Why bother

I've seen a lot of people put too much weight and care in other people and their opinions, especially when those people don't really matter. Trying so hard to impress people they don't even like. I always say "the only person you have to live with is yourself, and whoever YOU CHOSE to live with". Only the opinions of the people you love and respect should matter to you, as for anyone else, to be blunt, even if they roll over and die, it wouldn't affect you, so why bother.

cha-ching!

My wife finally earned more money than me for the first time in 2006. She's a pediatrician, but has always worked part-time since her residency (that was 9 years ago), and still does. It's a good thing that this finally happened, but I wonder whether I should re-examine my income to see if it's all that it could/should be. Anyway, it's all good.

I wonder whether the dynamics in our relationship will change because of this. I should think not, but who knows. May be she'll feel as if she should have more say about how we manage/spend our money (she always have a say, but maybe she'll exercise that option more). May be I'll feel that I should defer to her more than I already do, who knows. I'll report if there's any changes.

driving a relationship

In the previous post, I equate relationship maintenance to car maintenance. In this post, again I will use the car analogy to look at relationship, this time driving. When you drive, you are taught to drive safely and defensively.

You drive safely by not speeding, being extra careful in inclement weather, following traffic rules and etiquette, by not pushing your car beyond it's capability, by equipping it properly for the conditions. This equate to knowing the limits of your relationship and not push it. If your significant other (SO) has a particular pet peeve, try to be sensitive to it. Making sure you have good communications with each other. Treating each other with respect.

You drive defensively by always being vigilant of road conditions and other drivers. You could be driving safely, but if you're not watching out for bad drivers, you can still get into accidents. How this relates to relationships is that always be vigilant of your relationship, watch out for trouble spots and steer clear. Making sure the "SO" is happy so that will not be predispose to looking around. This is not to say, be suspicious and possessive of your love one, but to be mindful of dangerous situation and environment, and to make sure to avoid it altogether, or if not possible to be very cognizant of the risk.

Remember, as with cars, an accident no matter whose fault it was, can leave the car's infrastructure permanent compromised, even if repairable. Sometimes it will totally destroy the car. So "drive" your relationship safely and defensively.

Marriage/relationship maintenance guide for dummies

When it comes to relationship sometimes folks aren't sure how much "maintenance" is enough, I've thought of a way so that men/women (especially men) can put relationship in context of something we all know well enough to understand. I'm equating relationship to automobiles. It goes like this:

Essential:
gas = sex
schedule maintenance (tune-ups, oil changes) = anniversary, birthdays, valentines
wear-tear maintenance (brakes, tires, shocks, etc..) = vacations

Nice to do, but not necessary:
car wash = dinner out, movies
detailing = special night out

This should help us all understand how much "maintenance" our relationship requires to be in good running condition. In the same way our car does not run/look well if we neglect the items above, our relationship suffers as well. You can put off some of the items for a little bit, but if you go too long without proper maintenance the car/relationship will stop working.

We will look at other aspects of the car-relationship model at some later point. Hope this was useful to you.

You can't have it all!

May be it's just me, an un-ambitious person, but I've always felt that one of the reason that I think I'm happy is because I believe that you CAN'T have it all. All you can do is figure out what's most important to you and work on that, everything else is gravy. Trying to have it all in itself is not a bad thing, what it does however is put so much stress on us to try to attain/maintain it all, that we get too tired and/or too stressed out to enjoy ourselves even if we do manage to have it all.

Sometimes the things that we want don't go well with each other. It's like wanting a 2-seat convertible that you can drive your family of 4 around in, it just doesn't go together. Or wanting a powerful V8 car that gets 40 mpg, it doesn't exists (at least not yet). If we aren't "reasonable" about these wants, we will never find what we're looking for.

Sometimes the things we want can go together, but requires so much effort to attain that we can't even enjoy ourselves once we attain it. Like the mother/career choice that some women have to make. Some are able to do both, and enjoy themselves, but a lot of folks aren't able to do that. Either the demands from work is too stressful, or the rewards of taking care of the kids isn't apparent enough, or doing both well requires so much energy from you that you can't even take some time to relax and enjoy yourself and your accomplishments. This is where/when you need to sit down and decide what's important and cut back on the other stuff, if only to save your happiness and sanity.

Should the fact that other people are able to "have it all" while you can't make you feel bad? I say no, we are all different (different values, different tolerance, different temperment). the only thing we can do is make ourselves happy with our situation, whatever that is.

I'm not saying don't have dreams, I'm just saying that if you're out there chasing your dreams and if you find that even if you achieve your goals/dreams and you are still unhappy, may be you just need to slow down and figure out what it is that makes you happy.

Anyway, hopes this rambling haven't gotten completely incoherent.

