A Type of Restart
All I Know Is That I Don't Know Nothing
There's an Operation Ivy lyric that says, "All I know is that I don't know nothing." And that line became painfully, beautifully real to me during this time.
After the heartbreak of Fort Collins, I realized I didn't just need to heal - I needed to grow. I needed to understand the world around me. I lucked out when I stumbled onto James Randi, a magician who loved science, giving an online lecture on how easy it is for us to fool ourselves. The lecture was all about critical thinking and skepticism, and it was everything I was looking for.
I fell hard for science and philosophy - for physics, biology, logic, skepticism, reason. It was transformative and changed the way I saw everything. And for the next four to five years, it dominated everything for me.
My teachers during this period were people like Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman and Issac Asimov. Because of them, what I developed wasn't a narrow and technical expertise, but a deep, general appreciation for science as a whole - for how the world works, how ideas form, and how to think critically.
It was during this time that I realized something important:
I didn't just love learning.
I wanted to teach.
I wanted to share the feeling of discovery that had reshaped my life. And because my understanding came from big-picture thinkers, not necessarily specialists, I found myself suited to teach general science to younger ages - to help them fall in love with the wonder of it all.
So I enrolled in community college and started pursuing a path to teaching. To this day, science and philosophy are the only subjects that have ever rivaled - and maybe surpassed - my passion for music. I was hooked.
I ended up being given an award for Outstanding Philosophy Student, became close with my philosophy professor, and we went to many different events together. I became active in the science and skeptic community, volunteering, meeting incredible people like D.J. Grothe, who hosted the Point Of Inquiry podcast and till this day is the most impressive host of a show I've heard, and surrounded myself with thinkers who inspired me.
But even then - quietly, slowly - music started creeping back into my life.
I reconnected with Andy, who had joined a cover band and was moving out of the band house into a home he had just purchased with his wife in the same neighborhood. He asked if I wanted to move in to the band house. I did.
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