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silveradeptLast call for December Days for this year! Thanks for reading along with me as I talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.
31: A Whole New Ballgame
Traditionally "The World" in an RWS Tarot deck, A Whole New Ballgame is the way that the Baseball Tarot indicates that the journey continues on, even though there are stopping points along the way in a baseball career. And it also represents the culmination of effort, often from being down, where with one swing of the bat, the game is tied, or a team that has been behind for most of the game takes the lead. That's usually where the exclamation "It's a whole new ballgame" is uttered. Other sports have similar kinds of ideas, usually with the idea of "the score is 0-0 again" or "they now have to win the game that gets played with the time remaining" or similar ideas.
It can mean ultimate success and the closing out of a particular chapter in a much better condition than before. It can be a reminder that there's always the possibility that things will change drastically and you'll have to adapt to it. And, it's supposed to represent a certain amount of the end of the journey through the Major Arcana, before you go on to the suits. One thing ends, another begins.
I'll admit, I tend to think of the journey more as 0 to 1, Fool to Magician, which seems to easy to do, and also can become the kind of journey that would be best described as Zeno's Paradox, where you can cover half of the remaining distance each time you gain skill or practice skill, but you'll never actually quite make it to the end point. At least, not until you're not around any more to proclaim that you've finally did it. (And Universal AC said, "Let there be light.") And I think that it also can be 0 to 1 with an awful lot of detours all over the place to the other cards, suits and trumps alike, that make the pathways of each of our lives and the weavings of the Fates for us unique and fitting into the tapestry. Presumably with not all that much need for frogging their work and trying again,
Fixed mindsets tend to think of the journey having an end point, a spot in which you reach and can do no more, because you've reached the limits of your abilities and there is no more that you will understand or successfully practice. This happens in the world. Things do have ends. Media finishes, lives end, eras pass, one into another, mostly leaving it to the historians to figure out when something has sufficiently shifted to call it the end of an era and the beginning of another. (At least, when it isn't pegged to something like the death of the Emperor and the ascension of a new one.) If everyone saw time as a continuous stream, without reference points and defined blocks, it would be very difficult to talk of things that have passed and things that are yet to come with any accuracy. Even for an ideal that wants an eternal present, no past, no future, living in each moment exactly as it arrives, not chasing it once it has passed, nor anticipating something before it arrives, you still need a certain amount of temporal reference to understand those concepts, even with an idea to avoid them.
The growth mindset tends to believe that there's not an end to a journey, even if there are checkpoints along the way, or places where someone could reasonably say they've attained mastery of something at a desired level. There's always new knowledge to obtain, or new discoveries to make, or practice to do so that the skills learned can be solidified and reinforced. It celebrates the idea of humans as infinite potential, infinite diversity in infinite combinations, and sufficiently malleable that we can always change ourselves into something that works better for us or that will suit the situation we are in better. (This works both for us and against us, as it turns out that malleability of humanity can also be used to justify terrible things, or by manipulators, confidence men, cult leaders, and abusers to hurt us and make us think that what we are suffering under is perfectly normal and acceptable.)
These two ideas as endpoints gives us a nice spectrum to work from, and that gives us what Sweck wanted us to understand about some things being fixed, and other things being growth, since the capacity we have could be variable regardless of our mindset about it. Having growth mindset about things is an indication that we believe we have more capacity for something than we currently have, or that we are currently working through the skill-taste gap to get to something more palatable. Hitting the wall is the indicator that we may be shifting from growth mindset to fixed mindset about something, as that's usually the spot where we find ourselves wondering whether we're actually going to be able to make any more progress on something. As humans, we can go back and forth between the two of them, based on information, training, desire to go further, and so many other things.
