rambling stoned catharsis

Got both sweet potatoes and the regular high glycemic kind from Intervale last week, so my bag was extra heavy.  The terrain here is all ups and downs, and I insist on riding the sort of bike that makes it all more difficult.  I still didn't get to kickboxing afterwards, but that's also after three hours of язык de inglaterra and two hours of Испанский.

Still, I've barely been training once a week, and need to get back there more.  I've been so busy with all the book learning that all my injuries are almost entirely healed.  I need to do something about that.

Learning has proven to be more difficult than I remember it being.  I wasn't expecting so much of my time to be gobbled up just going over the material again and again.  I guess it's what they call studying, but I used to just remember things the first time a whole lot more easily.  You know, when I was like nine years old.  One of the many things I've learned in spite of that lately, is that this does in fact decline with age.  Not necessarily as a form of deterioration, but just the way the brain works, as we get older, our neural connections proliferate around utilizing what we already know, and less around remembering everything.

If this were English Comp I, I'd have throw a citation in there.  That is, I'd have to rearrange my words to be more citable, taking less creative license first.  I don't think my English teacher understands language though.  She keeps giving me bad grades when I try to explain it to her¹.  In a science class, of course, your paper needs meticulously accurate citations.  Creative writing becomes unnatural when held to that same standard, though.  Assumptions can be necessary to avoid getting bogged down, losing all readers, instead of just the ignoramuses.  Hyperbole isn't deception or laziness, but a way of adding emotional connotation.

These sorts of things can get lost in translation across certain boundaries, differing sociopolitical tribes, generational divides, cultures, sub-cultures, where hyperbole or imprecise language is immediately read as flagrantly dishonest.  There's neurotypically an assumption that we all know the basic facts, and if I'm exaggerating, it's to make a point.  People do this all the time among friends and family, colleagues, and in forums and periodicals devoted to a narrow enough audience where such things can broadly be assumed.  I've had to work on clearing those boundaries more easily.

I wrote a paper using "exemplification" to illustrate the value of nationalizing healthcare costs, but I didn't anticipate a reader not knowing technical jargon like "nationalizing" or "healthcare."  Turns out that people often have no idea what I'm talking about at all.  I expect my readers to look up anything they don't understand, and when they can't be bothered to do that, eh, my writing isn't for them, anyhow.  It's usually just this thing I do for my own reasons, but I guess that makes for some bad habits.

So, anyhow, doing better the last few days.  Spent the weekend studying, instead of making excuses not to.  Feeling ok, but have a lot to do tomorrow, and maybe that's where I oscillate from feeling ok, to oh fucking hell, what have I gotten myself into..  I'd planned on cutting way back on getting stoned, and even did for a little while, but this shit is way too stressful.


1. MY IDEA OF A JOKE.  I'M ACTUALLY TRYING MY DAMNDEST TO GET GOOD GRADES.  NOT QUITE THERE YET, BUT GETTING BETTER.