on the liberties of a short life

as deaths tend to do, my Dad's death has called to my attention the ultimate shortness of life.

now many things that once seemed to matter don't seem as important.

this loss has drawn me into definition. if something so clumsy and so ugly as death can do that, why do we continuously seek beauty of some padded, unscathed form? that is empty. exhaustible.

I'm finding it easier to be OK with the things that once threatened me. my physical oddities, for instance. my perpetual longing to be a smaller, more petite woman is more easily discarded lately. what an arbitrary, irrelevant wish. we all have bodies--we are all biological beings, and remain inescapably subject to this fact. sometimes people are small. sometimes people are tall and rangy. sometimes blood vessels burst in their brains and they are snatched away abruptly while their dearly loved ones stand nearby helpless. which among these is more significant and startling?

it's a matter of scale, really. life has deeper depths than I ever thought and they make themselves known to me, simultaneously causing all of those other presumptuous facets to pale and wither in comparison. they flake off like old scabs we brush off once better skin has emerged.

these are thoughts I may develop more another time; this might be amended with an edit.

on what is to be done

to do


graduate from ncsu with a major in psych, minor in agroecology having completed psy 499 (research w/faculty).


... all the while taking my farm job seriously, regarding it not merely as a means of income but an opportunity to gain a great deal of information and experience about sustainable agriculture.


develop as a pencil artist to the point where it may be an additional means of income.


co-manage the ncsu s.o.u.l. garden cooperatively, efficiently, and effectively, helping it to achieve its full potential and serve the ncsu community while also regarding it as an opportunity to develop skills in logistical planning and working with others in a cooperative and goal-oriented way.


pay off my undergraduate loans (approx. $22,000 worth by the time I graduate) while cultivating an attitude of peace and acceptance, knowing that hard work and a humble lifestyle is not only necessary but beneficial.


go to grad school for environmental psychology?

on the deepening and clarifying of love

I'm thankful for loving & attentive family and friends. thankful for my siblings' presence and my mom's resilience. thankful for garden work, school work, and the comfort of routine.

I am thankful, too, for warmth, sunlight, clouds, our cats, our dogs. thankful for quietness, for darkness, and solitude, and blankets.

for those of you who can only manage to say "this is awful, I'm so sorry" - you're right. it is awful, and I'm sorry, too. thank you for acknowledging it for what it is. for those of you who will say "it's going to be okay, in time," I'm taking your word for it, because I've never lost someone this close to me, or this suddenly. for those of you who have made me laugh, and looked me in the eye, held me, and done nice things, thank you. all of those little instances make a big difference.

in some ways this feels like a crescendo of a season of losses. in my mind the tokens of childhood have been snatched away at a slow and steady rate, like the bitter beating on an ancient drum. our old dogs, the house, the horses, gone. but my very father?

like the rest of my family and many others who knew and loved my dad, my emotions go from shock to despair to acceptance and back again. but here's the deal: I don't really know what I am accepting.

my dad's death is, for now, the rub. it is the crux of things. my family was one thing before saturday evening and it is something else now.

it's pretty hard to believe that I'm only three days in.

interestingly, this line from Wendell Berry's short story Fidelity has been on my heart ever since I first heard of my dad's condition: 

She thought it strange and wonderful that she had been given all these to love. She thought it a blessing that she had loved them to the limit of her grief at parting with them, and that grief had only deepened and clarified her love.

my goofy, capable, warm, affectionate, humble father has been taken from us. his death has not merely opened up a gaping hole but rather, a new dimension. I will be exploring it for the rest of my days.

so, I am thankful for all of those things I mentioned above. but most of all I am thankful for my father. 

on love, of all things

I am the youngest of three daughters--closer in age and life experiences to my sisters than my parents, but closer to my parents (until recently) in proximity. these days I wonder if that position in the sociology of my family has contributed to my inclination to want to meet many people and know how they tick.

among my sets of older friends I play the role of "little sister." this is not contrived--it is more natural than anything, but though it comes easily I can still recognize its advantages: there is less pressure to know, behave, and understand things on the level of my friends in their mid to late 20's and 30's (or beyond!) but I  still may be included in hangouts and happenings on a level with which everyone is pretty comfortable. it's fine--it's great, really. I have my friends of similar ages and experiences to me and we can mouth off, call the shots, assert ourselves, and generally enjoy the safety of sharing the same latitude in life. we may as well enjoy these years of hypotheticism (which is evidently not a word, but I'm going with it) while we can. it won't last forever, at least not to such a grand scale as we currently enjoy, but is is our necessary prerogative to explore haphazard ideas of how the world may be and should be before having to reckon with how it actually appears to be.

