Many Musings of Aarushi

Dearest Aarushi,

It is I, you, from the future. We live in space now. And your husband is an alien.
Haha, I got you. He is a Permanent Resident. But we still live in space. Only on the weekendends.

(That's the new term for the super long weekends that happen every 3 weeks. They give everyone a nice 4 day break for moonwalking and anti-gravity love-making, which is totally something that people can do now.)

I am just writing you this note to tell you what all future selves tell their past selves. I mean, I would tell you wisdom and advice to make you avoid the mistakes I made, but I kind of like my life now, and I don't want to royally screw myself over, and as I don't remember getting one of these notes myself, I'm probably causing Armageddon as I write this. I'll go back into my study and suddenly have a unibrow. "I just plucked this," I will think, and then I'll realize my kids have morphed into a bunch of creepy internet cats (yes, those are still a thing). It won't matter because by that point, everything will have blown up.

Where was I? I was telling you something. I am going to reinforce for you what you already know, bambalina, but maybe it will sound better coming from someone other than present you. What to you is a distant hope, to me, is a memory. You may be yet uncertain, wondering what your mark on the world will look like, or even if you'll even get the chance to make the mark that you want to make. But make no mistake - you will find a way. This is partially because you will never stop being passionate. Follow your passion - it will be your map. I know this sounds disgusting, (we brought back vomitoriums!) but it is my belief that we gravitate toward the things that we really like. There is a reason you continue to hang out with those weirdos you're friends with; they make you laugh and they talk about nerdy stuff that you also enjoy talking about. There is a reason why you move on from people who are too quick to judge, or who constantly make fun of other people and give dirty looks. No one likes people who give dirty looks. Even now. We make them clean the vomitoriums. It is through these conversations and through these associations and through those other things you find yourself doing (cleaning out incubators and plating cells and re-reading papers, thinking about genetic treatments that use viruses to incorporate the better gene into the target genome, listening to the Shins and weird books about neuroscience) that you will understand what you are truly lusting after. It's not really about the songs you listen to, but about what you're really feeling when you hear them. (...but it's also about the songs you're listening to. We need to talk about some of that stuff. Yep, you were wrong about some stuff. But I'll NEVER tell, muahahahahahaha.)

So here's one for you - you have far from exhausted your potential or your resources. There are still so many people, places, and opportunities you have not yet explored that will be crucial to the development of your character, and of your career. Hell, there are even songs on your iPod that you will discover as your favorites, maybe a year from now. Right now, you are affecting people in ways that you won't begin to realize for years to come. Life is a mystery, and not everything is knowable; as an internal and slightly psycho person, you may think you have everything figured out, but there is always a crucial amount of information missing. Your experience of the world is not the only one that is multidimensional and layered. Like it or not, there are worlds - big worlds like those built of multilateral organizations-- and small worlds, like the ones that exist inside of your friends, that you will not ever be able to access. But life is wasted dwelling on what you can never do, so don't. Uncover all the worlds that you can, the ones you never knew existed. There are millions of blessings that you don't have, but the ones you do have are unique and brilliant, and catered just to you. In the age of customization, isn't that the best that you could ask for? For the sake of thought exercise, imagine if today you were given the gift of Olympic skating ability. You can speed skate with the best of them. You are no longer clumsy when you get on ice. What would you do? Gaining this new talent would be totally stupid, because 1. you're too old to get into that business now, 2. skating makes you cold and you don't understand how it works and you have a ton of other hobbies that you care way more about. Maybe this is a bad example because speed skating is starting to sound really badass. The point is, your particular talents and gifts have shaped you into the kind of person who can fully enjoy them. It's like how youth is wasted on the young, but the opposite.

That's all I really have for you. I have to tend to your alien F1s now. Labor wasn't as bad as you think it is. IT WAS WORSE. Also, you are totally never getting Alzheimer's! Good for you/me/us/the future generation of Agnis.

Yours (and mine) truly,

Future Aarushi

P.S. You should be ashamed. You know what I'm talking about.

*Disclaimer: I'm sorry.

[this post is dated april 5th, 2012]

i write today sitting atop moving ground - no, that can't be right. indeed, i am in relative motion with the ground, soaring away from the horizon and into trees. well, okay, now the horizon appears directly left, which means we're going north (right?).

that's how i've been telling where i am lately. new york is all about east and west - everytime i get off the subway i do a quick and rough assessment of where the sun is and then try to figure out whether the numbers ascend or descend going to the west (they ascend).

anyway, i'm on a bus to ithaca, NY from new york, NY. i've never published anything while bouncing  up and down on the roads - i'm kind of worried as to what this level of turbulence will do to my hard drive. i'm going up to visit some dear friends at cornell university, but i never realized how peacefully smooth midwest buses seem to be in comparison.

i have been in new york and 21 for about 4 days, and as such, i've been thinking a lot about habits.

it started when i recorded the song "bait n' switch" by the shins back in september at their concert, and resurged when it became one of my favorite songs on the new album (plug, plug, plug). the lyric that plunged me into this rumination adorns the title-slot of this blogpost. it stuck out to me because i tend to really respect people who have good habits. the lyric, however, captures the instability that exists within a person who steadfastly adheres to habits over time - when you do something again and again without thinking, you may unknowingly steer yourself into ruin. that's what happened with my bad posture, anyway.

