🔬 Life Experiment 18, 2021

Hey There!

How was your week? Mine was Nah.

OK maybe not true. I managed to settle back home and get some rest. I even started to upgrade my studio again:

Yes, those screwdriver holders are new—baby steps towards the whole setup.

I finally had the time to reflect a lot. Filled the third A4 journal for this year. Did you get some rest and do some reflections over the last week?

Stuff that's better than YouTube or whatever else you consume.

We've got 7 atomic essays from this week of the ship30for30 challenge on Thinking Through Writing (TTW):

• 22: Is Thinking Through Writing enough for the complete cognitive process?
• 23: Can visual language help in concept explanations?
• 24: What's your relationship with writing?
• 25: Focus session
• 26: Mood session
• 27: Home Writing Environment
• 28: Question guided writing

I did some review sessions of my work and was told that my writing has no emotion. This might hold for some of the above essays, but I hope not for this newsletter.

Thinking Masterminds session this week was a complete flop. Three out of five panellists cancelled, and one person showed up for 5 minutes. Luckily we still discussed with the remaining panellist Indy the topic: Role of Logic vs Emotion in problem-solving. I promise the session notes are coming at some point.

🔬 Weekly experiment 17, 2021

Do you know the story of the seventy-year-old widower Ben Whittaker (played by Robert De Niro) from the movie The Intern (2015) :

Freud said: "Love and work. Work and love. That's all there is."

Well, I'm retired, and my wife is dead.

As you can imagine, that's given me some time on my hands. 

And retirement? That is an ongoing, relentless effort in creativity.

At first, I admit I enjoyed the novelty of it. Felt like I was away from school without permission. 

I used all the miles I'd saved and travelled the globe. 

I realized that the key to this whole deal was to keep moving. Get up, get out of the house, and go somewhere. Anywhere. Come rain or shine, I'm at my Starbucks by 07:15. Can't explain it, but it makes me feel part of something.

How do I spend the rest of my day? You name it: golf, books, movies, card games. Tried yoga, learned to cook, bought some plants, took classes in Mandarin.

Believe me, I've tried everything. (In Mandarine.)

I don't travel that much anymore; I spend time with my family. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an unhappy person. But I just know that there's a hole in my life, and I need to fill it. Soon.

He finds an ad at the local supermarket that a fast-growing fashion online startup is looking for interns aged 65 years or more. It says:

Cover letters are so old-fashioned. Show us who you are with a cover-letter video. Upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo using .mov .avi or a .mpg file.

He films a video:

I love the idea of having a place I can go to every day. I want the connection, the excitement. I want to be challenged, and I guess I might even want to be needed. 

The tech stuff took me a while to figure out. I had to call my 9-year-old grandson just to find out what a USB connector was. But I'll get there. Eager to learn.

I've been a company man all my life, I'm loyal, I'm trustworthy, and I'm good in a crisis.

I read once, musicians don't retire. They stop when there's no more music in them. Well, I still have music in me, absolutely positive about that.

He's hired. Watch the rest of the movie for the details.

I don't know what reminded me of the story, but I realized something. If I leave the field of experimental/computational physics, WTF am I going to do when I'm old when I get bored with all of the other stuff.

Sure, research and physics is full of traps/pitfalls/sacrifices but never, ever boring.

When I was at university, I was studying for a math exam in the library. There was a 70 plus-year-old professor who came in every day. He was there before me and left after me. He brought a nightstand clock with him and did research in the library. I always found his dedication really inspiring.

So what was my aha-moment? No matter what I decide to do in the future, I'll try to leave at least one leg in physics. Not willing to give up access to all the shiny toys. Oh, and I'll sure as hell keep going to the tea house (better than 7:15 Starbucks ...).

Hope it's now obvious that I'm overplanning my life, ...

Now the thinking experiment for you. What in your life is making you tick? What is bringing colour to your life, and you don't want to give up? What's making your life exciting. Dream a little, over plan a little. After all, no one died due to overplanning ... I think.

Now excuse me, I need to go and finish watching The Intern movie for the 3rd time. Luckily I can sleep in since it's a holiday here in Slovenia.

Ziga

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