Pandamao

           As it should be apparent from my previous blog posts, my mind jumps around a lot. Currently, I have returned to the issue of languages. See, I was appreciating a song in Japanese, and then I thought… why?

           Specifically, I looked at the lyrics, some of which I could read and some of which I could not, and wondered to myself when I would become even barely proficient at Japanese. Then, I wondered why I thought about it.

           Apparently, sometime a long time ago—though I have yet to get this confirmed—bilinguals were looked down upon. I mean, it makes sense. Bilinguals, trilinguals, polyglots—we like to joke that the reason we can speak so many languages is because we are not good at any of them. Indeed, when I speak my mother tongue, I find myself slipping in English words, not because I cannot think of the corresponding term in the other language, but because I honestly cannot be bothered to spend an extra five seconds searching for the word if the meaning will not be lost. Of course, that changes in settings where I am speaking with people who do not understand English.

           However, that is beside the point.

           My question now is… why do I revere learning languages so much? Why do I have a fantastical and unrealistic list of ten languages that I would like to learn someday?

           Perhaps a large part of this can be attributed to my childhood? I grew up bilingual, and pretty much became trilingual before I became an adult. It is different from just knowing multiple European or Indian languages—the ones I learned came from different language families. I also had troubles with communicating as a child, so I think that motivates me to attempt monopolizing as many methods of communication as possible.

           However, I do not think those are the only factors. Currently, around the world, many, many people are enamored with the idea of learning foreign languages… well, with the exception of some stuck ups who believe that everybody ought to master English.

           We praise polyglots across the Internet, and perhaps seeing them so many times, seeing them say what they do is easy, natural, fun, despite the countless hours of work that they put in, perhaps that causes some sort of confirmation bias.

           Perhaps it is simply today’s culture, where, worldwide, in developed countries, the recent generations are go-getters who have learned that with the aid of technology, they may accomplish feats unthinkable to the earlier generations.

           Honestly, I cannot discern if I have been caught up in fantastical dreams or a worthy, conceivable aspiration, something that I may one day attain. However, I cannot help but be attracted to, cannot help but hope…

           I could follow with the plans mentioned in the blog post from yesterday, in which I revealed some other hobbies of mine, one of which involves watching anime. Indeed, I did find quite a few series that I wish to talk about at some point…

           However…

           Last night I discovered something better…

           But first,

           I shall take this opportunity to remind everybody…

           …that I am a nerd. When I say that, I do not refer simply to anime, but to the old stereotype of math and science, and perhaps literature…

           The definition of nerd and geek and so forth has expanded so much in recent years, and I could write a few blog posts about their differences, but that would be going on a tangent.

           I do need to research it lightly at some point though, because I fall under the category that has a vested interest, somewhat, but lacks proficiency. Social skills… that will be a topic for another time.

           Without further ado…

           Apple’s Numbers, which is like Apple’s equivalent of Microsoft Excel, has added several functions in the newest update, one of which includes linking other documents. I am unsure how recent the update was, but I am quite certain that there were no such functions a few months prior.

           It seems so monumental, so pivotal, even though I have not had any plans for how to use it yet. Ah… I should explain this in depth.

           Previously, there was a function in Numbers where hyperlinks could be used for websites or online files. Recently, that has been expended to include…

           …wait. Upon reexamination, I am less sure of the details. Perhaps I made a mistake yesterday, late at night?

           Nope, nope, I got it!

           So, now the link has been expanded to email and another spreadsheet! The latter definitely has the potential to become quite convenient. What caught my eye yesterday, however, was a different function, which I assume is also new.

           Numbers has had the ability to insert photos for a while, but I cannot be sure if the same were true for videos, audio, and other files, though all are possible now. I believe it is possible to record audio directly into the spreadsheet, which is quite nice. Having access to other files makes life so much easier…

           The most I will have to worry about is third parties, most of which are advertisers, and while annoying, probably will not do much to me. There are speculations that such third parties will be much less innocuous in the future, and that digital footprints may be troublesome, but it… I lost my train of thought just now.

           A good portion of it comes back to the fear of being judged, I suppose, even though this is a fairly anonymous platform.

           This definitely sounds more dramatic than it ought to be.

           During the period that I have been lax with the blog, I have reexplored various interests. There is a post about five or six Thursdays ago that I wrote but never posted, about plans for a Webnovel that I never sat down to write. I rearranged my wish list of languages to learn and took on a few informal translation projects. I sorted out some things in my personal life and trying to find a method of record keeping that worked for me.

