If you want some completely unsolicited advice … and even if you don’t want it 😉 … from someone that has similar inclinations and feelings in terms of mental exercise –

Step out of your comfort zone.

I find that I feel the most satisfied when I have learned something I really was rather reluctant to do in the first place. If I read something that interests me in a subject I am familiar with, that’s good and I often learn something. But if I read a book that I disagree with or in a subject I am not already well versed in, I use my brain more and learn more, even if not always about the subject at hand.

I learn more going someplace different … no, not too different so that it’s alien, but I enjoyed Montreal because my brain comes away crammed full of all sorts of new information to process and assimilate. I didn’t enjoy PEI that much because it was all too familiar – take a strip of land surrounding Red Deer, rip it up and drop it in the Gulf of St Lawrence and you have PEI.

It may sound silly, but take a shot at a craft, or learn to bake bread … something you normally wouldn’t do. (Alton Brown is good for bringing food to the techie Geek 😉 )

I’d suggest that you actually try to step away from the intellectual. You have that down pat. You and I have read entire libraries and thought and thought and thought about what we read. Maybe you need to build and fly a model plane, or model boat … or even make and fly a kite.

The Piano was good … maybe you just need an instrument more suited to your manual dexterity … the triangle perhaps? 😛

Seriously, music is exactly the sort of outside your comfort zone I mean. Last time you were talking to Leaha? Kalen? ?? after taking piano lessons about stuff that went completely over my head, and a few years before would have gone over yours. Even if you can’t “play” you now know a lot about playing … knowledge that I am sure bleeds over into other aspects of your life.