this book i have been listening to - thanks to an accidental subscription to audible.com and a chance listening of an NPR radio program documenting the author - is all about the science of habit-formation. written in the style of blink and other such gladwellian work, the power of habit by charles duhigg, more or less takes the reader through case studies of people who utterly transformed their habits and have emerged as triumphant, better versions of themselves, and of organizations and movements that have succeeded by analyzing the habits of their own bureaucratic inner-workings and of their customers.

listening to this book in the time of my birthday and in one of the most statically dynamic cities on earth has created me a whirlwind of self-reflection.

if you had to sum up a person, you might describe them via their habits.
he always kept a pen in his breast-pocket. 


she was painfully severe to her youthful students, but a baby never failed to crack her hardened face into a grin. 


she is hopelessly punctual. 


even on the stillest day, his hair is windswept. 


the very concepts of "going through the motions" or "with the flow" or "being stuck in a rut" speak to the nature of habit.

some habits are neutral. for example, i have a tendency to stop everything when i see a beautiful baby child just to coo at it and then resume life just as quickly. me and like 10 other people i know share this incredibly relaxing leg-shaking habit. every time i order noodles, i order the same thing even if i don't know if i want it. these simple acts of sameness provide a sort of order in my chaotic, sometimes haphazard existence. and it's easier than trying to be or do a different way.

at 21, i realize that most of my habits are not intentional. rather they are half-grown reactions to life. yes, the tendency toward entropy. there are not many habits i have put into place to make me better, other than the compulsive need to study and do schoolwork in light of a deadline, or that showering-teethbrushing-sometimes hair-brushing instinct. also, i have this particularly good habit where i respond to emails and texts responsibly and quickly.

those that are intentional, however, blend seamlessly into my day-to-day existence and bring me a lot of happiness. it infuses so much joy into my day to listen to music that i know i like on my way to class.

another good habit is is acknowledging, greeting and smiling at other people. talking to people or not talking to people is a habit like any other. in some classes, i am pretty bubbly and interact freely with my peers. but then there are classes in which i never got into the pattern of speaking with my peers, perhaps out of some intense focus i've had on the material, on being distracted by something else, or a fear of poli-sci majors. in those classes where i don't have the habit of chatting with people, i find it incredibly difficult whenever i do want to ask someone a question ("when is that due?") simply because my habit is inaction.

(digression begins.) but as the lady (whose name incidentally was janice stewart) at ellis island said in her rather unorthodox introduction to the this-is-what-happened-at-ellis-island video, "it doesn't cost you anything to talk to people. it doesn't cost you ANYTHING to ask how someone's day is going, and you may have given that person just what they needed."

it was true. (/digression)

but my habits are mostly bad. so much hedonism... staying up late, writing blog entries on a whim instead of doing homework, drinking too much coffee, writing long emails to friends detailing the actions of others who surround me, not reading for class, messing up my room simply because i don't feel like putting everything in specific places (that's how things get lost!)

according to duhigg, bad habits cannot be extinguished - they can only be replaced. a habit is built around a cue and a reward, associated in a Pavlovian way. something triggers your habit, and some good feeling is associated with the result of the action. however, a habit isn't real until a craving for that reward is established.

to put it more simply, if you eat 2 bags of flaming hot cheetos and like them, you have not created a habit. but if you eat 1 bag of flaming hot cheetos and then super crave them for like 4 days and then buy another bag of them and eat them and repeat this process until it gets to the point where you see a bag of cheetos and start salivating and emptying your pockets, you have a habit.

so how do you get rid of this habit?
you can avoid looking at bags of flaming hot cheetos. you still have the neural capacity to salivate over the bag, but you have removed the cue. OR you could make it so that you associate a cheeto cue with something else that delivers the same reward but is not cheetos. maybe you can listen to your favorite song whenever you see cheetos and knock-down your initial reaction to the cheetos that way. you can also replace your bad habit with new habits that offer even stronger rewards. maybe when you crave cheetos, what you really crave is excitement in the middle of your busy schedule, which could be accomplished by a brusk walk around the building or a change of scenery or texting someone you think is cute.

anyway, that is some food for thought. i really want flaming hot cheetos now. new york is wondrous. 

i've had a good outlook lately. i love myself when i'm like this -- rushing into the world with boundless positivity. every person to me is a vessel of vast potential put onto this earth to enact the intentions of the kind universe.

there are low moments, of course. for example, yesterday i spent 7 hours in my new lab. this is not because what i had to do took 7 hours, it's because i am slow and mediocre at doing stuff independently in lab at present. i was thus the last person to leave. my luciferase assay, which is supposed to be the easiest assay in the world, did not go so great (at all), but i guess it was my first time... i'm pretty sure i just pipetted stuff incorrectly. pipetting is hard, i don't care what you say. i always overthink it, redo it, and end up introducing bubbles where there didn't have to be. fail.

in general, i'm doing fine, but all of my work from previous weeks seems to still be making me mentally and physically tired, so i've been allowing myself to relax way more than i should in the small amount of time i have free. as a result, i end up staying up late relaxing and then being unproductive in my spare time the next day. i try to rationalize this by believing my free time is negligible, but it's not, oh well.

