Hermitude

Ok, I lied, I did get a little crazy thinking about cleaning the house. I haven't wanted to do anything the last few days. As soon as I feel a little better though I end up doing something and make myself feel worse again. I think it's a lot like eating. You know when you have a food you really like and you start feeling bad but continue to eat it until you feel ill? So then you stop eating it, but as soon as you feel pretty much normal again you start eating it again. Mistake! But it's what you (or I anyway) do unless you either make a conscious decision not to, or the food runs out. That's also how I am with "fun" activities. I think as I get older and more tired maybe I'll stop doing this. It seems like that's what most people do. Maybe it's that their bodies are giving them louder and louder warnings that the partying and other "fun" they do isn't very good for them. It's the mind (which seems way slower than the body for figuring stuff out in my opinion) catching on to what the body's been saying since that first hangover or that first day of diarrhea/indigestion after overeating.

Oh yeah, what I really logged on to say is: Plain yogurt is nice! I thought I didn't like yogurt, but that's because of all the sugar in the flavored stuff. Without sugar it's pretty sweet! I bought the yogurt for another, totally gross reason that I think most women can figure out, and ate some for lunch to further aid the female-problem-thingy, and it was a pretty tasty time. It went well with the awesome fudgy birthday cake my coworkers bought me. Of course I turned beet red when they brought it out, my blushing seems to be out of control around people I don't know well. No, it's more than that, it's people I don't know that I think may think I'm weird if they got to know me better. Random burningman/san francisco electronic music scene/politically active/alternative culture people never embarrass me.

Ok, now that I feel better it's time to go out tonight with my boyfriend to see the most famous Neil Diamond tribute band. Wheee, let's see how quickly I decent back into hermitude! Will I ever clean my house? Will I ever choose a career? Will I become a wildly successful world-changing guru of The Next Big Thing or an anti-social hermit who pushes twigs into rocks all day? Stay tuned for the answer!

What kind of blogger are you?

I just put down the last book in the Ender's Game sci-fi series, feeling all contemplative and peaceful, and got the urge to write here again. I was all set to do my philosophical thing again, when I realized that anyone reading this blog would have a skewed perception of me. Sure I like thinking about the nature of the universe, but I also like the beach, thai food, sex, gossip, raw milk, cute hats, putting marshmallow peeps in the microwave, being in love, petting rabbits, balancing rocks on top of each other...You know, that full wonderful human spectrum of events. It's just I don't get the itching in my palms to write anything down unless I'm emotionally distraught or philosophizing. And I realize now that these blogs I flip by, that annoy me with their long-winded rants/raves about video games or their awful boyfriend, or endless logic about why this diet or that religion is better than all the others, these things are just one small aspect of these bloggers' personalities. These people just happen to feel that compelling drive to write when they are thinking about one particular category of human experience, for the most part. Am I making any sense? I'm tired and the wireless in my living room isn't so good so I write desperately now, convinced that all I've written will be lost in a flash.

Not that it matters anyway, no one reads this, which is as it should be, there's a reason I haven't told anyone about this.

But ahem, anyway, I'm trying to bore to the center of why people write, because if it's possible, I'm getting less and less cynical about people's motivations for writing. Even the dullest, least-inspired book had to have been written with a large amount of passion/itching-palms/neverending urge. Writing is tiring and fully engaging and almost impossible in large quantities if you're not emotionally invested in it. This is the opinion of a non-writer here, but I've watched my mother write since I was a little kid and only now am realizing what she does, how ridiculously real her written world becomes, creating itself and shoving her out of the driver's seat, and yet leaving her no rest. What if no fiction is written just for entertainment? Do all these authors really believe what they're doing, are they trying to teach on some level, do they have a choice on what or when they write? It's crazy and out of control. I like it a lot. Anything so all-consuming is ok in my book, I vow never to write off something that does this to a person without at least considering what it would be like if that activity did the same for me. Even organized sports.

My birthday is in 5 days. I'm having my first house party, well, the first one I've ever created and managed myself. The combo of beach bonfire, absinthe, and jello shots will make it a good one, I think. I could get really frustrated with my messy housemates and go crazy cleaning the house, but, naah. Too old and tired for that sorta thing now that I'm 25. And no matter how messy or lazy I am my friends continue to like me. They just don't take the hint! How many times do I need to fart in their cars or steal their boyfriends before they leave me alone on this transcendent mountain of thought?!?!?! Sheesh people.

Charles Eisenstein said it first.

I was throwing out the dead leaves surrounding the small tree in my office today. Throwing away matter. It's fantastic that plants look like they create matter out of nothing. The tree's in the same pot it's always been in, and doesn't seem to have lost anything. It's not like the soil line's going down or anything. I know, I did the biology thing and know the way plants get energy, but it still feels mysterious.

I've been thinking a lot about mystery lately. Why people find it so appealing. For years I was a skeptic and just assumed we liked mystery, liked creating fantastic stories about why the world is what it is, because we were bored or dissatisfied with our lives. And sure, that's part of it. But lately it seems to me that we talk about mysterious fantastical things with such glee because they are our way of describing things that really exist, and that they often seem ridiculous because language is not very good at describing things that can't be measured objectively, scientifically. Why do I get the most excited about the things I can't see? Like the potential for human society to change radically in unscientific ways? Or about how I might be able to significantly change the world without using ungodly amounts of brute force/money/job position? It's so easy to write that sort of thing off as New Age, Hippy, Apocalyptic, Whatever Crap, but maybe these ideas just seem ridiculous because those who attempted to put them into words weren't successful. Or because an idea is a very subjective experience, true for one and not for another.

I'm not just going to automatically believe everything people say now. But (I think) this blog will be mostly my explorations with ideas I used to find silly. I'm trying to drop every pre-conception and let go. Because my brain is tired and it shouldn't be, I like to think.

On a lighter note, have you ever heard the comedian Brian Regan? He makes me piss my pants, literally (that bit's a reference to another comedian I've heard recently, David Cross). I was joking last night about creating a very dry boring scientific discipline that is the study of humor. I could explain the fuck out of things and be able to talk about ass titties in a respected way. This probably exists already. In fact I'm sure of it, there are people out there who study the beer-goggle-effect (This is me dissillusioned by science).

And finally, medical advice:

• If you have a swollen uvula, don't freak out, just drink plenty of water and rest.
• Ass titties are not a common problem, even though in general I think people go to doctors too much and overuse medications, you probably want to get these checked out.
• Olive oil moisturizes skin better and faster than almost anything I can think of, especially if you exfoliate first. It seems to help with mild eczema too.

Ok, that's all for today! Time for adventures!