Strange Exercises

Minneapolis.

For anyone who's been following this blog, I've been slowly catching up with the dailies of the Yosemite Trip. It's been a slow process, given that work and my social calendar has been preventing me from writing as much as I would like.

Alright, I admit it. I just can't seem to figure out from what part of the day I can take the time.

One thing that has been a strange and new exercise for me has been trying to write accurate descriptions from what has become older memory. I've also been writing in installments, making for a more detailed (but still relatively short) travel work. This chapter style has been rather enjoyable, keeping the subjects very small and easy to manage.

The reflection on the events, from the vantage point of weeks rather than hours, allows for the inclusion of things that may have seemed less significant at the time come to fruit. It has allowed for more honesty, as well. I have been able to examine the happenings and for a more rational opinion. There are also things that seemed more significant at the time, but really were just blown out of proportion due to exhaustion[1].

But the daily writing has suffered. I miss it. I feel that to get it back I need to quit my job and go back on the road. Fortunately, people tell me "don't quit your day job."

Thanks, critics, for keeping me gainfully employed.

[1] The other possibility being that I was still affecting some remnant "softiness."

It was widely thought that softiness was a switch: one is either a softie or not (referred to in the scientific literature as "hardcore"). Recent studies have shown that this is not the case. Studies of people being shown photos of situations (hotels versus campgrounds, for example) that should only trigger certain brain locations for softies, tended to have gradations of firing.

These gradations also changed as the subjects were directly exposed to softie or hardcore environments. The more recent the exposure to a soft or a hard environment, the shift more towards one end of the spectrum or another.