First: let me admit that there really wasn’t much hope for me to do NaNoWriMo this year. In fact, it was really a doomed proposition, given that I’ve felt that I’ve had no free time lately, and really need to make the homestretch push on getting my Phd finished, done, over with. It’s really what I’ve been needing to do, and perhaps part of me has been avoiding it for a while.
Writing a PhD is a complex task. Continue reading
I’m not sure why this year has marked so many changes to me. Perhaps it is the reeling and rocking reaction to the changes that have come external to me, the changes I initiate as course corrections in response to the asteroids and stellar tailwinds.
Or maybe it is just the outpouring after a dam has burst, its pent-up contents free to stream out and release the potential energy..
In any case, I’m trying two traditions this year, for November, which are new to me: Movember and NaNoWriMo. Or rather, I’m trying to. Continue reading
There are changes to our bodies every day. Most are simple, gradual, non-dramatic. Sometimes, we don’t even see them unless we carefully take note. Some mark down their weight every day. When we are growing children, we check our height every week. We note our teeth every morning in the mirror, but may on then notice the long, grey hair that must have been growing for a month or two.
Octobeard was a challenge to myself. Could I change my image drastically, at least in part? Would I discover something about my image? Would I even notice?
And then there are the scientific questions: how long does it take for my beard to grow? Does it grow evenly? What parts grow fastest?
The month has passed. Continue reading
Regular patterns are hard to maintain, until they become self-sustaining…
How is this possible? Laws of physics (as written to date and relatively stable) suggest that objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in motion tend to stay in motion..
Are psychic patterns not derivable ultimately from physical objects, and thus subject to such laws?
(No, probably not…)
But then, is that not inertia that keeps these patterns from self-sustaining? Do we not give a push to a slowed pattern when we consciously repeat it?
There is an order to things. Gravity drags apples from trees and hurls them bodily at innocent proto-physicists who lay sleeping off mid-day mead. Sunshine blazes through scattered droplets of life-giving water and causes the easily amused and the hopeful to see pretty streams of light, and other physicists to poo-poo the sentimentality of accidental, trivial effects of natural laws.
And I have a beard, dammit!
Since removing my chinlocks, I’ve been fighting back a concussive wave of coughing, a explosion of sneezing, and a sleigh-load of sleeplessness. I find myself caught between natural difficulty in sleeping due to an over-active mind and the annoyance of ballistic phlegm dislodged by horizontal orientation. In plainer words, no night for two weeks has given me a continuous rest of more than 5 hours in length, and most nights have given me a total of no more than 6.
I have within me, the genes of bears. Or at least, it’s long been suspected. When I slumber, I do it long and deep, oblivious to whatever maelstrom might be hovering inches above my face. And I need to cease conscious existence for long periods, although I can, if pressed, remain awake and active for impressive amounts of time.
Perhaps it’s stress. Continue reading