guitar player's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
7Wannabe5
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I’m not sure that I agree with MUD article’s that Explorer’s numbers are not influenced by the number of Achievers. For instance, because I’m definitely an Explorer, but female so nurtured towards Socializer, this forum can occasionally feel a bit too boy-scout-badgey for me. I wonder if I could make “conversation”one of my Explorer specialist subjects, like I did with “dating?” Hmmm...

jacob
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by jacob »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:40 pm
I’m not sure that I agree with MUD article’s that Explorer’s numbers are not influenced by the number of Achievers.
I think the keyword is "beyond the margin". Even if the "talking" implies Heavyside [step] response functions, the "walking" works more like individual S-curves with a distribution of individual steepnesses.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

@WRC thanks for the recommendation, and I will write an impression after reading Sapolsky's book.

@daylen that's cool, thanks. Also had an amusing detour into garden path sentences

@7w5 so you would think that achievers deter explorers? I do some boy-scout-badgey bits but also think that they are to other stuff going on here what drawings of someone with no/little drawing skills are to Picasso (in at least two ways).

7Wannabe5
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob@guitarplayer:

Oh, don’t get me wrong. “ERE” is still the best all purpose lifestyle design book available (and I know because I have read them all- lol.) So, the question is why do so many people who “purchased”the all purpose kit adopt the same tactics towards building same model? And the best answer I can come up with is that the center of the forum is to the north of the main campus of the university, so the boundary completely encompasses the engineering, tech and business schools, but does not encompass interpretive dance or social work departments.

Mostly I’m probably just projecting bored-because-boring, because I’m frustrated by the fact that having given up my dream of permaculture, the instructions for next best model I can come up with starts with Get Masters in Tech Field, so I’m semi-desperately scanning for examples of alternative models, while recognizing the only way out is up.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

@7w5 no worries, I was genuinely curious, also I hear you re the semi-desperation.

I did not quite get your point @jacob, but my educated guess is that achievers don’t decrease the number of explorers instantly but there is something of a half-life of explorers tolerance of talking about badges all the time.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2022 update 36/52

Job

I filled out a remote working form recently where I have been asked for infrastructure supporting my potential working from home with some box ticking and a blank space for anything else I could think of. I will get a laptop as a default, and on top of that ticked boxes for an additional monitor, office chair, keyboard and mouse. In the additional space I leaned on research regarding sedentary work and wrote that it would be great if I could get a stand up desk extension, like for example this one. They might say no but why not ask. Regardless whether I decide to work from office or home, these extra devices will double down for helping me with my uni + DW with her uni. I might get the stand up desk setup anyway.

On a related note, DW got involved with some scheme helping STEM students in Scotland to anchor with the industry. She filled out a form last week, one thing let to another, and today she will have an interview wrt a 12-month paid placement with a major Scottish energy provider. She is stoked, if nervous. It would be quite a surprising twist of events if she got it. DW would get to work with data on renewable energy (Scotland tries to go big on net zero domestic energy supply, aka Net Zero Nation), from FI point of view it would mean no stall - we would carry on keeping more than half of our income (it's an entry level student placement but paid at roughly Scottish Minimum Pay). Since it is a placement, she would get lots of trainings etc. Because this came through the scheme, there was already pre-selection, so she is competing against only two other people.

Given her maturity, an engineering degree from South America, some experience of working with data in a lab from long past, years of experience in team work etc. from current work, I think she stands a good chance. But hey, come what may, we will be okay.

Flat

We got the keys to the flat last week and had a brief look around. Throughout the week I have been in touch with the landlord about a few things, like removing some shelves we did not want or installing a blind / curtains in stead of a broken blind in one of the rooms. It is actually only a second property DW and I are going to rent in this country. The first one was through an agency and everything was streamlined via an email or a form. There was also a very detailed list of stuff that had been in the flat and its state. This time it is very different. The landlord is a nice guy, rather sociable I would say. We started the relationship on good terms and I will try to tend it so it remains so. Looks like his approach to the flat management is rather hands off - some things in there are not exactly new, like crooked wardrobe or some cupboards in the kitchen, but he is not too meticulous about noting down every imperfection. I started pointing out to him things that are less than ideal to cover myself against him deducing cash off of my deposit when we move out; instead, he started offering to bin the old furniture and buy new one! So I will just go with it and adopt his approach i.e. treat the flat more or less as my own and count on him not being unreasonable with restricting what to do in the flat + with deposit return at the end. Needless to say, we are not to worried about small imperfections.

The weather was nice the last few days so on Wednesday we decided to do a 75km cycle to the flat, which at the end was along the Clyde river (first time we covered that stretch of the cycleway) and alongside the Glasgow Green. Then we had an intense afternoon cleaning the kitchen, it was pretty mucky. We also decided to swap the bedroom and the living room as originally the living room was in a room away from the street and darkish, and the bedroom was in the room facing street, brighter and bigger. On Thursday we continued cleaning the bathroom, a (now) bedroom cupboard, and windows. Wow, clean windows do make a difference!

