I would shoot myself in the left temporal cortex right now…

Actually, never mind. Sometimes, it’s good to keep it unloaded, just to keep from reacting to those transient moments of madness. The above sentiment, I think, is one of those. I’m surprised I’m still alive right now, not so much in a literal sense (though sometimes that boggles my mind as well), but after the past 3 exams, the past 30 hours, and with more to come, a moment of clarity is hard to come by. My mind is so very fried right now, vaprorized, and run dry. This has been a long, long day…

…and I still have finals left. But it’s break time now, and my Xanga time shall not be so tainted.

(So what is that which I’m thinking?) I think I’m facing my fifth career crisis, again worrying about what my life is going to mean when I’m a suitable distance from it to see. Maybe we’re not supposed to think of our lives that way, spending so much time in thought wondering what we *really* mean as a story when we really are, right here, living those lives in the here and now. So much time spent in thought, not enough spent living–that is the evaluation of my most recent experiences in the art of living.

But still, this career crisis is still very real, and to me, my life’s story is important enough to warrant thinking about once in a while, before trusting to waters to themselves. How many times have I changed on the surface? English to MCB to neuroscience, to bioengineering, to general engineering, to neuroengineering. Where’s the overlap in all these fields? Any new academic advisor would probably say that I’m
crazy, even dear Kai fears I’m far too whimsical in my long term pursuits. I don’t believe that to be true, these changes so far has each been in an attempt to refine the means to my ends. And each advisor, professor, dean, I’ve spoken to has commented positively on my intrinsic motivation and the extent of my vision in the choices I’ve made. Haha–if they knew the extent of my personal conflicts, maybe they wouldn’t be so eager to hand me control of my life.

BUT, my personal reality is that I haven’t changed much on the inside. What I desire to do with my life hasn’t changed since I got here and even during the crises, my fundamental drive has remained the same. And that’s okay, what I need now, is a stable road that heads in the general direction…

I’m reading one of the most facinating books I’ve ever read. God in the Machine: What robots teach us about Humanity and God. There are too many good things in the world! So many choices that can lead to a meaningful life, and my satisfied conscience. My only worry is struggling too much in the decision and ending up losing my edge. I’ve already squandered much of my year-and-a -half lead over the general student population here… but that’s okay. I think I’ve touched more fields than I can experience anyway. But yeah, fascinating book.

In the spirit of randomness:

The Keys to Your Heart

Heh… wow… I’ve never had this happen before. lol.. for the first time, I’ve lost an active entry I’ve been writing. Stupid mouse shortcuts, deleting my written entry! Heh… so much for my train of thought. I bet it’s still somewhere in the Firefox cache, lingering before the garbage collector gets rid of it. As if it were nothing but leaked memory…

*Sigh… it’s sad how much of our lives we can lose through a simple mistakes. We can write the story of our lives, spending painstaking hours coming up with the theory to everything, or just making something that no one else has done before… we can build so much, and then have it wiped out by a simple mistake, a slip of the finger, a wrong word to the right person… and then, it’s gone, as if it never happened.

In a sense we too are just active memory. We exist because we’ve existed before, and we will exist simply because we havn’t been smitten yet. I think I told Shaneal of my theory and fear, that the entire universe just happens to be a very large scale program, and that we are merely objects, operating on very solid code. But that’s too much of an analogy, my fear is in what happens if something were to go wrong. A misfired transistor, lost packet. And without anyone knowing, the world, the universe, were to disappear, as if it never existed…

Like a single life that no one knows. Or that random tree in the forest of Siberia that falls without anyone hearing it (thinking of Ishmael). Might as well have never existed. Just like the entire entry I had written up.

Still, what comforts me is knowing that in fact, something has changed. In writing that entry, my mind had been soothed, and if it hadn’t been for its fated destruction, this entry wouldn’t have come out in its place. Existence isn’t *quite* like dynamic memory, because it writes a history in time. Time is such a fascinating concept… especially if you don’t believe in its linearity.

Oh, now I remember what that deceased entry was about. It’s Thursday, 5:52 PM… in a week we’re out of here; out of this room where I’ve spent 9 months learning and growing–and procrastinating, and playing, and (not) sleeping, and otherwise just living. So many memories here. Pictures from high school so that everyone can see that someone had lived before. Coffee mugs, glasses, current school ID, stories on the wall, stories in writing, so that they can see too that he’s still living. But then there’s so much more hidden away: a personal memento box with cards and letters from the past year, a box of trinkets full of items that no one else will ever understand… blah, so much stuff here! And in a week, this room will be as empty as it was when I came in. I think I’ll hide a letter for the next habitants of the room. Just so that they can remember. Hopefully, they’ll be too busy with their own stories. But still.

Xander and Anu’s Room OG209!

(8/2004 – 5/2005)

The Tiled Wall of Memories

The Workstation Zone 1

The Most Recent Edition to our Wallpaper of Memories

Contents of the Social Memento Box: Letters!

It’s been a good year… and it’s still going, almost there!

Things have been rather complicated again. This happens on such a regular basis… I think it has something to do with the moon cycle.

Other than that… I’ve found a most useful tool, the Xanga anti-stalker module! For those who don’t know, it’s a small javascript based tool that tracks all the people that’ve been to my Xanga. I’ve been using it the past month, and it’s given me some rather interesting results. Here’s the top ten (known) list:

[ Skyrien’s Stalkers]

(Rank.) Name