Rambling out

Headed out of home for no big reason in particular.  The place was a mess: two unruly (one more unruly than another) teenagers romping around the house, one hijacking the piano with his somewhat-self-learned prowess that cannot comprehend the keyboard and taking down the whole house with the noise and the broken repertoires that are almost unbearable, to the extent that I would never listen to the certain classical music that it happens to be a victim of.  There is more than one; I just do not know the name of the scores, or the mere mentioning of the names will keep me awake at night.

The coffeeshop in which I am in right now is not very much better, either.  The raucous, poorly played scores on the piano is substituted with the soul music turned up a little too high.  It is not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but I was never a big fan of loud places.  I came here to do… what, exactly?  I dropped off something I have sold on eBay (you would not believe the things people would buy if you offered) and as I did not want to simply go back home and listen to the kids yelling and piano thumping, here I am, with a vague plan but not specific ones.  Despite the music and lack of Internet, the place is actually quite bearable, with air conditioning set almost just right (the place is actually a little chilly, which I think is just enough to keep me from falling asleep) and power plug conveniently located near the free seat.

What did I come here to do?  I roamed around the bookshelves after getting a cheap cup of iced coffee, the bitterness of too much beans in the filter basket dampened—in all too subtle a manner—by the half-and-half, which I am sure was more than how much I should have put and tastes like it has been out for one too many hours.  Manga I have been waiting for is here, for a few months in fact; the HTML book I looked for last time is still missing in action; and the book Eat This, Not That! continues to tempt me with its unique mix of concise information and voice that refuses to keep me bored.  Well, the layout and color pictures probably have something to do with it as well, but content is ultimately what matters, I think.  Then I realized that I vowed earlier this month that I would not buy anything unnecessary until I got a job (never mind the iced coffee, I need the caffeine if I were to have a day remotely productive), and as for JavaScript and HTML, well, I remembered that the library, in in its infinite wisdom of being funded by my tuition and by the state government subsidies, I have access to the relatively good source for learning the computer codes for no cost.  Well, it is probably not free; I have partially paid for it, is all.

But that does not answer the question; why am I here?  I have no real intention to buy a book, but I have the 40% off coupons.  I also have a couple of almost-filled Moleskine notebooks, some printouts for jobs, and binder from the old career service program I have taken a few months back.  I also have a journal, probably to serve as a first draft material for this—but it has not been used like that.  Perhaps, then, it would be good idea to ponder about the future while I do not have anything better to do.  But then, I have to fill out an application for Delta (I appear to be on the short list for summer job, or… well, I can dream, right?) when I get home (remember, no Internet, and I need to do this online) and other jobs, I probably have little hope for.

It appears that I do not have much to do here.  Perhaps I should just go home…?

Next steps

Had another meeting with career advisor a few hours ago.  It was not bad, what with talking about making connections with people in the fields of my interest and thinking of whether computer science or CIS is better for me (shocking: they are about evenly matched, in a way).  I have a plan—a list of things to do—written out here.  Hopefully I will get on with it and do more things than what I usually do.

Right now, I am not sure about how to make phone calls.  My advisor—oh, for crying out loud, let’s call her Stacy for the sake of convenience (I will henceforth call her Stacy throughout the blog, as I know no other Stacys)—wants to keep calling people over the phone as a practice to real-life situations; she tells me that it would be better for me to do so right now to get used to it, than for me to get out into the real world just to fail because I have not had any experiences with phone calls.  She is right—I should begin giving phone calls.  How about making myself more comfortable with talking first?  I know that I have made some mistakes over the past, and much would have been remedied if I had better conversational skills.  And I had better build up those skills and practice pronunciations quickly, too; Stacy went ahead and contacted a bunch of alumni with computer science and CIS majors.

I have so much things to do, and that is not counting the job hunt.  Amazing.

Training, but which one?

It has been a few weeks since I began taking a break from the job as a “sales associate” at that “sandwich place.”  While I am bored pretty much all the time from staying at home all the time, I am easily able to find something to do.  I could be playing a game or two, or I could be surfing a web, shopping for a certain something that I really should not be shopping for. 

Losing the only source of income is pretty terrible, really, even when one lives in his parents’ house and do not have a traditional “bill” to pay; what I lack in home mortgage or car payment or utility bills, I make up for the credit card debt that I have accumulated over the past few years, owing to the fact that I have been living beyond my means—and that does not take much when the biweekly paycheck during the time in which I have taken up most of my debt was something along the lines of $130.  Can you blame me?  I worked with rather small hourly pay (but at least above the minimum wage) for the measly 8 hours a week.  It was a cushy job, sure, but it just did not have enough hours.

Now, I am looking for another job to pick up the slack and such.  Career advisor has been helpful to meet with, albeit a little… how can I say this, becoming less and less effective?  She seems to have reached her limit of effectiveness.  Nonetheless, thanks to her, my major has (once again) narrowed down to computer science and computer information systems (CIS).  That was predictable, seeing as I did not want to transfer (“who would want a student that is a fifth-year undergraduate?” is what I told my advisor) and I really did not want to give in and take my leave and go for a vocational school instead (it simply looked like a colossal waste of time and money).  With that in mind, and with the thoughts on the skills I currently have, I began searching for jobs, part-time and otherwise.

Let me say that it did not go quite as planned.  The initial search was actually better than expected:  from the school’s in-house career search engine, I actually was somewhat fruitful in finding the jobs.  The problem from it, though, was this:  the jobs that I thought I was qualified for… well, they are not, really.  English tutoring jobs require me to graduate and hold some kind of degree first.  IT jobs generally expect me to know SQL or PHP (usually both).  And other jobs… they look pretty good on the surface, but I am sure they are competitive positions with many others applying for the same thing.

This prompted me to go ahead and look for some books.  What I am talking about are, of course, training books—the dime-a-dozen books (except a hell of a lot more expensive) about computer languages and such.  Here is where I am split.  So far, I figured that I need to learn HTML (which I know already, kind of, but am really rusty), CSS (also rusty), PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript, and there is also the issue of going through a kind of crash-course of MS Office.  I have a lot to do.

So where to start?  I have a hell of a lot of things to do aside from this, too—I need to turn in my resume to a lot of prospective companies.  I have to set up a server, look for jobs or internships—it is almost overwhelming.

I am tempted to lie down and think about things later, but that can only work for so long…

It’s a strange day when….

… you find a post office out of nowhere,

eat in a complete stranger’s house,

and trigger an alarm that once belonged to an old lady that owned the car before me.

 

The thing’s still ringing in my ear. Enough excitement for one day?

Out of job and looking for another

I am sitting around the library again, after meeting with the career advisor.  I suppose the whole fiasco with choosing major is drawing to a close:  it is back to CS or CIS.  A bit of discussion ensued: does it really matter which course I should consider?  The advisor tells me that, ultimately, it is the skills they expect from a job candidate, not the degree or prestige; “how able are you,” if I may.  Seeing as how I am rather pressured to get to the graduation and out of the house, I am tempted to simply stick to biology and graduate; with about a year of keeping away from the field, however, would do nothing good about it, nor would it work when the last class I took was a disaster with failing grades.  So, biology is out.

This is based on the little table that I filled out earlier.  Sure, it was quite simple and did not have some things that I valued (environmentalism?), it gave me a general things of interest and general fields of interest, and had them mix and match.  Of those, three were out—but only based on whether or not the school offered it, which is not quite a good idea to do, but I had to have some kind of constraint or I would not be making any decisions whatsoever.

There, we also talked about the summer jobs.  Of part-time jobs or internships, she said that internship was better thing to do, but it is also something that is harder to get, due to the fact that I am in a transition period and also I have acted a little too late.  So, I have a few summer and part-time jobs on hand that I could do, and it is basically for me to decide.  She did help me with the resume (and what to do with it), and suggested that I talk to some people in the fields of interest.

So, why a job?  At first, I wanted to find a second job to supplement the first part-time job at the sandwich shop with ever-dwindling hours.  Now, though, the job is all but gone for the summer, prompting me to get a new one that can replace it.  Seeing as I still have not taken care of the debt that I have, it is a good choice for me to keep working.  It would have been better if I did not go to school and instead took some time off, but here it is.  Job market is supposedly very though, though; I was surprised to see any job openings at all.  Does this mean that I am going to meet hellish amount of competition?  Oh boy.  I did not want that at all.

Whatever.  I need to keep working, and that is what I will do.  What to do at home… fix the resume, personalize them for companies, and send them off.  Call the IT department at school, ask them about internship or part-time job.  Inquire about the job at College of Law.  Contact the professors I had this year.  This will be a busy week, or what is left of it.

