Gifted Slacker

In a geeky programmer post Jeff Atwood made, he included this gem:

His [Daniel Gilbert's] research found that people are bad at predicting their own future happiness. They tend to radically overestimate the positive or negative impact of large events in their lives — losing your job, getting rich, getting divorced, having children. That’s generally good; it means we have defense mechanisms in place to adapt and survive in our changing circumstances as human beings.

What’s the lesson? Don’t avoid doing things because you fear the impact they might have on your life. Don’t do things that you’re only interested in the impact they’ll have on your life. Don’t suffer a meaningless toil, no matter how great the potential reward.

Live so that you can enjoy as many things as possible each day. That doesn’t mean banishing all of life’s annoyances. Perhaps some small joy can be found in them. Appreciate the rusty hinge or fix it; don’t let it bug you.

Enjoy the journey, choose the paths you pursue with that in mind, and don’t overlook the little things.

I am in serious pain today.

I went to the gym this morning, as always. I was just about done with my workout when, feeling a bit of tightness in my lowerback, I began to bend over to stretch. That’s when I hurt myself. I got about 5-10º from vertical, at which point I was hit by a bolt of pain in my lower back, starting just above my tail and extending to about 1/3 of the way up my spine.

The pain nearly knocked me down. Fortunately, gyms are filled with heavy things to lean on.

Eventually, I made my way to the stairs and out of the building without attracting too much attention. It took me about half an hour to get back to Leazes Terrace. During my old-man slow walk home three people stopped me, asking if I was okay. I found it quite comforting that so many strangers showed concern about some random guy stumbling through the park. This also made me wonder just how badly I was moving.

It’s been a few hours since I hurt myself, and there’s been a bit of minor improvement but I still can’t sit, stand, walk or lie down comfortably.

Several times in my life I’ve gone through periods of intense pain, and this ranks with the worst I’ve experienced. Whenever I’m dealing with pain I’m thankful my dad is who he is.

My dad has dealt with, sometimes debilitating, chronic pain for as long as I can remember. Growing up I’ve picked up a lot of pain management techniques from him. The two most important ones for me at the moment are:

1. Take care but don’t stop moving.
2. The pain could always be worse.

It’s also a great help to know that I’ve got an amazing girlfriend that I can count on.

Today is all about popping ibuprofen and trying to get some work done.

(Not that anyone cares.)

7:00 - Cereal mixed with yogurt.

12:00 - Schwan frozen pizza.

5:30 - Tuna melt.

Note 1: Buy a new can opener.

Note 2: All times are approximate.

I’d bet Clay Shirky would probably call MMORPGs one of the many “gins” of our era. I’d agree. But that’s not going to deter me from giving Age of Conan a try when I get home in September.

Scott Jennings convinced me in his post about how you can set stuff on fire. And I mean lots of stuff.

I can’t wait to play with fire (and boobies) come September!

Some days I absolutely love to program and forget why I want to retrain.

The rigor and candor and general sense of exploration I enjoy in other blogs is absent from what I post. I just don’t feel strongly enough about blogging, and I’m not willing to devote enough time to blogging to write posts at a level I’m proud of.

I originally intended this blog to house some of my craziest, most radical ideas. The failure is totally on me, but my big external discouragement is that I’ve tried posting some of my middle of the road ideas and received alarmed messages from those who don’t get what this blog is supposed to  be about.

So from now on this blog will be darker than it already is. I might occassionally post some drivel, or I might start posting anonymously elsewhere. Who knows.

I’ve tried writing. I’ve tried drawing. I’ve tried singing.

I’ve never had much to say. Mostly because I haven’t lived enough of my life engaged with the real world. Over the last year or so, I’ve made great strides in living more in every moment but I still have little to say.

Along with working on all-around creativity, I need more rich experiences. More weird experiences. More scary experiences. More, more, more. Experiences!

Jimi Hendrix famously asked, “Are you experienced, have you ever been experienced?”

Now I ask: Have you?

I had Subway for lunch today, while I was out buying groceries. I rationalized it by thinking it would save me time slicing bread for a sandwich, after I got back to my place.

Wrong.

It was just laziness and, since the sandwich hit my stomach like a bowling ball, I’m even more sluggish than I was before.

Take a page from my book, kids: Don’t do Subway, because Subway always ends up doing you in the end.

It’s good to know that other people agree with my thinking on British (and USian, to a lesserish extent) drinking culture. Emphasis mine:

Gamers vote. Gamers buy newspapers. They won’t vote for you, or buy your newspapers, if you trash their entertainment with your ignorant ravings. Call them social inadequates if you like, but when they have more friends in World of Warcraft than you have in your entire sad little booze-oriented culture of a real life, the most you’ll get from them is pity.

From here.

Contrast, that is.

The previous article I posted about talked mostly about the evolving ethos at Princeton. One person they mentioned was Hobey Baker, a football legend and aviator. He was the epitome of conformance.

After graduation Baker went to work on Wall Street, but found it boring, so he went to war, where he was killed in an accident after the Armistice. I like to think that perhaps something that pushed him to excel bridled at his conformity and caused him to break out of it.

Dwight Eisenhower graduated from West Point the same year as Baker graduated from Princeton.

Eisenhower wasn’t exactly a conformist. He pursued a military career despite the disapproval of his family, and when he entered the academy he was one of the oldest in his class. He was also a friend and sometimes protector of the flamboyant George Patton (who graduated from West Point 6 years before Ike and Baker).

Patton revolutionized the tank corp. and pissed off a lot of people by doggedly doing things the way he thought (knew) best. He also believed that he was the reincarnation of one (or more) of history’s greatest generals.

Patton and Eisenhower were both conformist enough to advance in the Army (Patton less so than Eisenhower). However, both of them were individual enough to come up with war-winning strategies, and ended up ruffling quite a lot of their allies’ feathers.

On the other hand, Baker was a severe conformist his entire life, until he enlisted. His sudden divergence from his previously held-dear norms may have even contributed to his death.

I guess some (most) of us have to accept that we will never fit into a certain demographic. People who aren’t born to be Ivy-drones can have just as much positive effect on the world as those who are. They are just different paths; neither is better or easier than the other.