![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fun-fun, or maybe it's zug-zug...
Dec. 6th, 2004 11:59 pmWell, today was okay. A little bit of stuff got done, a little more got put off, and a little more got dumped on me. But it's okay. Now that it's near the end of the semester, with the exception of my examinations, I have my projects completed. (Well, there is that nag, the thesis, but there's been decent progress on it and hopefully will be more tomorrow.) Having a little trouble getting motivated, but I'm sure that something like a deadline will give me inspiration to do stuff. But it's both good and bad having no band until the Rose Bowl - more time to goof off, and more time to get work done. Such is the trade-off we face.
Some tuff collected while out trawling the net:
Education and Sisyphus - a decent piece about how delicate the school environment needs to balance to avoid being useless in its goal of education. Of course, some would already say that the school system itself is useless in education, but pretend that it isn't for now.
Tell us something we didn't know. - This is what many have been saying for years and are continuing to say. It appears not to be having much effect in changing policy of the Administration.
Prairie Dogs have a language - and you thought we were just making this up, right? Well, if that doesn't convince you, how about The Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow! Monty Python, contributing to serious inquiry? I see someone's hand at work in all this.
Or maybe it's just my own hand. Turning oneself into a metaprogrammer may be difficult, but it is doable with practice. (Practice - my one major enemy of life so far) Perhaps I can convert that love of music into something useful - after all, when your playlist slowly continues to grow day by day, there's plenty of symbols that might be attachable to it. We'll see if anything comes out of it. Right now, I'm using my bedtime wisely - probably so that I can effect some other type of change. It all changes, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Before I know it, it'll be graduation day. And then, we'll see whether I continue on the path of schooling or I turn aside into a profession of some sort (what I'll do with a Medieval Studies degree is a little beyond me, but if it should come to that, I'm sure something will work out).
I turned into an older guy somewhere along the line. If I get into grad school, I can put it off for another couple years or something, but eventually I'll have to wander out into a world where studying at the university doesn't comprise the majority of my time. I'm fairly sure I'm putting it off because I don't want to think about it yet, since it hasn't happened yet. Perhaps that optimism that things will turn out fine, as I'm packing the disaster kit 'just in case'?
Maybe that's why![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
welah's moving out to Washington is still such a strange occurrence to me. He found something worth literally dropping his life here and starting again somewhere else. I don't think I've run across anything like that, and so perhaps I can't quite wrap my head around it. It might be the same sort of confusion I usually give when I get a measure of what image I project to people - they see some sort of (potentially) wise, open-minded, kind-to-all good guy. It's very confusing to someone who has two heroes wandering around in his head - they're the wise ones, I'm just a child. Some other personality fragment is the altruist, or the optimist - not me. I'm willing to take blame for my failures as essential parts of me, but I want to pass off my good parts as illusions or the province of something more not-me than me. So with all my virtues distributed, it's a little strange to see people react to them as if they were actually part of "me" - the dominant person in the tango of the mind. Too many excuses, not enough examples, I suppose. Same sort of envy of people who have committed beliefs as opposed to my own mess of conditionals, possibilities, and maybes.
Yeah, I know where this is headed. So I'll skip to the punch-line: I still don't feel like I've accomplished anything, or experienced anything, that I can use as the "defining point" of my life, as the anchor that says that I "am" something, be it good or evil. Having been raised on heroes, knights, angels, and grand adventures, my own life seems (naturally) more pathetic in scale comparatively. I don't have any of the pop-culture gods to pose as substitutes, asgreyweirdo theorizes, and I haven't had any of the deific forces or things whack me solidly enough to prove their existence and interest in me. I haven't found the sword I'm supposed to pull out yet, or the great quest I'm supposed to do and prove myself the hero. Still only human, in my opinion, so it's not honest to have people with good opinions of me.
Is that the drive to be a librarian - to finally be the hero, even if it is in a small way? To have proof every day of one's usefulness to other people? Should I ask for people to write what their life would have been like if I hadn't interacted with them... if I hadn't come about into existence? Should I play It's a Wonderful Life with my own life and see what happens? Am I confident enough to believe that the stories would come back that I had impacted them positively? Would my ego stand up to the possibility of my not having impacted a life significantly? Maybe that'll be the Christmas meme, although it's a bit on the morbid side, if you really think about it.
