I wish I was clever enough to come up with that title on my own, but My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey is a book I have read several times that continues to be a source of inspiration and frankly serves as the framework that allows me to contextualize what I used to call "spritual" experiences.

Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroscientist who was working for Harvard when she had a stroke on the left side of her brain. As the functions of her left-brain shut down, she was thrust into seeing the world through her right-brain eyes. The effects were fascinating. She became very sensitive to tone of voice (she couldn't really comprehend words at first) and she had an overwhelming sense of peace and could no longer see a division between herself and everything else. She felt at one with everything. She said it took her five years to understand the difference between her hand and the chair. She thought of herself as a bag of water.

It's a fascinating look into the functions of the brain from the perspective of someone who studies the brain for a living. The book gave me a framework for understanding the language that Buddhists use about experiences they have with meditation. I've had many experiences that didn't fit in the box of Christianity that I had been given when I was younger. I was unable to articulate the experiences and couldn't really make sense of them. When I left Christianity behind, I still cherished those experiences but was at a loss for an explanation as to whether they were God talking to me, or just me being crazy or what. Now I can enjoy the experiences of compassion, peace, intuition and unity that come from my right brain awareness without having to resort to "God did it" to explain it. I couldn't be more grateful for this book.

I was originally introduced to Jill Bolte Taylor in this talk she gave at TED:

Before I went to school, my mom would often give me graham crackers in a glass of milk as a snack. I'd eat them with a spoon and it was one of my favorite treats. So on the first day of kindergarten, the teacher brings out graham crackers and milk, and I'm like "sweet!" I pushed my cracker into the milk carton, to dip it, then eat it. Well, I was getting crumbs on the table (the crackers didn't quite fit into the opening), so the teacher came over and said, "Don't dip your crackers, because you're getting crumbs on the table." So what's the obvious solution? You open the top of the carton all the way by opening the other side too! So I did that. And I'm enjoying the fuck out of those crackers. So other kids start doing it. We're all dipping and blissing out. And the teacher comes over, takes my crackers and milk and sends me into the hall for AN HOUR for "not listening the first time."

In ninth grade I was going to a very small school (7-12 grade = 250 kids). There was a girl in tenth grade who had a prosthetic leg, attached just below the knee. Well, my friend and I just started drawing different cool legs she could have. Here are some we came up with:

• Home Economics leg - built-in sewing machine, small ez-bake oven, etc.
• Laser leg - Could be used to measure things, or the intensity could be turned up to burn things.
• Spring leg - for dunking the basketball
• Deer Hunting leg - equipped with a hand warmer, a .30-30, and snacks!
• Fishing leg - fishing pole holder, measuring marks (to make sure the fish is legal), built-in net, and a beer holder.
• Paper Towel leg - the leg was just a paper towel holder. But who wouldn't want to have paper towels around all the time?
• Plastic Wrap leg - equipped with a large roll of plastic wrap, she could don this before going to work wrapping food for the buffet.
• Chef's Block leg - holds a large assortment of kitchen knives, with a built-in hone, to keep them sharp. Foot doubles as a cutting board.
• Protein Shake leg - leg is hollow. Fill it with your favorite protein shake. Add the wire ball. Walk around. Shake is perfectly stirred, ready for drinking!
• Shovel leg - for digging holes
• Jackhammer leg - for wrecking concrete

This went on for hundreds of pages. We would sit in English class and draw these. After class, we'd share our inventions with each other. We had a great time and stayed mostly quiet in class. One day, however, we got a little carried away and we were laughing really hard at one of the drawings. The teacher told us to throw them away. All of them. (We kept the whole collection in a binder). I was a sad panda. Well, two hours later, I got called into the principal's office.
The principal said the teacher had pulled them out of the trash and gave them to her. She said, "I see you're quite creative, but your creativity could have really hurt that girl's feelings. You have detention for a week. Every day in detention, I want you to draw a picture of how you think she'd look if she found your book of legs. Give me the picture each day." So I drew a picture of her looking really happy saying, "Wow, these are awesome legs! I wish they were real!" I got an extra week tacked on for that picture.

On my favorite website, reddit.com, someone posted a question asking people to list the most beautiful songs they'd ever heard. I didn't recognize many of the songs and spent some time listening to them. Most of them didn't really affect me, and I started thinking about the most beautiful songs I had ever heard. I combed over my ipod and dug these up off youtube for you to enjoy. In no particular order, I give you the most beautiful songs I have ever heard:

Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain - Willie Nelson

Ballad of Spider John - Jimmy Buffett

Sullen Girl - Fiona Apple

Saddest Song in the World - Miko

I Will - Alison Krauss

I Love You - Sarah McLachlan

Elegie, Op. 3, No. 1 - Sergei Rachmaninoff

Moonlight Sonata - Beethoven

Been a Long Long Time - Bing Crosby (accompanied by Les Paul)

Those are mine. Share yours in the comments!

I've been geeking out lately on science documentaries. This is the video that got me started:



Here's the first video made by the same guy:



I have been watching Cosmos by Carl Sagan, The Universe (a series on the History Channel) and other science documentaries. The scale of the universe is so immense, that I can't wrap my brain around it. Watching these videos, it reminds me that I'm just a speck. I'm just a tiny bit of stardust. I tiny bit that can laugh and cry and eat and sleep learn about the universe. It's overwhelming to think that the iron in my hemoglobin had its origins in an exploding star billions of years ago. Or it was created 5,000 years ago by Jesus. I'm still not sure.

