The Nightmare and Her Ninefold

Two days ago at the climbing gym, I was working my shift, doing my duty to god and country, and I decided to pass the time by reading some Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving on Project Gutenberg.

(If you do not know about Project Gutenberg — it is an amazing resource. You must know about Project Gutenberg. You can read all the classics, for free, online in your browser or via your Kindle. This is an incredible thing and I have read countless classics via Project Gutenberg, including Sherlock Holmes, Sleepy Hollow, Ben Franklin’s autobiography, many old Greek philosophical texts, Voltaire’s Candide, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.)

I was in the first few paragraphs, when I read something that was very interesting. Here is a snippet of the passage:

“The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is from the late 1810’s, and it’s interesting to read these old books and stories and see how the language has changed, and so rapidly. You see that he uses ‘oftener’, which today would be considered incorrect, and is not used. We would say, ‘more often’. But the real interesting part of this passage was for me, at the end.

“…the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

What do you mean her? Who is the nightmare? Irvine is clearly depicting the nightmare as some kind of female entity. What does that mean? I didn’t know anything about that. The closest image or association I have with a nightmare creature is the image of a horse from a Magic: The Gathering card, called nightmare. And a ‘mare’ is a female horse, in today’s language, so is a nightmare then some kind of wicked, female horse?

I never knew about this, and so I had to do some Googling. According to Wikipedia (I know you’re not supposed to cite this, okay):

“The word nightmare is derived from the Old English mare, a mythological demon or goblin who torments others with frightening dreams. The term has no connection with the Modern English word for a female horse.^[5]^”

A mare is a “mythological demon or goblin”! Now, who knew that? And that’s where nightmare comes from. It has nothing to do with the female horse, so says Wikipedia and whoever who the article.

More, from Wikipedia: “Originally, “mare” or “nightmare” referred more specifically to sleep paralysis, in which an experience of terror and paralysis during sleep can be associated with a sense of pressure on the chest and the dreamed presence of entities often pictured as demons, sometimes sitting on the chest. The words also referred to such a “demon,” which was also referred to as a hag and the experience as being “hag-ridden.” The meaning of “nightmare” had generalized from sleep paralysis to any bad dream by 1829.^[1]”

This painting is from 1781. This is what was in their minds, regarding nightmares, at this time. That certainly looks a goblin/demon creature to me. And interesting how there is a creepy horse-ghost in the background. Pretty freaky.

Interesting that the word originally referred to sleep paralysis, before becoming broadly applicable to bad dreams. It makes sense though, because you actually see some evil stuff when you’re having sleep paralysis. I’ve only had it once in my life, when my roommate Adam suggested that I take a melatonin to help me sleep as he did. That night, I ended up having a crazy bout of sleep paralysis, turned sideways, unable to move, and seeing a large, black demon in the corner of the room. After that night, I said Adam, I’m never taking this shit again. That was too freaky.

I think it’s weird that I actually didn’t know about a mare, and never thought about why we say ‘nightmare’ at all. When did the concept of a ‘mare’ get lost? That’s a fun thing to think about. Why haven’t I known about the ‘mare’, sitting on my chest and causing me to have bad dreams? Is that lore gone from our common modern consciousness? Do the older folks know about it?

As I was inn the midst of my ‘nightmare’ investigations, some young lads entered the gym and were checking in at the counter. On the second monitor, my screen was open to the ‘Mare’ Wikipedia page, and one of the guys notices this, seeing that I was deep-diving on Wikipedia, and said, “What are you researching over there?”

I immediately launched into this tale, as I am writing for you, about reading Sleepy Hollow and discovering the interesting line about the nightmare, reading about the origins of the word, finding out about the ‘mare’, (everything I had learned in the last five minutes) and man — these guys were a perfect audience. They were listening with total, rapt attentio, and so I gave them the full scoop. The guy who had originally asked about the Wikipedia page, he said, “So it’s like sleep paralysis.” And I hadn’t even mentioned yet about how the word ‘nightmare’ originally referred only to sleep paralysis, and I said, “Yeah, that’s exactly right!!” and then proceeded to recite more info from the Wikipedia article. It was a wonderful mini-lesson of the etymology of the word ‘nightmare’ that we had over the gym counter check-in right there, and I thought, after they had walked away, and reflecting on how much I had just been geeking out there, “Man, I really am a nerd.” But they thought it was cool.

Now, it gets even juicier than this, people. After learning about the mare, and nightmare and her gambols, I went back to Sleepy Hollow, and read that line again. And then I saw something else that needed to be investigated, which was “her whole ninefold.”

“…and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

Okay, so the nightmare is a female hag, demon, devil spirit. Now we know. But what is her ninefold?

We are digging up some very ancient lore here. Apparently this goes all the way back to Shakespear’s King Lear. (From the 1600’s.) A line from the character Edgar:

“This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. He begins
at curfew and walks till the first cock. He
gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and
makes the harelip, mildews the white wheat, and
hurts the poor creature of earth.
Swithold footed thrice the ’old,
He met the nightmare and her ninefold,
Bid her alight,
And her troth plight,
And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee.”

