This is harder than I thought

...or I've just grown to have higher expectations of myself and what constitutes blog-worthy material. I gamely jumped back into doing this regularly again, and while I don't regret that in the least, I have to admit that I thought I'd be coming up with better posts in much less time that I've been taking with these recent ones.

Perhaps it's just that spending much more than an hour or two of effort on blog posts seems like such an alien concept to me. Isn't a blog a place to be entirely self-indulgent and not care about what readers (if any) would think? 

No, I don't think so. At least I don't want this blog to be such a place again.

On navel-gazing, lack of motivation, fear of failure, and personal development.

Shortly after I started blogging/journalling more than five years ago, I've held onto the assumption that if only I could understand my self enough to write about my situation accurately and comprehensively, it'd make dealing with it, if not exactly easy, at least seem possible. A worthy enough goal.

And so, many times when I would feel sad and frustrated and clueless, I'd dutifully attempt to chronicle my thoughts on whatever issues happened to be bothering me presently. I have to say, this resulted in some of my most cringe-worthy journal entries. Reading the earnest spoutings of a naive earlier self is embarrassing, to say the least.

However, while understanding is part of the battle, it's not really the part that I have the most trouble with. I'm too good at rationalizing. It's too easy for me to get caught up in concocting explanations for all the different aspects of the situation, without getting any closer to a resolution. In pessimistic moods, I can overthink and dwell on the perceived consequences of failure even before taking any action.

I suppose writing this now is mostly just more of the same, but somehow I have to believe that I know better know, hah! (Obvious spoiler: No, I don't.)

Ever since I've been self-aware enough to doubt and second-guess, I've been frustrated with my lack of motivation. Sure, I can understand, or at least drum up reason upon reason, why I should be doing something, but the punch, the visceral feeling of desire has rarely been there. All the reasons for all the different things convince me of nothing but my own confusion. No changes occur. I continue to drift, holding down a vague dissatisfaction.

“But knowing what I don’t want to do doesn’t help me figure out what I do want to do. I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don’t have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That’s my problem now. I can’t find the image.” - Toru Okada, protagonist of Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Sometimes it scares me to think that this is true for me as well. That I could do just about anything if somebody made me. What would that make me, who would I be then? Other times, it just gives me a feeling of peace, thinking that whatever happens, I'll be able to deal. Blissful passivity.

Should I be smacking myself in the face?

When there's a will, there's a way. What do you do when you can see many different ways, but really can't conjure the will to follow any of them? It's easy to say, try them on, and see what fits, but again, where is the will? As I see it, I can generate possibilities rationally, but seemingly lack the capability to become emotionally invested in any of them, to effectively and consistently bridge the gap between intention and action.

I've been on a self-help kick lately, and, I've got to say, that stuff isn't quite as bad as it used to seem to me. A lot of it is useless fluff, to be sure, but there are genuine insights to be had. And sure, maybe a lot of it is common sense. But as I continue to explore the personal development literature, I get the feeling that these guys are saying essentially the same things not because these things are trivial, but precisely because they're true. But it's hard to swallow common sense when it's coming from someone else, and it's easy to fool ourselves and say, yeah, yeah, we understand all that - even though we're not really living as if we do. And so they have to repeat themselves until we really really get it.

Someone just told me, hey, you're just afraid of failure because your fragile pride can't handle it. I have to say that I agree. I've never had to deal with real failure before, perhaps because I've so assiduously avoided even the slightest risk of it. Consciously or unconsciously, sometimes I tend to be too focused on failure to the point of paralysis, complacency, mediocrity.

But, yes, there is no success without failure. I won't develop as a person without making mistakes. My challenge is to get up my courage, and learn to deal with failure while focusing my thoughts on success. (Actually, the more immediate challenge is to convince myself. But we already knew that.)

I have returned.

Saying goodbye to Plurk

These past few weeks, I've been mostly over at Plurk, and any urge to blog was quickly worn down by a barrage of tiny little micro-entries (i.e., plurks). While satisfying enough, it was beginning to feel a bit too stifling.

Plurk works well as a sort of cross between a chatroom, a forum, and a blog. The interface is very user-friendly and quirky enough to be interesting, with the karma point system and the ubiquitous dancing bananas. The interface makes it easy (and quite addicting!) to keep up with new plurks and responses to plurks.

I would say it works best when you have a bunch of good friends along with you - Plurk makes for a good way to keep in touch with and amuse one another. So while I did have fun watching friends interact with their friends, but I don't think it really worked all that well for me, personally.

With just barely over a semester left in college, I probably would find it more useful than ever to get my thoughts in order by writing them out. So I'm quitting Plurk and trying to get back to regular blogging.



Saying hello to "old friends"

These past few days have been almost totally unproductive. I spent my time on Plurk, reading Blade of the Immortal, and playing Monsters' Den (and Monsters' Den 2). I could come up with excuses, but I'll leave them out for now, for brevity.

I've been in a research-work rut for this entire semester. Although I do attend the weekly seminar, I've also been utterly dry, production-wise. Sure, I've been reading up on my own, but I can't seem to get started on an actual project by myself. Perhaps it's time to admit this and ask for a little help from my adviser. I've only been putting it off because I wanted to be able to talk with him only when I had something to offer myself, but as it happened I still have nothing, even after a couple of months on my own.

As to my classes, they're manageable enough, but I haven't been getting the most out of them. I will be getting good grades, perhaps even 1.0's, but only because the professors are letting us off easy. Even with high grades in Physics 152 and 170, I still know next to nothing about statistical mechanics or solid state physics. Again, this is due to a lack of motivation and effort on my part: had I studied harder and solved more problems on my own, I could've gained a better understanding of what the heck we were supposed to be learning.