Praising your children

I recently read an article (http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/) about this very topic that resonate strongly with me. It basically talk about how praising your children as "smart" might not be a good thing.
As for me, I've always felt that children should be encourage to try, learn, fail, and keep trying and learning. I've seen too many instances where children are praised for just showing up or parents/adults let children win to boost their self-esteem. While this may encourage childrens to keep trying, or to learn to try new things, it does not help them deal with failure and hard work. This is not to say that this approach is bad, it just doesn't deal directly with two subjects that all children will confront as they grow and work to be successful in any endeavors. As with most things in life, the struggle is learning/practicing to get better. The hard work, the effort put forth is what allows some to succeed, where more talented peers may fail.

One of the thing I always stress is dealing with things in our control. If something is not in your control, there's nothing you can do about it. For example, in poker, all you can do is to put your money in when you have the best hand, and fold when you don't or when your chance of getting the best hand is slim. That means going all-in pre-flop with AA, if you lose so be it. You did everything you could have done, luck still plays a role. In poker the only thing you can control are what cards you chose to play, and how you play those cards (bet,raise, fold, check, call, etc..), unless you have the absolute best hand possible, even if you are a 90% favorite, the 10% chance that you lose can still happens. While you may not be happy that you lose because of that 10% chance, you should be happy that you put yourself in a situation that allows you to win 90% of the time, because over the long run, you will be successful more often than not.

Back to the children, effort is something they can control, smart (if couched in the context that it is innate, genetic) is something they cannot. If we teach them that they can be "smart" by exerting effort to learn more things, working hard to master different things then we are showing them how they can affect their knowledge. As Thomas Edison once said "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".

The other aspect is failure and how do we deal with it. Everyone fails at some point, some fail more than other, but we will all fail at something. How we deal with it defines us as much as if not more than our successes. Do we fail and give up or do we keep trying until we succeed. (Sometimes we won't succeed but does that mean failure when we try and got the best out of our abilities and it wasn't enough? That's a topic for another day) . Remember "quitters never wins, and winners never quits".

I've probably rambled on so much that the message may be lost, for that I apologized.


btw, no I did not win the Lotto yesterday (the jackpot grew to $390M because of all the hoopla surrounding it).

Lotto fever

In California there are two Lottos: Mega Millions (multi-state) and Super Lotto (CA only), the jackpot are now $355M and $57M respectively. It's getting big enough that your's truly have to buy some tickets. Generally buying lottery tickets is a "foolish investment", however when the jackpot is bigger than the odds for winning then it's a "fair gamble". For Mega Millions the odds of winning is 171M to 1, jackpot is $355M, so you're getting better returns for your bet. The odds for Super Lotto is 41M to 1, the current jackpot $57M.
Of course, all of this is just an attempt to rationalize buying Lotto tickets. Good luck to me.

Follow up on the previous post, all this exercising is causing my body to be sore all over. This is one reason why it has been very difficult for me to get into a serious exercise regiment. It's literally a "pain in the ass" to get started. Let's see if I can keep it up for a week, may be after that it will be easier.

The new reality of life in the 40s

As I and my friends all slowly drift into 40s something status, I realize we going to be dealing with a lot of issues we haven't have to deal with of late.
-Our own health and fitness
-Our parent's health, fitness & mortality
-Our kid's coming of age

Yesterday, after getting together to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday, a few of the friends invited themselves over to my house to play tennis. This is the first time that we have gotten together to "exercise". Most of the time, we get together to eat, or go out to eat. I think as we are all getting older, we're realizing how difficult it is to get rid of the pounds we put on. We have talked about the need to be more active, and some of us have been very good about working out on their own. But this was the first time that it was more than just talk. May be this will be a beginning of our "group" fitness dedication. Let's see how long this will last.

Are you smarter than a 5th grader?

I've been watching this show on Fox with my kids and I can't believe how bad (may be the proper word is "unenlightened") these people are. They are missing a bunch of questions that I wouldn't think that they should. The contestants are asked questions that kids would have learned in grade school. And as they answer these questions correctly, they get money (surprisingly, a lot of money). Of the 2 contestants so far, one (a UCLA grad no less) got $5,000, and the other one got $100,000. Getting that $100K requires you to answer about 7 questions right, this includes 3 chances to get help from the kids on the show.

The issue here could be contestant selection, that is select people who sounds like they could be intelligent people based on their education and profession, while making sure that they are at the same time clueless. I will see how this shows plays out. Meanwhile, I have a deal with my 12 years old son that he gets a quarter for every right answer, and lose a dollar for every wrong answer (since he is now a 6th grader, he thinks this is fair enough). So far I owe him $1 after the first show we watched together.

I will revisit this topic periodically, as one of my pet peeve is:
"common sense is not all that common" and "average intelligence is pretty disappointing"

Thang

First post

With everyone and their mothers blogging, I figure I should try it out to see if it's for me. I've read a few blogs that I thought were entertaining, informative and interesting and thought why not. My wife tells me that I need to get a life, what's so interesting to read about someone else's "diary". For me, a blog that is well done is worth the author's and the reader's time.

While I think it's just another forum to vent/share/shout about your thoughts and feelings, it can be a tool to track your thoughts and feelings and whether it has changed over time. It can be a forum to see whether others share your thoughts/experience as well (this assumes that someone may actually want to read all this, which is a big assumption it itself).

Thang