For the last few months I’ve been compiling a bunch of thoughts, but I guess I never found the time to put them down.
Mostly, this comes from advice I’ve gathered just in passing by talking to people. These are fellow writers, scientists, friends, a couple people in startups, family, academics whose work I look up to, acquaintances from LUNAR whose opinion is the reason why I started on this platform in the first place.
Over the years I’ve learned I’m driven by guilt in a way that the feeling of accomplishment cannot accomplish. I’ve liked writing for a long time, and became better at it over the years, but that hasn’t necessarily carried through. I no longer post on Blogger, which I used to use for updates of sorts; I neglected it as soon as I got busy. I look at the hardcore writers and the NLPers, the linguists and the scientists trying to understand human vision and language processing, and each one of them keeps a blog, a git, publishes in lit journals, some kind of outlet for their personal and creative endeavors. It’s really endearing to be able to peer into the human spirit like this and see that we all want to leave something behind, that could be venting as much as sharing something you’ve found interesting. Really, the importance of writing is not to be understated, and I would feel guilty if I didn’t do the same.
They say that good STEM people are good writers and vice versa. Most days, I feel like I’m trying my best to achieve even one of these.
So I’m starting from the beginning, in this sort of blog, but this time I really just want to get my thoughts down. I’ve told myself that whatever I end up writing in these, I won’t go back and change them except for egregious things, because if I really do I would be doing so because of the craft, and not for the spirit itself.
I also want to feel motivated to write just whenever, like a 60-second focus writing activity back in the days of Iowa, but notably outside of when I’m about to go to sleep and can’t feel that I have something on the line to write for.
Something else I’ve found useful to me is considering the advice of a family friend, who looked around for a bit, even as cracked as she was, before discovering she loved startup culture. Her advice was, especially in the early days, to optimize for learning, and not necessarily for time.
To me it seems like you can only ever pull one of these ideals out of the narrow jar that holds a life. You hold the one in your hand that gets you going in that moment, but you can never know how it feels to hold another until you ditch the first and pick up the second.
Maybe it’s a byproduct of being in the environment here, even as relaxed as it is, but I’ve tried to cram as much stuff in as possible within two semesters, because I want to be better, and when I find the people that do insane things with their time, I want to work my way up to them and see myself competing with them. You can feel like it’s a vortex at times that sweeps you in, and one that you can’t see out of. You think maybe they’re the only ones who can break the jar and squeeze both time and learning out of it.
Perhaps, at this point in my time, I only consider things from within this vortex, but at some point, it will become clearer. Maybe, when I leave this place I too can feel like I've held both.
. . .
I find myself where I left off three years ago. At the end of sophomore summer I sat aboard a plane going back to the Bay from RI with a distinct desire to prove myself, especially to those that knew me best. I put it to work now just as I had tried to then.
I’ve also been helping my little sister with her applications recently. I didn’t work as hard as I could in high school, and I feel I understand what I lost out on now, working from the perspective of College Hill. I wanted to be better moving forward. I hope she picks up on this earlier rather than later.
I can be content with the fact that sooner or later, my ongoing vision papers will be published, and the small amount of cash I’ve earned over the semester can sustain me for a little bit — I’m going to need it. I’m really lucky that the research I'm doing is exactly what I’m interested in now, and also for the forseeable future. I hope to meet some good people while putting my sunglasses on under the CA light that feels like the end of something, but the beginning of everything. It’s going to be a beautiful summer.