lightheaded, one of my favorite groups has had a new album out for awhile. i sleep on it, finally get it, and it’s great, as i would expect it to be.

But on one of their songs, the hook is “Do you love life, unconditionally?”

cue the ton of bricks aimed at me. such a simple statement, containing so much. i ask myself that question and my heart cries out “of course i do!”. and i do, i do. i’ve never asked myself that question, because asking obvious questions is a blind spot for me, but when i heard that question, my body answered before my mind.

it already knew. it instantly knew all the layers to that question, and answered unequivocally.

at least some questions are easy to answer.

i have been evaluating my intelligence lately, or the idea of it anyways. i have this feeling of being fed up lately with my contemplative side and never really understanding why. I enjoy learning things, new ideas and the critical aspects of pulling them apart. but i have to be in the mood, and that’s why i’m not constantly here, spouting off the coolest new idea i learned about, or some philosophical logic puzzle i’ve been turning around in my head. why aren’t i? because it’s exausting, and i find myself spending more and more downtime in the millions of distractions that humanity has created for itself.

this is, in a sense, the source of annoyance. with all the free time i have, more of it is spent doing things that are complete wastes of time (to anyone besides me), like the internet, TV, or video games. to keep the reward-driven side of my brain that has all it’s dopamine receptors in a twist ripe with anticipation for these rewards, these leisure activities. i relax, and people are bettering themselves whilst i stagnate. this is the idea that gets under my skin, because it’s such a stupid line of reasoning. but there must be something behind it, because i realize how stupid this is, and yet it still gets to me. at the same time though, i know that if i was working that hard all the time, i would be pining for more leisure time. if it’s not one thing, it’s another.

i know intellectually that there is this division between work and play (and most other ideas of seeming duality), a balance that is struck depending on the circumstances. I know that now, i have time for all these leisure things, so i should enjoy them. I’ll end up working hard later to make up for it, this will all level itself out, given the time frame. but my brain is in the pattern recognition business (and business is good, thank you sir!) so it feels obligated to find patterns in things to make things easier for me in the long run. the more work i do now, the easier things will be in the future, off to infinity. so i objectively look at these ideas of work and play, and maybe come to a satisfactory conclusion about their interplay, and continue on my merry way. then i do it again. then again. and then a few more times. eventually, i have thought about these things enough that it turns from intelligence to wisdom.

and that is what i don’t get. when does it eventually become wisdom? what feeling is linked to these ideas that change a simple idea to something you have tested and cross-referenced a million times to gain another level of insight from such ideas and how they mesh with other ideas and facts you have gleaned?

i feel like i am caught in the middle of my brain shifting from a spunky and spry young un’ to an old soul, and my brain is constantly fighting with itself over idiotic ideas and concepts that are only meant to be used in this reality i have created for myself of fighting for what i want or letting it slide. i hardly see a difference between the two anymore. i just see them as tools in toolbox, and i find the right tool for the job when i need it. or realize i have the tool i need, but refuse to use it because it doesn’t seem worth the trouble.

all my life, it has been a sequence of events. go to school. go to college. get a job. get married. buy a house. start a family. do something. everything i do has to have some sort of forward movement, some area for growth involved. letting others know what i plan to do next, so they can react or adjust accordingly. i’m sick of moving forward and having to justify it to everyone, so i do as little as i can to maintain the illusion. if there’s the appearance of forward movement, then there’s no stagnation, no “wasted potential”.

right now, my sheer annoyance (it’s not rightious enough and too silly to be anger) allows me to see through the veneer. i’m not stagnating, i’m ripening.

when the time is right, wisdom will guide me.

i love it. how could i forget about Kurt?

sometimes my brains amuses me without even trying. songs stuck in my head today (so far):

Golliwog’s cakewalk – a piece i remember playing back when i was just starting orchestra
The Veldt – very repetitive piece of music that played on the veldt in FF3
Damn it feels good to be a gangster – of Office Space fame
Jupiter – From Holst’s “the Planets”

not only have they been stuck in my head, i have been tunefully whistling them around the lab(you’re welcome, fellow co-workers). these are all songs from at least over a decade ago (in terms of their being introduced to me). apparently, my brain wants to revisit my musical past. after all, it is the soundtrack of our lives.