(The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet? What an incredible name.)

It seems that the nightmare’s ninefold is a bunch of evil creatures, spirits and hooligans that hang out with the nightmare and do evil with her. This picture is by Arthur Rackman, and shows us exactly what the nightmare and her ninefold are all about.

*The Nightmare and Her Ninefold, Arthur Rackman, 1928 color plate*

I think horses must have something to do with a nightmare. They made a Magic card called Nightmare that is simply a demon horse, and there’s a spooky horse spirit in the above Henry Fuseli painting from 1781, and the hag is riding a horse here in this Arthur Rackman illustration. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is about a ghostly horse-rider. Surely all of this horse association is not just coincidence.

I’m glad to know about the ‘nightmare’, now. I feel like it’s something of an evil tooth fairy. I’ll be thinking about this spirit, whenever I heard about nightmares again. The nightmare, and her ninefold.

“Several Years Worth of Coffee Experience…”

“I bring several years worth of coffee experience…”

This is the line that stunned me. I sat on the couch, after a long day of talking to people about jobs, applying for jobs, working on resumes and cover letters, and then printing some off at the local library, going through that whole debacle…

I had checked, I had double checked, it was all good. Everying looked fine, everything was ready. Except, IT WASN’T.

My fresh cover letter for the local cafe laid out in front of me on the table, I was feeling satisfied, a hard’s work finished, and I picked it up, to look over my fine work one more time—and then I read the start of that second paragraph, and had a crisis.

It read that I had “several years worth of coffee experience”.

Well, that was a straight up lie.

I debated on what to do about this. If the hiring manager read my resume, they would know that that was a lie—or they would think that for some reason I had coffee experience that I did not list on my resume, which would be strange. I had in truth seven months of professional coffee experience. That’s not several years, not even close. I thought about how I could reframe it, (“Well, I’ve been drinking coffee enthusiastically since I was 20, haha!”) no, that wasn’t going to work.

But I really, really did not want to go back to the library.

It was horrible, at the library. All to print out several pieces of paper. I had to log-in to Google, which required two-step verification, which require logging in to wifi, and using my old smartphone that I almost forgot to bring, but I remembered this time, having walked all the way to the library just to be stymied once before. It took about five minutes before my crappy smartphone’s processor could run fast enough to handle a notification from Google, and before even trying this, I had attempted to print remotely from my laptop, and I went through that entire process only to not have it work for some mysterious, unknowable reason in the end. You see that I did not want to go back to library and relive all of that. It took an hour of work to print a few pieces of paper. And to fix one sentence? Please, no. Not like this.

Parker’s suggestion was whiteout. Use whiteout on the letter, he had it. Just write over it. I couldn’t accept that. Handing in a cover letter with whiteout on it?

Come on. It’s just not to my standards.

So, this morning I had the great idea. A handwritten note. That’s what I would do! Cover letter was a little over-the-top anyway, although I’m sure would still be well-received and would be better to turn one in than not. But a handwritten note, with a funny picture, which I had several of—that would be perfect. And I didn’t have to go back to the library. Yes!!!! So that’s what I did.

Now, you may be wondering, why did I write “several years of coffee experience” on my cover letter in the first place?

The reason why I had written “several years of experience” on that cover letter is because I didn’t actually write that cover letter.

I had written my own cover letter, heartfelt and authentic, and then I gave it to ChatGPT, who kept most of what I had written, but made it sound professional and polished. And, truthfully, it sounded much better, even though it said basically the same things. But look—I was lazy, and I didn’t catch the mistake. That’s how this happened.

I used ChatGPT to help me write a cover letter, not write a cover letter. I think there’s a big difference. I also did not end up even using that cover letter anyway. But I thought a lot about using ChatGPT to help me get a job. Is it wrong? But, if I had a friend who suggested to me that I frame things in this way, that way, and improved it, would I accept that? I would. There is one major difference between these two scenarios, however, which is that I would probably learn more from talking it through with my friend, than by just giving it to ChatGPT to mockup. I still learn from ChatGPT though, and this is where ChatGPT can be really useful. I see what I wrote, and I think it’s not bad, but then I see how ChatGPT writes a cover letter, with the same content, and I think—now this is better. And why? It can be a great learning tool.

But in the end I was so impressed by ChatGPT’s cover letter writing prowess that I completely missed the “several years” of coffee experience line. And that killed the whole thing.

I walked in this morning, ready to hand in my resume and handwritten note, folded up in an envelope with some stickers attached, and would you believe it, but I see the manager walking over to the front of the store, passing me in line. It was my perfect chance, to make a direct connection, to hand him my letter in person, and remind him of my face. I couldn’t believe my luck, and I stopped him as he passed, and said that I was interested in working for them, he said great, do you have a resume, I handed it over, boom, shook hands, incredible. Couldn’t have been more natural, or gone more smoothly.