Paths of resistance

The way I have lived so far can be best described as “the path of least resistance.”  I had an enlightenment of this—an epiphany, if you will—while browsing through the college library’s selection of periodicals.  The aisles of shelves showcased many; some were magazines, many of them of popular variety (although, as I think of it, I cannot find any gossipy stuff like People), while others were scholarly journals that looked more at home in its surrounding environment, as this is, after all, a college library, although of community kind.  Some of them tried to blur the boundaries of the two, or at least perceived so, such as Journal of Popular Culture.  Perhaps I should look into it.

What caught my eye in the middle of browsing, though, was a journal from another college—the university that I go to:  Five Points.  Named after a probably historic but overall insignificant area in downtown where modernized business area meets the downtrodden slums, it is one of the two literary publications by the English department.  Needless to say, I pay no heed to it, considering it inferior to other journals that have better name recognitions and, arguably, better content.

Unlike normal times in which I would just pass by without a second thought, I picked it up.  It did not appear to be read much, especially in comparison to more popular magazines like Road and Track.  Nonetheless, it made me think:  could I be good enough writer to have a presence in a journal like this?

By no means am I a good writer, even though I appear to be a decent one compared to my peers; it is probably to compensate for my communication skills from hell.  Or it could be just that I have been hanging around those who simply look terrible on paper, of which their resumé would be ridden with typos and wrong formats.  Perhaps if I went to a better university with people that dazzled me with brilliance (and I mean intellectually, not with terrible glitters and fake tans), things would have been different, and I would have been more eager to catch up with my peers.  And this is when I wonder with the what-if scenarios.

And that thought, in turn, reminded me of the YouTube video of a late professor’s last lecture.  Called “How to achieve your childhood’s dream,” among the things he said was that the “brick wall”—figurative term for obstacles that are in the way for achieving such goals—exists to keep those who do not want something badly enough out of it.  While this, the Five Points, was nothing really, I found myself wondering, is this it, did I not want to be a writer badly enough?  From the look of my actions, I did not.  In fact, I did not want anything badly enough.

Now, summer comes, after the spring semester that was not 100 percent successful but still satisfactory enough.  Do I know yet what I want?  Perhaps I have been simply looking at what I wanted all along, which stifled me… I was only looking at the past to get a glimpse of what I am inclined toward.  Sadly, it does little in helping me decide; I only did things in ways that they were “good enough,” which may explain my slips and falls and wondering where I have gone wrong, when in fact it is not where, but how, I have gone wrong… and that is by inaction, lack of motivation, and generally wanting no more than taking an easy way out, going out in comfort while taking small risks that do not matter and will not help me get ahead yet give me illusion that I am doing something with my life, only to throw those away when things start going wrong, seemingly impossible to overcome.

Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here, or at least a question to be answered.  And here is the million dollar question (which can actually be literal, given time and thinking of jobs that were not but are out of reach):

What do I want badly enough to jump over the perceived brick wall and get it?

Conflicting emotions

Classes are nearing an end. Have I mentioned that before? I have taken a final exam today—it was an online exam, done with one hand on the book and another on the mouse—and while 54 out of 60 was not as well as I have hoped to do, it was still all right, enough to keep me in the A territory.  This is a far cry from how I did a year ago; out of four courses that I have taken, I had two F’s, a D, and a C+.  It was a shameful experience, and while much of them were challenging courses, with two of them being an upper-level biology courses and one of them organic chemistry, the D was from an introductory neurobiology course that should have been a breeze.  In fact, I am sure everyone but me got an A in the course… the shame still lingers.  It made everything crash down around me, and I have since taken a scenic route out of the college life—scenic, slow, but hardly eventful.

This first A, though, could signal a turnaround, which I hope it does.  While the classes are nowhere near the classes a year ago, getting high grades have to count for something.

The day went rather downhill from there, though.  I have lost my wallet since yesterday afternoon (which was on a computer case… long story), cannot find my key, and all of my parents have been asking me about my summer plan.  It is understandable, asking about the summer I could very well spend loitering around.  Terrible thing, that is.  They also asked me about what I will do as my major… that would have helped me with internship that might come my way, so I said “somewhere in IT field,” which was true but I have honestly not decided yet.  Oh boy.  Then there is an issue of a job… how am I alive in this economy again?

 

I have been doing a few things to keep myself from going insane as of late.  I have done a lot of things… let’s see, I have gone to the Centennial Olympic Park, which I have never been to despite the fact that I have been living in the city for a decade…

…and I have unwittingly stumbled onto a gem of a camera at an estate sale.

I will write more about them later; look forward to it.

Tackling procrastination?

Today was another disappointing day.  Granted, the day is not yet over, but it might as well be; after the class that ends in 9:45, I would have to go to sleep, get up at 6:00, and prepare for the presentation that will pretty much dictate my grade in the class (which would either swing between A and B… but anyhow).  There was an extra credit opportunity for the class that I will be attending in less than one hour, which is something I probably could have done in about an hour or two but is now lost.  Granted, it was only for 15 points (nothing when you consider the grade involved in that class is 500 points), but it would have been nice to get a little cushioning for my grades.  I am probably cutting too close for an A right now; I need to get at least 120 out of 130 for getting an A.  A-, though (damn you and your plus-minus scales, damn you to hell, except you are a university and you have no soul), I can take easily, with 100 out of 130.

This has been a problem of mine for the longest time.  I always put things off until the last minute… I generally do not care for anything until it is almost too late.  What would be going in my head when I slack off?  …is what my mother would say.  Frankly, I do not know.  Usually the procrastination is fueled by perceived urgency to do other things, or by pure lethargy—I succumb easily to drowsiness—and when I do things like playing games, it is either for letting out the inner frustrations (and as I am not the best guy at playing games, sometimes it works the other way and I quit even more spent than when I started—waste of time AND energy with NO stress relieved? Sucks!).  Of course, these do not account for the random times when I find a neat webcomic and just decide to consume over four hours looking through 300 pages of backlog… I have not read the Dinosaur Comics and Achewood in its entirety for a reason.  To look at those takes commitments.

I would look at ways to defeat procrastinations every now and then (when it is not fueled by sleep).  So far, though, I have not come up with anything except for the fact that this is inherent, I lack discipline, and I am hopelessly lazy when I have no certain goal that must be reached in the next thirty minutes.  I know that there is no magic pill for anything—remember, I was a runner, and I did not get fit (or unfit, for that matter) overnight—but I wish I had some kind of regimen to stick with.

Freeing from shackles

Many strange things are going around in my head.  I find it hard to concentrate; it has been a rough week or two, with harder projects and homework showing up one by one, with the hardest yet to come in a week or two.  It is all right, everything will be fine, that is what I tell myself, I have had harder times, it is much better than waiting like a swine in a pen, waiting to be slaughtered any day now when you know that  everything has been decided and it is simply a matter of when you will see yourself failing like you did a year ago.

I hate to admit it, but I did come a long way from where I was a year ago.  This hellhole, this aftermath of courses that left my GPA in shambles and the turmoil that gained me a girlfriend but betrayed the trust of family… how is it better?  It is hard to explain, but I will try to.

Until the end of the spring semester a year ago, I was basically shackled to my major.  By then, my GPA has already been sagging; there was no need for me to go for dental or pharmacy school, even though I knew that I would not like going to either to begin with.  That is the funny thing with your mind—even though you know things are not going to work out, even though this is not what you want to do… you go ahead and do it anyway, hoping that everything will work out as you would hope—or rather, everything will work out somehow as you progress through the ranks, or at least the course requirements.  Yes, I am still a biology major, if in name only; what does it make me, with physiology concentration (I should at least have change my concentration; I cannot stand looking at pictures of human body), then?  It truly was a pointless thing to have.  Neurobiology or even microbiology could have worked out better.  And working has had its merits, too… if only for being more comfortable with strangers during the job.  I probably will never have another sandwich wraps after I stop working at where I am working now, but the boss is nice (or I probably would have been fired by now) and I am earning some money—at least enough to get me through the days.

But is that all?  I am afraid so.  Some street smarts and social skills will not get you anywhere, especially when you have learned only a bit of them via working behind the counter.  It is obviously beyond my comfort zone, but what can you do?

At least I am out of the major.

Currently I am looking to get some part-time work or internship.  With my faltering GPA and limited knowledge and social links, it will be hard… but this is a grave that I have dug, so I must find a way out.

I also have a post about the childhood coming.  I am assuming that it should help me find out just why or how I turned out like this.

Speaking from the shadows: unsent letter 1

This is a letter that won’t be sent to my girlfriend, due to the content that is… not very suitable and might be detrimental to the relationship.  I shall name her “Maggie.”

