Data Dump

what to do in this life what to do and today i pour it out like this i like violin and getting organized and writing poetry and doing research and playing guitar but it really seems small and empty while others do a wonderfully focused job of building something with value and it takes focus i'm sure and where does that come from besides deciding what to not do. i eat my oatmeal and drink my tea and take my medicine and swim and even shoot baskets sometimes or play raquetball with care for the knees and other times exercise machines in a room of mirrors TVs and other exercisers. most days i check Dilbert because it is funny and often feels like the author must know somebody at my work he is so good at that. i like this writing but i don't know why. some people are much wiser and say less, think more, choose well, act considerately, are reliable, trustworthy, honest, prepared, and have straight teeth. they've learned, read, watched, known about, and in many cases, have been and done. all of this takes attention and of course time but mainly attention and ability to stay with something more than two minutes. this year so far an organization effort paid off for a while but the maintainence has slipped as it will and here is a saturday and the choice is to reflect and write while the tea gets cold. somewhere my dad has been writing out life adventures and i'm sure someday i will read them. and somewhere my son is resting. ben franklin wrote an autobiography chocked full with advice for his son who had no interest, it seems to go like that. i went to school like many and wanted oh so badly to be a musician on the stage but chose instead chemistry which is an acquired taste and full of problem solving which can be fun but when it becomes work is definitely work and it's not so easy to get things to actually work a lot of times. you can see from the lab coat and safety glasses what this has led to, with the smile that still thinks about being on stage. with chemistry came a focus on medicine and then a selection of school and hours in the lab sometimes with a squirrel in my pocket, yes, a squirrel found quite young on the sidewalk and raised on a bottle, my companion and would sit on my shoulder, rarely bit, liked to climb up the curtains and had no clue what to do on a tree which was pretty sad and one day a dog got it which is reason enough to not repeat the experiment although still hard to imagine leaving it as first found. life in the lab held instruments and computers and making them go and these years later have seen much of the same and my hair turned gray in graduate school but that's genetic. yes graduate school because i liked solving problems and am in awe of people like richard feynman who open up the nanoworld to the rest of us on the planet. i also like plato's cave and wonder about what's ahead. i've read the bible all through and studied and schooled and golden ruled and attempted to argue and lead and win by example but you know it comes down to being desperately in need. and i've asked for fixing and laid it all down and offered it up, admitted, committed, and all the rest, through groups and paid sessions, and journaled confessions, regretted regressions and frequent concessions. with many words comes many errors, i've spent hours learning to talk to machines and errors are more frequent but at least you find out pretty quickly (most of the time). people sometimes simply stop listening.