I don't belong anywhere.

I don't actually belong anywhere (I'm pretty convinced of this), but when I'm with my closest friends I can sometimes pretend that I do belong somewhere. :/

Otherwise, I just need to keep myself sufficiently busy and distracted so that my thoughts don't go in these directions.

(By the way, when I write that I don't belong anywhere, this is not any desire to "fit in" or conform but rather to just have things "feel right". I want to feel like I am in the right place, and I rarely ever feel that way. Most of the times that I do feel that way are when I am with a very few people who are special to me, and naturally I get to spend much less time with them than I'd like. Most of the time, I'm sort of just restlessly wandering through the world in between those precious few times that feel right.)

Hmmm...

I think that what is possibly one of my greatest strengths professionally is certainly one of my worst weaknesses personally---namely, that I seem to be incapable of feeling content and focus way too much on what I don't have even in cases where the things I do have are arbitrarily good.

I am capable of feeling happy---just not content, and I sometimes drive myself nuts as a result.

On the academic side, this can of course drive me to bigger (and ideally better) things. On the personal side, for example, I have a tendency to feel down when I don't get to hang out with my closest friends as much as I want (which of course is going to be the case a lot because I'm busy and they're busy, and only a very small number of them live close to me anyway). My best friends basically are who I consider to be my true family, and I would rather focus on the excellent times I have with them. Those times are my fondest moments in life, yet I have an annoying tendency to spend too much time thinking about the fact that I wish there were more of them when I think it would be much healthier for me to think happily about the good times themselves. And so I can drive myself nuts sometimes with this. (The flaw aspect of this also can come into play academically---by not being satisfied with certain things in a similar fashion---but I think it's the personal one where I can truly drive myself nuts much more than I'd like.)

There are various bits of subtext above---such as why my best friends are my real family and my genetic family really isn't---but I might have written about that before and in any event, I am planning on getting to work rather than on writing volumes now. There is also a reason that I am thinking about it this morning, but I will save that for another time as well.

In the meantime, I have some solution sets to correct, and I hope to go through a draft of a paper today that has taken way too long to revise.

Social Awkwardness is a Scarlet Letter

I wished I lived in a world in which social awkwardness didn't result in quite so prominent a scarlet letter. I was in G & D's (a local ice cream place) and overheard a rather demoralizing conversation: The people at the next table were talking about socially awkward people as if we were a lower form of life---apparently, we're less nice, feel less, etc. than other people. I know I can dismiss them as a bunch of idiots, but I felt like utter shit after listening to that and I do believe that most people look down on me to some extent because of my social awkwardness. (One of the reasons I feel bad when I hear that stuff is my belief that so many people believe it to at least some extent.)

Obviously, I have been able to find people who aren't that way, but one of these days I would like to believe that the number of such people isn't so small. I go out of my way to find people who I feel are egalitarian in this respect, and that's one of the reasons that I have a lot of difficulty finding friends. Simply, this is a very hard search problem. (Though, again, I have obviously found some of these special people!)

One can get better at social skills---but only to a point. (And indeed I am better now than I used to be.) In the same way, one can get better at doing contour integrals---but only to a point. In each case, there is some level of natural ability involved, and I wouldn't dream of looking down on people if they had trouble with contour integrals.

Doesn't entirely make sense

I'm a bit confused at the moment. I'm starting to become better friends with some local people. I went to the pub with a couple of them tonight. We hung out and had fun, opened up a bit, and and in general had a good time---and I very much like spending time with these particular people. Yet, I am back in my apartment and I feel a bit depressed at the moment and hope it's mostly because I'm tired. I think it goes go beyond my feelings of at guilt at not having worked on my grant proposal tonight (which is what I had intended to do). I have a thought or two on the matter, but I don't particular want to share them in this space. My thought processes aren't unfamiliar, though I still think that this isn't what my mood should be at the moment. Ah well, I guess I'll do a bit of stuff with my grant proposal because I need to give a new draft tomorrow so that I can get some more feedback.

I also got IMed with a 'thank you' from one of my SURF students because today is apparently 'Thank your mentor day.' I have several people I need to thank, so I think I should e-mail them before I go to bed. That helps my mood. (Actually, blogger was down and I couldn't post this when I first wrote the above. The IM from my student helped my mood a bit, as did sitting down and working a little on my grant proposal (even though I am not going to revise the draft as thoroughly as I'd like---nevertheless, I would like to get some more feedback on it without waiting the 3 weeks I'd need to wait if I didn't send in the new version tomorrow. So I think part of how I am feeling is guilt over the grant proposal, but I think some of it is also the thing that's bugging me that part of me feels very strongly shouldn't be bugging me at all. (I'm really annoyed at myself that I am worrying about what I probably can't have instead of focusing on the good stuff that I can and apparently do have. I really wish I could rewire myself on this.)

Friday Poetry

So, I'm not sure if I'll make this a regular feature (and it's technically early Saturday morning as I write this), but in these times of crisis and universal brouhaha, I feel it is appropriate to include the text of the poem that currently fits my mood.

The poem in question is "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost:


Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.


'But what is the subtext?', I hear your cry. It's simple: I don't know how the poem was originally intended, but I am thinking more along the lines of how people act when they are very angry. As I think all of you know, my usual mode in such matters is ice. And I think the analogy between nasty arguments and fire versus ice is quite an apt one.

I hope to post a happier poem next Friday, but we'll see what kind of mood I'm in and also how well I can keep my game face up.

Update (8/6/07): My mood was very dark during this post, and I wrote this entry about two hours after I reacted rashly (and harshly) because I couldn't control my anger. So, in accordance to my attempts to change certain things, when I am in that kind of mode, I should stick to posting poems that reflect the mood and most definitely make sure I calm down before I respond to e-mails (or other media) in which feelings are involved. This post reflects the fact that part of me understood what was going on in my mind, and yet I still didn't possess the self-control to stop myself. This needs to change. In the future, I will vent those feelings out only in an entry like this (with a poem or whatnot) and not towards other people.