Basically just testing
A video from 11 years ago
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Vision || Barriers || Next Step
In 2015 I started to think about iterative processes; I had been studying project management at the BI business school spare-time for a while, and I was finishing my bachelor’s thesis. My paper, written with a fellow student, was called “Uncertainty Management in Outsourcing Projects”.
Around then I also thought about all kinds of projects. I had been doing projects in different contexts since 1998. First as a project member, then a project manager / leader. And in 2015 I came up with this new triplet of questions:
- What is your vision?
- What is really stopping you?
- What is your next step?
The first question is long-term or idealistic, or it is something quite concrete and perhaps something you are working on Right Now. So, when my vision is formulated (and remember it has to be smart as well; I guess my version of vision is more concrete, oh well).
The second question is mostly about asking “why” over and over. “Why can I not reach my vision?” “Why is xx stopping me?” “Why is yy stopping me?” “Why is zz stopping me?” And at the end, I come up with a root cause. The root cause may be very different to the excuses I give myself in my primary conscious way of thinking.
The third question is really easy: What is the next step? Not 10 steps ahead, no project plan with 30 milestones. Just: What is the next step?
I very often ask myself these three questions, like a mantra. And I may do them over and over. Last winter, during the deepest part of my depression, I asked myself this a lot (“Vision = Be filled with energy and happy”), and every time I ended up giving myself a ton of slack, and saying to myself: “A time of more energy will come, sooner or later”. So in that case, every time, the “next step” was simply “be kind to yourself”
Right now, I may say that my “Vision” is to find a girl-friend. What is stopping me is that no girls seem to have a romantic interest me. But then I ask why some more, and some more, and some more, and it turns out that I am really not That interested in finding a new girl-friend / romantic partner. So that is really what my issue is. My next step then is to evaluate the idea of having a romantic partner some more, and perhaps seeing that in a more positive light.
Or, I may say that my “Vision” is to do something extraordinary at work. Or that my “Vision” is to have a new job for 2024 which is really giving me a lot of new challenges. My “barrier” for those visions may be different, and I may also have variations of answers, depending on where I am on my own energy cycle. My next step is often just to do x or y the next moment, or the next morning at the office, or something else.
But, here is my Current Core Questions triplet (I need to give it a specific name…); one that I have had for a few weeks now. It is not about finding a gf or a new job or even in my current job doing extraordinary work (I know already that I am good at my job).
Since April, when my energy level started to rise, I started to get curious about what I should fill my spare time with. Games, reading, staying with my son and blogging just doesn’t cut it. So I ended up being curious about “EWB” – engineers without borders. And I may find a way to get involved in that organization here in Norway. I like working internationally, and I like NGOs. I am kind of “done” with politics as such, and I am not interested in doing the same stuff as before; a new cycle would bore me too fast. But EWB is interesting. If I was a doctor, doctors without borders would be my thing. Well, I am not Really an Engineer, but I am enough of one to be able to be useful in such an organization. We will see.
I am scanning the organization now, and looking at the ways I might fit in. I guess I will have news before the end of May.
These questions are often with me. And now, I want to read some more in my current book, to move closer to my vision of reading 50 books also in 2023 (I am waaaaay behind on that target; I have only read 9 books so far this year)
[Video of process; 13m31s / 82MB]
My ethos of blogging
Justin Hall (Wikipedia) was one of the earliest bloggers out there, and his way of writing inspired me a lot when I started blogging myself in 2000. Justin Hall wrote on links.net, which also inspired me in my way of thinking – a collection of links (I later used del.icio.us a lot). This article has a pretty good overview of blogging after 1997.
Justin wrote about very personal, some would say private, stuff on his site. His ability to be vulnerable on the site was – to me – commendable.
Part of what I wanted to do in my own work was to show the process. That’s also why I was so keen on “screencasting” when that came about, and I was an early user of Camtasia as well as Snagit from Techsmith (I use snagit daily even today).
The “umlaut” video by Jon Udell was to me really inspiring.
So:
- Process. My process. Or showing the behind the scene (which is also why I often post the process/screen recording of my writing these blog entries; it is not entertainment as such, but it might show something)
- Raw emotions. This is something that I have struggled with more in later years. It was easier for me – for instance – to cry in front of the camera in 2005.
- Sharing my part of the world with the world. I wanted to show where I was, to my network.
My ethos for DLTQ.org moving forward may change, but these earlier principles are still there in my back-bone somewhere, and I can still remember the validity of them. The raw emotions part is problably the most difficult one, but I will work on it.