life right now is funny for me because it's the only time in ever where my primary motivation is me. i want to eat well/study well/work hard because i want me to do well. at this point, i'm no longer proving myself to the world, i'm proving myself to me.

this semester is about becoming better at handling things quickly, at harnessing my big-picture thinking just as much as i think critically, at making important practices (like reading papers, luciferase assays, being efficient about homework) second nature. it's about only stressing about over the stuff that i legitimately HAVE to stress over. it's about being flexible, and not fixating on things.

that's all i have time to say right now. peace out.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/how-to-be-emotionally-stable-without-getting-bored/

i am not a great writer. i don't think i'll be a great writer until i write something that can't be said better. id don't think i could have ever said this better

but then i have to get myself up, get myself out, and then i feel better again. 


i know slowly this will get better, even if nothing makes sense right now. sometimes i just get lost in the fact that break makes it so there's nothing to do unless i initiate it on my own. sometimes i get crippled by go-nowhere relationships- the fact that they don't work convinces me that nothing works. but things work, like my ability to move, and move on. 


i played the guitar for 2 hours today, or what felt like two hours. i can feel myself getting better. i recognize chords more, how they're positioned and shaped, it's even getting a little bit easier to change between them. i can feel myself becoming better even though there's no real proof of it. it just feels a tiny bit easier. i feel stupider now when i play the easy songs. i find myself hungering for songs that let me try new barres, or faster switches. as a challenge, i played one of the songs my band plays, and it actually didn't sound too awful. i hope that someday i will know this big log well enough to make my own songs out of it. 


i figure that's what rebuilding things is like- it comes one day at a time, one song at a time, it slowly gets a tiny bit better. that's really the only way to get better, by a tiny chunk at a time. nothing that really sticks with you can happen all that quickly, except for getting a job, or that boost in oxytocin you get after kissing someone. in general, life is kind of slow and gradual, but wonderful all at the same time. i know someday soon i'll wake up fixed, and i won't even realize it. tomorrow i'll wake up better than i was today, and one day i'll wake up and this knot in my heart will have finally completely dissolved.


i decided i'm not the type of person that wants greatness to happen quickly, as much as it pains me to have to wait. when good things are thrown at me, i fumble and i don't know what to do. i need them to be tossed slowly into my hands. i want to step toward them faithfully, having decided that they're what i truly want. i have to practice being good, getting better one day at a time so that when something truly amazing happens, i'm prepared and welcome to it. 

that trick your brain plays on you when you have a fantastic dream that fixes some huge problem in an amazing way, but then you have to wake up and live your life like normal. something in your brain chemistry changes about the situation, because you feel like what happened in your dream felt vivid and real.

that thing where you like someone more after you've hugged them. oxytocin. what a trick.

when you eat smaller versions of food, you actually eat less, and the same with small plates.

the cheerleader effect (as seen on how i met your mother)- you see a group of people and they all seem really cool, but actually the cool that you're seeing is the cool within the group that has been amplified by the fact that they're in a group, and fit together well. when you look at one individual member of the pack, they are not that impressive. this also happens at stores when they put all the pretty colors near each other of shirts. even though you'll only buy one shirt, you're impressed by how the shirts look against each other.

when you shove all of the clothes that normally adorn your floor in your closet in a garbage bag, your room seems a lot cleaner.

when people like you, think you're pretty, or whatever, they are more inclined to believe what you say, even if you're wrong.

that thing zooey deschanel does to her voice to make it sound old-time-y and weird. a trick.

that thing where school makes you feel like biology is totally boring and rigid, but really it's crazy badass and sexy.

when i was little i would try to play that "pick a card, any card!" game. i would organize the entire deck by suit and make the person hold onto the card while i looked through the entire deck to ascertain which card was missing. that was not a trick.

i'm in my bedroom, which isn't in the worse mess of its term as mine, but isn't is exactly something i'd want to clue my parents, future boss or mother-in-law in on. i feel like i should be having this epiphany, but this year i am coming up somewhat empty. i've made some progress this year, but i mean it's impossible not to have done so in a year, i suppose.

i feel as though this year has been broken up fairly rigidly into phases. rich and varied as it were, i feel like it might be one of those years i confuse with the year before it or after it when i'm in my thirties.

currently i'm listening to modest mouse on shuffle. something about modest mouse. they're one of my favorite bands, but their discography is not one that i have sunk to the bottom of. sometimes i'll discover something new they wrote that i love, for example: "sleepwalkin'" from building nothing out of something. the grittiness of isaac brock's voice, the tinniness of the guitar, the random bursts of anger and emotion interlaced with stoicism- it can go from lo-fi to hard core in like 12 seconds. i like the way they say things. what i mean to say is that i like their lyrics, and that's one of those things i unknowingly go for with artists. it doesn't always have to be particularly eloquent, but if the lyrics don't sit well with me, i can't like the artist.

