expertize

I've never done this before, but I know how to do it. I know the mechanics of it. 

what I know now

I always used to think and say that, if I had my time over, I wouldn't do anything different. But now I think I would do so many different things differently. 

That idea that I wouldn't do anything differently comes from a sense that I am what I am and all the choices I made and things I experienced made me who I am. 

There couldn't be different possibilities because of who I am - so I thought - but as I am now, I'm aware of the error of a lot of the stories I believed in. 

The only good use of this knowledge is in the present. 

beginning

I've been fighting this battle of tapering off valium for more than 3 years now, and I'm getting near the end - getting to the point where I don't need this stuff. It's a great feeling. 

uv

when I was all messed up and I had opera in my head, your love was a lightbulb hanging over my bed

oh

actually I think it was 'logic'. I was using logic and reason interchangeably. I said that science developed according to logic, and she took issue with that, probably because she is a classical scholar so she understands the origins of logic and how it preceded modern science. 

huh

I said that the development of science was driven by the use of reason, but an academic with a background in classics corrected me and said that the scientific method was more important, and that the use of reason was peripheral. To me that still doesn't seem right. Wasn't the enlightenment and the scientific revolution all about reason, and the scientific method a kind of reasoning?

newness

There's a sense in which my struggle never gets old. It's possible to be fighting something your whole life and it never gets easier. The vicious dog retains the sharpness of its bite. 

My daily goals don't change either - like, it's about doing the same things every day. But with them, there's a good sharpness - a sense of partaking in my new life.