So, like I said, nothing much is new. Hello, old friends. I am afraid to say, I do not seem to be better-equipped than before to meet you; we shall have to make do with the usual routine of frustration and regret.



The future?

I have taken the liberty of preparing this idealized schematic for how I'd like to proceed:

BLOGGING -> SELF-UNDERSTANDING -> MOTIVATION -> EFFECTIVENESS -> SUCCESS

(Realistically, the first link is the most suspect. I've been blogging for years, and look where it got me. Nowhere.)

Journal Entry Number Three

Replay

So these past two days have been eerily like last week's Wednesday and Thursday. Heavy rains on Wednesday, class suspension on Thursday. Normally this would be a good thing, but I don't know.

Our classes that are scheduled to meet on Mondays and Thursdays are falling behind. And there are two more Mondays of no classes scheduled this August alone: 20 and 27, I think. This is bad. This is just going to mean that we'll be scrambling to finish the topics when the end of the semester nears.

Also we were supposed to have an exam last Monday, which was moved to today, then to tomorrow, and now it's scheduled next week. I haven't studied yet, I suppose I should. It's actually a bit uncomfortable when exams are postponed, sometimes. Coupled with the no classes today. It seems like today should not have been a break, but it turned out to be one (with me just reading Butlerian Jihad almost all this afternoon). So, it's a bit odd.

(Well, despite it being a far cry from the original Dune series, I'm still reading the next book in this prequel series: The Machine Crusade. I don't know, I guess I just want to find out what happens. And they aren't really horrible books, once you take them for what they are: action-packed space opera masquerading under the Dune name for greater sales.)



No News

Well, nothing much of interest happened today, future self. Tried to study for the Optics exam (that was supposed to be tomorrow), but when somebody told me it was postponed, well...

I should really resist the temptation to go back to bed after getting up in the morning. I end up taking naps, and basically just lazing around almost all day, thinking that I really should get up and do something else, but not doing so.



Blogging

I have 570 entries on my Tabulas. (Link leads to the monthly archives.) I've kept it up for more than three years already, which seems like quite a long and, well, varied time, in retrospect.

It's quite fun to go back and consider that length of time, that period of my life that I've sporadically blogged about. I guess looking at my archives is one of the best ways for me to realize that I really do think that blogging is worthwhile.

I always get a renewed motivation to blog, just realizing that I already have a relatively extensive archive of the previous years. I can just imagine having an even greater archive, in the future. Wouldn't it be fun (or, at least, instructive) to be able to get into your past self's mind? Shoddy memory will not completely defeat me.

Even if I don't always remember exactly what I was thinking when I wrote all those past blog entries, just the feeling of resonance (for lack of a better term) is a bit nostalgic, a bit comforting, a sort of reminder that life goes on, that I'm still here.

I guess looking back would always make one curious about what the future is going to be like.



Journalling, Three!

So, I suppose "journalling" doesn't really have to be that much different from how I've been blogging, all this time. I suppose what's different is that I'm becoming more conscious about what things, exactly, I want to make a record of. It's becoming more intentionally a record of things that I think my future self would find interesting.

So the compromise is, I suppose, a bit of making these entries more... presentable? Although I'm not always conscious of doing so, I think that in these years of keeping a public blog my blogging "voice" has adjusted to take into account that, hey, other people actually read what I write here.

I've actually tried to keep a pen and paper journal, and, yeah, it's much different from writing something here. Sometimes I feel that I'm lazier, there, about being correct or precise or not redundant or not obscure. Which is to be expected, I suppose.



It's Getting a Bit Longer than Usual

I wonder if I should just split these sections into separate entries. It'd seem weird to me, but maybe eventually I'll get used to it? Or, hmm. Delay posting about things until I have something more significant or thought-out to say about them. Decisions, decisions. (Probably I'll just end up being too lazy to do anything different from what I've been used to doing, anyway.)



A Final Note, Promise!

I seem to have slipped back into my old blogging voice. Most interesting.

No I will not look over this entry and edit it. (P.S. I couldn't resist putting in that space.)

I don't seem to feel the same drive to blog as I used to. Now, I mostly have to force myself to go and write something here. I wonder why.

Partly, I suppose, it's because I've been busier lately. And also I'd stopped blogging regularly for quite a while.

Mostly I have a shoddy memory. I can't remember my childhood that clearly, except for some isolated instances and images. Like this yellow plastic truck that I used to play with. I can't visualize it exactly, but I can sort of summon up some vague sensory impressions: how it must've looked like, how big it felt under my fingers back then, how it felt to be pushing it along. Also when I was a kid I think I was not as hairy.

So to help my memory a little I really should develop the habit of journaling.

[start TV commercial person voice]
Because every life, even yours, is worth chronicling.
[/end TV commercial person voice]

I might as well start now. But not in this entry. For purposes of, I don't know, neatness, I'm going to separate the journal-type entries from the, er, others. Like this one and most of the recent ones.

Yes, I think I will go do that now.

Idea dump.

I will begin jotting down thoughts and ideas that I'd been meaning to blog about but haven't had the time to. Now.

I like how having a blog makes it more likely for me to actually think about how to express things, i.e. observations, realizations, perceptions, possible insights. Since there is now a possible venue for talking about these things, I become justified in thinking about them? That seems about right.

The only problem is that, well, I'm still in a bit of a time management mess. Like right now. I was all set on doing this blog post, but I got distracted by this other blog, Cosmic Variance. This led to some other mostly clueless pokings about in the physics section of the intarwubs.

And now I'm too sleepy to continue, good night. Yawns.