> As recently as a week ago I had to dig down. I was scheduled to do
 > a brace of three, totally new, 8-hour, geography modules. I had
 > zero prep time.  For eighteen days previous I'd not had a single
 > day off, (I was either driving or teaching,) during which I could
 > develop new material.  So overnight, for each of the three nights,
 > I memorized how to draw maps of first Brooklyn, then Queens, then
 > the Bronx, along with their several dozen streets, parks, and
 > neighbourhoods, then reproduced them the following day,
 > hand-drawn, standing at the chalk-board.  The trick is to be able
 > to lay in the features with smooth-drawn lines, and without
 > erasures. Students are usually exposed to several instructors and
 > are quick to make comparisons, are critical, and not shy about
 > verbalizing their thoughts.  Whatever you may or may not think
 > about all this, it was a personal benchmark for me that puts me
 > significantly beyond what I would have been capable of the
 > previous year.

Impressive and interesting. 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. It appears 
you are finding your niche in your new profession, but are doing so not 
by evolving (in fact, refusing to evolve) but by making only small 
adaptations to the skills you developed while engaged in other pursuits. 
I think there is a sizeable, hidden world of efficacious individuals who 
insist on defining achievement and performance in terms others would not 
understand.

 > Have not published much on the ng's but through the early to
 > middle of the year I enjoyed an extended collaboration, off-ng,
 > with another POV artist.  It gave me a certain stick-to-it-ness,
 > over an extended period, which had been lacking for a long time.

Will the results of this collaboration be "published"?

 > 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.

  -Shay

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On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:28:22 -0500, Shay <sha### [at] nonenone> wrote:

>
>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.

Hi Shay,
How many roughnecks can count to ten on their fingers? :)

How can you say that the driller's or even the pusher's job is not physical?
When compared to onshore jobs. Seriously, unless you are on a modern rig with
push button controls for the iron roughneck the driller's job involved a lot of
strain and repetitive movement. But then I may be very out of date. I've met
drillers who were not depressed only mad and very often bad.
I think that it is easier to be mentally fit when you are physically fit. Since
I stopped working on the tools I've found that it is getting easier to slip into
bad habits.

Regards
	Stephen

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Stephen wrote:

> Hi Shay,
> How many roughnecks can count to ten on their fingers? :)

So that's how drillers count? :)


> 
> How can you say that the driller's or even the pusher's job is not physical?

Perhaps it is not AS physical.


> When compared to onshore jobs. Seriously, unless you are on a modern rig with
> push button controls for the iron roughneck the driller's job involved a lot of
> strain and repetitive movement. But then I may be very out of date. I've met
> drillers who were not depressed only mad and very often bad.

Shay probably over-generalized there.


> I think that it is easier to be mentally fit when you are physically fit. Since
> I stopped working on the tools I've found that it is getting easier to slip into
> bad habits.

I guess we all agree on that. Though its been so long since I've been 
physically fit I can't really remember anymore.  I really have to get 
serious though.  Cab driving is so bad for one's fitness that it doesn't 
take much to push things over the edge.  Some anxiety, a little bingeing 
and it's a big mess.

-jim

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On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:29:47 -0500, Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:

>Stephen wrote:
>
>> Hi Shay,
>> How many roughnecks can count to ten on their fingers? :)
>
>So that's how drillers count? :)
>

There is the old roughneck joke:
A roughneck walked into a bar and held up his hand with all his fingers spread
and said. "Two pints, barman."

