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I hope you have a wonderful year ahead!

As 2017 comes to a close, it is time to reminisce, review and plan.

In September, I set out to do the wonderful things highlighted in bold.

A recount of what actually happened.

• “add photos of me to this blog and make it more personal”
  • I added just a few personal photos.
  • Lessons:
    • Most of the time I don’t carry a proper camera and iPhone pictures aren’t that hot in my uninitiated hands.
    • I spend a lot of time in my office at home. It’s just not a very portraitogenic environment.
  • I think I started writing more personally. I also changed the name of the blog to my own name. This makes me very happy.
• “instead of only making a list of what I plan to do the next day, start also writing a list of things I accomplished today”
  • I did this for a little while and gave up.
  •  Lessons:
    • It’s super useful when I felt like I’m not making progress despite all my efforts. It showed me just how much I am actually doing and helped me understand its relevance. However, on days when I feel like all is good anyway, it just felt like another chore.
    • A little trick occurred to me while doing this: I would write things in a numbered list and circle the number when it is something I did and I would put a square around the number when it is something that happened to me. This was probably the biggest source of insight.
• “do a basic course in coding (xhtml? html5?) and see if I want to continue with it”
  • I did a super basic Khan Academy course in html. Frankly, I had done most of this in primary school. It didn’t particularly ignite a desire to learn more at this stage as I don’t have a purpose for it.
  • Buuut!… I found an easier way to change the features of my education website than going back to first principles of coding
  •  Lessons:
    • Learning for the sake of learning may be fun, but not necessarily when it comes to html!
    • A solution to the practical problem I didn’t even realise was stimulating me to do this in the first place can jump out from the good old academic approach, i.e. books are great nutrition for bookworms, “play to your strengths”, etc.
• “sort out my car”
  • That’s a work in progress. I am relying on other people to help me with this as I am not very passionate about cars. It’s just a utility to me.
  • Lessons:
    • I got quite disheartened when I asked for help and didn’t get immediate results. After all, do I ask that often, ffs?! It made me feel like people abandoned me. This isn’t a closed chapter yet, but I suspect that I need to cut others more slack. There have been countless situations when I worked and worked and worked – but the results came in all at once, not in a stepwise manner in proportion to my work. This must happen to others too. See point about a list of things I accomplished today above.
• “bring Mam to the theatre”
  • Complete fail on this front, however, I did a load of other things with my mom which I think sort of makes up for it.
  • Lessons:
    • Planning sucks sometimes.
• “go on a short holiday”
  • Tick!
    • Proof: here is me with the river Volga in the background. This river would have been a big deal for my ancestors, I imagine.

• “go to the gym at least 40 times”
  • Yeah right. I only managed 23 in September, October and November. This still means gym every 3-4 days. Oh well, should have been more realistic!
• “read 3 books”
  • I shouldn’t have badmouthed Taleb, The Black Swan is really good past the nauseatingly familiar first 150 pages or so.
  • The Handmaid’s Tale was underwhelming
  • Boris Akunin’s Love for History and Photo as a Haiku were also rather underwhelming (published in Russian).

 

This article in the Atlantic posits that adulthood is a social construct.

Any time I’ve heard the term social construct, I’ve been skeptical.

This time, the expression seems to have touched me.

Perhaps, that’s just a reflection on me being a millennial in her late twenties yet to produce any offspring. Any excuse to feel better.

But perhaps, it is actually somewhat true. The article highlighted having children and financial independence as the keys to adulthood.

Of course, independence is a key part, but it wouldn’t be fair to say that the elderly or the infirm who need additional support aren’t adults.

For a wild Homo sapiens, independence would have had more to do with physical strength and mental agility. For a modern Homo sapiens, independence is more about convincing other homos that this homo can be useful to them.

Independence is a social thing by definition, where other human beings perceive that they depend on you no less than you depend on them – and the more they feel that they depend on you, the more they will be willing to pay, subject to demand and supply.

At the same time, the most independent of our ancestors depended on other people too: someone had to keep the fire lit, share the food etc. But I am not sure that back then there was such a thing as independence as we understand it today. There was no office you could go to that would tell you whether you are above or below a certain line.

Were the males in their prime really independent? It seems that they would have had a high chance of being killed if they were seen by members of another tribe. Today, the equivalent man can arrive in another tribe and work for Google, etc.

As for the children part, the biological part is perhaps less important to becoming an adult than the act of caring and taking responsibility for another human being – which is also entirely social.

Thank you everyone for a fantastic blogging year – I gladly we are now 1500 strong. I wish you all a happy holiday season 🌲❤️

Edward Snowden developed a physical (anti-)spying app. Maybe you would like to install it if Aunt Minnie is staying with you over Christmas.

Interestingly, it’s only for Android. It’s a strange idea as it involves you not having your phone on your person.

Snowden has also said that he doesn’t carry a smartphone. I guess if I were him, I wouldn’t either.