Now, that’s a good sign, is it not? That has to be a good sign.

I am fully immersed in the real world now, as it is required of me. I need a job, I need money. I must engage with the world to get what I need. But I have enjoyed reengaging with the world in general.

I feel like I’ve come out of a deep slumber. (Context: Have been doing a lot of fiction writing.) And waking up, I find that somehow I’m now friends with everybody at the gym, and have made a personal connection with almost all of the baristas at the coffee shop. I’m having more serendipitous interactions with the other customers and other climbers than ever before. But, nothing has really changed except me—they’ve all been here. It’s just that I’m tapped in and engaging, in the real world again. My energy is directed outwards.

My candle has not been cutting it for reading at night. It’s too much of a pain. I could do it for Harry Potter, and that’s a testament to how good the Harry Potter series is. I would say after a month has passed, that reading the Harry Potter series has expanded my literary consciousness. It was something different, something fresh more me, not as simplistic as some children’s literature, nor as whimsical, it was more advanced, something massive and epic in scope but not overly intellectual or literary, emotional and funny, but with depth and darkness as well. It could be all of those things, like The Lord of the Rings, but more accessible.

Anyway, I bring up the candle for this reason…

The last few nights, I haven’t been reading at all. For even the last week. All I do, when the sun goes down, is lay in my bed and think. That’s it.

I have lit the candle a few times to do some things, tidy up the room, attempt to read once more before giving up because it is such a struggle, and then I end up laying down in the bed again. And when I lay in that bed, for hours, in the darkness, it’s just me and my thoughts.

Last night, I was thinking about all of the people that have been in my life recently. All of these people, that are out here in the world, that are part of my world, that are here on this Earth with me. Lots of names, lots of faces. All of us here together, doing our thing, living our lives. And I ended up coming back to a core idea, which is really hippy-dippy, but I kept thinking—I should continue to expand my heart and mind. I kept landing back on that central idea.

I should keep my heart and mind open. I should keep connecting to people, reaching out to people, accepting people. Having pity for people, helping people, having mercy and empathy for them, and caring about them, and supporting them.

It’s hard to explain concisely some deep, lengthy thoughts and complex feelings, but there is a real lesson here that I am consistently reminded of, and am reflecting on once again, these days, which is this: I wish that my brain did not make so many assumptions and judgments about people. My brain, my intuitive and subconscious brain, likes to make assumptions about people. It likes to attempt to infer things based on how they look, how they sound, context, labels and titles. What they are wearing, who they are with, what their job is, X Y Z. Could be good, could be neutral, could be bad, and that doesn’t matter as much as the fact that my brain does this in the first place.

I guess it’s natural that we do it, but I wish it wasn’t so, because I have to tell you—my brain is so often wrong.

Most of these impressions, coming from stereotypes, assumptions, guesses and profiling, almost all of it goes out the window as soon as I start to talk to someone. I don’t like that I have all of this baggage before I even do start to talk to someone. I wish I could take every interaction with every person as a neutral, blank slate, and then learn about them through interacting with them. I wish I could always form my impressions and opinions of them after I start to see who they really are—because my perceptions are so often wrong.

I realized to what extent my perceptions were flawed on a flight to LA. I was on the end of the row, the aisle to my right, and a couple sat to my left. The guy was next to me, and the girl at the window. And I have to confess that I felt that we were unlikely to be friends. They didn’t strike me as such, and especially, I think the guy’s hat did it for me. It had some slogan that I thought was a dumb, and there you go. Whatever it was exactly that did it, my brain made some assumptions.

Well, you can see where this is going… We ended up talking, and then we became best friends. We talked for the rest of the flight, the girl was an actor, the guy had been studying web development, as I had been, we talked about music and coding, life in LA, TV shows, etc., many things. We had so much in common, and we had a great conversation, much bonding. And the guy’s hat?

It was the name of his brother’s band. He was wearing it in support of his brother.

I was so affected by this event, and felt so stupid for my brain having some negative assessment of these people who turned out to be so great, that I wrote something down on a piece of paper and carried it on my wallet, to remind me of this. And I actually still have it, I just checked—this is what I wrote, all those years ago now:

“I’ve noticed on these flights and conversations how judgmental I tend to be from the start, and how every person I talked to was completely different from whatever expectations I projected onto them. This is something you need to be aware of. Every stranger I’ve talked to has brought me a lot of joy, and I’m sure to them as well. So let’s keep that going.”

There you go. It’s still true, and it still happens and I have to catch myself and say, “You don’t know. Until you talk to them, until you get to know them, you have no idea what they’re really about.”

I am corrected and reminded of this lesson all the time.

For example, even at Ugly Mugs—I thought one guy might be the manager. He’s always working, he’s older, and he was on the website, modeling with the merch. Well, when I talked to another Ugly Mugs employee and asked if he was the manager, they laughed, and said no, it was another guy, that I would not have expected at all—and when the other employee came over (this is the girl I befriended who also works at the climbing gym, I should just give them code names), he was laughing and told her, “He thought Caleb was the manager,” and she cracked up.

