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Broken

My rational mind is telling me there’s something wrong with my brain. It’s not working the way that I think it is supposed to, which is the way it has always worked for me in the past. So it must be broken, right?

But there’s another part of me–another train of thought or perhaps my irrational mind?–that’s actually celebrating. That part of my brain is saying hallelujah, praise Jesus, hip-hip-hooray, and such. Because finally, 53 years after I arrived on this planet, my brain is working the way it should be working. Or is it?

That’s all perfectly clear, straightforward, and easy to understand, right? Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to me either. Trying to understand the why behind it all is making me crazy. For real.

Is my brain broken? Have I finally gone nuts? Or have I finally come to my senses? I don’t know which answer is right. Maybe there’s a little truth in both lines of thought. Or maybe my brain is and always has been working just fine, but my own reality has shifted.

That’s an even weirder thought!

Many people scoff at and immediately dismiss the whole idea of shifting reality. It’s tempting to dismiss it, certainly. I mean, reality is real. Everything we perceive with one or more of our five senses is either real or it isn’t. Right?

Nope. Scientists have learned an awful lot about brains and thought processes. Relatively speaking, however, there is so much more that scientists do not know. Really. So much so, that even science has started questioning reality.

Thinking about stuff like that can be quite mind-blowing. Literally.

If you have not read, watched, or in some other way come across any reality discussions, and are curious, check out this video I stumbled across on YouTube, “Reality is Not as it Seems.” I included an overview below.

The prevalent view in cognitive science today is that we construct our perception of reality in real time. But could we be misinterpreting the content of our perceptual experiences? According to some cognitive scientists, what we perceive with our brain and our senses does not reflect the true nature of reality. Thus, while evolution has shaped our perceptions to guide adaptive behavior, they argue, it has not enabled us to perceive reality as it actually is. What are the implications of such a radical finding for our understanding of the mystery of consciousness? And how do we distinguish between “normal” and “abnormal” perceptual experiences?

Cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman and neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan join Steve Paulson to discuss the elusive quest to understand the fundamental nature of consciousness, and why our perception of reality is not necessarily what it seems.

Do we create our own reality? If so, does that mean everything we see, think, and physically feel is created in our own mind? Or do we share realities with people who are close to us?

If we see things others do not see, is it because those things are not real? Or is it simply because others are not able to see them? If we feel things, physically, that others cannot feel, are we nuts? Or do we just have different abilities?

I am trying very hard to find the answer(s). If you have any good ideas, do let me know. Meanwhile, I’ll keep digging.

Brain Map
The Brain Puzzle
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Understanding

Yesterday, I learned of the death of someone I did not know. I knew of him through mutual ties to a friend’s family. I’d met him, briefly, and probably saw him at various functions over the years, but had never had an in-depth conversation with the guy. Not that I remember.

He’d just turned 38 in early January. He was a veteran of the US Navy. According to the obituary, he’d served tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The obituary also said, “He was a man of God who loved serving the Lord, his family and others, always with a smile on his face. His contagious smile and laughter will be missed by many.” At the time of his death, he was employed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, still serving his country.

The obituary did not mention the grievous, life-threatening wounds he suffered during one of his tours of duty. When an explosion wiped out most, if not all, of the other soldiers he was with at the time, his friends. It also didn’t mention the many, many surgeries and myriad other medical procedures, long, grueling periods of recovery, the physical pain he endured, and the scars. The beautiful love story that blossomed when, during one of his many hospital stays, friends of his stopped to visit with a young girl in tow. Unknown to him at the time, she’d eventually become his wife and the mother of two of his beautiful children. There was also no mention of the eventual divorce or detail about his second marriage being what blessed him with another wife,  daughter, and a son.

I have yet to see an obituary reveal the cause of death as suicide. Why is that? Suicide is not shameful. In my opinion, it is just as tragic as dying a long, slow, death from cancer or some other degenerative, fatal disease. The kind that slowly eats away at one’s physical body. Where families, friends, co-workers and others witness and have to deal with that person’s physical struggles. They can see the effect of pain on that person. They can empathize and, maybe, do things to help ease the patient’s suffering. They can offer support and friendship, do as much as they can to help, or at least take the patient’s mind off of the physical suffering.

When people die of “natural” causes, be it sudden death from a heart attack, accident, or something long and drawn out, like cancer, most of those who are left behind grieve differently than they would had it been death by suicide. They do what they need to do to wrap their minds around the loss and get on with the business of living.

