Among the many mysteries of my brain is this: Where do spontaneous thoughts come from?

A recent example.  A couple days ago I’m doing nothing in particular, letting my mind wander, when this song pops into my mind:

Through the magic of YouTube, I was able to pull the now 20+(!) year-old song and cruise memory lane.  But it begs the question: Where did this thought come from?

I consider this to be an okay song, but it has never been one of my favorites (Jesse not being my kind of female).  I haven’t heard it on the radio in ages.  Unless I subconsciously heard it on TV or YouTube, it’s been many months or years since I listened to it.  Yet there it was, playing in my musical mind.

One research paper on random thoughts posits the following:

We are aware of the output of spontaneous thoughts, but lack insight into the reasons why and processes by which they occurred. Rather than dismiss these seemingly random thoughts as meaningless, our research found that people believe, precisely because they are not controlled, that spontaneous thoughts reveal more meaningful insight into their own mind — their beliefs, attitudes and preferences — than similar, deliberate thoughts. As a consequence, spontaneous thoughts can have a more potent influence on judgment.

So there you have it.  Researchers haven’t figured out where spontaneous thoughts come from, but they must be important, because we don’t know where they come from.  They tell us something about ourselves–we just don’t know what it is.

Makes sense.

I seem to have more than my share of bad luck, so it’s worth noting when good fortune smiles my way.

Yesterday afternoon I was mowing at my church, as I do every week.  I was on the riding mower, going back and forth on a level area of lawn.  As I approach the middle of this particular section, I noticed what looked like bugs flying around.

As I get closer, my vision improved, and I saw that it wasn’t just a few insects, but dozens–perhaps more than one hundred–swarming low around a spot on the ground.

Whoa!  I’ve seen this act before.  Those weren’t bugs, they were yellow jackets, and they were all riled up.

I spot several of them headed in my direction.  I lift up on the mower’s forward pedal and slam down the reverse pedal.  The mower doesn’t go fast backwards, at all.  And it never seemed slower than it did at that moment.  But somehow I managed to get away without being stung.

Minutes later I approached the scene again, much more carefully–on foot–to assess the situation.  There was indeed a hole in the ground, with a steady stream of yellow jackets going in and out.

My first pass had been close enough that the mower vibrations had stirred them up from the depths of the nest.  But I was going fast enough to escape the initial wave of danger.  By the time I returned for the second pass, they had assumed their battle stations and were ready to attack.

Needless to say, this encounter surprised me.  Last time I mowed, I didn’t see a sign of yellow jackets.  Seven days later, there’s a nest with hundreds of them.  Sometimes nature is unpredictable.

As I said, this isn’t my first run-in with yellow jackets.  A couple summers ago I mowed over a nest and got stung three times.  Those things really hurt.  I’m very thankful this confrontation wasn’t as painful.  It could have been much worse.

This week marks the 100th anniversary of Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia, which launched The Great War.

I’ve never had as good a working knowledge of the First World War as I do of World War II, for several reasons.  It’s older, doesn’t have as conclusive an ending, America did not play as key a role in it, it had a lot of French sounding battles, and the military storyline is more difficult to follow.

That’s not an slight on the importance of the war.  To the contrary, WWI was extremely consequential, setting the stage for a second war, twenty years later, and lurking in the background of many other conflicts, extending even to today.  It accelerated advancements in technology, transformed the arts, and strengthened the power of government.  In many ways, it’s a demarcation line between the old and modern worlds.

I’ve been learning more about it reading anniversary articles, or 100-years-ago-today tweets people are posting on Twitter.  I’ve got four years to get caught up.

On a more personal level, I’ve found WWI draft records of two ancestors.  The first is from my paternal grandfather in Pennsylvania:

He registered in September, 1918, two months before the war ended.  He was 18–already married–working at the Atlas Powder Company.  Quite a different lot than I had at that age.

I wonder what he thought of the war at the time?  I never asked him about it.  He died almost 25 years ago.

The second record is quite different.  It’s from my great, great-uncle, a Ukrainian immigrant who lived in Alberta, Canada:

I do not know his story (yet), but it must be an interesting one.  His family came from an area that at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (British Canada’s enemy).  According to this list, he, along with many other Ukrainians, was sent to an internment work camp earlier in the war.  So I wonder if he ever enlisted–or was even allowed to?

One of many stories I’d like to delve into during the centennial.

I enjoy bread–particularly homemade bread.  I learned a simple way to make bread and bake most of the bread I eat.

It’s a basic bread–not something that will put bakeries out of business–but I like it better than many brands of store-bought bread, and I imagine it’s more healthful, too.  It suits my purposes for making sandwiches, toast, or just eating plain.

I use a bread making machine to mix and knead the dough .  [It’s supposed to be easy, right?]  But then I remove it from the machine and bake it in a regular oven.

Happy baking.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 tablespoons margarine
• 2 cups bread flour
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
• 1 cup + 4 tablespoons hot water
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Cut margarine into small pieces (for quick melting) and place in bread maker pan.
2. Combine bread flour, wheat flour, and yeast in mixing bowl.  Stir well.
3. Pour water into bread maker pan.  Add salt and brown sugar.
4. Add flour mixture on top of the liquid.
5. Turn on bread maker and run through the mixing/kneading cycle (on my machine this lasts 25 minutes).  Add flour, as needed, so that the dough loses most of its tackiness.
6. Remove dough from the bread maker pan and press into oven bread pan.
7. Warm oven to ~ 120F, place pan on top rack, and let dough fully rise (about 30 minutes).
8. Heat oven to 350F and bake for another 30-35 minutes.
9. Remove bread from oven.  [Caution: hot]  Allow it to cool.
10. Enjoy.

Crew Blog has a useful lifestyle post on getting out of your comfort zone.  It’s useful because this is challenging for me.

I generally like daily activities to be safe and predictable.  Since I rarely seem to have good surprises, the fewer of them I encounter, the better.

When you leave your comfort zone, you go in the opposite direction: toward greater uncertainty.  In most people this increases anxiety.  When you’re anxious, you are more likely to view events negatively.  This generates a reluctance to try new things.

But you really should push your boundaries.  Among other things, expansion will help you:

• find more activities you enjoy
• increase your productivity, because anxiety pushes you to be more focused
• boost your confidence as you experience new types of success

This illustration, from the above article, is a helpful way to visualize things:

You want to venture far enough out of your normal zone so you learn from new experiences, but not so far that you become overcome by nervousness:

Finding that middle ground where you are anxious, but where those anxiety levels are still manageable, is what we are looking for. Once you become acclimated to that new level of anxiety, you have successfully expanded your comfort zone.

So here’s to hurdling your fears and overcoming your mental boundaries.  As Marcus Taylor says in this video:

“If you want something you don’t already have, you have to do something you haven’t already done.”