There is a hook for a guitar after when the landlord lived there which is great.

The flat is now clean and all ready for our stuff to come in. In the coming days I will be packing boxes and probably sometime next week take them over. The Internet should be live sometime next week.

All things considered, I think we got lucky with finding this flat.

Reading

Reading now:
Robert Sapolsky - Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. One can definitely recognize his style as found in his youtube lectures. It is captivating, hard to put it away. It does come across to be on the stress averse side, so I look forward to have the counterbalance of the book recommended by @wrc.

In line to read:
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir - Scarcity: Why having too little means so much.
Kelly McGonigal - The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It.

From Pigliucci's 'Handbook for new stoics':

Week 35 - Question every action. This week was about asking oneself why one pursues certain things. It is something I habitually tend to (probably over)do anyway. The idea is to root out bad habits and deliberately choose actions one wants to cultivate and cultivate them to the point when they become habits. In the chapter Pigliucci referred to 'Thinking Fast and Slow' and to Marcus Aurelius.

Maths and Stats

I got books for further two modules but still need to pick them up from the parcel delivery shed.

Health

I am in good shape, probably better than ever. min 15min/day HIIT, whole food plant based diet + D3 and B12.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
I plan to get my retiring dad a book written by Aleksander Doba, the rower who crossed the Atlantic from the inspiration thread. I also plan to get my nephew a children's book based on Doba's story written by another author. I will see them both in the end of October.

It is pleasing to see how things unfold rather friction-less at the moment. Until the next friction, that is!

Thanks for reading everyone.

ETA: An excellent soundtrack from this movie, can move to tears. A very good movie, too. Though first watched it (and listened to the soundtrack) as a teenager, big impression, might be biased.

JollyScot
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by JollyScot »

How are you finding Glasgow!

ertyu
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

I'm also curious, it popped up as a recommendation of a Scottish city where you can live car-free :) I was considering settling there before brexit, might still if Scotland secedes and rejoins

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

@JollyScot, so far so good! In the process of moving just now. Already got some culture shot when DW won tickets for Andrea Bocelli in OVO Hydro this past Tuesday. This probably comes as normal to most here, but is was such a joy to not need to commute until middle of the night / next morning to get back home, and instead just have a 30min stroll along the river back home! We have been gathering momentum for the move for a while now and I have a feeling this life chapter is going to be a blast. It helps that Glasgow welcomed us with a stretch of good weather most of the last week, first impression matters. We had a walk down to Queen's Park yesterday, nice down there. There will be lots to follow in my weekly updates.

@ertyu, lost of bike paths and a friend is telling me quite a few of them are a new (covid related) development. Drivers have reportedly already gotten used to most of the cycling lanes as well. We are renting a place that is affordable and extremely well located, if small (but will accommodate us two). I see that properties in the strict city centre as well as those within 30min walk from the edge of the city centre are affordable or downright cheap (thought am yet to discover various neighbourhoods). There are multiple public transport options to get to three airports that are all I think within an hour commute. It takes about 50/80min (train/bus, pricier/cheaper) to get from Glasgow City Centre to Edinburgh City Centre (bus round the clock every 15min). Also buses and trains further afield, either England (easy to get to London), or the West Coast with its Isles and also north for the Highlands. For FI, lots of jobs. The history of the city, a past promised land, is reminiscent of the elsewhere depicted promised land, also this masterpiece. Nowadays you get the feel of it being a vibrant city, more so than its neighbour on the east coast. Perhaps undergoes somewhat of a renaissance, or maybe it is just the contrast one feels with a big change like ours now. Returning to the original question, we are going to be living car-free (as we always have!). To add to the list of amenities given a few post up, there is also a large beautiful park 3km away and as we discovered this past week, three big event venues about 30min walk along the river away.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2022 update 37/52

Job

No new development regarding the new post. Will start on the first Monday of the next month. I am thinking about coming to my current workplace once a month and do a shift to stay in touch with the people here.

A new development re DW - she got the 12 months paid placement doing data analytics for the major integrated energy company based in Glasgow!

This is a FI game changer because it means we will continue saving above 50% of income. Also, this puts DW on a career change trajectory and I am rather certain she will make the most out of it. She is planning to drop one module off of her Cybersecurity degree coursework due to that employment. So she will be doing 3 modules, and there will be 5 to go until she gets her BSc if she desires so. But frankly, she already has an Engineering degree from South America, so I trust she will do whatever is best in her circumstances. It was mostly this initial hurdle of getting on a new track that I felt was tricky to jump over. And the way I see it, the Cybersecurity coursework has already served its main function of building self confidence and getting back on track with some rusty skills.

In consequence, DW gave her notice in our village as well with the last days being in the second half of October. She will be starting the placement late October, the exact date to be confirmed.

