Introversion or Sleep?

Me time or sleep time?
Computer/brain/books or bed?
Daydreams or night dreams?

Do you know anyone who actually gets inspiration from sleep? I mean real, night-time, restorative, REM sleep?

Unlike Einstein, whose dreams gave birth to his ideas...

Most of my inspiration comes during the day, when I'm quietly introverting while in the shower or while I'm cooking dinner or out for a walk/run. Not so much while I'm DEAD in my BED. Sleep is mostly out of exhaustion for me, and I rarely get the kind of insights and ideas I get that from intuiting during waking life. Most of the crazy overachieving people I've known for my whole life have slept very little, and yet had the most brilliant ideas and produced some of the most wonderful work.

And so it comes to pass for people like me, who spend several hours a week commuting to work while juggling classes and languages and several other hobbies and such, to make a choice between staying up late introverting and real sleep, dream sleep, beta-wave sleep.

Do I stay up and write for a bit, reflect, study my various thingers, enjoy art and music and be imaginative, connecting with my intuition, or do I let my brain rest? Do I go to sleep? Sigh. After using my brain as a G4 processor during the day, the very least it deserves is some fun. (How about a nice sonata, at least?)

The very worst thing I could do during my precious introversion time, of which I seem to have very little these days, is bombard my brain with an overload of sensory information. No TV and online shopping! Restless internet surfing and TV just make me feel more restless and make me stay up longer doing NOTHING. Repetitive computer games like Pet Salon and Emperor, which are pretty management/detail/strategy-oriented are pretty bad too, and they whittle away your introversion time.

Some tips to spur your creative imagination, from this website:

1. Behave like a child while learning: Be curious about every thing what you learn.
2. Start reading novels, create Mind Maps, Draw some pictures and colour them.
3. Day Dreaming: Dream at least for 5 min daily.
4. Use your right part of your Brain: Right part of the brain has the ability for creative thinking. Practice some exercises which makes improves creativity imagination.
5. Think creatively for day today problems you have and try to find alternate solutions.

Don't forget to BREATHE DEEPLY!

Fight Club - This is your life.

I post this because my life feels like this, and because this embodies the sentiment of a generation of wage slaves.

Insomnia

For six months, I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing is real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. When deep space exploration ramps up, it will be corporations that name everything. The IBM Stellar Sphere.
The Philip Morris Galaxy. Planet Starbucks.

IKEA


It used to be that when I came home angry or depressed, I'd just clean my condo, polish my Scandinavian furniture. I should've been looking for a new condo. I should've been haggling with my insurance company. I should've been upset about my nice, neat flaming little shit. But I wasn't. The basic premise of cyber-netting any office is make things more efficient. Monday mornings, all I could do was think about next week. Can I get the icon in cornflower blue? Absolutely. Efficiency is priority number one, people, because waste is a thief. I showed this already to my man, here. You liked it, didn't you? You can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick. It was right in everyone's face. Tyler and I Just made it visible. It was on the tip of everyone's tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.

Visions of my Neolithic Living Room

We caught a couple of special exhibitions at AMNH today: 1) Reptiles, 2) Horses, and 3) Climate Change. The last special exhibition I caught was the Darwin exhibit ages ago, in spite of my having a STAFF pass which I barely utilize. (Yes, I know I should use it more often.) I thoroughly enjoyed all of them - they're like a breath of fresh air when I get to visit my old familiar friends like the HWhale, who will be around longer than me or all of my descendants. Ah, to be a museum specimen, frozen in time, embalmed for all perpetuity.

The Horse exhibit had some great Paleolithic cave art blown up as 10x10 paintings that would look marvelous in my living room. When I have my own house I want to decorate a room with a prehistoric theme: the Lascaux cave paintings, minerals, quartz lamps, fossils, everything made of stone.

Chauvet


Takhi! (Przewalski's horse, my favorite)


I can't see myself decorating with Neolithic goddess figurines or pottery, however, in spite of how much I love everything else about the Neolithic. I just don't get the goddess figurine aesthetic. Ha, it must be a reflection upon my distorted 21st century perception of "ideal" body image.

The cave paintings, on the other hand, are oddly familiar and haunting. Something about the horses reminds always me of "home." There must be something in our collective human memory that understands these symbols at a subconscious level.

Going to an old, familiar place with new friends is also fun because they make you see something you might not have thought of before.

Gusseted-Crotch Pants

I learned the difference between a gusseted-crotch pant and a non-gusseted one while shopping for shorts online. Gusseted ones are better for rock climbers because they prevent the shorts from splitting while you hyperextend your legs out of socket. They must be great for rock climbers (and other athletes like yogis and gymnasts), and have great practical construction for durably-built clothes, but why must they look so ridiculous? See this ad for Gusset Jeans.