mini-ERE

Where are you and where are you going?
candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

mini-ERE

Post by candide »

Previous journals:

Candide's Journal
viewtopic.php?t=12355

Candide: Origins
viewtopic.php?t=12370

And now . . .

Mini-ERE
========

. . . I shall call it *arches eyebrow, puts pinky up to his lip* . . . mini-ERE.

(Further research shows Mini-Me does the pinky thing at this point in the movie, not Dr. Evil).

https://youtu.be/qecqOri-b0U?t=93


Yesterday was my last day of teaching students for the school year. If I didn’t have a child on the way in July – induction date of July 19th if we get that far along – I would probably do some tidy-up work toady on my files and be done thinking about school after Tuesday’s room check out day until we come around to August.

As it is, I need to think ahead and gets thing where they can run smoothly with minimal mental effort on the weekends so I can help out as much as I can as a parent. 30 minutes a day for the next six weeks should get me pretty far – I’m a pretty good improviser, but it will be even easier with more of the framework set up and then back-up pieces already in existence. The longer ahead you are able to look, the more smooth you can make your moves, and all that chestnut.

Skill vs Challenge
=============

I remember reading something with Jacob posting this chart, and I think it clarifies a lot of what I am going for.

Image

The Renaissance ideal is about skill, diverse, interlocking skills. This is the Ancient Greek arete, how the Daoist used de/te, how craeft was used in Old English -- what the French call a certain . . . I don’t know what.

Note that diverse skill is a feature of how these words were used, and then their meanings narrowed (cheapened) over time.

Anyway, I like skills. Let’s make skills the given, the purpose, the end-in-itself, like how Pirsig developed his metaphysical Quality.

The days I go in to work is about high skill, low challenge. I wouldn’t exactly call it “relaxing” as the chart indicates, but there is a certain beautiful economy of effort that people notice about how my class operates, when they can see it real time and as a whole. (When pried away from that organic context, people can convince themselves that they know better than me because of some dumb-fuck gimmick or because some child looking for an enabler appears to like them). Rather than "relaxed", I would describe the way the class goes as clean, pure, ritualized. If 20% or so could be cut off the work day, I’d actually say it would be a near-perfect spiritual practice, for me.

Also, I'd estimate that 97% of my days stay right there in that high skill/low challenge ritual, with somewhere like 2-3% of the days becoming frustrating -- more for reasons of lacking autonomy and/or ass-clowns. A lot of this comes from teaching at the most affluent middle school in the district (out of four). I can't have such a high batting average everywhere, and if a much higher percentage of my days were bullshit, I'd probably leave.

As it is, the days are slightly too long, and the wear of the bad days does accumulate. I’m glad for the breaks built into the schedule, and especially the Big One that has started today.

Again, skills are the given. Instead of leveraging years of experiences, as I do with work, here in mini-ERE time I can work on skill acquisition. The moves up the chart to a state of toggling between “arousal” and “flow” depending on how the projects are going that day. Either way, it beats boredom, anxiety, worry, and apathy.

This is the guiding philosophy.
Last edited by candide on Mon May 30, 2022 6:52 am, edited 2 times in total.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9370
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: mini-ERE

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Interesting. I would say that my experience teaching at one of the least affluent middle schools in the U.S. was mostly in opposite quadrant. Sometimes arousing, but too often anxiety provoking.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

@7Wannabe5

I've worked more years at a Title I school than anywhere affluent, so I have some notion of what you mean. I recently read something you wrote years back (looked it up -- 2014) about enjoying subbing at the dose of twice a week. Was this the same district? If you subbed at a super-poor school, then my esteem for you has somehow risen even higher than it was before.

Getting the job I have now was kind of like value investing. I had used the fuck-you money to get out of a bad situation (online school is an abomination) and I was going to try semi-ERE as a sub, but then Covid hit, so that was the end of that school year. But because of Covid, people were leaving even the cushy suburban teaching positions and there were not people rushing in to snatch them up. My interview was one question: "can you start today?" This was totally "greedy when others are fearful," but the prospect of paying a full ICU bill really tested the notion of how much I wanted to self-insure.
Last edited by candide on Tue Jun 14, 2022 10:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

Sleep
====

The first thing to mind when I am on a mini-EarlyRetirementExtreme is my sleep schedule.

