What I Learned Today

Today I finished knitting a pair of socks that I started in January, 2010. That’s right, over a year and a half ago. Progress went in fits and starts, interrupted by trips, other knitting projects, and various daily demands on my time. About a month ago, I was all but done; one sock was complete and the other needed only the final bind-off row to finish it. A single row of knitting! But work and life got really crazy, preparing for my sabbatical and then traveling for a few weeks, then packing up and moving. I never could justify the time needed to sit down, look up and remind myself the details of Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off, and knit that row.

Today, mission accomplished.

And oh, how much more this means than finding time to execute a row of knitting! I have finished something! I finished a pair of socks. I now have these beautiful Coriolis socks knit from Painted Desert yarn:

And more than that, I have the psychological satisfaction of having finished something. One item, at least, can be removed from the mountain of Unfinished Things. I think all of us can, at a moment’s notice, come up with a list of things we haven’t completed: the shoelace that’s broken, the window that sticks, the yard not mowed, the book halfway read; and all of these add to the background level of stress we experience. Even cats, apparently, can experience frustration when given toys that can never by “caught”, like a laser pointer or a mouse inside a plastic tube.

How simple, how pleasurable it is to actually finish something!

Could it make sense to take a one-way trip to Mars? This notion has been floating around for years, but it got some recent press when Drs. Schulze-Makuch and Davies published a paper titled “To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars.” Their thesis is that this might be the solution to several of the barriers to a crewed mission, providing among other benefits a major reduction in mission cost (up to 80% reduction, which is pretty dramatic!). This can only be accomplished by shifting our perspective on what such a mission is: not a there-and-back-again jaunt like a trip to the Moon, but the establishment of a sustained presence on Mars, paving the way for future colonists and expeditions. Schulze-Makuch and Davies declare that:

“… to attain it would require not only major international cooperation, but a return to the exploration spirit and risk-taking ethos of the great period of Earth exploration, from Columbus to Amundsen, but which has nowadays been replaced with a culture of safety and political correctness.”

The initial reaction to a one-way trip concept is often one that assumes that the humans involved would immediately expire at the end of their mission. “One-way” sounds like “suicide”. But it’s not more of a “suicide” than inhabiting Earth, which is just as much of an ultimate death sentence — we just don’t think of it that way. Well supplied and informed, an expedition to Mars could survive for a long time, albeit in a harsh and demanding environment. They might not live as long as they would on Earth — or they might live longer; no one’s going to get hit by a car on Mars! And just think of the amazing accomplishments this group of 21st-century pioneers would attain, in technology and in science, and also in poetry and psychology: making Mars a human location, not just a light in the sky.

This short paper is definitely worth reading to see how Schulze-Makush and Davies set out the arguments for, and the conceptual design of, such a one-way mission. I was heartened to see their clear statement that “No base on the Moon is needed to launch a one-way human mission to Mars.” This is true of any mission to Mars, but has become somewhat lost in the various Constellation program discussions.

If there really were an opportunity to volunteer for a one-way mission to Mars, where you’d live out your days in a “cave-centered biosphere”, exploring and discovering and serving as a pathfinder for future advances — I’d sign up in a heartbeat. It’s difficult to think of any more important and meaningful goal to which I could devote my life here on Earth. (I know some, or all, of you will disagree with me on this, which neither offends nor dissuades me in the least. :) )

Wikipedia has an entry describing burnout, specifically in the work context. (It’s not really relevant how I ended up there. Right.) I learned that there is a “well studied measurement of burnout” called the Maslach Burnout Inventory. It makes use of a “three dimensional description of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy”. Maslach originally characterized burnout for professions such as psychology and social work, in which those experiencing burnout can not only be ineffective but start to view their patients or clients in a depersonalized or dehumanized way. But anyone in any profession can suffer ill effects from reaching unbearable levels of frustration and exhaustion. A later study showed that the MBI had “sufficient fit” as a descriptive/diagnostic tool for various occupations, except for those in advertising (hm?).