People typically have a harder time accepting suicide, or dealing with it. Most people, anyway. It’s not spoken of, not at length anyway. Survivors are often treated like victims. Maybe they even feel like victims.

How often have you heard things like… That was selfish. How could he do that to his family? How could he leave his children behind? If only he’d told me he was suffering, I could have helped. Imagine the guilt his parents are struggling with. He just couldn’t handle it all anymore, he wasn’t strong enough. Etcetera, etcetera.

In my opinion, it is just another example of how ill-equipped our society is to deal with mental illness. Death by suicide is just as tragic, if not MORE tragic, than death by “natural causes.”

Why is natural deal more acceptable? Because we can see the effects of disease? Because we know what physical pain feels like, and are better equipped to understand and empathize when people are sick, injured, and/or dealing with a fatal disease?

Mental illness may be invisible, but it is also very physical. We may all be people, but we do not all have the same physical make-up. Our bodies have many, many similarities, but they also have many differences. Our muscles do not all work the same way, and neither do our brains. We think differently, we feel differently, we perceive things differently, we act and react in many different ways.

If more people understood mental illness, would it have been different? Could that young man’s life have been saved? Should it have been saved?

I cannot imagine how difficult the entire second half of his life has been. I suspect the physical suffering he endured paled in comparison to the mental anguish eating away at his psyche. How difficult it must have been to live a seemingly normal life while dealing with so many invisible, emotional hurdles.

Organized religion doesn’t necessarily help either. Suicide is considered a sin by many. But that young man “…was a man of God who loved serving the Lord.” Imagine just how bad his pain must have been for him to take his own life. To risk being condemned to Hell for all eternity.

Is suicide a bad thing? Really? Or is it a final, courageous act?

That young man was not weak. He was a hero. He fought for a very long time, physically and mentally. If he’d been wired differently, he might have lived longer.

Would you condemn someone for ending their life if you knew they’d spent the second half of their physical life on Earth suffering from pain? Should you?

If one’s physical brain is not appropriately wired to process the negative thoughts and emotions coursing through one’s brain, and there is no end in sight to the emotional pain caused by that faulty processing, how can choosing to end it be bad?

That young man will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. He will be buried with honor, as he should be. He was courageous. He was a fighter. But he was also a human. His physical limitations were his undoing. His wiring had flaws.

I hope his children are better-equipped and, one day, able to understand how difficult life was for their heroic father. I hope the people he left behind are able to realize and rejoice in knowing his physical body may be gone, but his soul is finally free.

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Everything is Relative

HI was playing around with a word cloud app this morning and, on a whim, decided to input the URL of my last blog post. This is what I came up with…

I thought it a bit serendipitous that THINK showed up as the biggest word. Because, really,  I suspect that thinking is the key to everything.

How do you come up with solutions to problems? You think about the issue at hand.

How do you learn to understand other people’s feelings? Think about what it must be like to be in their shoes. By that, I mean you need to think not only about how they actually see things through their eyes, but how they perceive things with their brain. What is their perspective? Why do they do what they do, when/how they do it? Why do they see things so differently than you do? Why can’t they see or feel the things you feel? Why don’t they care about the “why” of things like you do?

That’s a lot of questions, right?

During my mother-in-law’s (MIL’s) recent visit, I asked a lot of questions. I didn’t just ask her questions, I puzzled over a bunch of stuff in my head, too. There are many things about my family that I have struggled over the years to understand. The more I think about stuff, the better I am able to comprehend things. Not just physical things, either. Ideas. Perspectives. Attitudes, for better or worse.

I may not have arrived at all of the answers, but I am at least better-equipped to form new, perhaps temporary, hypotheses. Some of those are more accurate than others. Some are pretty far-fetched, too.

We, as people, tend to take an awful lot of stuff for granted. We assume people are all basically like ourselves. That we all have the same ability to think, to reason, to comprehend. But we don’t. People are all wired differently. The differences could be physical (brain structure) and/or mental (brain signals). The tricky thing is that we cannot see those differences, so it takes longer to figure out. It requires a little bit of effort, too.

What kind of effort? Thought. It really is as simple as that.

Hubby, Mike, and I have been married for almost 27 years. It’s always been obvious to me that we are very different in a lot of ways, but I have only recently begun to understand just how different.

Here’s a simple example. A month or so ago, out of the blue, he asked me why, when I put the TV remote back on the endtable (where it “belongs”) every night, I lay it upside-down.

