the time will pass anyway
cw: bad writing, word vomit, cringe
i have written all and proofread none!
the sims
i had 400 hours on the sims when i was in elementary/middle school. i never even did anything v exciting on it. id create myself, sometimes give myself a cat, and then send my sim forth to do exactly what i wanted to in real life: become a programmer and chess grandmaster. so id spend every single sim day doing p much the same thing: going to work at my programming job, programming at home, studying chess, and then attending to the bare necessities that assured that my sim would not mutiny. it was a v boring life outside of that, but thats what you had to do in order to accomplish what i wanted to. as an adult, ive come to realize that the sims is, in fact, a simulation of real life. it feels like if i want to "be successful," i have to spend 90% of my time being productive. but i have multiple troubles w that. for one, it is hard to be productive for so long in real life. in the game, i could simply force my sim to do three things over and over again and she had basically no problem w it as long as she had food, showered, and browsed the internet every so often. unfortunately i need some variety, so even if i intend to spend eight hours straight studying, that is never what ends up happening. the other trouble i have is that i mistake scrolling on twitter as being productive, or browsing the internet in general. theres infinite content these days and its so easy to get caught up in clicking links and links to links wo actually absorbing any information. the number of tabs i have open of unread papers and blog posts is proof of that. the fact that the sims includes browsing the internet as a fun activity and not smth that boosts your skills in any way is also proof of that. even if the twitter posts are about programming! even if the blog posts talk about data engineering! because 90% of it is content made to satisfy in the same that tiktok does. the information is always transient and surface level. ive found the most useful tweets are recommendations for textbooks. these i bookmark and come back to 20% of the time, download 10% of the time, and actually read 5% of the time. what a world, having our short-term desires constantly catered to. what would a world that prioritized our long-term goals look like?
fog
the more i think, the more i think about how little ive accomplished in life. im not sure if ive ever fully applied myself to smth, or maybe i have and ive simply forgotten at this point. im almost positive ive dealt w brain fog for most of my life, and it really does suck having to constantly experience thoughts being just out of reach. honestly part of why ive started blogging is bc ive heard that it helps w memory. i want to be able to remember things and prove that i exist. when i compare how much i know w how much it seems like other people know, it feels like i am at the bottom of the ocean and it is dark and murky and v lonely. but at the same time im the one who tied the rock around my ankle. life is a culmination of the choices we've made, and even making mistakes will not stop life in its tracks, life does not pause or provide reprieve, it will simply find a new path ahead and youre the one left to deal w it. there is no escape. in this case, my life choices were those of the gifted kid who burns out, a title that can be applied to literally everyone else in the world who doesnt have their life together in their mid-20s. but then if we're all gifted, that simply cant be true.
the last two years
i disappeared off the face of the earth for the last two years bc i was playing lost ark. i got addicted to the mmo grind, found likeminded friends, and treated the game like a full-time job while ignoring my real life full-time job that was school. i was trying to pause time in my own way, spending each p much the same. i wouldnt leave my apartment. i wouldnt even leave my desk. i did the bare minimum to survive and spent the rest of my efforts playing lost ark. it was a prison of my own creation (although thats not to say there were no positives from the situation; i really am glad to have met the people i did in the game bc it means i got to try omakase and find my doggy). in my own way, it was an attempt to stop time bc i wasnt ready to grow up. i figured that these last few years of college were my last few years of freedom. after i graduated id have to move on to the real world and probably work until i died, so i put that and any relevant responsibilities off for as long as i could. but, as has already been discovered, time does not pause, even if you act like it does and choose to treat each day the exact same and not grow or change at all. and that is how you end up being years behind your peers. but im working on it now t_t
namesake
i came across the namesake for this blog during a scrolling spree on twitter. its apparently a quote by earl nightingale, “never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. the time will pass anyway.” and i think about that a lot. i understand the underlying wisdom is to just do the thing and i promise thats what i want to do! and yet i still find myself thinking about more than the quote when trying to just do the thing, thinking about if smth is worth the effort of getting into, if i can see myself doing the thing five years from now, if theres smth else that would be a better use of my time. and for me, that act of thinking is as exciting as the real thing. i end up being satisfied with just that, like a puppy who tires itself out chasing its tail and plops down in the exact same spot that it got up from.
nonzero days
i get so caught up in worrying if smth will end up being a waste of time that thats all that ever happens, wasting time. these days its easier than ever to avoid activity, to scroll infinitely on twitter and then discord and then tiktok and then twitter again, passively consuming so that wasting the hours becomes bearable, in the same way that snacks dull the hunger but never satiate it. in an attempt to avoid this lately, ive been following the concept of nonzero days and slowly building from there. even when i inevitably spend a whole day in bed, i make sure to at least accomplish one thing, no matter how small. even if that means just writing a few sentences in this blog or reading five pages of whatever book im on at the moment. this way, ive been able to maintain momentum, doesnt matter that i may be going 1 mph, beacause the energy to stay at that speed and eventually increase it is still less than the energy it would take to start moving from a state of inertia.