           I am stalling. Partially I am also disappointed in how my list of activities seems… a bit stereotypical, which annoys me, but… I have previously stated that I plan to stay away from controversial topics, at the very least for the time being—there is no need to kill a blog before it even takes off—and many current events are both political and controversial, so I am a bit limited.

           I am stalling.

           Anime. I have wanted to talk about that for a while, but I was worried of that being cause for this blog to be dismissed. It has been a sizable portion of my life for some time now. When I first started this blog, I had been watching Boku No Hero Academia, but I felt like I would just be bandwagoning if I talked about that… so then I did not. Then, I found out about Hunter x Hunter, which was amazing… but I wrote nothing. I started Re:Zero with an acquaintance, but have not gotten very far, though it seems very promising.

           Right now my mind is divided; I’m listening to a podcast, of a sort, in English, and I am typing right now, in English. It got me thinking—I will mention right now that a few posts from now on will be structureless, with me just writing down wherever my mind goes—about multitasking.

           Now, as many sources will eagerly tell you, multitasking is not real. It is a myth. A hoax. Our minds cannot multitask; rather, it switches between multiple tasks, or something like that. Now, isn’t that interesting. That was a filler sentence, and so is this one, because the “podcast” got surprisingly motivating and just now got quite engrossing. It is actually a speech. I should insert a link here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9gzGmyDJvc).

           Anyway, I have heard, once upon a time, that it was possible to think in Japanese and think about math at the same time. That makes me wonder what else that is true for. If I were listening to a podcast or speech in another language, would that make it easier for me to type this out in English right now? I wonder.

           From an alternative standpoint, it seems like I am still able to type in English while simultaneously listening to something in English, or so it appears. And now, a sort of notification pops up in my mind, reminding me to check something important. So then, what is multitasking? Sorry, that is not what I meant.

           Rather, what is it that I am doing right now? If I am not multitasking, if I am switching quickly between multiple tasks, what is it that I am losing? Well, I know that every now and then, something confuses me, as if I accidently missed two seconds of the presentation, but also not really. I can be confident that my typing speed is slower, but it still seems relatively fast, and I can’t isolate this from my normal slower typing speeds—I feel like typing tests are often inaccurate. Well, not necessarily.

           Typing tests are an accurate test of the time it takes to type a thought after having to think about it. However, when I write, I am limited by the time it takes me to type.

           Just now, I took some time to read something. I realized that I had significantly more difficulty with simultaneously reading and listening; I had to pause the audio. That’s an interesting realization because in language, writing and speaking are more difficult than reading and writing, respectively. One must create new content.

           Today, in a moment of both turmoil and determination, I searched online for an old game that I saw once in my childhood that left a powerful impression on me. Logically, it could not have been nearly as advanced as games are today, and indeed, the art style was much more simplistic, but somehow, it brought an odd sense of closure.

           Closure might be the wrong word.

           Closure implies emotional turmoil and trauma, which was not what I had associated with this. Rather, it was a sort of quiet longing. Juvenile though it was, it was a memory from long ago that kept surfacing, and though I never lingered on it for long, there was always this burning curiosity, this profound wish to identify what it was. Part of me feels like it has to have been years since I last thought about it, but it’s hard to tell, for even when I think about it, I usually forget it within the hour.

           For some reason, I decided to search it up today. It was surprisingly easy to find. Even though I know from experience how powerful the Internet is, I was not expecting my vague memories to be successful.

           Then again, I have found book titles online from my fragmented memories of plot devoid of the names of central characters or locations. Still, it was a nice experience, very brief. I expected at least an hour, but I think I succeeded within ten to twenty minutes.

           It seems to me that one of my old beliefs—everything goes in cycles; many things are never really lost—is becoming increasingly true in the rapid age of technological advances. When everything else in life seems jumbled and disordered, it is nice to step back and appreciate the little things, I suppose.

           I say that with no reference to religion and whatnot. Maybe that is an area that I will explore again one day, but for now, I am peacefully atheist.

            I think I mentioned it before, that I was no longer worried about dropping off my blog because I believed that so many parts of my life moved in cycles. That is to say, I would inevitably return whenever I was ready for it, and maybe I would linger, maybe I would decide to drop it for good, but I would return successfully at least once.

           After all, that seems to be the pattern with most things I do.

