It’s funny how things work out.

It is Saturday night and I feel really good about the world.

I spent about two hours up at the observatory. I’ve had a star-crush on Orion lately, so I decided to point the ‘scope at Betelgeuse (it’s way orange!) and Rigel (it’s way blue!). I played around with different eyepieces — discovering quickly that the telescope’s not-so-great optics (as well as random things like turbulent air inside the telescope’s tube) make most of the shorter-focus eyepieces pretty much useless. A couple of cool guys came up about half an hour into my solo observing session, and we looked at different stuff in the sky. I think I found the Orion nebula, which was really exciting! I’d never seen it before (or at least seen it and remembered what it was). We then checked out the moon (I whipped out a moon-filter and it helped a lot), and then I realized that the Pleiades were almost directly overhead and absolutely beautiful! (My impression is that light pollution is way low near the zenith.) We pointed the big telescope at it, but we had to wait a little bit for the dome to get out of the way (remember how I said it was directly overhead?). It’s a real nice sight, and I am extremely anxious to go somewhere dark and use my newfound knowledge of constellations to really take in the sky.

And, you know, something about this whole celestial endeavor must be doing something good to me. I feel so much better than I did last night. The optimistic Tom has returned, I hope. I do apologize for yesterday’s post. I figure I’ll feel that way again every now and then, but I suspect I’ve found at least one way to help me feel better about things. And in the end, it’s really just attitude that matters, I think.

I apologize in advance for this less-than-cheerful post.

It is Friday night and I feel awful. This happens more frequently than I’d care to admit.

You might ask me: “You study the cosmos. Doesn’t that make you feel insignificant?”
And I reply, in my probably naive, grasping-for-something-more way: “I feel a drive to be connected with the Universe. By learning about everything knowable, I gain a closeness to the distant, and I become intimate with infinity itself.”
But in truth, when I step back and look at myself, the things that truly make me feel insignificant are the connections I see between people — and how they’re often absent from my life.

Is this loneliness? Is it simple sexual frustration? Is it because I’m afraid to reach out to others? Is it due to a general disillusionment of the motives and mannerisms of my peers? In my hurry to grow up, have I left something within myself unaddressed?

I feel contempt. I feel resentment. Boy, do I feel resentment. Towards a lot of things. I resent having poor, not-well-educated parents, especially when attending a school filled with descendants of wealthy intellectuals. I resent the unstable home life I had to experience throughout my teenage years, and I resent the psychological scarring it leaves with me even once I’m freed of that situation. I resent the sophisticated pre-college educations that my classmates received, when I had to put up with largely mediocre teaching and a brainless mass of “peers”. I resent the fact that I once believed myself to be especially intelligent, only to have that belief crushed out of me last year. Maybe what I resent most of all is the fact that I still feel all this resentment.

Perhaps I don’t deserve the poetic words I said of myself. To “become intimate with infinity itself” — is that really what drives me? I think my greatest fear is that, in truth, I’m only driven by the hope of escaping from my negative emotions.

But… at least there’s hope, isn’t there?