[Video of process; 13m28s / 113MB]
CS:GO May 11th
I started playing Counter-Strike not far after the beta launched in 1999. I had already played Half-Life for a bit.
I liked CS. It was quick, it required muscle memory, and I liked to hang out with other students etc at the local internet cafe in Bergen, named “Dataport”. In 2000, I also started working at that internet cafe. I liked it there. Open 24/7.
Anyway. It is now 2023, and I started playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive again a few months ago, after I bought a new gaming pc.
My skills are still quite bad. And when I remember XeQtR who also was playing at Dataport now and then back before the new millennium, I remember just how quick he was. And I remembered his laser focus during the play.
Here is a CS:GO session tonight. I did ok during the round. There is no audio commentary there, you just see the game from my perspective.
I stopped playing CS not long after it went into “retail” in 2000; I became busy with other things. Gaming-wise I started playing WoW in 2005, not after the release of the game. I enjoyed that game, for other reasons than CS. But that is another story.
[Video of process ; 11m57s / 86MB]
Summit
I am not a mountain man. My grandfather was; the civil engineer who worked on an electric car in the 1960s and later worked on crane systems; travelled around the world and implemented cranes on harbours and ports across the continents. And climbed mountains.
I am not a mountain man, but I like the concept of conquering a summit; different summits. Collecting them, collecting experiences from them. Preparing for a summit, approaching the mountain, seeing the summit from a distance. Then as you get closer, the summit disappears from view. And between you and the summit there is a seemingly endless ascend, and then it goes steeper and steeper.
I am not a mountain man, but I like the concept of preparing for a summit, and then taking the plunge, the steps towards it, and to ascend, to climb, to finally; at the end of it, to be at the top.
I am not a mountain man, but I like to look at pictures of K2, the world’s second tallest mountain. And I like to imagine being one of the first to approach the top of this mountain.
I am something else than a mountain man, and my summits are of a different kind. And my summits are guided by my questions, the core questions. Sometimes my summits are very small and personal; getting over a depression, or working with my energy level in a constructive matter, or finding my path through things. Sometimes my summits are bigger, and I take on something – I glimpse a summit there in the distance, or I hear about it, and I want to go to it, climb it, conquer it. Be at the top of That summit, after having exhausted myself climbing.
The summits of my inner universe are my own to categorize, map out, prepare for, approach, — and then to begin the climbing. Using my tools, my tool-set, the core questions and everything else I have.
The summits of my inner universe are there, and I am approaching a new one that I caught a glimpse of a few weeks ago. That one may morph and twist, yes, like all summits do. But it is there – I sense it. And I set my systems for it.
Like those other times, the other summits. Each one was one that I documented – for my own sake, nobody else really, although part of that documentation was shared, in this way or that, with others. Videos for 10 friends, or public blog entries or so, to be used by algos and evil spirits.
Summit. I enjoy catching a glimpse of a new one, sparkling in the light. This one may be taller than others, or smaller. It may turn out to be a huge disappointment. But then there are always other summits to look for, exchange energies with.
(And this video of a K2 climb is nice)
[Video of process; 37m37s / 369MB]
Slow
I have used “Dreamhost”, an American service provider, since 2005. They are on the same level as “GoDaddy”. But since I relaunched DLTQ.org today, it has been very slow on my end when loading or reloading the website, or basically doing anything on it. I am wondering if they have downgraded the specs for these shared servers, in order to get customers to pay more for upgraded WordPress service, or something like that. This solution used to be fine. A bit slower for me than Norwegian solutions, but still manageable. Now, it is so slow that it annoys me immensely. I might end up just creating a wordpress installation on a Norwegian host, and then point the domain to that.
We will see, I will give this solution some more time, and reconsider the situation in June or July.
Why did I obsess over vlogging?
On December 22nd 2004, I became obsessed over vlogging. So obsessed that I devoted myself fully to this. Well. I felt like I only did 60%, but in hindsight, I realize that I really did a lot of effort.
Why did I obsess over vlogging from late 2004 until 2009?
I think it was linked to my mantra of “showing your world to the world”. And I also liked Jay Dedman’s “momentshowing” term. Showing your moments. So that others, who have their Own contexts, can see your moments, your context, and perhaps connect with you, over small things or big things. And thus we could hopefully make the world a smaller place.
