# 20080612 Pre-bed notes. The following, courtesy Captain Obvious. I live on systems. Knowing exactly how everything works and how it's structured. Being able to know the reactions of a system with any given stimulus. It's why I play the piano. It's a system. And once you become familiar with it, the theory behind it stops being important. You don't have to think about fingers and keys and names of chords, because you've learned - assimilated - the system. Once you understand why the rules are what they are, you can go beyond them. And at that point, the musick can begin to flow. Everything has a system. Friends, work, money. Religion. You are (I am, we are) a system as well. You can write rules that describe how you function, but you don't function by rules - all of your interconnected parts together form themes, patterns. And when one of the patterns change, everything changes. The entire system is altered, and it takes time for you to fully understand what you have become. Catching your balance. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://www.isaacbowen.com/2008/06/12.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.