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immersive interest
Sunday, August 26 2001
Today I continued being mired in my Linux box, to the detriment of all other interests. For me this is always a good indication that learning is going on. It's the way I learn. My parents first noted this immersive self-directed learning style when I was in high school. I'd get off the school bus with a truth table I'd just worked out, the logic necessary to do some sort of bank switching or device addressing on my old VIC-20. I'd spend the rest of the day with my electronics all spread out on top of the old freezer we used to store dry foods, meticulously soldering pins and routing individual grey wires harvested from ribbon cable. Back then, half of a day's success was that the computer would start up again after all the tinkering was done. When I'm in that mode, it always feels like my success depends on my not being disturbed, my not having to consider anything else in the world except the task at hand.
It's different now, of course. The web and my various web jobs have made me more multi-tasking and scatterbrained. I've matured and become slightly less selfish. And for the past few years I've had to worry about the needs of the people and animals I live with. Nonetheless, it's hard for me to strike any sort of balance between projects that fascinate me and the socio-emotional needs of those around me. In the back of my mind there's always the thought, "Can't they find their own immersive interest?" But then Noah will hop into my lap and start making his demands, and it's clear that concessions are necessary.
[REDACTED]
In the evening after dark, Gretchen and I walked Sally in the Long Meadow of Prospect Park. We stopped for a time to lie on our backs and look up at the stars, planets, Moon, and slowly creeping artificial satellites. There was a large reddish planet near the Moon and it seemed too bright to be Mars (since Mars in that position relative to the Sun would be rather far from Earth), but looking at an online sky map, I see that it actually was Mars. I don't know where I'd go for such easily-digestable information if I didn't have the Web.
After we'd stared at them for a rather long time, the fixed stars directly overhead seemed to be swimming slowly back and forth. For a moment we even thought one of them might actually be a very distant and phenomenally bright satellite. But this was apparently an optical illusion resulting from the lack of any fixed landmarks to stabilize our view. In other words, to some extent at least, we always have the spins.
Come to think of it, I haven't had the alcohol-induced spins for many months. I can't even remember the last time I got so drunk I threw up. Given all the drinking I do, isn't it a little strange that the worst consequence for me is a hangover?
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