Maggie--

How’s it been?  I’m writing as I told you after chatting on the IM earlier.  Nothing quite like a letter written from the motivation.

I’m not sure of what I’m doing right now.  What… are we doing, exactly? Are we serious about this and that, or is this but a fleeting love, just in a phase?  We are getting along nicely right now, but both of us know that the status quo will not last, and we must decide, once and for all, what we will do with our lives.

Of course, we won’t decide that right now; at least I don’t think so, as I believe neither of us is really qualified to do so right now.  Coming stateside for graduate school is fine.  Relationship is fine. My family also seems reasonably happy that I have a legitimate girlfriend (they even told me to bring you over sometime).  But, at the same time, you tried to look for a job in the  country; I am sure that it means you do not want to leave where you have lived the whole life.  Seeing as I do not want to leave America as well (I would rather take my gamble of life here than there), there is obviously a conflict of interest… do you know where I am going with this?

I am tired, so I will end things for now.  Love you.

Tom

Sitting on my ass, doing nothing

Please tell me that I did something this weekend.  Just today, I wasted a colossal amount of time.  Here is how my day went, with rough timeframe:

9:30 AM: woke up

10:15 AM: took off for church

12:45 PM: arrived from church

1:15 PM: sat on my computer, wasting away and reading manga, with intermittent bothering from my brother

6:45 PM: dinner

7:30 PM: continued wasting time

And right now, 9:15 PM.  I am a terrible person and I should feel bad.

I have made a resolution a week ago never to be late again after missing a bunch of classes the week before.  Of course, it has not gone so well, although it did stop me from skipping classes (go me).

So I will do this: I will limit my time sitting on my ass in front of the computer, and if I must do it for a long time, I must have a reason for it—and I will not procrastinate.

There. Let’s see how it will work out.

Keeping track of things I said / Will this haunt me later?

More than likely, what I said here will not be known by anyone that I know, at least not intentionally. That is my intention, actually; some of the things that I say or write here, I am usually very uneasy to unravel in person. Is this the comfort of anonymity?  I cannot say otherwise, you know.  I have no real close friends to speak of (at least close enough to reveal my all), I do not want to go to a psychiatrist (although seeing a shrink may help me in getting things off my chest), and I do not think I will reveal anything to my girlfriend, for reason that… I will get to later, if I can.

That was actually one of the things that I wanted to write about.  Have I talked about my girlfriend before?  She is in a country across the Pacific, and we have some moderate language barrier that probably will not be overcome.  I have no idea how far along (or serious) we are, and seeing as I will not be visiting my home country anytime soon (which she happens to be living in) and I do not know when she will be visiting stateside, it is a long-distance relationship that has a very questionable fate, although she seems to stick around me longer than any American girls would…

But have I talked about this before?

I am quite terrible at keeping track of things.  What I have said earlier in this blog could be said again (and again, and again…) and I would not notice because I am basically using it no more than like a journal, at least for now… but was that not what how I intended to use this, like a discovery / progress journal?  Nonetheless, the thought of me repeating everything like a broken record is unsettling.  I do not like it, not very much.

And despite revealing this blog to nobody in particular, I still feel scared of someone finding my real identity—do not get me wrong, I rarely speak wrongly of anyone or leave any scathing comments (I heard one too many horror stories of those who said too much with their names revealed or tracked down), but I feel that some things are still better left unsaid… which may be true, but which may also go against the intended purpose of this blog.

So I am split—how much do I diverge here?

How should we do this?

The last few weeks were hell.  I have faced some of the more vicious assignments, as it usually occurs near the end of the semester.  Yes, a semester has passed since I first started writing—what was the blog that tried to track what I was doing to improve my life turned into nothing more than a day-to-day update (if at that) of my life.  Not good!  It did prompt me to take some action, though. I would not have seen a career counselor and took some information if it were not for this.  I would also very well have done even less productive things if I had not written here.

But still, I do not think I did enough.  If I were truly motivated, I would not have had phases that incapacitated me from moving forward in the first place.  Sure, I am not the type that will keep the focus in one spot, nor am I the one that can sustain it, but I seem to have a knack for being turtle-slow.

So, four weeks left of semester is left.  I should try and work my butt off and do some extensive research, but instead I feel as though I am falling asleep, a part of vicious cycle involving late naps, sleep deprivation, and procrastination from hell—have I told you that I do most of my homework past midnight?  I am an extreme nocturnal.

Never mind that nocturnal people tend to be more creative.  I know that the lifestyle is unsustainable.

Things to be done, but what?

(Found via StumbleUpon; link embedded on picture)

I have mentioned earlier, yesterday in fact, that I am very scatterbrained.  You could see me toiling away in front of the book one minute, and surfing the web the next.  I know I did not say that I was, in fact, a scatterbrain, but it is very easy to deduce that, is it not?  I am finding it very hard right now to keep typing and stay away from the web browser (I use Windows Live Writer to write blogs, which I found to be quite useful), or doing anything else for that matter.  Other thoughts preoccupy me as well; I should be working on a report paper that is quite long and due in two days, and I should go back home and mow lawn and tidy up the room, and I should be choosing my major and get a summer job and/or an internship.  Well, it is not really happening right now.  I am trying to tie myself down to one task and one task only.  Take it for what it is.

I do find ways to remedy this situation, this series of distractions from hell, that is preoccupying my life, preventing myself from having one.  Now, I would also like to say that I do not necessarily mind this lifestyle; rather, I am deeply troubled by the fact—and my knowledge—that such lifestyle is unsustainable.  Never should I have to depend on my parents for shelter, food, or health insurance unless I have to, especially if I am already close to the mid-20s.  There is another depressing thought—while I was lollygagging at nothing in particular, others are getting ahead in life, moving beyond what I ever was.  So far, a few things I found that works (to various degree, and no pun intended) to get things done are:

• Setting timeline
• Setting schedule
• Making outlines / steps and following it
• Being asked by others

But I cannot set up a deadline or schedule or make step-by-step instructions if I could not be arsed to do it.  So, basically, I only do things that others tell me to do.  If I had something to stand behind and such, I would already be in Harvard, finishing up medical school, probably.

Which brings up the picture at the start.  Could my apathy—or laziness, if it were—the cause of all this?  If I had something I truly cared about and not lived merely another day, perhaps I would be in a better situation.  Never mind that I am like this because I am introverted; I could have learned more things if I went out to try new things.  Never mind that I have an accent from hell; it could have been remedied—to what extent, I do not know—if I took classes or used the learning material I have at home.  Everything can be tied to how I did not care enough.

So, what would make myself care?

Energy, tardiness, and the relationship of the two

(from Flickr by riotjane)

It is Friday. I have a test tomorrow, yet I cannot get myself to work. Never mind that I have a big test tomorrow, that I had to turn in a somewhat critical homework assignment for accounting class yet I could not, and that I have a six-page, single-spaced paper to write for Business and Law class that I have to type in a single letter for. I am tired, a constant phenomenon that refuses to let up until some 11 in the evening, continuing on until 2 or 3 in the morning, when I have a sudden loss of energy fueled by sudden urge to do work and compounded fatigue of many nights of uneven sleep schedule.

That is my usual day, and I am not proud of the fact. How many times have I fallen asleep in the twilight of the night, but a few minutes of the dawn that inevitably comes sooner than I would hope to encounter? I have lost countless days procrastinating, sometimes through napping and other times through coercion to do other things, by myself or others. I would count blogging among the list of things I have done instead of working, but it, too, is working—just not the “it will raise your grades and arguably improve your future outlook” kind. And, look—I am procrastinating even on blogging. It should not take two hours to write two paragraph of worthless crap.

Anyway.

I wanted to talk about lethargy. It has been with me since the beginning; I fell asleep in virtually every class I was in (and was penalized for that in one way or another, with varying teacher interventions), and it was probably a sight to behold—a sleeping kid, acing much of the tests, yet too tired or distracted to do some actual work unless it became a really pressing matter. What is the matter with that? Well, the problem is not when i am doing well, but when I am doing bad—bad habits die hard, and I find it very hard to change pace (or behavior) as I entered college and started struggling. Staying in the dormitory, while fun, did little to change my lifestyle; if anything, without oversight, I have worsened my habit, so much so that I have never shaken off my nocturnal lifestyle.

And that, in turn, makes matters worse, energy-wise. Working a part-time job in addition to college—I now work 20-hour workweeks—my energy seems to be nonexistent. Rarely am I able to make it to school without being tardy, if not missing the class entirely (with yesterday being an exception; I attended a court proceeding). I take naps before heading off to work, and consequently, I arrive late, to varying degrees. I even lost my freelance interpreter gig partly due to dozing off.

This has got to stop.

