“I’m feeling as distressed right now as your stylish designer jeans"
(random made-up quote)
I stood and stared at a deer that was in my yard this morning for a minute or two. I was just going outside for my early morning walk/run, and it was a little adolescent, still not full grown. It was less than ten feet away from me, but I guess because I didn't startle when I saw it, and I'm very quiet, it was startled by the sound of the door opening and closing, but not moving because it wasn't sure if I'd seen it, I guess. meanwhile, I got to marvel at it's beauty and cuteness, basically as long as I wanted, as it occasionally looked around, mostly still. I eventually had to move because I had lots of things to do this morning, but it was quite a treat.
 |
| (this is not my deer, but it looked similar. maybe a little older, and it was snowy out, like this picture.) |
I'm working on a program to improve my touch typing. I have high hopes that I'll get quite good at touch-typing using this program, simply because I find the process of touch typing quite relaxing. I put on some classical music, and just get to zone out while my fingers move in fine synchrony like the symphonies I'm listening too. For a long time, the tap tapping of keys and the complex, muscle memory dance of my fingers skipping across letters and making my thoughts form on paper... er, screen, has had a soothing effect on me.
I think my favorite times with this was when I was ranting to myself in my private journal on apple's simple text program, which happened to have a fairly robotic sounding text to speech feature. I would rant and rave, typing as fast as I could, not caring about the massive amount of typos, streeeeeeaching out words and using lots of ALL UPPERCASE and exclamation points!!!!!!! to get across the vehemence of my impotent rage at my condition, myself, my world etc. some people have primal scream therapy sessions, I had a primal journaling routine. Then I'd have the text to speech robot try and translate my stew of swears, passion, and drawn out letters, and laugh out loud at it.
But even when it wasn't quite that intense or satisfying or humorous, the process of typing out my free flow thoughts has been quite satisfying and soothing to me. handwriting, though great for retention of what is written, cannot hope to keep pace with a racing mind, whereas typing, as long as you don't care about spelling, errors, etc, can kind of keep up, most of the time.
So in any case, the practice itself is enjoyable, which I think is a key to getting good at something.
From what the research says, it takes a lot of practice to get really good at something (though it takes far less to reach a state of competency, the whole thing kind of leveling off like a logarithmic graph.)
For those people putting in 4+ hours every day to achieve eventual mastery, they'd better enjoy the process itself or they'll probably never make it.
In other news
I'M SO HAPPY!
Why? Because in one more day I will be on Thanksgiving Break! This means
a) I get a good five days of at least semi-rest before going once more into the breach (work).
b) I get to see my girlfriend in person, after many many months.
It's also always nice to spend time with my family. I quite enjoy them. I love my immediate family especially, but I love my relatives too. They are such. diverse group, in their personalities and beliefs and preferences, and yet they all have a common thread of wanting to do good. And they all care about family, and try to be accepting of other people's differences. I may not have lots to talk about with many of them, who have different interests, but I still love them and appreciate them, and enjoy their company.
I guess I'm a little nervous, bringing my girlfriend. They're super nice and welcoming, so I don't think there's anything to worry about, but I hope they get along and she feels welcomed and comfortable and they like each other. You can always be hospitable but you can't control your reflexive response to someone, that's just... I don't know what to call it, resonance, compatibility, chemistry. That's generally talked about in terms of romantic partners but there's an element of it among all acquaintances. Best friends are people you have really good compatibility/resonance with. And what makes people really good friends... I'm not sure. It might be very similar to what makes people compatible romantic partners, minus the sex parts.
Welp, I'm going to go pack what I can and get as prepared as possible for my trip Wednesday morning. I'm already tired and I want to make sure I can go to bed super early tomorrow night, because I have to get up REALLY early to drive to the airport and catch my flight. It's at... 6:20am I think? and I'm about an hour and a half away. so... I should leave around 4am. So I should get up around 3:30 am so I can brush my teeth etc. That's pretty early even for me.
It's going to be nice to not have the intense energy consumption required of teaching for 5 days, but I also kind of wish I had more free time during this break, to work on all the various projects I want to work on. With traveling and spending time with family and my GF, there's going to be very little time to actually get ahead with any work. I'll have to wait till Christmas break for that, I guess.
On the positive side of all this super heavy work, I think it is good for me, especially as I learn to navigate the stressors with less anxiety and worry. Even without excessive worrying, there is still a fairly intense pressure to perform at a high level, and that's pushing me to be more efficient and more dynamic. It's really the weekends, where I don't feel like every minute is precious, that my good routines fall apart. And that's fine, because I always have the week to whip me back into shape, and then try again next weekend, dragging more and more of that focus and efficient dynamism into the tasks I want to get done on the weekends (one of which is deep rest and recuperation, so don't worry too much about me burning out by overworking on the weekends, I'm trying to take that into account.)
That's our tea for the week!
Much love,
Isaac
For those people putting in 4+ hours every day to achieve eventual mastery, they'd better enjoy the process itself or they'll probably never make it.
In other news
I'M SO HAPPY!
Why? Because in one more day I will be on Thanksgiving Break! This means
a) I get a good five days of at least semi-rest before going once more into the breach (work).
b) I get to see my girlfriend in person, after many many months.
It's also always nice to spend time with my family. I quite enjoy them. I love my immediate family especially, but I love my relatives too. They are such. diverse group, in their personalities and beliefs and preferences, and yet they all have a common thread of wanting to do good. And they all care about family, and try to be accepting of other people's differences. I may not have lots to talk about with many of them, who have different interests, but I still love them and appreciate them, and enjoy their company.
I guess I'm a little nervous, bringing my girlfriend. They're super nice and welcoming, so I don't think there's anything to worry about, but I hope they get along and she feels welcomed and comfortable and they like each other. You can always be hospitable but you can't control your reflexive response to someone, that's just... I don't know what to call it, resonance, compatibility, chemistry. That's generally talked about in terms of romantic partners but there's an element of it among all acquaintances. Best friends are people you have really good compatibility/resonance with. And what makes people really good friends... I'm not sure. It might be very similar to what makes people compatible romantic partners, minus the sex parts.
Welp, I'm going to go pack what I can and get as prepared as possible for my trip Wednesday morning. I'm already tired and I want to make sure I can go to bed super early tomorrow night, because I have to get up REALLY early to drive to the airport and catch my flight. It's at... 6:20am I think? and I'm about an hour and a half away. so... I should leave around 4am. So I should get up around 3:30 am so I can brush my teeth etc. That's pretty early even for me.
It's going to be nice to not have the intense energy consumption required of teaching for 5 days, but I also kind of wish I had more free time during this break, to work on all the various projects I want to work on. With traveling and spending time with family and my GF, there's going to be very little time to actually get ahead with any work. I'll have to wait till Christmas break for that, I guess.
On the positive side of all this super heavy work, I think it is good for me, especially as I learn to navigate the stressors with less anxiety and worry. Even without excessive worrying, there is still a fairly intense pressure to perform at a high level, and that's pushing me to be more efficient and more dynamic. It's really the weekends, where I don't feel like every minute is precious, that my good routines fall apart. And that's fine, because I always have the week to whip me back into shape, and then try again next weekend, dragging more and more of that focus and efficient dynamism into the tasks I want to get done on the weekends (one of which is deep rest and recuperation, so don't worry too much about me burning out by overworking on the weekends, I'm trying to take that into account.)
That's our tea for the week!
Much love,
Isaac
