03.10.06

I thrive on unpredictability, spontaneity, and chance. This is how I think, feel, and perform my best so it is no wonder that I become anxious when I subconsciously have nagging moral values, such as what I should have done according to the rules, or how I should have gone about before undertaking a task. What is life to me with a plan, and with a foreboding of pressures yet to be done? After all, this is not how I live my daily life, and this is why I feel as though I never learn anything practical I can apply and in turn feel depress over the idea; when I do something for real I do not plan it in side my head I just perform and thus I’m inexperienced with the spontaneity necessary to keep up with my ideas, and since I’m a no good planner I cannot plan them so I can put my previous learned knowledge into use. This is why I dream of working with a master as an apprentice because I will be taught everything as I will later perform it. So now that I feel pressured that perhaps my trip is forthcoming and I will need x, y, and z for it, but I realize that the trip, it was never a destiny for me, it was a choice I made, just like I’m not bound to anything else in life I should not be bound to this one trip. This is why I struggle with this issue of divining the future through plans, because I feel oppressed in my freedom of choice, actions, and self. My being and naturally conceited human nature is being taken from me by some plan that I myself do not highly endorse, but one which people tell me must be the case and one I associate with those sayings, good as they are, but no good to me since I’m inexperienced enough in life to know their true meanings, like: “thins are not always easy”, and “most times you will do things you don’t like”. Then next time, because the sayings are so general and apply as if they were horoscopes to practically any difficulty I have, I string that difficulty to this one saying and back to my horrible experience with the saying, thus making the current one just as horrible as the last and seeing no end to the circle of unforgiving and spiraling denigration of self. What am I, if I cannot live my life, meaning that if I choose, if my feelings drive me regardless of other’s views on the matter as dangerous, irresponsible, radical, amazing, genius, awe inspiring, I should do it, they should have no effect on me. The matter of fact right now is that they do have a very large effect on me because of my self insecurities. These comments, not only oppress my being and drive me as a slave to other’s suggestions for my reality and well being, no, they tear me apart and strip me of my individuality, my pleasure, and my sporadic way of life. This is most likely why I feel more intimately drawn to the arts, like music, drawing, and set directing, and am always inspired by the group efforts there which to me as an outsider, seem to allow the corroboration of creativity, no strings attached (although I know this is only fancy I see what I like and want to see as we all do) and provide the emotional encouragement, and love of a group and an effort achieved at many tiers, and in many pieces by many such individual, hardworking proponents of the trade. And as Lord Henry says, optimism is due to fear. Because I fear for my own beliefs and mostly abilities to achieve anything self satisfying at such a large scales, and control all my emotions toward the work and the others participating, I praise other’s efforts and accomplishments.
Today I felt as if, in support to an idea I though of yesterday, but suppressed because I though it to show too much of my old feelings toward myself, I once only a short time ago knew the answer to a question so clearly, but amazingly only a day later, after so many consecutive, it seemed, days of uninterrupted normalcy in the mood which I was to remember these memories, I had a sudden change, unaccounted for by any tragic occurrence, but rather, a seemingly normal day and normal night, filled with joy (because I gave up the struggle of attempting to force myself to do Calculus at home w/o the class of Mrs. Dudo to teach me the ways, mostly because I could not control stably how I felt about the subject to enough of an extent that I could come up with a concentrated and deep conceptual understanding and thus simplification of otherwise (as is usually the case at home but not in class) daunting numbers, phrases, and mathematical thoughts, which at one point seem so complex, but the next utterly simple, and again this repeats) and strange laughter for which I chastised myself as a lunatic madman. More introvertedly I felt that this was an attribution to the genius I hide inside myself, the one I seek because of my fear of my abilities and greed for success it would bring. The exact example was that I recalled all of Dorian Gray and its deeply philosophical jargon the day before as queried on the review and chapter sheets, but today I strangely had forgotten it, at such a speed and depth, that one might compare this forgetfulness to the speed at which I conceived the understandings themselves and their respective depth, which lead me to their instantaneous comprehension

What do I do now? I’ve just NOT solved a calculus problem correctly. I know that I can do one of several things. First I could is back and do nothing about it, but keep living my gaily joyous mood, until I know in the future, when I an in harmony with the world once more, I will see this as time lost, and perhaps will place blame, which I will try to suppress indubitably (to what effect good/bad I don’t know), on myself for this moment as time lost. Secondly I could do as I normally do, and look over my work. However this second approach has some consequences (wow this text when read seems so complicated, but the thoughts stream out of me so fluidly and unbrokenly that I can hardly type fast enough, though when I read what I’ve written I become confused and muddled, must be a different level of understanding taking place in my head than I can accomplish with my habitual mannerisms of reading on the paper!). Firstly I know that when I look over my work I will immediately become anxious because of all of the bad experiences I’ve had with such times, and will probably end up not continuing on to do even one more problem in the mood I am in now. I will start thinking that I cannot do this, perhaps I will compare myself to the greats like Euler and how they would have handled this, but this will only depress me some more. My thoughts will seize up, and I will no longer be in this carefree, enjoyable mood with which I’m able to concentrate without consciously doing so on the rules and applications of what I learned this morning. This mood is almost bound for destruction though. I come to rely so much on the automation of the process that while I do it, I think that I will not be able to handle anything out of the ordinary which might bring with itself more problems. The problems I describe are on a tier. First is the initial problem, using the ratio test to prove the convergence or divergence of some or other series in the HW. The next is the algebra involved in simplifying the limit expression, and finally applying one of the limit rules to a final expression which leads me to an integer answer which I compare with the conditions of the test to prove convergence or divergence. This all seems so complex in writing, and I assure you it is, but in my mind what I’ve just described seems simple, meaningless, unable to be improved, learned, and ingrained in my head so much that as I said above, I feel as though if I were to attempt to have to think of any relationships outside this wrote pattern that I would not be able to first come to any such and second will greatly be so greatly discouraged in the process that I will lose the motivation ( and I wish to say ability because the loss of motivation fosters that, but I stray away from it) to perform the task which to me, right now is as clear as day, and rather enjoyable to do. Perhaps this has to do with resistance to adaptation and change in the situation, which would make me badly suited for math, etc. for this is always desired, and rather needed – a deviation from the norm to find some or other relationship between knowns.
