been a little while since i've posted. things are a little hectic in school. also procrastinated on writing because i don't want to subject all of you to incoherent ramblings. schoolwise, just finished programming two big quarterly projects - a distributed file store similar to dropbox, and a barebones internet router. still need to finish my tcp exploit homework soon, but that'll be ok. then it's finals next week.
got back on the bike since my ankle feels a little bit better. currently i'm trying to train for strength, since sprinting on my bike is difficult for me. i can fly by people riding up hills, though, since i'm so twinky and skelly. i haven't trained for hill climbs, but it seems i'm a natural fit for them. though this means the types of races that i'll be doing will be mountainous and painful...
a lot of things in my life feel like an uphill battle. i'd say socializing, being creative, and having a personality (that's isn't the depressed archetype) are the main ones. it really does feel like i'm behind on all of these. no matter how much i want a relationship, i'm definitely missing the prerequisites.
an unspecific 1st grade memory
flaum, did you like the field trip
I don't know...
that's your favorite thing to say haha!
oh yeah, dunno...
an unspecific 9th grade memory
flaum, come with us after school!
ah, I can't, sorry
...
goes home, plays team fortress 2
the more i think about it, the more i find that i've missed out on actually practicing these "mechanisms". no wonder why it's all so terribly difficult now. instead of developing my person, i spent nights leveling up in runescape, improving my winrate in dota, or practicing nades in counterstrike. no one gives a shit about my virtual achievements!
granted, i've quit playing games ever since i entered college, but that's besides the point. i spent half of my life stagnating on the computer, and now i've gotta play catch up.
growing up, i did get better at some things in real life. i got perfect grades, so people praised me for being smart. whenever i worked, i was productive and got shit done... and so I got better at these things. but what's it all for? so i can enter the labor force and work to pay for my boss's happy life?
unfortunately, i only got encouragement to be smarter and a better worker. i don't remember anyone telling me to be happy. my greatest regret is not learning how to be happy. and it isn't natural for me at all. is it natural for other people?
i surround myself with positive-minded people, and i try to hang out with them as much as i can. i exercise and lift weights most days of the week, and i always eat healthy. i wake up early in the morning and maintain proper hygiene. i'm successful in school, and i recently managed to score an internship at a tech company you've definitely heard of. i'm textbook functional.
i don't know how to be happy, though! is there any point in trying to learn, at this point? i can't see a way to the top of the hill.
two days ago, i was testing out my new clipless pedals on my bike. after an hour of clipping in and out of my pedals, i thought i had it down, but i lost focus for a little bit and ended up falling over and spraining my ankle.
eh, normal people would have been like, "dang, oops, no big deal..." right? well, it made me very very sad, even more sad than what i forced myself to last week for a couple of reasons. first, i knew that i had to go to the emergency room to check if i broke my ankle, and that would cost so much money and make my parents worry about my cycling activity. second, i knew that i am going to have to give up cycling for a couple of weeks, so maybe people would forget about me by then. third, i was planning to play dodgeball and volunteer with some people i met at a new club i decided to join, but there's no way considering how crippled i am right now. i just wanted to make some new friends!
anyways, besides all of these depressing things, lately i've been getting more interested in distributed systems and computer security. some of the papers that i've been reading include Raft, which is a simpler consensus algorithm based on electing a leader system, and this phrack article about how to examine network packets in linux. i think it'd be cool to do some research in this area, but i don't know what i want to do.
you may have noticed the graphics section of this website. i wanna learn some webgl and put some art there, when i have some spare time. i'm also thinking about overhauling the css on this website to make it more colorful.
this past year i've been concentrating on making new friends. i took a seminar on "interpersonal relationship skills", tried making study groups in my classes, joined new clubs, chatted with random people at the cafeteria, tried out tinder, and probably some more. i haven't been able to make any new meaningful friendships.
i'd invite people out to lunch, have an awkward conversation, and never speak to them ever again. i'd try striking up a conversation in class and then proceed to say something arrogant, feel embarrassed, and give up forever. i lost a couple of friends that i already had from my first year in college by being a sad and shitty person for most of the time that i was around them. now, people usually start ignoring my messages when i try to talk to them on facebook or something.
people say that maybe i haven't found particularly nice people or people willing to be friends with me. it is a legitimate line of reasoning. i don't think this is the case. the problem seems to lie with myself, and i conclude this because i simply have not had success with a wide variety of people. the probability of this happening by chance seems small.
it's something wrong with my personality, probably, but this conclusion doesn't really help me, because i have no idea what it is. it's like posing an existential statement and leaving the instantiation up to whomever's interested. pretty useless.
