Spring cleaning/musing

I did some much needed Spring cleaning of my apartment. Washed every fabric I can see, dusted every single piece of furniture, and wiped everything down till they were shining in the sunlight. The weather outside is hot (90F), but there are advantages of living on 6th floor apartment right next to a vast grass field/lake. The wind through the windows are cool and they carry the pleasant fragrance of flowers and trees. Now this is what I call Spring cleaning.

The whole thing took about 4 hours. Dusting all the bookshelves alone took some effort, and I had to sort through all sorts of notes and sketches strewn across my desk to figure out which ones to keep and which ones to throw away. It might not sound like much, but the problem is in that my desk is a converted workbench I picked up for cheap in some yard sale by the wave hill park. The thing is vast. I can actually go onto it and sleep with all my limbs spread out. I'd say it's about half the size of my bed, which is also inexplicably large for a bed in a bachelor's apartment. Whatever. I'm not complaining.

There's something about maintaining well-organized, clean living environment that's very fulfilling for me. I think it has to do with how dojos and zen temples place so much emphasis on cleaning and wiping down everything all the time. I used to think it was annoying (and yes, I spent some time in both of those places. Maybe I should write about that sometime), but now that I'm older, I think I can see some point in all that. There's a serene and calming quality to organization of the environment around yourself, and the fact that inevitable wave of entropy will eventually make everything messy again just adds to the quality of the experience.

The fact that my entire apartment begins to smell like middle of a pine forest whenever I open my windows just adds to the experience I think. I probably won't be as committed to cleaning stuff up if my apartment was facing a railroad tracks for example.

The only sobering fact of the whole necessity of cleaning the world is that I feel like I'm missing out on so much simply to maintain some semblance of order in my life. The four hours of cleaning is fours hours of time I couldn't spend on working with the synthetic biology software suite  (something I'm using to study biological systems in synthetic context these days, fascinating piece of software, though I'm just beginning to learn the ropes myself).

That is why the humanity needs robotic butlers/maids I think.

I'm impressed with myself for connecting robotic butler/maids with the zen practice of self-reflection. I think I'll go out reward myself with some burgers.