Let's stand up to cancer...and laugh at Rachel! #2

Time for Round Two! I got another donation-- thank you!!

I could go chronologically in order. But I've decided not to. Let me take you back to the childhood days  of Rachel Clark. This story is called Panties in the Pool.

It's short but hopefully the level of embarrassment is worth it.

For all of my childhood and adolescence, we belonged to this small, semi-private pool called the Teacher's Pool. It was kept alive by some fancy family fund and it was designed to provide a pool for, you guessed it, teachers in the community. I loved the Teacher's Pool. It was not usually super crowded, and I was scared of the big pool where anyone and everyone went, so it made sense that I relished in the relative emptiness and quietness of the Teacher's Pool.

To the embarrassing part.

The Teacher's Pool had two small bathrooms so sometimes we would just take our swim suits with us and change once we got there. I honestly don't know how old I was this particular time, I'm going to say somewhere around 10. Whatever age I was, I know I was far too old for what happened to have actually happened. I went to the girls bathroom, changed into my swim suit, ran back out, tossed my swim bag onto one of those folding lounge chairs and went to get in the water with my sister.

Because I was young, I don't have a stellar memory for all the details. However, I do remember that I was slowly inching my way in to the deep end via the ladder. I got in up to my shins. Then my knees. Then my thighs. Then my stomach. And suddenly, I was like.....something feels weird. It kind of felt like I was wearing a diaper.

That's right, I had accidentally forgotten to take my underwear off. In all of my hurry to change and get in the pool, I had put my swim suit on right on top of my underwear. How on earth I had left it on and not immediately realized it, I seriously do not know. Once I realized I was wearing it, I noticed that it definitely felt like I had multiple layers on. I'm unfortunately guessing that my swim suit didn't even cover all of it. So I had probably run out of the bathroom with underwear visibly underneath my suit. Whether anyone saw, I'll never know.

I honestly don't know if I was obvious enough about it that my sister or my dad realized what had happened but I'm guessing I turned bright red and ran back to the bathroom. I'll have to ask Abby if she knows this story.

I had no other option at that point than to deal with my soaking wet underwear. I think I considered throwing it away. Instead I tried to hide it in my hand as I sprinted to our chairs. I rolled it up in my towel and shoved it in my bag. I don't remember this part but I have a feeling I also had difficulty later when I had to actually use that towel to dry off after swimming and I didn't want to have to explain to anyone why my underwear had been soaking wet.

Whether this is a semi-normal mistake for 8 or 10 year olds, I have no idea. But I must have been really embarrassed, to remember it clearly to this day. The best part I think is that I didn't just start to put on my swim suit and realize I was still wearing something (although that has happened many times), but I actually went through the whole process and even got in the pool. Yeesh.

I remember my 8 or 10 year old brain thinking, "I will never ever ever tell anyone about this."  Well, thanks to that donation-- the cat's out of the bag ;)

Let's stand up to cancer...and laugh at Rachel! #1

If you haven't seen this on my Facebook page yet, I've decided to exchange embarrassing stories about myself for donations to our Relay for Life team, Clark Kent. I realized recently that embarrassing stories are at a premium. People (for good reason) want to put their best foot (and face) forward. I've noticed that this sometimes gives me what (I hope) is a false sense of everyone else's "graceful, charming lives".  Except for professional comedians, I feel like I rarely hear good down-to-earth, "I just massively embarrassed myself" stories....except for when I'm telling them. So now I'd like to share some such stories and assure you all that I do not, in fact, always have a graceful, charming life. I hope I at least make you laugh a little. 

Who knows who will eventually read any of these embarrassing stories....but it's a small price to pay for encouraging some donations so that we can stand up to cancer and help those in their time of need-- just as many people did for my family and I when my grandma and my dad were sick. 

Since I've already had an anonymous donation to my Relay for Life page, it is now time for embarrassing story #1.

