keeping your options open sometimes only leads to the same old options being leveraged over and over and over.
so what'll it be? open endings or open beginnings, fresh slates or the ability to move?
one of ryan's typical responsesrycodeApril 2 2002, 02:22:06 UTC
"leverage your options"
booyah.
i would prefer to look at it thusly:
just because you think you've "closed off an option" doesn't really mean you can't go that way anymore. it may mean that you've made it slightly more difficult to do that, but it's not "closed." and if it's really important to you anyways -- you'll figure it out. maybe later, maybe when you've got put in more effort to go do that other thing, but you'll figure it out and then go do it.
and how can you know what you miss if you never leave it?
and fresh slates are the same as the ability to move, to me.
i know a man, or used to, who got his GRE in 1986 and his phD in 1996. that's what i think about when talking about options and the opening and closing of. he now lectures at UofM.
i also know a man who played in a band for all of his twenties, then went to school and came out an engineer, but who worked part time for 10 years to raise his kids.
don't listen to anybody tell you there's only one way to go through life -- not even when you're telling yourself.
i also know a man who was raised in a working class neighborhood who put himself through school and was the first person in his family to graduate from college (even though it took 10 years) and, with the exception of his own children and a few shirt-tail cousins, remains the only college graduate in his family.
so, with the exception of the age factor, i think you'd have to work pretty hard to really close off any options. any important ones, anyways.
Re: one of ryan's typical responsesasdfApril 2 2002, 09:11:31 UTC
yeah, i mean basically, i agree with you.
though what i was talking about more is not that i've got any fear of loosing my options, or opportunities or whatever, but more that i'm the kind of person that likes lots of options. its a strength and a weekness. i keep my options open so i can keep changing what i'm doing, because i tend to get bored with things fast... that's how i leverage my options. i do it all the time. i have an arsenal of options, or opportunities, and i think i tend to use them in pretty creative ways.
some times, i get pretty annoyed with myself for keeping my options open though. because it makes a path of least resistence that maybe i don't want to follow. but, my mind is saying, you could probably use that particular path to lessen the resistence in others... i think its pretty important sometimes in life to put the shutdown on some options, though of course things like them can always be picked back up. that's why i'm leaving town in a couple weeks. it seems like options are important ways to be able to move, in that they can give you resources, while an open slate might leave you without resources to do the things you want to.. and building up resources is cool, but i've done that lots and lots of times already...
i guess i don't really get where this bit COMMIT theme is coming from.. seen it in a few responses here. ... i'm not having any trouble commiting to anything, i don't think i ever have. its more like a questions of what's my strategy and what are my real goals, which are kind of one and same question. options and resources are indeed somewhat separable, but also closely intertwined in important ways. resources, though, to me are more like complexes of ideas tied to physical entities tied to communities of like minds. that's a resource.. a structure.. though you can take and find those kinds of things wherever you go. the hard part is that to do certain things you need a certain comfort level.. i.e. to work on personal projects you've got to have the whole housing/food/money issue solved enough to not make it top priority. then, you need the supplies to do your projects. anyway, i'm not really concerned about any of this, i was just musing on it.
yeah, its weird that some of you seem to have gotten the wrong idea from my original post... in fact, i've gotten a few misunderstood responses lately. what i think about it though isn't that i 'gave people the wrong impression' but that people tend to find what they are looking for in things before they notice what's actually there, before they actually read what i wrote and think about why i might have written it the way i did... instead there is an assumption that it's a very typical kind of post/comment. if anything, its just a much a reflection on the reader as on the writer....
Re: yeah, its weirdrycodeApril 3 2002, 18:54:54 UTC
the commit thing probably works like this:
saying that you have questions about what your strategy is and what your real goals are seems very similar to saying: i don't have a real plan yet, and (putting it together with your first post) you're not sure if you want to do this thing or that thing or the other thing, and you'd like to do all those things without having to not do the others.
so when i say commit, i mean:
commit to doing one. damn the others. you'll find out if you've made mistake, and then you'll know more about what you really want to do.
(obviously.)
and as much as i'd like to say that everyone finds what they want when reading other people's posts, you do write vague as a sonofabitch.
booyah.
i would prefer to look at it thusly:
just because you think you've "closed off an option" doesn't really mean you can't go that way anymore. it may mean that you've made it slightly more difficult to do that, but it's not "closed." and if it's really important to you anyways -- you'll figure it out. maybe later, maybe when you've got put in more effort to go do that other thing, but you'll figure it out and then go do it.
and how can you know what you miss if you never leave it?
and fresh slates are the same as the ability to move, to me.
i know a man, or used to, who got his GRE in 1986 and his phD in 1996. that's what i think about when talking about options and the opening and closing of. he now lectures at UofM.
i also know a man who played in a band for all of his twenties, then went to school and came out an engineer, but who worked part time for 10 years to raise his kids.
don't listen to anybody tell you there's only one way to go through life -- not even when you're telling yourself.
i also know a man who was raised in a working class neighborhood who put himself through school and was the first person in his family to graduate from college (even though it took 10 years) and, with the exception of his own children and a few shirt-tail cousins, remains the only college graduate in his family.
so, with the exception of the age factor, i think you'd have to work pretty hard to really close off any options. any important ones, anyways.
commit.
Reply
though what i was talking about more is not that i've got any fear of loosing my options, or opportunities or whatever, but more that i'm the kind of person that likes lots of options. its a strength and a weekness. i keep my options open so i can keep changing what i'm doing, because i tend to get bored with things fast... that's how i leverage my options. i do it all the time. i have an arsenal of options, or opportunities, and i think i tend to use them in pretty creative ways.
some times, i get pretty annoyed with myself for keeping my options open though. because it makes a path of least resistence that maybe i don't want to follow. but, my mind is saying, you could probably use that particular path to lessen the resistence in others... i think its pretty important sometimes in life to put the shutdown on some options, though of course things like them can always be picked back up. that's why i'm leaving town in a couple weeks. it seems like options are important ways to be able to move, in that they can give you resources, while an open slate might leave you without resources to do the things you want to.. and building up resources is cool, but i've done that lots and lots of times already...
anyway, i'm still going to cut and run.
Reply
(and give me a break. i'm not saying you never commit to anything. shit.)
i look at options and resources as somewhat separable.
for instance -- you've got a blank slate.
fortunately, you've still got some leftover chalk.
you might need to go bust some motherfuckers up to get some more chalk later, but you've got somewhere to start.
i don't know. i feel like if you've built up resources a lot of times already, you should be able to take some of them with you.
and i feel like you gave everyone the wrong impression with what you wrote in your original post. that's interesting to me.
Reply
yeah, its weird that some of you seem to have gotten the wrong idea from my original post... in fact, i've gotten a few misunderstood responses lately. what i think about it though isn't that i 'gave people the wrong impression' but that people tend to find what they are looking for in things before they notice what's actually there, before they actually read what i wrote and think about why i might have written it the way i did... instead there is an assumption that it's a very typical kind of post/comment. if anything, its just a much a reflection on the reader as on the writer....
Reply
saying that you have questions about what your strategy is and what your real goals are seems very similar to saying: i don't have a real plan yet, and (putting it together with your first post) you're not sure if you want to do this thing or that thing or the other thing, and you'd like to do all those things without having to not do the others.
so when i say commit, i mean:
commit to doing one. damn the others. you'll find out if you've made mistake, and then you'll know more about what you really want to do.
(obviously.)
and as much as i'd like to say that everyone finds what they want when reading other people's posts, you do write vague as a sonofabitch.
not that there's anything wrong with that.
rockon.
Reply
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