Flat

In relation to the above, we got a second set of keys to the flat now. This past week we moved about 80% of our stuff to the flat. It is partly furnished but we did get two tables and a shelving unit there. Also, swapped the bedroom and living room. Now the bedroom is smaller, cooler and facing courtyard and the living room is bigger, brighter and facing the street. The living room is actually more an office space with our two tables and a generous shelving unit, and a massive couch to chill on (it was already there in the flat). It was a bit tricky to organize all the pieces of furniture to have it functional and aesthetically pleasing, but we managed alright. The place is now set up great.

Reading

Reading now:
Robert Sapolsky - Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. I find this book to be on the heavy side given that it is meant for an intelligent layman. But also, I am busy with lots of other things now so maybe that's that. I am enjoying the book though. It definitely shows a scientist outlook on the matter of stress - it's is very far from simple!

In line to read:
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir - Scarcity: Why having too little means so much.
Kelly McGonigal - The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It.
Joscha Bach - Principles of Synthetic Intelligence. PSI: An Architecture of Motivated Cognition.

From Pigliucci's 'Handbook for new stoics':

Another fail to read a chapter. Will do two chapters this week coming.

Week 36: Catch and apply the dichotomy of control to initial impressions
Week 37: Catch and examine the judgements underlying your impressions and impulses

Maths and Stats

I now have most books for the last year of my BSc. The pre-work has stopped until I finalized organizing a new life setup.

Leisure

DW won tickets for Andrea Bocelli this past Tuesday. Quite a voice he's got. Also, we got immersed in the popular culture with all the adds etc. I aim to be approaching all this with the eye of an anthropologist and for counterbalance still keep in touch which the environment of our past few years aka 'nature', i.e. go cycling the west coast or the Isles etc.

Thanks for reading!
Last edited by guitarplayer on Fri Sep 23, 2022 5:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

ertyu
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

heh sounds awesome, not gonna lie

good luck to both of you in your new jobs & new apartment!

guitarplayer
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Location: Scotland

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Thank you @ertyu!
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2022 update 38/52

Job

I got approved an electric standing desk for home working. One of the forumites here works for the same organization and it is indeed like they said: know the right questions and do not hesitate to ask them, then what you ask for you will be given! Though who knows, I might be waiting months for its delivery, let's see. The desk would be very handy to prevent the body from sitting for hours on end.

I will be picking up my laptop (and presumably other pieces of equipment) on my first day this coming Monday. Then there will be standard intros, trainings, setting up accounts, calls with a couple team members etc. Feels like first day of school, really. To understand this, you have to keep in mind that I have been working a diagonally opposite type of job on at least two dimensions the past few years. @brute wrote somewhere once that the exciting bit about riding a motorbike is not the speed but the rate of its change. Generally the concept of a derivative is such a handy concept. Anyway, these changes now are like this rare moment that comes at the tipping point of a process, flower blooming, fruit becoming ripe and falling off of tree, such things.

The agency I am going to be working for is just a few years young. This gives the job an interesting twist. The whole organization is amongst the most stable ones one can find.

My line manager wrote that it would be okay for me to do an odd shift with my old place from the HR point of view (but asked to double check).

I have recently randomly spoken to someone who had visited DW's future workplace; apparently it is the one with all sorts of bells and whistles. We saw it towering above other buildings last week when having a stroll along the river to see Bocelli. DW is happy and looking forward.

New Manager at old place

My friend has now arrived to be a house/unit manager in my old organization. We had a meal together yesterday. So far, looks like he is here to stay. His partner is meant to join him early next year. We got an invite to come any weekend and crash at his place, either when doing an odd shift or not. I consider this a triple win situation! Will be nice to come and visit the place, he will be happy to have company (at least until his partner arrives), him being here is good for 'the other' i.e. the organization. Until something dramatically changes, that is. So far so good though, I am glad it turned out like this.

Flat

We moved the remainder of our things as well as plants to the flat last week. I am cycling in today (ETA: probably cycling in in one or two days, as there is a friend from Berlin coming over tomorrow so we might have a bit of a reunion) and will try to sort things out. I have applied for council tax exemption on the basis of studying four modules (full time) of Maths and Stats. If this is granted, DW will do the same and we will not need to pay about £120/month council tax.

My prospecting self has already set up an alternative universe where we have bought a convenient small flat somewhere in Glasgow, switched to part time (I could even do a part time at where I am going to start working as a Statistician, they seem very flexible and accommodating), carried on studying languages, history and art with the OU and need not pay council tax, bringing living costs down to food and utilities only. Well, let's see how it goes with the council tax.

Reading

All might sound dandy but it has been a rather stressful last few weeks with finding a place, packing, moving, unpacking etc. Likely much less stressful than your average Joe, but still. So the reading went on back burner.

Reading now:
Robert Sapolsky - Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. I have read about a quarter of the book. I consider dropping it as struggle to see a unifying theme, though the book is full of info.

In line to read:
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir - Scarcity: Why having too little means so much.
Kelly McGonigal - The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It.
Joscha Bach - Principles of Synthetic Intelligence. PSI: An Architecture of Motivated Cognition.

