Pain of Mind

Yes, this is the title of the seminal Neurosis album, which has still never been bested by another band.

It also describes my current complications. My mind is slovenly and mired due to caffeine withdrawal, and my body is battered and torn from playing basketball like I was 20 years younger, two days ago. It was immensely fun, and I was atrociously terrible. I hucked airballs. I fouled people like frightened billy goat. I also made a few shots, played 3 games of solid defense, and contributed what I could. In reward I sprained my heel, bloodied my knee, bruised a rib, and have the sorest legs and hips that I've had in years. Great fun. Once the swelling goes down, I'm getting back on the court!

The end of the year, the beginning of the project

Yow! I'm going to write a novel this summer. School is over in two days, but I basically have about 3 hours left of work to do. Maybe 4 or 5. That's plenty of time. All I have to do is grade two small classes worth of finals, clean up, and do the end of the year procedures. I always kind of like the end of the year stuff; it's like a scavenger hunt of people's signatures. I think it's because it comes in this nice list format, and I always like crossing things off lists.

I'm also going to be planning our wedding, and getting in shape. Those are my only activities. Everything else is secondary. I'm considering this a job this summer. Maybe not during our honeymoon, and maybe not on days when Jessica is off, but I'm going to be at my computer typing an awful lot. I also think that I might start drinking tea. Maybe not though, as it stains one's teeth, doesn't it. I'll have to think about the tea.

I should keep in mind that if I really just sit at my computer all the time, then I'm going to forget how to be social. Also I'm not going to give Jessica any space. So, I guess I need to figure out other activities as well, probably based on exercise. I like hiking. Maybe I'll go on lots of hikes and give Jessica days off. Those are like vacation days at the house.

What's my book about? Well, you'll have to wait and see!

Caffiene and your brain!

Wooo! Zooom! My mind flies by at 1000 miles per hour, which is really fast for sitting in a rolling chair. (Get the implied double meaning? I'm sitting in my chair while my mind is moving, but I'm also conjuring the image or literally rolling, in a rolling chair, at 1000 mph. That's seriously fast, past the sound barrier. (Of course, theoretically this is easy to imagine. With frictionless wheel bearings, on a good slant, in a vacuum, gravity will pull you faster than 1000 mph. (But, frictionless wheel bearings are imaginary - they don't exist, how could they? You only need bearings that are good enough to have a max speed of over 1000 mph. (See? I did it again! I implied that the giant vacuum with the slant long enough to roll a rolling chair up to 1000 mph DOES exist, by the mocking tone I used when noting that the frictionless bearings don't! (Anybody else realize that I'm now inside of 5 sets of parentheses? This is seriously off topic. These metatopics just keep coming to me. (I'm thinking very much nonlinearly. Of course, grammar is an art (some call it a metalanguage) and the use of parentheses is subjective. This could've been written with much different prose. In fact, I think almost no one would open such a ludicrous amount of parentheses; maybe Gabriel Garcia Marquez would. (Ms. Charlip made me read 100 Years of Solitude in 11th grade, and while only about 5 of us read it all, and I thank her kindly for years of excellent teaching (I still think about the 5 types of comedy also), I think my readers might have some words for her (Another pun! 'Have some words for her?' Wooo! Zooom!) Of course, maybe they'd pass their thoughts on to the great Colombian grammarian savant instead.) The problem with thinking this nonlinearity, is that it is very easy to lose your train of thought. This comes about much more frequently in conversations with multiple people, but with me it happens, occasionally, solo. The problem with WRITING nonlinearly is that, even though we have the grammatical structure to do so (parentheses,) it makes the reader strain to figure out what the hell is going on. (Of course, Joyce still got published, as well as many other prose artists. Grammatical engineering is just another tool in the literary artists' box.) Illegibility is a problem, however, and isn't really something to be sought. )))))) The reason I'm thinking so fast is that I had a small cup of weak coffee at the donut shop this morning. I also had a bran muffin and a sesame bagel - no cruller. I don't usually partake in caffeine. When I do, Wooo! Zooom! (Triple-O-mind explosion!) Of course, the mind is influenced by chemicals. The ancients knew this, in a way. They didn't know much about what those chemicals were, but they knew which plants to chew, frogs to lick, and so forth. Recently we've learned about how life's basic activities alter our brain chemistry. (Recently meaning the last 100 years or so.) Food, sex, exercise, sufficient sleep, sleep deprivation, stress, et cetera, all effect our affect. (I couldn't resist! (I should've. (Oh man, totally non linear again, but now I've got a nagging conscience to return to the train - the train of thought. (It's going to be hard though, if I can't lay off the puns. (I need a plan of action: no more puns or double entendres. If one slips out (I seem to not be able to help it,) then try to refrain from commenting on it. (I seem to be having difficulty with this as well.) That's a plan!))))) Caffeine works profoundly on me, but for the last 15 years I've been trying to get better at noticing the subtle changes of brain chemistry. Eating healthily changes me over the next day or so. Exercise changes me for the next two days, or so. Coffee works for about 2 days. 36 hours of hyperness, then it tapers off into a lull of less energy, mood, and esteem for the rest of the second day. Sad, but Wooo! Zooom!

Find your own brain chemistry, and you can be your own engineer. Most all of us self medicate, but an advanced technique is to self diagnose, and treat the causations of happiness, rather than the symptoms of unhappiness. Experiment on yourself, and enjoy.