-"Black Cadillacs" 


i guess this modest mouse digression has little to do with the new year. i probably could have written this in any year since 2005. something randomly new is that i've started watching the show louie. it turns out i really like louis c.k. and he kind of puts me in the mood to listen to modest mouse somehow.



 i tend to have these associations with music and fiction and feelings. for example, there was a period of time when i associated the decemberists with a series of unfortunate events- there seemed to be a similarity in both wit, fancy, and a slight nautical theme.


louis c.k.'s brand of humor is kind of gritty and ironic too, i guess- in a way that is reminiscent of the irony and bitterness espoused by isaac brock, when he makes statements that are true, yet deeply sad and funny at the same time. he also never portrays himself to be a terribly good person, but he isn't a bad one either. at the same time he is the hero and the antihero.

oh wow, it's late. resolution 1 of every year is always sleep better. why do i never learn? i suppose we're only young once.

stuff about 2011

1. i made several good recordings with my (dynamically member-changing) band, the rose lights, that has now more or less dissolved or gone on extended hiatus. in case you are wandering through, you can listen to/download recordings at our last.fm page. we also played about 7 shows, i think. we kind of got into a nice groove. i'm proud of a lot of the songwriting i've done this year, although i suspect it will be enjoyed by few people in the whole world.

2. i saw The Shins in Philadelphia with Hannah! (note- inconsistent capitalization due to excitement.)  we also recorded a lot of video of us as we slowly deteriorated into madness on our no-sleep 900-mile road-trip adventure, which hannah edited and presented to me as a present. yay for friends with thoughtful creative streaks.

3. i probably read like 3 books. two of them were bossypants (book on tape!) and is everyone hanging out without me? and other concerns by mindy kaling. i started a ton more, but i have a kind of high default rate with reading books. i became a really active blog reader, so at least there's that.

4. i had my "i am just too stupid for this" moment with physics last semester. i am hoping to start fresh with lamer, easier physics this semester. wish me luck. dropping physics was okay, and it was actually kind of a relief to not have to do physics anymore, but the spare time killed me. physics shook my faith in my science abilities. it was quickly followed by a break-up, which basically bummed me out for the rest of the semester.

5. i stopped working in the gilroy lab, and basically did no scientific research (sans a biocore lab) for the rest of the year. i learned a lot mostly from the friendships and exposure to research i had in the gilroy lab. i really felt like i was part of a nerdy family, where people would be nice to me when i'd randomly sing. i liked having some other purpose outside of school to exist- as insignificant as i really was. it was cool to have that introductory experience, it was really cool to learn how to use a confocal microscope.

6. i got drunk for the first time.

7. i visited london and paris, chicago, philadelphia, and seattle.

8. it was one of those messy relationship years. that's quickly shaping into like every year of my life past the age of 16. i suppose every day i'm learning. it's hard to balance circumstances with caring for people, which is why i think most relationships at our age don't always work. sometimes it feels like we're all too busy figuring things out to be able to truly commit to someone. some people more than others, of course. i sometimes wish that people could just all chill out about each other and just get to know each other without making it all such a big complicated deal, but of course, when people's blood is all rushing to different parts of their body, and there's a bunch of oxytocin involved, it's impossible to tell anyone to do anything like 'chill out' and have it really sink in.

9. i performed in the UW summer choir.

10. i continued having a radio show, and started a new one called "tin can diamonds," which i enjoyed making musical themes and playlists for. a good one was "in C." i played songs that were all in C and its relative minor. i also played "commissioning a symphony in C," even though it wasn't in C.

11. need i say 11/11/11? an interesting night was had by my person.

see how much we love each other?

12. i got infinity better at the guitar, which has basically become my loneliness companion. some people have body pillows, i have a noisy instrument that i'm not good at playing. it's okay though because i can sometimes hide the fact that i suck with the fact that i'm a decent vocalist. becca gave me the guitar. (thank you.)

13. my spring semester taught of the wonder and magic that was human genetics and cell biology. i found it frustrating while i was learning it, but once i knew it, it was kind of insane to know the language of existence. it's funny how strangely ordered this chaotic system of proteins floating around in cells actually is. some salient topics and possible future research interests include RNA silencing, epigenetics, and disease transmission at the cellular and signal transduction level. i also learned physiology my fall semester, which was also interesting, but may have been too physical at times for me to love it. i liked learning about how the parasympathetic nervous system controlled only the blood flow to the sexual organs, while the sympathetic one did everything else. i liked feedback loops and stuff, but i wasn't as intrigued by how much resistance the lungs had. that stuff was kind of a bummer. i grew to appreciate how complex and wonderful the kidney is, but i kind of wish i had taken the optional lab component so that i would have cared more about the material.

14. along the lines of biology, i finally had a successful biocore lab project with real results. i'd like to say it was all my accomplishment, but it was really mostly brian's statistical tests that helped us to really know what we knew. i remember it was a really difficult experiment that i had to go to lab and re-do all by myself when our data was not conclusive. i am really glad that i did that though, because our final data supported our hypothesis and yielded significantly different results, so we had a really shiny conclusive data set to present to the class on the last day. i think we were like the only group in our whole class that did a successful experiment, and i just glowed with pride over it. it was also really cool because we were also the only 3-person group (the rest were 4 per), so we were like "suck on that! diffusion of responsibility." it was basically about whether the alpha factor (which induces shmooing of MATa-cells of yeast) of a yeast that was truncated at its signaling domain would still bind to the yeast receptor when combined with regular alpha factor. but that's probably more than you wanted to know. it was a very cool experiment. it turned out that the alpha factor that was truncated bound antagonistically with the receptor on the yeast, so less cell cycle arrest and shmooing. ISN'T THAT COOL? it's actually really cool.

