Shay wrote:

> Impressive 

thanks

and interesting.

it is actually, I mean in a different discussion from the points you 
make in your following, their is the whole discussion of what comprises 
a 'knowledge' of geography, how to teach it, how to test it. It cuts to 
some fundamental issues, abstract versus tangible knowledge, how memory 
works, how we understand and recall geographical relationships. (I am 
consciously avoiding the word 'spatial' here.)  For instance if you look 
into techniques for memorizing lists of information, a common one is to 
associate the information with a map or journey of some sort.  But that 
is precisely what I am trying to GET people to remember.

I have spent some time recently
> contemplating burnouts (a surprising percentage of the homeless 
> population [One interesting case was a programmer who had a 
> stress-induced heart-attack at 28yo]) and the metal-head culture of 
> which 9 out of 10 of the few intelligent people I meet in the oilfield 
> are a part. The link between them and you is the means by and degree to 
> which you seem to be adapting to your current circumstances. 
Okay

It appears
> you are finding your niche in your new profession, but are doing so not 
> by evolving
Okay

  (in fact, refusing to evolve)
a little puzzled here, refusing?  I have little sense of resisting or 
'putting on the brakes'.  I mean I refused to even try to go back to my 
old life, but I don't see that as refusing to evolve, rather there is a 
way in which I actually did lay myself open to evolving, my values at 
least, by just kind of drifting rather than taking any purposeful 
direction, and I did that, at obvious risk to financial security of any 
sort, never mind intangibles like 'status.'  But it is questionable as 
to how 'conscious' that decision actually was.

Ohhh, maybe you mean when I dropped the blog?  Ohhh...yes, see later...

but by making only small
> adaptations to the skills you developed while engaged in other pursuits.
I agree, for instance cab driving might have been/or still be an 
opportunity to invest in a business for myself, learn about owning a 
car, even a medallion, the intricacies of debt etc., but I have not 
pushed that far. But is reusing previously acquired skills in a new 
context the only common denominator you've observed?  There must be more 
to what you are driving at here.

> I think there is a sizeable, hidden world of efficacious individuals who 
> insist on defining achievement and performance in terms others would not 
> understand.

Obviously a huge and difficult topic.  In this sense, of how acheivement 
is defined I may have allowed some tiny 'evolution' for myself.  But 
still, on one hand there's the cliche that this still can be nothing 
more than a rationale for failure, and on the other hand, I have perhaps 
resisted development towards less material acheivements.  Yes now I 
think I understand what you were driving at earlier.  Just wondering how 
it is something in common with 'burnouts'  I would be interested if you 
could develop that point further.



> Will the results of this collaboration be "published"?
> 

Not sure.  At very least I should update my web site.  Right now map 
drawings of New York geography has my attention to the point of obsession.

>  > Fitness:
>  > Bad scene, but again, the mental health is improving so that might
>  > lead to improvements down the road.
> 
> The two go hand in hand, IMO. Despite the stress, danger, and long 
> hours, I have never met a depressed roughneck. Almost every driller (a 
> non-physical job) I have met has been depressed. I believe there's 
> medicine in physical activity.


I believe so too.  Humans do have many 'dimensions' for development 
though.

A cute aside...  My daughter,  who has more drive as a young adolescent, 
than her father ever had,... after her struggles as a highschool 
freshman,... is gaining much better social 'traction' in her sophomore 
year. Significant in this development was her joining the female varsity 
softball team.  This lead to her swift adoption by the school's sports 
sub-culture, and a place on the junior varsity basketball team. 
Basketball is a sport she has never played.  Traditionally we're all 
about ice hockey in the Charter family, a sport which she still plays as 
one of two females in the league.  But basketball is the new enthusiasm, 
a development I am loving; still, I know nothing about the game.  So 
there I am on a Saturday morning up at the HS gym, an environment in 
which I feel totally alien, being instructed in the  operation of the 
'shot clock', by the young female referees who are less than half my 
age.  All new to me,...but fun.

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