From Pigliucci's 'Handbook for new stoics':

Week 36: Catch and apply the dichotomy of control to initial impressions.

I have set up an implementation intention. Whenever I get a 'harsh impression' i.e. a strong (pos/neg) one, I aim to say

'you are but an impression, and not at all what you seem to be' (this is just taken from the book).

Then I ask

'Is is within or outside of my control'.

If it is within my complete control, I agree to it (give assent). If it is not in my complete control, I say

'This isn't really good/bad' or 'my character is more important than this'.

A simple example of something outside of control would be getting hungry - in fact the vast majority of people, certainly I, are very, very far from the point of starving / hunger being to the detriment of the body. And I don't have complete control over the impression. So hunger isn't really good or bad. Being moderate in eating is more important than hunger.

An example of something within my control would be aiming to exercise. It is in my control to intend to exercise, e.g. put on sporty clothes and running shoes. Things might get in the way, but the intention is in my complete control. So I assent intending to exercise.

Week 37: Catch and examine the judgements underlying your impressions and impulses

Here the authors talk about a 'stoic psychology' which is roughly alongside CBT. It is a neat framework, I am aware that academic work on describing feelings/moods/emotions is probably as messy as the subject matter itself. It is tricky to pin down these matters cognitively.

The interplay between neocortex/limbic system or cognitive / emotional system

1. Initial inclination for pleasure, desiring/avoiding externals give rise to an initial stirring of emotions.
2. The emotional stir gives rise to an initial impression which surfaces by thoughts like 'why is this so and so?'. Such thoughts and associated feelings are outside one's complete control.
3. One can agree, reject or suspend judgement about an initial impression. Agreeing to / assenting an initial impression is within one's complete control; if granted, then the feeling associated with an initial impression turns into a full blown emotion.
4. Assenting thoughts that appear in one's mind automatically is an 'impulse'.

The idea here is this. When I spot an initial impression, I am going to think about what I consider to be good/bad in the impression. Then I will consider if what I deem good/bad in it is within my complete control or not. If it is, then it truly is good/bad. If it isn't, then it is a (dis)preferred indifferent and I shouldn't bother with it (reject or suspend judgement about it). So if an initial impression is

'this investment will make me rich and I will be ERE1 and FI'

then I will go like

'what I consider here good is wealth, but being wealthy is not in my complete control. I am not going to agree to the feeling associated with this initial impression turning into a full blown emotion like euphoria about getting rich'.

On the contrary, an initial impression such like

'belittling is not the way to treat another person'

Indicates that what I consider good there is treating another person in a just manner as an equal partner in a dialogue. Aiming to not to belittle is in my complete control, so I agree to doing so. Telling others to aim not to belittle when asked is a courageous act also in my control, so I assent it. Doing such things feels good. When done frequently, this will turn into an impulse as per 'atomic habits'. A way to build a stoic life.

There are three P's to remember about assenting initial impressions.
Properly reserved - 'fate permitting'
Prosocial - benevolent and not malevolent
Proportionate to the situation at hand - bird eye's view, exercises of looking at one's life in the whole of the universe's existence, or all of its space.

Maths and Stats

I had a couple of email exchanges with my mathematical statistics tutor. I explained her that I would be working in the field as well as doing four modules this coming year. Looks like she is keen to help me as much as she can with the module. Mathematical Statistics is considered the most dense of the four I will be taking, so that is good to hear. But I think I will do fine. The equipment I am getting for home working will obviously also work for home studying, and DW can also use it sometimes.

I now have all the books needed for the last year of the BSc.

Systemic changes

I am pondering systemic changes that will take place in the coming months.

- currently the majority of my work is gentle to moderate cardio exercise. After work my physical activity is 200 burpees/day, in recent months the rest of the time was studying. Now, the majority of my work will be sitting at a desk. There is risk associated with sedentary work. The remedy for that I have in place is the standing desk I will be provided with. I might try to get a stepper like e.g. this one. DW and I will see how we feel with the new lifestyle, but I suspect we might be more keen to go on weekend adventures hiking or cycling.
- currently very much nature based, in a moment very much city based. The ratio of free time activities of the city vs countryside nature with invert.
- I am subject to forced socialization at workplace which is a very handy way to get more than enough social interaction for a person of my character. With the new job and working from home, this will go. DW will be there for some casual socialization. Our relationship is going to change as we will have more resources for talking to each other, because it will not be like we just had 8h of intense social interaction. I think this is a great opportunity actually. I mean we obviously do talk and have a very good understanding of each other. Just that now we will have more energy for it. Maybe we will be talking even more ERE2 talk, that would be awesome.
- no flat rate energy price. I welcome it, paying per kWh is a very simple feedback mechanism that will finally provide an easy rationale for optimizing for energy. As in, laundry programmed to be done at night, dehydrator ran at night, utilizing warm clothes and hot water bottles to the fullest and not a lazy 'central heating switch on'.
- generally more control over lifestyle choices and expenditure. At the old place, it sometimes felt like living on subsidy. This was convenient, comfortable, allowed for personal progress in a beautiful way. Also a very complex situation indeed. You have old Victorian houses with single glazing that are protected from certain energy improvements by Historic Scotland; in addition, vulnerable people living in the houses. So you end up burning lots of fuel to heat them up. The organization is registered as a business, hence relatively cheap food from wholesale organic food providers. This is convenient, but again no feedback loop, for example the walled garden we have here is more of a luxury and does not it's fundamental function of producing food nearly as much as it could. I suspect this might just be the outcome of being part of a greater whole, an upside of the eusocial-like focus. I welcome returning to more of a K-like focus.
- Connection. Very remote where we have been, few distractions other than Internet connection. There is even hardly a phone reception here so I would only occasionally get phishing text messages in batches and delete them straight away. Now we will be living in the city centre of a major UK city, with all its advertisements, traffic, people. To counterbalance this, the city is surrounded with nature and wilderness and very well connected to them.

