Intermittent Tasks
I'm gonna talk about ecological rationality again
Every year, I have to do something that is not really that bad but I still absolutely dread it because it is exhausting and takes several days.
I have to powerwash the patio.
Which means all the patio furniture has to come off the patio, and that is roughly two dozen chairs and eight tables and three benches and five rugs and about ten large potted plants. Plus various chests and boxes containing cushions or yard equipment, the hose reel, just all kinds of shit.
It takes an entire day just to do that. Then it takes two days to do the actual powerwashing, and then there’s a whole day of cleaning all the shit that came off the patio so it can go back onto the nice clean patio.
This year, I got to thinking about how every single year I am kind of worthless at cleaning the patio when I get started, but around the middle of the first day I get the hang of it. Then around the middle of the second day I get pretty good at it. And then I am finished and will not do it again for another year.
It’s not hard to figure out that if I had to do this for a living, I would probably get even better at it. That’s what economists call ecological rationality - even without instruction or deliberate study, just doing the thing will teach you to do it better.
So if you’ve spent a few years doing the thing for a living, chances are very good you know more about it than someone who has been studying it in graduate school. They may have a degree, and you may not, but that really doesn’t matter. Actually doing the thing matters more.
But at the same time, if you don’t keep doing the thing, you will lose what you learn about it. Every year I have to learn how to powerwash a patio all over again. If I just washed a patio every month, that wouldn’t happen, but that sure as hell isn’t something I want to be doing.
Hell, I don’t want to do it the once a year I’m doing it.
Most of us have encountered this when, as adults, we revisit a hobby we used to enjoy as a child. We know we used to be better than this. Now we’re struggling to do things we used to be good at. There has been deterioration in our skill over time, and it seems unfair that we have to relearn these bits of it.
It’s been thirty years since I painted a miniature. I don’t know if I’d be any good at it today. I stopped painting miniatures when I married my first wife, who thought it was dumb to have a painting station in the house so she put all the paint away and said if I wanted to paint something I could just go get the paint.
Of course, it’s not that simple. You have to clear a space to paint, and then go get out the paints, and put them out in the space… it makes the process of sitting down to paint so much more difficult, you’re just never going to do it.
Explaining this to someone who doesn’t paint, doesn’t see the value of painting, and seems actively offended at the idea that you spend any time or money on it? Not trivial. So I just stopped painting, and then when I went to start painting again, it was such a pain that I put it off again and again and again until eventually I just didn’t have space in my life for it.
Now I don’t even know if painting a miniature would produce decent results. I have a Rei Ayanami model kit that I occasionally pull out and think about assembling, but I’m not sure I want to commit to it.
Part of this is because I know how depressing it would be to discover that I am now absolute crap at something I used to enjoy. Once upon a time I used to win painting competitions at game conventions. With the expansion of the hobby, a lot of people have entered the field who are much better than I am at painting, so I would certainly not say I am a good miniature painter in the modern culture. I was only “good” in the smaller competitions within an already-small community.
I was okay with this. But I don’t want to find out I’m not even that good anymore.
I’m not even sure this model needs to be painted, it may be just modeled in all the colours it needs to be. I haven’t checked. I’m afraid to. It’s kinda pathetic.
Having said that, I felt like such an absolute pussy that I checked. It’s all pre-painted. I have nothing to worry about.
I should put this bad boy together this weekend. Actually, by the time this is published, it will have been the weekend before last.
I don’t really have a solid point here, as usual. Mostly what I do here on this Substack is keep myself writing something every week, so I can stay in the habit of writing. I try to put out a thousand words or so every Monday. Lately I am writing ahead because I can actually manage more than that.
And the whole reason I’m doing this is so I don’t end up forgetting how to write. I’ve seen myself get bad at things I used to be good at. There are some I don’t want to lose. I’ve been programming and writing and painting every week, but I still need to find room to add music into the mix. I need to get on that.
But I think I’ll put Rei together first. It seems like it would be easier and faster.