I'm sorry, but squash (also known as racket ball I believe) is a silly sport. I played it once with a person who also hadn't played before and we didn't know what the hell we were doing. We didn't know the rules (are there any?), we were just running around the court like headless chickens, with no purpose to it. Naturally, I thought we were totally messing it up, it's probably nothing like that really. Well, it is. I went to the gym today, and they have squash courts right next to the gym, so I went over there to see how people play squash. Some of them were clearly beginners, some were more advanced. But the way they played was exactly the same as we did. It doesn't look any more clever, it's really just running all around the court. Now tennis, that's different, because it actually makes a lot of sense, there are rules to adhere to and it takes skill to play tennis, it's not merely hitting the ball. But as a kid playing tennis, sometimes I wish I could hit the ball as hard as I possibly could, just for the hell of it. Well, that's squash. But when there isn't much else to the game, it doesn't offer much at all.

I resent going to the post office, something comes up regularly which makes me have to go there and I always hate the thought of going, it's such a pointless chore. Over the years I've had a lot of computer equipment sent to my address, some of it was broken, I had to send it back, I've bought stuff on ebay, I've sold stuff there, I've gotten packages from friends, I've sent out packages, I've gotten letters I've had to sign for a few times, I've picked up stuff for other people, and for all of this the common denominator is the post office. I used to have a post office right near my house, next to the supermarket, but they closed that branch to save money.. :( So I had to go twice as far, to the next post office in reach, at the shopping center. This made me resent going there, it felt like an unnecessary obstacle.

Then I get to the post office and there's _always_ a line. I would actually plan on when to go so I wouldn't have to stand in line with my number on a piece of paper, waiting for my turn. I would go early, I would go at 10, just before closing, I tried various strategies. And I realized that it's actually quite random when people show up, it's hard to find a formula that would guarantee no waiting. I could get there at noon on a Saturday and walk right up to the window, then just as I was being expedited, seven people would walk in in the meantime and a line would form. Of course, waiting at the post office would be less of a problem if the postal workers were more efficient. No matter what your business is at the post office, there is a lower boundary of about 3 minutes, there's nothing you can get done in less time. These people really take their time and I imagine they do quite a good job since they never rush. I know I always get good service at the post office.

But, there is a certain phenomenon I started to notice after years of going to the same post office. I would pretty much recognize everyone who worked there. And for some reason, I felt kinda sick of seeing the same people again and again. I felt resentment for them and I can't explain why. I would notice that at the supermarket too, "oh it's you again". As if by going there, I knew I couldn't escape those people. Even though I didn't know them at all.

Choose the correct answer, you may select more than one:

• it is incredibly difficult to find work in Utrecht,
• very few people are employed permanently,
• it is very common to have more than one job,
• very few people live in Utrecht for a long time,
• people are incredibly anxious to work,
• available positions are never filled.

And here comes the answer in form of a question (just like on "Jeopardy").. how do you explain that there are so many job agencies in this town? In a five block radius, I've seen about 15 of them, on one street alone they are literally door-to-door, out of 10-12 stores 7 are job agencies. I've never seen that many places anywhere, all of Holland must be coming here for jobs. When I go past one of those, sometimes I get curious and start looking at the ads (because they always have them in the windows), trying to find jobs that I could do. It's much of the same everywhere; sales person (hell no), secretary, project manager (well if you count college projects :D), various HR-related jobs. I've seen a couple that are more rare; tech support (at the cost of losing my mind, I could do that), network engineer (finally one that's more me, I don't have the experience, but I could prolly pick it up quickly). Anyway, if you're looking for a job, I know where to start..

Ps. the answer to our implicit question, "where did you steal the title from this time?", is - the stationary store guy who ordered the Rollermack 1000 for Mr. Pitt.

Today I started thinking about a rather more significant issue than the everyday blog ramblings. Why is it that I do what I do, why is it that I fail to do what I set out to do? I can trace a lot of action back to enthusiasm, it's a very powerful force.

I don't know about you, but I think that I have good ideas. Not good ideas about how to achieve affordable nuclear fusion for the household, I mean good ideas about things I can do, things perhaps I should do. But it's mostly about things I can do, because once the question of conscience and guilt comes into it, it's hard to summon any enthusiasm for what needs to be done. These ideas don't come to me on an everyday basis, they appear more on a monthly span of time. Quite often I will think of something that I could be doing, other than what I'm currently doing, at a time where I'm unable to do what I just thought of doing. Sometimes, in fact often, these ideas become little projects. And I like projects, so it's a good way of thinking about the issue at hand.