This one is called......The Fatal Belch

So I was at my friend's house a few weeks ago. Before I get in to this story too far, I should just disclose one  embarrassing basic fact about myself. I burp. A lot. And not daintily. Loudly and obnoxiously. This burping started sometime around the start of grad school. Before that, I literally could not burp. I would try and try and yet I couldn't make it happen. I didn't actually care that I couldn't- it was just odd to be deficient in this one specific skill. I must have very little muscular control over my diaphragm or whatever muscle actually allows burps to happen. It was almost a pathetic inability to burp, similar to my pathetic inability to roll my Rs. I just plain can't do it. Spit gets everywhere....when trying to roll my Rs. Not when trying to burp. Or maybe in both cases, I don't know.

Anyway, now I burp. Often. I've gotten to a point, perhaps unfortunately, where I really don't try very hard (or at all) to cover it up. Especially if I'm at home, work or a friend's house. So I was at a friend's house, practicing some swing dancing with that friend and another swing dancer friend.

Let me set the stage: we were in the driveway. It was dusk or slightly after. Maybe around 9:00 pm and since it was sometime in late April or early May, it was pretty much dark at that point. I was standing near the garage, under a light. There were some bugs flying around but I hadn't noticed them too much. I was watching my friends practice the routine we were working on. They stopped and came over to talk to me and just as I was going to tell them something I turned my head to the side and let out a fairly forceful burp. It was an odd one. Mostly an exhalation of air, rather than a loud burp.  One of my friends let out a surprised sound just before I actually burped and then immediately cracked up laughing. I could barely get him to stop laughing long enough to tell me what happened.

What happened was this.

 Just as I had turned my head to the side, a moth dove down from the light and flew straight for my mouth. Because of the type of burp this was, the exhaling kind, my mouth was pretty wide open. Apparently the moth was literally inches from just entering my mouth like it was a cozy cave. However, thanks to whatever I had actually exhaled at that very moment, instead of flying into my mouth, the moth...................DIED. That's right. My burp literally killed a moth. It had gotten knocked to the ground due to either the force or the content of my burp. Or both.

Pretty ladylike, huh?

I almost didn't believe my laughing friend, but sure enough, I looked down and there it was. A (really large!) white moth. On the ground. If not dead, at least near its eventual demise. It was a goner.

I suppose I'm grateful it didn't actually make it in my mouth. I also just realized how similar of words "mouth" and "moth" are. Ironic. This would probably have been an equally- or more- funny story had the moth flown straight in. But at least now I know I have a talent as a moth exterminator. As long as I don't know it's there. Because I definitely would not have opened my mouth had I noticed my proximity to the furry white flying creature.

I made my friends promise not to tell anyone. Thanks to the recent donation to my Relay for Life page, however, they no longer have to keep my secret :)

Anyone need any moths taken care of?

Love and grief and a wonderful little kitty

Having finished classes two weeks ago, I figured I'd soon have a chance to write a comprehensive blog post on what the semester was like and how this upcoming summer is looking in terms of my big upcoming "exam" and what all it will entail.

Unfortunately, my week was turned upside down when I found out my cat of 16 years, Scooter, was hurt. The last few days have been somewhat traumatizing and it still feels a little bit like a sad dream that ended in the worst way. I'll admit that he was old (16 healthy years!!) and that I knew someday he would not be with our family anymore, but he's been around for so long it is just hard to comprehend anything else. I spent a sweet morning and afternoon cuddling and brushing him on Thursday and then on Friday Michael and I went back to Newton to be with my family to grieve, but also to look at pictures and remember what fun we had with Scooter.

