I feel at least a bit better today if anything. I studied a lot, and I finished the chapter on ML. Thankfully I have seen this material before, and so not much was new, as compared to probability/stats. In studying, I re-ran through the interview question I had in the first round, and I realized how clueless I was in my answer. I did have some good intuition things going for me, but I ended up with something that was completely uninformed. Now at least I learned one thing more and a general framework of answering those types of questions, and given the fact that I got to this stage with that answer (my recruiter said don’t stress, if you already got to this stage that means you’re doing well) means that I will only do better with this new prep. I think more than everything else, my natural curiosity and passion will hopefully carry me past the lack of experience I currently have. Thankfully I don’t have to fake that and it’s genuine so that’s a MASSIVE thing in my favor. But also showing how I learned so much since the last interview is something that reflects really well on me. I want to prepare a bit more tomorrow and also make sure that I have at least a basic preparation of my history and behavioral questions / questions to ask ready to go. I’m excited! And terrified. But let’s focus on excited!
For better or worse here I am writing something meaningful again. I know the needle swings, and I’ve been horribly busy recently but I’ve realized how weirdly disconnected I am. A lot of my socialization is done through A, which I realize is inherently a bit dangerous. But I don’t really have much time to be able to socialize much and so I sit here in this constant state of strain. I feel pretty fucking sad because I feel unseen. I feel like if I was less than who I am it wouldn’t matter, at least in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t really matter what I do, how I feel, or what goes on in my life since it’s not being perceived by others. Or some stupid shit like that. I don’t think that thought’s fully accurate since it doesn’t feel like a fit in my heart, saying it out loud. Or writing it down. Or typing I guess. I wanted to write “how contrived” but I don’t even really know what that word means, and googling it feels a little bit disingenuous. I’ve had a lot of frustration recently and I don’t like how it’s shaken itself out. I get upset at things and then it just builds up this pressure that looks for any outlet to blame. I’ve felt this shortcoming the most whenever I’m struggling, which has been a decent amount recently. When I try to reach to A for support it always ends up backfiring and it’s a learning experience for them. At least I hope. However in return it just hurts me when I’m already hurting and since I’ve kinda neglected my support network because of how busy I’ve been, I have not many other places to turn. I’m fine with this, for better or worse. I’m pretty good at handling things without others, or at least with the resources available to me – like this blog for example. I take some solace in the fact that I don’t think people keep up with this anymore, so I guess that’s a benefit of all of the daily “sentence” shit I’ve been posting just to keep with the habit. I am glad I’ve done that. Today I picked up my guitars for the first time in a while, and I’m incredibly happy I did. I ended up playing Freefall for a while, and I really think I needed that. One line struck me in a new way today:
”Anyway, you say you're too busy saving everybody else to save yourself
And you don't want no help, oh well”
That's the story to tell”
This has kinda been how it’s felt for a while now. With A I know t they’re struggling with a lot of things in life, for valid reason – but as a consequence they don’t really have much space for other things it feels like. Or maybe they just naturally good at the things that I feel like I need. But as a result I feel like I just can’t express myself around them, since I have to filter every single emotion and thought through the lens of predicting what their reaction would be to it. And it’s horribly exhausting. I feel like I’m doing a tree search like a chess engine with a huge depth every time I interact with them in one of these contexts, and I just can’t really sustain that right now. I feel like they’ve been just speaking with me through a surface level interface of my default depressed voice mail. How am I supposed to connect with them or anything like that when I feel so fucking shit. I’m so afraid of thinking or saying how I feel even HERE. I feel suffocated because I can’t just feel what I feel, since I’m so afraid of them making there be consequences to things where there shouldn’t be. Like fuck. Every time I try to scratch the surface I get held underwater until I can’t take it anymore, and I just accept the fact that my boat is taking on water. I don’t know. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’ll try on this thought just to see how it goes.
R drhs R xlfow tvg rm nb xzi zmw qfhg slow gsv zxxvovizgli wldm fmgro R srg gszg vhxzkv evolxrgb, zmw gsvm qfhg srg hlnvgsrmt zmw gsvm ortsgh lfg. Nzbyv vevm tl luu z xoruu, zmw vckvirvmxv hlnvgsrmt xlnkovgvob mvd uli gsv ozhg grnv.
That was a pretty poetically tragic last line. What’s the point of something new for the last time. Or anything else for that matter. I made my 1K club goal, and so I think it’s fair that I’m able to consider the thought. I was hoping it didn’t sit, and it didn’t thankfully. But it felt painfully comforting. That’s fucking horrifying. I just want to cry and maybe I’m spoiled by mainly relying on my therapist, who is incredible at speaking about my issues. The perks of paying a professional. God I long for someone to see me for who I am. Where I don’t feel like my natural pattern ends up shifting into someone who isn’t me. I know that’s on me, but fuck I wish it was easier. I know that A is insecure about academic strength, but what am I supposed to do about it? This is who I am, or at least who was bred by the shit childhood in all other aspects. I think about how my sister wrote in her gate blurb how she was “unapologetically smart”. I loved that, but I think I’ve been apologetically so. I know that I’ve lost the ‘competition’ and so I don’t have my ego tied to it, and that’s been helpful, but I don’t think for A they can understand that. As a result I feel like I can’t even share anything beautiful or cool I find since they have that fear of being hurt nestled in nothing. Everything looks like a trojan horse. That hurts me.
And it kinda broke my heart. I realized how I don’t really have people I can share the things I’m so excited about, like there were two problems from the section on probability I was studying – what’s the probability that given three random points on a circle they create a triangle that contains the center, and also if you have r red balls and w white balls, and you keep removing balls from the bag until only one color remains, what’s the probability you remove all the white balls first. Also some others, but they had some BEAUTIFUL simple solutions, and I was so excited that I figured them out, and I had no one who I think would find that interesting. It makes me sad.
And I haven’t read a page. I’m pretty fucking stressed with everything going on, I’m barely just finished my slides for the LECTURE I have to teach tomorrow. I pray to god it goes ok.
I started studying at 1 PM, and I am stopping now at 2:30 AM. During this time I’ve been doing the Pomodoro timer method, except I’m working on Kaggle competitions during the “work” periods and then working on leetcode during the breaks. At one point I took a walk for 15 minutes since my eyes weren’t able to focus. Other than this one break, I had to go charge my car and so I asked A if she wanted to join since I knew that I’m not able to spend much time with her this week. She said yes, and we went and sat in the lot (after I bought another notebook) where I took notes on some linear algebra videos. When we came back and I went to drop her off, she kept talking about things that weren’t too pressing and I ended up sitting in her driveway for over five minutes. When she noticed that I wanted to drop her off since I had more studying to do, she got upset. I spent more time just talking with her than any other break today – out of my ~11 hours of studying. Nonstop.
I got a callback for onsite for Apple!!!! My wishes have been unfortunately answered as this means its back to cram time for this up to 7 hours of interviews coming up next week. I hope it goes well.
I guess my feelings were distilled down into a few neat bins. One was the feeling of putting a stencil of other people’s common problems over mine – of how someone wanted to do things with someone else rather than me, but I’m not sure how much that applies here. It still does drag at my chest a little bit more than I’d like. Another is I guess just the overall impression of their experiences and choices, and how I tie into that history. I feel like there are some red flags staring at me in the face that I somewhat choose to ignore, but I’m feeling a slight red tint from the corners of my vision that scares me.
I’ve realized how little I’ve written here recently, and I think it’s because I’ve just been in a weird stasis in life. I’ve been so stressed I’ve had no time to think about my life overall, and so I’ve been just getting to the next immediate fire.