V for Vanity

Sitting here, trying to figure out what to right (write, that is – my brain is not working properly), listening to Hole. What??? I have Hole on my computer? You remember them – that Courtney Love band that was semi-popular in the late 90s. No? Well, at least you should remember Courtney Love – she was married to Kurt Kobain – and she could beat Stevie Nicks (singer from Fleetwood Mac) at a sing-like-a-goat contest any day of the week. Maybe that’s my problem. [Switches music] Ah, the bright, sweet melodies of Reminiscing. No, not Litter River Band. I’m not cool enough to have them on my computer. I meant that I am reminiscing – to semisonic. Certainly improved my attitude over that of the previous “Noise Rock” mindset. Yet, still wildly indecisive. This problem must have began before my media player strayed off course.

I have been a mixture of complacent, apathetic, and disappointed – primarily with myself. Before coming to Thailand, I had a great number of things to do, people to meet, and language to learn on my list. My Thai studying beforehand slowed to a crawl in the final month, and didn’t much pick up on arrival. It was briefly stimulated in the first couple of weeks, but after being frustrated with my ‘apparent lack of progress’ (to quote Darth Vader), I am in need of ‘new ways to motivate’ myself. I enjoy travel, and meeting new people, and learning languages. But right now, I can’t seem to get much joy out of it. Then again, I do on occasion have short seasons of discontent, regardless of where I am at, so this could be one of those. But so poorly timed! I’ve started enlisted the help of others to push me in learning Thai – and another major goal – motorcycle riding. But I don’t want to be cynical in response to their help, so pray I can pull out of this. The fact that I’m leaving Chiang Mai in little over three weeks has added a certain urgency to the whole situation.

On an upnote, Tee is done with his exams for a while, and I think we might hang out on Saturday. I guess the weekend is coming soon – time to recharge and rekindle some lost enthusiasm? Maybe I’ll go ahead and get those tailored suits I’ve always been talking about, or perhaps find a marble ballerina statue for Rival, or just go and do something sinister (like turning all the stop signs upside down, or tie unsuspecting Farang’s shoelaces together, or replace the sugar and salt Muwahahaha! HahahAAAHA! Ha Ha HA! This is me working on my evil laugh. Look up Dr. Horrible on youtube if you haven’t seen it. …and the psychosis has passed). Tried some Thai wine the other day – some made of strawberry and another made of Lichee. Better than I expected – a bit sweet, only 30 Baht for a glass (less than $1), and leaves you feeling a bit tipsy if you have one directly after a strenuous workout. As Rachael put it so elegantly, “But I digress. Naturally.”

At least I am momentarily amused. We’ll see how my remaining weeks here wrap up – more on the language and the riding (I should have a blog on just that – Thai drivers) later. But looing forward to the next year, I have come up with a fairly large question. What am I doing? I seem to be drifting along towards something in future, but not very deliberately, and with little certainty about the result. My previous plan to graduate grad school in three years and go do something in the Industry has been tempered by experiences in the Industry. Boeing was terrible. Movaci is a lot better, and I am doing what I had supposed I had wanted to do, but I can’t foresee myself wanting to do this for a long time (say, longer than a year or two). I just don’t like computers. Makes it hard when you’re a network engineer specializing in security. My other options are, well,

1) Be a professor. This route, due to my poor number of publications this last season and none this summer, would require spending a fourth year. But I won’t know whether I want to do this until after Winter quarter when I teach a class, and then will be too late for an acual decision.

2) Try to do something security related that doesn’t require you to work with computers. Wait, that doesn’t exist…

3) Pursue a career in literary criticism. This may be difficult due to my lack of experience, education, and several other factors. For instance, I have never done any literary criticism. Well, beyond “That book rocked!” Which isn’t cricism, for any reasonable definition of the word.

4) I would like to be a pastor at some point. But I don’t know how to connect that with where I am at currently. And for that it would be good to have more education. That is where my heart is – for people and for God. Exegesis is fun too. But as to not be burdensome, I want to support myself financially aside from that – thus completing the circle.

Completely unrelated to all of this, my current thought is to take some non-engineering classes when I get back to Seattle, and reflect a bit on where I want to go. I decided to take a class on Ancient and Classical Indian Literature with Claire, and am looking into taking a language class – current thoughts include Italian and Hebrew (French classes are full). Of course, this is with a full grad student research schedule, so I may be overextending myself. I would also like to dance, and spend time with people, experience more Seattle culture, finish T.S. Eliot and Harry Potter, keep up with guitar and singing and djembe, learn web development, attack my seemingly limitless tea reserves with a passion, get a motorcycle, keep up my training and run a marathon three days after Thanksgiving.

Sleep would be plus, too.

So, I further reinforce my habitual tendencies. I always try to do WAY too much in the Fall. (Oh, and I forgot about swing kids, chainmaille, and calligraphy.) Followed by completely gutting my schedule in the new year. I am certainly not indecisive about this bit. Perhaps I am indecisive about the un-habitual things – the new things – the things on the horizon – the future and all that. I want the optimal solution, not some heuristic, numerical approximation (my current vexation can be inferred by those who know how much I loathe ‘numerical’, ‘dynamical’, ‘geometrical’, and all other words that shouldn’t have ‘al’ added to the end)! I’m guessing the problem is NP-complete. (In not-quite layman parlance, that means hard). One of these days I’m going to have to write a blog post about morality, God, and complexity theory, but now is certainly not that day. I think the fear of being wrong – taking the “wrong” path is the primary reason for my indecision. The fear that everything I have worked for, striven towards, and looked forward to, will be shattered to pieces with one misstep. In reality, it is much more likely that the worst thing I can do is stay frozen, paralyzed. But telling myself that I should take a step is much different from actually taking one. Moving forward involves trust, which doesn’t come easily to me. Does it come naturally to others?

Well that is where I am at. Waiting to take the plunge. But which/when/where/how/what? Hopefully my practice of jumping off bridges will make this easier…