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I'm off to a very slow start today. I'm having a difficult time seeing my monitor. More than that, I'm having a very hard time getting my mind filled with "project." My internal stack seems to just be a "short stack" today and drenched in refrigerated maple syrup.
I head an NPR story this morning about vacations. It seems a study, oh so carefully controlled, you know, has definitively proven that vacations are important to health and longevity. It was a great article and completely believable. I have just one tiny little issue. It was pure bullshit. I don't know how well the study was parameters were designed, so I can not speak to the quality of the data they collected. But I can certainly quibble with the conclusions. The researches started with a certain unproven premise, then built a theory,. devised a test, and reached conclusions that assumed the rightness of their still unproven premise. It is very difficult to get the researcher out of the research when the subject of the research is humanity. Hell, it is hard enough when the subject is primates. Here is my unproven premise: Life is a good or bad as you think life is. The "daily grind" of life is only a grind if you declare it to be a grind.
As a side note from the article, one difference between those who took frequent vacations and those who didn't is that those who did where more strongly affiliated with religion or spirituality. I am mildly interested in this part of the study. The reporter seemed to think this was not only important, but really, really good. Bah. :)
I didn't work on work stuff for the entire weekend. Instead, I fixed a few things around the house including putting the drip irrigation system in the backyard, buying the needed dirt and enriched soil, and planting a bunch of climbing fig. I will be planting some more tonight. Good for us, for moving on the back yard. No news yet from Mr. Back Hoe about when we can start on the front yard. I will be glad to get some action on that.
I have been struggling with the water chemistry of the pool. I finally decided I needed more knowledge than I had, so I paid for an hour of Pool School from Leslies Pools. That was great. The Nitty and Gritty of dealing with the chemistry and with the pool equipment. The installer should have (and said they would) taught me this stuff. (Oh well, contractors are the craftsmen they once were). Determined the chlorine generator must be screwed up so a call to the local warranty work folks. They never called me back. In the mean time I did a bit more studying of the equipment. The badly written operations manual didn't talk much about how to set things from the remote, but did talk about setting things at the service panel. "Oh crap," says I. When I set the generator to 80% (make chlorine 80% of the time the pump is on) on the hand held, I wasn't really doing anything. At the service panel, in service mode, the equipment is either in "pool mode" or it is in "spa mode." The remote, though, can also be in the nothing-at-all mode. Now the chlorine generator is set to 80% when in pool mode, which means we have chlorine.
When (and if) we get out of Serious Drought Mode or when the pool must be drained for water chemistry reasons, we will be ripping out the $10K of tile that we loved and replacing it with something that won't look like crap as soon as the water is back in the pool. Very disheartening.
I was thinking about the "causes" of emotional/cultural/social maturity and I've reached a tentative conclusion. No matter what one does to delay growing up, there is a certain level of maturing that will just happen regardless of the circumstances in one's life. For most people, individuals will reach some level of personal responsibility even if it only amounts trading the security of parents for the security of a spouse (married or not). But I think there is a limit to natural maturing that is not driven by circumstances.
If one looks at the process of growing up, it is easy to see events that shaped our thinking. For instance, when we are very young, we have something that completely altered our world view. For me, it was school. It is when I found out that my vision was a lot different and a lot worse than other kids' vision. I was different in a bad way.
Then in 'tween or early teen years', when we reach the developmental stage "needing to belong" we will inevitably discover there are some groups to which we will never belong. And we make that mean something -- about that group and about ourselves.
And there are a thousand and one other little things that chart our path through the growing up years. We learn to be careful, to size things up before we show our hand. Life is something like a poker game.
But here is where the natural, biological maturing grinds to a restless stop. Here is where we can easily get stuck. Here is where we can decide that life just isn't fair and that someone (parents, church, neighborhood community, government) owes us something just because. There is a reasons why some many psychologists and sociologists call this the "Age of Entitlement." Nope, we need one more set of experiences to push us over that final maturity cliff.
It used to happen to most people in the US somewhere around age 20. Now it is happening in the early 30s if it is happening at all. "What," you may ask? Children. Here is what children provide in the maturing process. A parent has to deal with the reality of life regardless of what ever else is going on or what a parent might think they want to do. "It is not fair" just doesn't cut it when a child is sick or hungry or just needing attention. Other things can also provide this shot of reality, too. Having to deal with a pet without the back up of a parent to feed the cat or walk the dog for instance. Anything that drives home the understanding that, for some things, the buck stops in your hand. Having children (or for some other reasons becoming the head of household), though, is arguably the strongest of these.
Until that time, adolescence reigns supreme. There is no point to growing up. And being a lost boy (or girl) seems like a really great life. And only a sharp dose of "sink or swim" pushes us out of that life.
Of course, there are exceptions. People are not monolithic. We don't mature at the same rate, we don't experiences the stages of development with same degree of intensity. And some folks mature very quickly without a major sink or swim event. But it does seem that the vast majority of folks go through this in some way or another.
Maturing seems to only happen in the handing of adversity. Reinventing ourselves as adults seems to require a strong push. Some generate it internally, but many more require an externally administered cattle prod.
After a year of marriage, three years of relationship and six years of friendship, I am happy to report, we still have no relationship issues. We have not had a fight or even an argument. I would never have believed such a relationship was possible for me. Of course, as long as I believed it was not possible, it was not possible.
