Growing New

A blog about my pursuit of productive pleasure. Check out my other stuff at www.mattwaldron.net

[growingnew-blog]

The Smile of Infinite Opportunity

“…slowly but surely an exhilarating sense of infinite opportunity stole through him; he felt as though he could have done anything, anything at all…He got to his feet smiling, brimful of confidence.”  This quote is from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and it’s one of my favourite moments in the whole Harry Potter series.  I love it because all Harry’s worrys, loneliness, and struggles turn into pure joy in the context of unstoppable confidence. (For the sake of those people who have not yet read the book I won’t say why that is.)

I think it’s obvious that we feel much better about our tasks, if we are confident of achieving something worthwhile.  But the feeling that life isn’t that straight forward is also pretty universal.  Although the pace of modern life and personal disconnection from the fruits of our labour might exacerbate these problems, they are certainly not new.  The first book of the Bible describes work like this: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you…by the sweat of your brow…” (Genesis 3:17-19).  So for thousands of years people have had the experience of finding work frustrating.  But the Bible also says it is not the way God created the world to function, and it’s not the way he leaves us to function.

One of the things I love most about following Jesus is that his death and resurrection show that God has not given up on running the world.  It is because of humanity’s rebellion against God seeking to run things our own way that the world often doesn’t work our way.  But despite our determination to do things our own way, God still loves us enough to send his only Son to live and even die for us.  And despite living with the frustrations of this world even to the point of being betrayed to an unjust death, Jesus was raised to life again.    If God could and would do that for people there is nothing good he wouldn’t do for us.  Jesus reveals a God worth trusting…a trust that fills me with an exhilarating sense of infinite opportunity.

[growingnew-blog]

Love Apples

Look out for my new blog comming soon.  Its all about desire, love and putting peeled apples under your armpit!

[growingnew-blog]

Fun learning is better learning

Another "Brain That Changes Itself" post - chapter 3 Doidge focuses on the work of Michael Merzenich.  In describing Fast ForWord, a program to assist people with learning difficulties, Doidge states:

Whenever a goal is achieved, something funny happens...This "reward" is a crucial feature of the program, because each time the child is rewarded, his brain secretes such neurotransmitters as dopamine and acetylcholine, which help consolidate the map changes he has just made. 

[growingnew-blog]

"For every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and *snap* - the job's a game."

Mary Poppins (reliving my childhood!)

[growingnew-blog]

When to gadget up?

I've always found that gadgets make tasks fun.  Not necessarily more productive, but fun.  But now I have a theory about why.  

I've just started reading The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge (I can see this inspiring a number of posts...).  Closing the first chapter, reflecting on the discovery of neuroplasticity, he writes that this work "has inspired cognitive scientist Andy Calrk to wittily argue that we are "natural born-cyborgs," meaning that brain plasticity allows us to attach ourselves to machines, such as computers and electronic tools, quite naturally.  But our brains also restructure themselves in response to input from the simplest tools too, such as a blind man's cane.

So I suspect that means three things.  Firstly, that gadgets are fun because they stimulate our brains.  Secondly, that means that if you upgrade your gadgets too often you will spend all the time adjusting to using them rather than actually being more efficient.  This is kind of obvious anyway, but it clairfied for me that the learning period is not just the time to learn the gadget.  To get real efficiency you need to get so practiced that using it feels natural and effortless.  Thirdly, that I will probably end up reading some of Andy Clark's stuff...

[growingnew-blog]

Close the blinds, I'm pretending to be a chicken.

So we finally got a new game console, having retired the Nintendo 64 some time ago. I thought that Wii Fit Plus might be a way for my computer-game-loving wife to actually enjoy exercise.  

Right now, actually doing exercise has become somewhat pressing because Cheryl is pregnant again.  The downside of that is that her back and hips are pretty much cactus.  So exercise is a must if she is to retain the cooperation of her body throughout the pregnancy.  But all the same, Cheryl is fairly resolutely anti-exercise.

So applying my theory of making productivity fun (and vice versa) I gave her the Wii Fit for Xmas.  But I must admit to being pretty nervous about it...I mean is it really possible to make exercise fun?

