It's Not Radiation

It's Half-life is Nothing like Uranium

Recently, I went without a functioning computer for a week, and it made me realize how much my life truly revolves around sitting in front of a screen. All day at work. Most of the night until I go to bed after I get home. Sometimes, I wonder, for all the time that I spend on one of these machines, how much in the real world am I missing?

During the summer, my wife and I like to go jogging around the various Cuyahoga Valley metro-parks, so I have some sort of direct connection to it. During the winter, on the other hand, I mostly stay indoors, so maybe that's why this, call it seasonal affective disorder, comes to play.

It's like some demon cat in the hat invading and reining in terror for a few months. I try not to let it get to me, though. Sitting here, Thing 1 and Thing 2 making a racket in the background, I type out these words, or sit with my pen and on one of my notebooks, and work on one my many on-going projects, with music keeping me in a trance, and I channel this negativity, spinning it into something positive.

When I get done I feel, kind of, liberated, is a good word to describe it. The weight of the world isn't quite so crushing for a moment--this euphoria, however long it lasts, is worth everything.

In that way, writing has a similar effect as going out and immersing myself in nature does, and I truly need both.

When I can, I like to find rock beside a stream and sit and behold, even for a few seconds, closing my eyes and listening to the water as it gurgles along its way, and just try to clear my mind. I grew up next a river, in a heavily wooded area, so, perhaps, subconsciously, it also takes some part of me home, which is gone everywhere but in my mind.

Sometimes I come up with some of my best ideas when I am actually able to let my thoughts go and just try to be present for a moment.

The sunlight is nice today. Maybe I should go for a walk.