15. i applied to journalism school, decision pending. i don't think i will go though if i get in. for a while it seemed like everyone wanted me to be a journalist-- i was offered a really neat position at the daily cardinal, my journalism professor was on the same plane as me, i spoke at a panel, etc. but i don't know if my career should be in telling the stories of others instead of creating something of my own. i also think that if i really want to be a journalist or something public relations-y in future, my experience serves me better than a degree (that could be used for something more rigid and school-based) would.

16. i started working at the one of our campus newspapers as the diversity editor. i really like it, and hope to do better things in the future with this beat. i think that diversity is important in a newsroom because it affects how sources are selected and whose voices they reflect. i can thank my ethnic studies course that i took over the summer (Journalism 662 taught by professor hemant shah) for teaching me all about the correlation between media portrayal and societal acceptance of certain groups.

picture credit: s. lewis

17. this.

picture credit: j.stewart

18. i think this list would be lame if i didn't mention the completely amazing halloween i had this year. while last year, i was in boston and met john kerry on halloween, this year, i had a gig with my band that i had previously thought would never again play a show. we played in costume. it was my best friend's birthday and i actually got to engage in some festivities, and we ended up throwing a large halloween bash at our apartment, by far the biggest party we've thrown. we got our first and only roommates picture (i'm pretty sure), with the exception of the cartoon renditions of us a la the scott pilgrim web site and jason shao.


19. becca moved out of the apartment and janet moved in. i will miss becca while she's in germany, and never forget how instrumental she was in making my first real apartment into a home-y collection of cold rooms with inexplicable sinks in them. we battled the elements together, the three of us, as well as multiple power outages, choppy internet, and pest-related scares. also of note, scott and sasha moved into the apartment building, but then sasha moved out.

20. sasha and i owned (survived) our organic chemistry and biology courses.

21. i'm really happy about the friendships i've made and maintained this year. it's been a good year filled with nice people. it's funny that you never really know who is going to end up being a good friend, who is going to end up really meaning something to you in the long run. i should really make a list of the people i know and how much i think about them at the beginning of every month and see how it shifts as the year passes. actually! i think i WILL start doing that. it's fascinating how people float in and out of your life and some insignificant specks become enormous blobs of importance.

22. The Arab Spring and the Walker Riots came around April. the only thing i really want to say about the collective bargaining/scott walker protests is that i know that mass action changes things, but wide-scale loud complaining only changes things if it causes mass mobilization that goes beyond awareness. protests are not an end-all, they are just the start of a change. it was also exciting and encouraging to see previously-repressed nations fighting against their corrupt governments because i believe it's true that democracy can only really come from within the populace of a nation- it can hardly be implemented from outside. that being said, there are very real obstacles these people face in their journey toward self-government.

some resolutions:
1. spend more time with my family.
2. floss more.
3. send more thank you notes, be more considerate and gracious in general.
4. be cleaner and more organized with room and belongings.
5. spend more time with close friends and don't take them for granted.
6. exercise more frequently, and try to build core strength.
7. market myself better, be more focused on hobbies than 'hanging out'
8. focus less on social life, focus more on school and career-based aspirations.
9. spend more time at the daily cardinal office.
10. get less carried away.
11. be more focused on health-related needs- doctor's appointments, subscription refills, taking the right meds, etc.

goals:
by the end of this year, i want to...
know how to make fish, chicken and my own daal.
know how to better play guitar. perhaps purchase electric if i get reallllly good.
have a new band or musical project
have had an excellent, life-changing health-related india experience
have actively participated in hindi conversation tables
be on track to graduate in 4, maybe 4 and 1/2 years
have joined a lab and started a research project that i'm really interested in and almost finished with
have a normal sleeping pattern
have lived to tell the story of it

it's not that i need anyone else. it's not that anyone needs anyone else, really.

on the list of people you actually need, it's like people who harvest and plant food,
followed by whoever employs you,
followed by someone who invests in you (a research mentor or an employer),
then come your collaborators,
and after all of that, then you need your family and friends, maybe a boyfriend or girlfriend, in that order.

remember, i'm talking need. not like, optimal emotional healthiness.

obviously no one wants to be alone, but human beings are capable of being pretty much lonely for weeks and weeks and totally surviving by their books, their fan fiction authorship, their over-blogging, their music collections, or their research. they can pour themselves over the guitar, treadmill, computer screen, or preoccupy themselves with hours of syndicated television.

and you know, they can be smart, they can be accomplished, they can be amazing, interesting people, all on their own satisfied by their own hobbies.

but they shouldn't have to be. they should talk to each other, they should bond with each other, they should fall in love with being alive on an earth where someone besides them can appreciate how amazing they are, and in turn appreciate the beauty of others' creation and independently-derived thoughts.

if you're busy with your own life that doesn't mean you can't take the time to connect with someone, even if you might only know them for a week or three. you shouldn't be alone in the small amount of time you have. i don't think you should live for others, but i do think part of the reason you cultivate yourself is to share it with others. i think that it's kind of unfair to the world to withhold your perspective from it.  we don't need each other to survive, but it sure as hell is better to have people to chill with.

i could make it on my own, but let me know that i don't have to. no one really wants to be alone in whatever time we have.

