CURRENT THOUGHTS

- Apparently immigrants come to America instead of other countries.  Really?  Why.  What's better about America than most industrialized countries?  
Pros: diversity, higher education, .... drawing blanks
Cons: lower pay for low-skill work, lackluster K-12, no universal healthcare (welfare in general sucks), public transportation/infrastructure sucks.
Am I missing something?

- going through old albums and (trying to) properly master.  My early stuff was very acoustic, vocals OK but tended to be overly nasal, somewhat intense and more literal.  Later stuff increasingly multi-instrumental and tonally expansive, more thematically vague, larger repertoire of genre use.

- Expertise:  how much time investment in college degrees?

• according to Cal Poly Humboldt a typical university unit = about 45 hours of student work (class & study)
• A 120 unit undergraduate degree would = 5400 hours
• A 45 unit graduate degree would = 2025 hours
• A 50 unit PhD would = 2250
• Thus, roughly 9675 hours.
• Add to this any professional experience beyond this, calculated as 52 work weeks in a year, at 40 hours/week (granting academics often take summers off, but many are writing books, etc.) and you get 2080 hours per year.
• So next time you're dismissing the expertise of, say, an epidemiologist with 10 years professional experience, you're dismissing their 20-30k hours of study and practical experience in their particular field.
• Add to this the fact that at this point their knowledge is highly subject-matter-specialized.  They simply know a TON about their particular subject.  Even if you dismiss 2/3 of that experience as secondary - housekeeping, meetings, teaching, non-relevant work, etc. - you're still looking at a solid 10k hours of very intense expertise in that subject.  But let's also grant that even all that non-specific work certainly provided expansive knowledge about how to think and evaluate ideas.

- This month I went in for nerve injections for my neck.  Basically, epidural-type targeted injections to try and numb my pain.  The first visit made me puke on the operating table, and nothing but injection-site soreness to follow.  The second visit thankfully didn't induce vomiting, however pain reduction was zero.  So, at this point, given that my original injury (2" neck wound while surfing here) occurred in 1989, that's about 33 years of pain.  Initially, the pain was maybe a chronic 3-4 (see below).  I'm currently averaging level 5-6 chronic pain.  This is constant, 24 hour pain - especially relevant when REM cycles offer the only real respite, and while drifting into or out of sleep it's always there - just me and it on the pillow. In bed, what this looks like is laying in a position for 1-2 minutes while the pain builds, and then having to turn my head when it becomes too uncomfortable

Pain scales are hard to establish, but I generally rate thusly:

1. slight: am I even in pain? (have to really think about it to feel it)
   
2. very minor: pain there but barely (stubbed my toe this morning)
3. pretty minor: pain is there but no big deal (day after workout)
4. minor: pain is there but can be ignored (recovering from common cold)
5. kind of uncomfortable: pain is there but can mostly be ignored (bad allergies)
6. uncomfortable: pain hard to ignore (minor common cold)
7. pretty uncomfortable: pain hard to ignore and maybe can't work (bad common cold)
8. very uncomfortable: can't work or do anything (flu)
9. extremely uncomfortable: pain can't be ignore, intense bad thoughts
10. horrific: dear god screaming make it stop?

This is all of course subjective, and doesn't really take into account the psychological effect of chronic suffering.  For instance, when in a foul mood, the sensitivity to pain greatly increases, as do the negative thought.  Alternatively, when engaging in highly reinforcing activities, the pain can be ignored much more easily.  I will often be too sore to go in to work (pain 6/7), but at home, after taking ibuprofen, acetaminophen and a gummy (usually 5 mg of THC), I find myself in a state of happy distraction and doing art or other "fun" activities despite the pain.

I was an intense skateboarder (old video), and I tend to think this exacerbated by body's dysfunction.  Although, I still really don't know what that is.  X-rays and MRIs have always been pretty normal.  I've tried many therapies: nutrition, vitamin, chiropractic, acupuncture, cranial sacral, Rolfing, the "Egoscue Method", multiple rounds of physical therapy, yoga, hot yoga, pilates, massage, steroid injections, prolotherapy, and now neural blocks.  But all to really no effect.  The best I can surmise is the locus of the pain is always most intense around a lump of scar tissue at the original injury site (right near the C1 cervical Atlas, beneath the base of my skull).  The pain is intense and dull, triggering muscles spasms that are near-constant around the back of my neck and in the past 10-15 years extending into lumps of muscle knots on the sides and front of my neck, under my jaw.  The pain and stiffness then radiates up around my skull into my temples and sinuses, as well as down over my shoulders, into my thoracic spine, as well as down my biceps and triggering tightness in my inner thighs and calfs.  Any excessive physical activity can be a trigger - certainly strenuous lifting or arms work.  But so to can allergies or colds.  Stress worsens it, as does depression - which the pain also contributes to (a fun little feedback loop there).

I can't really skate anymore - I basically gave up serious skating around 2000, after about 15 years of daily practice.  I can skate - but the pain keeps me from being able to skate like I used to, and what I can do is basically just carving around, little grinds, little ollies, rock and rolls... and these just aren't that fun.  When I skated I liked to go fast and reckless , doing tricks and shit.  And if I can't do that it's not very interesting to me.

So, putting waking and semi-conscious hours of the day at 18, multiply that by 33 years, you get 216,810 hours of constant pain.  Hey - I'm an expert!!