{"id":38,"date":"2005-11-25T07:20:46","date_gmt":"2005-11-25T07:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.195.124.246\/~wisecon1\/blog\/?p=38"},"modified":"2005-11-25T07:20:46","modified_gmt":"2005-11-25T07:20:46","slug":"nanny_knows_flo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/?p=38","title":{"rendered":"Nanny Knows Flow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Flow is a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity.&nbsp; &nbsp;My grandmother, Anna Bongiovanni, who just turned 95, is a master of entering the state without ever having read Mihaly Csikzenthmihaly&#8217;s &quot;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0060920432\/wisecontradic-20\">Flow:&nbsp; The Psychology of Optimal Experience.<\/a>&quot;&nbsp; Along with having a flair for completing crossword puzzles, my grandmother is a knitter.&nbsp; &nbsp;She makes afghans for her grandchildren, and clothes for her great grandchildren, but what impresses me is that she&#8217;s always creating new challenges for herself&#8211;which is a condition for flow.&nbsp; &nbsp;The idea is that you want to set out a task for yourself that is not too easy&#8211;which would lead to boredom, or too difficult, which would promote anxiety but one that is just the right level of challenge.&nbsp; For this particular afghan, my grandmother started out with a swath of wallpaper to match the color of my cousin Noelle&#8217;s room, used wool yarns instead of acrylic, and then incorporated a popcorn stitch instead of a regular one.&nbsp; So sure, it&#8217;s another afghan, another stitch, but what she&#8217;s really doing is finding new ways to transform herself at the young age of 95.&nbsp; I should be so lucky.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Nanny Knitting\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/teddyb109\/66633375\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.flickr.com\/32\/66633375_c6ac8fcf99_m.jpg?w=625\" style=\"border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);\" \/><\/a><br \/><span style=\"font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px float: right;\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/teddyb109\/66633375\/\">Nanny Knitting<\/a> <br \/>Posted by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/teddyb109\/\">teddyb<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flow is a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity.&nbsp; &nbsp;My grandmother, Anna Bongiovanni, who just turned 95, is a master of entering the state without ever having read Mihaly Csikzenthmihaly&#8217;s &quot;Flow:&nbsp; The Psychology of Optimal Experience.&quot;&nbsp; Along with having a flair for completing crossword puzzles, my grandmother [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}