           It is difficult to say if I have really returned this time. Sometimes I think I want to pick something up again but find out that I do not really want to, or that it becomes more burdensome than I had imagined.

           I slept maybe six hours last night so that I could wake up early and then go to sleep early tonight. I think I have mentioned before that I prefer waking up early to staying up late. Surprisingly, when my alarm went off today, I found myself scooting off the bed and beginning my day before my mind was fully conscious.

           It was nice. I can make a few guesses at the reason, but I cannot be sure of the specifics. The first possibility is the timing, whether that means I happen to prefer waking up early or that the six hours works slightly better than eight hours. Perhaps six hours happens to put me at an easier stage to wake up than eight hours.

           However, I want to refute it, even though I cannot be sure, because supposedly, throughout the night, one's sleep cycles get shorter and shorter, with less time being spent in stage three and four and more in REM, so the idea that it never worked well before and just happened to work well today would be too convenient. It feels like depending on a coincidence.

           Another reason is that the second and third possibilities seem more interesting to me, both drawing roots in psychology rather than coincidence and timing.

           My normal alarm did not go off today. I do not know why; that alarm, in particular, seems to be trickier, becoming silent if I accidentally left my device on mute or some other small reason. I am fairly sure that the first alarm did not go off today because I only had to disable one alarm this morning, which was the second alarm with a different ringtone that played fifteen minutes after the first one.

           The setup for that was quite coincidental. To illustrate, my first alarm, the finicky one, is the Bedtime function, since it lets me see around how many hours of sleep I get without having to do calculations, which is great considering that fatigue deteriorates my mental math skills, and while I could get by with counting on my fingers, why reinvent the wheel? The following alarms are set by me scrolling through a list of past alarms and checking every single one that falls within a thirty-minute time frame afterward. For instance, today, that was the one alarm fifteen minutes after. Some days there are none, others there are three.

           Anyway, this one had a different ringtone. It might have been that I dulled my senses to the other ringtone over time because I could hear this one and respond to it while half-conscious despite its much smaller volume than my usual. I think that acquired deafness/selective hearing would qualify as something psychological.

           I am getting more sleep than I have in a long time, but somehow it's more of a struggle to climb out of bed when I hear my alarm. I used to be able to jump out of bed, and joyfully begin my day without one, so I am not sure what is happening here.

           Anyway, today I am going to review foreign languages.

           First, I need to start forcing myself into returning to my previous regimen. Secondly, I wanted to analyze why some of the resources that I do not favor—Duolingo and Drops—are so highly acclaimed. Perhaps their success may be attributed to their price tag—people are always more attracted to free things.

           Perhaps another factor is that they inspire persistence. With the acquisition of almost any skill, practice and repetition are crucial. Although both break down the languages so much that it seems impossible to learn them in a reasonable amount of time, their simplicity makes the task less daunting every day. It minimizes hesitation.

           Both have a streaks system. Drops has a very game-like system, and the way it introduces vocabulary makes one feel accomplished under the guise of tremendous progress—more on why that system seems inherently flawed to me later. Duolingo utilizes a similar disguise, but I feel like it may be slightly better at spaced repetition. I think Duolingo's main attraction might be its leaderboards. The world tends to underestimate the wonders of competitiveness, but at least Duolingo does not.

           Together, these three systems keep the consumer returning each day to "learn" new words and aspects of the language. However, the assertion that everybody "learns" seems slightly dubious.

           Of course, I am not attempting to denounce them. In fact, on an ideal day, I would probably have used both for around fifteen minutes. However, as I have stressed many times before, I firmly believe that they are supplements.

           They are useful when learning a foreign language, but they are not the only way to learn.

           Honestly, with the proper dedication, a dictionary and detailed grammar guide would be sufficient for learning a language. The keys have always been active recall and spaced repetition.

           Those two techniques are famously proven to aid in memory, moreso than brute-force memorization or rereading or highlighting or summarizing or flipping through flashcards without attempting to mentally answer them first.

           Active recall is about seeing the question and forcing yourself to answer it before you access the answer. I feel as if Drops fails on this because it usually asks for recognition—shows one picture and four words or vice versa and asks for the user to match the correct word with the picture—and while it does have spelling, it is a quite simplistic system and it is not useful for languages like Japanese, which has complicated kanji that would take more time and effort to memorize.

           Funny. I announced that I returned and then got too caught up with tasks that I did not make the second post of the day. Oops.

