Monthly Archives: December 2002

Thoughts On New Years Eve

I haven’t been able to get any read­ing done. I stayed over at Aaron’s the night before, and we spent the night play­ing Gamecube and XBox with his broth­er. We went shop­ping and saw Lord of the Rings when we woke up a few hours lat­er.

My par­ents bought me a great cook­book for Christmas, so I’ll be attempt­ing a few recipes. Unfortunately, I can only try a few of the recipes, since most of them serve four or more. Jamie Oliver always seemed sexy in a dorky sort of way, until I real­ized that it was his mas­tery in the kitchen, and the loss of his mul­let.

I’ve real­ized that lis­ten­ing to The Gentle Waves fills me with a sort of con­tent­ment and hap­pi­ness. Their music is not bit­ter­sweet or trite, and some­how calm­ing and mov­ing at the same time. I think I might end up keep­ing their songs sim­ply because I don’t have any­thing quite like them.

I’ve been in such a strange, unde­fin­able mood late­ly. It feels like I’m apa­thet­ic to every­thing, while the future seems hope­ful. It’s prob­a­bly just a mix­ture of every­thing that hap­pened in the last term, the odd ups and dys­thymic downs.

To Be Immortal

Sometimes it feels like there’s too much to think about, too much to won­der about, too much to under­stand. It seems like I’ll nev­er be able to catch up with all my thoughts. There are too many things that take me too long to know. Yet I’m still learn­ing, or try­ing, at least, every day.

I wish I had all the time in the world to fig­ure things out, to become wis­er or more intel­li­gent.

It would be worth it.

Edulcorating the Sour, Enlightening the Ignorant

I had the chance to expe­ri­ence some strong, uncere­bral con­vic­tion from some­one I, unfor­tu­nate­ly, did­n’t have much respect for. I imag­ine that it was caused by a refusal to under­stand any­thing out­side of her frame of mind. She seemed so zeal­ous in her opin­ion, so upset at any men­tion of the con­trary, that any attempt to loosen her resolve proved to be more than fruit­less.

It seemed as if she was mak­ing up for her igno­rance in strength of opin­ion. In order to seem as if she was knowl­edge­able about the sub­ject, she became extreme­ly opin­ion­at­ed.

How can one argue with such a dif­fi­cult per­son? My answer is sim­ple; I don’t. Argument is some­thing that I’ve giv­en up on com­plete­ly, in gen­er­al. I now find dis­cus­sion, as opposed to argu­ment, to be an exer­cise in loquaci­ty and con­ver­sa­tion. At my age, it seems that most peo­ple have sur­passed what Erikson believed to be the iden­ti­ty vs. role con­fu­sion stage. They have become con­fi­dent in their beliefs, and there is lit­tle that can be done to show them a new view. Of course, there are always a few peo­ple who can keep a beau­ti­ful­ly open mind, accept­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any­thing, per­haps some­thing as adven­tur­ous as admit­ting they are wrong.

There always seems to be a fine line between some­one who is opin­ion­at­ed for shal­low, inse­cure rea­sons, and some­one who is opin­ion­at­ed valid­ly. Unless one attempts to under­stand both cas­es, they both seem the same.

The adven­ture becomes not the enlight­en­ment of the for­mer, but the dis­tinc­tion between the two.

Pressure

I just found out that I failed my last algo­rithms mid-term. It just seems like no mat­ter how hard I try, I always end up fail­ing. It seems so worth­less, all the effort I put into my school­work. Even all my study­ing for my cryp­tog­ra­phy exam will all be for naught.

It piss­es me the fuck off. I feel so angry just think­ing about it. This is my worst term to date. I have a good chance of fail­ing three of my five finals.

Sometimes I feel like I need this. I need to fail com­plete­ly, so I can learn to not do it again. Normally, I need to fail my midterms so that I don’t fail my finals. It cre­ates a pres­sure on me to do well, and the pres­sure works. But this is pres­sure on a much larg­er scale, because it could get me kicked out of the pro­gram.

It feels as if I need this big­ger pres­sure to get on with my life. I real­ly need some kind of change, some kind of inci­dent to hap­pen that can gal­va­nize the sta­t­ic that seems to be con­trol­ling my life.

Oddly enough, I seem to have a back-up plan for every fail­ure pos­si­ble; I can take anoth­er course to make up for fail­ing cryp­tog­ra­phy, I can take algo­rithms at Carleton if I fail it this term, and I can appeal my sec­ond fail­ure of net­work­ing to the dean.

And yet, every­thing feels so hope­less. I think I just need it to hap­pen. So that I can move on. So that there can be change.

So that I can get bet­ter.

Post LAN

I feel so damn tired. My fin­gers aren’t work­ing cor­rect­ly. They feel like they’re stick­ing togeth­er. The LAN par­ty end­ed soon­er than expect­ed, since every­one was feel­ing so damn tired. Aaron had to leave ear­ly because his ride left ear­ly (around 3:00 in the morn­ing) so he got in a few good hours of sol­id gam­ing. I end­ed up leav­ing around 8:00 am, and I was able to stay awake until 11:00 am. I slept for about six hours until I awoke from a phone call. I’m hop­ing to stay up for as long as pos­si­ble, then crash out of my bed so that my sys­tem won’t be too fucked.

I’m ques­tion­ing whether the entire par­ty was worth it, since I think that the two days spent at the LAN and recov­er­ing may make the dif­fer­ence in pass­ing and fail­ing my last two finals. The whole thing end­ed rather unsat­is­fac­to­ri­ly, due to the untime­ly depar­ture of four peo­ple, so the momen­tum of the ener­gy died down. No regrets.

I found out that the cab­in that Aaron and I were going to rent with some of the guys in January is under new man­age­ment. They have a new pol­i­cy that does­n’t allow rent­ing to peo­ple under 25. We found anoth­er cab­in that will be more expen­sive, but it has an indoor pool, jacuzzi, and full kitchen. It’ll end up cost­ing about $170 alone, but it’s prob­a­bly worth it, since I’m expect­ed to be too sore to do any­thing after one day of board­ing.