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.

A Life Before My Future Kids

I think the time is ripe to post a bucket list. That is, a list of things I hope to do before I die (read: before I have kids). I have done this a few times, but I have no idea where any of those lists are, and this one is forever. If all goes according to plan (it won't) I will update this post as necessary, adding and crossing out things as I think of them or do them, respectively.

And now, the list!

1. Fist bump Neil Gaiman
2. Learn Chinese
3. Go to San Diego Comic-Con
4. See Much Ado About Nothing (2012) - ACCOMPLISHED
5. Be in the same room as Joss Whedon
6. Attend an AMA by someone I care about (I'm looking at you, Nathan Fillion)
7. High-five Fran Kranz or anyone else who has starred in a Joss Whedon work
8. Get a tattoo
9. Never be a crack whore - SO FAR SO GOOD
10. Hallucinate (visually)
11. Be piss poor (to be defined as that time when I am living paycheck to paycheck and am forced to eat ramen out of fiscal responsibility)
12. See a total solar eclipse (what up, August 2017?)
13. See the aurora
14. Play LoL(lololol pre-accomplished goal, ftw)
15. Be referenced in a published work
16. Skydive
17. Go urban exploring
18. Run 5 miles
19. Go to a concert -ACCOMPLISHED (Atmosphere in the summer of 2013!)
20. Obtain a degree
21. CONSUME CAMEL MEAT (updated 08/19/12)
22. Couch surf (updated 5/14/14)

Please note my clever mixing of things I want to do with things that I will almost certainly do at various points in the future.

My Future Adults

I think about the nature of adulthood sometimes.
There are those who claim that we never truly reach adulthood, that we are forever children at heart. I call bullshit. There is no real reason that enjoying so-called "childish" things means that one somehow is a child or not an adult. I think these people are confusing being an adult with being boring. I have also heard that adulthood is just a mask we wear to act like adults until it's no longer a mask. And that may be true. And yet, I feel like true adulthood is something deeper than doing your dishes in a timely fashion.
It just crossed my mind that what I am thinking of is not actually adulthood but rather the resolution to my own inner turmoils. I proceeded to tell myself that adulthood is not well-defined so I can go ahead and use whatever definition I want. So that's that.
Adulthood, to me, consists of a mix of ideas. 1) Responsibility: paying taxes, replying to emails, having your shit together, and the like. 2) Knowledge: knowing what the fuck you're doing, though I hear that this is just a ruse, but I don't completely buy it. 3) Balls: the bravery to go against the status quo.
The inner turmoil I mentioned earlier is balancing learning how to play The Game and telling The Game to go fuck itself. On the one hand, adults are always telling me that I need to play The Game properly if I ever want to get anywhere in life. If I want to get a job, I better present myself well. If I want to keep it, I had better be sending thank you notes for every little thing. On the other hand, I feel that an adult is not slave to The Game and what is expected of them.

As a side note on expectations: I feel that people are highly dependent on their expectations. They have all these models in their brains that tell them what to expect and it's disturbing when these expectations aren't met. This is essentially how I survive in the world. I never know what to do but people always tell me eventually so that I can more properly conform to expectations. Sometimes I even play that role, but much less often. I don't think people like defying expectations either. Maybe that's built in to make our lives operate smoothly.

Maybe it's a matter of learning the rules before you break them. Or at least when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em but maybe that's wisdom.

I think that around this time last year I did not feel like an adult. I think that now I feel like more of an adult than I used to. Not a full-fledged Adult, mind you, but on my way. Maybe adulthood is not an end to be achieved but rather an idealization that move closer to but never quite reach. Maybe that's bollocks though. Because really most people should have a solid grasp on adulthood by 30, I imagine. Maybe all you need to enter the adult club is some minimum level of conscientiousness. And I suppose, failing that, you can just age in.

