Personal

A while back I read an MIT study on how our brains process code. The finding surprised me: it doesn’t activate the language centers the way reading normally does. Instead it lights up something called the multiple demand network (frontal and parietal lobes), the same system used for solving complex problem. The researchers said reading code is “not the same as language, and not the same as math.” It’s its own thing. I read that and thought, oh! that’s also how I process everything else! ...

In 2023, I had too much on my plate. To be honest, that’s been true for most of my adult life, but 2023 was when I actually sat with it. Work projects, finances, psychology research (don’t ask), exercise routines, new technology, new shows. I had built a careful system around all of it. A routine that felt like it was moving me somewhere. Then I had to travel. A week away from home, somewhere I didn’t particularly want to be. I couldn’t do even a fraction of what I normally did. By the first afternoon, a feeling I recognized immediately had settled in: guilt. Not the guilt of having done something wrong. The other kind. Productivity guilt. The sense that by stepping away, I was somehow betraying my own ambitions. ...