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profane_stencil
1. How do you feel about death and what comes after it?
I'm hoping to keep it as an intellectual exercise rather than a practical lesson for another 60 years or so. :-)
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what comes after death. I think some people are too concerned about it, to the point where they don't live. We don't know; we can't know. Far better to do good in this life than to worry about round two.
I assume that we rot in the ground and that's it. If there's a soul that has any existence beyond the realm of physical life, that existence is going to be pretty different from what we have now. While I would be happy to find out that I get to spend eternity with those I love in some idealized form, doing the things I enjoyed doing in life, it's not how I'm betting.
This is not to say that we should just live for today ("eat, drink, and be merry" etc), because we do have an impact on others and on the future. I want to live a life that is good and appropriate, not necessarily greedy. But that's because of effects in this life, not hope of eternal reward.
So, life is neither a test run for the next round nor something to be wasted on the here-and-now without any obligations to the other occupants of the planet. Death is the end of our chances to affect anyone or anything else.
2. What, if anything, do you miss about Catholicism?
The music.
Not the awkward congregational singing of simplified hymns consisting largely of parallel thirds, but the music that is inspired art, the music that stirs the soul. Judaism has that too, of course, but there's a lot of gorgeous Christian music out there that I cannot now sing and am sometimes uncomfortable listening to. For a musician, that's a shame. William Byrd's Gloria or Palastrina's Kyrie is great music, but it is now off-limits.
Once upon a time I had plans to write the ordinary of a mass -- despite the fact that I didn't agree with the religious message. Many of the great renaissance composers did it, and I wanted to do it too. All I ever wrote was a Sanctus; now I'll never write the rest. There is a difference between "not believing X" and "believing not X", and while I was previously able to set aside my non-belief, I cannot now set aside my anti-belief. (So nu, I'll just find other outlets. :-) )
This answer has mostly been about historial Christianity, not modern Catholicism in particular. Until the Reformation the Catholic church was the dominant force in western Christianity, so if you're looking at the historical perspective there's a tendency to lump them together. I don't think there's anything specifically about Catholicism in my lifetime that I miss.
3. What drew you to SCA in the first place? In my experience,
it was mostly for sexist young men who like to play dress-up.
Your accounts have shown me an entirely different organization.
Initially, I was drawn in by that dressing-up-in-armor-and-hitting-people aspect. I was 17 years old, a geek who read too much science fiction and fantasy (more fantasy), and I played D&D. This sounded like a dream come true. :-)
It actually took me a couple years to start doing things other than fighting, and gradually I explored many other pursuits, ranging from dancing to archery to music to cooking. By that time I had friends in the organization, so it was easier to explore new areas. In the SCA it was all "under one roof", so to speak; I didn't have to go find a community choir to explore music, or hook up with the contra-dance folks to try dancing, or join a sports club to try archery, and so on. I tried all sorts of things that I never would have sought out on my own, just because they were there.
As I commented in another entry, I also learned about being a functional adult in a social group largely in the SCA. The friendships that developed went well beyond "the people I fight with on Sundays" or "the archery folks" or whatnot. I think the people were at least as important as the activities in keeping me involved.
4. If you could meet anyone who ever lived, or will ever live,
for a casual conversation, who would you choose?
Several famous people came to mind, ranging from Rabbi Hillel to Palastrina to J. Michael Stracyznski (hey, different values of "famous" :-) ), but I think I'd set them all aside for my paternal grandfather, who died when I was a child. I remember him being a neat person, and I regret that I didn't get to know him better. I'd like to know, through an adult's eyes, more of his life. I want to hear the stories of his childhood, and what he did for fun, and what was important to him. (I'd also like to know if he really believed that left-handedness was a sign of the devil or if he was just pulling my leg without realizing the effect it'd have. :-) )
5. How rewarding is your job? (Feel free to elaborate. In fact,
feel encouraged to elaborate.)
"Job", or "career"? It's ok; I'll do both. They're somewhat intertwined anyway.
The kind of technical writing I do -- writing about programming for programmers -- is geek heaven for me. I'm good at it and a lot of people aren't, so I get to do something useful that isn't a dime-a-dozen profession. Sure, there's a downside -- we're not in nearly as much demand as some other folks -- but so far that's been ok. There's more risk, but I'm getting to do what I want to do and have a knack for.
There is a warm feeling of satisfaction that comes from hearing someone say "oh, now I understand". There is a very warm feeling that comes from applying what I've learned about the software I'm documenting in such a way that the programmers who wrote it says "oh yeah, that would be a better way to do it", or in being able to suggest changes to the design of the software and have them accepted. In an ideal world a good tech writer is a contributing member of the development team from the start, rather than an appendage who gets pulled in at the last minute because the release is due out next week. That doesn't always happen (including in my current job), but it's been getting better. The flip side of that is that the tech writer has an obligation to be a contributing member just like everyone else -- to be informed about the subject and to dig deeper rather than just parroting what the programmers say in a nicely-formatted document to be shipped out on Thursday.
In my current job, I'm the sole tech writer in the engineering group (though there are now other writers elsewhere in the company) and I have a good rapport with most of the developers on my team. People -- not necessarily on my own team -- come to me for advice or feedback, and many of them are good about sharing their plans before they go off and implement them and it's too late to tweak things. Some people aren't so good, of course, and people who blithely change the public interfaces without so much as a piece of email about it are annoying, but I'm not the only person they annoy either. And sometimes there are primadonnas who think that writers are a lower life form, though this is less of a problem in my current company than in some past ones.
I mentioned that there are now some other writers. It looks like I'm going to get to have a strong hand in the direction of certain aspects of our documentation without having to either do it all myself or directly manage the people who will do it. How cool is that? I get the outcome I want, or something close to it, while getting to continue to be a writer rather than a manager.
Financially, well, tech writing isn't as lucrative as programming, but specialists who've been out there for a while, like yours truly, can do better than the average for the field. My current employer rewards me well when you consider the entire package. And it pays better than many other positions out there, even though some of those lower-paid ones do a lot more for the common good than I do.
Another thing I like about my current job, which has nothing to do with tech writing in particular, is that I work with a bunch of people who are smart, fairly articulate, and direct. That last is particularly important; I hate beating around the bush and playing the "coy diplomacy" game; just tell me what you think and don't be afraid to argue for what you think is right. If I'm full of shit, tell me that -- and if you are, don't get upset if I call you on it. I work with people who are direct and who tolerate directness in others. I find it much easier to get work done in that kind of environment.
I used to be a programmer, and I was adequate. I tended to get the "glue" assignments -- application programming, systems integration, configuration management (shudder), test code, and so on. I wasn't brilliant; I was competent. And while I enjoyed it to some level, I didn't have that zeal for it that you really need to excel. I was never going to be a designer or writer of Great Software. On the other hand, I like to think that I'm a very good technical writer, and I get to do it in a way that puts that programming background to use. I think that's pretty neat.
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2. If you could visit any time and place in history just to look around (not interact), where/when would you go? (Assume you can understand the language.)
3. Do you speak or read any languages other than English?
4. Describe your ideal job. ("Retired lottery winner" doesn't count. :-) )
5. How would you pamper yourself, if money were no object?
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