This is your brain on.. nothing?

Have you ever noticed that the brain is a contrary beast or it just me? Personally, I find that when I'm actively sitting and trying to think of something, e.g. writing a blog post, working on my book, coming up with a solution to a complex technical problem, I can sit for hours and draw a total blank. Sometimes I try to force the issue by intentionally focusing on something entirely unrelated, hit the refresh on Twitter/Facebook, read online news in Google Reader, play a quick web game, read a chapter in a book, etc. For some reason, it rarely seems to have the desired consequence, it's as if my brain knows what I'm trying to do and by damn it's not falling for that one again!

Conversely, how often when I'm trying to just sit and relax and unwind or fall asleep for the evening and I'm sitting trying to completely empty my mind does THAT actually happen? Not much! It seems like my brain sits up and says, "Rest!? Why would I want to do that? Let's think about all those things that you need to do! Your book isn't done yet, let's go Mister! Oh yeah, you need to finish these 10 things at work. Don't forget you have to pay your Comcast bill."

Not only that, when the old brain does come up with the brilliant solution to just about any complex problem, it's always at the worst time humanly (mentally?) possible. Brain just laughs at me. "You want to figure out how to policy route source NAT'd traffic in an asymetric routing scenario? Ok sure, let me help you with that, one sec." Brain then proceeds to wait until I'm driving frantically to a family counseling appointment, trying to be on time and simultaneously refereeing the 3 different arguments between the kids happening in the back seat, then KABLAM, Brain unloads. "What you want to do is create a dynamic access-list bound to the subinterface of the inside ethernet and turn on the IP inspect for IP option 7, hey stupid, are you writing this down, I'm not going to repeat myself!" I'm like, "Can't we just discuss this later?" "No chance sir, you've missed the opportunity, better luck next time."

They say that science only understands a tiny amount of how the brain operates and what causes it to respond the way it does. I have a theory. I think all of our brains are still stuck in the terrible twos and are just trying to be as difficult as possible. But then, maybe it's just me ;)

Today's post is brought to you by the number 3.141592653589793238462643383279 and the letter 464B