NewSc2

I usually write up some long-winded, end-of-year post, but it’s already April. 2010 was a fun year, and 2011 is shaping up to be… well… influential.

It’s always been a little odd for me to see inexperience or immaturity in older people. I’ve always thought people continually improve, year after year. It’s those old jazz musicians you see… that saxophonist who’s been going at it for 50 years, who’s discovered those trusted tricks, things you only develop over time. But then again, keeping a beginner’s mind helps us discover those happy accidents that are hard to come across when you’ve settled into a groove.

Sometimes you see people that don’t change—that act like they’re still 16, even though they’re 40. Haven’t enhanced themselves, aren’t continually asking themselves “why” or “how do I,” and aren’t constantly searching for an objective perspective. Is it just this mentality that furthers skill? Or is it encoded in our genes, or our destiny. I guess I’ll just have to find out.

Love this song. It’s been featured in two RA sets (Johno Burgess and Brothers Bouaziz), which I guess… goes to show its crossover appeal? (It’s not a very electronicy song…)

Updating my post below — persistence paid off. If you really want my whole rundown of the GMAT, check out my post on GMATClub.com: Discipline + Hard Work = Success! 770 (Q50, V46)

So yeah, I did really well. Got a 770/800, 99th percentile. Scored a perfect 6/6 on the writing assessment. Stanford/Harvard’s averages are 720/800, so this was a nice ego-booster, and bumped up my outlook for B-schools considerably. I might be able to at least sell the “I may not be hugely successful, but I’m not stupid — I just need the right opportunity” point now.

I enjoy reading history. It’s nice to get the socio-cultural perspective of how people lived and behaved in the past. We can use history to judge how current trends may or may not pan out.

It’s also interesting to study how some of the legends in the past carried on in their personal lives. Frederic Chopin and Ian Curtis (lead singer of Joy Division) were fairly hopeless romantic. Kurt Gödel married a divorced dancer 6 years his senior when he was young, stayed loyal to her throughout his life and brilliant career, and died of starvation because he would only eat food cooked by her, for fear of poisoning (he weighed 65 pounds at his death, at age 71). Friedrich Nietzsche went insane in the last 11 years of his life. Richard Feynman found himself trending towards alcoholism, so he switched to experimenting with LSD and marijuana.

In some regard, I was looking at the GMAT (a statistically derived test, mostly taken by college graduates interested in pursuing advanced degrees) to justify some of my kooky thoughts and habits. Some external perspective, I guess. Is my pursuit of knowledge, is my method of study off-kilter, or will it result in tangible results that can be measured?

Scoring in the top percentile at least temporarily confirmed my methodology, but at the same time kind of sent me into a slight tailspin. I mean, first off, I don’t really believe what I scored was any more genius than what anybody else could have done (see the GMATClub post — I put a lot of hours into the GMAT — more than most people). But then again, why don’t people try hard to get similar scores? They certainly have the desire to. Is it because I’ve put in the time before? i.e., studying how to write, practicing rudimentary math throughout college (Chemistry, Economics, Calculus). Is it because I’ve disciplined myself during my long runs and workouts — when my body is telling me to stop, I press on? So when I study, when my social mind is telling me to go out and have a beer, the disciplined side wins out? Is there some weird wiring inside my brain that gave me a leg up on the competition, or was I just more motivated? Does music have anything to do with this? (Many of the toughest verbal questions played out in an artistic/musical “this answer just sounds right” sort of way.)

I’ve even gone so far as to compute the statistics (in a Fermi sort of way). Approximately 250,000 people take the GMAT every year. As of last count, the majority (51%) of those were outside the US. So 122,500 US citizens will take the GMAT in 2010. The top percentile starts at 760/800 and (from what I can tell) exponentially goes down from there (more people score 760’s than 770’s, 770’s than 780’s, etc.). Even if we break off the 99%ile into equal quintiles (760, 770, 780, 790, 800-very rare), that would mean I scored in the top 1000 in the United States. Top 200 in California (*this is assuming fairly uniform population and scoring, which I know isn’t totally true, but still). Kinda trippy.

What does it all mean though? Nothing. It confirmed to myself that I can excel on arbitrarily chosen, statistically scored questions, when motivated. I’m still no closer to my goal of… whatever it is I want to do. Enjoy life? Make music? Fall in love? Change the world? Teach people how to develop skills? Define ‘quality’? Become wealthy? All of the above?

Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to cram 5 lives into 1 lifetime.

(and okay, I might be a little closer to some of those goals.)

My life’s digital documentation has recently morphed from blog posts into snarky Facebook posts. I’m sure my descendants will still be able to surmise what’s been going on in my life through my 2-sentence updates. I suppose they could also sift through my gDiary (gmail diary), but that isn’t useful to my current adoring public, eh? All four two one of you?

Life has lately been a series of GMAT book after GMAT book. I’m taking my GMAT’s in early October, and I’m looking to do well. Really well, in fact. (I know I’m setting myself up to crash and burn.) It’s actually kind of rewarding to spend some time honing some quantifiable skills, and to eventually see how I measure up, number/score-wise, to others.

Although I’d initially questioned the value of business school, I’m starting to look at it from a more “practical” perspective. Not practical as in, “go there to make money,” but practical philosophically in the vein of utilitarianism and economics. A lot of decisions out there fail to take into account how something would benefit humankind as a whole (i.e. it’s nice that certain historical element is being studied, but is there a more effective element we should direct our attention towards?). I’m looking to study management/business to better direct resources towards more goal-oriented results, practical or fantasy they might be.

I’ve always believed that humankind should be more consciously directed towards a more cooperative, species-enhancing future. Many of humankind’s current problems can and will disappear once we stabilize our world’s food supply, ensure adequate education (via the Internet) to every child, develop bio-technologies, grow human organ replacements, etc. Why should we squabble over it now if we are only 50 (or 100, or 200) years away from the problem completely disappearing? And if we were all motivated to pursue a common goal, wouldn’t most of our differences become less bothersome?

The theories behind the decision sciences (such as Game Theory), motivation, and self-discipline fascinate me and Business School seems like a very relevant path to study them. I guess I view the study of business as a cross between economics, philosophy, information technology, and psychology. Sort of an “Economics-Engineering.” Applying practical results to theory, and also participating in research. (Similar to the way Chemical Engineering’s relates to Chemistry.)

I’ve also been listening to a lot of “Marketplace” recently. Most of its topics, from socio-economic to tech to economic theory, are all really intriguing. I want to spend some of my time and resources to better unify those studies and help the world understand them.

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Moving on, music has taken a back seat to GMAT studies, which (the GMAT would frown upon this use/placement of “which”), I’m happy to say, has given me a lot of anxiety. Yes, I said happy. It’s almost silly how badly I’ve been itching to get back into it.

I’ve taken sporadic 2-3 hour breaks from my studies to flesh out and write some musical pieces every couple weeks, but I really need more time to mix and arrange the tracks I’m making, of which (haha, “of which” is grammatically correct there!) I don’t have.

Dedicating myself to my books so hard has trained into me some newfound discipline that I’ll definitely keep up after my test and b-school applications are done. Before I was going through 2-3 hour musical stretches, and now I think I can push it to 4-5.

All this studying has also given me a lot of time to listen to music. It’s sometimes a little difficult to study with great tracks and tones playing, but I’ve generally listened to the same few albums and sets, so I can now listen through most portions passively (in the background). I’ve also found several great Ambient artists, and I think I’ll be better at arranging and mixing when I fire up Logic again in a few weeks. Going to integrate some hardware back into my setup, and I have some tutorial DVD’s queued up to buy once I get over my studies.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Had difficulties paying attention to my books just now, so I thought I’d jot down some public thoughts. Time for the gym, dinner, and then reading up on Combinatorics, Statistics, and Probability. For like the 4th fricken’ time. Wish me luck!

In Heavy Rotation:
natural/electronic.system. ssgmx49 (Ambient tech): link
natural/electronic.system. ssgmx23 (Ambient/melodic tech): link
Loscil “Endless Falls” (Ambient album): review
Mountains “Choral” (Ambient album): review
Xavier Morel clubberia podcast (pounding techno): link
Peter Van Hoesen clubberia podcast (techno): link
C’io Dor Extended RA Set (deep techno/minimal): link
19.454.18.5.25.5.18 RA Set (deep techno/minimal): link
Brothers Bouaziz RA Set (silly fun): link

P.S. Sorry about the English. GMAT Sentence Correction has taken over my grammar and syntax, and I’ve subconsciously (or consciously) reverted to a fairly didactic tone. Parallelism, pronoun references, opening modifiers, correct idioms… it’s getting to be a bit much.

