Busy, busy. Working quite a bit. It’s sort of strange – I’m not even working totally ludicrous hours – long hours, sure, but not ludicrous. But last week, I was *exhausted*. I came home one night, hopped into bed at 9:15, and slept ’till 7:40. It’s the intensity of the work, in many respects. I tend to be really good at juggling three or four ideas at once – if I need to come up with something genuinely interesting, I can background a bunch of processes, and I’ll be able to do a few things actively, and passively work on a couple others. But ten tasks at a time? All with deadlines, and dependencies? If I literally had someone spitting deadlines at me on a regular basis, I’d do a lot better – but mentally juggling priorities all the time is really, really tiring for me, and it’s definitely taking its toll.

Otherwise? Not a whole lot going on. Cleaning, organizing.

Watched The Last Samurai this morning. Beautiful movie, and in many respects, excellent. The ending I wasn’t too keen on, but that’s largely because it ended largely as I expected it to end – Tom Cruise teaching the Japanese what it means to be Japanese. Bleah. But the development up to that point was mesmerising, and both Ken Watanabe’s character, and the cinematography really make the film.

Makes me sort of miss the zen-like qualities of needing to focus on one thing, and attempt to excel at it. Later in the day, I went swimming, and it occurs to me that when I swam competitively, it’s likely to be as close to the sense of inner calm and focus that I imagine a samurai would feel when they achieve the sense that they are willing to die at any time. I know that sounds odd, and it’s obviously somewhat of a different magnitude – but the sense that your mind and body are focused solely on one thing, and doing that to the extreme extent of your ability… I miss that.

Even if I were to focus on work in the same manner, the … it’s weird – it’s focusing your mind on one thing, and turning off your body. My mind is running all day, my body is sitting still. It’s quite a different experience. But I don’t really know what one might do as a career that would fuse the two, short of being a professional athlete, or a member of the armed forces.

That, and I have to be jealous of the notion that one would lay down their life, at any time, for a cause – service, defense of your country, your culture, what have you. Do I feel that sense of loyalty to my country? No. Do I feel that sense about say, Ei-Nyung, or some of my friends? Sure. But I doubt if I’d ever be asked to lay down my life, or be given the opportunity, to defend the people I love. The world doesn’t work the same way. Not that I want that. But it is a strange feeling, and it feels almost like that’s the way we *should* be wired – to do something with that intensity – but we don’t anymore.

I dunno. Just rambling.