Aug 20: Emerging adults - where we in our mid-twenties really are
My good friend Heiner has introduced me to the excellent Instapaper concept. The idea is simple: surf the net as usual and when you find something you don't have time to read at that moment, click a bookmarklet they supply and the article is silently added to your Instapaper profile. A side-effect of offering this functionality is that Instapaper can perform statistical analysis on click counts for each URL, working out which are the most popular articles amongst the reading community.
Here's one I've enjoyed. It charts the "discovery" of that difficult period between adolescence and adulthood. I think I'm there right now. Lots of possibilities, not much stability, tons of energy, not much money. Watch this space as I develop my business and do some interesting things in the process. There is time for "setting down" later on. First time I've encountered the idea of synaptic pruning, too. I wonder which bits of my cognition have been lopped off so that other bits can be optimised? What about you? I refuse to feel guilty about enjoying this time in my life. There's a quote at the end from Jeffrey Arnett at the end and some opinion from the article writer, Robin Marantz Henig, which holds some promise for us all:
Here's one I've enjoyed. It charts the "discovery" of that difficult period between adolescence and adulthood. I think I'm there right now. Lots of possibilities, not much stability, tons of energy, not much money. Watch this space as I develop my business and do some interesting things in the process. There is time for "setting down" later on. First time I've encountered the idea of synaptic pruning, too. I wonder which bits of my cognition have been lopped off so that other bits can be optimised? What about you? I refuse to feel guilty about enjoying this time in my life. There's a quote at the end from Jeffrey Arnett at the end and some opinion from the article writer, Robin Marantz Henig, which holds some promise for us all:
“To be a young American today is to experience both excitement and uncertainty, wide-open possibility and confusion, new freedoms and new fears,” he writes in “Emerging Adulthood.” During the timeout they are granted from nonstop, often tedious and dispiriting responsibilities, “emerging adults develop skills for daily living, gain a better understanding of who they are and what they want from life and begin to build a foundation for their adult lives.” If it really works that way, if this longer road to adulthood really leads to more insight and better choices, then Arnett’s vision of an insightful, sensitive, thoughtful, content, well-honed, self-actualizing crop of grown-ups would indeed be something worth waiting for.