Here is my first video, from December 22nd 2004:
In January 2005, I joined VloggerCon in NYC as one of very few people from Europe. And I signed up for Vimeo early on, and I have video #126 on the entire site. Here it is: https://vimeo.com/126
I entered a community. A community of technologists and artists. And I loved loved loved that interplay. The exploration of technical feasibility mixed with the artistic view of the world. I did not consider myself an artist, but in hindsight I guess I very much did so; I created what later became known as the Raymonde persona. And there was even a series of videos created in 2005? 2006? Which was called The Head of Raymond K; in short THORK. It was madness. Very artistic. And I loved the interplay across timezones; one of my projects later on was SpeedVlogging – creating a video and uploading it for viewing within 5 minutes. (I at one point had www.speedvlogging.com but I forget what content I once had then)
Anyway. My ideals are pretty precisely expressed in this video from January 2005 during the vloggercon05 event. Here is a clip taken from the full video.
To quote my 2005 me:
“My manifesto now, my manifesto and goal now is: Real political dialogue between individuals from anywhere in the world. The digital divide today is enormous, but I think by using new tools, and using videoblogging I think we can actually make any individual be able to express his world, even in the park, and I think that’s a great ideal.”
Quote, from Source
In September 2005, I co-organized VlogEurope in Amsterdam (referred to in this BBC article), and we had a total of 5 VlogEurope events: 2005 (Amsterdam), 2006 (Milan), 2007 (Heidelberg), 2008 (Budapest), 2009 (Amsterdam).
Why the obsession? The quote from VloggerCon 2005 says it all, really. Real (political) dialogue between individuals from anywhere in the world. My motivation for vlogging actually became much less when Google bought Youtube in 2006 – I was like “Ok, it’s mainstream now, I don’t need to push this further”.
Within my life, the videoblogging years is actually a good example of what kind of thing that really – Really – excites me. Back in 2004, when there was no Youtube or Blip.tv or real Vimeo (there was something but it was very different from the 2005 version that launched) – back when having 100 or 1000 viewers of your video was a pain $$$-wise (because bandwidth wasn’t free) – it was a worthy goal for me to get involved. To invest my time and energy. I even became a volunteer at Ourmedia.org in spring of 2005 (wikipedia article), to let anyone upload media to the Internet Archive for free. It was before youtube launched, and it filled a dire need back then: Free hosting for videos.
I moved on in my life, later on, and in 2009 I was effectively busy with building a nest, building a family, building a stable job situation.
In 2023, I am elsewhere in my own history. We will see where this takes me!
(Btw, I just found this video from 2017 where Anthony D’angelo does some digging into the past, and he also had some very good points. Recommended!)
[Video of process; 44m07s / 336MB]
Core Questions (CQ)
Over the course of my conscious development, questions were my drivers. Not the answers, not the conclusions, but the ever evolving questions.
I started writing a journal/diary when I was 9. For my 9th birthday, my grandmother had given me a brown notebook. A hardcover. I think it had about 120 pages or so. And she told me to write in it. “Write what in it?”
She said something like:
“Write about your day. And think about your day. And wonder about the future.”
Like a good little pupil I sat down on her kitchen table and started writing my first entry. I did my best handwriting. I wrote about my day at school. I wrote about where she lived – she lived in Åsgårdstrand then, a charming little village south-west of Oslo. I wrote about different small things.
Then, the next day, when it was time in the evening, after dinner, to write my second entry, she sat down opposite me, looked me in the eyes and said “Now, I want you to think about questions. What questions you have. And then to write them down.”
In predictable manner, I responded “But aren’t the questions more important than questions?”. She shaked her head softly, then said “No. The questions are always more important than their answers.”
That made my head spin for sure! I was 9.
But I kept her words in mind, and I wrote about my questions. Questions to my future self, and questions to my past self. I wrote questions to imaginary friends, or questions to historical figures from the past. I worked really hard to make my grandmother proud. And she commended me for my texts.
Later in my life, as I turned older; 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 etc; I kept evolving my diary and I kept thinking about my questions. Questions to my future self. If I had a thick diary book, almost fresh, with almost no pages filled out – I would make a habit to skip forward 50-80 pages and then write things like “Hello, this is xxxx date asking you: How did it go with your goal to get great grades in that math test?”.
As time went by, I found different ways to explore the tools, the mechanisms – – – the ones that worked for ME.
Then, in 1994, when I discovered the internet, I became obsessed with that. And when hotmail was fresh out of the oven, fresh on the market, I signed up for a hotmail account. Some jerk had already taken raymond@hotmail.com, so I came up with “admnory@hotmail.com” (which is still active today, many years later).
Questions. In 1996 I was 18, and I wanted to be an author so so so badly. I wrote a lot. In 1997 I turned 19. And I still had questions. And I still had questions to my future self, and I imagined my former self answering my questions from the present. “Who was I 3 months ago?” I would then imagine it, and imagine what I had learned in these 3 months, and try to project myself into my past.