He was just an amazing kitty. Throughout my elementary-high school years, Scooter would plant himself on dad's lap every morning and stay for as long as possible. In these last few years, he has been wholly devoted to my mom; sleeping in her bed, getting in the way of her feet as she cooked, eagerly awaiting every time she came home. He loved Abby and I too but I think he was a little mad at us for leaving as often as we did. Even after he turned 16, he still could play with his toys like a young kitty. I could never believe how much energy he had, but also how lazy he could be- just curled up on a chair or in front of a window for hours and hours. Scooter had so much personality. His green eyes shone, especially when he would play with a laser or a feather or the light underneath the door that always eluded his grasp. Sometimes he would lick my leg or my hand non-stop until I would push him away or reposition because if I didn't he would lick the same spot until it was raw. Scooty would always keep me company on the couch or in my bed if I had to stay home sick. He would usually comply with my love of putting his leash on him and taking him on a "walk", which usually consisted of basically pulling him to the end of the driveway before he laid down and rolled around in the dust. He would always try to escape our back door as we went in and out but he really just loved the thrill of being outside and typically didn't try to run very far away. We could usually crawl under the cars or truck and drag him back inside.

Scooter let me do crazy things to him, like put him in baskets with my beanie babies and dress him in my Magic Attic doll Heather's dresses and boas and sunglasses and fancy hats. He always looked stunning.

My mom says that grief is the price we pay for love. And I suppose I agree that love wouldn't be nearly as sweet if it were free.....but I sure am tired of paying the price. Then again, I also think that if at the beginning someone told me I could have Scooter only if I agreed to let him go after 24 years, I would have said yes in a heartbeat. The time with him was well worth it. He was such a perfect kitty for our family. Thank you to everyone that ever loved him.

Someday soon I will write about my current life, which includes my comprehensive exam being due June 16th, Michael's trip to Haiti (he leaves tomorrow morning!!) and our super cool Iowa City summer Swing Dance project. I'll try not to wait too long before writing again. This last gap between posts was ridiculous. I think I need to get back to my Friday night blogging habit.

Hope you all are enjoying the start of summer.

I thought 'coding' was what you did when you wanted to send a secret message to your best friend

I am willing to admit that as a 13-year old, my best friend and I made up symbols for certain people and things (boys we liked, girls we didn't like, types of food, places to go after school). She would draw beautiful symbols and I would crudely copy them when trying to formulate a hidden message for her. We also had code names for the same types of things. Part of me wishes I could remember what those code names were. The other part of me is satisfied just knowing we had them, without the embarrassment of actually remembering what they were (for example, I think one particular boy's code name had something to do with falling...because I fell for him. I know what you are thinking...what's embarrassing about that?.....Only everything) Anyway, the maybe-even-more embarrassing part is that as a 21-year old, my friends and I still had codes! Different friends, different code names. Again, for boys. Apparently it's really fun or something.

And this is why it's so shocking to me that I had barely even heard of actual coding, you know, like computer programming, until graduate school. You might think I should have been an expert given my past experience developing our fake 8th grade lexicon and using the words and symbols profusely, much to the chagrin of the boys whose names were subtly hidden by our creative codes. But either no one taught me or (the more likely possibility) I didn't pay attention when I should have figured out that our world of technology is essentially run by foreign, mysterious languages.

When I started my first year at Knox, I had planned to take a computer science course. I thought, that sounds like something I should start to understand. My advisor quickly rearranged my schedule saying, "If you are going to do Neuroscience, you need to get started right away on biology and chemistry. You don't need computer science."

I NEEDED COMPUTER SCIENCE.

Knox rarely led me astray and I have little complaints about my education. However, this is one of them. I admit that no one is really to blame. I just wish someone had said, "Oh, if you are planning to go to graduate school for neuroscience or psychology (which I was planning for all along) maybe you should think about learning some different types of programming. It might come in handy."

It would have come in very handy.

I am doing fine in graduate school (I think). But I do think I've had a slow-ish learning curve with the different types of programming languages that I should be learning by now. For example, we use one language to communicate with the computer operating system, we use another language to tell our very cool computer program what to do to make the experiments we run with participants in our study, we use another language to tell a program what to do with all the numbers (data) we throw at it in order to make sense of our experiment results.