one of the cool things about having older friends is that I can toggle between doing silly things with youngsters (or older friends who act like youngsters) and then engage in reflective dialogue with my dear buddies who have gone through the motions and grown out of them. today I spent some time fishing with my best friend. he asked me if I could see why he doesn't care for going out to crowded bars and running around town. absolutely, I said--I always could, but there's plenty to be said for a little healthy dabbling in the common habits of city culture. yet already I have grown weary of the anxiety of being alone in a crowded room, or trying to hold conversations in the places least conducive to conversing, in conditions best suited to alternative forms of relating to people that are quite far from being healthy or beneficial.

it seems like growing up (more importantly, just plain growing) is finding that proper mix of the experiential and the reflective. but I suspect many lack any navigating principles to guide the proportions.  as unsure as I am about matters of my own faith and convictions, I am thankful for the sensibilities that have been instilled in me. my mother emphasized communication and consideration to what I realize all the time was an exceptional degree. my time alone as a homeschooled kid in the country prompted me to fill my time with art, craft, and curious inquiries into animal husbandry, history, science. my early best friends made being friends with the opposite sex no big deal--normal, easy, interesting. and my first regular job opened to me the ever-burgeoning world of agroecology--not to mention the practical value of principles like hard work and attentiveness. sometimes I feel as though I have been a passive participant in my own life and that someone is tending me by introducing joys, challenges and new material at exactly the right times.

sensibilities are not enough, however. for as long as I can remember I have been a little hard on myself by actively questioning my own motivations for my actions or interests. that doesn't mean I always find the answers, or that I do a good job of making adjustments when self-objectivity would seem to doing so. but none the less, I feel I am at least somewhat attuned to changes in my thought patterns, goals or understated intentions. it is disturbing, then, to notice my preoccupations shift from more selfless pursuits to selfish ones.

when I make any effort to trace these shifts to their sources I find that they have much to do with the people I'm spending my time with. no surprise there--so long as my norms are dictated by my society, the closest semblance to living a principled life will be to skim the surface of sensibility or mildly entertained interest, never truly committing to one when things get difficult. I'm at risk of becoming a delightfully likable but ultimately boring and ineffectual person by seeking to toe the line in an effort to be relevant, inclusive... and included. can one be a distinctly principled person, whose "action from principle, the perception and performance of right" makes for good change in the world without compromising my various dear associations and friendships?

perhaps it comes down to the mixture. not surprisingly, I'm reading lots of Wendell Berry these days and he draws a distinction between a community and a public. as it stands, I am (for better or worse) enjoying living in a public where I am comparatively independent from others and need not shoulder the yoke of others' dependencies on me, save for a handful of dear friendships whose requisite needs are welcome and reciprocal. it's a far cry from the communal ideal. but it has its advantages, provided I recognize it as a season in life to be actively encountered and observed but not expected forever. the most significant advantage is that while I function as an individual in an amorphous public I may make community happen on a smaller and deliberate level. still on my terms, and hence still not fundamentally communal, I may currently pick my society and retreat from them when I've had my fill.

yes, it's consumptive and no, it is not ideal. but it is beneficial for the time being--at least for me, considering it as food for thought. the trick will be remembering that even in the smallest pseudo-communities I can be thoughtful and reflective while still offering myself sacrificially to the other(s) involved. a table of fancy friends outside of a bar downtown is not community--it's portion of the public whom I happen to know to some extent. but I may yet offer what can be found within committed community: sincere interest in the welfare of the other, and an honest extension of aid should I be in possession of any aid to offer. jokes, laughs. the boldness to offer a private observation and the patience and warmth to receive the timid confessions of others' observations. commiseration over bad weather, car trouble, busywork or lack of work.

love, so it seems, always finds a way to make room for itself. ah--love, that's a principle. that's a start.

on better thinking

it was a long time coming, but recently I finally admitted to myself that I am not very good at thinking alone.

