Saturday, August 25, 2012

Experiments

After talking about it for a good half a year - Jon, Ben and I finally got down to combining two of our favourite pastimes in a rather unique way. A friendship that was forged over Scrabble back in high school was fortified over our more recent obsession with cocktails. So it was only going to be a matter of time before we put them together on a weekend meetup. We simply called it - Scraboozling.

The discussion prior to the event was focused on the experimental nature of it, as we concocted hypotheses, control strategy for the variables and even data-acquisition and recording methods. Despite all the planning on controlling the passage of events through the night much like you would in a proper scientific experiment, what we ended up doing was quite different indeed. Random conversations over a string of cocktails. A couple of Scrabble games in between reminiscent of those good ol' days. On my way back home the next morning, I was thinking how the night had turned out as opposed to how we'd planned it - and how I wouldn't have had it any other way. And then it hit me.

I've been meaning to venture into a few things for quite some time now. Very experimental stuff, yet I wanted to do it proper and kept making plans. Plan after plan; some recorded, some forgotten. I even had a number of them listed on my list of resolutions, but despite all the plans I made the fact is I still haven't taken the first step. What deterred me was my fear that my current preoccupations like work and family could get in the way..

So what if my pre-occupations get in the way from time to time? I finally figured I should just start, and let things unfold as time goes by. What comes out of it all may not be what I had expected it to be; but it could very well turn out to be more beautiful than anything I have imagined. Like our Scraboozling night.

So I've taken a step.. not a leap by any stretch of the imagination; a simple step.. and hopefully a few more to follow. It doesn't matter where these steps eventually lead me to.. only that I HAVE taken those steps. I'd have performed.. an experiment. An experience.

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