It's early days but so far so good.  I'm a little concerned that overall the amount of fun may be inversely proportional to the degree of exercise.  But there are some definite winners - my current favourite being the one where you have to flap your arms to fly yourself (dressed as a chicken in the game) on to various targets.  It get my heart pumping, my arms working and it's great fun.  Just remind me to close the blinds...and give Cheryl a go.

[her0inchic]

Your life is right now! It’s not later. It’s not in that time of retirement. It’s not when the lover gets here. It’s not when you’ve moved into the new house. It’s not when you get the better job. Your life is right now. It will always be right now. You might as well decide to start enjoying your life right now, because it’s not ever going to get better than right now—until it gets better right now!

(via coryjohnny)

[growingnew-blog]

DIY PANTS!  My latest attempt to solve a problem (needing clothes) in a fun way (making them myself).  Now I just need some actual fashion sense...

[growingnew-blog]

Am I significant?

A friend asked me, is it possible to live an objectively significant life but not feel satisfied? I thought this was an interesting question. Firstly because it seems to me that the idea of objective significance is controversial. Christopher Hitchen is quoted as saying, “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” He is very into being objective. But he also wrote in Hitch-22, “A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so”. On one hand he says that you can’t really call life meaningless. You can’t actually live as if life has no significance. But on the other, it is entirely subjective. He can’t give you the evidence he himself demands, and so he must admit that calling life meaningless makes it meaningless. It appears to me he shies away from the obvious logical inference. That would mean people are entitled to view each other’s lives as meaningless. However, I think that is nonsense. I think Chistopher Hitchen is much more on the right track when he says things like “We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors…but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.” I think the fact that humans cannot live life believing it is meaningless is itself admissible as evidence of the objective value of human life. So even when I don’t feel very significant, or God forbid, I feel someone else isn’t very significant, we still are.

[growingnew-blog]

It could be so much worse

Last year we had a fire in a house that we own (or at least co-own with the bank…).  We are just getting on top of getting it organized and I have been feeling a bit frustrated with it.  However I think there is a better way for me to look at it.

My brother and his girlfriend were renting it off of us.  The fire started in the middle of the day so no-one was home to get hurt.  There were no neighbours living on either side at the time, but one just happened to be there, saw the fire and called the fire brigade.  My brother’s bass guitar that is normally kept in the room where the fire started had been lent to a friend.

Now we, as landlords, had insurance, but my brother and his girlfriend didn’t.  A friend suggested that perhaps we could fudge the claim a bit to get some money for some of their stuff.  However, I felt we were so far ahead of what could have happened, so lucky no-one was hurt and it wasn’t much worse, it just seemed silly to lie for a few dollars.

And really I want that to be my attitude now.  Sorting out the house now is a great thing to be doing relative to how it could be.  Relative to situations lots of other people have to deal with.  So I’m going to try to remember to be grateful, and enjoy the process.

[growingnew-blog]

Old Friends Make Life Fun

I've just got back from a retreat with my family and three other families. The interesting thing was that not everyone who was invited came. And so just the way it worked out, was that all of us had been involved in our university interdenominational Christian club. So we have all been good friends for about twenty years. So the consequence of that was it made everything easy to organise, relaxed and fun. The relationships with the people made it a really enjoyable and productive break, and I've come back really refreshed. This reminded me of the career advice my dad gave me when I was finishing high school - any job can get repetitious and boring, it's the people that make a job enjoyable long term. I've always taken this into account in major career decisions like what to study at uni and which jobs to take. But it's just hit me that I could apply this on a much more day to day level. Eg. Efficient meetings are not only more productive, I could potentially enjoy them! I might enjoy exercise more if I find someone fun to do it with. And there are some things I would like to make more space to be by myself. Hardly rocket science, but I don't think I've appreciated the broad applicability of this principle before. friends

[growingnew-blog]