I am still on the beginner side of understanding all of these. The thing that is most striking to me, however, is how much faster I started to learn the second one after I got a handle on learning the first one.  For this reason, if someone said to me "well, you don't need to know HTML (the language used to design many websites), so don't bother learning it",  I would say to them, "It's not the specific language I need to learn....instead, I need to learn how to learn these types of languages." I need to understand the concepts behind why we need symbols and codes to talk to computers. I need to appreciate and be in awe of how much control and flexibility users can have if they know how to use the right tools. I need to feel free to be creative, instead of thinking of using programming languages as "plug-and-chug". As far as I can tell, yes there are grammatical-type rules, and yes there are syntax-type rules, and yes there are definitely spelling rules, but, like writing English, just because you CAN write a message one way, that doesn't mean you HAVE to write the message that way. You can get the same (or better!) idea across in a different way, one that makes more sense to you.

I know this was kind of vague as to what programming languages really are; maybe I will write a more detailed blog about coding in another edition of Stream of [Neuro]science  (http://clarkonneuroscience.blogspot.com/), but for now I just wanted to reflect on how important this skill I do not have is and likely will be in the future. I was inspired to write this by a very fascinating Kickstarter project I stumbled upon. If you're not familiar, Kickstarter is an online platform to share ideas for projects and ask people to be involved by pledging certain amounts of money. The cool thing is that "backers" (the people who provide the moo-la for each project) get rewards from the project based on the amount of money they give. So then, as a backer, I really get to follow each project as the developers make progress. I've already backed many projects, which I get a weird amount of joy out of doing. Anyway, I get emails each week highlighting the coolest Kickstarter projects. This week, the email struck my eye because the subject line read "Projects we love: Code and Canned Goods".  I honestly didn't care so much about the canned goods (it was the idea for an art installation of knitted pieces that looked like spam, beans and tomato soup. creative), but I was intrigued by the Code part. I went on an at least 20 minute adventure reading all about this idea for HelloRuby, a children's book written by a woman computer programming teacher from Finland with the goal of getting children excited about the world of technology and introducing them to programming. Where was this when I was 10??? (Don't worry, mom, you didn't miss anything -- there was no such thing when I was a kid!)

I couldn't stop watching videos of this woman talking about her project and reading about the exciting characters that will be in her book. It looks magical.

And educational. How can you say no to that combination?

My credit card couldn't say no either. If all goes well, sometime within the next year I'll be a proud owner of a hardcover copy of this magical book.

And then I'll have to find some kids who I can teach about coding.

Here is the link to her project page, if you want to see what got me so excited:  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lindaliukas/hello-ruby?ref=NewsJan2314&utm_campaign=Jan+23&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter 

Wow, this was a long post. Thanks for reading if you made it all the way through :)  Time for me to go to work and read about developmental neurobiology (how the cells of the spinal cord and brain are formed) and neurophysiology (how electrical signals travel between neurons to convey information throughout the brain. note: it has a lot to do with math and physics. yikes!)

Stay safe and warm :)
-Rachel

Oh!! One more note: I am officially Clark, R.
That means I am an author on a peer-reviewed journal article. It is a review that our lab wrote this summer about how extended sitting can have negative effects on the body and brain because of what happens to our different types of cells and chemicals when we don't move many muscles for long amounts of time.
It's still in press and I'm not sure if this page will allow you to at least see the abstract or not, but it's worth a try
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755296614000027
To celebrate, last week my mom came to Iowa City and we went to a fitness class at the gym on campus and then went out for a healthy brunch. Made my day :)

New year- new post!!

2014. Sounds really futuristic, doesn't it? The other day I literally wrote 2001 on something. As though that were just yesterday. And then I realized that I was 11 years old then. And holy cow, that was a long time ago! I've kind of changed since then...quite a lot actually. 