           Thinking through all of this, I honestly do not know what I plan to do. I would like to stay relatively on schedule, to not shift everything dramatically, but to do so, I need to go back and count through my posts.

           On the third day of the development month, April 19th, I switched over to the subject of a Bonus Month, and surprisingly, I continued to write posts—though they became sparse and deviated from the schedule—until March 3rd, totaling to two weeks and one day. I then took a break of about three weeks.

           ...Actually, this is complicated, and more trouble than it is worth.

           I am just going to call this Friday the end of the week—which makes so much more sense than when I kept ending the week during Wednesday or Thursday and start a new month. I guess I will call this the beginning of the third month, even though by my previously established logic/ ground rules, this should be halfway through the third month.

           This checks out pretty well too, since I got about two or three posts in the Development month before I switched themes, so combined together, I should still get around 28 posts in this first developmental month. Cool.

           Anyway, after this month, I will probably try to take another Bonus Month, not to take a break from the blog again, but to try and explore some different aspects of it. There is a project that I have been planning for a while now, though I am not sure how well I can execute it. Worst comes to worst, I will switch to spending that entire month trying to learn HTML and making a fancy Tumblr.

           ...it probably would not show up on the app though. I think Tumblr themes are only effective for the website.

           I guess that kind of wraps up a brief outline of my plans for this blog in the next two months.

           On the other hand, I am still trying to get a hold of the other goals I have planned, such as with Foreign Language learning and exercise. Speaking of which, due to coronavirus, many people are quarantined inside their house, which makes getting exercise all the more imperative.

           I am not sure what to write now. I really have fallen out of practice.

           Well, after this developmental month, I'll have a bonus month, and after that, maybe a foundational month? I think the four subjects would involve something personal or some personal project, some type of math or science, literature/English--I've been thinking about it for a while, and for some reason, I really want to go that route—, and...

           I am back!

           Somehow.

           That is a strong assertion. I am not quite sure that I am free, so to speak, and perhaps I never will be. Rather, I must learn to balance my time and manage all my endeavors simultaneously. Tough.

           I am not sure where I am going with this. Personally, the last two weeks have been a whirlwind, and I am kind of left reeling from everything that has happened. Hence, it is a bit humbling to look at the world and see that everything is still moving forward normally—well, as normal as it may amidst a pandemic.

           To be honest, it is a bit irksome too. It makes me feel disconnected from everything.

           I am not sure what to write here. I am also not sure what day today is in terms of the random journaling schedule that I made. I guess the first Bonus Month can just be turned into a break month, but I am not sure if the Bonus Month is still going on, or if it has moved onto the next month where I must expand on topics mentioned in the foundational month. It is... confusing.

           Also, as casual as writing in a blog is, I feel as if I have somehow fallen out of practice. I can still type, but my hands seem to fumble a little bit more than usual, or perhaps that is just my imagination. Anyway, it seems like I have been typing for a while now, but I am only at around two hundred words, but I clearly remember being able to type out five hundred words in a brief fifteen minutes before the break.

           I glanced at the calendar just now, and it seems like I am in the second week of the third month. Here, I have some choices. I can either start a new month, finish this one, or do some more counting and see if continuing the Bonus Month from before the break would be enough to finish out the third month. Either way, this has gotten quite confusing.

           I am not sure if I am simply rambling just now. Again, I am rusty, out of practice.

           On a random note, I have a list of goals now, organized in a four by four chart, where each box can be broken down into three more specific tasks, making for a total of forty-eight tasks, some of which will require multiple steps. Again, I am not sure how effective it will be, but I can hope that maybe it helps me with getting reorientated.

           Apologies. This post is bland. Then again, there is probably nobody that will ever read this, unless somehow my blog gets quite popular one day, and somebody decides to scroll through my initial low-quality posts.

      Alternatively, the state of mind with which I approach this task. Am I inspired? Discouraged? Lackadaisical?

      I wonder.

      Something I thought of earlier today.

      If I were to divide myself—my knowledge and experiences and interests—into separate overlapping spheres, I would not know where to begin.

      For a very long time, I divided things by class subjects. After all, it is kind of applicable even outside of school. The largest categories might be STEM, Fine Arts, Physical Activity... and then what?

      Such a system is inherently flawed because life is not that simple, because not everything can fit neatly into nice looking categories.

