[ Retroactive disclaimer: Posts like these really are for my own benefit. I doubt they’re much of interest to anybody. It’s just a bit of introspection and practice of putting words on a page, if you’ll allow me. I’m really keen on developing the skills to write something in 10 minutes that doesn’t require too much revising or proof-reading. ]
I don’t think I’m all bad, really. When I’m by myself just thinking, I do get excited by the project I’m doing. It’s just that when I’m working, I have created an environment for myself that’s so conducive to distraction. And the problem there is that it’s hard to do work.
When I was an undergrad, I worked literally as little as I could to still get by. That’s not the entire truth, since I didn’t do too badly, but I was never passionate about any of the things I was learning (in the same way that I get obsessed with other things, if you get my meaning), and I didn’t learn the basics as well as I should have. People complain about pattern-recognition rote-learners. I guess I was a little bit like one of them. I just feel that my pattern matching is flexible enough to cope with new ideas. Which isn’t so different from understanding, right? We all rote learn in the beginning.
But here I am, and my MATLAB code looks okay but isn’t giving the right answers. Debugging it involves both checking the physics and checking the code, and I don’t really feel up to either of them at the time being. So I read the feeds, waste some time (I like collecting information, but there’s got to be a better way), then turn back to my “work” computer, realise I’m still stuck, and come back to write this because I’m feeling introspective.
I’m really enjoying writing more. In fact, I’m also really enjoying exercising more. They’re both things people say you should do, which is kind of cool, because it means people are right for a change. I’d like to start eating small meals, but I don’t think that’s as common a meme. I feel kind of pretentious using the word meme, actually, and I’m a bit embarrassed about using it. Doesn’t “idea” fit the bill almost in exactly the same way? Isn’t it always better to write without jargon? (And, if I can say anything about it, without acronyms. Damn them.)
So from now on, ‘meme’ is delegated to only specific usages about the actual replication of ideas between minds. It’s silly in all other circumstances.
I said I was going to write about Aperture and stuff, but I’ve kind of lost the motivation at present (short term only, presumably) to write about that kind of stuff. I’m happy to think that my brain is actually turning its attention more directly on the research I’m supposed to be doing, albeit in a slow and plodding manner. That’s fine by me.
Dammit. It’s getting late. I should get some work done before going home for eats. ’Til next time.
First pass edits:
- added parenthetical remark, ¶2
- fixed typo, ¶4
- added quote marks to 'meme', ¶5
- added parenthetical remark, ¶6