We’ll see if this continues to be a positive development, but I already feel good about the shape of things to come.

I was being carried through the air

Beneath me, I gazed upon

hilly, glowing cities half-clothed in clouds of mist

an almost ethereal quality

And with a turn of the neck upwards,

my eyes found a still-richer city: the city of stars in the sky, more numerous than I’d ever dreamt.

Those seemingly immortal beacons of light that outline Orion;

the familiar angles of his hunting dog

the meandering but determined river of light, steadfast in its self-same, looping course

The stars told me I was still on my own world, but the experience suggested otherwise.

Until I dare return to this realm of the sky, I can only dream of what wonders it holds.

My sophomore year of college was characterized by an outward-looking-ness, an intense, conscious questioning of myself and the world and my future and my goals and my failures.
And as I’ve noted on this blog (in the drafts, if nowhere else), this property was drained out of me (at times painfully) over the course of the past year and a half.

This summer is acting as a chance for me to catch up with myself, be restful yet productive, and for me to seriously re-evaluate everything all over again, before the onslaught of senior year begins. And I think it’s working, to a certain degree. I’m pursuing a semi-serious hobby; learning how to effectively structure my time; and developing good, laid-back friendships – things I’m really happy about. And life is not completely peaches: I still have my fair bit of insecurities; doubts and fears about the future; frustrations about myself; but when I get into a speculative mood, these troubles don’t seem as pressing, and all that seems to matter is that I approach the future earnestly and with an open mind, so that I can make the best of what comes.

(I should probably use less semicolons too.)
(And parenthetical remarks.)

So, wish me luck, readers (if there are any of you left), and I’ll see you on the other side.

The end goal, of course, is to play like this:

Stairway on classical guitar

My hair is clearly too long for me to not know how to play guitar.

More to come.

For example, I’ve been working tangentially on a piece of code almost all night that will help me remove systematic errors from my dataset (research-y stuff), but instead of making much progress, I’ve poured lots of time into trying to get a better understanding of both software development and a mathematical curiosity called “robust statistics”. I’m a little irritated that I’m not as far as I wanted to be, but I feel like this was worthwhile procrastinations.

Staying up very late every night to work on a problem set, but not finish it 100%, while failing to take advantage of spare time during the day; tumbling through the weeks sleep-deprived but unable to turn extra time on the weekends into a swap space to regain my footing; always busy-busy-busy, but never doing anything right.

I’d hoped that I was past this, especially since my courseload is not completely oppressive by most objective standards. And yet, these painful positive feedback loops have gotten me again. Damn. I’ve even reformed my Internet habits significantly, and become more effective at how I do course readings (namely, printing everything and avoiding computers whenever I can). I’m a junior, for god’s sake – how the hell have I not learned how to manage my academic life by now?

So – how do you do it? How does somebody who feels oppressively busy and under-productive become someone who plans time effectively, gets things done ahead of time, sleeps and exercises and eats regularly, and stays happy and successful with a good sense of perspective? I feel like I’ve made philosophical gains in some of these areas but I just can’t drag myself out of the rut I’m in.

Let’s hope that Spring Break gives me a chance to reset my clock and pick up some of these habits.

Anyway, I’m gonna spend most of the rest of the night (morning?) writing some code before I go to sleep. I’ll hopefully wake up to a nice completed book of plots, send it off to my boss, and sleep in physics.

Charles got a job offer! With some mid-westy folks! That’s exciting, and he won’t even have his soul removed by the evil New York banking oligarchy. woo.

This is the first time I’ve used QuickPress, that’s kinda win.

I think we’re giving up. I’m gonna go back to my room and listen to Give Up by the Postal Service!

Ramble on ramble on ramble on.

I don’t typically exhibit such strong emotions towards my schoolwork, but problem sets and me are not getting along. I look forward to the point in my life when I am free to never do a problem set again.

On the flip side, I really enjoy working on research projects when I feel like I have some emotional stake in the outcome. I think I do better work all around when I know that I’m working toward more than just a grade.
Case in point: I’m having incredible difficulty getting very far on this astronomy problem set, but feel really stimulated putting any work into my project proposal.

I’ll observe this trend going forward.
/blurb