Attitude adjustment/Skills inventory

[featherynscale]

As I mentioned, yesterday was a metric goatload of fun. But, as sometimes occurs, there was a dark spot in the day, when adammaker said something like, "I almost never say, 'Wow, I don't want to learn how to do that'". And then, there was a chorus of assent from my other two-thirds, and I had to look at everybody and say, "Well, I do. I say that all the time." There are a lot of things I don't want to learn how to do, or at least don't want to learn how to do in that exact moment.

I think this is because I am fundamentally lazy. And, because of that, I find that I can't do nearly so many nifty things as most of my friends can, to say nothing of the lovely people who are my partners. And that's sort of depressing, and I generally wander around feeling inferior to people. So bleh.

So I was thinking I'd do two things here. One is to find some new things that I do want to learn how to do, and start learning how to do them. The other is to list out the skills I already have, so I can have some actual data to bitch and moan about, instead of just anecdotally bitching and moaning. There will eventually be a link to that list in this entry (I'm going to post it publicly, but backdated, so that if you're interested, you can see, but so that my neuroses will not clog up your friendslist if you aren't interested).

EDIT: It's here, if you care.

Comments

[adammaker.livejournal.com]

I used to teach Scientific Herbalism at Communiversity.
http://web1.umkc.edu/commu/

Go poke around.

Poke.
poke poke.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Communiversity always creates a tension in my brain between idealism ("Everything is worth knowing") and cynicism ("95% of everything is crap"). And yet, Portuguese.
That might be fun.

I took a creative writing course at one of these things, once. I got in with a bunch of older ladies who wanted to write either their memoirs or Harlequin romances. I was in a mostly horror phase at the time. After a while, nobody wanted to be my critiquing partner anymore, so I stopped going. :(

[(Anonymous)]

YEAH, how anything comes out depends on the crowd you fall in with.
Sometimes, that is not nearly controllable enough.

You do seem to have fallen in with some good people.... overall.

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that after you learn Portuguese, you're going to decontaminate the Officer's Block.

Sorry. Could't resist.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I knew the Officer's Block would somehow rear its ugly head... :)

perhaps I'm a fuddy-duddy

[saffronhare.livejournal.com]

I will, ever so often, decide that I'm not interested in learning a particular thing. I've gotten very comfortable about that (lack of) inclination, depite the well-meaning efforts of many people around me.

It's a matter of knowing that my personal time and energy are finite things. Agonizing about whether I'm inferior because I can't do Thing X takes up just as much energy as actually learning it. If I'm not going to worry about learning it, then I won't worry about not worrying about learning it. I think it's perfectly acceptable to be Not Interested.

I do not see this as laziness, but rather as a defense against the Scatterbrained Bunny that I would become if I never made a choice to exclude something. As a response strategy, it means I'm conserving my energy for something that matters more. If I keep jumping from new thing to new thing, then I'll never have time for what I've already got. But that's just me. :)

anecdotal bullshit

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

I think the very fact that most of our household views the rest of the household as "more talented/beautiful/resourceful/clever/kinky/awake" than they themselves are, ought to teach you something about the value of that sort of data.

I don't think you're any less talented or skilled than I am; you certainly have a different host of skills than I do, in a large number of areas, but I'm not willing to bet on whose list is longer. So there. (insert saff's thbbbt bunny here)

Re: anecdotal bullshit

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

It's more the attitude that bothers me than the numbers. I can manage it if I'm just behind for reasons of not being very bright or whatever, but I can't really hack it if I'm behind just because I can't be arsed to keep up. That's pretty lame.

Anyway, the list serves a number of purposes, one of which being that I want to know whether I just already know how to do everything I'm interested in knowing how to do, or whether there are a lot more things out there that I would like to learn to do and I'm just too lazy to learn to do them. Also, I'm interested in the patterns of things I know how to do, and whether they all cluster up in a few areas, or whether they're all over the map, and so on.

Also, nobody in our house is kinkier than anyone else, overall. We are all certainly kinkier in different areas, but I think we average out pretty even. Assuming, of course, that there are scales for such things and that kinkiness can be quanitified.

Re: anecdotal bullshit

[celticwhistlin.livejournal.com]

Quantifiable kinkiness... interesting study to be sure.

Re: anecdotal bullshit

[greektoomey.livejournal.com]

So what you're asserting is not necessarily that you have fewer skills, but that you are less motivated to acquire new skills?

Re: anecdotal bullshit

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Yep. That would be it. And that doesn't fit well with the rest of my brain at all. Things must be done!

Re: anecdotal bullshit

[greektoomey.livejournal.com]

Not that I expect it will have any impact on your self-regard, but I have to say that what I've seen of your inclination to learn new stuff vastly outstrips my own.

Then again, I'm a Certified Pothead, so I guess I'm not really useful as a motivation yardstick.

So, um, nevermind.

Re: anecdotal bullshit

[greektoomey.livejournal.com]

Also, I guess I don't qualify as part of your household, either.

Has it snowed since I left?

Re: anecdotal bullshit

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

No on both counts, actually. It was like 60 yesterday. I'm sure that it's just waiting to freeze over and kick my ass in April, or something, when I'm not expecting it.

Re: anecdotal bullshit

[celticwhistlin.livejournal.com]

There have been *heavy* snow warnings to our south today... don't know what that means for our future wheather patterns.

Re: anecdotal bullshit

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the other option, I suppose. I can stop being lazy, or I can start smoking pot.

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

Whenever I took the Strong-Campbell Interest Survey in high school or college, I always scored with one or two things in the "high interest" category and one or two in the "medium interest" category. Everything else was in the "Don't Give a Shit" category. I've always been okay with that.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I never took that. It sounds sort of useful, though.

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

It was actually. My number one interest, career-wise, was consistently "English teacher." Had I paid attention during my senior year of high school, I could be approaching retirement about now.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Neat. Maybe I could find out how to take it now, since, you know, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

[celticwhistlin.livejournal.com]

I too that in high school (or something like it). I put scuba diving down as something I would like to do and a Boy Scout Venture group called me out of the blue and invited me to join their club. We got to take scuba diving class and become cerified scuba divers.

This is where I started my rescue training as dive recovery and rescue was the whole reason I join the Pope County Search and Rescue team and met and married cerrunos. I do not think I would have met him if any of this had happened differently. Nor would I be in my current line of work as this is where my path led. Interesting how it all links together.

You can do Anything, but not Everything.

[adammaker.livejournal.com]

hmmm, No matter what my house looks like, there is a very useful gap between "Want to know more?" and whether I ever take up a practice.

-=-
I've gobs of things that I have no further desire to dig into. (Really!)

[rio-luna.livejournal.com]

i just got back from denver and squee! i love my gift!

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Yay! They reminded me of you :)

Happy times in Denver?

[rio-luna.livejournal.com]

things are strange in my life. more later. but yes, lots of happy in the bovine metropolis.

laziness

[greektoomey.livejournal.com]

I have always regarded laziness as a virtue; I believe that it is a symptom of intelligence.

My reasoning is that doing more work than is required is stupid; therefore, doing the minimum amount of work to get by is smart.

I would further argue that most, if not all, inventions that have ever been invented have been in pursuit of advancing the art of laziness by reducing the amount of (human) work necessary.

This attitude would also be in line with the ritual that I attended on New Year's day; if you are in fact lazy, perhaps that's a positive trait?