figuring out how to do a dialog

LPerson: So what if you didn’t need any money? or recognition? what would you do?

Rperson: What I want is just shifting one voice to the right a bit, with some overlap in the middle … Okay, I fixed that in the basic html file, but it doesn’t render correctly from WordPress. What’s going on? Some interaction with the theme?

so here’s a plain paragraph block. How does it show up in the inspector? Hmmm. Just as paragraph. I bet that alignment setting in the block controls is what’s screwing that up in the blocks above.
Nah. that’s actually a good thing, a correct thing. alignment happens within the margins (I think).

Getting rid of the has-text-align-left classification got me messing with columns and blocks and HTML view and a bunch of other stuff. I don’t really know what I did. or didn’t do. And now the left margin seems to be shifting as I want it to, but the right margin doesn’t. So that’s kinda sorta right (no pun intended). That was messed up due to columns inadvertently added. Cleaned up, I’m back to no margins being shifted by the styles LDialog and RDialog.

But it does render correctly when I’m messing with the custom CSS from the dashboard. I’m definitely confused.

The view from the Customize portion of the Dashboard.
Compare this with the rendering at the top of the page.
<html>
<head>
<style>
.LDialog { 
	color: blue;
	margin-left: 0%;
	margin-right:25%;
}
.RDialog { 
	color: red;
	margin-left: 25%;
	margin-right: 0%;
}
</style>

</head>
<body>
<div class = "LDialog">
<p>
DS: Suppose that you didn't need money, or attention, what would you do?  First you'd relax a while, then
after that, <I> when you’re ready to be useful </I>, ...
</p>
</div>

<div class = "RDialog">
<p>
JRE: Oh really?  Is utility the deciding factor?
</p>
</div>

<div class = "LDialog">
<p>
DS: A few months ago, I decided to stop trying so hard to be useful. I needed a little more me-time. 
</p>
</div>

<div class = "RDialog">
<p>
JRE: Or maybe a lot more me-time? 
</p>
</div>


</body>
</html>

the benefits of sucking at something

In today’s the NYTimes, I found a thought-provoking article:
(It’s Great to) Suck at Something

“Maybe sucking at something where the stakes are low [emphasis mine] can lead us to a better place. Maybe it could be a kind of a medicine for the epidemic cocksureness in our culture. Seeing ourselves repeatedly doing something we suck at — no matter how trivial — might make us a bit more sympathetic to how hard so many things really are: trying to navigate health issues, listening to our neighbors, improving the economy or mitigating relations with hostile nations.

By exposing ourselves to the experience of trying and failing we might develop more empathy. If we succeed in shifting from snap judgments to patience, maybe we could be a little more helpful to one another — and a whole lot more understanding.”

I’m trying to develop that kind of patience with myself, first by acknowledging that I am a beginner (or recent returnee) in lots of things. And then by setting myself up on a path to get better at the things that are important. And when I’m really honest with myself, some of the things I suck at are really important things. And that scares me. And it brings up shame. Still, it’s good to know that I (currently) suck at things. It’s a good stretch for my perfectionist self to be able to say that. Or something like that. “What I’m working on right now is [complete this sentence appropriately]”

There are different kinds of sucking, with hugely different consequences.
Sucking at something that is actually important to your existence, like keeping yourself healthy, or doing the work you get paid to do in a smooth and efficient way, is bad. That’s something to work on changing. Sucking at it is okay for a little while, but you can’t stay there. You have to get to not sucking, and then to competence, and maybe even all the way to mastery.

Sucking at something that is (just) something you’re wanting to do, like the surfing in the article, is different. That kind of sucking is an opportunity for growth in patience and willingness to stay in the moment, to persist, and to savor and celebrate the successes you manage. It’s an opportunity to admire others, and to learn to appreciate the small, intermediate, not-so-amazing accomplishments you pull off. And in sticking with that suckiness, we gain empathy — with ourselves and with others. Like she said.

Note: This was originally drafted in 2017, when the quoted article appeared. And it languished, as a draft, until 2021, when I remembered I had written something about sucking that would probably benefit from that window image that I found in my Instagram feed, without any attribution. And I found it in the drafts, unpublished for more than four years. And so my long-dark draft sees the dim light of day as a published post.

Well this is meta …

I wanted to define a continuum of blog posts, so I could work things up gradually. What are the basic elements that have to be present for a set of drafty bits to become a real post? What are the extras that make a post really effective?

So in the spirit of learning the sketching tool GoodNotes5, I set out to make a diagram of a blog post, with the minimal elements and my typical extras.

a diagram including the elements of a blog post.
The heart of a blog post includes a title, some text, and at least one image.
Tags are good, and references, citations, and follow-up questions are useful.
I also want to include lessons I learn about the tools I use to create the post.

I thought it was going to be more complicated than that, but it’s not. This is very helpful to me as I populate this site with individual posts during July, gradually liberating ideas from my notebooks, Blackboard, and file folders. I can start a draft with any one or two of the basic elements, and publish it (privately maybe) when there are three. (This one has all three, now that I’ve written the text. Yay. )

line drawing of a signpost

And tags will facilitate creating some larger structures as they emerge. That’s work for later. Right now, I’m just populating this with a lot of basically free-standing posts.

But of course I can always add the other parts, too.
And I shall.
Those will be on the second “page” of each post.

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