Now these problem tiers I wish to discuss some more. When I am faced with such a sub-problem in say the evaluation of the algebra method in the limit process I will either know hoe to do it, or as I said before, become utterly disparaged that it is not a problem I can solve with as much simplicity and grace and fun as I am having with the problem before it and be so mentally distressed that I will not be able to: understand the higher problem had begun (with great understanding, motivation, and confidence at that), perform the simple algebra I am able to do with ease now, nor finish the problem. This leads me to believe that I take on a habitual resentment in myself as soon as I touch on such a strange idea (it has even happened to me in my writing while writing this, though I controlled it somehow, possibly with the idea that I will live the now and whatever I do I do for fun and that what I do will not affect my mood [hard to put words to this], and that I will not delve so deeply on the problem preserving my genial happiness, and not depress that I am not achieving anything marvelous (wow it happened while writing here, just now!)) I discourage myself. So there are clearly two approaches I take. One leads to depression and the other to a continuation of my genial mood and rescue if you will from the foreboding depression. My only conclusion is that I must try not to pry to deeply into the problem and take it on the surface, and that depth will come with time and many problems, etc (just thinking about this made the feeling erupt in me!). Perhaps this is what people mean when they tell me not to think too much about something. I should try this.
So I believe that this new mood is based on two of my previous ideas. Firstly, the idea that I should suppress any feelings that I know from past experience cause a future of depression, which itself arose from the idea that I should not try to solve problems I cannot at the moment (that was half a year ago in my journal before the e-logs started), which too arose from the idea that I should control my feelings (or maybe they are swapped but I can’t exactly recall). And secondly, the idea that I should control my feelings, which means that whenever a feeling occurs I don’t question it, or offer advice to myself about it, I simply recognize it and I disassociate from it, pushing it aside with distractions ( I sometimes think this may lead to a stress overload in the future, if so be it, but it sure as hell beats the ups and downs of constant depression and mood swings [ok the superposition I just made is based on no experience; about 1 day!, we’ll see]), and mainly have nothing to do with the ideas that I know will cause harm, or ones I’ve recently realized will, etc., etc.
When I read physics I find myself more reluctant to just accept what a section has to say to me. I immediately want to know how that was established, but this is equivalent to me wanting to know all of the proof for all of the ideas presented in Calculus class. The ideas might be simple, but they are based on experiment, and are structured in such a way that they try to focus a topic with previous knowledge. To learn what the section has to say is like learning a new idea in Calculus without a proof. If I continually insist on knowing how and why statements are made, I will never actually get the benefit of realizing a chance to have such questions answered. The how’s and why’s I ask, the ones which lead me to not solving problems and feeling discouraged and feelings as if I have not accomplished anything, are the ones which stray into a tier of problems too detailed and requiring information too advanced for me at present. If I take the information as it comes and treat it as a doctrine for a time, then I can use the problems to satisfy my need to probe and ask questions within the realm of what I’ve been taught. This is equivalent to toying with different way of manipulating the algebraic expressions when I already have a problem which tests my knowledge of a new concept. Then I can try innovations with which I can already feel somewhat comfortable, in a sense that I know that what I’m doing is correct, why it’s correct, for what cases it’s correct, and what result I expect. Now what’s even more exiting about Physics, or should be from my greedy perspective lusting the how’s and why’s, is that the realm of my knowledge extends further when confronted with a problem that it does in Calculus, meaning that I can toy more with the ideas, but it is harder to do so, and to know when to stop because I’ve crossed into an area of the unknown and unpredictable. So, keep everything predictable and I should be able to gain new knowledge at a reasonably equal pace at which I gain it in Calculus class.