      What could I say of my crazy endeavor to type posts day after day into a blog online, where I do not know if I would prefer people to ignore or read? What would I say of all the time wasted in the past, staring off into space, or mindlessly running through tedious, meaningless calculations? What would I say of those moments I felt alone in a crowd?

      When it comes down to it, nothing is simple, and I try to escape it by making plans, but the truth is that I am human and that humanity... I suppose that is not something I have ever learned to truly account for.

      But what is "human"? Has anybody defined it? There is the whole Homo sapien definition—actually, it might be Homo sapien sapien—by now, but... what does it mean to say that "we are only human"?

      In a way, it sounds like an excuse, and I abhor excuses, in a way. After all, everybody is human, famous examples like Albert Einstein or Hitler, Leonardo Da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Amadeus Mozart, Issac Newton... and various less famous examples—that one amazing teacher, that one classroom bully, the coworker, the CEO, those who came before, those who came after...

      Privilege exists, of course, but when I make peace with my failures because "I am only human," I feel like I am making an excuse, and that is something that I cannot really get past.

      ...

      This here, is the result of me forcing myself to write in confined time. The above words took me about ten minutes, but it seems so incoherent. Just a bunch of frenzied ramblings.

      It seems rushed, and I guess maybe I am, right now? But I am also so slow, and stagnant...

      "But that is no matter, I begun drafting the post in my head while waiting. In fact, most of what I wrote up to this point is word for word from it." Also no longer applicable, or at least, not as applicable as it previously was.

      I have nothing.

      Right now, I am to talk about what I did today. I have nothing. Well, nothing plus seven minutes, which might be worse than just having nothing at all.

      I am not sure how to describe how I spent my day today. I was not that productive.

      And... I got off track just now, but it is not my fault because there was a conversation that I needed to respond to. However, I have three minutes left now. Alternatively, I have eight minutes if I considered 12:00 the deadline instead off 11:55.

      I do not even know what I am writing anymore. It just feels like a panic to get words on the page, which, I will admit, is not all that bad of a feeling. I have felt worse, and this deadline has no stakes attached, in a general sense.

      The sound of the keys is very satisfying. It reminds me of the tapping of rain against the window, all very soothing. Except, this rainstorm keeps stuttering with uncertain phrases and frequent ninety degree turns of my right hand to the backspace button. The trusty backspace button. Ever so reliable.

      I cannot help but pity people of the past who had to deal with typewriters. I used one once, when there was no paper in it. The keys require much more force to push down, and while it does not seem like much, I'm sure that it would take its toll on me over time. Worse still, they had no back button, if my knowledge on typewriters serve me well. Instead, they just had keys smeared with ink, and if there was a mistype, then they had to cross it out with a line in the middle. That would really be a pain.

      Few people now, even the world's best, fastest typers, would be able to type efficiently on typewriters, I think. In fact, the best might struggle more because faster typing often means more errors, only that those errors are fixed at faster speeds to compensate for their frequency.

      Anyways, I am nearing the end. If I am to consider my deadline to be midnight, then I have three minutes remaining, which I surmise shall be enough.

      It makes me feel accomplished, in a weird way.

      All these blog posts are giving me a lot of practice, with typing, with writing, and with freely expressing my thoughts, or at least expressing them in a freer manner than I usually would. It is nice to sit down and kind of think things through or ramble about nothing.

      I wonder if this has increased my typing speed at all.

      I ought to take another typing test—they are everywhere online—at some point. However, when it comes down to it, it is not about the typing speed.

      As seen in chemical reactions, or the common adage of the weakest link, a process can only be as fast as the slowest step. A superior typing speed is nothing to boast about when the writing speed—the speed at which thoughts are formed and then manipulated into an intelligible and grammatically correct sentence—is the limiter, or, in the case of coding—the speed at which the code is written is the limiter, though I would also argue that the speed at which one types programs would be slower than the speed at which they type text regardless because of all the increased semicolons and curly braces that we generally do not use as much in day-to-day typing.

      Such is why even though my typing speed averages around 70-80 WPM, with a sprint of around 90-100 WPM, all the blog posts I write take me at least fifteen to twenty minutes. I would argue, however, that I am getting faster at composing sentences, or perhaps I am just getting more comfortable with letting my thoughts flow. Alternatively, maybe it is just because I have been writing in a more casual style recently.

      When was the last time I used a semicolon or colon?