Strunk & White and Zinsser are going to be the first two books I read after the GMAT, to rehab myself back into more flowing sentence structures.

(personal diary stuff… this isn’t gonna make sense to most of you, but it’s what I write in my personal diary)

Read Kierkegaard today, his “Either/Or”

Notes: Aesthetic (pleasurable, experience-sense) vs. Ethical (religious, pious, grounded).

I enjoyed this read, but after reading up on some analysis, it feels too religious driven. Given the time period, and how Kierkegaard ended up supporting Christianity and trying to explain it, I don’t think this philosophy applies. Moreso, I think most historical philosophers don’t have an applicable point anymore — the use of the internet and Wikipedia have changed humankind in ways they could only begin to imagine (talking to somebody across the world, without seeing them face to face? that’s sorcery).

After going over Either/Or, and reading further onto Kierkegaard’s life, I did take away a few things — Kierkegaard was kind of a tragic figure, always in love with Regine (his broken-off fiance), and wanted an almost divine intervention to bring her back to him. But he lived his life single and a little hermit-like, and was (by all accounts) just focused on his work. I wouldn’t mind that.

Regardless, I need to develop a strong personal philosophy and remember its tenets. Perhaps even use them in a musical sense, a la spoken word.

It’s… March. Wow. My Daylight Savings post is only like 3 down. Damn you Tony-of-6-months-ago! Here’s your fricken hour back.

Short and sweet—this blog has apparently turned into a biographical tome, something to jot down a frame of mind. A frame of mind that never really changes… only the circumstances around me differ. I’m still stoner Tony from college, gamer Tony from high school, lame Tony from junior high, clueless Tony from elementary, and what-the-hell-is-going-on Tony from 4 years old.

Major things: music has been coming along, stylistically. I finished my whole year’s worth of studying production, to finally figure out how to produce (see earlier posts). I needed to figure out what to produce, what “good” music was. Now I’m there. And now I just need to take those ideas into songs. It’s not so much different from fleshing out a thesis into an essay, or a news bit into an article. I have good ideas, I know how to write, I know how to polish stuff up. And much like my blog posts, my songs meander, with no real direction. But at least my songs are “talking” about something good, in a cool-sounding way.

Beyond that, I’m going to be moving out soon, which I’m hoping will give me a much-needed refresh. A $650/month refresh, but a refresh nonetheless. I’ve started studying for my GMATs again, and have gone through a little maturation period.

Growing up isn’t really about learning new things… it’s confirming to yourself what you thought was right, was right all along. Vegetables taste better as you get older. Not because they taste any different—I’d still take a Happy Meal over a salad, based on taste alone. But they taste better because it’s the right thing to eat, and it makes you feel better after you eat them. Deferred rewards.

As I’m growing older, saving money becomes easier to do. It wasn’t because I once thought saving money was the wrong thing to do, it’s because the feeling behind it changed.

Working hard and studying, toning down on going out, feels better (okay, I hear you guys laughing, but seriously, I do get in a lot of personal time =P). Working out feels better. Okay maybe not, working out actually doesn’t feel as good as reading for 3 hours, but my point’s been made.

And that’s basically been my mindset over the past few weeks. Don’t see it changing anytime soon.

P.S. (Addendum post—Business School, Here I Come!) I used to think going to business school would doom me into life as another cog in the wheel, but I’m looking at it in a different light now. Sure, there’s a chance I could end up in middle management, with a dead-end job, but that’s if I don’t put in the work. If I’m lazy, I don’t get the prime positions in life. Guess I should try to see what I can achieve, and bitch or downgrade from it when I’m there. Pretty confident I’ll always make do with what I have.

1. Lose 15 pounds (I’m in shape now, but I want to slim down/easier to run)
2. Save $5000
3. Continue growing in music:
• 1500 hours. (4 hrs. a day/28 hours a week)
• By the end of 2010, my music should be very close to release-quality.
• Consider doing amateur-professional work (web/TV/radio/game stuff).
• Get music lessons—in jazz, audio engineering, or production.
4. Do something academic-related (take GMATs, or apply to complete a second bachelors degree in Econ).
5. Drink less, or at least continue the lowered consumption levels of the 2nd half of 2009.

EDIT: 6. Go to bed around 1am every night… no later than 2am.

2010, here I come!