The Grumpiness I Deserve

Lately I have been getting grumpy. Or at least more grumpy more often. But I think I have figured out why. In our church at the moment we are studying the teaching of Jesus in Luke chapters 12-19. I was very struck by the stories he told about lost things (chapter 15). Eg. A man has a hundred sheep he loses one and so he goes to find it and when he finds it he's really happy and tells all his friends to celebrate with him. And Jesus said that in a similar way, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who do not need to repent. Just to be clear - the fact that the shepherd treats one sheep like this shows the value that shepherds in this culture put on every sheep. Presumably Jesus used this story to say that God values every human being. But the thing that struck me was the introduction to the section. Apparently Jesus was telling these stories to an audience consisting of both "sinners" - people with a sufficiently bad reputation to be publicly recognizable as bad people, and "Pharisees and teachers of the law" - the devout and professionally religious Jews respectively. The good people were grumbling about Jesus welcoming the bad people. Then Jesus goes on to tell three stories about people getting lost things back. But the third story, about a lost son, features an older brother who grumbles about it. It struck me that how these stories went down with that audience probably depended on how they saw themselves. If they saw themselves as a good person who God owes, then they would likely be grumpy about it. But if they recognized their shortcomings then they would be grateful to be valued. As I think over my recent grumpiness, I think I have been assuming, to quote an old song, that the world owes me something 'cause I'm here. So when people don't treat me with the respect I think I deserve, or things don't go my way, I have been feeling resentful about it. But actually, the facts that people do value me, and lots of things do go my way, easily trump the exceptions. I already have heaps to be thankful for that I cannot claim to deserve. Now I just need to remember that.

[growingnew-blog]

Discovering the Joy of Dirt

I'm not really into gardening.  That is to say, I don't like gardening.  I quite like being in beautiful gardens.  I just don't like being the one who does the work to create or maintain them.  So this week something weird happened.

My wife, Cheryl, wished to grow vegetables in a raised garden bed.  For reasons I cannot fathom, this would constitute fun for her.  Also it seems like a good opportunity for our 3 year old son, Blake, to learn about plants and where food comes from and that sort of thing.  However, because Cheryl has back problems we decided a raised garden bed was a necessity for Cheryl even if it is not for the vegetables.

The consequence of all this is that I ended up spending several hours this week transporting soil in a truck, on a shovel, in a wheelbarrow, and on the shovel again.  For those who are unfamiliar, let me just explain that soil is gardener speak for special dirty dirt.  This is not just dirt.  It's dirt to which other 'things' have been added to make it 'better' for the plants.  This dirt has signs at the supplier saying not to touch it without gloves.  A friend who visited expressed concern that it smellt like hobos had been using our yard as a toilet.

And yet, I actually enjoyed the process!  I got my blood pumping and a sweat up doing the shoveling and wheelbarrowing.  I enjoy physical exertion in itself but I often struggle to fit sport into my schedule. This way I was able to get some exercise while helping Cheryl enjoy one of her interests.

And one day a friend helped for a bit.  She commented that she really enjoyed it because she had never used a shovel before.  In fact, she felt like her dad had never allowed her to help with that kind of task.  Now, as a man, I suspect her father was trying to save her the trouble rather than stop her.  But either way, it made me appreciate the opportunity to find a way to enjoy doing something that was useful to my family.  

[growingnew-blog]

A Whole New Meaning to Riding the Bus!

Today while I was on the bus, a dude about 40 got on with his towel and boardshorts.  Instead of sitting in one of the many vacant seats, he stood in the vacant wheelchair space.  Then he - I don't know how else to describe it - rode the bus.  He bent his knees and moved his arms to keep his balance but he only grabbed the rail to stop himself actually falling over.  I was torn between thinking "he's a bit of a twat" and "that looks like fun".  And why not?!  If you're going to catch the bus to get somewhere, why not make it fun? 

[growingnew-blog]

Dirty.Pretty.Things on We Heart It. http://weheartit.com/entry/9360192

[growingnew-blog]

Growing New

I've been thinking about how my world tends to divide pleasure and productivity.  Pleasure tends to be consumptive and being productive is either not fun or not healthy.  But I don't want to be like that.  So to help me reflect on how I can grow in doing things differently I thought I'd do the 21st Century thing and start a blog.

I've been trying to think of a simple metaphor for what I am trying to do.  And I came up with Growing New.  It seems to me that both I and most living creatures, enjoy food sunlight and various other pleasures and then turn these into health and activity and growth.

So my plan is to try to think about my life this way.  I am going to try to enjoy things so much that it inspires me to produces things.  Or to put it the other way, I want to enjoy being productive, inspired by those things I enjoy.