I know it is a staple of FIRE blogging that every day you wake up without the use of an alarm is a moment of perfect bliss, where all things in the universe are in harmony and loved ones --who you are of course surrounded with – just smile beatifically at you, showing the joy all non-playable characters should, at least in this type of ad copy. And if that is what happens for you, and it stays that way for months, even years on end, then that is great, and you should add it to your blessings when you count them.

But for me, the experience of doing this a bunch of times shows that I need an alarm. Without it, especially during the summer, my sleep will start to drift off more and more, going to bed at 2 am, then 4 am, and then when I hit 6 am I am well and truly screwed. This means I stop being able to do things (well) during normal human hours. It also means that I miss the nicest parts of the day here in the land of 100 degrees and high humidity. That failure to have time outside might be the most crushing. To be cut off from natural flows

I’m only three days in this current mini-ERE, so there is no reason to take a victory lap, but my wake up time of 5:55 has been working out so far. I am trying to give myself time to get coffee made, and then decide whether or not I want to watch the sunrise and then the subsequent golden hour. Also, I like numbers that are multiples of 3, but not of 9, so that’s why the exact time). Yesterday I went out to find a good place to see the sunrise, today I just sat and thought about things, and went out to a park a little later.


Making
======

Out of respect to neighbors, I only allow myself to run my power tools (or bang a hammer or mallet) between 10:00 am and sundown. That still leaves plenty that can be done in the mornings. I can lay out lines, do glue ups, make hand cuts with a saw. It is nice to do quiet work at the most pleasant time of day.

I am starting a policy of not sharing any project until it is completed, as I find that having something “out there” creates a kind of pressure which I find interferes somewhat with the work process. My current projects fulfill some needs that we have, so I am probably going to work on them at least a little bit every day, but then I certainly might take a break from the shop (garage).

Because reading is also good, and it’d be nice to give some of my studies my centered attention, rather than being a hot, sweaty mess each time I try to nibble on a chapter or two.

However, too much sitting (or laying) around reading is a sure-fire way for me to start feeling depressed as well. The answer for a while can be to break up reading sessions with chores that can be done inside the house. In previous years, that would have exhausted itself pretty quickly as the house got cleaner, but baby stuff, and then baby could keep inside during the hot parts of the day.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

Working on a short deadline really sucks. It makes it difficult to set up the work for maximum enjoyment, forcing all sorts of “get now, pay later” trade offs which anyone who likes ERE should instinctively distrust on the structure alone.

Well, I’ve been working on short deadlines the last two days. I reported into school today to go through check out procedures – inventories, turning in final grades, etc. I also wanted to use the opportunity to set my room up to run more efficiently and, also be more resilient (that was the real back-breaker, more on that in a moment).

One of goals was organizing some magazines I use as a resource for my Skills (low readers) class. Here’s what I came up with:

Image

The shelves are cardboard, stacked two layers, with the grains of one layer going one way, and the other layer perpendicular.

Credit for this kind of cardboard plywood where it is due:
https://youtu.be/Z6det-aFRe0

Good, fast, cheap – pick two. I think we’ll all agree that I tend to go with fast/cheap. All materials were scavenged, so the total price was something like 5-10 cents worth of school glue. Although, it does show. Still, since I received some cherry veneer for free, I might as well use it:

Image

This cleans the piece up a little bit, but I am glad to have it tucked away in a closet rather than out in the open.

All of the operations to make the piece could have been done during my cool, pleasant mornings (I did one of the veneer bits with a coping saw, so all three could have been) but again, the curse of deadline reared itself, and I ended up doing it a lot of heat, sweating profusely.

In the case of the shelving piece planning ahead would have enabled me to work in a more enjoyable fashion, but I also ran into textbooks and workbooks being put out to be thrown away. It was now or never to save them and so the amount of grunt work that went into the day exploded for me. I put in a 7 to 5 day, and while the morning featured a fair share of goofing around with colleagues I will not being seeing until next school year, it was all grunt work after lunch. (I did what I had originally planned at the end, and it only took an hour).