1. do no harm.
this is pretty self-explanatory. i'm not a vengeful person, i would never egg someone's house, or break someone's toys, etc. i try to set my actions by a trajectory that won't hurt people unnecessarily. when someone texts me, i text back; when someone talks to me, i engage with them fully and don't look around the room waiting for them to stop talking, because the fact that someone is talking to me is a gift.

2. be honest in being and in action.
i used to think that lying was the worst, that i should never lie. now i feel that lying is okay, but most of the time unnecessary. i should live my life in a way that doesn't necessitate lying. the important thing is that i'm honest with myself, honest with the people who have a stake in my truth - i wouldn't string along someone if there was no future, and i would never lie about who i am. if there is something that makes me feel like i'm acting untrue, i stop doing that thing.

3. don't let others get in the way of your happiness.
this one is possibly the hardest to follow through with. there is always a balancing act between an individual and the community they are a part of. sometimes one of them calls trump. sometimes you desperately don't want to show that something is upsetting you because you don't want to cause conflict. but if something is really important, i will be 'that person' who complains when something is wrong. i will be that person that calls someone out on their shit, and i'm proud of it.
another facet of this that is less hard to live by is acting in a way that makes me happy even when other people let me down. continuing to be happy in myself is the only way i can really cope with those things.

4. be happy in yourself. (preachy mostly because i don't feel comfortable using I pronouns).
you should be able to spend a day alone and be perfectly content. not all the time, no one is all the time. but you should be okay with being alone, you should feel pleased by what you do in your self-time. you should be able to spend a day recounting your own personal triumphs and feeling happy that you take up a small portion of the world with your own thoughts and mind, and that in itself -- is good.
and in interactions with others, you should be able to hold your own, because you have a unique personhood, and you have thoughts that are worthy of note.

5. treat others with respect.
i treat others as equals. it's basically the golden rule. do unto others as you would have them do unto you. don't treat someone like shit and expect not to get it back in return. be polite and civil, and expect others to uphold those same standards.
i feel that respect is what keeps us from being animals. in a sense i'm also talking about one-to-one respect, which includes hearing someone out, giving someone's thoughts and experience their due importance, and actually giving their point of view some thought. i can disagree with someone completely, i can disrespect all of their viewpoints, but i will still level with them.

6. surround yourself with people who are good.
it matters to me if my friends are assholes. i won't be friends with someone who doesn't treat others with respect, even if they treat me with respect. it is offensive to me if a person disrespects someone else in front of me.

7. on what being a good friend means to me.
i will come to your gigs, recitals, art shows, parties, fundraisers, whatever, as often as my schedule permits, which should be often. i will also get other people to come as much as i can.
i will talk to you about things you are sad about but don't want to act like you're sad about if you want to talk about them.
i will make you mix CDs that hold the songs i think you will like, and think you need to hear.
i will not flake on you, unless there's some kind of emergency, in which case i will always text or call you to inform you that the flaking is happening with as much advance notice as humanly possible.
i will always think you are attractive, but not because i like you, but because you are very attractive and i would be friends with you just because of your looks if i were that kind of person anyway.
i might not always be on time, but i will keep you in the loop about where i am in the getting there process.
i will stick up for you.
i will go with you to something DOA just so we can talk to each other and not feel awkward.
i will tell you what i think about the guys you like, but give you the freedom to make your own judgment calls about what you want to do.
i will post funny things to your wall like once a month at least.
you can always text me when you're bored, and i will text back as soon as possible.
you can tell me any secret and i'll never tell anyone.
i will always wake up and talk to you if you are crying.

8. don't be jealous of other people.
this goes with being happy in yourself, i guess. everyone's different, and jealousy is just counting someone else's blessings instead of your own. i don't remember who said that, but it's very true.

9. approach your problems independently, but seek help as necessary.
i attempt to fix something before i ask for help. i rarely find that anything is impossible, so i try not to be overwhelmed before i even attempt to fix the problem. most problems can be sorted out by:
a. turning it off and then turning it back on
b. a Google search
c. a thorough analysis of the system and what went wrong in the first place
d. reading directions and making sure everything is set up properly
if none of these work, then i ask for help. it's annoying when people ask for my help without attempting something first. it's like, what would you do if i wasn't here? would you hunt me down? or would you try figuring it out by yourself?
this is something i encounter with my students a lot. i feel like it stems from a lack of academic self-confidence. when you don't feel confident, you feel like you have to ask someone before doing anything, but often just turning off the freak-out button is enough to fuel you toward an answer.

10. listen/observe, remember, then judge.
i always feel that it's best to analyze all of the facts before making a judgment. our emotions and thin-slicing tell us a lot in a short amount of time, it's true. but we must be careful to also remember the facts rather than our emotions and quick judgments, because these can be wrong. our facts are what we actually have to go on.
i find that when people don't do this, they actually come away from a situation not understanding what the true outcome of the situation was, because they were too busy thought-commentating instead of listening to what went on.

