Year 2: Thought 5: Getting in the Game

So I'm going to try to do some speculating this year.  I've spent a good bit of time reading and thinking about my hobby.  I thought I might as well see if I can make some money because of it.  While I'm happy to play in tournaments and win prizes that isn't what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about trading.  In my head I know there is no inherent value in the cards I play with.  It is just ink on cardboard.  But the use other people (and myself!) have for them is undeniable.  There is only one real source that prints them so there is a stable second market for the cards.

I've toyed with trading in the past.  I would try to make good trades but my mind was always focused on getting the cards I needed to build decks.  Now I'm going to try something different.  Trading for value.  I just want to see how much I can grow my collection.  Ideally without putting tons of cash into it.

I have set aside a small amount of my yearly budget for my hobbies and I'm going to see what I can do with it.  The goal is to get enough value from this that I don't need to keep putting money into the game, but when I want to build a new deck I can trade away some of the stock I've built up into cards.

So why am I doing this?  Part of the reasoning is just to cut down on the portion of my budget that gets spent on cards.  The less I spend on cards the more I can spend on other things.  But really when it comes to a hobby I expect to spend some money to participate in it.  I play cards to relax, not to start up another job.

I like the idea of turning something small into something large.  Hard work and intelligent planning are the keys.  However it will ultimately end up taking up time.  I could use that same time to make more money.  In fact if I wanted to just be efficient I could do freelance programming and make more money (and therefore spend it on more hobbies!) than I could by grinding trades.  So it comes back down to can I make money while doing something I enjoy.  I don't particularly enjoy thinking about my full time job.  It isn't something that has captured my imagination or my day dreams.  But this game has.

I think this will be fun experiment.  Hopefully I don't bust out early, but we'll see.  I have a spreadsheet ready to track all my purchases and plot the changing values of my investments.  I've watched a couple of other people do something similar (though with varying levels of dedication) and even seen a few challenges to see who could get the greatest value over time.

If anyone else is interested in comparing notes or trying a challenge I'd definitely be up for it.  Hopefully I'll be able to learn enough from them to extrapolate about other trends or vice versa.  It's interesting to be involved in something that isn't purely mechanical but depends on the decisions of other people as the driving force behind the changing values.

*Edit* 02/01/2013 I was able to attend my first event where I was really prepared for trading.  I was able to increase my collection value from $450 to $550.  I did shift a good bit of that value (a little over $100) into longer term investments.  I expect them to double in price but it will take a little over 10 months for that to happen.  Since that was roughly the 'profit' from last night I don't feel bad.  I still have plenty of stuff in the binder that is worth trading.  I did end up building a deck that carries about $200 of the collection in it so I want to put more thought into whether or not it is worth it.  Luckily $100 of that $200 are the long term investments so it's not as big a portion of my trade stock as it looks like at first.

Year 2: Thought 4: Why is it hard to admit that I am bad at stuff?

There are more things that I am bad at than things I am good at.  Given the wide variety of skills a person can possess it makes sense from a mathematical point of view.  There will be a few things that you can invest the time in to become truly skilled at.  There will be a few things that you have a natural aptitude for.  Put together you won't be good at most things.

As an intellectual truth this seems pretty inescapable.  It is also easy to admit to in the abstract.  But when given specific things that isn't always my reaction.  Things that I have no exposure to it is easy to admit being bad at.  But things that either I expect or socially I am expected to be good at it is hard to admit being bad.

I am not very good at trivia.  It's weird because I would think it would be something I would be good at.  I was always very good at Bible trivia as a kid.  But I participate in trivia contests both at restaurants and via email.  I consistently come in last place.  It's harder to admit that I am bad at because a part of me equates being good at trivia with being smart.  I really don't like the idea of other people being significantly smarter than me.

I am alright at programming computers.  Unfortunately for me the group I work with is composed of super geniuses.  I am definitely the weakest programmer in my group.  In my department I would say I am around average.  My group is 4 people, the department is closer to 20.  That was definitely hard to admit to myself.  I spent so much of my childhood knowing that the only thing I was a lot better at than most of my peers was academics.  Now I'm surrounded by people who make me look like an academic light weight.  Coming from a family where most of my cousins failed out of college to a community of people composed of doctors, ph.d.'s and a ton of people with masters is weird.

I am good at math.  I have a lot of memories of growing up being obsessed with math.  Now I wonder sometimes if I enjoy math more because I know a majority of people struggle with it.  I have a natural aptitude for it, but could my draw to math be motivated by a desire to maintain preeminence in a field fewer people are interested in?  I don't think so, but I can't say there isn't an appeal to the idea of being interested in something where it is easy to be an expert.

