I switched hands for using my mouse. It's awkward, but a big relief to the index finger on my right hand. Any repetitive movement will bring the same result. I'm pleased that I can still type at all with my right hand. Typing is not what has caused the problem, but playing the card games like Hearts and FreeCell and Solitaire is what does the trick. I guess I'm lucky there isn't a half-decent MineSweeper game for the Mac that I can replace the Windows game with. I got to where my only limitation for speed with MineSweeper was how fast I could click the squares.
My biggest game addiction now is Sudoku. I bought a Sudoku game for Macs called Latin Squares that's got a timer. That's how I challenge myself with these games. I try to beat my own best time. Latin Squares comes with three levels of difficulty: Easy; Medium; and Hard. The Easy level ain't easy for me. Any game of Sudoku I win in under four minutes is a well-played game for me. I decided that I wasn't gonna play at the Medium level until I finished a game under three minutes.
I've played thousands of games at the Easy level. Winning in less than four minutes is good. The fastest game I completed was three minutes and six seconds. One day last week when I wasn't paying much attention I finished a game in less than three minutes, but not only that, I finished the game in two minutes and forty-six seconds. I haven't finished in under three minutes but for that one time. I didn't believe that was possible. Well, for me, at nearly seventy years old. My reaction times are also affected by the arthritis.
Playing these games on the computer daily remind me so much of pipe-welding for a living. I had to work at an expert level every day to pass the x-ray tests required for every weld I made, and I did. But, some days I could perform at such a level of excellence even the other welders would compliment me on the sheer beauty of certain welds. When that happens, the color of the finished weld has a tendency to turn golden, and thats how you know you've done exceptionally well. A weld can look pretty, and easily pass the x-ray test, without the weld cooling down to a golden color.
Pipe-welding was the first physically oriented skill I ever mastered. It set the standard for other modes of mastery. It was through my mastery of welding that I learned what mastery is. It's not perfection, but dictates the level of excellence that can be achieved fairly frequently at a high level of skill. It's associated with systems of expertise, and is not the sa-me thing as acting from a state of gnosis. At least, that's my opinion. YMMV.
It's March already. In three week the Spring equinox will arrive. That still doesn't mean we won't have cold snaps up until Easter in this neighborhood. Easter is the drop dead date farmers figure they can safely put their produce and tobacco plants out into the fields without losing them to a late frost. We're supposed to get cold today and it's supposed to be down to 13 degrees Fahrenheit tonight and for the next couple of nights, and then up in the seventies by the weekend. I hate having to be patient every single Spring, but I do. It seems like I'd learn to forego the expectation, but I never have. I always start yearning for the coming of the green way too early.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