Coming to you from Fort Firth. We're just saddling up the horses and loading up the tack, getting ready for a quick trip to vegas to shoot some videos at the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event. They're down to two players, and those two players sit down to finish out the tournament tomorrow night at 10 pm.

I took Supi for a walk this morning (she gets all neurotic if I miss more than one day in a row). While walking, I was thinking about how fucked up anxiety and depression is. Here's the deal: when I'm depressed, or feeling anxious, I start researching and finding ways out of my pain. And I start doing those things. And I start feeling better. Here's the fucked up part: a deeply-seated part of me says, "You don't deserve to feel better. You suck. So quit trying to fake it already." And the procrastination sets in, and the guilt. I feel guilty for trying to help myself. It's so frustrating. So self-defeating.

The only way out is to say, "I know this is going to hurt. I don't want to die like this. I have to change something." And the other important aspect is to not bite off too many things to change at once. That's another self-sabotaging method I've recognized in myself. I try to change a lot of things, or one drastic thing so that I feel like I'm "making progress", but it just ends up frustrating me instead, which means I then have an excuse to quit. "This is just too hard to do all of these things." And I stop. Gaaa!

So I just wake up and focus on the things I listed before: exercise, sunshine, walking the dog, crossing projects off the to-do list. That's it. And I don't try to workout 5 hours a day, and run 10 miles with Supi and do all the projects in a day while wearing my swimsuit outside in the sun. Because no one wants to see me in a swimsuit right now.

I don't think I have swine flu, but I'm definitely sick. Safi was sick earlier this week, and as anyone who's ever been around a sick kid knows, little kids have no idea how contagious they are, and they also don't understand that trying to lick Daddy when snot is running down your nose and you just threw up half an hour ago is not a funny game. Daddy is not trying to make you laugh by jumping away and reacting like he's being held at knifepoint by a mugger. Daddy just doesn't want to get sic--Don't lick me! Seriously! That just made Safi laugh harder and more intent on licking me.

So now I'm sick.

And that totally sucks because I have had a lot of new readers recently, and every day they've been coming back and looking around a little more, reading some of my old stuff, thinking, "this guy is an idiot/insane/lame/awesome/whatever. I wonder what stupid/retarded/tactless/insensitvie/insightful/amazing thing he'll say next" and they keep coming back, hoping that more of my brain will have spilled out onto this blog for them to read. And I have let them down. Well, fear not, new readers. I love you. I want you to come back, read, lurk, sulk, think, laugh, cry, feel sorry for yourselves, gloat over yourselves and have a good time here. And I'm willing to lie here, with a fever and tell you that you're not alone.

You're not the only one who fights depression. You're not the only one who is fat, but you don't feel like doing anything about it. You're not the only one who wonders "What would my ten-year-old self think of me?" You're not the only one who feels like they're just faking their way through life and hoping that no one else catches on. You're not the only one who wonders if other people have to deal with this crap.

Until a couple of years ago, I prided myself on being "different". I grew up around honorable hard-working blue-collar people. So I wanted to be a stock investor. I bought a briefcase when I was eleven. I thought of myself as "smart", so I read and read and read all the time, hoping that the answer to my problems would be in the next book I read. I was convinced that if I just understood the world/psychology/science/whatever well enough, that I would be able to predict other people's actions, understand their behavior, and be able to hack the system into a world that would be kind and gentle and understanding and I would be rich because I was smart.

Recently I have faced the reality that I am not so different. I'm just like everyone else in 99% of everything. I have the same problems, aspirations, dreams, disappointments and frustrations that everyone else has. My particular strain of life is unique, yes, but I'm not some amazing special better-than-everyone-else guy. I spent a long time trying to separate myself from everyone and everything around me so that I wouldn't be hurt. So I could look at everyone and say "Yes, yes. I know you've got problems, but your problems are just petty little stupid things. But I'll listen to you so that you'll feel better."

I am like you. I'm not on some other plane of existence. I'm here with you. I get sick, I fuck up, I forget things, I mess stuff up, I interrupt, I break things, I overcompensate and I feel stupid most of the time. But I have also learned that just by talking about it, just by mentioning the problems I'm facing, and how hard it is to break old habits, just to think about it and have a place to write about it helps. It helps me. It gives me something to think about it. Having this space gives me something to focus on, it creates a little thorn in my brain, a little piece of sand that won't stop bothering me. That thorn says, "you can't just float around hoping your life will change, dude. You've been doing that for 33 years. And you're still thinking the same thoughts and doing the same things."

So it's time to think new thoughts. Write new dreams. To think, to listen, and to remember that you and I won't be here long. The light is already fading in the corners. We don't have much time. So let's rock the house while we've got the mic. Lay down some serious tunes, drink some amazing drinks, make each other laugh, make each other cry and we'll smile, looking into each other's eyes, knowing that tomorrow, another band will be playing and we'll be asleep, never to wake up again.

Cranking away at the ol' to-do list over here in the Firth Fort. Making progress. Feeling better. Crossing shit off. Handing stuff off. All-around good things happening over here.

November has arrived, which means snowboarding season is less than a month away (Powder Mountain, my favorite hang-out, opens Nov. 27). Cannot wait to get on the hill and ride. Last year was my breakout year, where snowboarding goes from being an insanely painful way of making yourself sorer than you've ever been, to being effortless and thrilling. I hope my work schedule allows for us to hit the hill a lot this winter, because I'm jonesing so bad I can hardly think about anything else.

No big news. No big insights. Just trying to master the small things and keep my anti-depression plan simple. So far, it's going well. I miss a day here or there, but the momentum is good and I'm trying not to beat myself up over the small things. Just keep your head down, shut up and work. That's all you can do.