exceed_yourself dB This is sort of an extension to Seeds of Light's most excellent take_care_of_yourself blather. In addition to the things the Seeds' has said, it is very important that you challange yourself. Not only with puzzles and reading, but in everyday activities, your work is a good start. What happens if you stay in a job too long? If it is a job where the tasks are the same and you can only be so good at it, you become stagnant and complacent. We need change. If you are to truly understand yourself, you need to know what you are capable of. in the last 5 years I have started more careers than most of you will have jobs in your entire lives. Think about what you would like to know. If you want to know how engines work, go work in a garage for a few months. If you want to paint a house, go and do it. If you want to be a landscape gardiner go and work for a plant nusury that does landscaping as well. If you want to feel the satisfaction of building a house, then do it (this is the most satifying things I ever did. When you look at a patch of land with just grass and say "I will make a house here" and a couple of months later, after much sweat and frustration and a very swollen thumb, you look at that patch again, and there is a house). Many people get stuck in this mind set of "I need my job. I need a steady income. If I don't have my job I won't be..." and so on. If you live life like this you are only imprisoning youself. Don't get caught in the trap. Don't become a slave to youself. Humans have these very versatile bodies, and quite large brains for a mammal of that size. Why not use them. As children, the synapses are weak, but they fire up to 20 times more than adults because everything is new and they are incorporating everything they see and hear into the data that they already posess. When they get older, the synapses sit locked in some kind of pattern, because the outside stimuli is not new, there is nothing more to learn. There is nothing left to stimulate the mind. And this is a terrible waste. Humans have the potential, but many lack the will. 010826 ... ashmanzhou we wait in this cold hour taking in the depressing sights-but for what? its all death morbid hate broen dreams and only those with will survive we have no will no push no faith and when i comes a time for exceeding we fall short we fail we ultimately perish 030630 ... . . 050404 what's it to you? who go blather from