You Ever Start Using A Tool For A Project And The Vibes Are Just Sliiiiightly Off? Thats How I Feel About

You ever start using a tool for a project and the vibes are just sliiiiightly off? That’s how I feel about actix-web. It seems nice, but I get the impression there may be something more sinister under the surface.

Sometimes I think about the hobbies and skills I’ve picked up over the years and I wonder... why?? What about these specific things makes me happy? Is there some underlying idea that I really love that connects all the dots? Or is that just the pattern-finding part of my brain seeking commonalities?

Well, let’s take a step back: How do we pick up new skills anyways? Clearly, at some point we were exposed to them, and clearly we decide that they are enjoyable and it’d be fun to continue doing them, but what feeds into that decision? Is there something inherent in us that connects to specific skills? Or is there something special about the way we are exposed to them?

And why does it feel harder and harder to pick up new things the more entrenched we become in the old ones?

I don’t pretend to have the answers. Instead, I’ve got a mental vibe-check that makes sense in my head (which maybe is a skill in and of itself). To me it’s all about mental models -- the way we fit things into our brains. When I learn a skill, I feel like I’m connecting dots, figuring out some set of ideas, shortcuts, connections, and memories that I’ll be able to draw upon to do the skill better and faster.

But generating these models from scratch sure isn’t easy -- think about how long it takes kids to understand grammar or basic arithmetic when they have nothing to build off of. And they don’t have anything else to clog up their minds while they’re learning!

So once we’ve got a few skills modeled, suddenly some things start coming more easily! Different skills have some of the same dots and connects, and rather than building new models from scratch, I can perhaps take bits off of ones that already exist.

The more pre-built models we have to pull from, the less appealing working from scratch becomes and the more difficult it seems. So, if that’s what guides me when I learn new skills, it actually makes quite a lot of sense that there are commonalities between all the things I’ve gotten into over the years! I’ve been taking shortcuts and cheating to learn the things faster!

So wait, what does this mean about my skills? It’s not that they’re actually getting any harder to learn, it’s just that we have less time and mental capacity to learn them, and that we like shortcuts (I mean who doesn’t). But now that I realize there’s a scenic route I’m missing, perhaps I should try to take it one of these days. It suddenly doesn’t seem quite as bad :)

Hey OP, I feel ya. I really do. But the nice thing is that there’s an easy something you (yes you!) can do about that! You can just ask, in a totally chill and platonic way, “hey, do you mind if I rest my head on your shoulder/put my arm around you/give you a hug?” It took me the longest time to realize that as much as I’m a touchy-feely person, so are many, many other people.

That’s only my experience, but I think it makes a lot of sense -- humans like touch, and we like feeling close to each other. And while a lot of the time that stuff reads as ““romantic”“ it really really don’t have to. By challenging that idea and being physically close with your friends, you can help to change that :) Plus, who doesn’t like being cozy with their pals?

Sometimes I get the worst yearning to just lean in and hold my friend, but like--platonically. I don't know his orientation but I wouldn't want him to think anything of it either way. I wish touch wasn't seen as such a romantic thing at times

Ok this is like one of my favorite ace fun facts, but did you know that over 50% of aspec youth are also trans or nb?

(source: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/asexual-and-ace-spectrum-youth/)

Ok I don't know if this is a me thing or a thing that other aroace people might feel. But one of the reasons I think I am sex repulsed and romance repulsed is because it makes me really aware of the gender people perceive me to have & the associated gender roles & expectations. I've never really questioned my gender until recently since I don't think I really understood what gender actually is. But I mostly think it's just the perceptions of heterosexual cis men that make me very uncomfortable.

blog is pretty now i can go back to thinking about other (probably more important) things >:)

The other thing is that there can be an attitude of thinking that you know better than OSHA. You’ve been doing this work for years without deadly injury, clearly you know what you’re doing. And of course there’s the whole “well it’s safe enough for my tolerance” bit, which mixes with the mentality of safety just being something that slows down work. There’s a whole tangle of factors that make this a really tricky thing to change, especially if you don’t get to people while they’re still new to the industry.

Hon if he hates OSHA you gotta run and run fast