After a long day, sometimes the brain just starts throwing out error codes all… willy nilly.

ERROR: 0x800701G5 System crash.
ERROR: 0x809706b5 System simply… cannot.
ERROR: 0x80000cb5 Omg.
ERROR: 0x800v06b5 Please just make it stop.

Then I’ll turn the light off, lay down, and try not to think of anything for a solid hour.

That sounds so easy.

And yet…

To me, it feels like the most… flagrant admission of… I don’t know, failure on a very minor scale, perhaps?

Yet sometimes it is simply the most I’m capable of at that moment.

Ala: “ERROR: 0x809706b5 System simply… cannot.”

The subsequent reboot which follows after even a breif respite is both refreshing, and invigorating.

Although, it must be said, periods such as these necessitate doing something else the rest of the day. Anything else.

It feels good just to pick up a rock. To watching something I’ve seen. To look out at the stars.

Literally. Anything.

I once read a fascinating article on chess players. A series of very thorough studies were done recently which found that chess players, despite being stationary, can burn as many calories per hour strategizing while playing chess as an athlete who’s participating in a sport.

Isn’t that surprising?

I mean, it was assumed that the brain itself wasn’t a huge drain on energy in the form of calories… but it seems that isn’t even remotely true.

Think about it a second.

Consider how many thoughts you’re having as you multi-task.

Now, consider your subconscious, and how often you cycle back to a task knowing a better/quicker solution you didn’t arrive at through logic. That conclusion was calculated somewhere, wasn’t it?

And you didn’t consider those calculations because you weren’t aware of them, right?

Yeah, that’s right.

Because they happened on the other side of the wall.

In the room you don’t have direct access to.

The next time you feel a sense of self recrimination for being burnt out, think about that.

I know I do.