“I don’t put it there it upside-down,” I told him. “At least not on purpose.”

I know I can a bit scatter-brained, so adding that “not on purpose” qualifier is important.

I assumed that, by “upside-down,” he meant like this…

Face-down

Nope, he meant this.

Face-up

“What makes that upside-down?” I asked.

“The top of the remote should be pointing at the TV, not the other way.”

”Um… why?” I asked. “So, when I want to turn the TV on, I don’t have to pick it up, I just have to reach over and hit the power button. When you put the buttons here, upside-down like this, I have to pick the remote up, turn it around, and then hit the power,” he explained as he demonstrated.

Right-side up

I had to laugh. I mean, I never would have thought about making sure I lay the buttons down so they were pointing at the TV. I’m usually just happy remembering to put them back in the “right” spot.

Really, I would never think that. It’s a good thing we have each other, eh?

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Random Message from the Universe

I received a surprise package today. A special deck of cards that each contain a different writing prompt. Questions like, “What decision should you have made yesterday?” and “How do you define success…?”

I have no idea who sent it. I’m not sure I want to know, though. Sometimes, puzzling over stuff like that is half the fun.

Then again, how can I thank the mystery sender for this really cool gift?

I started to look for a nice EOA (emoji of appreciation), then decided a Bitmoji would be better. That’s when I found this…

I have no idea what it means, but how can I not share a ToadMama as Avocado Bitmoji? Anyone have any clue what THAT is supposed to express? Maybe it’s a spin on “cool as a cucumber,” but with a bit of a mean twist? “Awkward as an avocado” perhaps. Or  maybe it’s “absentminded as an avocado.” Because, you know, everyone knows how avocados affect a person’s memory. Especially if they come in contact with that big-ass seed.

Seriously, though, I do want to share an actual, appropriate ToadMama Bitmoji.

AND I sincerely wanted to say Thank You. For real, as I suspect someone who reads or has read this blog may have sent the deck. It was a kind thing to do, I can always use some inspiration, plus, it’s just a cool idea. So, thanks.

Of course, the best way to express my appreciation would be to actually use the deck.

Now, there’s an idea!

On another note… I took my computer on vacation. An actual laptop, so I could maybe write some blog posts and/or share some pics.

But, during the day, I just couldn’t bring myself to look at a computer, tablet, or even phone screen for any length of time. Why sit indoors, looking at my screen, when I could look at and listen to stuff like this?

Hawaii was awesome. We didn’t do much of anything, which is a big part of what made it so awesome.

I stared at the water A LOT. It was pretty.

Like, seriously pretty. And it was off season. So, other than places like Pearl Harbor and the world famous Waikiki Beach, there weren’t many people, so it was quiet. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen some of my pics.

I took around 2,000 pictures. I’m guessing at least half will be deleted. Have YOU ever tried to capture that perfect crashing-wave shot? Or fidgety yellow bird? Or ghost crab?

I DID manage to capture at least one good crab pic.

I might share some more here one day. But it won’t be anytime soon. We’ve got some special stuff going on this week. More on that later.

Thanks again for the cards, friend! I’ll try hard to put them to good use.

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Fuel for Your Daydreams

Despite a few bumps, I’ve been very fortunate in my career. The path I’ve chosen is demanding and deadline-driven, but it’s also allowed quite a bit of flexibility— like working remotely! — that many traditional roles would not.

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This place really is awesome.

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Did you know I’ve been a remote employee for 12 years? That means that of the 28 years I’ve had “regular” nine-to-five office-type job, 43% of my time has been spent working somewhere other than an employer’s site. Like in that brew pub, as pictured above, which serves lunch as well as beer. (I wasn’t actually working the day I took that photo, but did return during the week.)

Working remotely definitely has its share of pros and cons, but, for me, the pros (no commuting, comfy wardrobe, flexible hours, etc.) FAR outweigh the cons (occasional feelings of isolation, difficulties with teleconferencing, tendency to work longer hours, to name a few).

I used to think of myself as someone who “works from home.” But the longer I did it and the more people I encountered who were also doing it, I realized that “remote employee” is a much better distinction. Because, really, I can work from anywhere as long as I have a suitable environment (a quiet spot with few distractions), electricity, and a decent internet connection. I’ve worked from my friend’s house in North Carolina, both of my daughters’ houses on multiple occasions in various states, and my friend’s farm in Pennsylvania. With a bit of juggling, I can even stick to a schedule that requires feeding baby goats every few hours five times a day.

