Ahoy matey! It’s been a while since I have posted anything over here. And I’ll be honest, it’s not like I completely forgot about this place; it’s just that every single time some idea popped up, I’d invest a lot of time just thinking about how to make it this perfect thing, and well that never happens does it? So there’s that, then a couple of things I just wanted to discuss, and the new promise I want to make to myself and any readers.
Just a heads-up: this might turn into a very weird blabber that you might not be interested in at all, but it seemed worthy of posting nonetheless because why not? (Also gives me an excuse to make some content finally, and talk about blockages others might face!)
I believe we all have this pseudo-apparition of ourselves. Some version that we either think we are, or that we aspire to be. There’s nothing wrong in having this dream-like image; in fact in my opinion it’s a nice thing because we have an anchor to hold on to, as well as a personal Polaris if you will. Problem comes with the movement bit I guess. Support and guidance will only help you get you so far - it’s the getting part that you still need to do by yourself. And this is not something I am just putting out there as advice for the readers. It’s something I want myself to actively realize.
So what has been my problem so far? I think I put this perfect persona on a pedestal. That has resulted in multiple halts and/or burnouts that just lead you into thinking you’re getting nowhere. And it’s not like I am getting nowhere (I am pretty sure I am farther than wherever I was a few months ago), but the feeling stays because you keep stopping, thinking, and whatnot. Many ideas never see the light of the day just because you’re too afraid to take action because you think you need to have these developed set of skills.
Initially I wanted to post like at least one post a month, and I still want to do that. In fact, I was infinitesimally (never my blog without some sort of nerdy reference) close to making a new post in September about Lagrangian Mechanics. I stopped because I just couldn’t get around showcasing even the slightest of inadequacies in my apparent persona, or the post itself. I guess the internet as an outlet can do that to you: you have the opportunity to present yourself to new people every single time, and the thought of them knowing something about you that you don’t want them to know is just scary.
It’s not that this doesn’t exist in the world outside the internet, but I think the internet can have the effect of amplifying this effect. We want people to think good of ourselves, and that is perhaps the one thing that keeps obstructing GAIA’s goal of just sharing me and my thoughts in their pristine form.
The promise I want to make myself this time around is to acknowledge the efforts that I put in, and just let things out instead of keeping them hidden. If people want to think, they’re free to do so, and I am free to not worry about that. Like I said in my last post: Suggestion taken. Necessary Changes Made. Moved on. (Okay yes I added the bolded part this time to better suit it with the theme of this post).
It wouldn’t be a dump if I didn’t transition to other things bugging me. So sudden transition here we go. A few days ago, I messaged a fellow peer of mine about some formalities we had to tend to for a course. These formalities weren’t exactly meta-formalities about the course itself, but the content of the course I suppose. Okay well not exactly, but their reply struck me quite a bit. It went along the lines of:
“It doesn’t count towards our GPA, so I don’t exactly care”.
It made me wonder if that’s how we all think about things. I mean, I am not saying that I am not guilty of this, but it’s just that I actively aim to avoid thinking about it this way. You can say my perfect persona thinks accounting for the exchanges in the real world when doing something that contributes to knowledge is unnecessary. Just a thing to think about I guess: Do you want to do things because you’re required to do them, or do you want to do them because you’re genuinely interested to do them? We forget to think about this because we’re always occupied by this race to get this and get that. We forget to think outside the result model. Sometimes we even criticize every single thing in existence because we weren’t rewarded for doing something (okay maybe it’s just me?). As a past victim (Present and future too! There’s no end to it - I am human) to the “Expect reward ooga booga if no reward then burnout loop”, I can’t stress enough how different the feelings of doing something can be.
I am not sure how many of the readers will relate to this, but for those who do: that’s great! We have something in common! Mental blocks, “brain-go-bbye” outages, and burnouts can be a serious impedance to progression. And I think the best way to tackle them is to acknowledge the reasons they happen, and then ?just find peace? I swear I am not trying to type things this way just because it makes me seem like this wise person, but it’s just the way I have experienced things.
I have disabled the comments because of the plethora of changes I wanted to bring about. There’s also the thought of finally giving in and using Disqus because managing things in the long run can be difficult. But I guess if I am to uphold the whole point of this post, I shouldn’t be hiding any intermediate states that the whole thing goes through (as long as it’s presentable 😅). Also had this thought about moving to Substack, but honestly the feeling of cultivating your own blog from the ground-up, customizing and developing something that belongs to you seems too much fun to give up on. So perhaps I’ll set up some sort of subscriber system? I don’t want to impose the readers with ridiculous ads, and I definitely don’t want to keep things behind a paywall, so the best way seems to be a system where people who want to support me in my journey can do so freely.
Okay the whole support system thingamajig is something I probably will have more time to think about considering I have \(\underset{x\to 0}{\lim} x = 0\) amount of readers. Got to push out some lovely, nerdy posts before anything!
RIIIGHT. So what I want to accomplish before the new year is:
- A post on Lagrangian Mechanics
- A post on the Fourier Transform
- A Catalan Numbers x Data Structures post
- Anything and everywhere the path to continuous knowledge takes me!
- MORE READERS!!! Ugh do I really need to figure out SEO as well as the comments (okay the comments stuff is definitely coming out within this month)
- Oh, and there’s Advent Of Code 2023 coming up! Would be fun to discuss some of it here.
- Some Quantum Computing too!
- More things on my mind? I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?
Okay that’s a lot of stuff. Can’t promise every single thing, but hopefully most of it. Definitely not going to let anything interfere with the quality of the posts.
Alrighty! I think that’s all for now. Cya soon!
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