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(Thanks to Kasi for this one.)

I recently dis­cov­ered that gui­tar chords are the same as ukulele chords, which opens up the reper­toire of avail­able songs con­sid­er­ably. It’s a shame that most online sheet music is in the form of gui­tar tabs, which don’t trans­late to the ukulele. Still, I have enough songs to prac­tice that I can switch to another when I get bored with one. I find it inter­est­ing that since the ukulele requires two hands doing dif­fer­ent things, I run into a bot­tle­neck in hand dex­ter­ity; I can pluck or strum well enough with my right hand, but I can’t get the chords with my left hand fast enough, or vice versa depend­ing on the song. I have to prac­tice each hand indi­vid­u­ally, which is so unlike any other instru­ment I’ve played before.

I have a tele­scope now. My instruc­tor was able to get a great pack­age deal for stu­dents in his astropho­tog­ra­phy course for a 114mm reflec­tor, along with a track­ing motor¹ and illu­mi­nated retic­ule². I put it together today, and it was really excit­ing to be assem­bling all these pre­ci­sion parts to make my first tele­scope, a moment I dreamed about since I was a kid. Astronomy is much more com­pli­cated than I expected. Much of it is sim­i­lar to pho­tog­ra­phy in terms of the equip­ment used (although the terms and con­trols are dif­fer­ent), but now you also have to know your sub­ject, your ori­en­ta­tion, and your weather con­di­tions, not to men­tion being at the right place.

I’m feel­ing bet­ter about things. Maybe it’s the promise of warmer weather. I’m wait­ing for the day I can drive my car with the win­dows down and san­dals on. Those are the days of house par­ties, camp­ing, drinks on patios, and first kisses. Soon, it will be the time of stargaz­ing, bar­be­cues, and who knows.

A few peo­ple have sug­gested my depres­sion may have been due to a chem­i­cal imbal­ance, which I never ruled out. Even though it was one e-mail on that Thursday morn­ing that trig­gered all those bad thoughts, I nor­mally would have been able to han­dle it bet­ter. There wasn’t an imme­di­ate impact. Just a grad­ual sag­ging that got worse and worse through­out the day until I was com­pletely dejected at night. After that, I got a blis­ter on my neck from stand­ing in the shower for too long with water that was too hot. Now that I think about it, I com­pletely under­stand why I felt that way, but it seems kind of silly.

Joe Lencioni also rec­om­mended to me a free pro­gram called Flux — appro­pri­ately head­lined as “Software to make your life bet­ter” — that grad­u­ally changes the colour tem­per­a­ture and bright­ness of your mon­i­tors to mimic the set­ting sun. It’s also local­ized, so it knows when the sun sets for your area and changes auto­mat­i­cally. I’m pretty sure it’s made it eas­ier for me to fall asleep at night.

I’m in such a strange phase right now. I don’t know where I am. When I look back on this time in my life, I won­der whether I’ll look back with nos­tal­gia, pity, or regret.

1. To move the tele­scope at the same rota­tion of the earth to pre­vent blur in astropho­tog­ra­phy. [↑]
2. To keep track of a guide star in cal­i­brat­ing the track­ing motor. [↑]