Brains are weird

This is a slight variation on what I usually say, which is “Brains are dumb.” And this post has me wondering whether I have the courage to go all-out with the meta puns, or if that would just come off as pretentious. I worry a lot about seeming stilted & faked. (I worry about a lot of things. Brains are dumb.)

Thoughts about my mind that have been on my mind —

listening

I was talking with a guy yesterday about audio books, and how I have trouble getting into them because, when picking the book back up (so to speak), I have trouble remembering the story thus far. I also have a tendency to space out while listening to things, which is really annoying because audio books would be the perfect way to get more books in my life.

And I don’t really understand why that’s the case, other than “brains are weird.” Which is not a particularly satisfying explanation.

learning

Today I was thinking about the JavaScript course I’m taking at Code Academy and how I’m struggling with it. I’m not confused by anything — they’re taking me through in nice discrete chunks, each lesson one block on top of another. But I’m finding it kind of frustrating because I don’t have an image of the bigger pictures. It’s like being walked through how to build a house without being shown what a house looks like.

Part of that frustration might just be it’s been awhile since I’ve taken any kind of actual lessons. The little I know of CSS mainly comes from finding a big chunk of complicated code and then mucking about going “Okay. So what does this line do?”

And part of it is just I need to understand the big picture before I can retain the details. At the same time, it’s hard to present someone with the big picture when they don’t already know at least some of the details, as I’ve discovered while prepping for my very first tabletop roleplaying game as GM. I keep finding details about the rules I need to explain before the larger picture of the game makes sense, but details without larger context are difficult to remember. (I have until Friday to work it out.)

overload

I’m also trying to get into Twitter again. (You can find me @monsterfictions !) It’s strange and I don’t know how successful I’ll be at it… I honestly don’t remember how to make friends outside of games.

I tried using TweetDeck as my Twitter client, because I love the idea of sorting my Twitter feed into categories. A column for friends! A column for the apps I use! A column of celebrities! On metaphorical paper, it sounds like a great way to cut down on information overload, because you don’t have to look at everything at once.

In practice, I found it even more overwhelming. I could separate things into lists, but I couldn’t hide the lists I didn’t want to look at right now. Instead of being organized, my feed felt cluttered and in my face. I’m only following 17 people.

I’m now giving BirdDrop a try. It just sits in my menu bar and lets me peek at my timeline when I click on it. Which is all I really need from a Twitter app (even though the ability to actually filter content would be really awesome).

that dress

Just looking at that dress makes my anxiety spike. It’s a reminder that everybody sees the world differently, in a very literal way. But it also freaks me the fuck out.

People can look at the same object and see it completely differently.

How can we trust our senses if that’s true? How do you verify anything? How can an objective reality exist? Does an objective reality exist?

Yes, I’m reading way too much into one badly light and badly composed photograph. Like I said, brains are weird.