Checkpoint, April 22 2024

PERSONAL: a quick update because that’s good for sanity and stuff.

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I’ll keep this one quick because things are getting very busy on my end.

Suggested music: Donkey Kong Country 2 - Stickerbush Symphony

There’s always been stuff to do this year, but with job application season rolling around, it’s now at the point where I need to get it done because other people are demanding it (or else I don’t get a job). So unlike a lot of the “I have to stay busy!” stuff I was saying in the past, I am actually busy right now. Lots of late nights reading, coding, or writing as of late.

It’s a bit startling to see how much worse I was doing in January compared to now. Something, clearly, was very wrong. I don’t want to articulate right now what I think was going wrong, but it’s definitely gotten much better. Here’s what I will say: at some point, there was this very quiet - very quiet! what a weird descriptor - realization that really, as long as I get somewhere in the short term, there’s not a lot of reason for me to worry. I trust myself to know whether or not I’m satisfied with what I’m doing in life, and if I am dissatisfied, I trust myself to change my situation for the better. I also trust the friends I have in my back corner to be there for me, to yell at me to get up when I’m down, and to pick me up when I truly cannot make it anymore.

It’s also been very helpful to learn how to say “no” to myself. I can’t do everything that I think I can, and I need to pick and choose which projects I want to pursue and which hurdles I want to overcome, or which hurdles I think are worth overcoming compared to the others. I think that even if I had no work to do¹ and had all the free time in the world, I would not be able to do everything that I wanted.

So right now, despite the professional stress on me (simply because of the additional prep work and side projects and stuff), I’m feeling pretty okay.

Lots of nice non-work moments in the last few months. I visited the UK and messed around at Cambridge and Oxford for a bit. I went back home and caught up with my friends and wrote an insanely long essay about it too. No traveling for a while, though; I honestly don’t mind spending a month or two staying in Łomża and not having to think about travel plans and such. Unfortunately I won’t have time to elaborate on them right now. Maybe some other time.

Anyway, coding club’s about to start. I’m going to pick out a UK photo and put it here, then send this out. Short and sweet update.

1. which I don’t think I would like very much. Work gives a sense of purpose because work is, at the end of the day, for other people. I am very bad at being selfish. ↩