I envy one of my friends. He seems to be working hard (or harder than I do in most times), and does not seem to show much fatigue even in the face of all-nighters and continual abuse of body with lack of sleep time (which he supposedly makes up for in the weekend by sleeping like a log, or more appropriately, like a man in a coma). And what am I? A man of little discipline and a need for sleep. A lot of sleep.

Do not tell me I have not tried to remedy the situation, though, because I have. I am a caffeine junkie; right now I can feel that the withdrawal symptom—headache from hell—is just around the corner. I tried to work out, which had a mixed reaction (better overall energy, but god help me once adrenaline wears off). Knocking myself out with Benadryl works—for a day. That is after getting rid of the extreme drowsiness that will not leave for hours after I am done sleeping, though.

My mother tells me I should stop napping and go to bed earlier. But am I napping because I do not go to bed earlier, or do I not go to bed earlier because I nap? And napping is what keeps me going throughout the day. So I don’t know.

So, what can I do? How can I wake up earlier, be energized, and keep going until bedtime? And how can I keep going when I have underslept and must not fall asleep but still am stuck with sedentary lifestyle?

Unexpected Outing

Call it a night turned around.  The day already very well wasted, I was preparing to get it done and over with the last of class—on Mondays I have a class from 7:15 to 9:15 PM—when my phone rang.  It was from my friend, apparently bored and wanted to know if I wanted a drink after class.  Having a lot of other things I wanted to do, all of which will not be done or even begun, I naturally agreed.

We arrived at a coffeeshop at nearly the same time.  The place sold beer and wine as well, and both of us knew where it was, so it was a good place to go.  We got to talking, although I do not know what we talked about exactly.  It went from iPhone to books to movies to caring for sports (which we do not, at least not to fanatical level), continuing on conversations like I could not for a long while.

We parted at midnight.

It was fun, if sedate.

I’m saddened by the fact that I will not be doing much more of it anytime soon.

Downside of giving

I donate blood every now and then.  I do not have a specific schedule, but while I decline the offer to give blood every other time, I do have a time to do so.  There is no science to do this.  I just do it when I feel like it.  I had done that for past six times.

And this was one of those times.  Never mind that my right arm no longer feels quite the same.  Never mind that I now have needle marks on my arms that, while they do not stick out like sore thumbs, still crave some attention from me every now and then.

So, I went.  I was a little late, but that is the same for all the appointments I make.  I do not come often at all, so I saw no familiar faces.  A strange nurse took care of me—she did not talk too much, and had a negative aura that I could immediately feel.  She had an odd accent, and went way faster than she should; I simply did not like her.  But that is okay, as long as she did her job well.

Well, she did not.

The trouble began in the question sessions regarding my info.  She had asked me about my name, so I answered; but she then asked my birthdate like she was waiting the answer from the first question.  Not a good start.  Then she gets the gloves on.  Right after that, though, she types with the hand that she put the gloves on.  What the hell?  Having some experience in the microbiology field, I know that it will be anything but sanitary.  At least she took an alcohol swab; otherwise I would have been driven mad.

Then there were the health questions, of which she sped over the bloody questions like an inebriated auctioneer… even the diseases that had complicated pronunciations.  Especially those diseases.

It was hell, as far as I could tell.  The sample blood for hemoglobin count was taken, which stung a little but was okay.  Then I was led outside to a reclining chair.  I have been there before.  I sat on the chair, and nurse asked which arm I would like to have blood drawn from.  I said left, but if you can’t see the vein, you could do the right one.  All the other nurses went for the right one when I said that.  She went for the left.

So she rubs iodine on my arm, and did not really clean out the residues.  There were puddles of the solution on my arm. She stuck the needle in.

It hurt like hell.

Let me elaborate.  I have been to the blood drive a few times, and went to the blood donation center the other few.  I go to the center because nurses tend to be more relaxed and friendlier, as well as more adept at the job they do.  Last time I had such a pain was at a high school blood drive, and that was because the nurse had accidentally prodded a needle at the bone in my arm.  It had the works—the bruises, the pain, et cetera.  This time it was different, though; I had instead a hot, searing pain further up my arm.  The resident doctor (I think) said that it was possibly due to the iodine residue on my arm; but I know that veins do not travel up the arm, but rather down it, so that was bullshit.  The nurse immediately took out the needle right after I motioned the thing off.  My arm still felt tingly and uneasy.  I left it be, so I did not know exactly how bad things got.  The nurse did not say a single sorry.

Seriously, it was testing me, the whole situation.  I took the post-donation call number and walked out, fuming.

I looked for such instances on the Internet after I left.  Of course, since it happened just a few hours ago, I could not look at it much.  What I did come across, though, is that there are a few rare cases in which nerve damages happen—could that be the case?

Anyway, we will see what happens.  Red Cross told me to wait 48 hours to see if things get better, so that is what I will do.

Walking on Thin Ice

The work was hardly good today.  I do not believe I made any mistakes worth mentioning.  I charged for most (if not all) of the extra things I had to charge, did not give away any free drinks, and I did not write down wrong order for things.  If anything, the only wrong thing I did was getting to work late… I am sure my boss is not approving of my action, but I will say that I blame it on “hectic” lifestyle.

And yet, I have been asked to work harder than I needed to be.  Do you not see that I am helping other people?  Do you not see that I am putting up the tapes for use later, so what is wrong with sitting down for a second while doing so?  I got flacks from the bosses (husband and wife, actually) for sitting down and not appearing to do any work.  It is understandable, I think.  When I sit down to do some of the work that I am supposed to do, I am behind a small partition, seeming to do a little bit of nothing, when I am in fact working.

These are terrible times for businesses, and pretty much everyone working.  Rarely do I hear of business picking up in any field whatsoever, and usually when one business falters, it makes ripples around wherever the businesses are—employees are fewer and work less hours, spend less, and affects other businesses that caters to that business… and we are feeling it, all right.  I am guessing that causes tempers to flare up.

So, I am seething.  Then the lady asks me about my future plans… you know, what I am going to do for summer, that kind of things.

I have no idea, I told her.  I am thinking about doing internship or a summer job, probably, but since I do not even know what my major is going to be after this semester, I do not know.

Then she tells me that I might be better off going elsewhere when summer comes, if business does not pick up.

Yeah, terrible time, indeed.

So what am I going to do?  I have little other to do than to look for a job and such.  Oh, this will be tough.  I do not know what to think anymore.  This is very draining.

Exercising

I have begun working out again for a few weeks now.  I am not doing anything serious, to be honest; I go to the school’s recreational center every Monday and try to get some running done after I get back home from downtown when I can.  Being a former cross-country runner that I am, I like running; I would not have stuck wit it to begin with if I did not like doing so.  Cross-country is a strange sports among the running sports; you run through the trails cut through the forest, and unlike the glorious paved tracks that adorn the stadiums and asphalts on the road race courses, you run through the dirt and over the hills and down the much-trodden paths that is often not all that safe or even coherent (without markers throughout the paths).  Frankly, I liked it—the courses made everyone miserable, sure, but I felt a certain rush in running through the woods, minding the hills and barren tree roots as I dodge the fellow runners on the track.  I should write another post regarding this; it needs reminiscing.

Funnily enough, I began exercising on the week of spring break.  Not too many people were around to watch me embarrass myself at the gym if I started then… just kidding.  I went mostly on a whim, waking up on Tuesday and realizing I had nothing to do after work… so I went to work with running shorts and some clothes to change and went to school.  I came home sore and tired.  Same thing last Monday between work and the evening class, and this one, too.  Needless to say, I would very much like to sleep on the chair right now.

But after I recover, I usually have more energy than when I lead a sedentary lifestyle.  I may have read about it earlier somewhere, perhaps on a Men’s Health website or RealAge, but I also speak from experience.  Should I go into the details on why that would be the case?  I would, but if you really wanted to know, you would be at some exercise or biology or health website right now, not here.  My understanding is that exercising increases the mitochondria count in your body—the cell part that converts sugar into energy that cells can use.  Hence, I, who have been exercising, feel more alert and energetic than before… or something like that.  To be honest, the boost is rather minor, as I have been relying heavily on caffeine  as of late and I was never all that energetic to begin with.

Compared to how I used to be before I started working out, though, I feel healthier.  I feel that I can do more things and do not feel as unwieldy and lazy.  I think that is what counts—and what you look for—when you exercise.

Now, I need to learn to harness this energy more efficiently than now…

Came to school reasonably early.  After getting off the metro, I stopped by Dunkin’ Donuts to get some breakfast, and by the time I arrived at class, it was some ten minutes late—not bad for some lollygagging endeavor.