quitting videogames
honestly, a large part of why ive been more human lately is because ive basically quit lost ark and gaming in general. the ratio of consumption to creation was simply too one-sided and to the point of brainrot. i dont want to act like it was exclusively my willpower and dedication that allowed me to do this though. since ive moved to hawaii, the ping is just too bad for me to enjoy playing lost ark like i used to t_t ive been forced to find new ways to fill the time, and luckily for me those ways are infinitely more rewarding and productive than lost ark. but do not get me wrong, it was mostly because i literally could not play that i was able to change. i am by no means a strong person.
chatgpt tell me who i am
i wish i had kept track of every tweet that i read that immediately made me think "me." id prob have enough data to input to chatgpt for it to tell me who exactly i am. smth i cant even define myself. i remember when memes first became a thing. i remember being absolutely amazed that other people have experienced and thought the exact same things that i have. today, there are tweets using tens of hyper-specific, niche phrases to describe a kind of person, and every single one of those words will apply to me. i dont even need to think about who i am anymore bc i am just everyone else. and maybe ive always been that way. i keep telling myself that one day my brain will fully develop, one day i will develop a sense of self. and i keep waiting for that day bc im honestly not sure how to change otherwise. i have ideas of who i want to be. but nobody cares about what i want. i can go on and on about all the things i want to do. at the end of the day, all other people can see is what i did. so then, if people can only see the things i do, but i dont do anything, but im also waiting to do things until i know what i want to do, its quite a predicament. and suddenly im 24 and still dont really know what im passionate about. this is only exacerbated by the state of the tech industry right now for new grads. it feels like most job posts are looking for specialized experience in a specific aspect of computer science, whether that be systems programming or graphics or ml. i just need to specialize i just need to specialize i just need to specialize. i just need to find what im passionate about and learn everything about it and then i will be desirable and cool and unique and wanted and have purpose. a fulfilling life is a life of knowledge.
in my head is dead
ive come to the realization lately that the image that i have in my head of myself is vastly different from reality, different from what i currently convey to people. in my head, im lainpilled cyber rat loser gf. the shayna in my head is cool and creative and code and chess and cyber. the shayna in my head inhabits and exudes the internet in all its data and wires and casual intelligence. the shayna in my head knows a lot and everyone knows it. but the reality is that no one knows that. therefore its not true. the shayna in reality is a mediocre software engineer with a few group projects and blog posts written and abandoned with a passion. the shayna in reality is no better than chatgpt, all flowery talk and no substance. i must close this gap between perception and reality or the shayna in my head is dead. i must.
on doing whats already been done
even as im writing this i already know that all the thoughts ive expressed, someone else has expressed them and probably better. it definitely causes one to stop and reflect on the point of doing anything thats already been done before. the thing is that everyone needs to build their foundations. and the only way to do that is by traveling that same path so many have gone down before. the difference is that you can get further before the road ends and its then your turn to start paving the way. the problem is that people are more and more trying to skip ahead in line, only to backtrack all the way to the beginning when they realize they dont know how to further the path because they never learned what the road was made of or how to build it. the result is always a longer journey with a lot of time wasted. i see this especially in software with programmers starting their personal journey further and further from the heart of the machine they control. most dont know anything about hardware or os, so how can they ever know how to best communicate with a computer.
research vs corporations
theres a tweet by yann lecun:
"those who can ... invent new things and tell the world through papers.
those who can't ... read the papers, sometimes understand them, and occasionally make products from them."
unfortunately, i am currently in the second camp. at this very second, im working on a project that implements a paper that outlines a methodology for quantifying the similarity and complexity of chess openings. i did not write the paper myself, i am not capable of discovering such methods on my own. i am not at the stage where i can contribute something novel to society, but it is one overarching goal of mine. until i can get to that point, i hope to just keep swimming.
swimming
even though i have a long way to go, ive been doing much better lately. im happy with the work im doing at my job, in school, for my projects. i believe ive finally found a passion and im working towards a long-term goal in data engineering. i love data and infrastructure and building and cybersecurity and back-end and having a real-world impact. im happy that i am creating and learning and growing, and i can really, truly appreciate that because i already know what its like to be nothing, do nothing. how grateful i am to be alive.
dealing w mediocrity/avoiding failure/submitted better than nothing
in college there were times when i procrastinated way too much on an assignment and could only get 60-70% of it done before the deadline. and during those times, 9 out of 10 wound w me not submitting the assignment at all; it was not complete. in that same way, ive spent most of my life dealing in absolutes. unless smth was perfect, i wanted nothing to do w it. but avoiding failure is what breeds mediocrity. there is simply no other way to grow than by trying and failing. and so i am trying. even though it pains me to type these words, knowing they are half-baked, incoherent, rudimentary, wandering, embarrassing, i am trying. a ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.