This morning when I arrived at work, I saw the challenge in my inbox. As it happens, thanks to some prior explorations into downtown Portland, I signed up for PASS, a professional society designed to propagate the knowledge and practice of SQL [1]. The e-mail came from that society, and gave a challenge to all writers of technical blogs to write one entry per month for the next year that is accessible for entry-level users of SQL, or, in other words, people like me [2]. Now, it is not entirely clear that this challenge was directed at me, because my blog is particularly complicated in terms of its approach and subject matter, but at least a certain aspect of my blogging is clearly directed to other people who are skilled in the ways of data analysis even if my approach is far more broad than being a technical blog alone. So I considered the challenge accepted, and, for the month of January, at least, completed [3], #entrylevel #sqlpass and all that.
I do not know when I first became devoted to accepting most of the challenges that were directed my way. I know that as a loquacious elementary schooler that I was once challenged for a fairly nominal sum of money, a quarter, to be silent for an entire half-hour lunch period, likely because my neighbors and classmates wondered if I would ever shut up, something many people no doubt wonder even today. Even at that time a fairly stubborn sort of person devoted to challenging myself, the challenge was accepted and achieved. At times in my life, challenges have been made explicitly, and those ones are the easiest to understand and apply. At other times, the challenges are recognized implicitly, at which point they can then be undertaken. At other times, I recognize a challenge and then must outsource its achievement to others who are in the place to do so, as was the case when I commented to a deacon in our local congregation that when the pastor says that a particular verse (in this case Romans 1:17, from the second Bible study on Romans in our recent series) needs to be given as a “difficult scriptures” sermonette, that a wise person takes heed and does so. According to this person, he is going to do so this upcoming Sabbath, although as I have Sabbath School responsibilities this week I will be unable to hear it live myself.
Many of the challenges I have accepted in my life, such as the challenge to write a blog entry a month for the next year that is designed to be accessible to fellow entry-level users of SQL, as described above, are challenges that relate to writing. Although those who read my contemporary writings may assume that I was always a skilled author, many of my challenges have served as a way to expand what I was comfortable writing, and ultimately led to the ease of writing that characterizes me at this particular time. As a high school student, for example, I was told in one of my lectures in English that nobody wrote lengthy blank verse poems. That night, I wrote a hundred-line poem in blank iambic pentameter, at which point my teacher had to comment that almost nobody did it. In such a way challenge accepted led to mission accomplished. On a more recent basis, I pay attention to the challenges that are given in what I read and what I hear, as very frequently in a sermon message a minister will say that it would be a good idea for someone to study or investigate a particular matter, like the references to the Holy Days in the New Testament, or the famous last words of various people in the Bible [4], or something of that nature. I don’t need to be told twice when it comes to writing material that other people express an interest in reading.
It is hard for me to avoid the thought that my general attitude towards expressing a somewhat extreme willingness to subject myself to challenges that are made to me relates to having lived a life that presents frequent challenges of a baffling nature. Having lived a life on a fairly high difficulty setting, to speak of life with the language of gamification, it should not be a surprise that when a challenge is uttered verbally and not merely experientially that having become accustomed to dealing with challenges that I should find such goals to be easy to direct attention and action towards, given that my life is lived in a perpetual state of questing towards some sort of immensely challenging and (hopefully) worthwhile goal [5]. One only wishes there was a greater sense of fulfillment and pleasure when a challenge was completed, for if one devotes one’s life to achieving what is difficult, what is challenging, and what in some cases can only be achieved with the aid of divine providence, it is not too much to ask that one be able to enjoy the successful achievement of a challenge for at least a little while before starting the next five ones on one’s lengthy and ever-expanding list.
[1] See, for example:
[2] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/book-review-transact-sql-cookbook/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/book-review-sql-in-easy-steps/
[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/some-minutes-of-the-sql-brown-bag-lunch-1/
[4] See, for example:
[5] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/the-quests-of-our-existence/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/the-quest-for-kow-soy/
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