Not that long ago, I had a boss who struggled with the distinction between working from home vs. working remotely. Working from home means one works from their home and working remotely means one works from a remote location. ANY remote location. Unless your work terms/contract specify otherwise, of course, which mine did not.

As a courtesy, I usually let employers know if I’ll be in a different location. Especially if there was a significant time zone difference. But that particular boss would say stuff like, “I let you work from California for several weeks,” like she was doing me a big favor. That’s one of the reasons I decided to work from Pennsylvania earlier this year without telling anyone. I was going to work from my Dad’s house, but after spending the weekend there, it quickly became apparent that it was far too loud for me to work at his place. So I relocated to my friend’s goat farm. I was there for an entire week and no one knew any different. Despite the fact that there were two recurring appointments on my daily shared work calendar that said something like “feeding kids lunch” and “afternoon kid snack.”

The boss was surprised to learn on Friday that I’d been working from a farm in Pennsylvania all week, but I still don’t think she got the point. Remote means remote. It does not mean I have to be in any specific place.

I came across a great story today on Roadtrippers.com that took that experiment much further. Its headline says it all… This badass couple spent a year road tripping across America… without telling their bosses. 

If you’re interested, give the article a read. Remote work isn’t for everyone and not all jobs can be done well remotely. I’m very glad that my job is one that can be done from anywhere. It opens the door to a very wide range of possibilities. Who knows where life will take us next?

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Back on Track

Hello, Minneapolis!

I’d be less than truthful if I said I didn’t enjoy the Summer break. It would have been nicer if I’d had some grand adventures, but lots of fun little things I did, which would not have been possible had I been working, made up for it.

The mini-week in Virginia Beach was a very nice dose of relaxation topping off the Summer. My girlfriend and I enjoyed relaxing in an oceanfront room with a balcony, watching the sun rise daily and, at day’s end, people-watching as folks frolicked on the boardwalk. We rode our bicycles a lot, ate quite a bit, enjoyed some adult refreshments, spent some time on the beach (it was a hot and humid week), and just relaxed. It really was lovely.

All good things must come to an end, though.

I flew to Minneapolis on Sunday, September 9, and officially started my new job on September 10. It seems like a good, solid company, staffed by good people. I met lots of new people, learned a bunch of new things, and then flew home late on Thursday. It was exhausting, but in a good way.

The week was overshadowed by news of and worry about the impending hurricane. Early in the week, forecasters were predicting that the storm would track inland from the N.C. coast and head north to our area on Thursday. Originally, I was going to return to Virginia on Friday afternoon. I knew I’d be stuck in Minnesota if I waited until Friday, with my company footing the bill for the extended stay, so we moved my flight to Thursday.  No big deal, really, as I’m sure I would’ve been able to entertain myself had my return been delayed.

This is pretty much as close as I got to the city.

The worry was because my friend’s house was right in the storm’s projected path. Heather and her husband, Timo, have a beautiful house in Carolina Beach (CB), south of Wilmington, NC. CB is actually on an island between The Cape Fear River and the ocean. They’re pretty close to sea level, about one-tenth of a mile from the Intracoastal Waterway and only about 10 miles from where the eye of the storm came ashore. Some of you may remember me talking about the area in posts like this one.

They and their pets had evacuated, so I knew they were safe, and I know material things can be replaced, but it’s such a beautiful area. It was sad thinking how much the natural beauty and landscape of the entire area could change forever.

I was sick to my stomach watching the weather coverage, seeing where the eye came ashore, watching Florence sit, churning away at the coast for several days. I thought for sure the island would have been leveled or heavily damaged at the very least. Miraculously, it was spared. There was some damage and flooding on the island, but it was FAR better than one would expect given all the horrific news coming out of that area.

They can’t return to their house until the roads around Wilmington are passable, but it seems as if their house is not damaged. They won’t know for sure until they’re back, of course. There will be yard clean-up to do, of course, but things really could have been much worse.

On a lighter note…

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He’s such a good sport. ❤️😎🐸

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That Hubby of mine recently decided we should start exploring local breweries, so we got back to that on Saturday. If you follow me on Instagram, you know we’ve been doing that for a couple of months. I was still pretty tired after that very-busy week, but sampling beer isn’t particularly strenuous. And I took it pretty easy on Sunday. Now, I’m readjusting to the reality of work.