Thoughts that keep me up at night
My sleep schedule has been a crapshoot lately. I've been waking up at very strange hours, after falling asleep at even stranger ones. Tonight however, is slightly different. I awoke from a dream that left me feeling strongly nostalgic, wishing for something that had changed several years ago.
I met this girl when she was 12. In many ways, I've quite literally watched her grow up. In others, we've grown up together. The thing is, somewhere in the last couple of years we've lost that connection. The dream snapped that into sharp focus. What was the dream you ask? A single text message. She was asking for advice on a Ph.D thesis topic. And I realized, I have no idea what her dreams are. I knew her dreams when she was 12-14. When she loved to skate, and had a firm set of beliefs. Now she's the single mother of two kids who works retail. And that's about all I know. Dream-me would have had no idea what to suggest, since I don't even know what she would have gone to college for. In some ways, for someone that I've known for that long, that's really frightening.
The moral of the story? Sometimes I think I'm really afraid of change. I've been avoiding posting in this LJ for the better part of two years now. Part of that is because I've been busy, and I do talk to most of you through some other medium. But not all, and certainly not everything I wish I could say to you. The thing is, in the last couple of years, things have changed. Not all bad, just different. And in some ways, I've never quite figured out how it all fits together, what I can share with all the changed relationships who'd view a journal entry like this. Especially since there are some days where I wish I could just rewind our clock, and find that point in our friendship where I was happiest. In some cases, it's a small thing. But in general, posting anything about it on here would feel too confrontational to me.
The thing of it is, would you even want to know? I do. If there's a piece of our old friendship you miss, maybe I can give it back to you. Maybe I can't, but I do want to know. Send me an e-mail, drop me a comment (I'll moderate them for this entry), however you'd like to get in touch with me. Because if it's possible, I'd want at least try to give that back. If you want to know what, if anything, I miss of you, same process. I'll tell you if you ask, but will try to leave be if you don't.
With that out of the way, life updates.
I've been thinking a lot about some good goals for the upcoming year. These are really general sketches of what I've been thinking so far.
I met this girl when she was 12. In many ways, I've quite literally watched her grow up. In others, we've grown up together. The thing is, somewhere in the last couple of years we've lost that connection. The dream snapped that into sharp focus. What was the dream you ask? A single text message. She was asking for advice on a Ph.D thesis topic. And I realized, I have no idea what her dreams are. I knew her dreams when she was 12-14. When she loved to skate, and had a firm set of beliefs. Now she's the single mother of two kids who works retail. And that's about all I know. Dream-me would have had no idea what to suggest, since I don't even know what she would have gone to college for. In some ways, for someone that I've known for that long, that's really frightening.
The moral of the story? Sometimes I think I'm really afraid of change. I've been avoiding posting in this LJ for the better part of two years now. Part of that is because I've been busy, and I do talk to most of you through some other medium. But not all, and certainly not everything I wish I could say to you. The thing is, in the last couple of years, things have changed. Not all bad, just different. And in some ways, I've never quite figured out how it all fits together, what I can share with all the changed relationships who'd view a journal entry like this. Especially since there are some days where I wish I could just rewind our clock, and find that point in our friendship where I was happiest. In some cases, it's a small thing. But in general, posting anything about it on here would feel too confrontational to me.
The thing of it is, would you even want to know? I do. If there's a piece of our old friendship you miss, maybe I can give it back to you. Maybe I can't, but I do want to know. Send me an e-mail, drop me a comment (I'll moderate them for this entry), however you'd like to get in touch with me. Because if it's possible, I'd want at least try to give that back. If you want to know what, if anything, I miss of you, same process. I'll tell you if you ask, but will try to leave be if you don't.
With that out of the way, life updates.
- School - When I last posted, I was just in a transition phase between two projects, and trying to sort a lot of things out. Since then, I've made progress.
- I passed my Qualifying Exam. This leaves me with my Thesis as the only degree requirement left.
- I'm not auditing any classes the upcoming semester. I've been auditing as many classes as I could, trying not to let myself slip out of the mindset of being a student. This upcoming semester, I think, is the first time I'm not doing any of that.