      My problem with typing tests is my perfectionism. In my typing, I make a surprising amount of errors, but I usually do not notice it because my right hand automatically flicks over and presses the backspace button before my conscious mind really registers it. Now that I think about it, it is strange how such a complicated series of actions—typing—feels like second nature.

      Simultaneously, I do not consider myself particularly fast. I cannot shake the feeling that I am only average, though perhaps that is because I am surrounded by greats.

      Anyway, typing tests are equipped with measures of accuracy. Thus, they measure not only the typing speed, but the amount of errors made, even if they were later corrected. The accuracy really bothers me.

      I have tried intentionally slowing myself down to 70 WPM to see if I could get 100.0% accuracy that way, but I always inevitably get bored and speed up, which results in an error.

      I realize that I missed another post again this morning, I think. I also realize that I stopped taking the time to format these posts—add dates and times and titles… That is okay. I keep telling myself that one day I will go back and edit all those posts, but part of me severely doubts it.

      It is okay because in a weird way, this blog is serving its purpose. There were dreams and aspirations I had for this blog, of course, and I have not given up on them, but the ultimate purpose of this blog was to help me find myself and ground myself, and that has happened, even though counterintuitively, it results in me not always updating my blog as consistently as I promised myself that I would.

      With that in mind, much of the month dedicated to focus has passed, and I have strayed from my goal various times, but I feel like most times, I ended up learning something, or at least having a good time. It might be bad to always be positive, and I cannot tell whether my current writing is just me putting up a farce, but I think I am slowly finding it, not as quickly as I would have liked, but I always tend to aim too high, so this is still nice progress.

      When it comes down to it, it is about personal values. What are the things that we value most? What actions or places to spend time would we appreciate or regret most? Priorities.

      It is like a fire. Passionate, bright, blinding, but also incredibly disorientating and bad-smelling.

      I feared fire when I was younger, but now I find it immensely beautiful, even though the fear has not gone away completely. In many ways, it is an enabler.

      Combustion reactions are used in labs and workspaces, to sterilize tools or to generate electricity.

      I suppose it is a little bit cliché, but that is in all honestly, part of what I have been thinking about today. For a while now, I felt as if a part of me had died down to a small flicker, like maybe I was trying and failing to shield tiny tongues of flame from the wind with my body. Today, however, there was a specific instant when I felt like something was rekindled. I do not know how true that was, or if it was, how long it will last, but I will relish in it for the time being.

      I have done a lot of writing today, so my mind is kind of lost right now. In essence, I am writing an appreciation letter, which I think are helpful for both the sender and receiver, if done right. While we both have a chance to feel a stronger connection, the receiver feels validated and happy, the sender also feels happy due to getting to revisit old memories and being thanked by the receiver after reading.

        I feel invested in my life, but my actions do not necessarily reflect that.

        I have a slight headache, and the back of my throat is dry. I am not sure if this is because of eye strain or over-consumption of water. After all, eye strain causes headaches, and water can be poisonous in large amounts.

        "Poisonous" or "toxic"? I am sure that there is some specific difference in definition between them, but I know not the details. I will go with "poisonous" because of the phrase "water poisoning."

        When that thought came to mind, I thought about electrolytes and all the things I have read about water with a pinch of sugar, salt, and a dash of lemon juice to counter dehydration. I do not believe I currently have access to lemons, though sugar and salt are available.

        Instead, I indulged in a piece of candy, possibly expired, but hopefully not. Initially, I wanted gum, but I was worried that the chewing motion would aggravate my eye strain through vibrations. In the end, it did not matter what I chose. I am currently chewing gum as I type, having finished that piece of candy.

        Of course, chewing gum is also not a great option when fearing dehydration, but I can no longer find it in myself to care. My mouth tasted incredibly bland, and with the dull ache above my brow and my intermittently parched throat, I will take the small mercies.

        I figured that if sipping water could not fix the parched throat, then chewing gum could not worsen it. There it is, folks! Faux analysis at its best! Logical fallacies galore! Quite brilliant, no?

        Yea, no, it sucks. Is it even a logical fallacy if it was not logical in the first place?

        ...I suppose it could be considered a False Analogy, but that too seems like a stretch.

        Anyway, if this post seems incredibly mundane, that is because it is. As usual, I will not be revealing much about my life, and since I have not had any epiphanies nor bouts of extreme emotion today, this is all there is.

        Word vomit.

        My gum has almost no flavor now.

        "Alexa play Despacito."