Thanks for reading!

mathiverse
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by mathiverse »

I've really enjoyed reading about your progress through the Stoic exercises each week.

guitarplayer
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Location: Scotland

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Thanks @mathiverse! The third part (assent) turns out to be quite practical. It was good that I did the write up of weeks 36 and 37 - in the last few days I have been implementing it when interacting with people. I look forward to carrying out more stoic exercises and practices next year, I have a website somewhere up in the journal that I might want to go through.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2022 update 39/52

Due to change in days off (now them being Saturday and Sunday) I decided to post an early update no 39. This way update no 52 will be on the last weekend of 2022.

Job

I have two intro calls tentatively set up on Monday, one with a statistician one level above mine and another with one two levels above. Work-from-home equipment will be arriving later this week.

DW has a starting date for her placement later this month.

Flat

Currently the shelf thermometer in the flat shows the temperature of 17 C / 62.6 F and one that I had on the floor shows 15 C / 59 F.

Some things are still in boxes, I will be unpacking the next few days.

Reading

I finished reading Sapolsky's 'Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers'. This was an empirical scientist speaking, with all the if's and but's of empirical research. Concluded with some stress management advice I already knew about from other sources. I skimmed through the last few chapters due to too much inconclusive nitty gritty for my taste. Also, skimmed through it because I have decided to suspend my reading list for now. I gather I will be now reading lots for Uni and for work, at least initially, as well. I will continue Stoic exercises and will give it a separate heading.

Stoic exercises

Like mentioned above in response to @mathiverse, I have been implementing the 'protocol' as outlined in previous update when facing various impressions. One particular recurring impression was in the form of more or less 'why are they not answering / doing what is needed / procrastinating'. It is pretty amazing how a minute or two of reflection can really improve my perception of these impressions by me not getting overtaken by them.

Maths and Stats

I aim to officially start working on it today. I went through some coursework throughout July and August. What I am going to do is download first assignment questions and create LaTeX templates to feed the answers into.

Well-being

I drew on my physiological resources quite a bit in September. Trying to keep some routines going e.g. still reading, exercise, and at the same time putting stuff in boxes, packing boxes in the car at night twice, playing car tetris with boxes/plants/awkwardly-shaped-items, two car trips to our new place, carrying many boxes up two stairs in a short time span and driving back to return for an afternoon shift. Some short nights due to the time it all took, also unpredictability of (not) finding a flat to rent in early September as well (as per Sapolsky's book).

So now that the transition is roughly complete, yesterday I was mostly horizontal, watched lots of 'Yes, Prime Minister' and put lots of food into the body. Feeling strong today.

DW suggested we take plants from our old place, the hardy ones so that we can leave them for travels and they don't die. I managed to somehow pack them in the car so we have a flat full of plants. This is good.

Otherwise, I had persistent dry skin of my hands in the past many months. I suspected that the issue was irritating the skin all the time due to the nature of the job - washing hands many times a day, putting nitrile gloves on and off all the time. I finished working at my old place on Tuesday, and happy to say that I already see what looks like an improvement. The skin definitely feels better, more stretchy and all.

Thanks for reading!

guitarplayer
Posts: 1300
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:43 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2022 update 40/52

Job

I am grateful for finding this job. After the first week I can say that it will be a good place to work. People seem to care about what they do; the subject matter is actually very close to some of my interests. There is a lot of work to be done by my team in shaping data we provide. This contrasts with some more mature parts of the organization where there could perhaps be a tendency to do things ‘as we have always done them’.

I now have my laptop and some of the work-from-home equipment which makes work much more comfortable. This was one of my worries, that moving from a very active type of work to a sedentary one would require a big physical adjustment.

It being a typical 9-5 work opens new possibilities for automation of other life tasks aka some good habit formation. I have slowly started developing routines (e.g. slow cooking food at night), but I am still waiting for DW to arrive to sort the new living arrangement (@mF’s ‘Planet’) between us both.