- My advisor and I managed to settle on a thesis topic. It was really stressful for a couple of weeks there, because the most promising direction was a significant departure from where I'd been and was only tangentially good for where I wanted to go.
- Most of my past work has been on Narrative Understanding, in particular trying to get a computer to understand 6th grade students' creative writing.
- The most promising future direction was in Goal Recognition, in particular trying to understand what a student is attempting to accomplish while playing one of our educational games.
- The final solution we came up with is a hybrid topic: I'm going to use my Narrative Understanding background to leverage the narrative structure of the game in order to perform the Goal Recognition task. There's a lot of work that has to be done for this, but I think it's interesting and it gives me a direction
- We're even closer to a target graduation date. If my advisor is correct, I can finish this by Dec. 2012. This means I have to start thinking hard about what I want to do when I graduate.
- I've always been leaning towards an academic job.
- I know I don't want to go work for most companies I've heard of.
- My advisor has suggested two potential non-academic paths. One of which is sort of attractive, but only as a short-term (< 5 years) career move.
- Both of these would be focusing on my more math-oriented interests, and less on my narrative/creativity directions.
- I have strongly considered going back for more school, this time a Masters degree in Math.
- The downside to this? I can't justify taking another 2 years off of my career path, especially from publications, if I want to go the academic route.
- The reason Academic jobs are attractive is because at some level, I really want to teach. I taught a class in 2009, and despite some things that I feel I did wrong, I really enjoyed it.
- Writing - As I mentioned last time, I've been writing a lot more recently.
- I don't remember if I mentioned, but last December I joined a Critique Group. These girls have been amazingly supportive. Two of them have self-published books which I think some of you would really enjoy.
- I won NaNoWriMo again. 2nd time in a row. I'm losing the ability to call it a fluke.
- I'm now in the middle, so to speak, of 3 stories.
- DragonMage - My first novel. I'm about 4-5 chapters in, for all that I spent most of this year working on it. They convinced me that this will work better in a different Genre than I'd been writing in. This does however, keep the trilogy more genre-consistent in my head.
- Mnemomancy - This was the first novel I started during NaNoWriMo. It's about a black market for memories. I abandoned it halfway because i realized the MC may not be the right MC for the story, she's not proactive enough.
- Ink Blooded - This is the one my critique group thinks I should focus on. Magical Ink, Necromancy, and a 16 year old assassin. This was what I wrote for the 2nd half of NaNoWriMo.
- I realized that I have yet to write my favorite trope. I might try and weave it into the story I'm working on now, but it might be too many things going on at once.
- My group has been (slightly) pushing a self-publication route. It's really tempting, because I can't spend the time required for an actual publishing contract, due to my career choices. However, it means that whenever I can actually spend time on it, I'll get some money from it. I haven't made up my mind yet, and I'm strongly considering Creative Commons licensing as an alternate option.
- I need to come up with a pen name, since I think it'd be best to keep my academic paper-publishing separate from my personal book-publishing. I don't want to use Magius Pendragon so much, because it's really too much of a fantasy name.
- Reading Challenge - I've made really good strides towards my reading challenge. However, I had to revise it, because I was falling short. Out of the 150 books I originally planned, I've read 115 as of last night. My revised goal is 120.
- Other projects - I had a bunch of other projects for the summer that have mostly been put on hold for various reasons.
- One of the ideas I've been playing with a lot lately is costuming, for like ren faires and the like. I bought some fabric with the goal of making a cloak, and I've had some ideas for boffer weapons. Both of these are temporarily on hold, with an intention of moving forward. With the cloak, I need a sewing machine, and I might need to make another one out of different fabric if I like how it turns out. At least this fabric was relatively cheap. The boffer weapons just need a little tweaking in the idea-land.
- The tablet was canned. After the touch screen issues were resolved, the LCD on the netbook decided to stop working. I realized that I've spent way too much on it for not much progress, and have set it aside. I ordered a tablet from best-buy that's getting released soon. I may still design a steampunk-like case for it, but the original mod project is out. I may still fix the netbook and use it for other purposes.
- The movie I was writing is also canned. I'll probably work on the script again once this novel's wrapping up, but I really don't think I have the art chops to do the animation. I may still spend some time on a score though.