Getting those materials gives me back up for a future of less than perfect abundance. The internet can be spotty for whole days, that’s already true. Photocopies may be further and further restricted, even denied completely. And we may never get an infusion of textbook materials again, under the theory that it should be all online. I appear to be the only person interested in putting away materials to be prepared for any of these eventualities.

The window was short, though there is no reason in theory why it needed to be. Oh well, the work is done. And today I can rest my body.
Last edited by candide on Sat Jul 30, 2022 7:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

From drudgery on a deadline to optionality – ah, divine optionality.

Mornings
=======

Today my wind shield was more dewy than I wanted, so I stayed home and sat in a chair. Other than that, I have been driving out to Walmart’s parking lot because it has the best near-by view of the East and that lets me welcome the day. The time I spend on this is measured by my coffee. One day, after I finished the first cup, I drove home, made a second and went to a park. Today, I sat in my chair for both cups of coffee. This actually faces the West, but the clouds were picking up interesting coloration anyway.

No watch, no timer, no measurable objectives. Just passing time until the coffee is up. I can look at to-do lists later on in the day.

Birds
====

The real game-changer for my morning time has been birds. I have recently read How to be a (Bad) Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes, and it serves as a passable enough manifesto.

In the past, when I spent my enjoying nature, my focus before has always been on plants, whether trying to read the landscape as a whole or looking for what is edible. I’ve also been attached to clouds and looking at sunrises and sunsets. But birds are where the action is at, and I can’t believe I have gotten to 38 years of life without noticing this.

And maybe that is partly how I have not come to enjoy birds before – I was trying to use nature for my own tranquility, and it would do that, but too much of this would lead to an attachment to inaction (see a good translation of the Bhagavad Gita) as well as an eventual deep apathy, which I will track to framework above as low skill, low challenge. I would then chastise myself for not being able to get more out of nature – how dare me not continue to find unconditional content. Related, how dare I not find it where I am at.

Well, a little knowledge of birds seem to make the point moot. I don’t know if this just some neuro-atypical thing and most people have appreciated birds the appropriate amount their whole lives (something, something, reading intentionality, dreaming of flight) but I have always put birds off to the margins. I haven’t been hostile to them, but they were just some chaotic thing at the edge, not important to the gestalt. But now with birds at the center of the experience, everything else falls into place. The bird watching gives me enough action and then I can notice the changes in lighting, clouds, etc at a pace that allows for them to change.

Naked eye looking worked for a few days, but then asking my wife where her old binocular where took the experience to another level.

This seems like a great hobby for when I am a father (about 6 more weeks . . .) because it can dropped and then picked back up whenever needed.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

Home Economy
============

I'm really proud of my wife. She's always been pretty scared of cooking, but she's set a plan for herself to try two new recipes a week until the pregnancy makes that too much for her. So that is probably another four weeks of her trying out recipes, getting 8 more under her belt. We have also discovered that DW’s pickiness does not extend to eating left-overs during the same week. This has been very helpful as we can plan double batches, and now it allows us to consider cooking every meal at home indefinitely for the first time in our marriage.

We have long had a set up where we alternate who decides what we eat and then the chooser is also in charge of the logistics, payment, etc. DW has seen how much I’ve been able to save by cooking it myself and that has exerted a kind of gravity. It led to her getting more things from the store that she could pop into the oven, and saw how even that has saved her some money. Getting more meals down to scratch, or at least closer, will help her budget even more for these two months (we’ve always maintained separate checking), and then my budget when her leave of absence takes financial effect in August.

The times I took off for mental health reasons, I only did my normal half of the chores, so fair does seem fair here and I’ll do my chores including cooking half the meals – hopefully getting some bigger batches done on the weekends so we can warm them up, rather full out cooking after a day of work.

But in the meantime this has been a really great experience with a lot a strong sense of teamwork and validation – for my wife trying new things, and for me being close to finishing the work of several years and coming to a strong enough rotation of dishes that match frugality with what my wife will eat, so close to completion that all I really need to do is work on a few more side-dishes and the system is set.

