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Jun. 2nd, 2005 07:22 pmOk, so Sunday's lesson in pain failed to discourage me and on Monday, in a desperate display of foolhardiness not befitting me, I ended up indulging in yet more of our national pastime. No, not drinking tea or insulting the French, but playing football. (Also known as soccer in countries lacking a Prime Minister.) This came as a result of attending a barbeque over on the Nottingham university campus with numerous locals. Apart from being on the losing team for football, I also managed to drink a fair amount - which is why we lost, surely? - and consume a couple of meaty comestibles courtesy of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
big_fat_stu's adept bbq-ing technique. And while I'm on the subject of adept techniques, _arnamentia_ casually flayed most of the skin off my hand during our lightsaber fight. This had followed her innocently remarking that she didn't know what a Jedi was, or what they did. Obviously one of the Sith then...
Fast-forward to Wednesday and I was in a not insignificant amount of pain, as befits a man who erroneously thought that playing football twice in two days after not having done so for about eight years was something approximating a good idea. In an interesting reversal of my situation a decade ago back in school, my cardiopulmonary system was perfectly fine but the limbs are out of practice. Yet still I struggled over to Derby that day for a job interview, which went 'ok'. (A word of advice - if I make the mistake of telling you that I have a job interview lined up, don't bother asking me how it went afterwards as I am no more qualified to comment on the quality of a job interview than I am on the attractiveness of another man. My judgement on such matters seems to bear absolutely no relationship to the actual reality and so attempting to make an evaluation of quality is almost entirely pointless.) Anyway... after that I managed to struggle down to the pub to see the usual suspects in the evening for a drink, but it was fairly empty so I just stayed long enough forvampiric_monkey to mock my age a few times. ;)
I've been doing some voluntary research into making proper use of the mind, both in analytical terms and creative terms. Some basic tests have shown that my memory is pretty bad compared to average, at least at recalling words and extracting information from a passage of text. For example, when given a list of 35 words and asked to read it through once, with no repetition, and then recall those words, I didn't remember any of the first or last 6, which is very uncommon. Out of all the other words I only remembered the obvious one and the repeated ones. This is interesting because I usually do well in exams - fundamentally a memory exercise - perhaps in large part because I learn rules with which to synthesis an answer rather than just remembering the facts and stringing them together. This in turn may just be because I am not very good at rote learning of said facts.
It also probably correlates with the fact that I have no concentration these days. I put this down to my multi-tasking tendencies on the computer. I can barely read a page of text without my mind wandering unbidden onto something entirely unrelated. Because of this lack of focus, playing chess or doing logic puzzles frustrates me no end, whereas I used to be something of an expert in those fields. Something to work on, perhaps.
Another such topic is that of practicing creativity. In exactly two minutes, how many uses for a paperclip can you come up with? I like to think of myself as creative because I write music, manipulate photos, and pick out obscure terms like 'comestibles' to litter my prose with. But sadly my paperclip test score was not so good!
Still, I'm feeling reasonably positive about myself at the moment - which itself implies illness ;) - so I don't mind seeing areas which need improvement.
big_fat_stu's adept bbq-ing technique. And while I'm on the subject of adept techniques, _arnamentia_ casually flayed most of the skin off my hand during our lightsaber fight. This had followed her innocently remarking that she didn't know what a Jedi was, or what they did. Obviously one of the Sith then...Fast-forward to Wednesday and I was in a not insignificant amount of pain, as befits a man who erroneously thought that playing football twice in two days after not having done so for about eight years was something approximating a good idea. In an interesting reversal of my situation a decade ago back in school, my cardiopulmonary system was perfectly fine but the limbs are out of practice. Yet still I struggled over to Derby that day for a job interview, which went 'ok'. (A word of advice - if I make the mistake of telling you that I have a job interview lined up, don't bother asking me how it went afterwards as I am no more qualified to comment on the quality of a job interview than I am on the attractiveness of another man. My judgement on such matters seems to bear absolutely no relationship to the actual reality and so attempting to make an evaluation of quality is almost entirely pointless.) Anyway... after that I managed to struggle down to the pub to see the usual suspects in the evening for a drink, but it was fairly empty so I just stayed long enough for
vampiric_monkey to mock my age a few times. ;)I've been doing some voluntary research into making proper use of the mind, both in analytical terms and creative terms. Some basic tests have shown that my memory is pretty bad compared to average, at least at recalling words and extracting information from a passage of text. For example, when given a list of 35 words and asked to read it through once, with no repetition, and then recall those words, I didn't remember any of the first or last 6, which is very uncommon. Out of all the other words I only remembered the obvious one and the repeated ones. This is interesting because I usually do well in exams - fundamentally a memory exercise - perhaps in large part because I learn rules with which to synthesis an answer rather than just remembering the facts and stringing them together. This in turn may just be because I am not very good at rote learning of said facts.
It also probably correlates with the fact that I have no concentration these days. I put this down to my multi-tasking tendencies on the computer. I can barely read a page of text without my mind wandering unbidden onto something entirely unrelated. Because of this lack of focus, playing chess or doing logic puzzles frustrates me no end, whereas I used to be something of an expert in those fields. Something to work on, perhaps.
Another such topic is that of practicing creativity. In exactly two minutes, how many uses for a paperclip can you come up with? I like to think of myself as creative because I write music, manipulate photos, and pick out obscure terms like 'comestibles' to litter my prose with. But sadly my paperclip test score was not so good!
Still, I'm feeling reasonably positive about myself at the moment - which itself implies illness ;) - so I don't mind seeing areas which need improvement.
