Physical Learning

So this week I spent some time hanging out with a few of my nephews. We ended up hiking some pretty steep side hills. One of the boys is not to much of the adventurous type so he and I hiked them together hand in hand. The whole time. The problem with this is when it got really steep he had a tendency to lean back away from the mountain, instead of in towards it, and when he was holding my hand he was pulling us both back, so I told him, "lean towards the mountain," "lean in," that sort of thing, and he did catch on pretty fast. I just thought it was fascinating because I don't ever remember learning that but I'm sure I did, but did I learn it by myself or did someone tell me, just like I told him. I have no idea? But it got me thinking about physical learning.
They say once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget because it is all about muscle memory. However, no one really seems to talk about other muscle memory type stuff. I remember teaching myself to brace myself with my feet on the school bus so I wouldn't have to hang on. When I worked on the train a month or two back I had to get used to spreading my wait and walking with very deliberate footsteps as I walked the isles as the train jiggled from side to side, and forward of course. The same sort of thing goes for walking on ice (slipping and sliding and knowing when it's thick enough) and walking down talus slopes (those rocks do move but with a surprising amount of consistency).
So here are my conclusions about physical learning. (1) In general it seems more like you learn it through experience than instruction and (2) once you learn it, you more or less always have a feel for it no matter how long between uses. Which really is unfair because book learning seems like it flies away quite fast if you aren't using it on a daily basis. So maybe our bodies are smarter then our minds...

Shooting for A's B's or the Stars

Recently I told someone that I got an A- in a class which I thought was pretty good but then he asked what I had been shooting for. I said "an A. That's what I always aim for."
Shortly before that someone had told me that you (in the general sense) "should always shoot for a B" because then you don't get stressed about little things that don't really matter.
Then there is the saying that I will purposefully misquote* "shoot for the stars and even if you miss you will land on the moon."
So which is it? Should you aim high, super high, or just moderately good. Or does it all just depend on your personality.
I had a conversation with a friend who said that if you have the mentality that you are below average, average, or above average in a certain area, no matter what group you are in (whether a really skilled/talented group or a dull one) you will find yourself in that place within the group. So basically if you think you are average at school (easy example) instead of telling yourself to be above average you should just start hanging out with a smarter group of kids and you will end up being average in that group and doing better overall in school.
So I guess you could just shoot for average but seek out skilled groups.
Or just don't set expectations at all :)


*"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." But that really doesn't make sense...

The Meaning of Night

I'm sitting here in my apartment with the setting sun shining in on me after a storm. And it makes me happy.
Sometimes at night if the moon is ever shining in through my window I sleep backwards in bed just so I could fall asleep with the moonlight on my face.
There is something incredibly compelling about light. It is bright and obvious and beautiful. Is it any wonder that it has been used in comparison with darkness since the beginning of time as a visualization of un-articulateable ideas, especially involving good and evil?
Of course not. But as my dad says I'm a rebel and I have to root for the other side.... and darkness does get a bad rap.
As a senior in high school I wrote a poem entitled Night is a Blanket* for an assignment. I tried to emphasize the healing, peaceful powers of night and darkness.
Then I wrote a novel about a people who are nocturnal** and are thought to be evil because of it... but really they are just people.
I think the main reason why dark is seen so negatively is because humans are bad at seeing in the dark so the dark often means the unknown and unexpected.
But the thing is complete light with no darkness (shadow/contrast) is just as blinding (more so really because it can last longer) than complete darkness. (Remember don't look straight into the sun).
Just like winter--the time of dormant plants--is necessary for the health of some plants, night is our daily time of physical and often emotional rejuvenation.... So if I take the next step it begs another question. Are times of confusion and uncertainty in our lives, often compared to times of darkness,  really times of unnoticed growth. A type of staging ground for the next step?


*Night is a Blanket

Night is a blanket,
Covering the world,
Thick and dark.

Night is a blanket,
Underneath to hide
Secret longings, hidden from the day.

Night is a blanket,
Comfortable and warm,
To rest in.

Night is a blanket,
Children lie under,
Scaring each other with phantoms.

Night is a blanket,
To snuggle within
And listen to sounds all around.

Night is a blanket,
To look through,
Trying to see the world anew.

**If you ever wanted to know how much being diurnal has affected our language try writing a book about nocturnal people. Today, Morning. Three days ago. Seeing color. How do you tell what time it is when the sun isn't up?

Practical* Crafts

So recently I have finished some fun projects that I thought I would share.
Seeing as how lately I have been living in apartment for a year at the longest and have still been acquiring things (😝) I thought it would be useful to have some sort of bag or box that is small when not in use but large and sturdy enough that I could use it for packing. Instead of buying it, I wanted to make it myself. So I designed a box (made out of cardboard and grocery bags) based off my brother's reusable grocery bag. It was a fairly long process but I like how it turned out. Now I just have to see how it withstands a move. It really is just cardboard and plastic bags (no tape or glue, etc). I used binderclips, paperclips, a carpet needle, and an awl to make it. And it folds up relatively flat (with a false bottom).

