Yep apparently that’s what I am. I read this post to Carm (my wife) and sadly it seemed to resonate. At least we both laughed pretty heartily at it.
Some high points for me:
Understand your nerd’s relation to the computer. It’s clichéd, but a nerd is defined by his computer, and you need to understand why.
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The nerd has based his career, maybe his life, on the computer, and as we’ll see, this intimate relationship has altered his view of the world. He sees the world as a system which, given enough time and effort, is completely knowable. This is a fragile illusion that your nerd has adopted, but it’s a pleasant one that gets your nerd through the day.
Yeah too true… Carm was explaining to a friend the other day that I come home jump on a computer, eat dinner (fast, more on that later) put the kids to bed and jump on a computer. The friend totally couldn’t believe it or more likely she couldn’t believe that Carm puts up with it.
Your nerd has built himself a cave. I’ve written about The Cave elsewhere, but here are the basics. The Cave is designed to allow your nerd to do his favorite thing, which is working on the project. If you want to understand your nerd, stare long and hard at his Cave. How does he have it arranged? When does he tend to go there? How long does he stay?
Each object in the Cave has a particular place and purpose. Even the clutter is well designed. Don’t believe me? Grab that seemingly discarded Mac Mini which has been sitting on the floor for two months and hide it. You’ll have 10 minutes before he’ll come stomping out of the Cave — “Where’s the Mac?”
As we prepped to sell our house recently, Carm weened me off my clutter. Invariably she would have just freecycled or packed an object and I suddenly needed it. It was spooky. Stuff I hadn’t touched in years. Good to know I was only doing what is expected of my species.
As each part of the project is completed, your nerd receives an adrenaline rush that we’re going to call The High.
Yep I get that all the time. I mentioned it recently. When I really get going, I bang the keyboard, or scribble on the whiteboard like a frenzied rat banging a bar to get cocaine-laced food pellets. It isn’t pretty.
Your nerd’s insatiable quest for information and The High has tweaked his brain in an interesting way. For any given piece of incoming information, your nerd is making a lightning fast assessment: relevant or not relevant? Relevance means that the incoming information fits into the system of things your nerd currently cares about. Expect active involvement from your nerd when you trip the relevance flag. If you trip the irrelevance flag, look for verbal punctuation announcing his judgment of irrelevance. It’s the word your nerd says when he’s not listening and it’s always the same. My word is “Cool”, and when you hear “Cool”, I’m not listening.
Guilty as charged. With kids, especially smart kids this is really dangerous. P and Q both know when I’m not listening and have exploited that to new heights. Guess who is getting two guinea pigs once our new house is built. I swear I thought they were talking about a TV show (Wonderpets) not pet ownership.
You might’ve noticed your nerd’s strange relation to food. Does he eat fast? Like really fast? You should know what’s going on here. Food is thrown into the irrelevant bucket because it’s getting in the way of the content. Exercise, too. Thing is, you want your nerd to eat healthily so that he’s here in another thirty years, so how do you change this behavior? You make diet and exercise the project.
For me, exercise became the project ten years ago after a horrible break-up. When the project was no longer the Ex, I dove into exercise every single day of the week. There were charts tracking my workouts, there were graphs tracking my weight, and there was the exercise. Every single day for two years until the day I passed out in a McDonald’s post-workout after not eating for a day. Ok, so time for a new project. Yeah, nerds also have moderation issues. That’s another essay.
Another one that hits close to home. About 5 years ago I started running. I hated running as a kid because it was always the thing we did before the fun stuff (e.g. rowing). For some reason I got possessed and decided to run a 5k and then 10K. I got the pace/HRM/watch with a massive statistics package. Not satisfied with 10K I decided to take it further and head for marathons. Being on the proverbial project I kept pushing forward and broke multiple bones (metatarsals) in both of my feet. I also developed plantar fasciitis and sprained my ankle, twice. Yeah moderation is not my strong point.
Oh well at least I’m know I’m in reasonably good company.