It is the difference, I suppose, between knowing that you're an important being and finally believing it. I haven't got to the belief part yet, and I think I've been out here long enough that the frost is beginning to nip at my extremities. I write it because it's what I feel, and it's what the truth appears like to me.
Some tuff collected while out trawling the net:
Education and Sisyphus - a decent piece about how delicate the school environment needs to balance to avoid being useless in its goal of education. Of course, some would already say that the school system itself is useless in education, but pretend that it isn't for now.
Tell us something we didn't know. - This is what many have been saying for years and are continuing to say. It appears not to be having much effect in changing policy of the Administration.
Prairie Dogs have a language - and you thought we were just making this up, right? Well, if that doesn't convince you, how about The Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow! Monty Python, contributing to serious inquiry? I see someone's hand at work in all this.
Or maybe it's just my own hand. Turning oneself into a metaprogrammer may be difficult, but it is doable with practice. (Practice - my one major enemy of life so far) Perhaps I can convert that love of music into something useful - after all, when your playlist slowly continues to grow day by day, there's plenty of symbols that might be attachable to it. We'll see if anything comes out of it. Right now, I'm using my bedtime wisely - probably so that I can effect some other type of change. It all changes, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Before I know it, it'll be graduation day. And then, we'll see whether I continue on the path of schooling or I turn aside into a profession of some sort (what I'll do with a Medieval Studies degree is a little beyond me, but if it should come to that, I'm sure something will work out).
I turned into an older guy somewhere along the line. If I get into grad school, I can put it off for another couple years or something, but eventually I'll have to wander out into a world where studying at the university doesn't comprise the majority of my time. I'm fairly sure I'm putting it off because I don't want to think about it yet, since it hasn't happened yet. Perhaps that optimism that things will turn out fine, as I'm packing the disaster kit 'just in case'?
Maybe that's why
welah's moving out to Washington is still such a strange occurrence to me. He found something worth literally dropping his life here and starting again somewhere else. I don't think I've run across anything like that, and so perhaps I can't quite wrap my head around it. It might be the same sort of confusion I usually give when I get a measure of what image I project to people - they see some sort of (potentially) wise, open-minded, kind-to-all good guy. It's very confusing to someone who has two heroes wandering around in his head - they're the wise ones, I'm just a child. Some other personality fragment is the altruist, or the optimist - not me. I'm willing to take blame for my failures as essential parts of me, but I want to pass off my good parts as illusions or the province of something more not-me than me. So with all my virtues distributed, it's a little strange to see people react to them as if they were actually part of "me" - the dominant person in the tango of the mind. Too many excuses, not enough examples, I suppose. Same sort of envy of people who have committed beliefs as opposed to my own mess of conditionals, possibilities, and maybes. Yeah, I know where this is headed. So I'll skip to the punch-line: I still don't feel like I've accomplished anything, or experienced anything, that I can use as the "defining point" of my life, as the anchor that says that I "am" something, be it good or evil. Having been raised on heroes, knights, angels, and grand adventures, my own life seems (naturally) more pathetic in scale comparatively. I don't have any of the pop-culture gods to pose as substitutes, as
greyweirdo theorizes, and I haven't had any of the deific forces or things whack me solidly enough to prove their existence and interest in me. I haven't found the sword I'm supposed to pull out yet, or the great quest I'm supposed to do and prove myself the hero. Still only human, in my opinion, so it's not honest to have people with good opinions of me.Is that the drive to be a librarian - to finally be the hero, even if it is in a small way? To have proof every day of one's usefulness to other people? Should I ask for people to write what their life would have been like if I hadn't interacted with them... if I hadn't come about into existence? Should I play It's a Wonderful Life with my own life and see what happens? Am I confident enough to believe that the stories would come back that I had impacted them positively? Would my ego stand up to the possibility of my not having impacted a life significantly? Maybe that'll be the Christmas meme, although it's a bit on the morbid side, if you really think about it.
It is the difference, I suppose, between knowing that you're an important being and finally believing it. I haven't got to the belief part yet, and I think I've been out here long enough that the frost is beginning to nip at my extremities. I write it because it's what I feel, and it's what the truth appears like to me.