Has it already been a year? Did I really graduate college 3.5 years ago? Have I really been working for TACCIA for 6 years?

It’s always odd doing these retrospectives, but I guess the end of a decade is as good of a time as any to look back.

My years usually find themselves defined by a singular theme—relationships, friends, failures, or achievements. 2009 was no different. With all of the turbulence 2008 brought, 2009 was a much-needed emotional change.

The first half of 2009 brought along a different social tangent. I went out a lot more, met a lot of new friends, and got to know old friends better. The second half was a little counteraction to all the partying; around July I holed back in and hit the books.

Music in 2009 also saw two halves. I started taking online courses in March (eventually notching 3 courses total, with lots of material in between). When I started the courses, I was doing things “by the book”, whatever that means. I wasn’t intimately familiar with my music programs, and couldn’t “feel” the music—my attempts were basically a rehash of my homework assignments and exercises. It was a step up from 2008, when I felt like I was blindly stumbling onto music pieces—at least now I had control over the music—but the music quality arguably suffered and became more methodical and planned.

After I took the last class in August, and tortured myself through laying out a few songs, something “clicked”, and the computer became an instrument again. My music workflow became natural again, and now I had the synthesis, mixing, and theory knowledge to tweak sounds and shape them. I mean, I’m still not an expert, but earlier this year I wouldn’t know where to start to create a specific synth tone or sound effect. Now I can break a sound down in my head, get to a starting point on a synth, and know where to go. I still struggle with perfecting the sound, but at least I have a clue. I can read audio books and at least understand the advanced techniques.

Good music (like most things in life) is created from a person with confidence and experience. Just listen to an amateur guitarist vs. an experienced one—they can both play the same guitar solo, with the same notes, but the experienced guitarist plays with more “oomph” and style. I’ve been trying to figure out what defines this “je ne sais quoi”, and over time it feels like it comes from practice (confidence) and knowledge (experience). If you’ve played 100 different melodies, and labored over them to prove to yourself that yes, #37 has “it” and is the best one… that stuff comes through to the listener’s ears.

So, to sum it up, in 2009 I:
• Took Point Blank Minimal Ableton course
• Took (both) Point Blank Trance courses
• Went over ~20 courses on Sonic Academy (good arrangement tips/exercises)
• Reviewed another 2-3 courses on MacProVideo.com (workflow enhancements)
• Took Point Blank Deep House course (finally made music production “click”)
• Studied DMP Synthesis DVD (great for synthesis/ear training theory)
• Studied DMP Trance DVD (made me realize it takes an awful lot of time to polish songs up, and sometimes, polish is all that makes or breaks a song)
• 12-15 Future Music DVD’s (good insight into professional producer mentality—use whatever you can—samples, presets, etc., as long as it sounds good)
• Countless hours on KVR Forum and Gearslutz ($$ lost, but sometimes the tools really do make the carpenter)
• Read Mixing Audio by Roey Izhaki (awesome book, taught me tons about EQ and mixing tricks and techniques)
• Read Composition for Computer Musicians (one of the better books out there, but I can’t seem to remember anything specific I learned from it, other than to use Latin percussion the same way you’d program an acoustic/rock drum beat)
• Read Mixing With Your Mind (Michael Stavrou) and The Manual (by KLF). (great pop/philosophical books. Catchy music is all about the hook and the groove, never forget a good “hit” or “emotional” song puts people on notice and has them humming your hook.)
• And produced a ton more, read another ton and a half of stuff online, and random Sound on Sound articles, production videos, manuals.

Wow, that is a lot of time. I mean, in instruction alone, that’s at least 500 hours. Probably another 500 hours in production too.

2010 goals/resolutions to follow…

(P.S. Forgot to go over the year’s themes. 2007—Silky’s & Brewbakers, 2008—The Breakup & DJing, 2009—Understanding Music Production. 2010? Applying Music Production :D)

Yay, it’s the “got an hour back” day. Autumn’s Daylight Savings used to mean “yay! I get an extra hour of sleep!” but in the past decade or so it’s morphed into “yay! I get to stay awake an extra hour!” Think I went to bed around 5am (new time) yesterday.

To be honest, nothing really new to report since August. Work has been busy (which is good). And a few more skills are coming forward in music. It’s all a bunch of little things that are coming together—when to EQ, when not to EQ, when to compress, how to approach a blank template, how to start arrangements, advanced synthesis techniques, envelope modulators, LFO shapes, etc. A lot of practical workflow stuff. I made a good default template, with decent starter sounds and drums, which has helped speed up my initial inspiration.

