an esoteric wish list

[dchenes]

Last night I realized, again, that I miss having intelligent conversations every once in a while. An intelligent conversation is one of the ones that makes me think about something I’ve never thought about before (last night it was urban planning), and doesn’t put me off by descending into geekery, in which all the details go right over my head. It doesn’t have to be a directed conversation, either; I also like the ones that start off at point A and end up at point B several hours later, having detoured through points D, J, Q and S on the way.

I think what it boils down to is, I like learning. It helps if what I’m learning is either useful or of interest to me, of course (math has yet to fall under either of those categories), but I like thinking about things I’ve never seriously thought about before.

The problem is that the line between intelligent conversation and geekery is sometimes pretty thin. There’s a difference between talking about something because you want somebody else to like it too, and talking about it because you want to impress somebody with how much you know about it, whether they understand the details or not.

So, an intelligent conversation is one thing I want every so often.

I also want a timeless night every so often. What I mean by that is a night when I can sleep, or not, and there might be sleep in the middle, or not, and what I’m doing when I’m not sleeping is something that occupies enough of my brain to keep me from worrying about whether I should be sleeping, and I don’t care what time it is because it just doesn’t matter.

The best kind of timeless night is when I go to bed with somebody else. Failing that, a timeless night when I fall into a writing/sewing/Civ III/etc. project is good too. Those happen once in a while when I'm on vacation for a week.

Comments

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

I can't tell you how much I sometimes miss nights when I didn't feel like sleeping and would stay up, falling into a book or a game of Civ or some piece of fanfic, till I genuinely was tired and then go sleep as long as I want. I miss staying up late and not being tired the next day. I can't remember the last time that happened.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem. In fact, if I pull an all-nighter now for classwork or even stay up and read until 1, I am a wreck for multiple days afterward.

I think I'm getting old.

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

it's a tragedy, is it not? My only consolation is that it is still possible, on the right nights, for the night to be timeless -- and still get to bed later than usual, but not so late you'll be a disaster the next day. If only that time weren't marching steadily forward...

I love the description of a timeless night, dchenes.