"thinking out loud" with others comes easily to me, though I suspect my friends grow weary of my vague allusions and verbal mulligans as I attempt coherent thought and speech. it must be like watching a toddler as she tries to capture butterflies with a net, or chase chickens into the henhouse. how uncooperative my thoughts can be.

but I digress. such considerations for my listeners notwithstanding, I've straightened out many of my thoughts after trying them on for size out loud with trusted friends.

perhaps I've relied so heavily on vocalizing my thoughts because they won't budge otherwise. when left to my own devices I just can't seem to get things straight. I drown in my own internal thought life. it has been chaotic, thus direly unproductive.

I just get distracted. I begin thinking about something in a reflective way and my mind darts off in another direction, leaving whatever thoughts that were beginning to form in the dust before they can coalesce into anything coherent and recognizable. honestly, it's quite discouraging to be nearly twenty-one years old and feel as though I'm still navigating this world with a primitive, undisciplined mind.

but hallelujah: all of this is changing because I am choosing to respond to the world with an internal voice. it is clear, deliberate and reflexive.

it's simple. I just say the stuff I would say to a friend, but instead I say it inside of my own head.

is that how everyone manages to be a thoughtful and coherent person? if so, I am behind the times. because it feels stilted and unnatural. and I constantly question whether I am truly reflecting the nature of my thoughts, my feelings, or the situation at hand or if in fact I am presenting some version of it to some veiled, hypothetical listener. it begs the question of whether or not we possess a singular, true "voice" or if even in our internal lives we can only manage to access some side of ourselves--some organizing theme.

(more on that last bit another time).

in any case, it's working. for example, it used to be that I struggled with task organization at the farm. all of the elements present in my circumstance would swirl around me without any imposed order. so my mind would be a mix of these pieces--sometimes named, sometimes mere notions such as pictures or scents.

these days, when I can muster the mindfulness to do so, I begin constructing a narrative about my surrounding situation. the mix of initial sensory responses are not disregarded but rather built upon. instead of my mind remaining a mix of images of squash bugs and large pumpkins coupled with the musty scent of tomatoes, the word "overgrown," a recollection of fungal rot followed by a pang of fearful dread, and the memory of rough tomato vine skin against my fingertips as I remove a sucker from the crook of two branches, order emerges:

"there are squash bugs attacking the pumpkin vine so I should remove their eggs and spray the living escaping adults with greenlight pesticide. nearby, the tomato plants are developing more suckers than I've been keeping up with so I should prioritize spending extra time removing those to avoid the clustered branches and leaves that led to fungal problems last summer."

it's a process, retraining one's brain to develop better thinking habits. but it's about time.

on choice words

nestle in
the nearer the dearer, dear
here, a nook in this crook
of my neck's nape.
of my crooked crescent spine.

or there, my cupping clavicle
fortifying collar-bone big timbers
trembles. tremors.
presented to you, prone
prickle-pear, supine.

on scale

my wealthier young friends flood the feed with photos of their travels. india, italy, thailand, and so on.

I remain here, near and dear, brown-skinned growing ever browner.

no encounters with ancient and obscure religion or authentic gelato mark my days. instead, I am enraptured  by my daily trysts under the boughs of pine, oak and redbud trees, where my grimy, dewey neck is lovingly kissed by the wayward breeze.

this is a summer of small things, cupped with both hands against my heart, against my eyes. little things seem much bigger when viewed closely and felt completely. you know, there is so much to be found in moments.

on the anxieties of youth

aging folks dread the signs of time that leave their faces weathered and bodies diminished. but maybe it's worse for the young. those of us in our 20's, our 30's understand ourselves to be very young, or young, or still young.

I know I fear my errant teeth--the dreadful functioning of memory in my jaw which draw my teeth away from where I'd best like for them to sit. likewise, I fear my wisdom teeth which have stopped in uninvited and which require time and money to remove. it doesn't help that they are uncomfortable, sometimes painful, and that--in concert with the aforementioned forces--can wreak havoc upon a smile. my smile, for instance.

such affects are startling. because I am young, you know. this sort of thing should not happen to me. it should take years. surely the fifty year old could handle this better than I can right now, at twenty.

