Barack Obama won.

I read both of his books this year. Words to express my impression of him: Authentic. Thoughtful. Capable. Intelligent. Compassionate… and yes, Hopeful.

After he had spoken about five sentences of his acceptance speech, I began to feel my attitudes towards this county shift. It was physical and emotional. This was the moment I was cheated of 8 years ago.

He is limited by the political machinery that will grind around him, but it is reassuring to have someone I believe in at the controls.

My brain is fucked.

I accept this and have to deal with it. I have a terrible attention span and can’t think with any discipline anymore. The neurological pathways in my brain have developed scattershot. I know I’m not the only one. Probably most of my generation has this disease. These are the kids who hit their teens as the internet burgeoned. We didn’t have it as grade schoolers, it came in high school. This is terrible for us. We’re internet suave, but we weren’t indoctrinated when our brains were pliable enough to fully master thinking in a compatible way. We have half-internetted brains.

I’ll officially dub this syndrome, “Paritally Internetted Neurodegenerative Syndrome”. Or “PINS”. I have severe PINS. If you were born in 1979 you are in the high to extreme risk category for PINS. That means you were thirteen in 1992, and are 29 now. Risk decreases the further away from that age you get. The old generation has zero-internetted, and the new generation has fully-internetted brains. The old school technophobes and new school 2.0 kids are safe from PINS.

So I’m going to try and treat this as a disability. What is my therapy? Since I can’t focus for extended periods without a new thought pattern loading in my head like a new webpage, I’ll take a page out of the Guy Pierce movie, “Memento”. I will put positive symbolism up around my desk to prompt my brain into behaving. I can’t stop myself from having tangents, but maybe I can improve the quality and value of the tangents.

I’m half serious.

2025 me here: Remember Ask a Ninja?! The old link was broken, so I linked it to an active one on Youtube that made me chuckle.

In pajamas on Sunday morning. I have so much to do and feel so slothful. Wasting time with online video.

Sometimes something trivial and ridiculous, like an ask-a-ninja video, triggers existential angst. It was the anti-consumer message embedded in there that snapped me to attention.

http://www.askaninja.com/node/5520

Right now I feel that I should weigh 400 pounds instead having the normal and fit body that I have. I don’t know how to stop gliding through life.

On Halloween night I saw a movie called, “Happy-Go-Lucky”. It is the most Un-Halloween movie made in the history of man. A complete love letter to optimism. The theater was 1/4th full, and it was the late show. I wonder what the common psychological threads between the audience members were. Who goes to see the brightest, happiest movie ever on what is perceived as the darkest night of the year?

Anyway, there was a preview before that movie for a movie version of Richard Yates’, Revolutionary Road. This is a book I read half way through a year or two ago. Leo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet play the married couple. There was one line from the preview that pierced through my critical shell. “A man only gets a few chances in life. It won’t be long until he is sitting around, wondering how he got to be second rate.”

I feel myself falling into that and don’t know how to stop it.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/09/21/revolutionary-road-movie-trailer/

Forget about Harry Potter. This is the best wizard duel of all time….

I turn 29 in a few days. 29. A very suspect age.

I feel like a peel of what I used to be. The more confident, beautiful, clever core is lost in the past. The peel is inferior. The peel lacks clarity. The core was quirky but the peel has diverged in even more idiosyncratic ways.

Maybe that’s all bullshit. I probably was always this way. This year I’ve just been exposed. Being single for the first time since I was 18 has sharpened self-consciousness. Old photographs don’t reveal the turmoil that I’ve always felt. The breakup was a good decision. It would have been a wasted life if I did it at 40. I’ve met at least one wonderful person dating. I’m terrible at it, but at least I’m attractive enough to have repeated chances.

Music. Writing. Reading. Getting into the woods. Having a wonderful woman and fuzzy cat in my life. Career success. Health.

I should stop straying from these things. I should actually pursue instead of relying on passive diffusion to bring me happiness.

I lack discipline.

😦

Living like I do is beautiful and tragic.

Maybe that’s true of everyone.

I hate Thursday morning lab meetings. They always make me feel like an idiot.

I don’t have 20 years worth of immunology experience like everyone else in the room. Last year at this time, all I could do was grow cells.

Sometimes I feel like I totally conned my way into this job, and everyone feels the same way and begrudges my presence.

http://en.scientificcommons.org/30004846

The gist is that software that assists us in planning/working is less effective than a pen and paper in terms of both task performance and knowledge retention.

I wholeheartedly agree. The internet turns my brain to mush. I never multitask on the computer with clean thoughts.

When I use a small notebook and a pen, it feels right.

I’m turning my computer off now.

“The restless who will not follow any steady occupation – and this relic of barbarism is a great check to civilization – emigrate to newly-settled countries, where they prove useful pioneers.” -Charles Darwin