In the last few years I've really worked at admitting I'm bad at stuff.  I used to refuse to believe that I was bad at anything.  There were things I was good at, and things I would be good at if I just applied myself (but didn't feel like it, or have the time, or whatever).  As I've spent time trying to learn new skills I've found out that no matter how hard I try there are just some things I suck at.  Excelling at something (when in a large pool of talented people) is hard.  It takes a lot more than a little effort and knowing a few tricks to make yourself look smarter.

The thing that really drove a lot of these things home to me was just looking at data.  I play cards a lot and I started tracking my win/loss ratios.  It turns out I wasn't very good at something that I did a lot and thought I should be good at.  I've put in some serious time and seen an increase in skill, but I'm still not very good.  While I could fairly easily beat a novice I can't just effortlessly crush people.  Anyone who has also put in time will give me a real challenge.  I've played with several people who consistently beat me no matter how hard I try.  I can look back and see that some of that is variance, but some of it is just those people being better than me.

So, the real question is what do I do?  Do I want to learn just enough to impress people?  To be able to coast when playing against the unskilled?  Or do I really want to apply myself?  I used to be able to  beat people at chess.  It was because I played unskilled people and knew a few traps to play.  When I went to play at a chess club I got crushed.  I played my brother some when he was very seriously studying chess and got crushed some more.  Then I quit playing.  I was a teenager and I couldn't wrap my brain around someone else being better than me.  I rationalized my defeats to protect my ego from considering that other people might be smarter or more skilled than me.  I really regret that.  I wish I had stuck with it and tried to improve my game.

So I think I'm going to stick this out.  I might get crushed over and over but I'm going to keep my eye on improving my skills and not whether or not someone out there is better than me.  It isn't a competition to see who is the smartest.  And if it becomes one, then I'll just have to be okay with not being the smartest person in the room.  But I will be the smartest me possible.

Year 2: Thought 3: What are the base units of friendship?

I only have so much time.  24 hours in a day.  168 (*edit* I originally wrote 156) hours in a week. 52 weeks in a year.  I end up spending quite a bit of that sleeping and a depressing amount of it driving back and forth to work.  How much of my time does it take to care for a friendship?

I have known a lot of people over the course of the last 30 years.  Some friendships have been short and intense.  Others have been long but sporadic.  I've grown apart from a majority of the friends I've had in my life.  Statistically speaking I wonder how many of the friends who I am close to today I'll still be close to 5 years from now.  10?  15?

There are a lot of reasons friendships grow less intense.  The biggest one is just a lack of interaction.  I have very few friends that I talk to every day.  It is in fact a small group of friends that I email on a daily basis.  Others I see on a weekly (or sometimes twice a week) basis.

I don't think I'm necessarily closer to the people I talk to more often.  But I do think there is a critical threshold where friendships are on a downward slope.  Daily, weekly, and monthly communication are all significant maintenance milestones.  I can maintain a friendships while only talking to the person once or twice a month.  Anything less than that and the unstoppable flow of time will erode the closeness of the friendship.

Oh we'll still be friends.  When we get together it'll be like old times.  But as my time is taken up by more and more people who are in the here and now there is less time for me to dedicate to preserving and maintaining friendship with more distant people.

So, what is the basic unit here?  What kind of regular communication needs to take place to keep a friendship alive?  I think monthly is enough to sustain a friendship, but what about for it to thrive?  I would think at least weekly communication.

This is a sad reality.  There is a scarcity of everything.  Resources, time, mental effort and energy.  There is only so much to go around and it would be silly to pretend otherwise.  We should try to spend what small coinage we have to the best possible effect.  Does this mean maintaining a small group of friends?  Is there a critical threshold past which can't accept new friends?  I only have 10 friend units and I'm using 2 units per the 5 friends I have per week so sorry, I just don't have any intimacy/friendship to spare?

That seems weird.  It also doesn't quite seem to match up with reality.  Either I'm not at my max friendship usage or there is a growth of friendship.  I only have so many evenings a week but I think I can maintain a friendship with less effort and time than I think.  That could be idiosyncratic to me and the way I approach friendship.

At the end of the day I'm happy with the number of friends I have.  I think I have room for at least one more though.  Hopefully I'll always have room for at least one more.

Year 2: Thought 2: Priority Hacking

Sometimes a particular thing will seem very important.  This can be awesome as you'll dedicate lots of resources to the thing.  Whether it be a new skill you need to acquire or a problem that needs to be fixed, greater resource allocation is cool.

I love playing card games so it is easy for me to spend a lot of time reading up on different strategies.  It doesn't take discipline to read articles online.  It is a pleasure.  I feel great while I'm doing it.

Why can't I have just as much pleasure in driving to work?  I don't.  I make myself drive to work.  I don't sit at home anticipating with glee my drive in to work.