. . . Until my daughter gets old enough to eat what we eat and will probably blow up the whole thing.

Kids.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

Prepping
=======

Being back around people who question infinite growth on a finite planet has brought preparedness back into my mind. As usual, hat tip to Jacob.

I bought 2 five gallon buckets. One is for rice and the other is mostly lentils, but will have a bag of two of pintos. Writing this out makes me think that I will buy a third bucket so that I can regularly buy smaller amounts of rice and beans on normal grocery runs so I can keep a relatively steady supply and maintain first in, first out. I will be willing to sacrifice the last bit of unit price savings for convenience and keep my pants (er, supplies) fully up if a supply disruption occurs.

I want to point out that I take no pleasure in prepping. But I think households and communities (maybe even whole nations) would be better if prepping was less the domain of people who get off on power fantasies about when SHTF and more people seeing it as a chore, but still doing it. Thus, I give myself a point in my habit system when I have to something out my way to prep – ie buy and lug around 20 pounds of rice.


Meal Planning
==========

I’m still very much proud of my wife for her cooking experiments. Recently, she tried out a slow cooker sloppy Joe recipe. The amount it made was . . . absurd. But my wife didn’t get down about it; instead we ate it together as left-overs two times, with me pulling extra duty on several lunches while she had something else. DW will probably make it in two weeks time, and then freeze half of it. (Asking her to reduce/modify a recipe is not in her comfort zone right now, so I am completely encouraging this solution. Life needs more people, especially spouses, willing to go “yes, and. . .” and allow solutions that are mostly right work).

Even after all of that, there was a small amount left after I ate lunch on the stuff today. DW traveled across our metropolitan area to visit her sister tonight, so I had freedom on how I could doctor the remains up for dinner. First, rice, of course, but then was the last little bit of a bell pepper, and then I grabbed some small wax peppers and dandelion from the garden. Also, while out I grabbed two cherry tomatoes and some peaches from an absurdly early variety, and a few leaves from a neem tree. Neem is somewhat nasty by itself, but goes well enough with peach, so I ate that and the tomato as a kind of dessert while I cooked the rest.

Getting to self-sufficient in a garden would be really unrealistic for my amount of time, energy, or land. But it is easy -- really low amounts of effort and time -- to get to the point where the garden can provide a little bit every day or a big contribution to a meal a week. I’m just back at gardening after years off, including total neglect of the trees, and I’m already almost there.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

Making
======

Between the small shelving unit
viewtopic.php?p=258964#p258964

and the wheel barrow
viewtopic.php?p=257241#p257241

the wheel barrow was far, far easier, though it might not seem that way because it is rarer and more ambitious.

However, I could just strike arbitrary, even asymmetrical lines with the wheel barrow. It came together in two sessions. . . Let's just say the shelving unit took more than that.

Today's project was a spice rack. I think the spice rack is what a mini-ERE is all about to me. I am using the time to execute on a project the same day I came up with it, using (once again) scavenged materials, thus trading time for not spending money. Furthermore, organizing my spices for easier access and greater thematic matching will pay dividends even when I am back to work. I see this pattern again and again, and some reflection on it helps me to focus on the aspects that work the best:

* Use mini-ERE to acquire skills and convert resources gained into better systems.
* Run systems on auto-pilot while I work.
* Use work to gain resources at work, many of them discards.
* . . . and iterate, trying for improvement on each iteration.


Spending System
==============

My bird hobby has made me realize I would eventually like to spend money on seeds. I will probably start in the Fall to get birds used to the fact that I'll feed, and then carry it over during Winter.

This is now a non-necessary expense, one I can in no way justify as a semi-investment, like say, sand paper, tape, or (maybe one day) a drill press for the shop. This has led me to create a new rule: I can spend out of my habit fund for non-necessary items, but I have to use twice the points I get to use on semi-investments.

Today, I went with my wife to the library and decided to buy a bilingual copy of Voltaire's Candide which I had seen previously in book shop they use for discards and donated books. The cost was $2, highway robbery, but I wanted to own a copy, because, well, you can see my screen name.

I had $72 in the fund, so now it is

Habit fund: $68
Level 1 (So called since I haven't kept past records since I started doing this).