 My second project was inspired by my Saturday hikes. I have low topped hiking boots and so with the advent of summer there is a ridiculous amount of prickly seed pods of various sorts that would get caught in my socks. After one week of stopping every 5 minutes to pick out the prickles I got smart and did something about it. The next week I made gaiters out of gallon ziplock bags but they were kind of hot and sweaty and noisy. So two weeks after I made these gaiters out of my old pants (good thing I hadn't thrown them out yet). They might be more effective if I wore them over my boots instead of inside them (a few prickles still slide down to my lower foot) but I wasn't sure I had anything hefty enough that could survive the beating the cloth would take on the bottom of my boot and these work great so far (I've only used them once but still). I'm also glad I made the plastic prototypes because I cut these a little different than I would have otherwise.

  So maybe these projects don't look exactly classy, but I still enjoyed designing them and I made them with stuff that I just had laying around (or my mom had laying around... well I did buy the binderclips). I might have been able to find similar things at a store, but then I would have had to go shopping! Plus, it makes me happy when I can make something that I will use.


*As in they can be used, not necessarily that they are monetarily worth the time or effort.

A New Word

I'm going to make up a word.
There are several conditions that greatly affect life in the oceans. One of these is salinity. Some animals can live in highly salty water (such as lagoons) others can only survive with a little salt (such as right off a delta where the river water waters down the salt in the water) and some can survive in both. Animals that can live in both very salty water and not very salty water are called euryhaline (meaning broad salt). Creatures that can only survive in water that has a specific percentage of salt are considered stenohaline (meaning narrow salt).
Today I was thinking about how some people are very particular about the weather that makes them happy. They don't like when it rains or when it snows or when it is too hot, etc. Then I extrapolated out and thought about how some people seem only happy occasionally, when a specific set of circumstances align, but others seem like they can find happiness in most situations.
I'm not sure why this is exactly, but some of the contributing factors may be natural disposition, faith, humor, and actually choosing to be happy. But thinking about all this made me want to be eurysatis (meaning broad satisfied) and find satisfaction and happiness in a broad range of situations and environments. Let it rain! And be blistering hot! Let me be with friends and family. Or be far away from them. Let me be working on school things, work things, other peoples projects, my projects. Let me be under green trees, on desert sands or sitting at a computer desk. Let me be eurysatis.

Curiosity: Part 2

A while ago I posted about being curious, and I talked about a spreadsheet of terms I had put together so I could do well in my studies. Now that I have been working in my new field of study for a while I don't find myself looking up quite as many terms as I did then, but I haven't given it up completely. I think I added some to my spreadsheet just last week, but as I said, it isn't quite as much the life line it was when I started. Despite this, I think I am still curious. This week I worked on a Dinosaur Train (aka I talked to little kids and their parents about dinosaurs while they went on a train ride. There was a fair amount of down time and I found myself asking the conductor and the other train workers about their jobs and how the train worked. I asked one of the teenagers that worked on the train something about one of the procedures. She had no idea (I'm not sure she had even noticed). So I guess I still count as curious. :)
Another thing I have noticed though, is sometimes I use curiosity as a coping mechanism. Occasionally when I am stressed or decidedly uncomfortable (especially in a new environment) I will start studying the mechanisms around me, trying to figure them out so I don't think too much about whatever I'm stressing out about. So, if I ever become excessively engineer minded it might be because I'm stressed out.
On another note, I find that my curiosity sometimes heads in a different direction then most peoples. On the train perhaps the two most questions about dinosaurs was "What was the biggest dinosaur?"^ and "How big was a T-rex?"* But I don't really care about "the biggest," "the fastest," "the smallest." I guess I'm just more about the stories then the stats. (You can google the stats if you need them for some reason). So, when I wasn't answering stats questions I tried to tell people things that they wouldn't be able to find out with a quick google search... well they could, but only if they knew what to ask, which--granted--would be the hard part, especially when doing it off the top of their heads. However, I am sympathetic. Good questions are sometimes hard to think of, especially when you are asked kind of out of the blue, so I guess I was even more grateful when people asked good questions.


^The Argentinosaurus, a long neck that was 130 ft long and about 90 tons (roughly the weight of two passenger train cars). And yes, it was found in Argentina.
*About 15-20 feet tall.

Textures

Last week I was laying on some pea gravel rubbing my bare-feet through it. At least twice a friend asked what I was doing with a tone that said she thought I was crazy. Then she did it and admitted it felt pretty good. I've been known to do the same thing with mud.
I hate lotion. The slimy feel of it makes me cringe, but my two year old niece brings her mom lotion and cries if she doesn't put it on.
I like al dente noodles and toast and crunchy things... in fact squishy things, or even a large quantity of non-crunchy foods with a homogeneous texture make me gag. Texture is a huge thing for me in regards to eating.
So, overall I dislike squishy things (eating or feeling...unless it's mud apparently.... I don't get it) solely because they are squishy.
My mom hates "weird fabrics," I think this means shiny smooth ones or spandex like with a stretch, because she hates the feel of them. However, she has no problem with eating squishy foods.
It is just interesting to me that it seems like many people (I won't generalize to "all") have very distinct reactions to textures, but not always in the same category. Food is the primary category that texture is an issue for for me but for my mom it is cloth. So maybe different body parts are more susceptible to being picky about texture for different people. Or maybe it is something else... I guess I will have to ask more people about this.