#bonusmonth

      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.

        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.

   I think yesterday's appreciation post was nice. I might do something like that again in the future, but I am currently stuck at home, so it might be more efficient if I wait until I start interacting with people daily to do appreciation posts. Of course, I could always look back on past events, like yesterday, and perhaps this time to myself is all the more reason to think good things about the people I know, but right now, I am still trying to get myself in order.

   My rhythm has really been thrown off, though it might have already been spiraling into disaster before the outbreak. Like I said, this quarantine has probably saved my mental health.

   On the other hand, I am now stagnant. Whereas previously I was suffering from a stressful and unsustainable level of productivity, I am now so markedly unproductive that it scares me, and part of me fears that I shall stay this way when the world begins moving again.

   Every time I think I am ready to start again, I falter, somehow. At the very least, I am not unhappy or tremendously stressed, yet. Perhaps I am not letting myself be. Perhaps I am not letting myself feel regret for wasting time or disappointment or frustration. Perhaps I am scared of relapse.

   It sounds beneficial, I suppose, but I question it. If I am content with everything I do, no matter its nature and productivity, then I will inevitably fall and languish.

   That is all. それだけだ.

   And I say this with a certain amount of apathy. It is startling almost. As my fingers dance and tap their way across the keyboard, I find myself glancing at the words on the screen cooly. There is no joy nor fear nor excitement nor sadness nor frustration.

   I feel as if I am merely stating facts.

   I must add a side note here that I am not depressed or anything. I feel emotions, but not right now, right here, in this moment, on this page, about this topic.

   I am in a better headspace, but this topic leaves me feeling incredibly neutral.

   There is no way to explain it. It feels like a part of the universe: if I do not pull myself together, I will eventually be hurt, and everything I have built in the past will crumble.

   But that is okay, because I still have time, for now.

...

   Earlier, "それだけだ" rung out in my head as I typed "fall and languish." I had to take an half-second to translate it from Japanese to English in my head, which I think was cool, though it does not mean much because it is more like a canned phrase than one that I conjugated. If it were, I probably would have used "それだけです" because I prefer the more polite/formal tone.

        I spent at least an hour, maybe even two hours grappling with spreadsheets so far today. I like number crunching and looking at the results, but...

        The process was very tedious. I was once again tempted to try and write a Java program instead of working with the Numbers spreadsheet offered by Apple, though logically, it was probably better to keep using the program. I do not know if maybe Excel would be better, but I also do not want to move all my work onto it.

        There was nothing complicated, simply combinations of everything a four-function calculator could do—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The annoying thing was that whenever I went down a table and referenced data from another table, it would move down the other table when autofilling, no matter how many times I called the same location from the other table.

        I am probably not describing it clearly. Basically, I had a column of input values. The other column was the column for output values, which I would write formulas for involving the input values. There was another table that had numbers corresponding to different sets of input values that needed to be put into the formula. For instance, there were 100 numbers, and "2000" corresponded to the first one, "1700" to the second, "1500" to the third, "1200" to four through ten, "1000" for eleven through twenty, "800" for twenty-one through fifty, and "600" for the rest. These were "fixed" values, but since this program did not allow for the use of variables, I did not want to write constants directly into the formula, I stored them in table B.

        Of course, I could have stored them in table A under another column, but that looks messy to me, considering that there are various indexes that share the same value. I thought it would look messy because it was not like there was one input and one output. There was one input column, but the resulting output column became an input column for another output column and so forth, because I was interested in seeing the intermediate answers as well. I am getting off topic.

        Anyway, it would not let me autofill using one value only from Table B! Whenever I tried, it would move down the column, and transposing the rows and columns did not help. Because of some weird programming, even when I copy and pasted the formula, if I did not go into the specific function—which would require about three more clicks per cell—it would shift down the column! So frustrating.

        But I did finish it.

        The annoying thing was that I knew that this process would have been so much faster if I just plugged in the numbers as constants into the formula rather than trying to make them variables in a separate table since this program has no variables and just interprets tables as lists that it needs to continue moving down on.

        Ah...

