Noetic Revalations

I feel crampy.

Brain cramps to be specific.

Like the kind you feel right after you've crammed for an exam, but then realize you memorized a pile of useless facts, only to be given a multiple choice basic math quiz. Only I don't feel like doing any math.

Why all crampy, you ask? 2009 and 2010 (to date) has been a crampy year all around for many reasons:

• Way too much travel. Hitting Air Canada's Elite Gold Status in under 3 months sounds fun until your body has to actually do it (and all in coach)... I did a quick calculation and I have travelled over 100,000 miles in the past 8 months. That is 4x around the world. India, Indonesia, France, Nashville, Toronto, Montreal...




• Too much renovations. I am still working on the inside finish work of this enternal renovation and yes, the darned deck. Railings? Who needs railings?!? Apparently I do. And a cement stone path as well.




• Not enough riding. I picked up a new Trek Madone in the summer and have well under 200km on it. Why? See my "Too much" list.




• Not near enough writing: 21 blog posts in 2009. What was up with that? Yes I had probably 200+ Facebook or Twitter updates, but that doesn't count.

So here's what I tried:

• I tried replacing the crampy feeling with high quality scotch, but the hangover was a wicked 2 days of blurriness.




• I tried replacing the crampy feeling with Facebook status updates. All I got was a bunch of Farmville requests in return.




• I tried reading all of Reddit, but did it all and then saw the repeats on Digg the next day.




• I tried increasing my noetic stimulation by broadening my Twitter feeds, but realized all I received in return was a plethora of data which required manual extrapolation into meaningful informaiton .

So I have to bump my wring again. My notebook is out, and in the past few month many scribbles have been taken but none crafted into prose.

A prime example of some note-pad scribbles from this past year:

Toronto:
everyone wears a scarf - fashion over coldness.
couldn't understand why I wore shorts
women are better looking. What? Well, better dressed. I think Little Italy had something to do with it.
Bikers - crazier, no helmets. I aspire.
Less panhandelers more hot-dog stands. Standing at Bloor & Younge gave me 4 choices within 100 feet. Nice

For inspiration I have stocked up my bookshelf with some 2009 Giller Prize nominees:

• Kim Echlin for her novel THE DISAPPEARED
• Annabel Lyon for her novel THE GOLDEN MEAN
• Anne Michaels for her novel THE WINTER VAULT

So the table is set and I will read with veracity...and hopefully let the cramps be gone!