>
>> 
>> How can you say that the driller's or even the pusher's job is not physical?
>
>Perhaps it is not AS physical.
>

I was joshing, there is no comparison. A roughneck's job is probably one of the
most dangerous and physically demanding there is. I'm just trying to regain the
camaraderie I lost when I left the tools. <sad git>


>> When compared to onshore jobs. Seriously, unless you are on a modern rig with
>> push button controls for the iron roughneck the driller's job involved a lot of
>> strain and repetitive movement. But then I may be very out of date. I've met
>> drillers who were not depressed only mad and very often bad.
>
>Shay probably over-generalized there.
>

Nah! It's a job thing. Park your brains at the door when you get promoted :)

>
>> I think that it is easier to be mentally fit when you are physically fit. Since
>> I stopped working on the tools I've found that it is getting easier to slip into
>> bad habits.
>
>I guess we all agree on that. Though its been so long since I've been 
>physically fit I can't really remember anymore.  I really have to get 
>serious though.  Cab driving is so bad for one's fitness that it doesn't 
>take much to push things over the edge.  Some anxiety, a little bingeing 
>and it's a big mess.
>
I sympathise Jim. I've b*ggered my body working offshore and can't exercise or
I'll make it worse. So I've had to limit my food intake to stop getting fat as I
get depressed (not clinically). My weight see saws in a 2 or 3 year cycle.
Fortunately my appetite goes on its own accord when I reach about 13 stones
(~185 lbs). So it is not too hard to loose weight, so far :)

Regards
	Stephen

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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.

Post a reply to this message

Jim Charter wrote:

 > Shay wrote:
 >> It appears you are finding your niche in your new profession, but are
 >> doing so not by evolving (in fact, refusing to evolve) 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.

 > 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.

Yes, you understand perfectly.

Skill recycling isn't a common denominator, just a sign that a person is 
"cherry-picking" the areas of his occupation where he wants to place his 
energy rather than diving wholly into "succeeding" at that profession. 
The common denominator is a lack of extroversion or fear (of financial 
ruin) or any other trait that makes a given apple on a stick look as 
appealing to one person as it does to another.

As to this "refusal's" being a rational for failure, I suppose it is in 
some instances and not in others. Moving over to my clearest point of 
reference - my self:

In High School, others had even me believing that I was an underachiever 
because my grades were poor. I laugh at that now. Would an underachiever 
run 24 miles a week? Work late nights after school? Train countless 
hours on home-made equipment?

I wasn't and am not currently underachieving. What I was/am doing is 
focusing my energy into areas that provide little or no chance for 
"success." I didn't have the genetics or want to become even a 
small-town track-and-field competitor; my after-school job was 
satisfying but offered no resume-enhancement; and despite my many years 
of working out, you'd never know I was into fitness at all unless you 
saw a blood test. What I could have done is get a doctorate in 
Electrical Engineering as my brother is doing, but working in an office 
seemed too much like going to school, and I *refused* to spend my life 
doing anything that felt as terrible as going to school. I have what 
some others consider a lopsided view of the costs versus rewards of that 
type of occupation - and of my current occupation.

Someone who spends his night watching TV and grumbles that he's too good 
to cheat to get ahead like the other weasels have done? Yeah, that guy 
is rationalizing failure.

Burnouts run away from whatever it was that burned them up, but only run 
so far, because they still find a lot of appeal in whatever rewards drew 
them to that occupation in the first place. The homeless programmer who 
had the heart attack at 28 introduced himself as "Windows" and still 
dressed as best he could manage as a programmer. He couldn't survive 
being a programmer occupationally but got what he needed by playing the 
roll of "computer guy" socially.

 >> I believe there's medicine in physical activity.

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

Many, but I truly believe that brain (not mental) fitness is the 
foundation under all other dimensions of development. I believe that the 
brain is like the heart or any other organ in that it will be sick if 
not given the proper physical environment. I can't see how a person can 
put potato chips into his brain and expect that brain to produce a 
healthy mind.

 > 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.

Excellent. I need to find some pretext to have a long talk with my 
niece(13yo) about bad social habits. My niece is smart enough not to 
smoke crack or get pregnant just because her friends are doing it, but I 
don't think she grasps how carefully she needs to guard herself against 
less obviously destructive (but more contagious) habits and attitudes 
that can be picked up from friends. The pretext is necessary because her 
mother has fallen victim to this herself and wouldn't want me lecturing 
her child on the dangers of hanging out with losers.