The computer science class for the day was cancelled.  I am now at the library,  wondering what I should do with the freed up time.  I could be sleeping, or maybe it is a better idea for me to get some work done… but who am I kidding?  I was never a morning person.  I could theoretically try to work on things, but it won’t work.  What was I supposed to do, anyway?  Oh, right… I have a computer science assignment.  The class ties me up anyway.

Think I’ll take a nap and work on things afterward.

Day to day

Spring break is over for me.

It was a wasted week, all nine days gone into the abyss, never to return.  I became sick near the end, too… but then I realized that it was nothing more than an allergy coming earlier than usual.  Am I okay? I do not know. I still feel under the influence of Benadryl, which is to say not much, my car drove like a washing machine and sputtering somehow, as it was morning and more humid and usual and the car was chilly but not cold.  I had my car checked but the mechanic supposedly cannot think of any life-threatening issues about it so I am supposed to drive it for a week more or something like that.  So I drive.  That was Friday.  Am I supposed to hope that the car gets worse?  That is terrible… that is like looking at a cancer patient and wondering if the tumor is big enough and seeing if it will grow.

I worked from Tuesday to Thursday.  That left me with two three-day weekends, which was not really worth anything.  A good part of the first part was wasted, as well, by the online midterm exam that I took and did well but I really did not need to study all that much for it.  How much of a waste of time was that, I wonder?

The days continue to be a series of blurs.  Day in, day out.  I go to class then go to work, and if I am lucky and have time, a nap before work.  I then go to work, more often late than not, just like the classes that I do not quite know why I am taking.  I am staying in school today late because of a class that will begin at 7:15 in the evening, and a terrible fact is that I have no need or use for the class, save for the fact that maybe I can get a degree in CIS and I make a living out of it somehow.

And it will be all done by the end of the April.  What will I do then?

I am afraid of what the future will bring, which will also be all a blur.

It’s a start, of sorts

I have a premonition that this will be the most activity I will be doing during the spring break, but here it is.

I went to the recreational center at my university.
Worked out, doing weight training.
I feel sore, but rather good.
But my god, I feel so incompetent; I am no longer able to weight as much lift as I used to…
That’s only given, though, I am sure.  When was the last time I used the weights?

The library closes in 10 minutes. There was only so much I could do while I was here, although I did burn off some time by surfing the web.  Oops.

What am I doing?

Every now and then, I stop myself and wonder what I am doing with my life.

Today is such a day.

Imagine this:  I have been awake since 10 in the morning. I have been chewed out from work for being late, was let out by three in the afternoon (that’s some three hours of work… not very much at all), and I then proceeded to waste an ungodly amount of time sitting in front of the computers.  I cannot tell you what I have done on it, but I can tell you what I have not been doing: working. Never mind that I have written a substantial post not too long ago (in fact, it was some hours ago, posted at… 6 or so, was it?), for that, too, was done over a period of few hours—few hours for something that went maybe a little over five hundred words.  I have known that I had a high degree of inefficiency… and there it was, the very evidence glaring at me with the timestamp.  I then proceeded to play Team Fortress 2 until the computer told me that I have had enough.  I cannot do much when the computer simply refuses to let me connect to a game.  But what did I do then?  I surfed the web again, lurking amidst the darker alleys of the Internet.  Looking through my bookmark, I found something that has been bookmarked some time ago in the frenzy of stumbling… Sankaku Complex.

And what a site it is… a semi-neat blog with quite a bit of activity, talking about anime and hosting boob pictures of both photograph and cartoon variety.  In the course of an hour, I have read more about NEETs, otakus, and other things that I was better off not reading about than the period of last few months, if not a year or two.  Being an occasional anime watcher, it also made me more aware of the anime fans, their culture, and their effect on the very medium that they are fan of.  There are also news there, too—rarely are they pleasant.

Sure, these news are from some eight thousand miles from home, but they are still disturbing. I also wonder if any of these news stories are exaggerated or somehow made into a fodder of some more serious (political) issues on hand, diverting the public’s attention. But I digress.

And with these things that I have done, I have accomplished none of the things that I have meant to do.  completing list? No. Reading a book? Nothing done. I have done an extremely cursory attempt at researching on setting up a Windows server, but that is where the productivity ends.  Perusing Amazon.com and Woot.com do not count as researching, not the productive kind, anyway.  In all, I was given some ten hours to work things out, but two blog posts are what I got out of it.

So, thinking of plans, and reading Sankaku Complex… that brings me a thought, leading up to the chilling of the spine.  Am I going to end up like these people on the news? Probably not, realistically speaking. I am too straight for that, at least for now.  Still, it disdains me to see that after months of writing on the blog, nothing much has changed.

I wonder what will cause me to change.

A question of the day, 3/4/2009

While surfing through the lesser-traveled part of the Internet, it dawns on me:

“Is it darker when you see from outside in, than when you see it when you are inside yourself?”

Meaning, doe it look worse when you look at the news than when you are the news material yourself?

Plans

 
(Picture from Flickr)

It’s been two days since it snowed here in the South.  It was such a surprise; snow came so much, and the flakes so big, it piled up on what was a wet landscape with water all over in no time, piling up like there was no tomorrow.

If this happened a few years ago, I would have taken the first chance at going outside and throw snowballs or make snowman.  Of course, it is not all that fun alone; even Calvin had Hobbes to accompany him when he made all sorts of wacky snowmen.

So I stayed in, keeping rather warm inside the home.  Am I so boring as to do so? Only when I have nobody to have fun with.

Since Sunday, the day of the snow, I have been trying to write down the things I wanted to do. Doing so is harder than you may think—for one, you get distracted (and that is especially true for me), and for another, you have other things to take care of. Actually, scratch that out… I could very well have done everything if I were not so sidetracked.

The theme of my days lately seem to be “plans.”  My Zune 30, which has been serving me rather well despite its recent slowdown (failure is imminent, I am sure), has just played me the episode of This American Life—“Plan B” was the theme, and it involved people who went on to the course of life that they have not originally intended.  I love the podcast; it lets me come back to the episodes that I have missed on the radio and replay it while I am commuting.  I definitely have Apple to thank for the idea.  Anyhow.

After listening on to the podcast on the way to (and from) work, I stopped by a coffeeshop.  It’s somewhere I used to stop by a lot more often… I got lazy with stopping by, though, mainly due to the fact that I am trying to minimize the expenditure, and I rarely get anything done while being in here (I blame familiarity).  I come in and one of the guys that always seems to be here greets me, briefly stopping from writing things down in his composition notebook.  He’s got the idea from the book 4-Hour Workweek, or some book name close to it, and he is trying to come up with a business based on it… problem? He has been doing it for months now, and I have no idea what he does for a living to keep him sustained with such lifestyle.  That, combined with economy on the fritz, makes one wonder if he will go anywhere with this.

Funnily enough, though, I have come to the shop with similar reason—I wanted to plan things out.  In my bag are a binder from a group session provided by the career department by my university, Getting Things Done by David Allen, and a notepad.  It’s just too bad that I am not getting anything done at the moment (I am blogging, and slowly at that)—another irony, if there was one.

I want to know what I want to do for the future, but at this rate, I will never have plans for it.

Out of hell, for now

Spring break is here.  With the darkened clouds and cooling weather, it greeted me.

It has not yet begun, theoretically; it begins on Monday.  So?  The break began on Friday for me, as soon as the session for accounting was over on 10 AM.  It sure does not feel like that, though.

There are less people here on downtown, is the difference, if I were so inclined to look; people either went home, never to return for a week, or they went on a vacation, never to return for a week.  And yet here I am, to take a test I could very well take at home but instead sought refuge some twenty miles away from home because I will be distracted.  Of course, I got distracted quite a bit here before I started taking a test, but that is another story…

I had a rather high concentration while taking a test, though (which is very unusual for me, as I am beginning to suspect that I have ADD of sorts.)  I was surprised at myself.  I wish I could pull something like that off on regular days, not when I am taking online exams.

Nonetheless, I think that studying during the past few days have paid off.  I have received a grade of 47/50, 94%… and the missed questions are ones that I thought did not give me much trouble at all. The 100% is as elusive as ever, even with a good opportunity like this.  I would like to thank Waffle House for helping me with the late-night studying endeavor… god forbid if I have to do something like this anytime soon. 

And I don’t think Waffle House washes their cups at all.  This is how it greeted me—with smudges from lips that touched the cup before me.  Yuck. Yet I could not raise objections; the people working there… looked so terrible.  The whole place had the aura of misery.  Last thing I wanted to face when I stepped into the place…

I am happy when it rains

(Not from today; today was darker and more severe, albeit, surprisingly, without thunderstorm.)

