First Post

In the new year I will write one article about something I’ve recently become interested in or am thinking about. A list of topics includes:

• Soldering Gameboy game batteries
• Cycling in Dublin city
• Improvement and effort as the goal
• Being stuck in “mono” mode

Deciding who you want to be

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that who you are is defined everyday by the choices you make. And it’s not even actions that you take on those decisions, but even your approach toward a topic influences who you become. If you frame something positively or negatively that is a point of reference that you will refer to in the future which in some way defines yourself.

You are as a personality a combination of genetics and experience. The ratio between them is highly disputed. In certain well studied books such as Robert Plonin’s “Blueprint” it’s argued in the former. But regardless of what you may believe there is some certain amount of choice you have for this. Although in some scenarios it can be difficult, I find it useful to keep an overarching perspective for any event that may occur.

As a recent example; a couple of weeks ago the tap in my kitchen began to drip. That noise easily gets under my skin, but more annoying is that someting has failed and must be addressed in a way that I am not familiar with. I try to take a stoic perspective on dividing the world into what you can change and what you cannot. There isn’t much point getting annoyed with the tap for breaking, it isn’t sentiant and I could do nothing to prevent it failing. Therefore I should focus only on what is in my control. In this case that meant becoming familiar with how modern taps work, finding a valid replacement part, and figuring out if I can install it myself (and how). It really doesn’t matter if it’s a tap, a surprise car breakdown or an unexpected bill. The method for dealing with it is all the same.