This is what I'll start disclosing in my journals. It works better for me and my situation than a lot of other metrics I see in journals.
Last edited by candide on Wed Jun 15, 2022 12:36 am, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
mountainFrugal
Posts: 1125
Joined: Fri May 07, 2021 2:26 pm

Re: mini-ERE

Post by mountainFrugal »

I like your spending system. Something that has worked for me in the past is tying the "hobby" spending to some other habit I wanted to pick up. As an example, once I get a certain number of habit points (# of times new habit achieved), then I got X dollars to spend on whatever I liked that supported another hobby (in my case relatively inexpensive art supplies). Maybe you could have a bird ID goal that unlocks the next level of bird seed to attract birds. Just an idea. Keep up the cool projects. I have enjoyed following along.

edit: you might be able to grow some sunflowers and use that as seed

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

@mountainFrugal

Yeah, tying the ability to earn with habits is really good stuff. It creates a synergism where the habit actually gets done, but also it works on moving past part of what be is so bleh about FI: being able to buy anything you realistically would want to buy.

It's cool to earn things again.

Also,I bet with mountain in your name you are have a pretty solid wild life/bird game going on.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 10:33 pm
edit: you might be able to grow some sunflowers and use that as seed
Oh, heck yes. I have the patch for sunflowers picked out for next year (or the year after if baby stuff is gnarly) already.

I have dreams of other builds -- bird houses and bird baths dancing in my head as well. . . Also, a plum tree that has never produced for me saved its life by being a place that the blue jays that frequent my back yard like.

User avatar
Slevin
Posts: 626
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2015 7:44 pm
Location: Sonoma County

Re: mini-ERE

Post by Slevin »

We have a store near us where you can get sunflower chips (broken shelled sunflower seeds) for like $2 per pound. If you have something like that, you may be able to cheap out until the actual sunflower harvest. The birds don’t care about broken sunflower bits and it’s super cheap by the pound. A 5lb-6lb bag lasts for a good while in 1-2 feeders in the warmer months when you can keep the squirrels out (and that’s a when, not an if. Squirrels eventually coming up with some insane method to get to your bird feeders is one of the great certainties of life, along with death and taxes).

theanimal
Posts: 2628
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2013 10:05 pm
Location: AK
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by theanimal »

We do what @slevin suggested. DW is into feeding the birds. She just got a new 35 lb bag of crushed sunflower seeds a couple weeks ago for $50. It was 10% off because the original bag was damaged. Funny enough, nothing has eaten it since we refilled the feeders. Migratory birds are uninterested and the local chickadees and gray jays must be off enjoying some other summer bounty.

I am very much enjoying your postings.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

@Slevin

I didn't realize it could get that affordable.

Also, I say let the squirrels have their fun. When looking with my binoculars at the backyard I enjoy seeing the going ons of squirrels too. I saw a little guy pick up a wind fallen unripe peach and just go to town on it.
theanimal wrote:
Wed Jun 15, 2022 12:24 am
gray jays
Gray jays were really important guest stars in the Dick Proenneke videos. It was my first exposure to them, a few days ago. Their corvid relatives are some of my favorites because of their intelligence and sense of play, though I note that crows and blue jays can also be bit of assholes -- friends of pleasure, rather than virtue or utility, indeed. Are gray jays friendlier than those other corvids, or was it Proenneke's skill that was on display with the relationship he had with them?
Last edited by candide on Wed Jun 15, 2022 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

theanimal
Posts: 2628
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2013 10:05 pm
Location: AK
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by theanimal »

They are definitely far more amicable than their corvid counterparts. If you take a break when hiking or hunting within the forest here, it is not long before you'll find a gray jay flying up and flittering about on a spruce tree nearby to see if there's any food nearby. That said, their nickname is "camp robber" and they will gladly take any scrap of food that is lying unattended. They will typically get fairly close to people but it takes frequent meetings to get them to land on your hand like Proenneke did. There were a few spots I would stop with guests, when I led tours, where the gray jays were real friendly. The guests would think I'm some type of animal whisperer as I'd raise my first three fingers as a perch with a scrap of food and click my tongue a few times. Within a minute, a gray jay would be at the edge of the parking area, then soon sitting on my fingers nibbling on the food, as the guests marveled and took pictures. Sometimes I'd have them do it too. Once a guest took a tiny piece of her sandwich she was eating and held it up in her hand to try the same. There was no activity after a minute or so and she was looking around. Well while she was looking the other way, a gray jay came up and landed on her other hand and proceeded to snatch half her sandwich and fly away with a larger bounty. :lol:

