Satisfaction [NOT 13/4/24]

13/4/24 ManchuCandidate 13

Ain’t got no satisfaction… sang an London School of Economics drop out long ago.

What give you that strong sense of accomplishment?

Lists?

Is it finishing your list of things to do? A bucket list?

I get a kick out of finishing things. The sense/need/desire of accomplishment is strong within (damn engineer).

So when I finish a model kit/engineering project/home project that has pissed me off to no end, caused me lots of grief, whose fellow coworkers or parts make me want to throw things… to finally wrestle the damn thing to the ground and pound it into submission, er, completion gives me the warm fuzzies.

Is it the struggle or the goal? Hell, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s both. Sometimes it’s neither.

Watching a friend or loved one accomplish a life goal can be the same especially if you watched them, helped them along the way.

What say you Deadsplinterites? What was your shining moment of accomplishment?

Open Thread/Threat

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13 Comments

  1. my shining moment hasnt come yet

    honestly im just so much better than everyone around me its not even fair

    modest too

    anyways….i may never live up to my ideals

  2. I really like using up products. Like when I finish up a bag of refill spices from Penzey’s. Or using up the last of a variety of tea in my cupboard.

    I think it’s probably a combination of not having a lot of space and not liking to waste things. So it kicks some serotonin into my brain.

  3. Also, gardening. So much satisfaction. Both in making things look pretty and serve as homes and food for insects and birbs, and in making things that serve as food for me.

    Last week I used some chives from the garden, first thing this year that I’ve enjoyed from the garden. Tonight I am eating a salad with lettuce I picked an hour ago and it’s a goddamned delight of satisfaction.

      • I got bok choy, kale, 2 kinds of lettuce, and spinach already growing. Plus the chives on year 3, I guess they’re a perennial and I never connected the dots. There’s some parsley that’s come back for 2 years and I’ll know in a few weeks if it made it this year too.

        In 2-3 weeks I’ll get to tomatoes, sweet peppers, and green beans. This year I’m trying some giant lima beans and cowpeas. I know I don’t have enough space to get a lot of them, but fresh beans are so damn good.

        I’m not even trying it with the damn cucumbers or squashes this year. I can fight the squash bugs and win. I cannot win against the squash vine borer moths. 

  4. oh wait…..getting an old moped/motorbike running again ranks too

    theres just something about that ringdingding and the smell of gasoline …

    is like….. manly man shit

    anyways….give me your vehicles….i promises i will maybe not asplode them

    but if i do i will post it on youtube

  6. What brought this up was that I had to change the piping for my drains this year. I procrastinated/overanalyzed for several months (in the fall/winter) worried that this would be bad and a lot of work.

    I did it this afternoon. It took a 1/2 hour. I spent much much much more time worrying about them. Then it took more time to write the NOT.

    But it was a satisfying checkmark off the to-do list.

  7. Well, satisfaction for me is maybe less the kind of thing that I can visualize beforehand and more the kind of thing that I can allow myself to feel after the thing in question happens. So, at the risk of turning this post into a humblebrag, here’s some stuff that I accomplished this past week:

    • I managed to get all THREE of my tax returns in by Thursday, which felt pretty damn good.
    • I stayed on my last call last night for more than an hour after my shift should’ve ended, which helped make up for the time they docked me last Friday when my Internet connection went down. (And brightersider, unlike that one time I’d told you about, the fuck-up was on my end — or should I say, your employer’s end. So this time they only comped me for an hour.)
    • I took in a three-hour webinar today that capped off the CEUs that I needed to fulfill for my court interpreting credentials this year, although I periodically fell asleep after the first hour. (It was vaguely disorienting to be awoken by a voice saying “Recording stopped” and to wonder where everyone had gone or if I’d gotten disconnected, only to realize that they must’ve just taken a break.)
    • And then this afternoon I went to Target to try to return a USB charger that was the wrong size, even though I’d already opened the packaging. They took it back with no guff and no questions asked and put the money back on my Visa. (SCORE, bitch!) 

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