Now sometimes you can hack your priorities.  Recently I was able to convince my wife that since I was going to endure misery to save us some money (by driving us for 16 hours instead of paying for plane tickets) that I should get a little bit of that money.  She agreed and my priorities shifted.  Rather than complaining endlessly about having to drive (which I hate) I quietly got in the car and got to work.

The trick was associating the pleasure of getting $ (which could be spent on frivolities) with the work.  It's a direct correlation to try and make the work a little less worse.  This is the main driving force behind me going to work.  I do something I don't want to do (write financial software) so that I can do stuff I do want to do (eat, sleep in a bed, buy board games, etc...).

But wouldn't it be nice if we could just decide to set priorities in our head the way we set CPU priorities for different processes?  Being in shape is important to me and I know in my head that in the long run being healthy will pay off.  But I can't just shut off my desire to do something fun or make carrots magically taste like cake.  There are external constraints my brain and body put on me.

Some of these are probably adaptive.  Sweets (highly dense in energy) should produce a pleasure reward so that you seek them out.  They are great food sources for anyone who is worried about survival.  Sex better be pleasant or you'll have people weighing the cost of raising children with maintaining a fun going life style and have a dropping population rate.

At the end of the day though the reason I'm glad we can't do this is the creative impulse.  It isn't efficient.  It isn't always useful.  But it is beautiful.  It would be too easy in a world where we can hack our brains to make doing the optimal thing easy for us to lose sight of beauty.  We've come up with a lot of beautiful and crazy stuff in our pursuit of being happy.  The world would end up being a cold sterile place if we only make the smart efficient choices.

Year 2: Thought 1 - Why Write?

People have all kind of weird impulses.  Some are constructive, some are self destructive, and some are just plain entertaining.  But what drives me to write?

I think there are couple of layers here.  Let's take a look at each one and see if we can make any sense out of it.

Part of the drive is a need to accomplish something.  Consumption largely leaves me feeling empty.  While I enjoy reading a good book or watching a good movie if I spend too much of my time enjoying other people's creations and not making anything myself I start to feel unbalanced.  Even if it is not something significant to anyone else the act of creation lets me feel a sense of accomplishment.  Even if the thing created is not really worth of a sense of accomplishment.

Part of the drive is a desire to share and interact.  While I enjoy a well written post or a elegant and profound thought sharing it with other people makes it better.  I think this is composed of a need to perform and a need to receive validation from others.  If other people think my thoughts are interesting then I'm not wasting my time thinking them.  If some people find it interesting and others boring it is easy to separate them into groups of people who get it and people who don't get it.  There is also definitely a thrill when my thoughts open someone else up to a different perspective or help them reconcile conflicting thoughts in their head.

I think the dominant part is the need to create.  I rarely get a sense of creation accomplishment from my job.  While the last year and a half has allowed me to create something pretty intense I don't derive a huge sense of satisfaction from it.  The things I make are not stand alone.  They exist inside a system that I have a very small impact on.  I can occasionally point to a screen and say "That is mine" or an intense algorithm and say "That is mine".  But ultimately my work will be rewritten and overwritten by others.  A large portion of my time will be spent fixing bugs other people (and of course my own) introduced to the system.

I'm better at fixing bugs than creating.  Writing up portions of a system from scratch is not my strong suit.  Historically I haven't found it very interesting or engaging work.  I doubt that will change as long as I am working on financial software.  Most of the problems just aren't that interesting to solve.

So what is a person to do?  Human beings (at least me) have an innate desire to create something.  We want to see our impact on the world.  I think we see this in our desire to have children and to raise them.  We want to send something out into the world that we have had a hand in.

My strongest creative desires is in games.  I love games.  I want to create games not to make money but to payback the people who made games when I was a kid.  I think back to the passion I had for a lot of games I played as a kid and I want to pass that on to the next generation.

Games that are fun.  Games that are complicated.  Games that are sometimes a wonderful vehicle to tell a stirring story.

Another creative desire I have (not quite as strong as my desire to make games) is for writing.  I have always been a voracious reader.  As I aged I have been able to see more and more of the soul writers have poured into the books I have loved.  Again, I want to be able to do for others (specifically I'm thinking of nerdy young guys) what has been done for me.  I want to give the joy and passion a good story brings to my fellow men and women.

I hope to get a significant portion of work done on a novel this year.  I'd like to move from thinking about this idea for a great story and give it life.  But I also want to write in a freer form and that is what this blog is about.  When I see (or think) of something beautiful I want to create a record of it for history and to share it with others.  Come on people let's all share something beautiful.

Year 2: Let's try this again

Ok, we're going to try again this year.  2013.  I can do it this time.  Definitely going more free form this year.  Not going to feel like I have to post about something more abstract.