Proud member of the dull men's club
My Facebook algorithm started showing me posts from a ‘dull men’s club’.
(Yes, I am still fighting myself to completely remove Facebook from my life)
These posts are long winded descriptions of some (non-)achievement, musings, or questions.
I recall one where a man installed a number of garden lights in his driveway. These lights would eventually fail due to water ingress caused by the cold. Over the passage of years, he’s now stockpiled every individual component of the lights, and can rebuild them in their entirety. This brought him such satisfaction he shared it online.
Despite the ‘dull’ topic, this post was shared and liked by hundreds of thousands of others.
I think it resonates with people because most of us have fairly dull lives, and we see ourselves reflected in these posts.
I grew up in a household where extraordinary was expected. In my formative years my parents ran a business that was very successful, but only briefly so.
At the time, this success was attributed to their hard work and smarts - and that certainly helped.
Absent though was an appreciation of luck.
I use the term luck because it’s a combination of unquantifiable things like timing, connections, access, and so on.
My parents may believe that they are wholly responsible for their success, that all their prior decisions led to this culmination, but life isn’t like that.
We can’t see what is ahead, we can only make course corrections with the information that is available.
My parents could just as likely have sailed past the treasure island, or had their ship sink entirely, if not for the butterfly-effect sequence of events that occurred.
You cannot manifest your life dream into reality, no matter what the self-help gurus tell you. There’s too much outside your locus of control.
The best you can do is point your ship in the right direction and hope you’ll get close, and not deride those who fail - it was probably not their fault.
This is why it’s important to celebrate the dull achievement. Not everyone is going to climb a mountain, or cure a disease, or win a medal.
In fact, if the world was a movie, statistically most of us aren’t even extras - we’re bystanders or punters at best.
In the boot of my Macan, I have a mini fridge. It runs off the car socket, but it also has a battery so it can keep running even when the car is off.
Problem is, the fridge would not last as long on battery as I was expecting. I’d drive around for two or three hours and the battery would still drain, seemingly not using the 12v from the car.
The battery is lithium, and I noticed that sometimes after removing it would be quite warm. If I put it on charge, it would refuse until it cooled down.
The battery sits right above the compressor, so I theorised that it was heating the battery, which prevented it from being recharged while the car was running.
The fridge has cooling vents around the compressor but no active fan. In the boot there’s a fair bit of space but no air movement.
I bought a cheap USB computer fan off Amazon and squeezed it between the cooling vents and the back seat. I plugged it into a USB 12v in the boot using a double socket adaptor.
Since doing this, the battery stays nice and cool, and recharges while the car is running.
The fan moves just enough air that the compressor and battery don’t get heat soaked.
Before, I’d be lucky to get a few hours from the fridge. Now I can be out the whole day and the battery still has half charge.
I’m also able to run the fridge in its ‘max’ cooling setting, rather than ‘eco’ like before. It gets colder faster.
Quite dull, but I use it almost daily to take drinks and lunch for myself and Mr P out every day, so it makes me happy.
