How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?
When someone unfamiliar enters my vicinity, I shout STRANGER DANGER! and form a cross of my outstretched index fingers that I point in their general direction.
But seriously, it’s just a vague memory at this point.
I’m a morning person and am typically at fairly high energy levels first thing in the morning, So, that time is generally active, filled with exercise and / or physical activity of varied varieties (calisthenics, walking, running, and — of late — the occasional swim [which I normally do latter in the day.])
[Of course, there is the obligatory urinating, washing, toothbrushing, etc. (sequentially not concurrently,) but that seems like it would go without saying and would be strange to ask strangers about.]
I think that would have been “race car driver,” between my “cowboy” and “independently-wealthy-masked-vigilante” phases. (I did NOT know how jobs worked.)
Computational Fluid Dynamics. Also, Nuclear Lensing.
Technology has changed everything, for good and for ill. It’s the source of our vast growth in productivity, but also at the heart of our modern crises (e.g. I’m almost certain that no caveman ever experienced “imposter syndrome.” But like other crises of modernity, I suspect that technological dependence and an ever-continuing trend toward ultra-specialization are its cause.)
I count myself fortunate to be of an age to (probably) miss the (rapidly approaching) day when machines and artificial intelligence do all “productive tasks” better, faster, and with far less energy consumption than a human being. I don’t think most of humanity will be prepared for that day, and it will – in all likelihood – go down catastrophically. [I think we’re seeing the cracks in the dam already.]
I spend more and more time with the only technology-proof sector of which I’m aware: building a more capable human being.
I believe if every person spent some time learning skills like primitive living (sustainable wilderness survival skills) or unarmed martial arts (that train against armed opponents) society would be much better off. I pick these two as examples of skill sets that give practitioners a deep confidence in themselves [not in themselves + technologies that they can’t build, can’t fix, and which they don’t really understand.] I suspect that the core self-empowerment that would result would ease away much of the general shittiness of character we are increasingly prone to see in the world, shittiness that — like all shittiness — is ultimately rooted in fear.
I say no to all sorts of things regularly, for good or bad. I have a [sometimes] unfortunate proclivity to default to no. I move through life like an aircraft carrier, not prone to quick turns or rapid adjustment to unexpected circumstance. I need prepping for course changes and plenty of time. But it does tend to keep me on my objective.
Mind control. I can control my mind with my mind.
[NOTE: I’m not sure what “secret” has to do with it. Anything one blabs across the internet is — by definition — not a secret. Though the skill I mention takes place in a purely subjective realm, so — in that sense — might remain unknown to the general public.]
Partly cloudy.
I’d say my first full-time martial arts teacher, because I was young enough to have considerable open domain in which said teacher could be influential and because the lessons were so diverse — from kinesthetics to ethics to culture to psychology.
By “most influential” I think one means having had either the broadest or most profound influence. (I favor the importance of the latter, the lessons that stick with one and which inform one’s philosophy of life.) This definition favors earlier teachers, but as I don’t remember any specific lesson taught by a specific elementary school teacher, they’re out (though I learned useful things from them and they ranged from competent to quite skilled as teachers go.) The earliest profound lesson I received through scholastic education, one that became a core tenet in my philosophy of life rather than just a skill, was in high school — and in my junior or senior year at that.
As with books, if I can take away one profound lesson from a teacher, I consider my experience well worth the time and energy. And most influential isn’t necessarily the prime criterion for a teacher — and certainly doesn’t necessarily mean best or most skilled or most in command of a diverse array of knowledge.
Have epiphanies. They are quite hard come by.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 