A digital journal
Hey me. I find myself happy and full of life in the morning and when it's time for night I'm hurt and tired. I planned to get to bed earlier and maybe have time to really write, but my heads empty and tired. I wish I was stronger, and that I wasn't so weak to collapse under the smallest pressures.
I wasn't planning on going back and writing this, but I did have something I wanted to say today.
I dislike how insecure I am at times. I find myself always mentally considering the fact that I am being replaced, And I think it's fundamentally ugly. I don't want to be this way, but I constantly find myself falling victim to the same fears. I don't know a way out.
It is exactly 8 hours after when I started this lab. And with that, I’m done. I did it all myself, and I believe that it’s all good to go! I took no breaks in between and just finished the entire thing. I am going to take this quarter by storm.
S did something that was almost dangerously nice. I don’t doubt in my mind that they value me as a friend. I say dangerous because I feel like it sets the bar way higher than it was before. I’m obviously not expecting everyone to compete with that, but also it reminds me what I don’t have to settle for. God, I actually don’t feel like a burden. Things have consistently been nice. Even when both of us are busy, I don’t feel like anything bad is happening. I’m a big apprehensive because this feels like a sustainably healthy relationship, and I think that’s a scary thing to have faith in. It’s like hope, but at the same time, I think it’s so worth it to risk it on things like this.
I’m genuinely happy nowadays. I wake up and I find myself singing to music, dancing while walking, and just happy. God, I’m happy. I’m happy to be alive. I’ve been spending time with the people I love, especially my online friends I’ve been friends with for years. It’s interesting because we’re all busy, but we once in a while can line up and make up for it. I love my friends.
I weirdly have a decent amount of free time. I have things I could be working on, but they aren’t too pressing and I kinda just don’t want to do them. This is strange, I feel not too busy for once. I’m also incredibly tired but I don’t find myself wanting to sleep, as I want to have my own free time. I also think I got the internship at Tesla today, the recruiter told me that they would reach out with a formal offer letter soon. I also think I got my old apartment which is a blessing. I’m a bit worried as life has kinda been throwing me around recently and right now things seem like they’re going my way.
We all made time to play some games together, lost all of them I think. We all should have been asleep a while ago but here we are. It’s incredibly blissful to know that your people want to be there with you. I love my friends. I hope we can all travel together like we were talking about soon.
I feel pretty damn free. I think life is in a pretty good spot, I have plenty of things to keep me occupied, while also time to spend with friends consistently throughout the week. Putting things in context, I realize how I have a solid handful of close friends and another handful of good friends to do things with. I’m happy with how life is right now, there are some things I wish were different but nothing I can’t change or mind too much.
It’s really nice to finally be able to let go of a lot of things because they don’t matter anymore. I’ve decided it’s probably best for me to part ways as much as I can with E, and there still is a part of me that is vindictive. I’d like to think I triumph over that voice a good amount. I asked the PPL group chat what they would do in a not-so-hypothetical hypothetical question they managed to puzzle out incredibly quickly. Similar to the advice of flipping a coin to make a big decision, this worked very well because before I saw them send their responses I knew what I wanted my answer to be.
I am happy being the person to be nice to others and to be undeservedly patient. That’s someone I’m happy being. I think I want to figure out a little bit better where to draw the line, and when to be more selfish to preserve my own best interests – but I’m happy to be someone who cares unapologetically. I set my status earlier today to “This is the worst boss music” as a cute little way of notarizing how I was feeling. During a difficult conversation with E, at one point I started hearing a certain soft song I am realizing I don’t know the name of. I weirdly had a somewhat divine intervention moment, as almost right after there was a mosquito hovering around my desk. My first instinct was to swing at it, but it really wouldn’t have affected me. At that moment I wanted it to be alive, as I thought that was nicer than another dead bug. I think that had some strange parallels.
I have 66 days left until the 1-year mark of starting working out, and my goal is to join the 1k club before then. I’m a bit nervous, but also optimistic.
Earlier, E had asked the professor if they could stop being partners without asking me, and since it is a difficult process it is now a huge headache. It stresses me out a lot because I’m incredibly busy already this quarter, and I don’t know if I can handle this workload. And now I might have to do 2x the work for a class which is an incredible amount of work regardless. The class is so much work the professor almost mandates lab partners, and I am taking almost double the courseload of a regular undergrad student already. But I also remind myself that I anyway would have been doing all of the work, and so there’s not much of a difference there. But at least now I don’t have to worry about dealing with a volatile person’s behaviors at the same time while juggling their stress unduly.
I do feel kinda bad though because I am realizing that if I behave within what is fully my right to do, which is also not putting in effort for someone else’s gain – I think E would be in hell for a very long time. And I don’t just mean academically, I think this would probably lead to a bad trajectory for their life overall. I also additionally unfortunately have recently acquired what is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb over them – I did nothing wrong, but I know mentioning something I did would absolutely DESTROY them. But with these options out of the way, the thing I think I’m doing which I’m not too sure of is putting in effort of my own, and sacrificing some to make the landing easier for them. I don’t really think that they’re someone I want to invest time or effort into anymore as a friend or person, but at the same time, I don’t think I could sit here and bear witness to someone spiraling down knowing that I could have prevented it. I think I’d rather take on the burden without them knowing rather than them suffer in a way I could have prevented.
I don’t know if this is good.
I want to sleep and I forgot again to do this. I could write about more solemn or depressing things but I think it's equally if not more important to notarize happy moments.
Today I felt overwhelming joy during the gym, and I couldn't even tell why. I'm just happy to be relatively healthy, hash is healthy, things are going well comparatively. I screamed in the car to some of my favorite songs as loud as I could. I found myself just breaking out smiling and laughing. I'm glad I'm alive.
Hey, it’s been a while since I’ve actually journaled. Unfortunately, I feel bad because I don’t think tonight will be the night that changes. I got some work done on a personal project with friends and made some slides for my presentation soon. I also did catch up on sleep a bit, I was so tired that I took a nap for 3ish hours in the middle of the day.
Yesterday I read an 8-page paper on conditional image generation, something I wouldn’t say I’m familiar with. But I actually understood it! It took me a few hours, but I went through and annotated the entire thing. I actually get it. I’m able to read papers, and understand their material! That’s absolutely incredible to me, because I decided against doing a PhD after intending on doing it my entire life, and this was a big factor. I was really afraid of stuff like research or papers, and because of that, I gimped my own potential.
This quarter I’m taking 2 upper division CS classes, TA’ing another upper division CS class, and two grad classes. For the class I’m TA’ing, I have to do all of the questions every week (instead of just 2/4 of them), host 2 hours of office hours, teach at least 1 section, have a weekly meeting, and have 3 hours of code reviews. And then I’m also in 3 rec-cen classes, 2 of them are martial arts and the other one is hip hop. I also have powerlifting training, and that’s another 2-3 hours a day. Oh and tennis. My day starts at 9 am, and I usually get my first free time at 8:15 pm. I usually have to use that free time to do homework.
I’ve also been reading and meditating every day, which isn’t for too long but I find it’s not exactly ideal when I get busy and leave it for the end of the day right before I sleep. I am pretty damn fatigued, I don’t even have time to eat some days. Let alone spend time with friends. I still try to make time, and it’s pretty hard – but I end up usually sacrificing sleep for it, and I am realizing how much I need that sleep.
I’m not sure if I can handle this, to be honest, but also I want to prove to myself that I really do have that dog in me. I want to show myself I’m capable of these hard things.
I’m in call with a friend and I’m about to pass out, but I want to write something. I guess I’ll put this here – I haven’t been able to find this anywhere else online.