In 1998 my life changed quite a lot. From a position of passivity, mostly, I turned to a position of activity. I made a conscious decision in January 1998 when I was new at the University of Bergen and new in Bergen, in this Bergen cycle, to get more involved. And yes, I did.
In 2000, I discovered blogging, and started a LiveJournal blog. I later deleted it, and wrote under new pseudonyms. Deleted those, and started new. While this happened, I tried to live up to my Ehich nickname that I had back then. And in 2002; in my process of morphing into a DLTQ version of me / my persona; I started writing down Core Questions in a new way. Because… I knew that I was not getting any younger. I was 24 back in 2002. I felt ooold. (I am 45 now in 2023, and I feel ooold.) I did not want to forget my questions. My questions to myself, or my questions to society.
Over the next years, I wrote different questions, in different ways, in different formats. From 2004-09 I did a lot of the exploration through videoblogging, but that was not my only area. I had my trusty diary; the books lined up. In July 2009, I made my decision to change my life. To stabilize, to become more “normal”. Get married, have a kid, stay at the same job for 4+ years. I got married, I had a kid, I stayed at the same job for 12 years (2009-2021). I got divorced in 2020 (well, separated -> divorce, but you get the point). And I asked new questions about my past, and other people asked me questions about my past, present, future.
Last weekend, I hosted my second “CouchSurfing” guest, and we talked a lot about core questions, and those discussions reminded me of my own core questions, and how I had lost so many of them. Yes. Despite the daily reminder of “Don’t Lose the Question”, I had lost so many. Trivial questions, or core questions. I had stopped caring about so much; I just wanted to do my job (I work as a project manager in a large organization here in Norway), and deal with my kid (he is 12 and stays with me all weekdays, while he is with his mother in the weekends; I live closest to his school), and have peace in my life. I just wanted peace.
I still want peace, but I am ready to explore my questions again. Core questions. Some of them I will share here on DLTQ.org, while others of course will just be in my Day One app diary (where I have 5K+ entries since 2013), or in my physical diary. Yes, I still keep the physical, tactile medium as well as the others.
So, My CQ’s will be shown, over time. Some will come in headlines, while others will be in a small sentence, in the middle of a wall of text.
This is one of my reasons for deleting the Mastodon server that was linked to dltq.org from November 2022 to this morning, May 10th 2023, when I deleted that whole server and my hundreds and hundreds of updates, as well as my connections made in that world (oh well).
I need to be able to have longform. And to write my questions out, in detail, if needed. Or my answers, or anything inbetween.
I will also explore with other things. I guess video too. I also will do a lot of jumping into the river of past days, moments, periods. I will have memory lanes, and I will have lanes of thinking about the future. Imagining it.
May 10th 2023 19:46. I add a link to a video recording of my process of creating this blog entry, and other blog entries (not all; I guess) because I can. I want at least. Perhaps the thought police or DMCA police will come and handcuff me for not taking the sound track of the spotify music out of the background. Oh well. Girdle.
19:48. I am obsessed with timestamp. I don’t know why. I know why. It is linked to many core questions. Oh well. Girdle. *fnis*
[Video of process; 30m21s / 169MB]
Hello 2023
My first WordPress blog on dltq.org was in 2005, or perhaps even late 2004? I don’t know, I get confused. Let’s just say that it was in 2005, and leave it at that. I think that in 2004 I was still on Typepad.
It is now 18 years later. Not 2005, but 2023. I am 18 years older than in 2005. 216 months. That’s weird, to look at it that way.
In November 2022 this website – dltq.org – became a Mastodon server, and I had my own Mastodon instance there. Or, rather, the dltq.org domain pointed to the IP address of my Mastodon server, which was hosted in Finland; but you get my point anyway. Anywho. Anyhow.
In 2005, I was experimenting a lot with videoblogging. I did that for a few more years. The last time I co-organized VlogEurope was in Amsterdam in autumn of 2009. In 2009 I also started working at a company where I worked until 2021. In 2021 I first changed work to another company in the same sector (IT), and then in January 2022 I joined my current workplace. It is now May 2023; May 10th 2023, and I went from – yesterday – thinking that I would let dltq.org lapse – let the domain name registration expire; to this morning thinking that no. No. I want to renew the registration, and I want to use the website again, differently. Or the same way as in 2005. I don’t know which is which; cycles cycling, turning to the same spot. Or the solar system planets cycling our local star; our sun, but that sun also moving through our galaxy, and then of course that galaxy also moves in relation to other galaxies. And the further you zoom out, the more dizzying it gets. And the further you zoom in, the more dizzying it gets. And whether I scrub back in time; until 2013 or 2005 or 1999 or 1986; I get dizzy. And whether I project forward in time; until 2029 or 2035 or 2050; I also get dizzy. I get dizzy whatever direction I take within the context of my own life.