So it really is 2014. I'm excited for this year. I think it will hold a lot of challenges (not the least of which is the comprehensive exam I have to pass this summer in order to continue working towards my phD!). But I also think it will be a lovely year for many reasons. Being more settled here in Iowa City after a full year of school means I get to teach Zumba regularly, swing dance at least once a week, know where my favorite coffee shops are and what kind of food to order there...lots of things to be thankful for :)

This year will also include some minor traveling. Lots of trips to and from Chicago (location of Michael's med school....and location of Michael). A few swing dance festivals around the midwest. A conference in Georgia (Cognitive Aging Conference). Hopefully another visit to Michigan (Michael's home state). 

Probably not Europe though. Gotta save up for another trip like that one. Maybe in 10 years ;)

It has been such a long time since I've written a blog post, I feel like I've forgotten how to do it! Most of the time I write for me, in such a way that I first presume no one is going to read it and then later decide it's decent enough to be shared. Right now I just feel like I'm writing a Christmas letter! Maybe that's ok, though. It'll probably be a few years before I write a real Christmas letter. Although this wouldn't be a Christmas letter. It would be a 11-days-post-New Year's letter. (and probably not a very good one, at that) But I do hope these have been a good 11 days for you. 

By the way, one of my resolutions for 2014 is to gain direction and focus for what I actually want to spend the majority of my life doing (no, not just swing dancing or teaching Zumba)...my actual career. I'm torn between feeling like I want to teach Neuroscience (or positive psych, or health psych/neuroscience, or something of that nature) and feeling like I want to be in a lab, writing grants, running subjects, developing projects...but I also have a strong feeling that I really want to work on developing projects that can be implemented in communities- to promote activity, wellness and body and brain health. Can I just do all of them? And also maybe write a book? 

Lofty goals. One step at a time. 

Happy 3rd week of 2014 :) 

The funny thing is....

It seems that the weeks I don't have the time needed to write a decent blog post are the weeks I have the most to say! Like the past few. Hence the no new blog posts in a long time! And it's too bad. Because blogging is one of my favorite things. Besides swing dancing, teaching Zumba, being with my family, and hanging (or even just phone chatting) with my boy Michael. And so I can't believe I haven't written in so long. 

I can't write long given that I just spent at least 4 hours cooking food for the week and now it's almost Monday, but I really want to share a little about what's new in life. 

Well, lots of things are new in life. 

Like that new iPhone update that most people hate and I thus far have refused to get. 

Like the fact that it's weirdly still summer weather and yet time has determined that it needs to be October already. 

Like the new Arcade Fire song that is super long and yet the radio station I listen to feels the need to play it multiple times per day (which is fine, because it's awesome!). 

But in MY life, what's new is that I'm finally figuring out some of my unsolved weird/annoying/frustrating health symptoms. About 10 months ago I decided I needed to give up coffee. I was having pretty bad acid reflux and also stomaches later in the day after drinking a latte or espresso in the morning. I was also having a lot of trouble swallowing food and pills. Not drinking coffee seemed to help some with my stomach but I was still drinking at least 3 cups of caffeinated tea per day just because I felt like I needed it. Without it, I would fall asleep at my desk multiple times throughout the day. I was feeling like a terrible grad student and I thought I just wasn't very good at this "real job" thing. I felt foggy most days and still got stomaches nearly every night. 

I did get my swallowing problems figured out and "fixed"as I was diagnosed with Eosinophilic Esophagitis in May, meaning I have an abnormally large autoimmune (allergic) reaction to....we don't know. Some foods. Maybe alcohol. It's hard to tell. But basically, over time I have had eosinophils (a specific type of white blood cell) building up in my esophagus, making it very narrow, which in turn made swallowing very difficult. Thankfully, I was able to have a endoscopy done where they put a camera down my esophagus to look at it, and the camera ended up breaking apart one of these so-called "strictures", where the eosinophils had made it very narrow. And lo and behold, swallowing became much easier! So that's the story of why I've choked so many times in the past, and why I still have to be careful with certain foods and with how much I bite at one time. This also solves the mystery of why I'm such a slow eater!!