So, yes, this is the end of this year. In so many ways, it was exactly the year we feared it would be, and it was another year where I continued to have to deal with expenses, expected and otherwise, and the great times that come along with being at work. (This last two months have been particularly gnarly, since our administration has Big Plans they intend to put into place, regardless of whether they are wise or well-supported.) It was another year where I found that my holiday spirit was empty, as it has been for many of the years since I got out of the terrible relationship. Maybe it'll come back when the last of the consequences are paid off, maybe it won't. Some of it may be the bit I talked about earlier, about how happy moments have to be really strong to stick, some of it may be that the basic function of working and paying expenses are not things that make me feel great, since holding on is not the getting ahead I was hoping for. Holding on is better than backsliding or flying downward, but there is not always great satisfaction that comes from this.
There's not a lot that this particular year had going for it in the big picture, as a lot of the people who are in charge decided they wanted to enforce a hierarchy and then stratify it even more. But, as they did so, we found out (or re found out) that the people around us are more than capable of throwing down to protect their friends and neighbors, even when the agents of oppression are better armed and armored than they are. Whether showing up en masse, or distributing whistles, information packets, buying up the street vendor supplies for redistribution, following and making ruckus, swearing their ever-bleeping heads off and making great noise at injustice, or fighting in the courts, there was a lot of punching up that happened, and solidarity. And plenty of other good news, whether locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. The year, even with the progression of immoral and unjust acts, there were still plenty of people going along the pathway that said they were not required to complete the work of justice in the world, but neither did they shirk it or avoid it.
Taking a long view toward things is important when you have been hit with A Whole New Ballgame. And so many of the things that I do for work, or outside of it, are things that qualify in the realm of "Plant trees in whose shade you may never sit." They will be things whose blooms, whose fruits, whose further seeds, are things I will never know about, not because they weren't important, or because they didn't flower and fruit and spread their seeds and pollinate other things, but because, like I have done myself, people go places and they do things, and they don't always check back in with the people who were there when they were younger, or who helped them with that thing here and there. And sometimes, by the time you've made it and you want to look back, that person has already left the position they were in, and you don't have any other known way of getting in contact with them.
It was a year. Just like and unlike every other. It has a beginning, an end, and it is a continuation of things that have gone before, and it will continue into the future. I grew in some ways, and stayed static in others, and believed I had reached my limits, and believed there was still more for me to accomplish and to practice, and new skills to collect along the way as I refined others. I felt that my best days were behind me, even though what I really wished for was greater security and less responsibility. I castigated myself for forgetting, for not using my external memory, for having forbidden emotions, and for having emotions at people who didn't really deserve what they got. For being inadequate, a failure, and a disappointment.
I got to spend time with people who accepted me, flaws and all. I had great experiences in community. I made people laugh, I put them at ease, I helped them solve their problems, small and large alike. I'd like to think that the things I created were enjoyed by the people that received them, and I have comments to remind me that it did happen. I published and was published, I commented and received. I smiled, I shared, I performed, I expressed my concerns and I listened. Sometimes I even managed to offer good advice at a good time for it. I tried to accept with grace when other people did nice things for me, and I tried to get the weasels to go away and leave me alone for a bit when I did something well, or when I did something less well. I tried to believe others ere genuine when they said I was good company, or that I had good insights into things.
For as much as I tried to avoid it, it turns out I was human, after all. For all the times when being human was a failing, and for all the times where being human was a joy and a benefit to myself and others. This year closes, another opens. I can only hope that it will be a better year next year. Better than all the best years I've had before. (I think we're due up for one.)
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snowflake_challenge starts tomorrow. It's usually the housekeeping post , so you may not see anything until a couple days afterward, as everyone prepares their digital spaces for guests.
31: A Whole New Ballgame
Traditionally "The World" in an RWS Tarot deck, A Whole New Ballgame is the way that the Baseball Tarot indicates that the journey continues on, even though there are stopping points along the way in a baseball career. And it also represents the culmination of effort, often from being down, where with one swing of the bat, the game is tied, or a team that has been behind for most of the game takes the lead. That's usually where the exclamation "It's a whole new ballgame" is uttered. Other sports have similar kinds of ideas, usually with the idea of "the score is 0-0 again" or "they now have to win the game that gets played with the time remaining" or similar ideas.