I suppose each of us, regardless of age, is a bit like a population of sand castle builders who scramble in the ebb to build structures sound enough to stand against the flow. good luck, tiny architects, tiny carpenters, roofers, masons.

on-farm progress

I work mondays, wednesdays and fridays, with the occasional saturday thrown in for good measure.

but I was off of work last friday and this monday while out of town, and upon returning on wednesday I discovered that things had carried on without me quite well: the farm was awash with verdant green and everything seemed to put on a few inches--weeds included, of course.

here are the most exciting things:

the strawberries which I'd transplanted and moved to a mound encircling the garden had gobs of green berries growing on each plant. better yet, some of them were a glowing shiny red, ready to be eaten (which they promptly were, by me).

the asparagus had not been picked by the family, so the three 25' long rows had very thick and very tall stalks every few inches. pounds and pounds of tender asparagus. I ate a lot of those, too. I almost prefer them raw.

the spinach which I'd seeded last fall were now going to seed themselves, while those that I planted as seedlings this spring were leafing out beautifully.

the rows of leeks, throughout which I also seeded a few varieties of carrots, were completely overrun with the seeds of the grass I'd painstakingly removed from that area. can anyone tell me what kind of grass this is? all of the photos on NCSU's turf grass website look about the same--this is the sort which has incredibly tough roots which grow along the ground and then root in, forming a dense network of roots and shoots which after just a few weeks establishes itself as an intractable carpet. the only way to remove it thoroughly (for each piece must come out or it will quickly re-establish itself) that I have found so far is to drive a sharp hand spade down and across the soil, breaking some of the roots and making openings in the mat of grass wide enough to allow a hand to grip and tug at the roots. as you can imagine, this takes a very long time and puts a lot of wear and tear on the fingers and wrist. I have cuts from thorns on my fingers which never get a chance to heal due to the grit and rip this process entails--and I can't find my best pair of gloves, which fit closely to the skin and allow one's fingers to function almost as well as they do when bare. oh well.

yesterday I spent a few hours uprooting the newly sprouted grass seeds while trying to avoid the carrot shoots. today I will reseed.

one last bit of nice news, for good measure: the crimson clover I'd seeded last fall in a bed in dire need of  more OM & N, which for most of the winter sat as a fuzzy pale mat, is now tall and bobbing around with deep red fuzzy flowers. I pulled up a few and found the roots sporting a good number of nodules. beautiful. I love it when things work out--and I can't wait to crimp those suckers and retire their bodies to the soil.

on communion

sanity has to be provided for

says the serenity cool grass grants,
says the interlock of arms with the horse's head
and says the big ache of beauty.

the conscious self must be curated

that it may dip into the waters below
that it may draw along side its subterranean counterpart
that it may drink deeply.

on wishful thinking

swirls around me that slight fear that my desire for land (property, acreage, to build on and grow in to) may be the one I have to lay aside to follow some other lead. sacrifice, et al.

for now I hope that the potency of my interest--that deep stirring--will mean it must be realized, and will guarantee efficacy later on in life.

on choosing sides

lately I've been realizing how many of my decisions are based on how I feel about something, rather than what the best decision actually is. there's room for such a silly criteria in plenty of situations. ice cream, for example. if you're going to eat ice cream than there's not a lot to ask besides "what flavor do I want?"

often I feel that being sensitive to desires may be the best idea because I assume some connection between how I am feeling and what I will be capable of doing. and I'm sure that this is valid within certain narrow contexts. for instance, consider a situation in which you have an equal need to do two different things. say, cleaning your bathroom and changing a bike tube. imagine that for whatever reason you're really just not "in" to changing the bike tube right now (is anyone ever excited about that?) but the idea of cleaning the bathroom sounds pretty good--it can be an engaging challenge and the place is much nicer once it's done. in this situation, because there is an equal need for both but an order must be chosen, it makes more sense to first tackle what you're most keen on accomplishing: you'll actually enjoy it, so it will boost your spirits--and you're more likely to do a better job because it isn't drudgery to you.

being attentive to your desires, then, can be empowering--you can throw your weight in an area that is the most meaningful and most effective. this isn't any unique concept: it's merely specialization, utilized on a personal scale.

but sometimes I take this too far, and extrapolate it to situations beyond where it is at all practical. instead of making the most of my ambition, "pursuing my potency" as I like to say, I wind up merely justifying self-indulgence.