It is a Wednesday. A Wednesday belonging to the date May 10th 2023. It is a Wednesday, my son who is now 12 (not 22 as in 2033, or 2 as in 2013) years old is out playing soccer, with the others. He is almost home. And I am writing this while I am cooking dinner in the oven, and a pot of rice cooking in the rice boiler. I am writing this; it is now 18:23 CEST. Summer time here in Oslo, Norway, where I am now. It is a Wednesday, and this Wednesday belongs to a day where I reboot DLTQ.org. A new iteration, a new cycle, a new exploration of – what exactly? I think the following are my themes moving forward:
1) exploring the limits of online media
2) not losing sight of those core questions in our global society.
3) exploring the limits of my own creativity or lack of it
4) not losing sight of my own core questions
A few words about DLTQ. Don’t Lose the Question. I came up with the name in the spring of 2002. I was living in Brussels then, doing work as the President of the Student Wing of the Coimbra group of universities. I was living in Brussels, and I kept on telling myself one evening – I think it was a Wednesday, but it could also be any other day in the week; not the weekend, because then I took the train from Brussels to Konstanz am Bodensee. Anyway: It was evening, and I was asking myself questions in my diary; it was a physical diary then. And I also thought about things online. I had blogged on LiveJournal since 2000, and in 2002 I think I was mostly active on TIG. Anyway: It was evening, I was asking myself questions, and I thought about moving on from my Ehich nickname.
The Ehich nickname was something I came up with in the spring or early summer of 1998. I know it was before October 1998 because in October it was that I asked a silly question to Neil Gaiman during an online Q&A. Here is my question and the answer:
<Puck> First question is from Ehich. Ehich, go ahead.
<Ehich> On the event horizon chat you talked a bit about your interest in finding out the relationship between fairy tales, myths and religion. How do you think that this is related to philosophy? I mean; do you think there is any bridge between Mythos and Logos; litterature and Philosophy? and if so; how do you think this bridge can be explored?
<NGaiman> Ah, right. Let’s start with the small ones… (er, typed with a small amount of irony, that). Honest answer, I don’t know. And as an addendum… I try not to think about it too much. Especially when I’m writing. Mostly what I’m doing is telling stories, which is a strange sort of occupation — it’s part instinct, part craft, part skill and part luck. There are places I sometimes think that it’s wisest not to go… or rather, not to go on purpose. I was fascinated when Zelazny pointed out that the first books of Magic followed the traditional Cambellian Heroes quest pattern, as it was not designed or intended to go that way: it was just where the story went. As a final note on that… I’d hate to pretend to be unconscious of the craft. But when it comes to the relationship between myth and philosophy, hell, I’m still trying to figure out why we need fairy tales.
Source
Anyway. In 2002 I had used Ehich for about 4 years, and I wanted something new. I came up with DLTQ. Don’t Lose the Question. Because I wanted to remind myself to not lose my questions. Not lose my core questions. Not lose what drives me; moves me forward.
DLTQ has been with me since 2002. In late 2004 (December) I started videoblogging, and in 2005 I turned my blog from TypePad to my first WordPress blog. Here is a WaybackMachine snapshot of dltq.org in July 2005.
DLTQ became my twitter handle in 2007, and in 2011 when Google+ launched, I went sort of different and called myself Raymond K (here is a PCMag article about my early Google+ work). I had moved slightly away from DLTQ in those years. It became a stressful thing for me – being reminded to not lose my questions. I did not see the warning signs. I also registered rmnd.org as an alternative domain name at some point (I let that domain name slip, and I only registered it again in late 2022).
What’s the question?
OH. Yes. My online persona. In 2009 I decided to start my “stabilization project”, and that project led to other things, including marriage, a kid, and staying at the same company for 12 years. 2021 I left that company, and had shit in my private life (my wife and I divorced in 2020, pandemic divorce yay). In 2022 I had a new company, and had shit in my private life. 2023 was pretty shitty as well, until I on Friday March 24th 2023 decided to make a move. Back then, it was simply to go to Denmark that evening and to spend two full days in Copenhagen. But that move signalled a new era. And here we are. Hello 2023.