Randomness

Yesterday I did nothing. I played Settlers of Catan a few times on line, and learned how to use my new clothes steamer, and did some cleaning. It is fun to do nothing sometimes, allows you to get energized for the next few days. I wonder if we do the same for years too, do nothing for a few years to prepare us for the coming avalanche of things to do in the future... or have done in the past. One reason I liked Indiana Jones movies was it was constant action from beginning to end, you finish the movie looking at your watch and wondering where the time went. Sometimes years go that way, you look at the calendar and wonder where the months went. I guess I'm getting old when I realize that. If you have read a few of my writings you know that I go in random directions. I do that when I speak and teach too. I often try to change that, I try to do things in a methodical step by step direction. But, it goes "random" pretty quick. When I teach I know I should introduce the subject, then build on that step by step to get to a final goal ... but I go off on tangents pretty easily and I don't even know where it will end. It is the same when I write here. Today I thought I would write about how much I have affected people throughout their lives, without me even knowing about it. I was going to talk about how this blog affected my sister to write her blog, www.suesgene.blogspot.com. Then I started writing and thought about writing about how American adults play games and how few other countries have adults playing games with other adults and/or children. Then I thought about how I went through the day yesterday thinking about what I was going to write in my blog and decided to talk about how I got a new device no one ever showed me how to use and how we do things the same way our parents did, or teach the way our teachers did. As I was writing the two cats demanded my attention, one spilled open the silverware drawer and the other laid down on the keyboard and I was going to write about how things through our lives don't allow us to reach the goals we had thought we wanted, and instead we reach the goals that we really did want. As I was thinking about all those things I realized that I really wanted to write about my philosophy of being an Angel, and how I really don't want to be, but I couldn't find the Bible verse I wanted to quote. I guess those will all be topics for future writing, because I really want to write about all those topics! Today I just wanted to write about how random things go through our heads all at the same time. I took a class on using music in the classroom a few years ago. The teacher suggested we play music during the time students were doing seat work. Her rationale was that silence wasn't natural. In nature you have a lot of background noise. Either animal sounds, wind rustling the trees, crickets, waves, always something. So, she suggested that if you quietly play music while the students were studying in class their minds wouldn't wander so much. They could concentrate more on what they were doing, and instead of thinking about what they were going to have for lunch, or what their mother was going to yell at them for, or what they were going to write about when they got home they would be listening to the background music. Then she explained that the music you play should follow some criteria. Most important was it shouldn't have any words, or you would sing along with it instead of it just being background sound. The best music should be baroque music, because it is at the same rhythm as a resting heart. I thought maybe the best thing to play was those CDs (at the time I thought about tapes, tells you how long ago this class was) that have natural sounds, like ocean waves or forest sounds (but definitely not jungle music). I have done this in a few classes I have taught and it usually works well after the students get used to it. I have even had students complain when I stop doing it. See how random this writing goes, I had no idea I was going to talk about that today, I haven't thought about it for a long time. I wonder what I will write about tomorrow ...