DW will be starting her placement in two weeks, she cannot wait.

The Cave

I have been thinking about the cave allegory. In one sense, I am now entering the cave after living at the fringe of society for the past few years. I plan to do an informal 'BSc in Cave Anthropology' with all my daily experiences treated as field trips.

Flat

It is easy to manage staying comfortable in the flat temperature wise. There are no rapid changes in temperature, so just put layers on or off. Where we lived before, the felt temperature was much more variable as it was a ground floor of a lonely old stone house in a windy place with wooden floor and single glazed windows.

Based on my presence in the flat this past week, my current estimate is that we will use up to 1500 kWh / year of energy (repeating the week exactly would yield 886 kWh / year, but I am still waiting for DW to join). When I look up average household energy usage for the UK, I see that it is an order of magnitude higher.

I managed to reclaim kitchen countertops from stuff (though admittedly, majority of it was food supplies)! There are still some flattened cardboard boxes to be put in the recycling. The nearest food waste bin is some 4 min walk away.

Our landlord is okay, a pleasant person and gets things done if needed.

It is a small flat, everything is close. There are no door closers unlike in where we were at before. I am enjoying it.

On a more general level, I am enjoying the city feel with all the diversity it provides.

Stoic exercises

Week 38: Observe and counter four moods of the mind.

This week is based on an excerpt from Marcus Aurelius, where he talks about countering the moods that are ‘a needles fancy’, ‘antisocial’, ‘not coming from your heart’ and ‘giving up one’s ‘diviner’ element for a ‘less honourable’ one. Based on this, the task for this week is to choose the most relevant thoughts and impulses from the following list
- Needlessly thinking about unnecessary things
- Antisocial thoughts and impulses
- Insincere thoughts and actions
- Giving in to physical urges
and focus on them in the week to come. Catch the thoughts and impulses and counter them with an implementation intention. I am going to focus on needlessly thinking about unnecessary things. My implementation intention will be

Whenever I needlessly think about something there is no need to consider, I will pause and say to myself: It is not necessary to think about it. I won’t act on it.

I will aim to write down at least some of those thoughts.

Maths and Stats

I have created LaTeX templates for most of the assignments for this year, there will be 19 of them. I am done with 75% of the first assignment, so 0.75/19 done. I have also signed up for some tutorials, although might opt out from joining them in the future as tutorials are often recorded so can be accessed anytime.

It is a pleasant experience to do this course because all the problems are well defined and answers readily available. In some sense it is an indulgence to do it.

Well-being

The past week I had some great sleeps.

Thanks for reading!

ertyu
Posts: 2893
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

are the classes you're taking still with the open university?

guitarplayer
Posts: 1300
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:43 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

@ertyu, yes. Being on the final stretch of my previous lower income job, I also applied for and got the funding for it due to their policy of looking at income at the point of application. Even if this was not the case, studying in Scotland is relatively cheap with something around £2000/year in fees.

It is always impressive to me how superficial traits make a big difference, particularly in financial terms as it is so easy to compare.

Renting a flat in Scotland, cost of a degree: £6,444,
Renting a flat in England, cost of a degree: £19,368.

Infrastructure is all the same, lecturers are the same, all is same.

The old story of geoarbitrage all over again.

guitarplayer
Posts: 1300
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:43 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2022 update 41/52

Job

Two weeks in. I did a bunch of obligatory trainings and one job shadowing of another department, we do research based on numbers spit out by the software they are using as far as I understand. This was the first and only day when I went to the office. It is open space, heated to 22 C and every workstation has two eye-level monitors, keyboard and a mouse. I thought I might head there over winter as a back up when the flat turns out to be too cold possibly.

The bunch of people I work with might have the highest concentration of PhDs outside of academia, I met at least three in my wider team so far (so about 20%, and counting).

Initially I will be working mostly with SAS and Power BI. I aim to gravitate towards R, lots of people work with it although not the project my team deals with just now. I suspect I will stick around in this sort of work for the next minimum two years, so plenty of time to find out how to position myself to go where I want. I have some mid term plans as well so keep them in mind.

Anthropology of the Cave

The general level of conduct in the city centre strikes me as rather low after years spent in remote hills. Swearing, spitting and today one guy was clearing their nostrils onto the pavement. But all in all according to the live-and-let-live principle, all is fine.

Having moved to the cradle of the industrial revolution - when it all started going sideways - I settled on educating myself in the history of Glasgow as a proxy for the history of industrialization. On my desk I have paper copies of The Tobacco Lords and The Upas Tree.

Image

The first one is about how some Glasgow Merchants rose to the wealth levels of aristocracy (at behaved accordingly) on the back of trading tobacco, textiles, rum, sugar and slaves between Europe, Africa and North America in the second part of the 18th century. The second one is a case study of Glasgow 1875-1975 as an example of the misgivings of modern industrial city. I work on my laptop, still learn Maths and Stats on my laptop, for books I will now rely on paper books from libraries or Ebay.

