Neurons

I've not lifted a book or magazine in a long time. My life seems to revolve around doing crafts for weddingness because if i'm not then I think I'm holding things up. There's an odd psychology in that.

Anyway. During my sister's wedding week thing, she gave me her copy of 'The short second life of Bree Tanner' to read. Yes, I know. It was an easy read though, and it entertaining although it was purely random and completely lacking in proper story. It was like Breaking Dawn all over again, but shorter and a little more focused (because it had to tie into eclipse).

That got me interesting in actually reading again and I picked up 'Buyology' by Martin Lindstrom. I had been in Barnes and Noble in 2008 a few weeks before meeting Jon himself, and seen this book sitting on a 'new arrivals' table and I wondered why i'd never heard of it while doing masters, the whole 'new arrival' thing was lost on me.

Anyway. I started reading it. That was around the time I was going NaNoWriMo and meeting the ol' true love. So needless to say the book was shunned and nothing past 10 pages was read. I tried again on other occasions to start reading it. I even brought it back and forth to the US with me while visiting Jon, but still nothing past 10 pages was achieved.

After reading Bree Tanner, I picked it up and i'm not half way through, which I think is definitely a feat. And boy is it interesting, it's all about subliminal advertising, and what imagery is actually successful in advertising. It kind of goes into ever facet of advertising. It's good.

That in turn, led me to pick up the last issue of Adbusters I'd had posted out to me. My subscription has expired and there's no point renewing it for 3 years when my address will 100% be changing before they can send me 2 issues.

So I will bide my time and hopefully not miss and issue. I think i've been subscribing since 2006/7. I find it an enjoyable, mind-freeing read.

There was a short article, which I have discovered is part of a long long article that said:

Failure to learn new things kills neurons. People who vegetate before the TV are killing their neurons. People who never do anything new or meet anyone new are killing their neurons. People who never read or learn a new game or build a model airplane or cook up a new recipe or learn a new language are killing their neurons. Mind you, many middle-aged professionals are killing their neurons. They’re doing what they are good at, what they already know, what they learned to do years ago. They’re pursuing careers, raising children, cooking dinner, returning phone calls, reading the newspaper. They are busy and accomplished, but they are not learning anything new. If you are not learning anything new, you are killing your neurons. To keep your neurons, learn something new every day. Begin now. Doing so requires no particular genius.

This actually terrified me.

I am killing my brain by just being stagnant and not progressing myself nor my brain.

I also found it interesting because I have very little desire to do the design work that I am 'supposed' to. The design work that is expected by a branded society, the website, the business card, etc. That's all someone else's idea of design and branding, and I find it so hard to be motivated to design within the confines of someone else's long-ago made decision.

The passage above gives me a bit more insight into why, my brain must be absolutely gagging for me to not rest on any laurels and push it to new levels. But I'm far too lazy for that these days. But I think that's why I've latched onto the extreme over load of crafting and wedding planning because it's something new and something i've never done before.

It's not that I think i'm the best designer ever and i've reached the pinnacle of design, far from it, but my brain has tired of doing it, and wants to try out new things.

Perhaps i'm shoe horning excuses into my own lack of interest. But it seems to make sense.

Everything that I need to do before moving to the US just seems bitterly dull, like selling things, and packing things. And it's because i've done it before. There's no learning in it. There's just remembering how to do it, and redoing it over and over again.

Even when it comes to crafting once i've learned how to do one specific thing I move on and do something else even although an abundance of the original thing is required, i'd rather make something new.

Maybe I have a short attention span, and in fact, this is a bad quality. I've found that with hobbies throughout my whole life, I tend to give up on things quickly because I know the basics and I have no desire to perfect it.

So there must be a balance, between continuing to do what you know until it's perfect, and desiring to learn new things. Hopefully i'll find that soon otherwise nothing will ever get done. :)