I head an NPR story this morning about vacations. It seems a study, oh so carefully controlled, you know, has definitively proven that vacations are important to health and longevity. It was a great article and completely believable. I have just one tiny little issue. It was pure bullshit. I don't know how well the study was parameters were designed, so I can not speak to the quality of the data they collected. But I can certainly quibble with the conclusions. The researches started with a certain unproven premise, then built a theory,. devised a test, and reached conclusions that assumed the rightness of their still unproven premise. It is very difficult to get the researcher out of the research when the subject of the research is humanity. Hell, it is hard enough when the subject is primates. Here is my unproven premise: Life is a good or bad as you think life is. The "daily grind" of life is only a grind if you declare it to be a grind.
As a side note from the article, one difference between those who took frequent vacations and those who didn't is that those who did where more strongly affiliated with religion or spirituality. I am mildly interested in this part of the study. The reporter seemed to think this was not only important, but really, really good. Bah. :)
I didn't work on work stuff for the entire weekend. Instead, I fixed a few things around the house including putting the drip irrigation system in the backyard, buying the needed dirt and enriched soil, and planting a bunch of climbing fig. I will be planting some more tonight. Good for us, for moving on the back yard. No news yet from Mr. Back Hoe about when we can start on the front yard. I will be glad to get some action on that.
I have been struggling with the water chemistry of the pool. I finally decided I needed more knowledge than I had, so I paid for an hour of Pool School from Leslies Pools. That was great. The Nitty and Gritty of dealing with the chemistry and with the pool equipment. The installer should have (and said they would) taught me this stuff. (Oh well, contractors are the craftsmen they once were). Determined the chlorine generator must be screwed up so a call to the local warranty work folks. They never called me back. In the mean time I did a bit more studying of the equipment. The badly written operations manual didn't talk much about how to set things from the remote, but did talk about setting things at the service panel. "Oh crap," says I. When I set the generator to 80% (make chlorine 80% of the time the pump is on) on the hand held, I wasn't really doing anything. At the service panel, in service mode, the equipment is either in "pool mode" or it is in "spa mode." The remote, though, can also be in the nothing-at-all mode. Now the chlorine generator is set to 80% when in pool mode, which means we have chlorine.
When (and if) we get out of Serious Drought Mode or when the pool must be drained for water chemistry reasons, we will be ripping out the $10K of tile that we loved and replacing it with something that won't look like crap as soon as the water is back in the pool. Very disheartening.
I was thinking about the "causes" of emotional/cultural/social maturity and I've reached a tentative conclusion. No matter what one does to delay growing up, there is a certain level of maturing that will just happen regardless of the circumstances in one's life. For most people, individuals will reach some level of personal responsibility even if it only amounts trading the security of parents for the security of a spouse (married or not). But I think there is a limit to natural maturing that is not driven by circumstances.
If one looks at the process of growing up, it is easy to see events that shaped our thinking. For instance, when we are very young, we have something that completely altered our world view. For me, it was school. It is when I found out that my vision was a lot different and a lot worse than other kids' vision. I was different in a bad way.
Then in 'tween or early teen years', when we reach the developmental stage "needing to belong" we will inevitably discover there are some groups to which we will never belong. And we make that mean something -- about that group and about ourselves.
And there are a thousand and one other little things that chart our path through the growing up years. We learn to be careful, to size things up before we show our hand. Life is something like a poker game.
But here is where the natural, biological maturing grinds to a restless stop. Here is where we can easily get stuck. Here is where we can decide that life just isn't fair and that someone (parents, church, neighborhood community, government) owes us something just because. There is a reasons why some many psychologists and sociologists call this the "Age of Entitlement." Nope, we need one more set of experiences to push us over that final maturity cliff.
It used to happen to most people in the US somewhere around age 20. Now it is happening in the early 30s if it is happening at all. "What," you may ask? Children. Here is what children provide in the maturing process. A parent has to deal with the reality of life regardless of what ever else is going on or what a parent might think they want to do. "It is not fair" just doesn't cut it when a child is sick or hungry or just needing attention. Other things can also provide this shot of reality, too. Having to deal with a pet without the back up of a parent to feed the cat or walk the dog for instance. Anything that drives home the understanding that, for some things, the buck stops in your hand. Having children (or for some other reasons becoming the head of household), though, is arguably the strongest of these.
Until that time, adolescence reigns supreme. There is no point to growing up. And being a lost boy (or girl) seems like a really great life. And only a sharp dose of "sink or swim" pushes us out of that life.
Of course, there are exceptions. People are not monolithic. We don't mature at the same rate, we don't experiences the stages of development with same degree of intensity. And some folks mature very quickly without a major sink or swim event. But it does seem that the vast majority of folks go through this in some way or another.
Maturing seems to only happen in the handing of adversity. Reinventing ourselves as adults seems to require a strong push. Some generate it internally, but many more require an externally administered cattle prod.
After a year of marriage, three years of relationship and six years of friendship, I am happy to report, we still have no relationship issues. We have not had a fight or even an argument. I would never have believed such a relationship was possible for me. Of course, as long as I believed it was not possible, it was not possible.