Apparently it was funny to think about Caleb as the manager. And I thought, you know, that’s it. My brain thought I might have had it figured out, that I could somehow tell, who was doing what, and it turns out I was so wrong that Izzy is laughing about it. I didn’t have a read on anything at all. And I thought, imagine that someone asked, when I was at Starbucks, “Is Jason the manager?” (Jason being the annoying barista who is always complaining and praising Elon Musk and generally driving me insane.) Wouldn’t that be hilarious? I would say the exact same thing to my co-worker, Jessica. “Jessica, this guy thought Jason was the manager. Hahaha!!!” And we would crack up, because we would know Jason, and know how absurd it was to think that Jason could ever possibly be the manager.

Witches and Warlocks

February 18th, 2025

I can do some brain dumping for you. Let’s see what comes out.

This is for your entertainment. So it better be entertaining.

Jaz told me today that her family is full of witches and warlocks. Her exact words were, “My family is full of witches and warlocks.” That was absolutely an incredible thing and I immediately had to go and write it down. Jaz has Jamacian ancestry, or perhaps Haitian, I must confirm this, but Carribbean at least, we can say, and so she was not joking. She said, “I’m not joking.” She knows about voodoo, and she said she used to practice, and knows about the techniques, for hexing and cursing and etc.. That she comes from a line of practitioners. And she told me a story of putting a dead trout in her roommate’s air vents, to get her worthless roommate to understand what it was like to have a stinky house, because she would never take out the trash or do the dishes. She served her roommate up with a problem so unbearable that she would be forced to actually deal with it. If I had been consulting with Jaz this whole time, or if Jaz had lived in 805B, I don’t think Wisdom would have lasted two months. Jaz knows about being petty. But the main thing, that was so incredible, was that she said this statement, after mentioning some things about voodoo, in full seriousness, in the year 2025, and that was what was so incredible. To say, “My family is full of witches and warlocks.” In seriousness, and mean it, and I know that you mean it, and are serious about it. What an incredible thing to say.

I’ll tell you about the mug. I just went and took a sip out of it, and was reminded about my mug, and I need to tell you this because I need to give you some good things, to compensate for you reading my rant.

I bought a mug from the store, a cute lime-green mug, in the classic coffee mug shape, with an interesting series of purple and pinkish-brown lines across the middle of the mug, and also in the middle of the handle. When I rang it up, it was listed in our system as the “gradient mug”, to which I told Juanito, and who said, being a smart boy that he is, “What! That’s no gradient! You call that a gradient?” I actually think, from my web dev days, that it is a gradient, and that Juanito is just plain wrong, but I’m not going to do any Googling to confirm this. I’m just going to assume that I’m right, and that it has something of a gradient on it. This mug caught my eye from the moment I saw it, I was immediately charmed by it, and it is an unusual item to be in our merchandise roster. We have many more interesting items, things way more exotic, but something about this simple yet unique mug stood out to me. In the color scheme and the gradient. My brain did not really attach words to use to describe the mug, or why I should like it, as it goes with things that strike you in a visual way, you just like them because you like how they look, but when I was considering buying it, because it was now 50% off, having survived about a month and still, sat there on the shelf, I admiring it from behind the counter every once in a while, I was considering buying it now, only $8.65, and I of course first consulted with every single other employee, my trusted advisors, to gauge their reactions and also because I was curious what they thought about this strange mug, and I asked them to rate it out of 100, to which Juanito replied, something sarcastic, I can’t remember exactly, he said something that was not out of 100, and then someone gave it a 40, I think that was Jessica, and then I think it was Katerina, who said it was ugly, but kind of cute, and that I needed to buy it, and that’s when I knew I needed to buy it, and she was right. Katerina has phenomenal judgment and especially because, when she described the mug as being cute and ugly, I felt that she had a similar understanding of what was special about this mug, she saw it in the same way that I did, and I also felt that it was like that, cute, but ugly. Because the colors, as someone said, green and purple, they didn’t really go together well in this way, they could not have been the most obvious choice, and yet somehow, it worked. It was actually working. It was wonky enough to be interesting, and ugly, and yet cute. So, I bought it then, immediately ringing it up, and then drinking coffee out of it, and that was about the first thing that happened that morning. I spent the first thirty minutes of that day in such a jubilant mood, and having purchased the mug, and so happy to be working again with a team who was in good spirits, that I had to ride that out for as long as possible, as it was also very necessary for my mental health and spirit (this was now four days ago, I would say), and I just walked around with my mug, after the successful purchase, and enjoyed my coffee, and chatted with everyone and made many jokes and said stupid things. I went over to Queen sometime later, after having done some work, and was holding my mug again, so charmed and happy to have this wonderful new mug, that I had now been able to buy, and had already said to her soon after I had bought it, that even if somehow my mug disappeared or I broke it, and I was only able to use it for this single day, it had already brought me so much needed joy and excitement that it was worth the purchase, and then about an hour later or so, I was again sipping coffee from this mug, and she was sitting down at one of the cafe tables taking her break, and I walked over just to talk to her, and was talking, and she said, “Enjoying your new mug?” And I was absolutely enjoying it, should could obviously tell, and then I realized that me holding the mug then, in that moment, and sipping on my coffee, and wearing the Starbucks apron, I felt so absolutely relaxed, like I was in my living room, or a hotel, in my slippers and a robe, which my apron was giving me the feeling of having like a lounge robe on, and I realized that I had felt exactly that way, which I told her. And we had a good laugh about that. Somehow, through this assortment of cues, the new mug, just the act of holding a mug of coffee, and my feeling, and then the apron was truly somehow making me feel that I was in a robe, or some pajamas, made me feel that I was just chillin’ in my living room, enjoying a cup of coffee and reading the paper. It was a great feeling, and Queen asked me if I was going to keep the mug here at the store, and I joked that if I did, and it made me feel this way every day, Stacy Hamilton was going to hate it to the maximum. And, remembering how comfortable Charlie would look, holding his cappucino that he had made first thing after showing up and clocking in, and how much she hated that, and how Charlie lasted only two weeks (RIP Charlie), I decided that I should just take the mug home. And the advantage there is that, I have a little piece of my store at home, a small link to my Starbucks world, that I can enjoy and reflect on.