This is all quite vague, I know, but the whole process isn’t really clear in my mind (yet). All I know is the little daily exercise/song bits I write are sounding more unique and better.

I’ve dabbled in a few different genres—hip-hop, trance, house, and techno. Techno was probably the most difficult out of the 4, next to House and Hip-Hop, but after a few epiphanies it’s come together. It’s pretty weird coming from a classical music background and trying to use a computer creatively. After putting together a solid base of synthesis and mixing techniques, I’ve begun to just let my creative juices “flow”, and not worry about what tones are going on.

It’s a kind of odd process… you have to have listened to a bunch of good music, to know what works and what doesn’t… and then develop your skill to emulate that… but the last step is a quantum leap of honing down and trusting your instinct.

Anyway, after reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” (great book), I’ve re-dedicated myself to start taking my studies seriously. Which also means I’ve been a shut-in for the past few months. I’ve been spending about 8-10 hours a week at the HB Library, another 8-10 hours/week at Kean’s Coffee, about 10 hours/week in front of my desktop (see picture), and another 5ish hours just reading manuals and guides in my spare time at work or elsewhere. I’ve been downloading new music like crazy, too, and probably go through about 10-12 hours of new stuff a week (on top of the 10ish hours of old stuff I still listen to). It’s a bit taxing, but in a way pretty rewarding.

And with that, I’m off to Kean’s and Barnes & Noble. Gonna try my hand at some more Berghain-style techno, and read up on arranging.

Been a while since I tried to work out a riddle. I came across this one on a site, which said I would get some, $200 worth of clams if I solved it and sent the answer in, without Googling. Of course there was no e-mail address. Interesting blog, though, some of those recipes look good. (seedmore.org)

Anyway, here’s the riddle, and below the spacer is my thought process to come up with the answer. Took about 10 minutes.

RIDDLE

Rick is a strange liar. He lies on six days of the week, but on the seventh day he always tells the truth. He made the following statmenets on three successive days:

Day 1: “I lie on Monday and Tuesday”
Day 2: “Today, it’s Thursday, Saturday, or Sunday.”
Day 3: “I lie on Wednesday and Friday.”

The questions: On which day does Rick tell the truth?

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Okay, here’s where I’d usually do the “click Next to find the answer!” but I don’t use that formatting for this blog, and I’m not quite sure how to add it to just this post. Anyway, the riddle is solvable, so if you’re feeling nerdy, write it up and don’t look below.

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“Thought Process for Solving Riddle”

Let’s figure this out.

Rick only tells the truth 1 day out of the week. That either means a) all 3 of the statements are lies, or b) one of the statements is true. (so b1, b2, b3)

Break down a). All are lies.

Many ways to read these statements. The wrong way would be to construe the first statement, “I lie on Monday and Tuesday”, as “I lie on Wed-Sun”.

Specifically, lying about “I lie on Monday and Tuesday” would mean that he tells the truth on Monday or Tuesday. Hm, well what about Day 3 then? “I lie on Wednesday and Friday” Doesn’t one of those two have to be true?

For simplicity’s sake, let’s just go with that. Day 1 or 3 is true, the other one is a lie. And Day 2 has to be a lie.

We’ll go onto b).

Day 1 — Truth or Lie
Day 2 — Lie
Day 3 — Truth or Lie (opposite of 1)

Day 2 = Lie means that Day 2 is either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday.

Scenario 1: Truth Day is Day 1, which is a Sunday.

If Day 2 were Monday, Day 1 would be Sunday, and Day 3 would be Tuesday. Let’s break it down into Day 1/3. Day 1 = Lie (that means he tells the truth on either Monday or Tuesday). Day 3 = Truth (Wednesday and Friday are both out). Then Monday/Tuesday can’t be truth days, because there would be 2 truth days. (Wrong)

Scenario 2: Truth Day is Day 1, which is a Monday.

Day 2 = Tuesday, Day 3 = Wednesday. Only 1 Truth day, Monday, so Tuesday and Wednesday are lie-days. This can’t happen, because Day 3 truth = Wednesday and Friday lies. (Wrong)

Scenario 3: Truth Day is Day 1, Tuesday.

