being sick makes me weird, i’m not sure why, but i always end up being just a little off-kilter when it happens, and it doesn’t go away for awhile. but i ams who i ams.

i keep wondering lately how i’m going to turn out in another 40 years. i look at how there is such a generational gap between us and our parents, and a gap consisting of light years between grandparents. but i look at the differences and most of them are skin deep, but the major difference is openness. it’s there to a point where an acceptance of ideas is discarded. there is no wonder in seeing new things, just resignation to the fact that there will be new things.

but after accepting so much stimuli over decades of life, how could you not shut yourself off at a certain point? or on the other hand, with so much out there to experience, how could you ever close yourself off? it has to be some sort of personality trait, something that is integral to the vision you have of yourself. adding new information all the time to this idea of yourself can either be taxing, or something that is integral to growth. no right or wrong here though, despite my lopsided wording.

but i can’t help wondering how i’ll turn out. i mean, i try and keep myself as open as possible, because i feel like i’ve made way more mistakes in my life because i was closed off as opposed to being open about things. it’s what i can hope for, but my guess is alot will change by the time i’m sixty. so there is not really anything to do but wait for it. which i’m good with, but it’s still interesting to ponder. will i someday be as dense as the people i wish not to emulate? it’s always a possiblity, as it wouldn’t be the first 180 in my life.

i think the real gift is the privilege to even make it that far in life.

there are always days like today. i write about them somewhat frequently, because i normally end up here when i have them. but today is a mix, a blend, a hybrid of inner hollowness and outward joy that is inexpressible, but makes sense because there is no sense to it. but the senselessness gives it sense. it’s really what gives life some perspective.

as i wrote that paragraph, i took a sidetrack to see what was going on the unchained mind, and i find once again, i have beaten to the punch, but it doesn’t really matter because we’re both just bouncing off each other anyways, two blogs forces combined to make the super blog. at least the one that has ideas harmonious enough to build on each other.

but anyways, the idea was the fact that knowledge comes gradually. i mean, if you wanted to know all the wisdom of the past ages, there are tomes of it over thousands of years to peruse. but there is a big difference between knowing such information and understanding this information. i could read until my eyes bled, but i wouldn’t have the understanding until there are events that plant them in, to make the understanding complete.

so this leaves the question (to me anyways), can you force the understanding? there’s a voice screaming from the depths of my primal soul that immediately screams “NOOO” and i’m prone to listen to that voice. but i can also let it fester and then something is forced to happen, because it was bound to at sometime. so then there’s that balance between forcing it, and letting it be. try and get to the apex of that bell curve and find that harmonious, creamy middle. but it has to be done by playing by ear, because the variables are all unknown, and you gotta go by gut instinct. because you don’t have the necessary wisdom, right? says me, anyways.

i got more thinkin’ to do.

you know, despite the things running through my head, i have no inclination to write them down. i have this feeling that somethings are meant to be written down and expanded on, but other things are just there to flit around in your head, distract it for a bit, and then go back to from whence it came.

but at the same time, writing them down will leave them here, for me to find at a later point in time. since i don’t remember it mostly, this would be an ideal place to put everything down so i can review it later and make wise, well thought out implications from said thoughts. i heard about people who wear cameras around their necks and create a lifeblog, where every part of your day is recorded and cataloged. it sounds useful, but i don’t think i could handle it. being able to forget is really a key component to being human.

what is going on these days now though? nothing! and that’s pretty much the way it is for now. that first few weeks after the holidays where it’s time to relax after seeing everyone and being on point and all that other stress. not to mention the amount of money spent. it’s kinda a wacky paradigm where you spend lots of money on other people, and end up getting roughly the same value of money back from things given to you through other people. so getting gifts for others means getting gifts yourself, and all the other foibles of the hunt, the wrap, and finding a way to get it to them. i still got two sixers sitting in my bedroom that need to be distributed to others. but this winter stout i gave out to everyone was the finest beer i’ve crafted yet, and i kinda want to keep them to myself. at the same time, i can always make more, which i will. i got a pale ale that’s ready to be racked for a bit and then subsequently bottled, and i have a feeling it’s going to be good. of course, i’ve had that feeling with everything i’ve brewed for awhile now, but hey, i haven’t been wrong so far.

brewing is awesome. i got my transcript heading down from western so i can apply for brewmaster’s college for the next year starting jan 23rd. that’s only a year away and it’s kinda sobering. 6 months of hard engineering and science, and my brain a little atrophied from under use, but it’s time to get crackin’. this has been a fun little pop stand for a bit, but it’s time to blow on out of here. it’s exciting to say the least.

on a more tangential note, on my run this morning i somehow ended up back on zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (probably because i finally found a copy to buy) and the idea of quality. for some reason instead of subjective vs. objective, the idea of time vs. investment came in. what i hammered out in the 20 seconds i thought about it was that for something to inherently have quality, there has to be time spent on it, and a certain amount of investment (care, ability, materials) to create that quality. if you look at time as the independent variable, and investment as the dependent, then i think that makes some kind of sense. but at the same time you can’t just pump in more investment or more time and expect to get a product of higher quality. i have no idea about these kinds of maths but i figure that it’s not exponential or any graph like that but something sinusoidal where by finding certain harmonies between the two, you find something of higher quality. at least it’s some form of quantification.

granted this is very loose and fast, and more of a technical approach, but i think something’s there and by writing it down i can check back in at some point and see that this was some turning point where i started to see the light, or feel foolish at the way i thought back in the good ol’ days, where i had nowhere near enough wisdom or experience to really complain about anything (but did anyways). i guess at least it’s down. i can hardly remember what happened a couple of weeks ago.

god bless the internets!

let’s do something useful! strike one by coming here. this really isn’t useful for anything. my existentialism gets the best of me sometimes and i succumb to that bigger picture. it makes me feel serene, i wonder if that’s a good thing? shouldn’t i believe in the power of humanity? heck, why not. we might as well make a go of it.

i seem to hear alot of inadvertent existential talk where people discuss the big ideas like happiness and sorrow, and don’t even realize it. i don’t even realize it most of the time. i couldn’t even write down major ideas besides the fact that this universe is too big for anything to really matter. but it’s just too subjective.

but really, look at what’s going on right now in iowa. a preliminary race to see who gets to run for the president of the united states as sanctioned by a huge mix of large interest groups, the mainstream media, and the citizenry of our country. and i eat it all up, looking for the numbers of who’s ahead at the moment based on entry polls. mere numbers representing the opinion of people in iowa, where i have a vague notion that people indeed do live. i know no one in iowa, and yet i am part of this collective force to choose a leader (or two major candidates to vote between, and other ancillary third partiers). and it’s so very distracting.

which is why i focus on it. the indifference of random chance always staring you in the face beyond this state, beyond this country, beyond this earth. trillions of variables coming together to cause effects. at least i can see a system organized by humans here. at least i can have a pretty good comprehension of what’s going on here, questions with answers. i mean, there are people in vegas right now betting money on who’s going to win in iowa tonight. how human is that? i don’t know…is it human enough? what’s a boy to do?

everybody’s right, but there’s nuggets of wrong distributed through it, like chocolate chips in cookies. even a cookie is too small to embody everything though. i mean, i can look at a cookie and see it for everything it is. not so much with the universe. it mostly just is.

and then something happened.