I think this is a good story too because it makes me feel the positive side to acquiring an item. I feel that we know that we make purchases that we shouldn’t make, but here is an example of a purchase that does good. You really can buy material things and they can bring you happiness, and function as well, because I haven’t really had a good coffee mug, that I loved. I bought a pig mug from Goodwill for $1, that is a large mug in the shape of a pig, that is cute and special, but I realized the problem with it as soon as I first tried to enjoy a cup of coffee out of it, which is that there is no easy way to drink from it, because the shape is weird, and so that completely ruins your drinking experience.

That’s the mug story.

My friend Mister Ethan Beller of Atlanta, Georgia recently called me and praised my outstanding guitar riff that he had seen me play on Instagram. He had recently seen this video I had posted, of me playing Creeping Death, and was very impressed, and said “100 out of 10 guitar riff, Steven san.” I said, I know, and then I realized that he thought that that was my riff, and I said, do you think that’s my riff, and he was like, yes, and I had to laugh so hard, because he definitely thought that that was all my work, not even one riff but the three main parts of the whole song, and he had no idea that that incredible guitar music was from one of the greatest metal and Metallica songs of all time, that is Metallica’s Creeping Death. But I thought it was also amazing because it goes to show that good music is good music, and he wasn’t swayed by thinking it was special just because it was Metallica or because other people said it was an amazing song. He thought it was mine, and he recognized it as being incredible. And he said, “I guess I should listen to some Metallica.” And I was like, yes, you absolutely should. I’m thinking about this because I’m sitting down to practice this legendary, masterful work on the guitar once again. It is 214 beats per minute, and James Hetfield plays with only downstrokes, which means that the song is played at 214 bpm and only with downstroking, which if you don’t know about BPMs and downstroking, let me tell you that it is not very easy to do. At least, not until you can do it. Then you can do it easily. I was struggling with 160 bpm, then it was easy, then 170 bpm, and now that’s a cakewalk, and now 180 bpm, which is doable. And that’s how it goes. But how long until 214 bpm? Let’s see what I can do tonight.

180 is possible with mostly no mistakes. 185 is not possible, doable with many mistakes and some collapses. So there ya go.

Today a cute girl came into the store, her name was Katie. Katie had mobile ordered, and we knew she was coming to get a Penguin Cookie, which is a sugar cookie with a cute penguin face on it, that we had in the winter, and we didn’t have them any more, and we were going to have to break the news to her. So, I was standing out in the lobby area, not having anything particularly to do, but needed to get farther and farther away from Andrew, in this moment desiring freedom, now needing to get so far away that I have to leave from behind the counter, because even that is too close, and Katie walked in to get her goodies, amongst which is the Penguin Cookie, and as she stepped up to the counter, I approached her and told her that we had good news and bad news, yada yada. At this same time, Andrew approaches, because he cannot ever let anyone do anything by themselves, and must intrude on all affairs, particularly me, and my affairs, because as Jessica would say, he’s in love with me, and so Katie is now somewhat flanked, and Katie is looking at both of us, but mostly looking at me, as I am the lead and initiated this interaction. So, Katie asked if we had cake pops, and went with the birthday cake pop. And when we had gone over to the register, which, I don’t know why we even did, because she didn’t have to make any transaction, and I said, “You like the Penguin Cookie, huh?” And she said she did, and that she had been getting them since high school, and she figured we wouldn’t have it, but she saw that it wasn’t marked out on the app, so she thought she would try and go for it. Andrew of course had followed us over to the register and was now standing very close. The Penguin Cookie was nostalgic for Katie, and I thought that was cute, and also shocking that Starbucks has had the Penguin Cookie for that long, and then she got her birthday cake pop and left, and I was standing there at the register, thinking about how Katie had loved her Penguin Cookie, this little Christmas cookie that she had some attachment to, and then I thought, why could she order the Penguin Cookie? She shouldn’t have been able to order it anymore through the app, because it was seasonal, and it has been phased out, and we don’t have it anymore. So, I went into our POS system, into the seasonal items, and found the Penguin Cookie button, and saw that it was not marked out as being unavailable, and I went to mark it out, and it was then marked unavailable. So at least, if Katie ever looks, or if anyone else looks, they will not have to be disappointed. I then tried to mark out the other seasonal items that were not listed as unavailable, but the system told me I couldn’t do that, because they were unavailable already. These are the small technical glitches that happen in the POS system, of which there are many. But I was able to mark that Penguin Cookie out. I felt that I had done something useful then. For Katie and the Penguin Cookie lovers.

