I've been thinking a lot lately about the importance of retraining your brain.

It's all too easy to fall into routines—the same breakfast bar, the same walk to work, the same delivery menus... The last couple of months, with my move from Brooklyn to San Francisco, and starting a new job, have really been a smack on the head about all the routines I'd fallen into. Even more, it's amazing that even in a new city, with a new job and schedule, and a whole new life, I find myself going through the same routines I was stuck on in Brooklyn! (Fruit bar for breakfast. Exercise a little. Trawl through my blog list. Go to work. Come home, eat dinner with friends or alone. Watch a movie, drink a beer, read a little, go to sleep. Rinse, repeat.)

Far worse, though, than routines of action are routines of thought. I've noticed that I think the same way about the same things—friendships, relationships, politics, art and culture—and always end up at the same conclusions. Very comforting, not much real thought required. Like a car being floored in neutral. Or around a NASCAR track, to be generous.

......vvvVVRRrroooom...... vvvVVRRrroooom...... vvvVVRRrroooom......

My job at Red Room has been helping, of course. Whether it's the more mundane tasks, like learning to use Vista and Excel, or the more challenging things, like learning and cleaning up html and creating potential Google ad campaigns, it feels good to be stepping outside of my comfort zone and trying new things (and even better to be succeeding, at least thus far).

When I was three, my father decided it would be a great idea for me to take piano lessons. How great it would be—he must have thought—to have a child with whom he could play duets and share his love of classical music. If he'd had told me as much then, things might have gone differently. Instead, I saw my piano lessons as torture, and the only reason I sat down at the piano every week is because I felt like I had to. I refused to learn to read music, and memorized everything I played by ear. After eight years, I finally felt brave enough to quit, and except for the ones with letters, I haven't touched a keyboard since.

But when I was in Paris, I had the opportunity to watch a performance by the pianist Jay Gottlieb, who played a magnificent concert of mostly modern and experimental classical music. I don't know if it was the jetlag, the champagne, or the combination of two, but I was blown away, and inspired. There is something about music that is so perfect, so universally and mathematically true about chords, notes, structure and discord. And despite, or maybe because of this mathematic perfection, certain notes and music phrases mean something, or represent an emotion, regardless of one's cultural exposure or background. Low, heavy notes are foreboding and dark, great trumpeting chords are inspiring, and slow, soft violins are the sounds of lamenting voices.

As a kid, when I'd dream about giving up piano lessons, my parents (and everyone else) would tell me how I should stick with it anyway, because I'd thank them when I was older, and because it would be so much harder to learn an instrument as an adult.

That idea used to scare the hell out of me. Would my brain slow down? As an adult, I wouldn't be able to learn or think like I did then? That idea still scares me—which brings me back to this whole idea of routine. These insidious little routines have already started to take over my brain, and I'm not going to let it get set.

A recent article I read gave me hope. Of course, we now know that brain cells keep generating and regenerating your entire life. But now there is confirmation that it is possible to rewire your brain­­. The beautiful part is that the more that you believe you can rewire your brain, the faster and easier it will be for you to do. So in that spirit, I bought myself a midi keyboard, and I'm looking for some good teaching software for Mac. (Know any?) I've decided that I love music too much to keep myself from understanding it better, and being able to participate, at least a little bit, in its creation.