Gilberto de Piento
Posts: 1942
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 10:23 pm

Re: mini-ERE

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

candide wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 10:58 pm
Oh, heck yes. I have the patch for sunflowers picked out for next year (or the year after if baby stuff is gnarly) already.
I have 5-10 sunflowers in the yard each year. At this point they reseed themselves. They take no work except if they fall over and need a support added. They attract birds for the period while the seeds are available. It takes awhile for the birds to clean them out. In my location they mostly seem to attract goldfinches which are a fairly entertaining bird to watch.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

I actually bought wood today. Two cedar fence panels which I will not be using for their intended purposes. Both cost around $3.50. One project will help productivity -- specifically my wife's. One is for fun, and so will be charged to my fund double.

$3.50*3 = $10.50, round up to $11.00

Habit fund: $57

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

Making
======

I’ll spare the making stuff log on account of the extra details I’m adding.

Anyway, here’s the build (and, yes, I also wanted to show off cherry tomatoes from the garden ) :

Image

Image

Now you know what one of the cedar boards was for. My wife wanted a holder for her tablet when she tries new recipes in the kitchen. I had some thought of trying it out with some of my reclaimed pallet wood, but went with cedar to give it a uniform look and as I had read it is rot resistant.

The design is imitated from here:
http://www.ozdiyhandyman.com.au/2015/09 ... stand.html



Physicality (and dao)
===============

Here’s some quotes I recently read in Eric Gorges’s book A Craftsman’s Legacy.
For me, peace is when my focus and energy are in harmony with what I am doing. Our lives, wants, needs are always smacking up against the outside world. Peace is when we find a place, if only briefly, where that tension between us and the world fades. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that the tension doesn’t bother us (113).
. . .
Often, in language, we conflate peace and quiet – I just need some peace and quiet – but for me total quiet is undesirable. The noise of my bike [he works with motorcycles] is the purest kind of peace I know (115).

Power tools can be part of that Zen (the term most people will reach for)/ dao (the term I prefer) experience of work if the operations can become integrated enough with the doers sense of being, working on perception, getting underneath it – so to speak. This comes from the high skill part of the chart. Down that corridor, depending on level of challenge, is labeled Flow, Control, Relaxation, respectively.

So far so good as a two-variable model. I’ve worked with noisy, noisy operations some myself – heck, I use a drill on the majority of projects I do. But the meaning has to come first. And the model reveals that the skill you leverage is part of the meaning.

I want to put in a good word for the quiet shop. It is easier for me to get to a state of positive feeling when my nervous system isn’t bombarded. I find it easier to blend with the material, the tool, the environment. I wonder if some people actually prefer noise, or if it is more of a matter of what they are working on have noise as natural byproduct, so they get used to it very quickly. Well, all things being equal (though when are they?) I prefer quiet. Peace and quiet.

I guess I’m saying I prefer relaxation to flow as my production model, but the producing/making is the key to the good time – the work needs to get done . . . eventually.

candide
Posts: 432
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:25 pm
Location: red state America
Contact:

Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

If you make your spouse a gift out of wood, there may be some desire to have it finished.

Boiled Linseed Oil: $14

I thought long and hard whether or not to charge this as a semi-investment or as a fun expense. I came down on the side of semi-investment as I will try to give more and more gifts made out of wood, and applying finish should make them easier to accept as such. Well, if I wasn't going to double the price, I figured I might as well also get . . .

Shellac: $17.50

This will really protect to the piece I made for my wife, making it something that will be cherished for years. Or so I am to believe. I have also seen that shellac can be used to harden cardboard, making for better, more water resistant pieces from what I believe to be a vastly underrated material.

Habit Fund: $25.50

Post Reply