While the MBI itself is only available by purchase, you can take a quick self-test to get an idea of your burnout level (if it isn’t already obvious to you). The same site also provides tips on avoiding burnout. The one that resonated most with me was advice to “protect the parts of your job that give you meaning and satisfaction.” When too much of your time is swallowed up in the dreck that provides no satisfaction, but from which you cannot escape, you automatically ratchet up the burnout scale. It’s good to be reminded that taking time to focus on the parts you really enjoy benefits everyone you work with, not just you.

FarmVille is, I hear, some kind of game one plays on Facebook. Well, not just one; the game has over 82 million active users as of May 2010. I’ve never tried it myself, so I don’t really know what makes it so fun or addictive. And although I knew of it in passing, I thought it was confined to Facebook.

Not so.

FarmVille (and its sister games such as Mafia Wars) have entered the real world, the one that you and I live in, through (of all places) 7-11. I was driving along a week ago when I noticed this billboard. That’s right, if you buy a Slurpee, you get a “virtual gift” in the FarmVille world. The gift turns out to be 200 “FarmVille dollars.” Am I the only one who finds this utterly bizarre? I’m aware that people buy and sell virtual goods for real dollars in Second Life. I know that some MMORPG players pay others real dollars to generate game commodities like experience points or gold. But for these virtual objects and services to obtain a “real world” value, they have to reach a certain level of social dissemination and perceived value in a large real-world community. And certainly, 82 million people is a large community — I hadn’t realized just how many people were playing this game.

I now wonder how much of an incentive 200 $FV is. What’s that worth to anyone? Is there an exchange rate with USD? To those of you who’ve played FarmVille: would the promise of 200 $FV be enough to persuade you to buy a Slurpee?

I have read and re-read and savored Anneli Rufus’s wonderful book, “Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto.” The author defines a loner as one who actually enjoys time spent alone — as distinct from those who are lonely (which is the state of being alone and wishing you weren’t). Being a loner doesn’t mean that you hate other people (misanthropes claim that distinction), but that you just don’t need them around all the time, and you rather hope they can understand this and not take it poorly. My full review of the book goes more into its scope and ideas, but here I wanted to record some of my favorite quotes:

• “We are at our best, as Orsino says in Twelfth Night, when least in company.”
• “Anything done alone is discredited, demeaned, devalued, or at best, simply undiscussed. People talk about other people, and of the things they do with other people.”
• On phone calls: ”Being home alone, they presume, could not possibly also mean being busy. Or contented exactly as you are. Unwilling to be interrupted.”
• “Loners have nothing against love, but are more careful about it.”
• “But loners, no matter our taste, eat many meals, if not most, alone. At home, this affords the essence of choice and spontaneity […] Jell-O eaten from a toy pail with a toy spade while taking a bath? A beef-tongue omelet? Why the hell not?”
• “Unmoved by the mass hysteria, immune to the contagion by which nonloners spend fortunes just proving they like a certain song or style, we do not give the entertainment industry what it seeks.”
• “Time spent alone has a way of winnowing the inventory of what we need.”
• “For some loners, a paucity of friends is a matter of time. There is simply too much to do alone, no time to spare. Shared time, while not entirely wasted if the sharer is a true friend, must be parceled out with care, like rationed flour. And time shared, even with true friends, often requires loners to put in extra time alone, overtime, to recharge.”
• Quoting Sasha Cagen: “For the quirkyalone, there is no patience for dating just for the sake of not being alone. On a fine but by no means transcendent date we dream of going home to watch television. We would prefer to be alone with our own thoughts than with a less than perfect fit. We are almost constitutionally incapable of casual relationships.”
• “The solo expedition, traveling beyond reach, is a big thing still and will always be. To the loner, such an adventure promises epiphanies, wonders never to be forgotten, elemental challenges, confrontations with the ultimate and the self.”

If that’s not motivating, I don’t know what is.