For years, parallel to this blog, I’ve maintained an offline journal. In part, it’s filled with trains of thought too personal for mass consumption. The remainder, however, consists of observations of the world, discourse on physics, economics, biochemistry, art and literature – any number of topics on which I’m completely unqualified to pontificate.

This morning, for example, I woke up suddenly and inexplicably fascinated by the apparent similarity between adjacent underwater and above-water ecosystems. Pen in hand, I scrawled down a solid page and a half on “wet/dry biomatching” (to coin a phrase), contemplating the Monterey Bay (its tall kelp forests mirrored by the evergreens of the surrounding hills), or the islands of the Hawaiian Archipelago (whose thriving coral reefs match well the dense low scrub that covers the majority of the islands themselves).

This is the sort of stuff my brain pops out if left to its own devices, and I’m never sure what to do with it. Were I a biology grad student, I could construct a PhD thesis around the observation, fleshing out the strength of the correlation, honing in on causative factors (available sunlight or nutrients, weather patterns). Instead, I simply jot my thoughts down amidst any number of others, hoping that one day my thinking will become useful – either to me, in a future endeavor, or to whomever discovers the journal, once I’m gone and pushing up daisies.

Growing up, I always wondered why Da Vinci (a personal hero), who (obviously) journalled far more insightfully than I, followed through on so few of his fantastic inventions and groundbreaking observations. Over time, I’ve come to believe the answer lay in Da Vinci’s reliance on apprentice painters – once he had sketched out a work, fleshed out the tough spots and carefully lit segments, the rest was handed off to his assistants, to people whose talent and passion was directed more towards coloring between the lines than to drawing lines to begin with. Not, I don’t think, because Da Vinci believed himself to be too important to do such work himself, but because he realized he would only be happy when doing something new, rather than expanding and improving something pre-existing.

Watching friends and colleagues at work and play, I’m convinced that distinction holds just as much today as it did in Renaissance Italy. People break down into two groups – pioneers and settlers – and very few people are as unhappy as those inadvertently trapped in the wrong camp.