How our brains work according to me

I worked on the car all day and thoroughly enjoyed it. If not for the fact that it didn’t turn out as well as I hoped (I fixed something but in the process, ‘broke’ something else :P), today was a pretty good day.

I think hobbies are important because it takes you away from what you’re doing long enough to at least give you a fresh perspective on what it is you normally do. In other words, I worked on my car because I didn’t wanna work on my projects or the sites – my solution to the fact that I am so up to my ears in work (and consequently, thinking about it), that if I spend any more time working on it I’m liable to go nuts.

The left and right turn switch doesn’t work for some odd reason, so my solution was to open and clean it up thoroughly using a rag and contact cleaner spray. I did so, and by golly who’d have known such a thing was so complex inside? It had bearings and tiny little springs that would fall over the place if you weren’t careful opening it up. At any rate, I got it to work in the end, but only after a hell of a time. I realized I was literally bent over in concentration for an hour or two, and when I finally got it together and working I felt like celebrating. Problem is, the switch for the windshield wipers suddenly doesn’t work now (it was working fine before I opened it up, and I never touched it when I did), so that’s egg in my face right there. I’ll get it to work though. I’m sure it’s just something loose somewhere.


I think our brains don’t (and likely can’t) differentiate how important one job is from another. I gave that job a hell of a lot of time and effort – as much time and effort as I would say, getting a website to run or code to work. The difference is, I’m sick of sitting in front of a computer monitor and straining my eyes doing that, while working on the car gives me a chance to get my hands dirty (I like that) and active plus the fact it solves a problem that had been bugging me for a while.

If it didn’t rain today, I’d probably have found myself at the court shooting hoops too. Again, I’d be exerting a lot of time and effort (a great deal more effort of course), but the result would be the same. It’d have given me time away from work, time that I’d appreciate because afterwards it’d give my head a fresher perspective on things I deal with at work.

I realize now that people probably don’t, or at least shouldn’t, mean it when they say they just want to sit around and completely space out when they have a chance to do so. It may seem to be the last thing anyone wants, but when a vacation comes around I think it’s better to engage in some activity that will completely involve you as opposed to just watching the tv or aimlessly surfing around. I bet that if I had done that my head would surely have started thinking of work again, naturally because that was the last thing that concerned me before the break began. My brain doesn’t know about the vacation break. It just keeps going on and on thinking about stuff, solving problems when it finds any. So the solution is to give my brain something else to work on so that it can still keep functioning at the same level as when I was at work, but at a different scenario or at least happier, healthier one (like sports or family stuff).

Sounds like a good idea I think. I thought about above when I was dealing with the turn signal. I just need to remind myself next time to deal with something simpler so that I’d not end up with another problem after :P

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