Leisure

My initial plan now that I hope DW will sign up for is to finally do what I thought multiple times of doing: go to the same art galleries over and over and over again and actually take time to appreciate the art in there. Entrance to Art galleries here is free which is helpful.

DW came for a couple of days, left today. This was great. Tomorrow I go to our old place to take in some countryside Scottish Autumn. Maybe we will find honey mushrooms, DW found some for the first time a couple of days back.

Stoic exercises

Week 38: Observe and counter four moods of the mind - I never managed to write down thoughts I have been putting in question, but all in all I think I was pretty good at directing attention to things that I can do something about. I rarely had second thoughts about things I was doing.

Week 39: Keep basic Stoic concepts always at hand.

This week is about ingraining the idea that what should be striven for is virtue. This will be done through having some at hand phrases, the suggested ones are
- virtue is the only good
- there is no good without virtue
- virtue itself is situated in our rationality, producing true judgements
- the dichotomy of control
- humans do better when they work together
- nothing lasts forever
Choose no more than three. I will choose

- the dichotomy of control (is this within or outside my complete control)
- there is no good without virtue
- nothing lasts forever

The other part for this week is to meditate on the above. The way I will do it, I am going to look at the statements I have chosen for 5-10min when I have my second cup of coffee, so after one or two pomodoros of doing Maths and Stats in the morning.

Hence, when I experience an initial stir of emotion I am going to say to myself 'is this within or outside my complete control?'.

Maths and Stats

1.10/19 assignments now done . I have read through Unit 1 - Starting Points and Unit 2 - Univariate Continuous Distribution Theory for Mathematical Statistics. I enjoy this very much, black boxes open up. I now know how the normalizing constant of the probability density function of the normal distribution came about, amongst other things. Tonight I plan to continue working on the 2/19 assignment.

ETA 15.10.22: 2/19 done! I am very happy because there was one particular problem involving relationship between moment generating functions of two linearly related variables, and I just could not crack it... until I cracked it!

Well-being

In general I recently feel similar to when I go hiking and camping and at the end of the day I am positively knackered and zone away into the realm of dreams. I don't know, maybe it's just that days are full of novel events. Maybe the cool ambient of this flat. Maybe the fact that the flat is so small vs my previous old-victorian-house-with-tall-ceilings abode that it feels like sleeping in a tent, haha.

Thanks for reading!

guitarplayer
Posts: 1300
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:43 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2022 update 42/52

Job

Three weeks in. I managed to break something - this is good, 'fail yearly, fail often'. Turns out that something that is produced by my team is produced via a very fragile route that is not version controlled. I followed the protocol, but inevitably something did not go according to plan and the thing crashed (I am puzzled I have been let to do it!). Apparently this happened to everyone before, maybe it is a sort of rite of passage. Now there is a bunch of manual updating, and I set to read more about and perhaps contribute with version controlling stuff. Good no blame working culture though.

Next to my assumed highest concentration of PhDs outside of academia, there seems to also be a rather high concentration of psychology graduates outside of the sensu stricte psychology profession.

I have my SAS training lined up and will be learning PowerBI on the go I think.

DW is starting next week, sadly hers will be a hybrid working so some days in the office in 'business casual' outfit. Yesterday she went to a charity shop to get a pair of 'business causal' trousers; she paid £6 I think. Otherwise she is excited if slightly nervous.

Anthropology of the Cave

I have read the Upas Tree. Glasgow there is presented as a case study of heated expansion followed by a relative contraction. Extraction of 1875-1914 was due to Glasgow being specialized in shipbuilding, mostly producer goods i.e. ships for international trade. There was a huge inflow of people from surrounding areas, this resulted in a very high population density. The author then describes how the city started undergoing decline past 1914 (IWW) and through the international trade crisis in the interwar period. Then there was still some peak coming from re-specializing in naval ships' production, however this was obviously a short lived impulse as no wars last forever. Free market economy and little regulation and foresight resulted in many socioeconomic problems experienced by the city particularly in bad times when friction between classes escalated. Especially housing was and is a predominant issue in the City with some peculiar dynamics that I am not going to go into now. Post 1945 Glasgow was riding the wave of increased standard of living the rest of the West was riding, but always lagging behind somewhat. The book was written in 1975, I would like to read a more recent account of Glasgow's current affairs.

I have started the The Tobacco Lords, it is about times before 'The Upas Tree'. It probably gives a good account of why one of the central districts of Glasgow is called 'Merchant City'.

At work, people mostly talk in their free time about going to cinemas to watch new releases, one person is going to spa this weekend, one person is going to a pumpkin farm to collect / buy some pumpkins.