The last time it rained around here has not been terribly long; it must have been a couple of weeks ago.  It was not terribly memorable because nothing happened to me during the times of tumulus weather (unlike that last time when my car decided to play slalom) aside from going out to dinner with my friends, though.  Perhaps that is why I felt as though it has been forever since it last rained.

I like the rain.  As long as I do not have to drive, I like the rain; the dust settles, smog is gone, and for a while, I get to breathe fresh air (with a touch of earthy smell that is undoubtedly dirt and dust.  It also reminds me of the days of my childhood, where it rains a lot more than it does here.  In the summer, there is a rainy season; in fall, there is hurricane season.  Fun times indeed.  I will also say that the same reason for nostalgia brings out the nightmares that come bundled with it.  Childhood, for me,  was a bundle of misery, packaged so that I cannot taste it as much, like a candy-coated bitter pill.

It is one of those days when I want to just walk around aimlessly, soaked, with not a care for the world—not hunched over like homeless, hurrying like a businessman, or stooped like a collegiate.  Perhaps I want to make up for the lost early days that I could have had.  Instead I went to the convenience store, asked for the umbrella I could buy but the lady told me to borrow one of hers (“you remind me of my son, so why not? Just bring it back when you come back to school,” she said).  With a big, sturdy umbrella over me, I went to the library and began to study for midterm.  So here I am.

I could write more and romanticize about the day, but instead worldly worries cloud over me.  How will the traffic be en route to home? Will I be all right with the midterm? Do I have enough money to fix up the car later?  Will tomorrow be cold?  To add to that, the Red Cross asked for blood donation.  Despite my hurting arm and series of needle scars, I did not refuse. I do not want to do it, it harms me, and yet here I am.

Enough ranting, though. I have a midterm to study.

Personality and tests

I am attending sessions offered by the career advisement center that is supposed to help me decide on my career and , more immediately, my major.  I am not sure if it is helping me so far; it feels mostly like a re-hash of what I have researched and realized thus far.  That indicates a few things.  Let me get over the bad first:  the things that these sessions are offering are not very useful.  These are just variations of information that I can—and did—easily get over the Internet.  Call it efficiency, if you will; I can quite easily do some quick research that proves to be on target in many cases.  Now, it also means I tend to rush over things, not adding too much details (if at all).  If I really had my way, all the posts here will end in a paragraph.  Maybe this one will, at least.

I’m just kidding.

Among the things the people inside the sessions have done is the MBTI.  This test is simply a personality test; you fill out some hundred questions (or just about) of two choices (always two choices, and you can only choose one, although you can leave some blank if you are so inclined), and the test results come back to you in the form of one of 16 combinations of four alphabets.  It is easy enough, and while I am not sure how accurate the free, online versions of them are—they are really easily found and quite comprehensive at least in the questions department—I now have a legit MBTI test result.

In advance: if you are lost in what I am talking about, look for MBTI on Google.

The results are not very surprising.  I know that I am strongly introverted and thinking, but rather subtle in the N/S and P/J departments.  Am I sensing or intuitive? Perceiving or judgmental?  These two always swap around for me, depending on the tests and the time they are taken, or so I am assuming.  So far, I have gotten INTJ, INTP, and ISTP.  One more (ISTJ) and I have the whole selection involving I and T covered.

I read the description and what my type is supposed to depict—the official test proclaimed me an INTP—and it is pretty right on.  I value efficiency, and not much bother me (although I am rather cranky as of late).  When I do my homework, I like to them just-in-time and with as few written words as possible; my answers in short answer and essay questions tend to be shorter than everyone else’s. If that is not efficiency, I do not know what is.

I do not know if I should embrace this phenomenon or try to offset it.  It is my nature, and if I tried to alter it, will I not be going against it?  Being very introverted is quite a flaw in the outgoing, extroverted society like America, though…

Inferiority complex

It was only Tuesday afternoon, and I already hated the week.  Thankfully, or unfortunately as I needed more money, my work ended at three in the afternoon—and as I was quite tired, I decided to go home instead of killing a few hours in the library, trying to study.  The day was still bright, and mail has not yet been checked. I decided, of course, to get the mail; why not? I park right next to the mailbox due to space constraints in the driveway.  I wonder what my neighbors think about it, but I (and my family, probably) ignore any possible indignations stemming out of it by the neighbors.

The mail was rather hefty.  While no packages arrived, a big lump of letters instead filled the mailbox.  Some of the letters were even bundled together with rubber bands.  Most of the mail was directed to my younger brother, who has not received much mail at all until quite recently:

Look at these motherfucking letters… pardon my French.  I am but a few years older than him, and I have not received as many mails from colleges as he did.  Some of the envelopes were recognizable; I have gotten brochures and letters from them a few years back, when I was a senior in high school and was apparently bright enough for college.  Macalester was one, as was Mercer.  I may also have received something from William and Mary, but I cannot remember, and I doubt that it even matters now, as I am now virtually grounded in my bloody state college that it almost feels like a tenure.  Some of them look to be so far out of my league that I would not have dreamed of receiving anything from them, however:  MIT? Caltech?  Columbia? Highest-regarded college letter I have received is probably that from NYU, or maybe University of Southern California.  I was also briefly interested in Emory and visited the campus thus, but that is as far as I have gone.  Through a series of blunders, miscommunications, and other complications, I have missed all chances to get to other universities.  Perhaps it was not that bad; Tulane, one of the colleges I thought of attending, was hit by Katrina on the second year of university.

I do not know how I should feel about this.  Have I mentioned that I feel like a failed experiment?  I am a brooding figure marred by odd actions and beset by trial and errors that my relatives have made from raising me.  They are like my parents; I am, in fact, adopted by them, but while I call them parents while I am at school and work, I cannot accept them as such when I am at home.  I think it is home, anyway.

So, what am I to do?  I cannot blame my relatives for raising me poorly; moving to America was possibly the biggest break I had up to this point.  The follow-up was pretty terrible, though; I admit it, and they should too.  But with the past gone and the best that will come out of bickering about it being the hindsight of what went wrong and what can be fixed (if you are lucky), there is little I can do to better myself in the regard to the school I am going and the grades I have so far.

I would like to get behind my cousin—or my brother, whichever.  But… call me evil, or perhaps call me selfish.  I just can’t seem to do it.  The very fact that he will get a head start in life fills me with rage and grief.

It should also help me with get my ass up and try to get somewhere. Let’s hope so.

Status Quo: Project - “PictoFic”

I do not think I mentioned the project I was working on for a while.  I am still planning things, but it is not working out too well, unfortunately.

But before I get to the nitty-gritty of things, I will tell you what it is.  I plan on writing a story each week, from the inspiration that I get from a picture… oh, did I mention that already?

Yeah, I named the project.  It’s “PictoFic.”

I meant to put the “s” at the end, but then I decided to let it be.  I say I want to let it be an organic endeavor, and what is more organic than an awkward title that feels well-intentioned and –thought but kinda fails in execution?

 

I would get on the project right now, but man, I keep on making excuses not to do it (for example, I have a test tomorrow!  OMG!) I will, though, try to come up with something by next week.  I feel that going headfirst into the project (perhaps like this blog?) will do no good.

I’m late, I’m late, I’m terribly late

It appears to be the main thing that happens to me lately—being late to lectures.  Not somewhat late, either; I am talking about twenty-minutes-past-time, you-missed-half-a-lecture late.  I promise you that I am not doing it on purpose.  It just happens after an excuse here and situation there. 

Somehow it feel eerily like the times when I began losing interest in classes, subjects, and school in general.  Not only was it not pretty, it was a precursor to what I have since become, confused, older, directionless guy, back to home from school dorm and unable to escape without facing the certain circumstances (especially in this uncertain economy, where I can lose a job any day…)  I feel that I am stuck in this life; I am not complaining, not too loudly yet anyway.  You look around and see people suffering and you look at them and… is it the wiseness coming with the age when I say “I have been through worse.”?

I am wondering where things are going wrong.  It could very well be the part-time job that I am doing, but I do not think that is very taxing physically; in fact, my head feels generally clearer by the time I am done.  I do, however, require naps by the time I am done with class and before going to work—that explains very well how I get to work so late so often.  It cannot be helped; I just require a lot of sleep.  There must be ways to keep me awake while simultaneously separate me from my tendency to sleep whenever I can.

It looks deceptively simple, my problem of being late—I need to sleep, I feel sluggish, and I just want to do thing just-in-time.  My tendencies explain a lot about the consequences that it entails…

Tell you what.  I will wake up early tomorrow and be in class on time.  It has not happened in that 8 o’clock class before.  I will make it happen, dammit.