But as of a few weeks ago, I hadn't yet solved the mystery of why I couldn't stay awake in class or at work, why I have terrible eczema that my steroid cream doesn't even seem to help, and why my stomach was so uncomfortable almost every night. 

For the past few years I've been subscribed to an email newsletter written by a health coach. I don't even know how I first found this newsletter but I've enjoyed it since and a few times I've seen her promoting her "21 day detox." I didn't think much of this in previous years besides "Oh, I don't need to think about that. That's probably for health nuts or old people." (Admittedly, my rationale was a wee bit...unreasonable)

Anyway, sometime around the end of August, I read again that she was doing this detox from Sept. 15 to Oct. 6th. I couldn't tell exactly what it entailed but the testimonies were so good that I couldn't quite get it off my mind. "Better energy...more alert...better skin...I never knew I was allergic to gluten!...ect, ect"  I started to wonder if going on a super-well-controlled diet would teach my anything about my own system. Not wanting to make a big decision like this on my own, I talked to all the important people in my life about potentially doing this. I was met by some skepticism from both my mom and Michael, but that was totally fine- because I was skeptical too. But one day, about 2 weeks before the detox was scheduled to begin, I decided that if there was even a chance it would help some of my issues, it was worth a try!

Long story short- it really, truly has been worth it. It hasn't been easy, but its a different type of "not easy" than I expected. Yes, I miss cheese. Yes, I kind of crave some chicken every once in awhile. Yes, I really miss chocolate. But honestly, I'm loving the kind of food I am eating now. 

The hard part, really, is how much I have to THINK about what I'm eating. I know I know, I'm studying to get my PhD, you think I'd be okay with thinking. But it takes time. Time to plan all the meals. Time to prep meals ahead of the week so I don't end up eating out at all. Time (and hassle) to take my food for a whole day with me because I often don't go home at all between 7:30 am and 10:00 pm. 

But like I said, it's all been worth it. In the last 14 days (I have 7 days left to go in the detox) I realized that a combination of caffeine, sugar, gluten, dairy and/or meat (at this point I can't exclude anything or really point fingers) was making me tired, bloated, itchy and acne-y. Obviously not everything has just cleared up and become wonderful in the past 14 days. But I feel so much better after eating my food now. I feel full and satisfied...and then I'm able to wait until the next meal without feeling desperate or cranky about being hungry. After a few initial "getting used to the detox" kind of sleepy, foggy days, I have had so much energy all day long. I actually know what it feels like now to sit and read a paper at my desk without realizing halfway through that my eyes are closed. Some of my sleepiness is definitely due to the "not large" amounts of sleep I get. But I honestly think a lot of it was due to the food I was eating!! 

This is a crazy concept to me. And it's crazy because it really shouldn't be crazy. Not at all. It makes complete sense that what we put in our body directly affects how we feel. But I guess I've never experienced such a change in how I feel based on a change in what I've eaten. So I'm still ridiculously impressed with it. 

Ok, I gotta get to bed. I'll write more about the detox again I'm sure. It wraps up in 7 days but honestly, I really want to keep eating like this so I kind of wish it were longer! I think I will stay largely gluten-free and continue avoiding processed "food" in favor of all the delicious fruits and vegetables I've been treating myself to. 

Hopefully this was interesting to anyone who has made it this far with me :) Please let me know if you are curious about this type of detox- I promise it's not a juice cleanse or low-carb diet or any "fad" type of thing like that. It's all about eating real food! Before this, I would've said "Oh, I eat healthy. I eat lots of "real" foods."  And I would have been wrong. This has been a huge learning experience. More later :)

Happy almost-October!