        Recently, I have been more relaxed, or at least not focused on my posts. Part of that can be attributed to how I do not have a topic in mind, so I keep procrastinating and hoping that a topic will come to me, but one does not.

        Sometimes, I am lucky and a topic comes to me as I type out these posts, but right now, I am drawing a blank. I have been drawing a blank for a while now.

        When I think about this Corona Break, the phrase "Much Ado About Nothing" comes to mind. I believe it is the name of one of Shakespeare's plays, though I do not care enough and am too long on time to verify that. I do not know the contents of the play, but I find that title very relatable. Right now, time seems stagnant. There seems to be so much time, and sometimes nothing to do.

        However, as always, there are so many things to do, if we only set our minds to it. I read a quote somewhere, a long time ago. I cannot remember the exact words, or if it was about a fictional character or a real person, but it was along the lines of "So-and-so was successful because when everybody else thought the night time was time to stop and sleep, he thought it was his time to get ahead."

        While I do not condone reduced sleeping hours—do as I say, not as I do—I think that quote has a lot of merits. I believe that many people have the potential to accomplish great things, but the amount of effort required greatly hinders us. It is like there is a certain amount of activation energy, sometimes for success in general, and other times for motivation to start individual tasks.

        So then, the key is to draw internal motivation from ourselves, somehow.

        At the same time, I do not want to get too deeply into this because it seems complicated.

        I do remember reading a while back that studies showed that people with low IQ could outperform people with higher IQs if educated in a certain way in their childhood. I am sure the details were different, and I did not cross-verify that information at the time.

        It implies that good habits in the formative years are very important, but I do not believe it stops there. When it comes down to it, determination is what it takes to learn and accomplish great things.

        Granted, privilege makes a difference, and sometimes people are born with certain talents or good genetics. Even so, that is not a sufficient excuse to toss in the towel and walk away.

        Perhaps these views are too idealistic, too naive. Perhaps a little voice in my head refuses to believe this. Perhaps I am saying all of this for myself...  

        But what of it?

      Speed.

      It is about rushing to do the things I once cared about, the things that I hope that I still care about, but honestly, right now I cannot tell. I have long since become complacent due to this break from everything.

      Complacency marks the end of caution, which may often times lead to failure.

      Speed.

      These are the grains of sand and gravel that I watched slip through my hands in my childhood, staining my hands with small rough particles, which display a faux softness with the aid of the caress of the wind, lying to my mind.

      These are the dreams I once held, perhaps the dreams I still hold, but I cannot tell, and for now I must rush just to keep up. Silly me, idling the day away but working myself into a frenzy late at night.

      Have I not lost the privilege to lament after being the one to condemn myself?

      Speed.

      I have seen it done and I know it possible. I know that were I to put my nose to the grindstone, any and all efforts would bear wonderous fruits, but instead... what am I doing.

      Once again I return to the topic of focus. "Focus!" Am I lying to myself? Do I really yearn for a goal if I seem so lax in my attempts to reach it. I can only ride on the coattails of my past endeavors for so long. If I do not do something, then at some point, I will be swallowed up.

      By what, I cannot explain.

      Does this writing have meaning? When I tell myself to write 500 words per day, are these words still helping me, or am I merely babbling? Perhaps it would be better to take these posts offline, so that I may learn to be more open.

      Yet the problem returns that I cannot be confident that I would adhere to the schedule if I were not to make it something permanent. If I leave this here, then there is a time stamp that I know that I cannot go back and change. Meanwhile, if I write words in a journal, I can easily tell myself that I will write an extra page the next day... and then I fail to do so.

      Speed, speed, speed.

      For what purpose? What is so urgent about the destination? If I know not the destination, what is the purpose of making haste? Am I merely putting on a show? What is the rush?

      Even now, as my hands race across the keyboard, my leg bounces up and down on my toes. That is a sign of impatience, boredom, or something else. Why would I be impatient? I do not think I am bored. What else could it be?

      I suppose most frustrating of all is my inability to answer my own questions. I ask and ask for no reason, though perhaps I already know the answers, but refuse to verbalize them?