Gently Curious

  If you are a bit ADHD, you will find yourself often getting into trouble with people. I say often and I mean often but for differing reasons, one of them is when a thing someone does just grinds you because it's just inefficient to do it that way.

Big triggers of grumpiness (anxiety) like lack of sleep, stress, technology that glitches, over-loading or even a food change are more general ones that we have some amount of control of. But some you have no control over. Like when a friend takes 20 minutes to eat lunch and you know it takes you 10-15 minutes and the train will be arriving exactly then. It grinds you, if the train runs early, you want to be on it early too dammit! I have always had FOMO (fear of missing out) which means I love to arrive early to every meeting. My FOMO however had started to drive my wife mad. I needed to teach myself to be less anxious about time itself. Last week I twice managed to actually run a few minutes late getting somewhere and a miracle happened, I did not end up driving faster. And I missed out on nothing at all.

Gently Curious

What grinds me, is not just people who eat slowly. I had to realise that my FOMO and wanting to get to every single meeting 5 minutes early was also stressing other people. This works two ways a lot, much more than I had realised. And just like my totally irrational desire to never miss things was not understood by my family, I often don't understand their quirks too. I very often fail to accommodate others, I mean why can't they just do things my way, the better way? Well, that's because everyone has different goals and different things they get out of the habits they might have. So how do I satisfy my unhappiness with the choices of others to do things wrong?

I used to just tell any person straight out, that that is not the best way! And when you turn it in it's head, and instead ask, what they are doing first, then ask why they do it that way, but without asking the why question, ask the how does this activity meet a need, for example how often do we all do "X" in a day for example? Almost in a reflective way, as if you are asking yourself, and then even though you will then learn why they do it the wrong way, and you will not be able to change them, you will understand the person better. Ever since I started being more gently, I have been building my own list of annoying things that I do, which I now work on, to minimise. It goes two ways.

Sex sells the box

Why do people put a sexy elf on the cover? To sell the box, but even if the game inside sux! ...will it still sell? Apparently it does. I tried out the demos for Spellforce and Spellforce2 (2006), it was easy enough to find and download, and immediately you discover that they come out with a swathe of expansions for extra play, the review ratings averaged around 6 and 7, which meant it was "worth a look, but do not expect anything". The graphics are good, and sound+voices are up to par, and if you had the patience to play through totally linear storylines and non-interactive combat, it would be fine. But I do not. I give it a 4. Basically because it suffers from something a lot of RPG types do, the magic-users are powerful, and die easily, but because it is impossible to pause the game, it is not feasible to swap spells an target properly. (See: Dungeon-Siege 2 from a recent post, which does this very well).

Whoohoo Photoshopping, well in this case picture-publisher.

I am ill this weekend. Having fun with the web cam taking photos of the room, and then giving them an electric effect. Not great, throat is sore - and I am lacking sleep as a result, (from playing spellforce demos more likely) my inbox is starting to flood over a little with Christmas cheer, and the Christmas cards are starting to come and go.

Rhys got very inventive, and has decorated the plain generic cards we sent out to friend in the village-school with some hand-drawn on-the-fly art. It looks more like noughts and crosses, but on closer inspection, the x's are kisses, and the noughts are hugs. I am astounded by the creativity displayed here. I am always wondering, what was I going at that age? The toys of today are so much advanced, the boys have slippers that flash at you when you walk or jump. I never had that, the world has so many more things that go roar, blink, giggle and squeak. I mean a laughing-toy for red-nose day is a disposable SIC with a simple motion-detector based on a loose spring inside a copper tube so it touches the tube when shook. When the battery dies, you turf it out (It costs £4 for batteries, and the toy is only £1). Oh back to the boys, Rhys made hand-prints the other day. All on his own - all prompted when he discovered a old foot-print made by Gregory at daycare back in Johannesburg. Rhys colored in his chalk-board, then wet the board with some paper-towel to make a blue wash. Next step, is two hands on board, then 2 hands on paper. Pretty good results actually. Clean-up was not a mission either, although mom had to mop the floor latter on because they carried on playing with the chalk.

Greg is very chatty when he wants to be, and can make up stories about how and why things are quite quickly. I have a few black T-shirts, with logos on them of course, so I ask Greg, what the TShirt says, and his answer? "Black shirt with letters" of course, how silly of me to not translate the Microsoft Logo like that. Rowan is working a day-shift at the local care-home, which works pretty well for us. It is not far, pays the minimum wage, but flexible. Rowan fits in night shifts normally Tuesday night, so I take the boys to school the next morning, and Greg spends a little longer the next day at the playgroup (called the rosary) Rhys only finishes school after 3:00, so it is a long enough day for mom to get some sleep in. I need sleep too.

I still feel a bit out of things in general. I think that's the winter depression, living with short daylight, the happy vitamins in your blood stop coming from the sun.