They say that one of the best ways to make friends with people is to see them regularly. Any time you regularly see someone, you will have a higher likelihood of becoming their friend. People who live in apartment complexes make friends with people on their floors, etc. Well, that’s definitely 100% true. I have so many friends now through my job at this Cummins Station Starbucks, only because I see these people every day (most of my coworkers) or every other day, or every week (the regulars). And in almost every case our friendship and closeness and familiarity that we now have, where we know things about each other and have some idea of what is going on in each other’s lives, is only because we’ve seen each other repeatedly. It’s not because we have had any kind of special connection, although there are always going to be people that other people bond with. Everyone has their special friends. It’s interesting to see what baristas, what members of our team have befriended what regulars, and what customers, and who has positive interactions with who, and in what way, and what they bond over. One person I think about in particular right now is a woman named Katharine, who has a small dog, Lambo. Katharine is a regular and is in the store usually at least once a week, and I see her walking all over downtown Nashville with her extremely cute Pomeranian fluffball. This dog is one of the cutest dogs in existence, and is an extremely special dog. Katharine knows this and you know that this dog is living like royalty, or better. It is obvious. You could almost say that Lambo owns Katharine, actually. It really feels that way. Lambo is the king. Well, I remember that Katherine and I had a funny interaction from the very beginning, that we were sharing laughs, I can’t remember exactly what was said, but I remember that from the beginning, that she was funny. And that was about six months ago, when we first opened. Well, here we are all this time later, and when I come in on my off days, if Katherine comes in she’ll sit by me, and we’ll talk about life, or if we’re slow, I’ll chat with her over the counter while she sits there with her incredible dog, and talk about guitars, or her pilates class, or Starbucks, or the weather. And every time we talk, or every other time we talk, we learn something new about each other. But, the friendship, a friendship like this, is not based on anything but pure social joy. There is nothing transactional about it, it is just pure friendship. Nobody wants anything but to have a laugh and a good conversation. That’s very wholesome.

I have a similar relationship with many of the people from the Gibson Garage. I learn about them, learn a little more each week, acquire a new fact, and add it to the list of facts and stories I’ve learned about them. Just yesterday, Whitney came in, and I knew that she had been wanting to buy a new guitar, we had been talking about this for a few weeks now, and she was excited to tell me that she had bought her new guitar, her first Gibson, and it was a light-blue Gibson Les Paul, and of course she had to show me a picture, and I was like, oh my god that’s a beautiful guitar, outstanding.

This is the joy of working in a coffee shop like this. You can get so many stories and learn so many things about people, and the happenings of the world. For example, about world happenings, two days a lady came in, asking when we had opened, because she came here every year with her husband, because he goes to a yearly conference here in Nashville, and she hadn’t seen us here before. I told her that we had opened in August, and I asked her what the conference was (we get many conference attendees because we are right downtown by the Music City Center, I think that’s what it’s called, that hosts large conferences, with like, 30,000 people, and they all stay at the hotels right in the area) and she said it was a healthcare conference, and she told me that security was really tight this year, because of, you know, the shooting, she looked at me, and I said yes I did know about it, and she said that she knew people in the conference and she was usually allowed to enter and talk to people and mingle and hang out, but that this year they weren’t letting guests in, and they had metal detectors and etc. So she had to find other things to do. And I thought that was a good example of hearing about world affairs and the happenings of the world, and we could say as well an example of how the news is real, and that there are really events happening, and changes resulting from them, and here was an example of someone impacted by an event that had happened recently, that we all knew about. Because Luigi Mangionne killed Brian Thompson, this healthcare guy’s wife couldn’t go to her husband’s conference anymore. That’s what I mean.

