Choosing is hard

There is so much out there in the world to be learned and done and seen and enjoyed, and I'm never going to have the time for it all. That's one of the hardest things to accept about the world. And it's hard for me to prioritize what I want to do and what I want to learn because there's just so much of it.

Case in point: I play, to varying degrees of ability, eight different instruments, five or six of which I would actually play in front of people. I also conduct, which, I've discovered, is a somewhat comparable skill. And yet I want to learn more. I've fallen more in love with strings lately and wish that I could play the fiddle. Then I remind myself to learn the instruments I already have.

I've written about this before, to an extent, discussing the concept of the "Renaissance soul." I've been thinking about it again because there's not much for me to do at work, which has given me time to doodle and read interesting articles, like this one about a crazy awesome computer virus. Computer security is fascinating. I learned a little bit of assembly code and the basic concept of a few injection attacks in some computer science courses. I'm hoping that in the spring I can take the course on viruses.

And roller coasters. I rode some this weekend, and they're awesome! Everything about them, from the design of the track, to the chains and brakes, to the steel (or wood) that holds them up, to their construction in the winter offseason, is really nifty. That would be a cool job too.

I feel like I'm often either torn on what to do with myself because there are simply so many options or too lazy to pick any of them. When I get these crazy bursts of energy, I'm not sure how to constructively focus them. Sometimes they are focused (like right now I want to play trombone, but sadly, I don't have one) but often it's just a jittery sort of energy that demands I do something. I suppose right now I'll put it to good use by doing the laundry...

But the amount of knowledge in the world is so incomprehensibly vast! It's amazing! There are so many technical things that I'm never going to understand because I don't have time to learn it all. Even subjects that you may scoff at and believe there's no way that can have a lot of depth can have incredibly complex histories or mechanisms or underlying chemistries. Wild stuff. Maybe I like writing because it's a good way to learn some of this stuff, or at least pretend that I know it when writing about characters who do. It's a good way to live vicariously.

Sometimes I think about immortality and how cool that would be, not because I fear death, but because then I would have the time to master everything. At the same time, though, human knowledge is constantly expanding, so maybe I wouldn't be able to even then! But I could get a much larger chunk of it. Probably even reach the limit of my brain's capacity... I wonder how many GB, TB, etc., our brains can hold. It would probably depend on the compression and file format... :-)

This is really rambly. But that's the kind of mood I've been in. Now, off to laundry.