It can mean ultimate success and the closing out of a particular chapter in a much better condition than before. It can be a reminder that there's always the possibility that things will change drastically and you'll have to adapt to it. And, it's supposed to represent a certain amount of the end of the journey through the Major Arcana, before you go on to the suits. One thing ends, another begins.
I'll admit, I tend to think of the journey more as 0 to 1, Fool to Magician, which seems to easy to do, and also can become the kind of journey that would be best described as Zeno's Paradox, where you can cover half of the remaining distance each time you gain skill or practice skill, but you'll never actually quite make it to the end point. At least, not until you're not around any more to proclaim that you've finally did it. (And Universal AC said, "Let there be light.") And I think that it also can be 0 to 1 with an awful lot of detours all over the place to the other cards, suits and trumps alike, that make the pathways of each of our lives and the weavings of the Fates for us unique and fitting into the tapestry. Presumably with not all that much need for frogging their work and trying again,
Fixed mindsets tend to think of the journey having an end point, a spot in which you reach and can do no more, because you've reached the limits of your abilities and there is no more that you will understand or successfully practice. This happens in the world. Things do have ends. Media finishes, lives end, eras pass, one into another, mostly leaving it to the historians to figure out when something has sufficiently shifted to call it the end of an era and the beginning of another. (At least, when it isn't pegged to something like the death of the Emperor and the ascension of a new one.) If everyone saw time as a continuous stream, without reference points and defined blocks, it would be very difficult to talk of things that have passed and things that are yet to come with any accuracy. Even for an ideal that wants an eternal present, no past, no future, living in each moment exactly as it arrives, not chasing it once it has passed, nor anticipating something before it arrives, you still need a certain amount of temporal reference to understand those concepts, even with an idea to avoid them.
The growth mindset tends to believe that there's not an end to a journey, even if there are checkpoints along the way, or places where someone could reasonably say they've attained mastery of something at a desired level. There's always new knowledge to obtain, or new discoveries to make, or practice to do so that the skills learned can be solidified and reinforced. It celebrates the idea of humans as infinite potential, infinite diversity in infinite combinations, and sufficiently malleable that we can always change ourselves into something that works better for us or that will suit the situation we are in better. (This works both for us and against us, as it turns out that malleability of humanity can also be used to justify terrible things, or by manipulators, confidence men, cult leaders, and abusers to hurt us and make us think that what we are suffering under is perfectly normal and acceptable.)
These two ideas as endpoints gives us a nice spectrum to work from, and that gives us what Sweck wanted us to understand about some things being fixed, and other things being growth, since the capacity we have could be variable regardless of our mindset about it. Having growth mindset about things is an indication that we believe we have more capacity for something than we currently have, or that we are currently working through the skill-taste gap to get to something more palatable. Hitting the wall is the indicator that we may be shifting from growth mindset to fixed mindset about something, as that's usually the spot where we find ourselves wondering whether we're actually going to be able to make any more progress on something. As humans, we can go back and forth between the two of them, based on information, training, desire to go further, and so many other things.
So, yes, this is the end of this year. In so many ways, it was exactly the year we feared it would be, and it was another year where I continued to have to deal with expenses, expected and otherwise, and the great times that come along with being at work. (This last two months have been particularly gnarly, since our administration has Big Plans they intend to put into place, regardless of whether they are wise or well-supported.) It was another year where I found that my holiday spirit was empty, as it has been for many of the years since I got out of the terrible relationship. Maybe it'll come back when the last of the consequences are paid off, maybe it won't. Some of it may be the bit I talked about earlier, about how happy moments have to be really strong to stick, some of it may be that the basic function of working and paying expenses are not things that make me feel great, since holding on is not the getting ahead I was hoping for. Holding on is better than backsliding or flying downward, but there is not always great satisfaction that comes from this.
