Down and Out

Stress has really had a hold on me for the past few weeks. My blood pressure has been quite high and I've just been feeling down and out. Not much is really different from how things usually are at work. So I wonder what it is that makes a person reach the breaking point. How is it that one day you just wake up and realize that you've had enough. You aren't happy. You don't enjoy your days and all the joy and positive energy is being sucked out of you for a purpose that is solely about money. What makes you break? What makes you stop caring about the money? Is it that you have enough or you realize that there will never be enough unless you let go? Well I reached that point this week. I can't really say what drove me there - it really wasn't any one specific thing. I just hit the wall. I don't know what this is going to mean for me. Its scary. But I know I can't go on the way I have been. It's a relief to come to the decision but it is also incredibly depressing. I think that was the big surprise. I just feel like crying. But the tears won't come out.

Marine salute

http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/news/finalSalute/

Follow the link below to two slideshows on the final salute to fallen Marines at Buckley. I imagine it has sparked controversy from both sides of the fence. The right would say that it inflames the public and stops support for the war and the fight against terrorism. The left would use it as evidence that we should not be in Iraq.

The link was sent to me by my 18 year old daughter, Lindsay, who is studying to be a professional photographer. It says several things to me: only imagines can truly convey the cost of freedom, the honor and respect our military gives to each other is a national treasure that I believe does exist to the same level elsewhere, and that my daughter has chosen to pursue something (photography) that has tremendous power (particularly in the new media world).

Brain Plasticity

I read an article over the weekend in Discover Magazine, May 2007 called The Plastic Brain. The article is primarily about a professor at the University of California at San Francisco named Merzenich and his theories about how to "fix" the brain and reverse the toll of aging on memory. He says his program works by reversing the "negative plasticity" of aging. He posits that older people tend to want an easy life but they don't realize that that is bad for them. Basically as we get older we get lazy and stop working so hard to solve problems or be involved in various interactions so that brain starts to atrophy. It is a really interesting article.

Below is a link to an interview with him about his theories.
http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2006/10/09/brain-fitness-programs-posit-sciences-dr-michael-merzenich/

I am thinking about buying the program and checking it out. I will say one thing I have noticed about myself. When I get tired and disengaged in what I am working on, I get lazy. I have noticed when that happens that I have fewer good ideas. When I get sparked by something new and interesting, I find myself making all sorts of new connections and the ideas start to flow. So my non-scientific data supports the concept. I think that why older people who stay engaged and involved do so much better than those that retire without hobbies or outside interests. Being constantly hungry for knowledge and learning new things keeps the brain alive. Wonder if that could create a whole new customer focus for Universities. Maybe they could have programs in a different pricing structure that could target the aging population just to keep there minds fresh and engage in discourse. Wouldn't that be interesting? I would love to go back to school now. I think I would be a much more interesting participant in class. Maybe I would even be able to focus on the chemistry 101 and calculus that I dropped when I was a freshman because they were "a drag".

What do you think?

The familiarity of Home

Home. How do you define it? Most of the time I think of home I am thinking of the house that I live in with my family in Colorado. But I just finished reading a book set in the mountains of Kentucky and it really made me think of home. My home in the context of my ROOTS. Who I am. Where I came from. The descriptions of the sounds of water flowing in the creek, the smell of the woods, the smell of the rich earth after a good rain, the greeness of Kentucky that says its alive and the rotting smells that say its dying. These are a part of my soul. It has been many years since I have lived in Kentucky but it still my Home. I was struck by the emotions this book evoked in me. A longing for a place near the woods. A longing for the rich garden earth and a garden planted, tended and grown with my own hands. The simplicity of a life closer to God's creations not in the big city far from the things that are real. How can a person feel such and affinity for a place so long removed from their day to day life? Would I even appreciate it if I were there? Or just ignore it as I do the richness of my current life and the land in and sky in Colorado. Is the nostalgia of something lost or left behind what makes it so special in a persons mind?