My Future Bigots

I am sexist. Very sexist. Also racist, but only a little, and that's besides the point. I am afraid that my sexism will have a negative effect on My Future Kids. To be clear, I don't think my version of sexism is the standard issue for the most part. It's less about men or women and more about traits which I internally characterize as masculine or feminine. I know, I know I will tell My Future Kids to man up and rub some dirt in it. I'l never tell My Future Daughters that can't do anything (except get that awful tattoo, etc.), but maybe I'll end up telling them that they can't be girls to do their thing.
I never really felt like I "counted" as a girl. I always saw girls as kind of annoying. It's really only a recent development that I've started trying to look more like a girl, but even that is a little half-assed and I have lesbian hair? Whatever. Anyways, I still have difficulty associating women with engineering, despite who I am and all the people I hang out with. I'm okay with it, because I don't really see myself as a girl, female on all accounts, but not a girl. Maybe My Future Daughters would like to be girls though. Maybe they would like to be girls and be engineers/[insert male-dominated profession here]. I think living with me might be a hindrance to that.
The fact of the matter is that I consider a lot of feminine traits to be "bad," or maybe more accurately, a lot of  bad traits to be "feminine." I don't know why, but it kind of makes me angry when guys act like such. fucking. women.  And I think that's bad. I think that's bad for My Future Kids, regardless of sex or gender. I don't want them to grow up believing that if they want to succeed, they need to reject their femininity.
Sometimes things fall out of my head and into the world, but the world doesn't always understand them. The models in my head I think can be different, and I'm not the best at expressing what the modes say or what my words mean in my head. I'm afraid that as much as I know that My Future Kids can do whatever without sacrificing bits of their so-called "identity," my words and actions won't express that appropriately. That when I tell them not to be such a woman, they won't hear "calm down and stop being so emotionally erratic and irrational." That when I tell them that something is easy they'll hear "you're too stupid to figure this out" and not some combination of "you'll understand it eventually," "it will be easy," "this is a solved problem and all you need to do is learn how to do it."

My Future Delinquents

Today I saw (part of) a video featuring horrible children. I am now concerned with what I will do should Operation Raise a Good Kid fail. What if My Future Kids are bad people? What if they do such wrong that I am ashamed to call them my own?

The video I saw today has been getting around the internet, so maybe you've seen it. It depicts a bus monitor being harassed by a pack of middle schoolers and made quite a bit of money off some poor saps who felt bad about it. It is of course well-known that middle schoolers are essentially the devil's spawn as a rule, but sometimes they can be truly horrible. They are smart enough and brave enough to be hurtful but lack the wisdom to not exert their power.

People have commented on the incident with the bus monitor, horrified by the acts of the children, ruking those among them that did nothing to stop it. They act as though they would have done the Right thing if they were there, and that may be true, but I am doubtful. They've done the experiments on conformity, on cruelty, and I know from 10th grade US History all too well what a mob of adults is capable of. So screw those guys who think that it's so easy to be a good person.

I guess it's hard to even know what the Right thing is sometimes. We all need to make mistakes. We all need to hurt someone to know what it means. Or something. I don't know.

Anyway, back to the original question. Situation: My Future Kids are terrible people. What to do?
If My Future Kids do something horrible, is it enough to punish them? I never really understood punishments, maybe because I've never really been punished. I have been punished for things, but I can only recall a handful of distinct times and then I have no idea what I did wrong. Except for the one time. But other than that, I'm pretty sure even when I was actively being punished, I didn't know what it was for. I remember being told to think about what I had done, but I don't think I ever considered that to be relevant, so maybe that's something for Future Me to keep in mind. I don't know, maybe my sense of cause and effect was not fully developed at the time. Or maybe just how things were related.

Maybe I should just be really disappointed, that's a good way to make a kid feel like shit. Maybe even the best way. But is making a kid feel bad a good way of teaching them good morals? Or at least good conduct?

Is it even about teaching them the difference between right and wrong? Maybe it's not about doing the Right thing. Maybe it's about teaching them how to be brave. Not to know what is Right, but to stand up for it. People act like it's easy, natural even, but I don't even know if I could do it.