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Hi Friend,
I’m in a dive motel in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, which is basically in the middle of nowhere. Put another way, I’m far from all the references people know, like Denver. We’re not even anywhere near an interstate. This place is ruled by corn and trucking and maybe oil. It is 6 degrees outside and my dusty worn-out room is sweltering. At least the heat is working.
I had some fun conversations yesterday about the seemingly weird cycle of growth in the wind industry. A new friend who I’m working with told me it’s political – the conservatives hate wind, so when they get into power they remove the subsidies and tax breaks from wind (while leaving those in place for oil – it is not a fair fight). So you end up with big growth and then these flat spot, which I saw in the graphs I did last week. Cool!
We could even test this explanation pretty easily, by adding detail to our little data set and see if it correlates to shifts in government control or funding. But it’s just cool to see a question pop out of the numbers and then have a person in the know give a nice-fitting answer.
Also, it sucks that wind doesn’t stay on an upward trajectory. And it begs the question: why has solar been largely immune to this?
At least it’s sunny here, speaking of solar. Apparently we are working in a giant mud slushie which thaws progressively through the day.
I think I brought too many warm clothes and not enough different boots. Oh well.
I have a headache, which is going away as the coffee kicks in. I’m well-stocked on groceries, even though my bananas froze in the back of the truck, and my 78-degree room was nice for doing morning stretches.
I’m still grappling with how seriously I ought to take my resume/CV. It would be nice if Minerva had a system for telling you the relative importance of the different parts of the application. There are so many unknowns, my uncertainty is huge, and therefore I am loathe to put in a big effort cleaning up my resume so that it looks good/normal/impressive.
I feel pretty good about my experience and skills. Can I just describe that to them? Probably not.
Ok, I’m going to go, but I wanted to know if you’ve seen this video?
It’s kid of cool, especially the bit at the end where he describes emotional struggle as a sort of dance. It’s still a little laden with good and evil for me (as opposed to just competing ideas/models/emotions) but I really did like it. Thanks to Scott T. for sharing.
From my perspective, it takes a lot of the load off when you realize how insignificant we are in the big picture of things. It’s kind of like play-acting when we feel important. It’s more about finding the groove with the sustainable purposeful healthful feelings, just because those feelings are more sustainable and less painful than the other ones.
So we tinker with our lives to avoid pain and seek out joy/pleasure (and pure optimization for pleasure actually is counter-productive). But I’m pretty sure it has more to do with dopamine and access to easy stimulation than it does with our relationship to God.
I’ll just add here that I’m always available to talk, if you’re struggling, friend. Or if you’re doing great! Or anything in-between.
Love,
Brad