but I am beginning to see through this, though. the realization came to me more fully this morning than it ever has before--while listening to Jonsi, go figure. I was sitting in my favorite coffee place, with morning light floating in from the big front window, my heart soaring as the androgynous wall-eyed archangel Jonsi lifted me above this putrid earth and into a brighter, fairer land beyond the skies... whoa whoa hey now, where was I? ah: Jonsi's songs, if you aren't familiar, are gorgeous. resplendent, even. and--though I know this word has been overused--often quite epic. so I was listening to one of these rapturous melodies whilst writing a paper on strategies for small & organic farms to overcome the common causes of farm failure, and I felt as though I was doing one of the most important tasks in the world! as though what I was doing mattered, and that I was happy have the opportunity to be learning about this stuff, and that I could do it, dammit--I could write that paper. in short, I was stoked. all from a great song coupled with a nice setting.

and I got to thinking about other times I feel equally motivated--driving home from work at sunset with a rowdy Americana tune and the windows down, say. yet if I leave work after accomplishing just as many meaningful tasks, at a similarly beautiful time of day, yet do not listen to any good tunes I feel still, stagnant. rather than think about what I need to accomplish when I get home (and feel a great surge of anticipation and excitement about arriving so that I may begin) I disengage and feel overwhelmed, not excited, by the work that awaits me.

to boil all of this down, I know this to be true: I am overly sensitive to my feelings, wants, moods. I have allowed myself to become this way out of selfishness but also a sincere interest in making the most of whatever mental and emotional state that I am in. in this habit I have assumed that my moods and minute desires cannot be controlled or changed to suit what I actually need to do--I've taken for granted that my feelings are fixed, when in fact I can do much to control them. often it's as simple as picking the right song.

what a girly post. eventually I'll write on the need for "grit."

on too much of a good thing

"white men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui"


this quote has to be wrestled out of a somewhat shady context for its truth to shine. in this case, I pulled this statement from George Fitzhugh's attack on the rich for "cannibalizing" and effectually enslaving the rest of the white population through their broken economic system--fair enough, but it's also set amid his characterization of black slavery as summer camp in comparison to the woes of the working class white. nice try, George. but I digress.


I like this particular fragment of a statement because it characterizes a bit of frustration I've had lately with life: there exists at this present age and place a glut of options. 


before I go on, I should point out the irony of my complaining about having too many options. what an opportunity, what a luxury, to complain about an abundance of opportunities and luxuries!


this quote, and the malaise it references, have been on my mind because I'm struggling with reconciling my ever-expanding sense of world norms (in typical undergraduate fashion) with my current lifestyle and the paths I intend to take in the future. I suppose that's been a recurring theme in this blog.


a new realization the has been creeping on me for some time, and which I'm only beginning to reckon with, is that I am constantly feeling out norms. for almost everything. I do it the majority of the time. I am constantly asking myself how people at my age act, and should act. how people drive, and should drive, and shouldn't drive; how clean people's bikes are, or should be. how loudly I should be speaking in comparison to others, and so on. about everything, everything!


I could delve into the supposed reasons for this and psychoanalyze myself. but I'll save that for next time, because I'm already edging away from my intended topic. what was it, anyway? I've literally had this post sitting in my blogspot account for days, unsure of what I had so far and where I wanted to take it.

the topic of my neurosis with feeling out social norms is weighty, but what of my original intention--to lament on the number of options available to the average middle class American? I'd intended to really lambast this decadence, based on what I've observed in the lives of folks I know and certainly my own struggle with it.

alas, I think I've spoken to soon on both accounts. to be continued.

on the self plagued self

my fickleness knows no bounds; I can be so indecisive and directionless at times that I'm forced to consider that it may be a symptom of an absence of some critical core. so in response I half-heartedly muse on what sort of person I would be or how my behavior would be different if I were truer to my convictions. but that requires more introspection than I'm often unprepared for--after all, looking within assumes there is something to see, and there are few things more startling than discovering just how little core there may be.

which I suppose brings me to my biggest frustration with myself, and that is my conduct around other people. kind of a biggy!

to offer some context: I spent a lot of time working with people this weekend and it gave me opportunity to observe myself. on saturday I helped my friend Greg dig out earth & clay from the foundation of a house he's building, all the while jabbering with whatever rascally neighbor-kid or adult wandered on site. this sunday afternoon was spent at an urban crop mob, surrounded by friends, acquaintances and folks very new to me. 