- I have been trying to get more interested in some CS projects, but nothing's holding me right now.
- One of the ideas I've been playing with a lot lately is costuming, for like ren faires and the like. I bought some fabric with the goal of making a cloak, and I've had some ideas for boffer weapons. Both of these are temporarily on hold, with an intention of moving forward. With the cloak, I need a sewing machine, and I might need to make another one out of different fabric if I like how it turns out. At least this fabric was relatively cheap. The boffer weapons just need a little tweaking in the idea-land.
- Gaming & Friends - I lump these together because there's only really 2 people I've been seeing outside of gaming.
- This past semester has seen a drastic reduction in games. Mostly, people have started joining other clubs and have less free time in general. Partially, we have fewer people in our little group who are willing to run a game.
- I'm running a game right now, that seems to be going rather well. Running two games at once seems to be beyond my abilities.
- I've joined an online play by post game, which I'm really starting to enjoy.
- I've made a couple really good close friends in the past year. Two are fellow gamers, and one I met through a gamer.
- The last one, the non-gamer, spent a lot of time with me this Summer. To the point where I thought there might be something there (more on that to come). However, she's transferring away from State this spring, and I'll see her much more infrequently. Also, she sucks at online contact.
- I mentioned a little that I'm back in therapy. This is the third therapist I've had in the last year, but she's working out much better than the first one, and better enough that then previous. She also happens to be the mother of one of my new friends, which means there are certain topics I won't talk to her about (not because I don't want my friend to know, but because I don't want her to think me a creep who shouldn't be friends with her daughter).
- I mention that in this section because everything we've discussed has come to one conclusion: I have some form of social anxiety. Certain social situations in particular, cause me some rather severe anxiety that a friend has likened to PTSD (though my therapist and I don't think it's quite that serious). We are working on a desensitization policy, though it may still be some time before I can talk about it in more detail. The biggest fear on talking about it is I know it's caused some fights with some of you before.
- This past semester has seen a drastic reduction in games. Mostly, people have started joining other clubs and have less free time in general. Partially, we have fewer people in our little group who are willing to run a game.
- Relationships - Truth is, there's not terribly much to say in this section
- Other than two sorta-dates, there's been nothing on this front since my ex broke up with me early 2008.
- I did ask out the girl I mentioned in my last post. I don't remember how much I said about her. She's a librarian at my local library, just graduated from college. We had chatted often since I was always picking up and returning books. I finally asked her out, and almost a month later we managed to hang out in a coffee shop, where I learned she had a boyfriend. Haven't gotten in touch with her outside of the library since really.
- There are times when I think that one of my friends might be interested in a relationship. I'm really not sure though, since she's mostly just a friendly girl in general. The fact that she dated one of my friends means it would also be really awkward to ask her out. Plus, as I mentioned before, she's moving about 5 hours away and really really sucks at online communication. I'm not sure it's worth bringing up.
- I've been really thinking about asking out this girl I met through NaNoWriMo. So far, every interaction with her has been really positive. But I really don't know how to make that move from hanging out to asking her on a date. Both my ex and the last really promising almost-relationship both grew really organically, and I have no idea how we managed to bring out that we were interested in each other. So I'm not sure what to do. Only upside is that I've had rather good luck with friendships surviving a crush.
- Other than two sorta-dates, there's been nothing on this front since my ex broke up with me early 2008.
I've been thinking a lot about some good goals for the upcoming year. These are really general sketches of what I've been thinking so far.
- Now that I've picked a research topic, I need to dive into it and complete it if possible
- I've got a conference submission in the works, due Jan 24th. That'll keep me busy through most of January.
- I also need to figure out what I'm going to do once I graduate.
- I'd like to finish the novel I'm working on. At least one of them.
- Participate in (and hopefully win) NaNoWriMo 2012.
- Keep working on the social anxiety thing
- Become better versed in Computer Securit, and especially Cryptography
- Pick two projects from the above list and complete them
- Go on a date. I'm stealing this one from a friend, but it'd be nice to go on a real date.
Wow, that was a long entry. My hands hurt. Goodnight.