My Future Scientists

I watched a TED Talk today that inspired me. Children are actually brilliantly creative. Possibly because they haven't quite gotten to the point of feeling the pressures of societal expectations or the idea of others judging their work.
My theory is that children are all roughly the same. They may have different personalities, but I suspect that children are all in the same general range in terms of intelligence and creativity. This makes children somewhat like tools that you can use almost interchangeably. Tools for science.
The talk I watched was about using a bunch of kids to write a scientific paper. Kids love science. I can get My Future Kids to do science. Get them to write a paper. That would be awesome. I could get them to do it all the time. Once or twice a year, maybe. What are kids in elementary through middle school even doing anyway? Acquiring general knowledge and waiting to get older so they're easier to work with. Pah! They could be doing science! Real science. Not that stuff that's learning about other people's science. Real science! I will probably need to find out how they prompted the kids to get a question out of them and found the resources to try to answer that question. I hope they wrote a paper on getting kids to do some real science.
I remember trying to do science in 5th grade or so. That science was terrible. I only really tested things that I already knew the answer to and that would be easy to perform. I think the trick is to start by asking a lot of questions and then finding someone with a lab and the resources to help you answer that question.
I think the framing is important too. It's a lot easier to think of things to explore when you really are exploring. Much easier than when a teacher says "do some science for me, you'll need to start with a hypothesis...". For some reason it's a lot easier and more fun to do things that you don't have to do. I don't really know why. Maybe it's a motivation thing. Once you have to do something, the motivation is that you have to, whereas if you don't, the motivation is that it's an interesting thing that you want to do and can stop if you don't want to do it anymore.

Lives of Scale

I was at a talk about start-ups today. I'm not really interested in starting a company, but they mentioned something interesting.They said that it's easier to transition from being a student to running a start-up than from working for a large company to running a start-up. You know, because students are poor and work all the time and so do start-up owners, whereas people at large companies get paid a ton and have very set hours. Once you get paid more, you start spending more. I notice this a bit when I actually started getting the meager income I do from student employment. I sometimes buy things because I want them now. I'm still a cheap bastard, but how will that change when I actually start making real money? 

At some level, the more fund you have, the greater your tie to your money, and the less freedom you have. Suddenly the things you do cost money. Suddenly you have a mortgage; you have responsibilities. Suddenly you can't just get up and leave. And what if you wake up one day and don't like where you are?

At some point or another, My Future Kids will exist, I will have very real responsibilities regardless of how much money I make. Until then, however, it will just be me and maybe Spouse. Don't get me wrong, I want to work for some company and make the big bucks. I just don't want the big bucks to hold me back, well as little as possible, anyway. I realize that any kind of job security with the big bucks comes at a cost. But I decided something. If I don't have to live paycheck to paycheck, I won't.

But I can see how the money is dangerous. Why would I live with roommates if I don't have to? Why would I live an hour away from my work if I don't have to? Why would I live in a tiny, grody, apartment when I can afford a nice one? But it comes at a price. If I stop bringing in the big bucks, will I still be okay?

I don't want to be stuck somewhere that I don't want to be. At some level, I don't even want to stuck somewhere that I do want to be. Ideally, I will be able to make enough money, and live in such a way that if I so decided, I can pack up and go and still be able to sustain myself for a while.

One of the things that frightens me the most is the slow death of complacency. It's so tempting to take the easier route. I like to pretend that somewhere, out there, there is something that I'm passionate about. But suppose no such thing exists, suppose I only find things that I'm merely happy or satisfied doing, if that. This is the reason that I'm afraid of going to grad school right after getting my degree. What if I never leave academia because it's so much easier to go to school for the rest of my life? What I never leave my cushy job at Major Company because it's so much easier to rake in the dough than to do something that excites me? Becoming dependent on my job at Major Company will only make it easier to shut my eyes and forget that there was anything else that I wanted to do. It's scary to throw your fortune to the wind. But being scared is something that I need to do. To be a better person or some shit. Are you ever more alive than when you are scared for your life? I don't really know. I've never done it, but it's a romantic idea I suppose. 

My Future Slutwhores

In all likelihood, one day My Future Kids will fall in love and one day they will have sex. If they are normal, well-adjusted human beings, this post can be forever ignored. Otherwise, they can take solace in the fact that Their Future Parent is also mal-adjusted? Hopefully, one day Future Me, too, will be normal and well-adjusted and upon rereading this post will smile and shake my head knowingly remembering the times before my happy and sexy relationship with Spouse. But we can't all be normal and well-adjusted and that's why this post exists.

I am a bit... quirky in terms of how I relate love and lust. More specifically, I don't. Sometimes I want lovin' and sometimes I want lustin', and however pleased I would be to have a relationship that involved both, I somehow can't put them together. I just don't really see how they're related.

I sometimes think that I would make an excellent prostitute. Well, as far as not being too concerned with exchanging sex for money is concerned.

When I was younger I had crushes. Great crushes that lasted years. I stopped getting them since high school. I once dated a person that I had a crush on for over a year (though not while dating them). It wasn't great. And it only lasted as long as it did because of its expiration date. I don't have crushes anymore, but I do have people that I want to respect me. However, these people are not people I would be particularly interested in getting naked with, or like, kissing them and stuff. So maybe the crushes of the past were kind of dumb but at least they were clear. Now all I have is people I would be interested in kissing and people I want to hang out with as mutually exclusive set.

Maybe my problem is that I know the people around me too well. They've all settled into their respective groups and are there to stay. New people that I meet often seem both interesting and attractive, so maybe I just need to get out more.

Anyway, the reason that I decided to write this is because I've been thinking. I tend to think that as a rule, I don't mind people wanting me for my body. But actually, sometimes I do mind. I mind when people who are supposed to like me for me use me for my body. I'm not really sure why. But I do mind. Maybe it's because I don't like feeling used? At least when I'm not also doing some using? That doesn't seem quite right. I don't want people I want to be friends with to only hang out with me to get in my pants. Maybe I just get uncomfortable with their ability to associate love and lust.

Welp, My Future Kids, I hope that someday you will read this and thank me for your flourishing escort service.