this makes me pretty sad, because it means that if i don't change something about myself soon, i'll end up losing my three (?) remaining friends. anyways, tonight i'll finish my bottle of whiskey, since it's a holiday here in the US tomorrow. although drinking intensifies my depression, i'll do it anyways because i deserve it.
hope some of this is interesting to those of you reading this. otherwise i think i'll go back to writing in my own private journal.
wow, time sure is flying. it's already almost the end of 2017. i hate thinking about how much time is going by and how old i'm getting because, to go along with these thoughts, i think about how i haven't achieved the hard things that i've really wanted to do.
i think i've always struggled with being original and creative in the work that i do. i got through primary and secondary school with ease just pattern matching the textbooks and the teachers to earn good grades. but i don't think any of this really exercised my brain, and that feeling has become harder and harder to ignore.
at my internship over the summer, i wanted to do some good research. something a little bit original, useful, and interesting. i didn't manage to get much done, actually. i tried so many angles and strategies to try to come up with something that'd push my research to some good result, but none of them ever yielded any significant result. i also had some ideas that i just had no skill to execute in time.
all in all, it made me pretty sad. i'd put my whole effort - three months of it - but came up with nothing on my own. deep down i already knew this since i've never done anything outstanding, won any awards, or gone to a particularly competitive university. somehow all of the people who have judged me from a neutral position have never thought i'd make it to something great.
and you know, after all of these failures, i've become pretty worn down. i haven't tried to start any kind of academic project this school year, partly because i'm happier making friends at the cycling team, but mostly because i'm lazy and tired and feeling hopeless about it. i think i might give up on the goal of going to graduate school and earning a masters or a phd. i may be better off in lower skill work. but it makes me sad to see myself accepting this.
the one happy thing is that i went out cycling today in the hills and the desert. the views were nice. i don't know how to socialize and make friends with the rest of the cycling team though.
i've been taking the advice that they give every depressed person - go outside and occupy your mind, focus on the present, join activities, find new hobbies, make new friends, and exercise. I've even dropped a class just to spend more time at the gym and at the cycling team. i've made some more friends, and i enjoy doing the activities with them, but still i can't shake the feeling that they dodge every opportunity to hang out or get food one on one (i'm way less social in groups).
besides all of this, i've been looking for a relationship: preferably with a girl, but if a boy approaches me i'm ok with that too. well, actually, I've been looking for one ever since I've been in college, but that hasn't owrked out at all. so i'm a still a thirsty virgin. perhaps people can see that lol.
i've had some leads; might get food and have really long conversations with some, or even go on a couple of dates, but nothing really romantic. some of them always end up having other boyfriends already or turn out to be psycho or just lose interest and ghost me eventually. does the problem lie with me?
this quarter i've almost dropped the ball on all of my academics to make new friends and socialize more. i hope it pays off. if it doesn't, what do i have left to look forward to?
planning to organize this site a bit more. might add some music sections, art sections, maybe a section on compsci topics. perhaps i'll write a bit about my travels. no one wants to read about so much depression, right?
to strata, no need to feel like an impostor. i know about all the mood swings and how the happiness or sadness feels fake. but i'm glad there's another bi depressed compsci student on here.
i've visited hamburg once last summer, it was great. maybe i'll post some pictures that I have from there. missed out on the fischmarkt though.
what's the point of waiting for new music? i'm always trolling r/zhu and r/flume for unreleased tunes but I'm finding it useless. i get an initial burst of excitement and enjoyment from listening to a new song for the first couple of days, then it's back to listening to jamie xx's on hold remix.
i used to enjoy playing my show at ksdt, but since no one listens to it ever or even likes my music, i've stopped looking forward to it. people listen to music as a social activity, but since i don't have any friends, I can't even enjoy that aspect of music.
as an aside, it looks like I underestimated how warm the neocities community would be. thought I'd have a cozy space that no one would look at. but I guess that's ok.
i hate compsci. or actually, its culture. if you want to work in industry, you better be studying your shit trying to find the shortest path through a bunch of recruiters. otherwise have fun code monkeying at SAIC while you dream about gary's new lamborghini.
for the socially inept and connectionless losers like me, there's compsci research to get into, unless you're actually braindead like me. no one gives a fuck about undergraduate research here anyways, unless you're a special jacobs scholar snowflake or a minority, or someone with actual interests and passions. too bad I don't fit any of the criteria.
would I be better off in another major? perhaps urban studies? no, fuck you because I'm not interested in anything besides making new freinndos.