It was one year and two days ago today that I posted this little 'Sunday Supdate' (a tradition sadly dying out), which outlined my Summer failures of motivation and writing (and also doubled as a love letter to Felicia Day, looking back at it). So of course, Summer comes round again and obviously I'm not going to let this happen again. No sir-ee; I am going to sit my butt down, write at least 25 posts, develop some creative ideas, write a play, a short film, a few songs... And I can do it all because of all that wonderful spare time, tralalala.
Two years in a row. It's time to work this thing out.
"Learn from your mistakes", the oldest saying in some sort of book, but you don't mess with the classics. So Introspection, Reflection and Self-Awareness have lead me to a conclusion; I SUCK at working when I don't have to. Consider this now, because I know plenty other people have the same issues, that when no pressure or expectation is applied, nothing gets done. It's simple to the point of being stupid. But when one hundred and eleven things are going on that I'm supposed to be doing, I manage to do another one hundred and eleven on top of it. Sense makey?
As people, we naturally thrive for things to do. Whether the gain be short term or long term, for better or worse. So we do. We do much. The thing is, it's through all the doing that you gain 'extra dos': caught up in a sweep of progress usually brings out more progress. There's no room for pushing back or doing later, because later might be a ton more stuff to do. I need a drive to keep driving, otherwise I'm just lolling about in a limbo of "plenty of time", "couldn't hurt to do that later" and my personal favourite, "*looks at blank page* Blurgh. *closes blank page*". Now whether this theory remains true will be seen next week when I start sixth-form college, which means a large work increase, so potentially a large drive increase. Or a big time decrease... So check back to measure the success/redundancy this post has come then.
But enough about me, let's talk about the upside of my Summer. The part two of the inaugural Thinky Thursday:
Mind Slightly Ajar
That's it, I'm done with secondary school. As of June 2012, my studies were complete and I received some fairly decent grades, especially in the things I'm excited to take forward to the next level. But what I left behind on those exam papers of subjects that weren't of that much interest to me were perhaps more impactful than I give credit for. Maths and Science, specifically; things that I didn't particularly love (hated in some cases) but on the whole I was quite good at. However, I'm never going to do them again -- leaving all that information in a static state in my brain (if not deteriating out of boringness). Sure they've given me a good grounding in their ways, which on the most part I understood and will continue to, but it's not what I've learned in them that I'm getting at, it's what's happened since I've stopped learning them...
It is believed that the way the human brain works is like in this image:
Now I for one hate it when people define you as one or the other in terms of which side you'd use. I've always seen myself as a middle ground mixer of the two hemispheres, and still am. I've got varying extents from each side, as I'm sure you wouldn't argue, but look at that Science and Math sitting humbly on the left side. What if we were to reduce the portion of thinking belonging to that? Say, if I were to stop actively learning them and not have to again...
Enter "The Free Brain Space".
(Please remember that what I am saying here is in noway proven, only what I'm currently perceiving)
So I've now got room for other areas of thought to grow out into, expanding at greater rates to compensate. Thought in particular is where this is headed. No, I didn't read all the books I had hoped to over the break, but there was one in particular that I most certainly did: Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, an apparent seminal work of philosophical fiction that gives a frank and realised examination of the power of existing. Existentialism.
It's a deep book.
The thought of existing and how physically frightening that actually is (he words it a lot better...) gave me a clarity of persona, so to pretentiously speak. I honestly believe that this book will be one of the most important I'll read in my life and that I read it first at just the right time for it to have the powerful effect that it's had. Why? Because my thought process was ready for it; with all that worked out and calculated straight thinking of maths and science reduced, it left the mind slightly ajar for Nausea's dizzying concepts to speak to me. Thus reaching the free-thinking, perceptive anti logic part so it made some god-damn sense (also, very much the "Pompous Windbag-iness" part).
Hey, it's called Thinky Thursday for a reason.
ATR
Follow Me: @The_DudeMeister
Note: Not all Thinky Thursday's are going to be as self-involved as this narcissistic piece of nonsense, just a one off to get things started. You can always count on self-deprecating though!