Day 2 = Wednesday, Day 3 = Thursday. Yet again, Truth day cannot be Tuesday because that would go against Day 3’s statement (Wednesday and Friday have to be truth days). Seeing a pattern here, but it’s late so I’ll continue.

Scenario 4: Truth Day is Day 1, Thursday.

Day 2 = Friday. Again, Day 3 annuls this point, because Wed/Fri are both lies. Onto the next set of 4 scenarios.

Scenario 5: Truth Day is Day 3, Tuesday.

Day 2 = Monday, Day 1 = Sunday. Huh, I’m confused. If truth day is Tuesday, then why didn’t the first scenario work out? Well.. the dates were wrong I guess.. oh well let’s just trudge on.

Scenario 6: Truth Day is Day 3, Wednesday.

Day 2 = Tuesday, Day 1 = Monday. Doesn’t work because if Truth Day were Wednesday it’d annul point 3. He can’t lie on Wednesday Day 3

Scenario 7: Truth Day is Day 3, Thursday.

Day 1 = Tuesday, Day 2 = Wednesday. Day 1 Tuesday = lie doesn’t work, because the lie is on Thursday, not Mon/Tues.

Scenario 8: Truth Day is Day 3, Saturday.

Day 1 = Thursday, Day 2 = Friday. Again, doesn’t work, because if Day 1 were a lie, then Monday or Tuesday would have to be a truth day.

So I’m going to conclude with Tuesday. I’m not sure why the first run around didn’t conclude Tuesday, but it works as so:

Day 1 (Sunday): I lie on Monday or Tuesday — LIE (he tells the truth on Tuesday)
Day 2 (Monday): Today it’s either Thursday, Saturday, or Sunday — LIE (it’s Monday)
Day 3 (Tuesday): I lie on Wednesday and Friday — TRUTH (he does lie on Wed/Fri).

Hope this is correct, going to google it.

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Yay, I’m right!

Ugh… head hurts. Spent most of the weekend watching music tutorial videos, reading jazz theory books, getting frustrated at myself, and finally biting the bullet to turn in a Deep House loop that I was marginally pleased with. (I’m taking a Deep House course online)

I also spent the weekend doing one of my bi-annual (or tri-annual? quad?) room rearrangements. Saw this post on Lifehacker and it inspired me to de-clutter my room, and lower my desk (it’d been adjusted too high). Shit hit the fan (toilet flooded, and laziness settled in), so I didn’t really get my desk back up till about 3am last night (Saturday), and I spent about half of the day today (Sunday) working on my music project. So my “office room” is currently in half-disaster mode, my bed has about 2 weeks worth of old clothes I don’t wear anymore — but! I have a very aesthetically pleasing desk:

which is what really matters. Now I can (hopefully) comfortably zone out in front of my own computer, and not have to deal with finding power outlets and uncomfortable coffee shop tables and chairs. If I could only do something about my internet addiction…

Damnit… where was I.. I always digress. Oh yeah.. remembering stuff (no, that aside wasn’t meant to be ironic).

With all this reading/studying/skill-acquiring I’ve been doing recently, I’ve found myself approaching my brain-enhancements differently. On one hand, I can easily skim through a book and not remember specific details. Hell, I do it with movies all the time — Up was a movie (SPOILER ALERT–SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH) about a boy who hitchhiked with an old man whose wife passed away, and whose dream was to visit a South American waterfall/jungle. Man meets childhood hero, who turns out to be bad, and along the way makes 2 animal friends (this is Disney, after all), and eventually becomes the hero.

Do I remember much beyond that? No, not really.

On the other hand, I never really review my written notes. It helps me remember things, but maybe just in the short-term? Like in college—you listen to the professor, you read, you take notes, you do homework, you take a final—then forget everything. Do you remember your high school foreign language as well as you should?

So I’m thinking I could glean a lot more in a shorter period of time by just skimming over the books and stopping on those “A-Ha!” moments.

… I don’t know where I was going with this, but I’ve been debating how to study recently and keep myself focused. Basically, at the end of a month of studying, I have absorbed some instinct, but it comes so incrementally. I’m better at music, I’m better at photography, I’m better at — whatever. But ever-so-slightly. I’m not sure if this is just the way things go, and I’d like to speed it up.

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I don’t have a sheet next to me of “Everything I’ve Ever Learned” written on it — I just… know things, and do them. Absorbing what you’ve learned into your mind is a very, very strange process.