----
i don't really know why i did this. i guess i felt like i had to write some of these things down, at this point in my life. hopefully i won't have to amend this too much, and i didn't leave out anything important.
anyhow, happy holidays yo. 

it's no walk in the park. i am usually the master of distracting myself from shit by using my really resilient memory and my ability to pretend that putting nice things on my wall and play songs with myself on the guitar are roughly equivalent to always having a willing dance and songwriting partner. 

everything was a mess and i was a wreck. 


i pattered and preened and quibbled and driveled all while wearing a smile and pretending everything was dandy. i don't really deal with things as much as i ring them out and hang them up to dry. i will always have the shape of some people etched into my heart. 


i will never value anyone more than i value the people that make the time to see me face to face, the people that tell me what i need to hear without me asking for it, and the people who know me well enough to tell me the truth but not hurt me with it. i value you those people who see the good in me when i don't see it, and the people who dream for me what i haven't yet dreamed. 


it's easy for me to let people in, it's easy for me to make friends. what's hard for me is knowing if i can be myself completely around people. i just want to know people i can be myself completely around at some moment. i think we all crave that. there are some people who can make you better just by being around you and just by talking to you.  those are the people you want in your life. 


this will all make perfect sense some day. a john mayer lyric, but true nonetheless. a better quote to end on is this: 


“[...] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?” 
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road


I guess I just think all of my friends are crazy insane, but I can't like people who aren't crazy anyway.

best compliment i've ever gotten, hands down.

a certain population of my friends (i have so many friends, don't even bother guessing,) is obsessed with google analytics. they use them to track who is looking at their web-posted information, like blogs or whatever, to figure out WHO is viewing their content.

like with crossword puzzles, i kind of missed the analytics boat. i mean, yeah, it's a good use of time when you've got nothing else to do, and there is something intrinsically valuable about them, but at most points in time, it's just time that could be spent thinking about something else. there is something nice about people checking in on you without talking to you about it. you can't really put a price-tag on that, i suppose, but there is also something to be said for the fact that they haven't said anything to you about it. as a somewhat empirical person, i try to set more by what people say and do with me that proves they were listening to what i was saying.

i'll admit there is something insidiously interesting about analytics, of course. they are interesting when tracking how many plays my band gets on its bandcamp, but become boring when confirming obvious facts like the fact that no one besides perhaps 3 people who are close to me (and my parents and brother when they google me) read my blog. (also some random spam people and indian people who google my name) and yeah, it would be a little more awesome if you could google analytics your facebook page and find out who was looking at you.

i think i would prefer analytics if it measured things i participate in say if there were analytic data about my conversations with people in person. it would measure useful things, like
% of eye contact
average interpersonal distance
frequency of interaction
duration of average interaction
amount of self-related pronouns used in conversation
amount of times they used my name in conversation
amount of times i used theirs
amount of times i used the word "like"
posture, position
pitch
audibility

you know, useful shit like that. i think that would be the holy grail of analytics, because i'm pretty sure people are kind of obvious if you pay attention to those types of things. there should be a rule that everyone has to tell you if they're reading your blog anyway. 

There is nothing for me here anymore.

That has been the resounding cry permeating my life as of late. I have this thing where I self-isolate and I don't include myself even in the what I am included in. My passions are far-reaching, but somehow remote. I have somehow compartmentalized every part of my life to the point where I am only somewhat included within them and not immersed in anything fully. I feel like I'm playing hard-to-get in everything I do, whether it be making my room a temple, or making plans with the people I care about, for example.

It confuses me that everything goes on without me. Coming to this realization has catapulted me into even greater withdrawal, and self-isolation. I have a headache, I can't write this anymore

sometimes, you should just stop

i'm trying to keep a better record of my feelings of the day as a part of an initiative to not lose control in the hustle and bustle that is my daily life.

things that i liked today:
-i suppose you readers will tire of hearing this, but i like the amazing stillness and tranquility that comes with bouncing from place to place with headphones on. this feeling is amplified (haha) by the fact that around me there is actually much noise, lots of drama and activity and PEOPLE all around me. but i have created a space of peace within myself, within the sound.

-i like thinking funny little thoughts. things like, "oh chemistry applies to love given the fact that bond distance is the point of time where you are not too close that your negative charges repel their negative charges, and not too far that there's no interaction at all, but you're at just the length that you can maximize the positive to negative charge balance in the most effective way to reduce individual energy." yeah, little thoughts like that.

-i like noticing things that other people did well. like today, one of the daily cardinal comics made an arrested development joke out of the blue. i love that!

-i like knowing and loving the people that live with me. i love becca whose birthday it is today, and i love connie, and the fact that we constantly analyze each other.

-i like having a great conversation with someone i barely know, or someone i just met. it makes me feel that people are really good at heart, and all worth meeting.

-i like to make playlists. i make them for days, seasons, concepts, and mostly, people. when i make someone a mix, i keep it forever. i listen to it and think of them. it's like my own narrative (through other people's words and music) of that person and what they were to me at that time.

-i like it when i get a test back and i go through all the things i actually did correctly. in that moment i think, oh my, i've learned so much. i could do this and i bask in that small delight before i look at the final score and how things conspiratorially stacked up against me.

-i like feeling that there's no end to the knowledge that can be gained and discovered but also at the fact that i could live my life just reading all the books i have now over and over again and i'd still probably have loads to think about. and i'm really not even that into books except for harry potter and random other stuff like wayside school and a series of unfortunate events and freakonomics, shrug

-i love my journalism professor, she's so smart and capable, but also she levels with us and is hilarious, and sometimes uses clips from SNL just for the hell of it. :)

-i like those mornings where i just don't talk. instead, i listen to everything i learn with open ears and no mental commentary.