Exit Stage Left

The day was somewhat busy and awkward, with a few hours put in between the things that I needed to do here and there.  That meant that I could not do some things that I wanted to do for today.  As I woke up in the morning at around eleven or so, my mother wanted to go to Sam’s Club, so I went.  What I thought was going to be a short trip turned out to be a trip spanning more than an hour; by the time I got home, it was after 1 PM.  I wanted to mail something at the post office, but since today is Saturday, that did not work out as I would have hoped; the package will have to be shipped first thing on Monday.

Then, I had a tennis practice at five… I am not very athletic, yet my family wanted to know if I would like to learn tennis, I jumped at the chance.  So far, I like it, although I am still a beginner and need a lot of work if I were to be even remotely competitive.  What does that mean, then?  I think it means I will need quite a bit of practice if I were to be better (which I am not getting very often, by the way) and maybe I need to join a club, as I do not have any friends that are interested in tennis.

I got out of the house at nine, after getting back from practice, eating dinner, and loafing a bit around online.  Slacking is such a hard habit to conquer; it adds up, the time, and it takes many forms for it.  Napping here, facebooking there, and maybe after some clicking around stumbleupon and eating dirt at Team Fortress 2, a whole day has passed; where did the hours go?  That is why I left the house in search of somewhere better to concentrate and study.  So, here we are, at a coffeeshop, getting my laptop out, blogging away as soon as the Internet connects.  I love this.

And the reason I left the house?  Oh, the test is coming up on Monday, with materials that I thought I never had to touch as soon as high school ended.  I do not mean to say that it is some elementary stuff I had to learn there, because… well, the advanced placement courses are probably harder than many of the college courses.  Unfortunately, I am not getting the things done today, what with my blogging and being distracted, and a couple on a date right in front of me, chatting away about things I never wanted to know about them, and further away, a bunch of Indians that are annoying and louder than the couple that is literally right in front of me.  I am sure culture plays a part in this…

The whole distraction part and not getting things done in general is in line with the LASSI test that I have taken earlier this week.  It is a self-test thing that my career counselor gave me for a group session.  It is supposed to tell the strengths and weaknesses one has for studying… and I am in bottom tier in all but one category, and that is the “anxiety” category, in which I thought I did not have much but turns out that I was in the 60 percentile.  I am sure culture plays a part in this…

I am going to study now, at least until for about an hour.  I cannot stick around and do nothing after driving some twenty miles to the only coffeeshop around here that opens until midnight.

Bad idea abound / Good idea abound

At a local Borders right now.  The place looks somewhat slower than I anticipated. Could it be the result—of sort—of the economic clusterfuck that is affecting everything from large malls to the gas stations to chain stores to restaurants?  That is a rhetorical question; of course it is.  This is the first of the economic recession that I am experiencing first-hand.  I could count the dot-bomb bust at the turn of the century, but to be honest, it probably was not as bad as the situation that I (and the world) am (are?) in right now, and I was quite dependent on my parents back then, whereas I hold a job of my own, albeit a part-time one.  It hits closer to home whenever I receive a paycheck and have to fill up the gas.  I am more conscious than ever when I spend money… or maybe not, but at least I am cutting back, just like everyone else.  I tend to spend more than I am comfortable with, but only because I feel bad about everyone else having to go through the tough times.  I could say that it is out of sympathy, but it is probably I that probably needs more receiving than giving… I own no store, have no savings, and feel like a leech whenever I come back home and say hello to whoever is in the charge of the house at the moment.  I probably should not think so, but I feel like sitting on a pin cushion every day I stay there.

I wonder if I mentioned that the author of the book Freakonomics is visiting my campus tomorrow for (what I think is) reading from the book and also signing of his book.  There lies in my reason to visit Borders:  I wanted to buy the book.  Problem?  What I had in mind when I came to buy the book was to pick up the paperback copy of the book quickly, maybe take a quick break (by blogging?  Are you serious, man?), and then go for some reading on the subject of accounting.  Instead, what happened was that I could not find the book where I thought it would be (“I am pretty sure I saw this book around here somewhere… it is a popular nonfiction book, right?”), roamed about the place for some minutes, before stumbling onto the books that I looked for in the economics section, right next to business and computer books.  Oh, but this book was not what I was looking for, not entirely so anyway.  It was hardcover, relatively shiny-looking and mostly ding-free, with the superscript letters above the title:  “Revised and Expanded Edition.”  So, is it like the “Teacher’s Edition” for Jon Stewart’s America (The Book)?

Uh-oh.

So, that was a bad idea—looking for the book a little too late, not giving myself some time for the book to ship from Amazon, and buying the book that only worsens my economic outlook and puts me further into debt.  Isn’t life wonderful?  I knew that the author was up to something when he started touring again.

At least I printed out some coupons and brought it over.  That made it about the same as buying the paperback… at regular price.  That’s not too bad… right?  Right?

But while scanning over the places and taking pictures, a brighter idea dawned on me, and it stuck with me long enough for me to write it down.  Such phenomenon does not happen often… what happens, usually, is I think of something cool, fetch my notebook, and stand awed from dismay by the fact that I have bloody forgotten about what I was about to write.  Most of them are lost cause; once it disappears, it is lost forever, never to be seen—or thought of—again.  And even when I write it down, there is no guarantee that the ideas are brilliant and must be used right away, for much (like, 90%) of them is garbage that can at best be used as a reference or an inspiration for something else altogether.

And what is the big idea, one may ask?

Oh, nothing big, actually.

It is another blog, which is probably not a good thing.

But the idea… it might be good enough to be noticed (unlike this blog—hahaha).

You see, I pick a picture.  It could be either something that I took, or it could be from, say, Flickr.  And I write a short story out of it.

It may or may not work.  But I am certainly excited about it.  What should I name the blog?

Memory Photography

I have been toting my camera around everywhere.  Pretty shoddy picturetaking skills notwithstanding, I found that it is not too bad a way to be aware of your surroundings.  The world is my subject, and I will use it… or so is what I think, anyway.  Mostly I take pictures without a human subject in it; it simply feels awkward to take a candid picture of someone whom I did not ask to see if it was okay to, indeed, get a picture taken.

That aside, I have realized one thing while looking through the pictures that I have taken… they bring back memories, do they not?  I sat down to write a post today, and wondered what I was going to write: I had forgotten about it.  Nonetheless, I plugged in my memory card into the computer, hoping to find something else to write about (I cannot be away for too long from updating, that defeats the purpose of having a blog).  And then… voila, I found what I wanted to write about.

So, who’s up for some snacks?  I thought of writing about how I wanted snacks but did not know what to get once I got to the store… it’s probably a lost cause, though.  Anyhow.

I wonder how much of the stuff I know can be recalled by looking through the pictures I have taken during that time.  Never mind the saying “picture is worth a thousand words,” and never mind the fact that the picture was not well-taken.  This is probably the reason why people continue to take shoddy pictures en masse and the little digital cameras sell like pancakes…

Reconsidering English

Today was a rough day, and it has not yet ended.  It seems simply to be the continuation of the day before; I have not had a proper sleep, but thankfully, the day has been kinder to me than I have anticipated about it.  I did not bonk and fall asleep in the computer science as I did on Tuesday, and while I did become fidgety during work—oh god, I can’t believe she wanted to pay for the five sandwiches separately in the middle of a lunch rush—I have yet to really fall asleep and take a nap.  I am still quite tired, but not enough to keep my head swerving and my mind hazy.  I am okay.

I did skip the CIS class though.  I feel bad about it.

And something happened right after the English class that I was seriously considering to drop.  Right after class ended, I went around to check out the library that a reading was going to be in; ZZ Packer is coming to my college, and my English instructor is supposedly having a dinner with her… I wonder if that was why he wanted the students to come to the reading as well?  Of course, we also have read her book as an assignment, but that, too, could have been the effect of her reading later tonight.

But I digress.  Carrying on…

The library was surprisingly close; it was at the same floor as the classroom that I was in, which the English department also calls home.  It was at the opposite end of the same corridor as where my classroom (which also happens to be the seminar room… why do I get the feeling that the department is severely underfunded and underrepresented?), revealing the rows of books through its open door.  Closer inspection of the room revealed the sign of the library, indicating that this indeed is the place that I should be later in the evening.  I peered through the door with a peek, my feet outside the library (which is frankly more like a room) but my head inside.

Guess who I saw?  My former instructor.

He taught my creative writing class about a year ago, when I was going through the similar motion of trying out different classes for choosing my major.  Of course, it led me to nowhere, but I at least passed the class with flying colors, grade-wise anyway.  Have I done that good of a work?  I think to this day, wondering if it was through merit or through pity that I received an A in the class.  Such thought eventually led to the death of my confidence in skills of the creative writing, which is a part of what led me here, career in college-wise.