        Actually, do not though. I neither own an Alexa nor appreciate Despacito—a friend's sibling told me that memorizing it would help me better my Spanish, but I stopped after the first few playthroughs upon realizing how suggestive that song is. Either way, that joke is a bit past its prime.

        Now that I have added a random assortment of slang from different age groups and different locations on the world, my work here is done, I guess.

        Yesterday evening was the second post that I completely missed since the start of this blog. I am okay with that. It was a very deliberate decision I made at eleven last night when I opted for a time-limited thing that I would enjoy.

        Self-acceptance. That is an interesting, albeit strange concept.

        A little bit about my writing process. Usually, I kind of ramble, more often in the mornings, until I find a topic to talk about, and I flesh it out for the remaining two or three hundred words. Of course, that was different when I first made this blog because back then the blog was my main focus, but for this month, it is not. Back then, I would make an abstract outline at the beginning of the week—like I did for Foreign Languages—or at least I would be confined enough to a topic that I would not struggle over deciding what to write about—such as in the case of FRC.

        Meanwhile, I kind of pick up topics for my Daily Report throughout the day, though sometimes I do not, and I kind of just write whatever comes to mind. I suppose in that manner, Daily Reports reflect my mood and productivity for the day. I am explaining this because although I am in a light-hearted mood now, I was in a more contemplative mood yesterday, and I did not get far with writing because of other commitments, but I would still like to flesh it out.

        "Part of me wonders what it would be like to have a silent mind. Not that my head is filled with voices--that would be insanity—or repetitive music," but it is in many senses, filled with rubbish.

        Earlier, I talked about numbers and how videogames seemed easier than life because they were quite quantifiable, but life had unquantifiable qualities, or at least, different objects were not as easy to compare to one another. For instance, maybe two pieces of equipment in a videogame could be compared by their stats. However, it is much harder to pick the better out of two tomatoes bruised in different places in the grocery aisle—the simple answer is just to look for an unbruised tomato, but that is not my point here.

        The thing is, there is a downfall to numbers, though I am not sure if it is just something that only I experience. Numbers draw attention. One gets tunnel-vision on numbers sometimes. But it is also more than that.

        The longer I spend looking at screens, the blurrier my vision of the outside world gets, literally, but also metaphorically. Even when the screen is no longer in front of me, my mind is reeling with numbers and information and everything except what I need, perhaps because it is easier that way.

      Everything adds up to something large eventually, positive or negative, provided the increments are not equivalent to zero. However, things of little magnitude take longer to add up than things of bigger magnitude, if there is a certain desired magnitude.

      It is easy to analyze numbers. It is easy to perform in-depth analyses when everything can be quantified and compared relative to one another. Perhaps that is part of the appeal of video games; so many things in video games are quantified, making it easy to figure out the next best course of action.

      Life, on the other hand, is not easily quantified. Granted, age, grades, income, years married, and the number of pets and children are all numbers. However, if such numbers were enough to describe one's entire life, then that life would probably have been a little drab, maybe even meaningless, as harsh as that sounds.

      When we read books or consume other storytelling media, we are often focused on the qualities. The color of the sky, the softness of cotton candy, the speed trees racing by outside the car...

      One does not simply put numbers to these. Of course, it is possible. The color of the sky cold probably be broken down into a string of numbers, hardness is measured by scratch tests—though I suppose that may be difficult for a subject like cotton candy, and one may easily look down at the car's speedometer.

      However, in these cases, the descriptive adjectives mean so much more, bringing so much more connotation with them, than the cold numbers. There is beauty in the way our world functions.

     However, it is difficult. Being unable to quantify something may mean being unable to compare it to another. It is like when one is asked to choose between two things they love, and the answer is that "they are uncomparable."

      Yet...

      Can we define tasks that have a short required time and a quick pay-off as having a small magnitude while other tasks have a large magnitude? Is magnitude linear? It seems to exist on several different planes, but perhaps that is just a testament of how complicated our world is.

      I am probably running around in circles at this point. I have the image in my head, and my words are making sense to me, but because of omitted information, it seems like random blabbering on paper.

      That is okay too, I suppose.

      When it comes down to it, these posts are very, very little in magnitude compared to everything else, but I think I have perhaps been more persistent about them than anything else, recently.

      Tis strange.

      Everything is strange, but wonderful, I suppose. It is better to define what we cannot understand as "beautiful" than to labor away pondering at it, than to struggle to come to terms and ultimately hate the world around us.

      Interesting. Beautiful.