Minor Alterations

The first thing that I've decided needs adjustment is tabulating screen hours by week instead of by day, because there are some days when I go over 3 hours and there's no way to compensate for it later.

I fantasize about living in a cute, little farmhouse on a bunch of property somewhere beautiful. Somewhere like Mamu's. When I think of how she lived out the last 25 years of her life I picture a very Walden existence. Quiet, peaceful, maybe a little lonely. Lots of gardening, long walks in the woods, very little tv on a very little tv set. She fed the birds and the deer. She had a wonderful wooded path to the side. Swimming in the pool. Fires in the winter, I think there are three fireplaces, but definitely two. I wish I had known her better. There was so much that she told me, so much I don't remember, and so much I never knew to begin with. But she lived through so much, knew so many important people, and was well respected everywhere she went. There are so many things I would have asked her with just five more years under my belt, and a marriage, and a son. "Tell me about your life, Mamu, tell me everything. Let me know you." The human experience is so singular and yet so universal. It's fascinating, but the only record there is of our lives is the one we leave behind. These blogs and my journals and my photographs will be the only actual record of me. I'll leave behind the things of life, the pieces that archaeologists or anthropologists or whoever would use to construct an idea about me after I'm gone, whether by a day or a thousand years or more. They would see me clothes, my books, the things I cook with and eat off of, my movies, my electronics, my treasured possessions. What conclusions would they draw? And, no matter what, how well can we really know another person, especially without having known them and spent a significant amount of time in their presence?

Our thoughts are our own. They are what make us unique, that no one else can know the pathways our neurons are making that lead us to the conclusions and actions that we make. Ultimately we're all alone. This ended somewhere much different than where it started.