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Five Things Make a Post
Aug. 2nd, 2013 12:46 am1. Last week, the Rep Club had a quiz night to raise funds for renovating the theatre. I went along with a couple of friends and some of their friends, and upheld the noble and long-standing family tradition of coming second at quiz nights.
2. The house I'm renting is at that age where things are gradually wearing out and needing to be replaced, which makes me glad I'm only renting and not on the hook for what all this must cost. In the time I've been living here, I've seen the replacement of the hot water system, the toilet cistern, and the shower outlet pipe (which proved, on excavation, to consist of several large holes held together by rust), and at some point, something is going to have to be done about the rain gutters (see also: large holes held together by rust). In the circumstances, the fact that the kitchen sink takes several minutes to drain is such a minor detail that I haven't even bothered to mention it.
3. I caught part of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides on TV recently, including the scene where Captain Jack Sparrow learns he has a doppelganger who has been going around recruiting people in his name. Now I'm trying to remember if there's anything like that in the original novel; it's very much the kind of situation that would occur in a Tim Powers novel, though it would be played for understated horror instead of laughs and the scene where hero and doppelganger face off definitely wouldn't end with the same revelation that the scene in the movie leads to.
(While I'm on the subject, my opinion in brief of Pirates of the Caribbean is that the first movie was a pretty good swashbuckling pirate movie that happened to have some dark fantasy in, and the sequels tend too much toward being dark fantasy movies that happen to have some swashbuckling pirates in. And my opinion in brief of Tim Powers is that his novels are awesome, and I hope he got paid well for letting Hollywood plunder one of them.)
4. I've mentioned before that I have procrastination issues, which sometimes manifest in avoiding a job for months that turns out to be fairly straightforward and over in half an hour. A related problem is the one where I'm about to start on a job I know I can do when I notice an unexpected complication and decide to put it off while I think about (read: avoid thinking about) how it's going to affect things.
I think I've identified one of the underlying motivators for this sort of thing; put into words, it's something like "If I never start, there's no risk of it ending in everybody finding out I can't do it".
Having the words is useful; it suggests coping strategies. Due consideration of the actual probability that I won't be able to do whatever-it-is can be illuminating. Also, in some cases the fear that starting will lead to being discovered as a failure can be vanquished by the fear that not starting will lead to being discovered as someone who promised to do something and then never even started.
5. At the Toastmasters meeting this week, I was the designated MC, which also carried with it the duty of checking that people would be available for their rostered roles and arranging for gaps to be covered. The actual MCing part was not a worry, but the aspect that involved Being Organized and Phoning People kicked off the whole "this is going to end in disaster, the schedule will be full of holes, and it will be All My Fault" train, and up until a few hours before the meeting I was seriously considering calling in sick and hiding.
I got through it partly by the aforementioned due consideration of the actual probability of failure, partly by reminding myself that Toastmasters people are friendly and don't mind imperfect success as an outcome of honest effort, and partly by acknowledging that I also like my fellow club-members and wouldn't feel right dumping a potential disaster on one of them with a few hours notice -- but the single thing that tipped the balance was that I thought of the perfect joke to use in my opening remarks, and after that I couldn't bear the thought of not getting to deliver it.
(After all the stressing, the actual meeting ran smoothly and I'm very glad I went.)
2. The house I'm renting is at that age where things are gradually wearing out and needing to be replaced, which makes me glad I'm only renting and not on the hook for what all this must cost. In the time I've been living here, I've seen the replacement of the hot water system, the toilet cistern, and the shower outlet pipe (which proved, on excavation, to consist of several large holes held together by rust), and at some point, something is going to have to be done about the rain gutters (see also: large holes held together by rust). In the circumstances, the fact that the kitchen sink takes several minutes to drain is such a minor detail that I haven't even bothered to mention it.
3. I caught part of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides on TV recently, including the scene where Captain Jack Sparrow learns he has a doppelganger who has been going around recruiting people in his name. Now I'm trying to remember if there's anything like that in the original novel; it's very much the kind of situation that would occur in a Tim Powers novel, though it would be played for understated horror instead of laughs and the scene where hero and doppelganger face off definitely wouldn't end with the same revelation that the scene in the movie leads to.
(While I'm on the subject, my opinion in brief of Pirates of the Caribbean is that the first movie was a pretty good swashbuckling pirate movie that happened to have some dark fantasy in, and the sequels tend too much toward being dark fantasy movies that happen to have some swashbuckling pirates in. And my opinion in brief of Tim Powers is that his novels are awesome, and I hope he got paid well for letting Hollywood plunder one of them.)
4. I've mentioned before that I have procrastination issues, which sometimes manifest in avoiding a job for months that turns out to be fairly straightforward and over in half an hour. A related problem is the one where I'm about to start on a job I know I can do when I notice an unexpected complication and decide to put it off while I think about (read: avoid thinking about) how it's going to affect things.
I think I've identified one of the underlying motivators for this sort of thing; put into words, it's something like "If I never start, there's no risk of it ending in everybody finding out I can't do it".
Having the words is useful; it suggests coping strategies. Due consideration of the actual probability that I won't be able to do whatever-it-is can be illuminating. Also, in some cases the fear that starting will lead to being discovered as a failure can be vanquished by the fear that not starting will lead to being discovered as someone who promised to do something and then never even started.
5. At the Toastmasters meeting this week, I was the designated MC, which also carried with it the duty of checking that people would be available for their rostered roles and arranging for gaps to be covered. The actual MCing part was not a worry, but the aspect that involved Being Organized and Phoning People kicked off the whole "this is going to end in disaster, the schedule will be full of holes, and it will be All My Fault" train, and up until a few hours before the meeting I was seriously considering calling in sick and hiding.
I got through it partly by the aforementioned due consideration of the actual probability of failure, partly by reminding myself that Toastmasters people are friendly and don't mind imperfect success as an outcome of honest effort, and partly by acknowledging that I also like my fellow club-members and wouldn't feel right dumping a potential disaster on one of them with a few hours notice -- but the single thing that tipped the balance was that I thought of the perfect joke to use in my opening remarks, and after that I couldn't bear the thought of not getting to deliver it.
(After all the stressing, the actual meeting ran smoothly and I'm very glad I went.)
