I wrote a rather long entry here.  But then I realized that I still had not reached a final concensus on how I felt about the issue on my mind.  Or perhaps I’ve realized that expressing my feelings in such a way is not going to make life easier.  Expression is no subsitute for reality.  The subsitute for reality is … fiction.

Goals (in reverse order)

I am writing this in several places in order to have them stare at me every so often.

-Academic Agreement

-Prob/Stats

-Music Hum

-learn LaTeX (the real thing, not just LyX). I’ve realized that while it’s all possible in LyX, it’s also all hidden, thus making it almost impossible to learn to create more complicated documents. Once I have a good LaTeX background, I can perhaps use LyX to make life simpler…if I still believe that.

-Research!!!:

1)Document code fully

2)Read Systems Bio book

3)Main work

the problem

I think I’ve finally figured out the problem. I have nothing to look forward to. I have ambitions and dreams, but in the immediate future I don’t really have any plans. I never go on vacations anywhere, I just work. Work is what I know…but I hate just working. So I slack off. But then I think about my work. Then when I have no work, I’m bored and I look for work, but I don’t want to do it and so I let myself down. I need to get away, go somewhere with friends, away from family, and just rest. But that doesn’t seem anywhere near to my future. I lack funds, I have few friends who’d be willing to plan anything, even something small and relatively inexpensive with me, and I lack parents who want me to have a life (well, that’s not true, but they’re really way too overprotective and questioning over what I do). So, that being said, I have my present state, and I have in my mind some semblance of a future state. In between, I don’t dream. I lie awake and wonder.

College Education

Where should I focus? My mind is pushed in so many directions that I end up with hopeless tangles wherever I go. I can tell that I will need to take big risks in the future, but I have no aptitude in developing a proper algorithm for risk taking. Grad school? It’s so far away, yet it’s probably not too far off. Except I think maybe I want to take a year off and I dunno…breathe in a little air…study a little something of my own. But what I need is money. And so I get a job, and so my time for figuring this out is cut to pieces. What I want is to be in charge. It’s always been my dream to start a business. But I have no ideas for how. I simply lack sparks. Oh can’t I just borrow a spark from someone? You see, sparks are hard to come by. And yet, they cannot be borrowed either. I will…eventually… have to deal with this. In the meantime I have homework to attend to.

Thoughts

I like the things I value in life. I acknowledge that, in practice, there are things to work on, sure, but at least I can say that they way I live my life is a good one. I do not judge, I do not insult, I do not hate, I do not have only one goal, one path, or one destination, I see more to reason than pure cold-hearted calculation. And people like me as a person.

That being said, living the life is far from easy, far from complete, but I can be sure that it is not a bad way to be.

Happy New Year

2008 on the way, and a good start to it. Spent the whole day today talking with Stephanie. And a decent amount of work has gotten done. What’s left to say….

I was thinking today, about my life. Reading “The Kite Runner” will do that to you. And I was thinking about how I have all this education, all these amazing friends, a girlfriend I love, and opportunity at every corner. And so much uncertainty about my future…. So, I was thinking, and I thought some sad things, and then some good things, and I came to a picture of my life. A picture of threads growing from all directions, representing what I have and what I’m building. I am getting an education, I am making friends, I am in a relationship, I have social and professional responsibilities, and I have another year during which I will eventually (not too soon from now) loose the right to call myself a teenager.

So, I am an adult. And throughout my life, I have found that no matter how old I grow, it gets no easier to balance the things in my life. It gets harder. I barely have time for my new friends and my old friends at once…they all want a piece of me, meanwhile I have my schoolwork, my family, my girlfriend, my work, my research, my thoughts. I don’t have time, I can’t give you my full day, I use my vacation to catch up on a long list I have of things to do that I am too busy to get to during the school year. But, back to what I’ve realized. When I concentrate on academics, my grades rise. When I focus on a social life, I gain friends. When I focus on a relationship…not in a desperate way, but in a true and thoughtful way, with a bit of luck, I can get a girlfriend. Actually, that happened when I stopped putting so much desperate focus on it, and decided to let things happen as they may.  But it is a sort of focus because it requires focused understanding and acceptance.  And I say all these things generally, but I honestly couldn’t be happier with Stephanie right now. Well, now I have all this, I feel that I can maintain it. I feel that, the next step is the last thread: the career thread. I’ve been working hard on my resume, and I feel that it’s time to start my career, if not yet bring it to its peak…of course not yet. But I’ve been worried about my future, and it is time to move on and complete myself, and in so doing complete the structure that will serve to start my complete life and all the ups and downs that come with it and which I cannot even fathom in any sort of concrete way.  This is how: I take the 4 strands I have (academics, social life, romance, career), and I weave them into an unbreakable knot. This knot, depending on how carefully it is weaved will become either a happy life, or a failed one. I will need both the luck and inner feeling that has gotten me this far, and the wisdom that I have gained from them, from trial and error, and from my parents. And this is the year. This is the time.  To start.

The more I see, the more I know, the more I do, the more I am.

Somewhere along the line, this blog went downhill.  I suppose it correlates to the fact that I have little time or desire to spend on it these days.  So ok, I’m no worse off than anyone else, and I’m doing ok by most standards.  What’s left to write?  I don’t know.  If I think of something, I’ll write it.  But I think I’m going to take a break until such a need comes.  Yes, I think it went downhill when my posts had no real motivation or point to them.  Right.  Now to get things done.

Why I write (Take 2)

I write:

A little bit for myself.

A little bit for others to know who I am.

But mostly for me to know who I am—-This is also why I think.

Why do I write here?

I have no idea.

I have learned a lot.  I am unfulfilled.