a panic attack right now? Then I can show you what I mean about accepting it."

I...uh...

"Actually, no, we're not going to do it now. I can see how much tension the idea is causing you. How about next week?"

If you're thinking "how is this guy going to induce a panic attack? Is there, like a brain button I don't know about?" then you and I were ridin' the same bus (except for that stuff about a "brain button." Where the hell did you get that? That's just silly. Brain button. Come on). But I was game, and willing to bypass my skepticism and work with him as best I could. I made my appointment. And when the day came, I wanted my attack. I doubted it would happen, of course. How could this guy - a guy I trust with my soul, a small, gentle, wonderful man, give me a panic attack?

He didn't He gave me two. 

They weren't complete - they didn't bloom into full-on, out-of-control anxiety - but if he hadn't stepped in to help me stop them, they both would have sent me spiraling into chaos. I'm still reeling from what happened.

The session went like this: I stood behind his desk, staring at his wall of bookshelves, while he stood next to me, blocking my only exit (the desk was against the wall). And while we stood, he asked me to imagine a hundred people in that room, watching us. He used some specifics to ramp up the urgency, and within 10 minutes, maybe 15, I was in the first stages on a full-on anxiety attack - losing touch with visual reality, as though one of my contact lenses was replaced with a tie-dye plastic film. Or...something, the visuals are hard to describe. But my breathing was shallow, my throat was so clenched it was hard to answer his questions, and my neck was on fire.

At that point, when I was on the verge of really crossing over, he asked me to give my body permission to feel what it was feeling. This required saying it, out loud, until I meant it. It really was okay for my neck to be glowing. It was okay for my breathing to puddle-deep, for my legs to feel rubbery, for my brain to be in a cloud. My body was just doing what it had to do, and it's okay. I give it full permission to do these things.

And once I started believing what I was saying, My tension level dropped 15%. A little later, I was taking full breaths, and I could move my legs without effort. 

Neat, huh? But I'm not quite done, and this next part is really important. I'm trying to be concise, because I think this can be really helpful to anyone reading this, and I don't want to risk boring you any further. 

He stepped away, we sat down, we got ourselves together. (His tension had risen too - turns out, he doesn't like to be crowded with imaginary people either.) We talked about what just happened. We chatted, maybe joked, relaxed and reflected. And just when I was almost back to baseline:

"Okay. Let's do it again."

Dude, I - I really, really don't want to.

"I know. But please trust me, you have to do it again. You'll see."

We got in our same place, and he told me about the people, staring, judging. This time, it took only two minutes to get me to the tension level I was before, which is maybe 65%. The sweat started to roll again, and my neck was getting that freshly-slapped feeling I know so well. 

"Okay. Tell your body what you need to tell it."

I took the deepest breath I could. "It is perfectly okay for my neck to feel exposed, for my body to sweat, for my pulse to race. It's okay because once I accept it, my tension will fall."

The tension in my neck spilled onto my cheeks. My heart rate went up.

This wasn't right. 

"I give my heart permission - I give it -  dude, this isn't working. I don't like this please stop, please make it stop please."

"Matt. You just said 'if I accept it, my tension will fall.' That isn't how it works. You're giving it a condition, and panic doesn't accept conditions. You just gave energy to your tension. Don't do that - just accept it. Accept what you're feeling."

I did, to a degree, but I was struggling and really thrown. He let me off the hook, stepped away, and gave me another little grounding exercise to do.

But you see what happened? These attacks don't respond to reason, and they certainly don't respond to if/then logic. I told myself I could make it go away, when I should have just been telling myself to let it happen, to feel my heart race and think "that's okay. In fact, that's good." To feel my neck get red and angry and think "that's okay, neck. You're doing fine. In fact, how cool is it that the body reacts like this." To feel my legs turn to rubber and think "that's okay, legs. You go ahead and get rubbery. People take expensive drugs to feel like this - thank you for letting me feel it all on your own."

So yeah. I'm not remotely there yet. I have to practice, which I'm not looking forward to. But I really need it. My life is too good to have these odd little interruptions scuttle my momentum. That was an incredibly intense hour, and it had an emotional and physical effect on me I'm still feeling, some 32 hours later. But man, what a lesson. So if accepting the anxiety is what I gotta do, I'll be more accepting than an 80s German metal band with a chubby lead singer in K-mart clothes.

       I went a long, long way for that last reference. That's commitment, yo.

Calmly yours,
Matt

Please do not adjust your universe. The slight disquiet you feel is because I've moved OnePo, Boutell.Com, and everything else I run to a different hosting provider. I did that to get more storage, better backups, and more RAM for less money. More RAM, in this case, cuts down on disruptions when I deploy my other apps. The old b-com was running pretty close to its limits.

I've been banging on all the bits and validating that everything is here. For instance, I'm attaching a photo to this message.

That photo just about sums up my present situation: disordered but excellent.

Blues: fearless beings with a magical sense of connection, just screwing around.

Fusion: blues dancing to electronica. Sshh, don't tell them.

Salsa: really pretty math.

Salsa rueda: really pretty partial differential equations.

Bachata: who decides if it's gonna be sexy? Not you, fella.

Cha cha: has nothing to do with Nicole Kidman.

Swing: would you like to dance jitterbug, lindy hop, balboa, charleston or west coast? Oh sorry, I'm a southgoing zax.

Waltz: surprisingly sexy seventy-year-olds in the suburbs. Do try to keep up.

Tango: anger management.

Foxtrot: a thing? I guess? The longer you've been social dancing, the less memory you have of your three foxtrot lessons at that ballroom studio ten years ago.

You know you want it. 

This morning my co-worker, Joe, and I were talking about people with odd names. I told him how I went to kindergarten with a kid named Clark Kent (first, middle), whose younger brother was named Bruce Wayne (also first, middle). 

Clark has embraced his name fully. He's now a top-flight landscaper, and all the branding for his business uses the colors red, blue, and gold. He's a super landscaper. 

"What about Bruce?" Joe asked. 

"I don't know," I said, "but now I want to write a play about that (hypothetical, imaginary) younger brother Bruce, living in a basement, listening to Morrisey, wrapped in a black comforter and tying tools to his belt."