You can learn a lot about someone, more than you ever wanted to know about some people, when you have even 15 minutes of free time to talk to them. They can open up, and they can tell you their entire life story, or you can read about them on Wikipedia, if they’re famous, or something like that, you can read about them in the news, or whatever. But when you meet someone over the register, over the counter at the coffee shop, you don’t have a lot of time. You have only thirty seconds, even. If there’s no one in line, or you particularly want to talk, you can manage to have more of a conversation. You could talk for even 3 or 5 minutes. But eventually, something is going to happen, someone is going to walk in, someone is going to ask me a question, or their order is going to be ready and they will be called, and feel the need to go get it, and you will be pulled apart. And then, if you see them again, if they come back, you can talk again, and then if they keep coming back and are a regular, then you can do this, over and over, and then each time, or every few times, you learn something new, in your conversation, they reveal something, and you accumulate facts and knowledge about this person, and you get to know them a little bit better. And in this way, over the course of weeks and months, the person is slowly revealed, and continues to be revealed, and you learn more and more about who they are. But still, it happens slowly, it can be just a trickle of information, and you never see them in their element, really, you only know them from the coffee shop, only know what they’re like and how they act within the confines of the coffee shop, and don’t know anything about their entire life outside of the shop. You only know about it from what they tell you. And similarly, they only know me as being the Starbucks employee. They don’t know about my entire life outside of it, they don’t know what I look like outside of the uniform, they haven’t been there for any moment of my life away from the Starbucks store. They only know me in this role.

Some little information that I learned today about Jared – he is a salaried employee. Jared works for the Gibson Garage as a Sales Pro, and is a younger guy, probably about my age, from Florida, also been in Nashville for a year, and is extremely good at guitar, has played for like 17 years. See, I know about this guy. I have now had many of these small interactions with him, learning something each time. And today, we had another one, and I learned a new thing, that Jared is a salaried employee. That’s a small fact, a small single fact, but I didn’t know that about him, and now I know.

One of the most recent times I was in the Gibson Garage, Jared showed me the fancy, expensive, real Gibson Explorers, and let me rock out. I was really impressed with and loving the Lizy Hale Explorerbird, that just felt and played amazing, and sounded incredible. So heavy. He had asked me if there was anything in particular I wanted to play, and I had been playing the Epiphone Explorers, and liked those, and had been too shy/not bothering to ask anyone to unlock the expensive ones for me, and let me try those out. So he took me over there and let me crack in to ’em. And now that I’m thinking about this, I actually have this story somewhat wrong, because this is what happened. HENRY was the one to ask me what I wanted to play, and took me over to the Gibson Explorers and let me crack in, and he showed me an incredible thing when he took the guitar down for me, which was this: that all the expensive guitars have a “lock” on them, that prevents you from taking them off of the rack without help from a Gibson Garage employee, but he showed me a trick, which is that the lock is actually kind of useless, and only requires you to twist the twisty-part with your fingers, to get it to unlock, and the special key that they have for the lock is basically just for show. But, this whole time that lock had prevented me from taking anything down, because you know, as like most people probably do, you see that something is locked, and you think, well, it must be locked, and I can’t get through a lock, so I’m not even going to try. But this lock was extremely easily foiled, if you just tried. With two fingers, you can defy these locks. I thought that was amazing, and Henry was very happy to show me that. Henry and I are cool, I should say, and I’m sure he’s not just going around and showing everyone how to foil these little guitar locks.

Seeing how easily these locks could be defied, but how effective they actually were at stopping me, just because they were there, made me think about something that I had heard before, that I don’t know if is true or not, but I had heard this once, that elephants kept in captivity were, when young, bound with chains, so they couldn’t actually escape when they tried, but then when they grew up, the elephants would be tied with rope instead, which they could actually escape if they tried, but when they had tried to escape the chains they found that they couldn’t, and so they stopped trying to escape at all. I felt like the same thing had happened with me and these locks. And if I was an elephant, and another elephant came along and showed me how easy it was to break my rope, I would have been just as shocked.

Visual Stimulation (Sensory Needs)

*Sunday night writing from 805B the home base*

About one and a half hours ago, I wanted to do some writing. That’s what I wanted to do, but when I sat down and tried to do it, I couldn’t. I was feeling restless. I was having a craving for something, a need for something, something stimulating, something fun, something new.. but I couldn’t pin it down. Usually when I want to play, I have an idea of what I want to do – something like joke around with someone, play a sport, go somewhere, take a walk and make some discoveries, play a game – but today, in that moment I wasn’t feeling any of those things. For lack of a better idea, I tried them. I even tried meditating, which does help with restlessness, but I knew that wasn’t what I needed either, and it helped a little, but I still had the feeling of needing something. I asked my new roomie Hope for some ideas, and she fired off a few good ones, and I settled on trying to figure out a Rubik’s cube while going for a walk, which kept me preoccupied for about 20 minutes, and was distracting, but didn’t satisfy the urge, my restlessness either. I didn’t want to play more guitar, and I didn’t want to walk around Shelby Park. I didn’t want to play a game on the Switch, but from the outset of all of this, I’m remembering, is that I wanted to play Fortnite. That was actually my original desire. I couldn’t play Fortnite at that time, but this is important, because after trying all of these different strategies to cure my itch, I decided to watch what is my guilty pleasure, high-level Korean League of Legends gameplay.

