Day 21 |
January 7, 1998 | Return |
1,803 Miles Today: 0 Miles |
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Roamer's
Rest RV Park Tualatin OR |
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| Picture list Tualatin RV Park |
Words of a song keep going around in my head: "I’m just a boy whose intentions are good; Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood." What brought that on? | ||
| Woke to a cloudy morning – some blue sky, but no rain for a change. Last day in Tualatin; tomorrow the drive back. Futility. Heavy heart. | Rained in Portland area every day until today | ||
| Software: complexity vs. complicated | Csikszentmihalyi defines complexity this way: "A system that is more differentiated and more integrated than another is more complex. … Differentiation refers to the degree to which a system is composed of parts which differ in structure or function from one another. Integration refers to the extent to which the different parts communicate and enhance one another’s goals." Needless to say, he contends that humans strive towards, and are happiest in, complex situations. Complex is to be distinguished from complicated, which he defines as "hard to figure out, unpredictable, confusing." By this definition something complicated is differentiated but not integrated, and hence lacks complexity. | Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The evolving self: a psychology for the third millennium Harper Perennial 1994, p 156 |
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| In these terms, most software is complicated but not complex. | I suspect end users would agree with this, but the creators of the systems would disagree. | ||
| A complicated life? | My life is, I guess, complicated but not complex, since there is so little integration between work and the rest. Actually, it’s not even all that differentiated, as so much of what I do is the same: lots of e-mail, lots of meetings. Not much variety. Rather pathetic, really. | ||
 30 secs at 28.8 |
It turned into a beautifully sunny day – no clouds at all towards the end. Around lunch time I went to sit by the river; read a bit. | "As early as the 20's and 30's Roamer's Rest
was a haven for people seeking fun and recreation. For a small fee families could picnic,
enjoy a ball game in the shady groves, take a swim or go boating in the slow moving
Tualatin River. One elderly gentleman relates how he used to jump off the Tualatin Bridge
and swim up to the Park facilities in order to escape the 10c entrance fee of this, the
most popular of the Tualatin River Resorts." Roamer's Rest RV Park site map and local guide, American Guide Services Inc |
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| Why having children alleviates yuppie career angst | Csikszentmihalyi’s model of Flow applies. According to him, people feel most fulfilled during ‘flow experiences.’ Flow occurs when both the challenge of an activity and the skill required to perform it are within, but just barely within, one’s capabilities. Humans enjoy flow – but, and this is a problem for his model, they watch a lot more TV than they spend rock climbing or dancing, even though they feel less contented afterwards. His explanation is that TV is superficially more attractive than Flow because it requires a lot less energy to indulge in, even though the reward is correspondingly low. This led me to a chemistry analogy: left to their own devices, most people don’t have the "activation energy" to get over the initial effort hump and into a flow state. They end up in a bored and slightly anxious life, living TV in other words. It’s even worse when their careers stagnate, since Csikszentmihalyi’s research shows that most people experience more flow in work than leisure, in spite of their professed desire for the latter. | ||
| Having children is a great antidote to stagnation. Conceiving kids is generally enjoyable, so the hapless parents end up being tunneled through the activation hump (or by it…) into a flow experience. Once the little blighter is born, there’s no way of avoiding the challenge. There are endless new skills to be learnt, but instinct ensures that most people are sufficiently well endowed with parenting skills to keep up with the challenge. Now their lives have new purpose – having goals are an important part of flow, too – and a flow-inducing skill/challenge tension is maintained for many years. (A minimum of twenty-something years; thanks, but no thanks.) No need now to radically alter a career to provide fulfillment; in fact, having children tends to incline people against taking risks, and they prefer to ensure a steady supply of money and security for their offspring. | |||
| Provisional conclusions | A hard day’s thinking about life and goals and actions. Ended up with a (psychosomatic?) headache; my first on the trip. I have, I suppose, come out of this with some conclusions at least, though no magic bullet: (1) I have to change what I’m doing, or wither and die, creatively. (2) I’m stagnating and need new challenges to stimulate new skills. (3) Massive change just for the sake of it is stupid right now, since I don’t have a clear and present alternative to what I’m doing; however, I must put a time limit on tweaking the status quo. (4) The dream of changing the way people mesh information into every minute of their lives is a worthy interim goal. | The headache (back of my neck and head – haven’t had something like this before) kept getting worse all day. So bad that I couldn’t get to sleep; and no aspirin in the house. Eventually took a half-tab of melatonin at 11.30 which knocked me out. | |