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Sometimes we just need chocolate.
Thanks for the information about why we crave it and how and when not to eat it for our own benefit.

Gee, that closet looks good. Oh, to be so organized!

What a delightful article, I love how you walk us through your life as a writer, I too share the same habits, nice to know I'm not the only one living, breathing and sleeping article content. Thanks for the heads up on twitter feeds.

You ever watch that show Eureka? The first few seasons the sherriff lived in a house that was a converted silo but it had a living computer in it that would talk to him, even in the shower- I was thinking how cool would it be to have an interactive recorder that's voice activated installed so when your showering you can simply say "record" and bounce your ideas into the omnidirectional microphone- then you could use speach to text software built into many programs these days to convert it to text then just edit it into your article, list of ideas, etc... :)

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Great article! I love the kids soap crayons idea!

I have actually put quite a lot of thought into this years ago when I was studying the brain and wanted to figure out this phenomenon so I could somehow duplicate it at my desk :)

What I came up with:
(You said):
"It is an interesting phenomenon. We often have moments of insight or creativity while showering. What is it about bathing that causes us to suddenly see solutions to previously perplexing problems or come up with a brilliant blog series idea?"

My Take (similar to yours)
I too have wondered this and came to the conclusion that it's the isolation from stimuli or rather the focusing of stimulus (vs. all the complexity that is outside that shower). It's also the fact that the water soothes you and makes you feel meditative, safe, isolated from any distractions.

Your movements are also constricted to a limited set and thus this limits the things you have to think ahead about (i.e. not tripping over the bump in the carpet or over a toy etc...).

In this state your mind is actually freed up and processing power is tripled! The same phenomenon happens at bed time- that period where your almost asleep but your brain is racing. Both scenarios take you into a "theta" brain state where creativity runs rampid (we dream in theta state).

One reason dreams are so vivid sometimes is that we truly have relaxed our body and reached a stage of sleep just beyond the Delta (deep dreamless sleep- or recuperative sleep) state and entering theta (closer to the waking state) super relaxed is what gives us those powerful and highly creative dreams!

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The bottom line is the shower and going to bed, the darkness, the stillness, the meditative state of the body, all lead to the brain being able to relax it's thought stream away from, for lack of a better term, responsibility thinking, and into child like exhuberance thinking where there are no rules, no limitations, no stresses (if your stressing a lot you won't have a creative shower or theta experience before bed)- this is where creativity prospers and thrives. With all that garbage on the back burner now those thoughts that have been standing in line for days or months tend to "when the cats away the mouse is at play" so to speak!

When you leave the confines of the shower and re-enter the world of clutter (not mess so much as everything in the room that has associations of thought attached to it that muddy up the thinking) your mind clicks back into responsibility mode and all the things in the room tend to make you think about a gazillion things at once (by association and memory triggering) and all those great ideas you had in the shower start to get crowded out by other thoughts and "the inspiration is gone". cool huh?

That can be a wizzle all it's own :) (feel free to take all my words here if you want to create it- I got 30 in the oven no time to make new ones haha). Thanks for the stimulation!

Jerrico

My daughters love to read and it's official they are both teenagers, my baby just turned 13. They have read many of these but there are some new ones, a good many in fact. Look forward to reading these good books for teenage girls. This is just in time for summer, we are always looking for good meaningful books to read, thanks so much.

Very true, just came back to check out the movie titles again. I think the next film I watch will be Romeo Must Die, but my daughters haven't seen West Side Story, that will be a good one too.

Thank you Katie, it's actually a brilliant example of TR's strength and tenacious spirit. They tried to bring him down but only invented the cutest toys, a security guard for kids during a time when things didn't feel so safe- brilliant!

I saw one of those huge, very soft, teddy bears around valentines day and meant to get one- they are so cool! (remember the my buddy and kid sister dolls from the 80'/90's? They tried but failed to rebrand the teddy haha...(now that song is stuck in my head!)...

thanks for commenting!

Well said, Katie. :)

These are great examples of kitchen compost keepers. There are so many times I just don't have the time to run out and add my compost to the outdoors compost. This is perfect, I love it now I won't hesitate to juice, chop or eat more raw fruits and veggies as I can discreetly add the rinds, peels, leaves and such to my lovely compost keeper. I love it THANKS!

I remember my daughter doing a report on TR and was surprised to learn this was why and how the teddy bear came to be. Interesting, glad you shared this as many, I'm sure, don't know. Glad it turned out to be a positive as Teddy R. was a very significant part of our developing country. We have traveled far and wide with the one common thing being all the fun places to build your own bear. My daughters both adore teddy bears. You can't go wrong when it comes to teddy bears. In fact I'm setting in bed typing this leaning back near my very large teddy bear. My daughters brought me this teddy when I had an appendectomy years ago. It's been to the hospital twice since then as the girls brought it to me both time I've had other surgeries. My teddy sleeps with me every night and I can't imagine life without him now, he's a keeper. Great article.

@Jerrico Usher thanks for the suggestion, just testing.
Have fun cooking outdoors, Mike

How ironic is it that the "Teddy" bear was invented as a way to ridicule the man (TR) but became the most lovable and cool toy a kid (or adult, especially on valentines day) could want? It was also supposed to "shake" Theodore's self image/security and it had the Teddy effect (TR was unshakable, well other than dat der grizzly that started the whole thing).

Another great article! You inspire me.... (I think the wizzley banner would be better placed after the two side by side BBq grilling tips mods though, seems a bit out of place above them...

I love the modular grill system up there, (the camp chef explorer)
keep em coming!

I threw a wz like and all the others (syndicated) this one for you... I have a lot of friends preparing to buy grills, I'll point them towards this page