I notice some people talk about being stressed at work. So far I fail to be stressed. Maybe this will cost me a promotion, but I still aim to tick all the boxes for promotions. What I earn now, if DW sticks to a job for a few more years, I think I will occupy myself with a different project a few years down the line. Though it might still be a paid one. I have been thinking about being a teacher in some capacity somewhere. But who knows, this is just me drawing multiple future potentialities which I enjoy doing when I give myself free space for thinking.

Leisure

Last weekend I went to the countryside for the last time, stuffed my face with blackberries and brought back some charcoal burners, hedgehog mushrooms and a couple suede boletes.

We are yet to start going to Art Galleries, however yesterday we went for a concert at the Glasgow University. We listened to an ensemble playing Erik Satie and other composers on xylophones, marimbas and such. Also, they streamed the Red Balloon and played a soundtrack to it.

Stoic exercises

Week 39: Keep basic Stoic concepts always at hand.

Well, I managed to meditate over:

- the dichotomy of control (is this within or outside my complete control)
- there is no good without virtue
- nothing lasts forever

only maybe 2 out of 7 mornings. I did however managed to ask myself quite a few times throughout the week 'is this within or outside my complete control?'. This was helpful, especially when I ran the thing at work that crashed.

Week 40: Focus on the Mind-Body connection.

Pigliucci here stresses that the way stoics were talking about the 'will' and the sensation of, say, sickness, they do not take the position of mind-body dualism and instead are materialists stating that all comes from matter. That being said, they do define 'self' as the faculty that experiences, perhaps a phenomenological self? (he does not talk about phenomenology in this chapter). Drawing the boundary of the 'self' on the the one that experiences is a rather minimal conception of oneself compared to an average person who will most likely consider their arm or leg as part of themselves. To the stoics, the way we experience things is under our control, not what we experience. Like Murakami wrote: 'pain is inevitable, suffering is optional'.

This week is a continuation of the last one, only that now I will be focusing mostly on physical experiences 'physical disability and discomfort'.

So

if I experience a physical discomfort in the form of being tired of sitting at a desk, my feet being cold or needing to go to the loo desperately,

I will say to myself

'This is a hindrance to what is currently do or how I prefer to feel, but not to my will. What can I do? Which virtue (wisdom, justice, temperance, courage) can I exercise here?'

Maths and Stats

2/19 assignments now done. I have read the first chapter of Applied Statistical Modelling: Introduction to Statistical Modelling and R. I am now reading through Unit 2: Multiple Linear Regression. Thanks to the R course I did over summer and my previous familiarity with regression and a good foundation in stats by now, this is not challenging at all. I work through Jupyter notebooks running the code there. The units are lengthy, but I hope to finish Unit 2 today and start working on assignment no 3, hopefully to write it up this weekend.

Well-being

I continue to sleep well. Manage to get time for exercise everyday, and definitely benefit from DW being around. Yesterday I got the rest of the work-from-home equipment i.e. an extra screen, mouse and keyboard + an office chair. This makes me have a better posture when I work, and also doubles down for when I study outside of work. My personal laptop is old so I need to get a VGA-VGA cable to connect the extra screen to the laptop, I have ordered it, so it should arrive next week. Surprised the cable did not come together with the screen, there were HDMI cable and a couple other ones.

Prompted by DW, I got creative and made myself fingerless gloves / external over-knuckles sleeves from old socks with holes in them. I find them very comfortable, they do their job and look good.

Thanks for reading!

zbigi
Posts: 978
Joined: Fri Oct 30, 2020 2:04 pm

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by zbigi »

guitarplayer wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 5:05 am

I notice some people talk about being stressed at work. So far I fail to be stressed. Maybe this will cost me a promotion, but I still aim to tick all the boxes for promotions.
Stress usually increases with level of responsibility. So, senior ICs (individual contributors) can already have a considerable amount of stress, as they're expected to independently deliver large chunks of value, as well as take juniors under their wings. Stress goes up from there if you're a team lead. It goes up again if you're managing multiple teams. Many people choose to stop at the senior level or even sooner, as they see the extra money in exhange for extra stress as not worth it. So far, you're at the very beginning of the journey and looks like the company is well set up (the "no blame culture" you mentioned), so it's possible that the role will not be very stressful.

guitarplayer
Posts: 1300
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:43 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Thanks for your input @zbigi!

My initial observation is that there are at least two promotions that can be had without a significant stress increase. I notice other team members who are those two levels up mostly due to increased level of either expertise in either knowing how to get things done (which really just comes naturally with time) or where to find info (content knowledge, same as the former), or both. In particular, those two levels above me have no managerial responsibility but yes they do sign under some published material (so will I in a few months, though a small chunk).

I also see part time being very much a thing in those three levels (mine, +1, +2), some people working just three days a week and having long weekends. This is appealing.

Currently no ambition to go higher up to managerial responsibilities. Another version of the future holds relocating to continental Europe, especially when folks in DW and I's families are getting older and more fragile this might make sense. Then we could also be taking trains/buses/cycle around Europe much more easily than now when it mostly resolves to at least one flight each way. I would envision this potentially happening at 3 years mark in the business.

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