Inevitably, I produce more ideas for projects than I could realistically undertake, so there has to be a screening process. Since I'm both lazy and rigorous about what I want to spend time on, I never select ideas that are completely pointless and would lead me to think it was a total waste of time once the project is done. In fact, those never make it into a project at all. So I know that I'm left with a few meaningful projects, and it's a question of choosing among them. This is where enthusiasm comes in. I don't select the project which seems to give the biggest pay off, long term benefit or is the most important, I choose the one that I'm most enthusiastic about. And this is a creative process, so enthusiasm is helping me to accomplish something that I conceived on my own, which gives me a sense of accomplishment. Among recent projects I listed on a piece of paper, there was:

• swimming at the pool (to get in shape),
• making another Juventus video compilation (I made one before),
• starting a software project (and finishing),
• learning Italian.

There were others, but I don't remember them now. From the top; I did swim, but not as much as I set out to do and I didn't do it enough to feel that my shape had improved. I decided against doing another compilation, simply because I knew my expectations to it would be too high to ever be happy with anything I could make. I did start a coding project and I finished it, I consider that idea quite successful. I did make a bit of an effort to learn Italian, without really getting into any kind of productive routine, but my motivation was thwarted and now I don't consider it much of a goal anymore (there were external factors at play here).

And that doesn't illustrate an especially successful nor unsuccessful outcome, it's pretty much an average result. Except for the fact that I had about 8-10 projects in all and it was too much at once. From that little example, one can see that a project has promise if it has a clearly defined beginning and end. Swimming and learning a language have no precise goals, one can do it forever. Launching a project that has a definite end is different, however, there I know where I am in the project, how far I am from the beginning and from the end. The two other examples are like this, one was successful, the other was never undertaken. Similarly, there are lots more other projects I have not verbalized and written down anywhere, which I've completed and lots more projects I've abandoned. A project also has a lot of promise if it can sustain my enthusiasm all the way through.

Enthusiasm, there it is again. The point of taking this long route is to underline how useful enthusiasm is in small accomplishments. But ultimately, we are still left with the major issues in life; education, career, health etc. And enthusiasm is much tougher to spot there, because these things have no effect of being novel, of being exciting. They also have no trace of being something you can complete fairly quickly, like a project. So it's not new and the pay off, the moment of accomplishment, is very far away.

How then to mobilize enthusiasm for the big issues? I had an idea today. I remembered that a few years ago I made a policy decision to be nice to people. I'm not really nice by nature and it opened my eyes to see some people being really nice and I realized that my life would be both easier and more pleasant if I could do the same. And being nice doesn't mean being nice when you want to anyway, it means being nice when you don't want to. I somehow told myself that from now I would make this my goal, I would strive for it. Lo and behold, people started being nicer to me, my relations with a lot of people improved from neutral/resentful to good. And I did that because I believed in the idea, being nice is a good thing, it makes sense. I must say that I have neglected that principle recently, because I also need to strive for confidence and confidence requires confrontation sometimes, so striking a balance between the two has proven a challenge.

So if I could go from indifferent to nice, why not enthusiastic? Well, it's not straightforward. False enthusiasm is good for 5 minutes and doesn't solve anything. To be enthusiastic, I really have to believe in what I'm doing, it can't be based on a total spur of the moment notion. Inducing enthusiasm doesn't work either, when someone is trying to make me enthusiastic based on their values, which I don't happen to share. But, just as being nice is a state of mind, a starting point from where to make decisions on a case-by-case basis, perhaps enthusiasm could be as well? I don't know if this is going to work, but this is my idea today, to think of enthusiasm as a starting point. I've already been doing this for a while with happiness, sometimes when I'm not terribly cheery, I can rationalize the reasons I have for being down and conclude that I really should be happy. And from there on, a feeling of happiness grows in me, it may take 30m or an hour before I get there, but it works.

This is important, because enthusiasm is a catalyst for what gets done and what doesn't. Whether it be a "small idea" or a "big issue", the ultimate reason why I do or don't decide on something is based on how enthusiastic I am about it at the time. So if I could be more enthusiastic by definition, maybe I could get more done? Well, if it were easy I wouldn't have to think about it in such complicated terms. There is something about the nature of enthusiasm that demands reciprocity. If I'm really excited about something and I try to get you excited about it and you're indifferent no matter how hard I try, my enthusiasm wanes. And so to sustain it, it has to be reciprocal in some sense. When it comes to things I do on my own, there has to be positive feedback to fuel further enthusiasm. If my goal was to dig a hole and I could see that with every shovel it got deeper, it would make me happy to see that I'm getting somewhere. In practice, this positive feedback is not always there. Some things require enough determination to keep at it for weeks only to learn of the result at the end. But this is now the joining of two issues, one is "by default" enthusiasm to get started, the other is positive feedback (which must be truthful) to sustain enthusiasm. What I'm shooting for is the first one.

Wouldn't it be easier if there was no dating? No sitting by the phone, no wondering how people feel about you, no awkward moments where you have nothing to say?