Something interesting happened.

I watched my Korean League gameplay video for about 20 minutes, and whatever craving I had had in my brain, whatever restlessness I felt, it was relieved. The video was 33 minutes long, but I didn’t finish it. After 20 minutes I could tell that I was satisfied, and felt refreshed. I felt normal. And then, I found that I could sit down and do the writing that I had wanted to do.

Now, just yesterday my sister was telling me all about her journey with ADHD and what Adderall has done for her, and she mentioned that in college, she had a therapist who suggested that before she tried to study, she should watch a short video that had colors and movement, to give her brain some “stimulation”. Writing and studying don’t seem like they’re all that different, to me. Both are mental tasks that require focused attention and concentration. And what was keeping me from doing my writing here was that I wasn’t able to, in that moment, summon the powers of concentration and mental focus that were needed.

My sister said watching the video her therapist recommended really helped her. I think that watching the League of Legends video helped me in the same way. A League of Legends gameplay video is nothing but movement and colors. It also contains a plethora of exciting sounds and moments. Being an ex-League addict, I can’t and don’t want to play the game ever again – but watching League gameplay does seem to do something positive for me. Before I thought it was just that it was entertaining for me, just like watching a sports match. It’s just like watching a game of basketball. Which, I was going through a period of my life where instead of watching League gameplay videos, I would enjoy watching pro soccer highlights. Once a day or every few days, I would fire up a few Champions League, Premier League, La Liga, videos, and enjoy those. I would get bored after a while, something like 15-20 minutes. I guess that something similar in every case is happening, giving my brain some kind of pleasurable stimulation. Tonight, after watching my League video, it was just really noticable how different I felt, and especially after I had tried several other remedies.

The thing is, I don’t have ADHD. I have taken the tests a few times, and don’t really show any of the symptoms. I don’t forget where I put things, I have no problems concentrating on tasks for long periods of time, I don’t have distracting thoughts, and am able to tune out the environment, such as if I am walking with a friend and having a conversation, I have no problems with listening to someone even if we are in a public place with other conversations around us, I have no problems with waiting in line, or being patient, etc. etc. etc. Yet, it seems that in the same way that my sister with ADHD benefits from watching a stimulating video, I benefit too. So what does that mean?

There’s something else going on there. And it seems that it is something visual. Today I had a lot of mental stimulation – learning how to sing while playing a song, conversating with a friend, writing, and maybe that’s why attempting to solve the Rubik’s Cube wasn’t what I needed. I had also in the past few days had all the fun I could have asked for, and that wasn’t really what I needed either. I think about how my first idea to fix my craving was to play Fortnite, but not the other games that I could have played, like Minecraft, or Legend of Zelda. Fortnite, like League of Legends, is fast-paced, and packed with colors, noises, and movement. So, it seems like that’s what my brain wanted, that’s what it needed. Maybe I needed some exciting visual stimulus.

Thinking about visual stimulus, and a need to see interesting things.. I do like seeing things. I love spotting things in nature, I love going for walks and finding new things, and those new things can be anything like an interesting flower in someone’s yard, an interesting sign that says something silly, a bumper sticker, a cool car, an interesting character, anything out of the ordinary, anything that catches my attention. I also like photography and visual arts, and making visual art, purely for how it catches the eye. As an example, here are some macro photos of drops that I edited in Lightroom. I just tweaked parameters until I felt that the photo was visually interesting enough and was satisfying for me.

I do this just because it’s stimulating and fun for me to look at. There’s nothing else to it, really. It’s a purely sensory thing. But it’s new for me to think about a need for visual stimulation. I wouldn’t have though it was a need before, just something that I enjoyed. But tonight, and seeing how I felt before and after the colorful, energetic, League video, it seems like I really had a craving for visual sensory stimulation.

I did a little Googling, and it seems that that is a real need. The need for sensory stimulation – sound, touch, taste, smell, sight. I feel like I’ve known that babies need that, but I wouldn’t have thought that adults needed it as much. I think about the joy I get in eating an interesting and complex meal, with a variety of flavors and textures, or with something totally new in it, and I think about now how the pleasurable feeling you get is something more than just being delicious. It’s not just the fact that it’s delicious, it’s the fact that you’re getting sensory stimulation, stimulating your sense of taste, and that’s good for your brain.

When I think about this topic, of human needs and identify human needs and identifying our own needs.. we really have a lot of needs. It’s almost tiring. You need to talk to people, you need to play, you have physical needs, for sleep, for movement, for nutrition, you have intellectual needs, you have spiritual needs, emotional needs, and now, what, you have purely sensory needs too. UGH. So many needs!!!! No wonder that everybody’s got problems. How many people are actually getting everything they need?