The beauty of a changeable brain

This post has taken me far too long. I started writing it 2 weeks ago, approximately one week after I made a pact with myself to write in my blog every week. I have failed that self pact twice since then. But, regardless, I think this was a worthy post to start and henceforth I shall finish it. I wrote this as I was feeling very mentally disgruntled. I was having some trouble with my mind racing about with unimportant thoughts and it really started to distract me from work. My normal routine at the time was to work while I was at work and then when I came home I generally cooked and cleaned, but while I did that, I would have TV shows or comedy sketches playing on my computer. I enjoyed it and felt like it was pretty normal to have those things on "in the background" while I was semi-productive, because what was I going to do otherwise?.....Think for myself? Contemplate life's mysteries? Brainstorm for genius ideas for work?

I should have. I should have done all of those things. But instead I was saturating my brain with entertainment because that felt easier. Until I started feeling a little out of control. Then it was slightly less easy and perhaps even a little dangerous. When you constantly have things entering your brain through your eyes and ears, you get a little less good at being in that space by yourself, and you (or at least I) tend to be less okay with it being just plain quiet. So I realized I needed to change that, and I declared a (however short) moratorium on all things falling under the category of addictive media. To me that is basically TV shows and iPhone games. I still allowed myself to listen to music and to watch Zumba DVDs because that's actually for a job, so it's semi-important. And it's fun. And educational.

So basically Zumba was in, everything else was out.

Then, throughout the two weeks since then I wrote a few times so I'll throw those mini-posts in here and then I'll wrap up with something really insightful. Ready?


Maybe it's all in my head. In fact, I think it really is all in my head. But something has to change.

I've become addicted to too many things. Although, having said that, I don't actually know how many things is the "perfect number to be addicted to." Don't worry, none of these things involve anything seriously harmful or illegal in any way. But nonetheless, it's damaging to my brain and my sense of wellness. I can feel it.

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It's been 5 days since I watched TV or played any iPhone games. It's smaller than a drop in the bucket in terms of time and it's miniscule in terms of the other forms of media to which I expose my brain. But it was something, nonetheless. And it helped. I really did stop getting the urge to open a game or turn on a tv episode any time I was doing something semi-mindless around the house (cooking, cleaning, folding clothes). In the past few weeks I found myself playing clips of comedians or a new episode of the Danish show I am so fond of anytime I had a free moment or a moment doing chores. And when one was over, I would automatically press play for the next one. I was simultaneously addicted to it and disgusted by it. Which I suppose is how most, maybe all, addictions are. 

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I came home last night after work and upon deciding that I should enjoy my last evening of "summer", I didn't even consider sitting in bed watching tv or lounging around playing games on my phone. Instead, I automatically thought of how much Zumba I could do and how I could finally clean my desk and fold those clothes that had been laying in a heap at the foot of my bed. As minuscule as my little experiment in "TV purging" has been, I really do feel surprisingly different. 


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 As a neuroscientist (an aspiring one, at least) I shouldn't be so surprised that we can change our brains. I KNOW we can. And yet it shocked me that I did; that I, fairly easily, reduced my excessive compulsion to play a game or have people talking at me so I didn't have to generate thoughts myself.
I understand that it's not much, and that I'd have to do a lot more to diminish the other addictive behaviors I have (sugar craving being a large one; Facebook-checking being another), but I'm pleased nonetheless. I oddly do feel much freer and also more in control. I felt a weird amount of obligated every time I would watch TV shows, knowing that there were so many other episodes to be watched. It was such strong persuasion to keep pressing play, even when I was only paying half-attention to each passing episode. But why was it my responsibility to watch them? It's nice to realize it's not my responsibility.

Yes, there's a time and a place for enjoyment of most forms of media and yes, I'm still going to watch my favorite Danish show again one of these days, but it was really useful for me to start feeling sufficiently satisfied with my own thoughts and to really enjoy some peace and quiet.

Especially going in to this new semester (this will technically be my last year of classes!!), I'm grateful to start on a slightly-more-balanced foot than I was previously when I felt largely dependent on external things to preoccupy my mind.

Maybe I didn't end up saying anything especially insightful but I better end this for now because I have an early morning wake up call for a beautiful Iowa countryside bike ride with my lab mates.

Happy back to school season to all :)