There's not a lot that this particular year had going for it in the big picture, as a lot of the people who are in charge decided they wanted to enforce a hierarchy and then stratify it even more. But, as they did so, we found out (or re found out) that the people around us are more than capable of throwing down to protect their friends and neighbors, even when the agents of oppression are better armed and armored than they are. Whether showing up en masse, or distributing whistles, information packets, buying up the street vendor supplies for redistribution, following and making ruckus, swearing their ever-bleeping heads off and making great noise at injustice, or fighting in the courts, there was a lot of punching up that happened, and solidarity. And plenty of other good news, whether locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. The year, even with the progression of immoral and unjust acts, there were still plenty of people going along the pathway that said they were not required to complete the work of justice in the world, but neither did they shirk it or avoid it.
Taking a long view toward things is important when you have been hit with A Whole New Ballgame. And so many of the things that I do for work, or outside of it, are things that qualify in the realm of "Plant trees in whose shade you may never sit." They will be things whose blooms, whose fruits, whose further seeds, are things I will never know about, not because they weren't important, or because they didn't flower and fruit and spread their seeds and pollinate other things, but because, like I have done myself, people go places and they do things, and they don't always check back in with the people who were there when they were younger, or who helped them with that thing here and there. And sometimes, by the time you've made it and you want to look back, that person has already left the position they were in, and you don't have any other known way of getting in contact with them.
It was a year. Just like and unlike every other. It has a beginning, an end, and it is a continuation of things that have gone before, and it will continue into the future. I grew in some ways, and stayed static in others, and believed I had reached my limits, and believed there was still more for me to accomplish and to practice, and new skills to collect along the way as I refined others. I felt that my best days were behind me, even though what I really wished for was greater security and less responsibility. I castigated myself for forgetting, for not using my external memory, for having forbidden emotions, and for having emotions at people who didn't really deserve what they got. For being inadequate, a failure, and a disappointment.
I got to spend time with people who accepted me, flaws and all. I had great experiences in community. I made people laugh, I put them at ease, I helped them solve their problems, small and large alike. I'd like to think that the things I created were enjoyed by the people that received them, and I have comments to remind me that it did happen. I published and was published, I commented and received. I smiled, I shared, I performed, I expressed my concerns and I listened. Sometimes I even managed to offer good advice at a good time for it. I tried to accept with grace when other people did nice things for me, and I tried to get the weasels to go away and leave me alone for a bit when I did something well, or when I did something less well. I tried to believe others ere genuine when they said I was good company, or that I had good insights into things.
For as much as I tried to avoid it, it turns out I was human, after all. For all the times when being human was a failing, and for all the times where being human was a joy and a benefit to myself and others. This year closes, another opens. I can only hope that it will be a better year next year. Better than all the best years I've had before. (I think we're due up for one.)
snowflake_challenge starts tomorrow. It's usually the housekeeping post , so you may not see anything until a couple days afterward, as everyone prepares their digital spaces for guests. 
no subject
Date: 2026-01-01 09:40 am (UTC)It's already 2026 for me when I'm reading this, so Happy New Year! 2025 was indeed a difficult year (as were so many of the previous ones...), so I do hope that this one will be better; even if turns out not to, it'll still be different than the current one, at least. (For myself, I already have next New Year's to look forward to, because then most fireworks will be forbidden in my country!)
I've followed this series with interest, and I think I'll be doing the same for the Snowflake Challenge, since it has a somewhat lighter load than this one. Until then!
no subject
Date: 2026-01-01 07:12 pm (UTC)Until then!
no subject
Date: 2026-01-01 09:01 pm (UTC)Our pets would like it, too, so I'm happy for them! I'll be there tomorrow, as I unexpectedly needed to save some stuff from LiveJournal.