- i like reaching out to people and having them like it.

i don't like:

-feeling overwhelmed by schoolwork, or feeling like i can't control my own progress.

-knowing i feel like listening to a certain song, but not knowing which song it is. or having that looming feeling that the song i want to listen to doesn't exist yet.

-admitting to myself or someone else that i suck at something, or that i'm not entirely sure of myself.

-the feeling that i want to just do what i want and act how i feel, but realizing that doing such things invites consequences and interpretations i can't control. but i try to remember, "be who you are and say how you feel because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." that dr. seuss seemed like he was doing lots of drugs from his illustrations, but he knows his shit, let me tell you.

-feeling like everything in my future is set in stone

-staying up late doing something crazy. :/

i kept walking down the streets, and the sun was bouncing across everything, and there was a song on my lips and surrounding my ears, and i couldn't help but keep this goofy grin on my face the entire day

there is some chemical reaction that occurs when one is in the process of making a new friend.
it's like an infrared spectrometer is turned on, and suddenly all of your bonds are rotating and vibrating. anyway that's how it feels.

it's so interesting how you can go from day 1 indifference to day 2 interest to day 3 oh my god, where were you before? did you exist before you entered my life?

many, if not most, of my friends i've discovered over time. it's not always friendship at first sight. most of the time, it's more of a growing process. i always like to say that people grow into my life like benign tumors.

you barely even realize that they're there until you look around after a few months, and they're a part of the fabric of your existence, they've somehow implanted themselves into your life. and it's funny because once someone's in your life, they create a little world, right there in the middle of your already fixed structure.  suddenly their ecosystem is linked into yours. every person you have a relationship with has a little narrative attached to their existence in your narrative.

and you just can't undo it. some people get so wrapped up in your fabric that if you remove them from your life, you'll have to unweave all of it, and re-sew it back up (and it will be smaller when that's over). some people are more like sequins sewn on sloppily whose presence isn't really that missed. but most people are patches. they hold you together, and maybe they can replaced, but they'll never be able to fill exactly the same space as the old patch did.

</mushy post> 

1. just when i thought i said all i could say, my chick on the side said she's got one on the way. full disclosure: this was the first song i liked by usher

2. i take video at most concerts, but then i can't do anything with it because i sing along and it's very embarrassing.

3. i have an obsessive personality. i have a tendency to LOVE things that i like. like, i watch tv-shows non--stop or listen to songs over and over again in one day or start a project at 3AM. i'm not very rational when i'm excited about something.

4. one time, gina and i got in trouble for singing this song in bio class.  we were doing a really good job too. whatever. https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/agni/15%20Utopia.mp3

5. i think i'm the only person who noticed that in the 7th harry potter movie, the lightning-bolted P of Potter in the logo grew an extra ridge.

6.  i believe that sometimes talking about problems just makes them worse. but i also believe that if you think your gripes all the way through about 90 times, you'll bore yourself to death with how repetitive your thoughts are and just move on to something more interesting.

7. words i use that lots of other people i know don't use: "dope" "lolz" (usually not out-loud) "boss" "zomg" (online only as well) and of course "badonk" and "ridonkulous" whateva, i do what i want

8. if i were going to spend a day with any singer/actress women, they would be: regina spektor, amy poehler, tina fey, mila kunis, alia shawkat

9. if i were going to date any fictional men, they'd be: tom from daria, floyd from 30 rock (jason sudeikis), ben from parks and recreation (adam scott), ron from harry potter, jim from the office, michael scott (like the way he is when he leaves the office), michael bluth, marshall from how i met your mother, henry from party down (also, adam scott), sean from boy meets world, ron from kim possible, darryn from as told my ginger, arnold from hey arnold (hey, i was little when i watched that show), cappie from greek, dave (who dated lane for one season) on gilmore girls, gilbert blythe from anne of green gables, that guy from a wrinkle in time with the red hair, michael from the princess diaries (and i met the guy who played him in real life (because he's the lead singer of rooney), and he totally initiated a hug with me! crazy) --> god, i'd date a lot of fictional men.

10. i think that colors matter so much. you might not remember them, but they hit you right in the eye and they make your memories different in weird ways. they affect the way you perceived a mood, and can alter history. when they finally invent time machines, or those "what-if" machines like on futurama, they will change colors of things and see how it changed history.

11. this confessions list devolved into a talk about random things list. ah well.

12. i will always like these songs no matter how overrated they become:
i try- macy gray, somebody to love - queen, diamonds and rust- joan baez, in the middle of the night; piano man - billy joel, faith - george michael, high and dry- radiohead, kissing the lipless- the shins, dream a little dream of me - doris day, or someone else, the best is yet to come - frank sinatra, sound of silence - simon & garfunkel, you're going to make me lonesome when you go - bob dylan, stand by me - ben e. king,  a tisket a tasket - ella fitzgerald, just my imagination - the temptations, strange fruit - billie holiday, ragged wood - fleet foxes, it doesn't matter anymore - buddy holly, lullaby - cat empire

13. singing is the only thing in the whole world that always makes me happy