I just realized that I can update this blog from my iPod. Nice.

I can honestly say that I do not know the meaning of the word “boredom”. I do not really know what it means to be bored or how anyone can possibly be content with being so. While I am honest enough to admit that there have been times in my life when I may have felt bored, those times are so far gone that I can barely remember them. Being bored, today, for me, would be the Haley’s comet of Facebook status updates.

There is something about my cerebral existence that, somehow, finds it hard to be bored at any one point in time. I have spent, however, a considerable amount of my time on this planet in less cerebral pursuits. Well, maybe it is that I was as cerebral but I just used the artistic side of my brain significantly more. Writing songs, composing songs and admiring and contemplating song lyrics can be as exhausting as sitting at a desk crunching numbers 24/7. (I am finding the evolution of the word “cerebral” fairly interesting right now—it seems that the use of certain words in the English language have yet to catch up with science.)

I feel I have experienced both sides of the spectrum and I truly believe that being an artist—of any type—requires that one walk the line between boredom and industriousness. I mean, there are certain concepts that cannot be articulated when the brain is moving a million miles an hour. On the flipside, there are just as many concepts that may never be conceived by minds that have only two speeds: slow and slower. Minds that rarely (or never) bring themselves to appreciate different shades of green definitely miss out on some things of the greatest things in life.

In the summer of 1995, I went to New Orleans and chilled while the band I was in went on a tour of the West Coast. I guess you can say I did the “punk rock” thing and quit before things got really “good” but I guess it all depends on your definition of success.

Anyway, I was a few blocks from Lake Ponchartrain in the part of town called New Orleans East. During the first few months there I did a lot of meditating along the south shore of Ponchartrain. From about 1990, up until that point I had been working two jobs (60+ hours/week), performing music just about every weekend in at least one band and had gone to church two or three times a week. For those five years, or so, I was definitely not in tune with popular culture. During my “extended vacation” in New Orleans, I got a chance to realize how much “life” I had missed. Before my move, I had a lot on my plate and the 13 months I spent in New Orleans proved to be very therapeutic.

One of the things I remember fondly is seeing a Pizza Hut commercial with Peter O’toole in it.

That Pizza Hut commercial really helped to foster my interest in the theatre.
So much so, that, years later, when I returned to Lafayette (Indiana), other than topics in computer science, I studied a lot of topics dealing with the history of Hollywood, Shakespearean history and the history of the theatre. (I studied all of these topics informally as I was not enrolled in any school at the time.)

I started keeping an electronic diary in June of 2000. At that period in my life, I spent 8+ hours/day in the library reading books.

Here is the first week of my e-diary:

Monday June 12, 2000
• read Shakespeare and the Jews and summarized and put last few readings into context; should I read more on Shakespearean History?
• read and familiarized myself with the drawing of sculptures at Georgian playhouses during the 1600’s and 1700’s
• thoroughly examined the idea of scalar variables; from own knowledge of computer science and math and computer math and how scalar variables might be applied in a computer programming language– the most interesting and sure application of scalar variables is with memory indexing, which can be used in the design of video games, network communication, etc…

Tuesday June 13, 2000
• found a book; not too entirely about William Shakespeare, although it should hopefully offer a different view on the theater, culture, etc…
• read more from Shakespeare and the Jews; summarized

Wednesday June 14, 2000
• read and edited nearly completed book summaries; hopefully I have a good understanding of the topic(s) and the importance, value, etc… of Shakespearean theater; should more than prepare me for the reading of the book Memory Theater…

Thursday June 15, 2000
• completed “page01″ and page 02 of _JavaScript Guide editing

Friday June 16, 2000
• completed “page03″, “page04″, “page05″, “page06″ and “page07″; some of the printed copies appear as if they’d been printed as to save toner

Saturday June 17, 2000
• read, paraphrased Shakespeare and the Jews until about 2:20 pm
• edited and completed “page09″ and “page10″

Sunday June 18, 2000
• edited and completed “page08″, “page11″ and “page12″ of _JavaScript Guide

You can find a free version of “Shakespeare and the Jews” by James Shapiro here courtesy of Google books.

Back in 2000, I was a big fan of Netscape, Mozilla and JavaScript. I remember placing a supreme importance on creating a JavaScript booklet that I could carry around with me when I did not have access to the internet..hence all the editing.

Early Friday morning I accepted an offer of admission to graduate school!
I cannot imagine being more excited right now but I guess finishing grad school would be the actual Everest.

Hmm, come to think of it, reaching the top of Everest cannot be as involved as the descent. I mean, typically falling down a flight a stairs hurts significantly more than falling up any amount of stairs.

As I see it now, my entire journey up to this point is about to be eclipsed by the next few years of my life. So to help me keep my perspective on things, I am going to start by posting snippets from the e-diary I started during the summer of 2000.