  -Shay

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Stephen wrote:

 > Nah! It's a job thing. Park your brains at the door when you get
 > promoted :)

Or "Park your brains when you *accept* a promotion." A driller in my 
company makes $90k a year. Not bad considering how poorly many of them 
read and write, but the job is a miserable one: sit on a stool and watch 
a gauge - btw, f*** up and people die. A bit more to it than that, of 
course, but no way to spend a life! No wonder they're so bitchy.

 > I sympathise Jim. I've b*ggered my body working offshore and can't
 > exercise or I'll make it worse.

Come on, you don't have to pump iron, buy a bicycle.

  -Shay

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On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 10:03:53 -0500, Shay <sha### [at] nonenone> wrote:

>Stephen wrote:
>
> > Nah! It's a job thing. Park your brains at the door when you get
> > promoted :)
>
>Or "Park your brains when you *accept* a promotion." 

LOL - true

>A driller in my 
>company makes $90k a year. Not bad considering how poorly many of them 
>read and write, but the job is a miserable one: sit on a stool and watch 
>a gauge - btw, f*** up and people die. A bit more to it than that, of 
>course, but no way to spend a life! No wonder they're so bitchy.

In my day and in the UK sector. The driller actually worked a bit. But if that
mud pressure changed fast then you'd better hope the BOP works :)
I never had to work under the drilling crew because I was part of the barge crew
reporting to the OIM. So I would have a slightly different viewpoint.


> > I sympathise Jim. I've b*ggered my body working offshore and can't
> > exercise or I'll make it worse.
>
>Come on, you don't have to pump iron, buy a bicycle.

I've thought about that but:
1.	I live in the centre of London and the traffic scares be silly.
2.	My hips are on the verge of giving out. If I walk for more than about 3
miles or an hour. I have to take pain killers.
Swimming might be better if I hadn't pulled a muscle in my arm that hasn't
healed properly. Or if I didn't find it boring and wet.
It is a concern :(
But then I'm pushing 60 and can wear my t-shirt tucked in to my breeks so I
shouldn't complain too much. 

Regards
	Stephen

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Shay wrote:
> 
> Excellent. I need to find some pretext to have a long talk with my 
> niece(13yo) about bad social habits. 

YMMV but I found repeated short conversations more effective at that age.

Post a reply to this message

Tom Galvin wrote:
 > Shay wrote:
 >>
 >> Excellent. I need to find some pretext to have a long talk with
 >> my niece(13yo) about bad social habits.
 >
 > YMMV but I found repeated short conversations more effective at
 > that age.

Don't know many teenagers, but I think it depends on one's relationship 
with the kid. In a way, we're fairly close. I knew her parents before 
she was born and rented a room from them when my niece was a baby. She 
was calling me "Uncle Shay" before I had even met her aunt. On the other 
hand, I'm not an uncle to her like my uncles were to me.[1] My uncles 
had nearly as much authority over me as my parents. They could pull off 
preaching to me.

Back to the first hand, she does recognize that I am one of the few 
adults around her who acts like an adult (the rest [the exact type I 
would warn her to avoid] are needy and try to be her buddy). Teens are 
going to f*** up in life as part of their learning process, preaching or 
no. I feel the only thing within my "power" to do is give her a "heads 
up" and hope that helps her figure it out for herself a minute earlier. 
If I ever have a kid of my own, I'll be preachier - "Lie down with dogs 
and you get up with fleas" will be written on the nursery wall.

  -Shay

[1] I've even agreed with her to drop the "uncle." I have no kids 
myself, so have become "Uncle Shay" to all of my in-laws (gets old 
quickly). That's been curbed a bit since the 13yo dropped it, but I 
still have one more (4yo) niece to go. I don't want to be "Uncle Shay" 
(I had an "aunt" Fritzie) to my wife's entire family when I'm 80 years 
old. After they finish school, my nieces will most likely be 
near-strangers I see once a year on Christmas anyway. I can live with 
their foregoing my proper title.

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