on my way home after saturday's project, during a particularly sensitive National song and under a dimming sky (and my being utterly prone to sensory circumstance), I reflected on my impression of myself, and I didn't like it. I realized that not only was I talking during most of the work, but I did not savor the quieter moments when the neighbor kids were occupied elsewhere. Greg even commented on how quiet it was, which likely prompted me to wax on about something related to quietness. doh! in hindsight, I really would have liked to have been quieter in those moments. I love silence on my own; I actively savor it. why can't I be more attentive to it even when there are others to talk to? why can't I tune in to others' desire for silence? why must I comment on everything? oh boy. the self is daunting.

embarking on today's afternoon with folks, I tried to be mindful of what I didn't want to do. not only did I not want to jabber the whole time I was working, but I didn't want to forget names, to interrupt people, to rush to speak, to try to seem important or knowledgeable, or to shy from asking questions that are worth asking. 

all of this comes down to becoming a more precise and collected person. collected. collected. I write it thrice because it's such an attractive term to me right now (and also because I love double L's).

at this point it'd be good to ask myself what my motivation is for these reformations. do I desire poise so that I seem more feminine, more lady-like--more accomplished or impressive?

do I want to seem cooler and more with-it? on the ball, spot-on, on-point?

or do I want to embrace these changes so that I may be better to people?

every time I think I have a pretty good grasp on myself, I realize (with a cringe and an ache) some areas to which I've been totally oblivious. but I do know that I have many selfish intentions, and part of that comes down to simply being a human being whose default is to worry about my own welfare and security first and foremost. what a handicap! so my intentions will always be a mixed bag. but for now i can say this: I want to want to be better at being better to people. 

on returning to a point of possibility

my self-concept seems to be transient. it returns to the same form before springing off in another direction (sometimes due to wishful thinking).

I was pretty sick for a few weeks. today is the best I've felt in ages! and I wish I could say that I used that down time for deep contemplation, but alas, most of my energy was devoted to struggling to get better and feeling sorry for myself that it was taking so long.

yet I have recently been recalling the sort of child and adolescent I was. maybe this contemplation is due to my being sick--sometimes we return to times in the past when little can be found in the present. in any case,  it's been interesting and a bit surprising to remember what I used to find myself preoccupied with.

for instance, when I was seven I began designing a barn on graph paper. it was nothing special, and I think I've still got multiple sheets of paper in a yellow plastic folder somewhere. I remember agonizing over whether to make the stalls 10x12 or 12x12, and where to put the washroom and barn office. on another sheet I drew a rough sketch of the barn up in the corner with the paddock extending beyond it, as if one can plan in advance for what sort of paddock they will have before even having land. it was fairly straightforward: rectangular, with a water trough and gate near the barn, but I DID round off the corners of the fence because I knew that was oh so very important so that the horses would not get trapped.

it's interesting to recall that I did this, because these days I don't consider myself very mechanically-inclined at all. it's just not my aptitude, I've told myself. but in those days I had no reason to doubt my own abilities.

I recall sitting in my room when I was just a few years older with a great urge to build something--nothing useful, just something with levers and hinges and pieces that worked together for some purpose. I never managed, not surprisingly.

these days I have a similar urge, but it's a somewhat better informed one, having spent a little time this past year on relatively simple building projects. my few days at Love Story farm working on Christine's cob cottage, building a dry-stack stone wall as a memorial for a friend in Surry County, helping put together an earthen pizza oven at a classmates house this fall--all of it leaves me wanting more. on a very primitive level I crave the texture of a good cob mixture and the feeling in my arms of hauling a big chunk of it on to the structure being built. the same can be said for stone. indeed, the physicality of it all is perhaps the most compelling--grit on the fingers, strain in the arms and back. it's so satisfying.

but these days my desire to build goes beyond a wish for a mere feeling and desire for engagement. I want to participate in building projects with my mind, not just my body. it may seem odd to draw such a distinction but I'm the sort of person who can withdraw mentally from a process and operate on a level independent of my actions. that's great when the work is repetitive--in fact, rote work seems to promote productive thought. but an absent-minded builder is no good--if I am to learn about carpentry and building with mortar and digging good foundations than I've got to tune in and pay attention.

to really do that, I must believe that I can learn what there is to learn, or my self doubt will keep me operating at a merely experiential level. ah, how I miss the naive confidence of the untested child.