i imagine that the classical stuff has been coming up again because i have been practicing violin again. this time i realized i should actually play along with music though, if i’m not going to take the time to bother and learn keys (maybe someday). whenever i play by myself with no music, it’s still fun, but i end up getting stuck in the muscle memory patterns i’ve always done with an occasional break from the norm that i notice but soon forget (look out, life metaphore). playing with music, any music, is a bit more challenging, but brings with it lots of variety. i am finding rhythms and tones i didn’t know i had in me, and loving it. playing some violin along with cypress hill, then some pink floyd, then some nicklecreek take so much thought on my part to switch gears, but that’s what i need. when you’re trained on a violin, you’re basically the melody man the entire time, and switching up playing the ryhthm, or the bassline is something i need to develop.

but i look at this as fun! it feels like everything around me has an edge of competition to it, a feeling of needing to better something, take it to a more complex level. be the best (blank) you can be. and sure, these are necesary activities. but lately, i just look around at my life and realize that deep down, i’ve never wanted my life to be one comeptition after another, which is kind of the accepted norm for growth. struggle and grow, right?

lately, i’ve just been trying to take stock of what i have now, and am leaving future betterment out of it. and i find myself here, writing about it. but the question that bugs me is “what more do i need to be happier?”, with the emphasis on the “happier”. because the sky’s the limit when you use words implying there could be more. and i realize when i’m dissatisfied with myself or my life it’s because i could be doing things that would make me “happier”, and all the indiscreetness of all these values just drives me nuts, also making me wonder why i even get myself so riled up about it. probably because “happier” can be broken down into other people’s values. sigh.

so it’s just you and me, violin. i’ll never be the best, but we’re gonna have a whole lot of fun on the way. and wherever we’re going, we’ll get there.

information flow = energy flow.

you’re onto it ben (in my opinion). here’s what i know. sugars have something like 16 calories of energy (the stuff on your nutrition facts is actually kilocalories) contained in all the bonds in a molecule and your body has to break it down to get that energy off of the sugar molecule and into systems needed to keep your body running. It breaks it down using a huge, complicated, and redundant cycle to get the energy, breaking off about 2 calories of energy per reaction. If it went and got all the energy off of that molecule all at once (which incidentally would be the easiest way to go, chemically speaking) it would start a fire.

i have applied this model to so many facets of my life (or at least used it to put a name to things), i don’t even realize it until i am made to think about it.

future topic for me: how would my thought formulation be different if i wasn’t a biochemist.

actually, i think i can answer that one right now: probably figure something else out.

hey, let’s get a little pedestrian here. i realize i like to go back and read these things occasionally, and having some fluff from my life in here is just as valuable as my state of mind, as i can hardly remember what happened last week. but hey, i imagine i’ll start writing about things that have happened to me lately, and it will end up being some point about something larger anyways. that is apparently, how i roll.

it is glorious around here in seattle, 80 degrees everyday. i’ve been taking advantage of this by riding my bike to work, which has been pretty amazing. it does take a large chunk out of my day, and makes it tough socially to time things, but it’s really chilled me out. it’s about 35 miles round trip to work and back (mostly flat, thank goodness), and with this kind of heat my brain gets real tired, due to the exhaustion the rest of my body feels. most of my ride is along the shady part of burke-gilman as well, and i’ve been getting my speed up. i’ve never really cared about biking fast before, but things like getting home sooner or getting to work sooner so i can leave sooner are great motivators.

all this time on my bike has been giving me plenty of time to listen to radio, and i did hear a really cool story a couple of days ago about how some birds (along with a type of elephant) are able to recognize the beat in music and dance, sing, or mimic in general along with it, in time to the music. something that was once thought to be a uniquely human trait, shown to have some roots in how life developed on this planet. that’s the cool stuff in biology, the stuff i really want to learn about anyways. it’s also cool to think that a random youtube video of a parrot dancing around to the backstreet boys can grab the attention of the scientific world. knowledge is everywhere!

the summer has barely started, and already i feel like every weekend of the summer is already booked. but when i think about it, that’s how most of my life is anyways. thank god for the work week, the only suitable excuse for not doing social things with other people all the time. because if you’re lucky enough to have a job these days, then you gotta go work it.

and now it is time for a walk.