Ramblings of a Stupid Hipster Doofus

Inspiration to write is often fleeting for me. It's a common problem for writers both amateur and professional; I think they call it writer's block. Sometimes though I just get distracted with a new hobby and dedicate my focus towards it until I get bored with it.

But I always seem to come back around to writing again, and that makes me glad. I'm so happy I have at least one hobby that I've never given up completely. It's like certain personality types to bounce from one hobby or one focus to another until they've saturated their interest in it. I'm certainly one of those people since I've had numerous hobbies over the years. Some of them were expensive ones, and others not so much. What I find most interesting about the hobbies I've had is the experience of learning something new and gaining new knowledge of something. Now that knowledge may or may not be useful in everyday life, but the process of learning, it was worthwhile to me. It's an exercise for the mind. I had an NCO (non-commissioned officer) in the Marine Corps who referred to himself as a pillar of useless knowledge. He knew all sorts of odd things and facts that weren't always of much use. But looking back on it, I think it was at least useful in the sense it prompted some conversation among us. It even served a purpose in that after 22 years, I still remember him and his quirks. That purpose unbeknownst to us at the time has made its way into this newsletter for you to read. It's still sort of useless yet now, but I still remember Ken Waldschmidt from Wisconsin today, and now you know his name too.

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There isn't much of a theme for this newsletter. My fingers feel like typing tonight. It's Saturday night, and I'm listening to some electronica quasi-disco music on my hi-fi system while working from a terminal shell in my tiled window manager on Linux with a program called Vim. I'm geeking out here, and I am enjoying every bit of it, and why shouldn't I? We all do things that we like and which make us feel good.

At least right now, I'm feeling inspired enough to write something after a few months of nothing. It's my base hobby, after all. Having all of these hobbies helps me keep going day after day and year after year. I find it difficult to imagine not having something to do or something to work at a little bit and to take something apart and see how it works. An idle mind is a dying mind. As Neo said in the film The Matrix, "If you're killed in the matrix, you die here?" Morpheus replies, "The body cannot live without the mind."

I firmly believe that if we desire to live a quality life, a long productive life, we need to find something to occupy our minds and keep those creative juices flowing. Keep the wheels turning and move forward.

Some of you know that my mother was diagnosed last year with dementia, early-onset Alzheimer's disease. She was 65 at the time, 66 now. Due to political treaties in the 1990s, the place she worked at, Lapeer Fabricator's, closed up shop and moved operations out of the country. She has never gone back to work since. My father worked for and retired from Ford Motor Company and made enough money to support the family without my mother having to work too. So she stayed home, smokes her cigarettes, watched TV, and read cheap romance novels every day for decades. She didn't keep her mind or body very busy, and more or less stopped learning if you will. Her father, my grandfather, died of dementia when he was in his mid-90's. He stayed active in the senior community and family up until his final years. I firmly believe that my mother's condition, while very probably heredity, could have been staved off for many years longer had she gone back to work, or gotten herself involved in something to stimulate her mind, even if it was to learn something - anything - new. But she didn't, and now she doesn't even know who I am or that she has a son anymore.

I don't mean to make this so depressing, but this is where the keyboard has led me tonight. But I think I can still tie it into how it started. Yes, I do appear to go from one hobby to another, fountain pens, to stereo equipment to painting. But I believe it's healthy for me to be always engaged in something new. To be continually learning and making my mind work hard all the time. We need to keep the brain-building new neural pathways, keep the synapses firing, and keep the neuroplasticity pliable. It can only work toward our benefit.

I like to write from time to time, and it's a hobby that helps my mind stay active. Then I seem to find all these other hobbies I get into and learn everything I can from them, that fills in the voids of my writers' block.

I've had a different newsletter theme on my mind for this next one for a while, but it will come another day. The idea is there; I need to get it out of my head and into Vim.

What are your hobbies? What do you like to do to keep your mind active and healthy? If you don't have anything, try to find something you can do for which you are interested.

Leadership & Beyond is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.