I thought, for the longest time, he hated me.

I was kind of a dick in that class.  Discussion classes that do not seek actual knowledge but speculations, such as English classes that do not teach rules, turn me into thus, or so I have realized.  I am sure I looked down on majority of the people in the class.  Here is what I have explained to my career advisor concerning the class:  “it fills me up with the feeling both of alienation and superiority.”  I am not sure where the latter comes from, actually.  I am quite terrible at thinking about the characters.  While I can easily see what people are talking about when they point out the characters’ thoughts and motivations, it is not so easy until it is pointed out, and I am hardly the one that notices things first.  Nonetheless, during that creative writing class, I basically tore the short stories by the fellow students apart like a paper machete wielded by a bloodthirsty librarian.  Some did survive, but that was more through skills in the grammatical department than the story one.  Funny thing is, though, that I even tore my own story apart, presumably irreparable.  I have yet to touch the story again, even after nearly a year of leaving it be.

But it was all right.

We talked for a bit, both of us trying to fill in the bouts of awkward silences.  I think it worked, but I cannot be sure.  I get the feeling that while I did not leave a lasting impression, he did recognize my face, and that was good enough.  After a bit of chit-chat, I thought over the decision to drop the class right after this class.

I am going to wait.

I will wait it out and toil through the class again.  I may not like it, but I would like to know if there is more of what this class has to offer than what I have experienced so far in it, which is rather lackluster.  I have until the end of February, and I will decide if I want to withdraw by then.  Yes, it means I have not changed my mind, but no, I have not shoved the very idea of sticking with English and creative writing in general out of the door, but only just.  The idea still hangs by the thread.

Hopefully I will make a right decision soon.

(I may add a few pictures later.)

Now, pictures from reading:

The reading was pretty fun.  She actually sung some Brownie songs!

Oh how I sleep

Today has been a day-long endeavor against sleep.  It started at the metro, where I could not take a much-needed nap during the thirty-minute ride to the downtown (and the campus).  The first class was all right; the room was cool enough and the lecture went fast enough.  The second lecture that I went to, though, oh… it was disastrous.  Head bobbed all throughout the hour that I was in the classroom.  After that, I went to the library—not to look for a book, not to study, but only to take a catnap for a few minutes.  It worked, but only just; the dream I had during the short period of time was lucid and trippy and had me floating across the library in my mind.

The overwhelming lethargy bordering on narcolepsy subsided once I started working, though.  It was okay, until I took the metro back home.  After that, it was the race to catch every last minute of idling moment and contribute it to the art of napping.  It is not pretty; nobody said it was.  If you do not require as much resting period or sleep as me, I highly discourage this behavior.  Doing this cost me my freelance gig, unfortunately.

I did stay up enough in the evening, though, to get a nominal amount of work done… I probably did not do enough studying, which will undoubtedly result in me crashing through the homework and reading assignment tomorrow.  Joy.

By the way, it feels awkward to go to a library of a different college and try to borrow a book… and fail.

Thank god I do not have to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow.

Writing shorter

Among the things that I have learned through the years is that people generally do not want to read long posts.  I am not sure where the ideal word count lies, but it is definitely shorter than how much i used to write while I was in high school newspaper—around 500-600 words in length.  While plenty of people are capable of writing such length of pieces (in fact, much of college papers tend to run much longer than that), I have learned that longer blog posts generally get the “tl,dr;” treatment:  the sheer volume of words that fill the monitor becomes so overwhelming that people skim over the words at best, and at worst, the post is simply scroll down to the end, not a single word read and entire thoughts ignored.

Sure, chances are the post is filled with angst-filled rambles that make little sense, but think of how many quality reading materials people has given up on.  This phenomenon is rather funny, too, as it corresponds with the society that is endowed with ever-shortening attention span.  That explains a lot of the newer applications that have recently gained popularity on the Internet—how about Twitter, or maybe Stumbleupon?

With that in mind, I will try to trim my posts as much as I can.  It will not be all that hard; much of what I have to do is to get rid of excess words.  Maybe Hemingway was on to something with his writing style.

And this is what pulls me close

Every now and then I find something that gets my attention, something I wish I could do, and something that I could actually (probably) do.  I am looking at the robot that I have gotten last week.  There are many like it, but this one is mine… for now.

No, I cannot say that I find it cute.  It looks like a Roomba prototype without the vacuuming apparatus and with double-A batteries as source of power.  I have a feeling that it will suck through them like Game Gear on a holiday.

So far, I can’t do anything with it.  I have connected it to the computer using Bluetooth module that came with it… and as a test, I used the included joyStick software to move it around (or roll it around, if it were).  It is growing on me, though.  Yes, I thought about actually buying it and tinker with it on my own, but no, I am not going to do that; I will try my hand on the iRobot Create if computer science tickles my fancy.

And tickle my fancy it does.  Consider if I went to, say, a field in English.  I do not mind teaching English, although I sometimes have erratic accents that pop out, unwarranted, as though the shackle that chained it behind the oh-so-practiced “American” accent has been torn off by the forces unknown.  I probably know more about grammar and spelling and word usage than your average American.  I, however, am not terribly interested in it; I just wanted to write, and be a novelist of sort that will leave my name in a hardcover book.  It’s a lovely idea, but I do not think I participate enough during English classes to do well in it.  It is just a hunch, of course… I am pretty sure the last instructor I had for creative writing class was not too fond of me.  Just a hunch.

But the CIS department in my college is more highly regarded than the CS one.  What am I to do?  Do I toil through the business classes for rudimentary knowledge of coding and hardly an algorithm?  Or do I jump into the world filled to the brim with math, choking under the weight of integrals and theoretical numbers?

I think I will need to talk to my advisor about this.

But I hope that things will turn out to be all right, and it will serve me well in my lifetime… and I pray that the things I learned will not be turned to naught.

The Stranger

I was listening to the “Dead Flag Blues” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor earlier in the evening. It is one of my favorite songs—dark, brooding narrative delivered over echoic tunes in the background. Bored, I googled the name of the song, and some videos—fan-made music videos, as the band did not seem to have made any music videos at all—were on YouTube.

One of the videos likened the song to that of the recollection of 9/11. While the album was initially released back in 1997, the words do resonate as such:

The video by itself was insightful (as using the song for purposes unintended by the original artists sometimes is), if a little lacking in finesse. It also reminded me of the time back in high school when it happened.

The class started at eight, and I never fared well in the first period, so I could have dozed off... Not very interesting. I cannot even remember the second period. By third period, though, things got… unusual. Students in my class turned on the TV to catch the ever-elusive airwaves, which were never meant to be received on the school ground, and teacher did nothing to stop them. The class went by and we did not learn a thing.

The trend continued in all the classes I went to afterward. I did see the glimpse of the building, and while I did ask people around, I did not notice the significance of the event. Some kind of building fell… as an accident... was the extent of the info I got.

When I went home, I watched the television—again, same stuff, but things becoming much clearer—beginning with the reception. CNN was playing in place of TBS (we do not have cable at home), replaying the footage of the incident over and over again. The tower on fire, another being struck by a jetliner… it was so surreal, I found it to be almost comical. Did that just happen? Did the airplane just bring down the huge, brutalist structure? I realized that it was a big deal, though, only after realizing that the World Trade Center was an iconic part of the New York skyline. The smoke fuming from the what is later known as Ground Zero for days on end helped with this.

But I could not help but feel apathy out of this. Even after Taliban’s claim of deed and subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, it felt like someone else’s problem, with me uninvolved--

--and that would be right. I am, in fact, uninvolved. I have no family in New York. While I stopped by the City earlier that year (or maybe a year before), I could not feel much connection with the city. I have not ridden their subway, nor stopped by to eat a hot dog from a stand. All I remember from the ascent to the Empire State Building is the Chrysler Building that stood right before it. I do not even have much connection with the city in which I live and grew up in, so caring for the Big Apple, the ever-imposing city portrayed as Gotham and just about as distant, was—and still is—hard to do.

Call it an apathy of the stranger, much like the protagonist in the novel by Albert Camus.

That gets me thinking. Would I have to make myself care for the things happening around me, if I were to feel something out of it at all? Did I have to decide, for one, whether or not to care for a monumental event like 9/11? I am having trouble even to give a damn about much of the things around me, and to some extent, myself. It is a surprise that I care enough to write here, right now.

So what could make me care about what is around me? My thoughts—or lack thereof—must have led me to this road, the road with failures in school, lack of friends, and general dissatisfaction of life. I should be caring more, but it is not happening…

Do you get me?

What should I care, how should I care, why should I care?

It is probably among the many things that I need the answer for to keep me going forward.