Blogging: The Non-Addiction

Fuck. I do this way to often. I say I'm going to start blogging again and then I go two months without a post.... It's ludicrous. It's like the guy who says he's gonna start working out and he goes hard for the first five days and then is done for the next 6 months. I gotta stop doing that. I gotta hit the gym hard (where gym refers to blogspot.com). It seems I've amassed a huge following (all 6 of you), who occasionally tell me they've read my blog and are keeping track. So I mustn't leave everyone in the lurch all the time, because certainly things are going on. But the very idea of a blog s always so conflicting to me. You see I want to say some very interesting stuff, but then I worry, will some family member be reading this who will be offended, or is it too strange to expose certainty quirks and qualities to people I don't know all that well... isn't that stuff better saved for the intimacy of human contact? Well the answer is yes and no. Yes, there are certainly things that don't belong on blog posts, but I should probably be a little more open.

So let me begin by explaining some new happenings in my life... One reason that I haven't been blogging often is that I'm writing a lot these days (counterintuitive isn't it), I find if I am writing so much, it becomes hard to split up my writing time between so many different things and I need to focus on the task at hand. The particular task which has been nagging at me is writing a speech. I was accepted to speak at the TEDxFlushingmeadows event (april 22nd), this speech has really been consuming much of my focus for a long time, I've been writing it, and editing it, discarding it and rewriting it, sending it out having it critiqued, rewriting it, trying to fine tune it so that it's just right, it's an ongoing process... also I've never spoken in public before... so aside from the speech itself I'm quite nervous about delivering it. But it's no excuse for not blogging.

What else is up you ask... well when I got home, the conditions were less than ideal for living and working, so I took care of a few odds and ends, and packed off to florida for about a month, where I built a Bobcat for a customer who lives down there (as well as a bunch of other stuff too, like a piece about how difficult math can be.)

And, to reference my parenthetical statement above, that is another thing which is truly occupying my time: Math! (By golly!) It really has been quite consuming lately. Not to say I have a knack for it, because I certainly don't, grasping ideas is quite a struggle, especially when I'm trying to relearn everything from algebra on up, so it's quite a venture... but I just finished reading Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, and I must say I haven't been as entranced by a book in ages. They way it combines self referential material, with comical dialogues, mathematical statements, zen buddhism, physics, logic, the human mind, computer programming, number theory, macro-biology, music, and art, all in one seamless.. to use the author's own words.. "Endlessly rising canon"... it was truly a wonderful experience (which took me over two months). So now I'm excited to move on to the next scientific journey.. And on to gardening... and a seriously busy season of work... and soccer... and building some new structures on my property.... and keeping You (whomever you are), posted... whew.

Here's some pictures of stuff you probably haven't seen before: