See you, space cowboy

I can't help big brain-smiles of glee when I see the pictures coming in from Curiosity, the NASA rover that landed on Mars this month. Space always has a way of melting me into doe-eyed wonder, and to see these shots, to know that this is what you would see if you were standing on Mars makes my head blow up BIG BANG STYLE.

I don't care if it's a hunk of red dirt. It's another world that we're seeing like never before.

And think of how much more there is to see out there! What do the Earth-sized storms on Jupiter look like? When do we get a good sight of a black hole? (Or what's around it anyway). How about the unfurling edges of the universe?!

Obviously I'm not expecting any quick answers there, but this stuff has been infecting my dreams since I was a kid, and I'm ecstatic to see even the smallest scrap of it for real.

Patience, my eyeballs—someday I will launch you out there too!

Dummy

Sometimes I wish that for every work I produced, I were a new person. Some fresh crash test dummy who never has to worry about what comes after his job's done. No precedents to set. No expectations to meet. Just a fresh, disposable body that no one even needs to know.

It's a little silly. I'm a nobody as it is! But even still, there's always a desire to distance myself from what I've done already. It doesn't matter if I liked it, or if I made it yesterday or years ago. I don't want to be trapped in the same car, crashing into the same wall, flying out the same windshield, no matter how good I've become at it.

That's probably why I've always been drawn to starting new projects. But lately I've been wondering how much of that is a desire for novelty and how much is just plain running away. Would I ever be able to devote myself to, say, poetry, for more than a few years? Being completely honest, that's what I want to do the most. I know I wouldn't have to do it exclusively, but I wonder if I'm capable of a true, long-term focus regardless.

Suppose we'll find out soon enough. Maybe I just need to crash the same car till the wall breaks.