Spring Break Day 1

So I ended up skiing for 4+ hours today. I wasn't going fast or anything, just thinking a lot and I lost track of time. Ended up getting sunburned too, because of course I did.

Anyway I went through a whole bunch of hypothetical situations in my head, ranging from "really probably not happening" to "never happening lol". That's normal of course; it's just what I do. What is more interesting is that these were fairly positive, when normally I am very negative about myself, my future and how people might treat me. I came to a lot of realizations about myself and my situation.

What's more impressive though is that for the first time in a while, I felt I could change things. I was visualizing ways of fixing some problem or some of the burdens that have been . I felt a desire to be apologetic and try to right some of my many wrongs. Overall, I feel like I've actually been experiencing a mighty change of heart.

Even stranger? I've started acting on them. I've felt guilty about being a bad minister for a long time and today I actually reached to some of them so that they'd at least know who I am (not to all of them yet though. There's one who I'm afraid I might have offended last week and so I want to make sure my apology is good. Maybe I'll see if I can catch them after sacrament on Sunday and then re-evaluate from there. I was thinking about the internships I haven't applied for and started writing (in my head of course) the emails I need to send, with every intent of actually doing that tomorrow. I would've done it today if I hadn't gotten home so late (4+ hours of skiing, plus packing and unpacking my bike, plus travel times plus a quick trip to Walmart to grab somethings I forgot to get on Saturday) and the wifi had been working when I got home.

I'm still depressed, there's no doubt about that. I'm still anhedonic (especially wrt food; which makes dieting easier but also emphasizes my anhedonia since I love food). But my mood is getting a little better, at least temporarily. I'm still no closer to knowing why I'm here. But I'm becoming a bit more accepting of that; accepting that I just need to be ready to do what God wants me to do. I still hate a lot about the situation I'm in. But I'm remember that it's okay to be unhappy and that being unhappy and hating my life doesn't need to mean that I hate myself or make things difficult for myself because I feel like that's what I deserve. Most importantly, it doesn't mean I need to drag down others with me.

So yeah, oddly productive day even though I basically spent most of it skiing.

I did it

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An existential question (or not)

Sad posting again already because apparently I was just in the eye of the storm and had a mini breakdown in the shower, followed by actually crying while writing this. (Also the skiing conditions were absolutely miserable yesterday though I'm glad I went. Did dampen my enthusiasm for going out this morning though).

"Why am I here?" is one of the most common existential questions. We humans crave having meaning to what we do and that meaning can come from a lot of different sources. We need to decide what the answer is for ourselves, since our experience of the world is what drives our actions, independent of any objective actual truth.

That's not what I mean by this question though. I mean quite literally "Why am I here, in this city, in this program?" When people ask me why I chose to be here, I dance around the question. I'll say things like "there were professors I wanted to work with" or "It's a good program" or even "It felt right" without explanation. But those are non-answers since they don't address why I chose this program over others (more specifically a well regarded California program). I don't talk about that, even with members, because it's a deeply personal, even spiritual experience (in fact, I consider it one of my anchor points for why I stay). Those outside the faith couldn't understand. Those inside can understand, but may also understand why I hate sharing these sorts of things.

But I'm going to talk about it now because it is important for the question I posed earlier. I think it was back in early 2018 when my current institution first came on my radar. I was looking at potential masters programs across a variety of fields and learned said institution was highly rated in a certain field (not my current field of studies). Nothing came of that, but it did plant seeds in my mind. Fast forward to spring of 2019 when a recruiter for a local tech company reached out to me. I wasn't interested in it (and later learned I really dodged a bullet) but yet more seeds were planted. In late 2019, when I decided that I would go to grad school, I remembered that masters program I looked at years before and saw how my current program was rated and decided I'd apply for phd programs along with a couple masters programs as back up (lol). I finished my application here the day before it was due, well after the priority deadline and got an acceptance letter back very quickly after that. But that's not the personal part. The main rival school on paper was a better fit. Slightly higher ranking and better placements. Professors more closely aligned with my interests. Closer to family. Better weather. More opportunities for field work and for studying the things I wanted to study (like the intersection between agriculture and development). But when I attended this school's grad day zoom call (thanks Covid) I strongly and repeatedly felt that I should go here. Looking back at my notes, I have things like "felt an impression here" and lots of circles, underlines and exclamation points. I didn't know why (I thought it might've been about working with certain professors or centers here but now I don't think that's the case, more on that later) but for once in my life I decided to actually act on them. I decided to come here and it felt right then even though no rational person should have made this choice.

So here I am, almost 3 years after that day and over 2.5 since I moved here (by September, it will be the longest I've lived in one place since middle school, some 14 years). I'm miserable. Despite at one point being my cohort's star (and honestly, probably still am at least for dev) I feel abandoned by the department. One professor I was planning on working with suddenly retired, another one doesn't want to advise me despite everyone else thinking we should work together (and to be fair our interests have diverged in the last 3 years anyway). I can't put together workable research project, let alone one that someone is willing to sponsor or advise on. It's been 4 years since I've left the country and I feel trapped. 

And yet, despite so desperately wanting to just quit I still keep getting that feeling that I'm still supposed to be here. Such a strong feeling. For a long time I thought it was for my intellectual benefit but as outlined above, I now don't think that's the case. So I have no idea why I'm here and it's driving me crazy. I'm so tired of not knowing.

I finally got around to watching Your Name the other week (a birthday present to myself). I loved it. Anyway, I'm thinking of it now. Not the soulmates stuff (since that's bull) but the idea of going through our life feeling like you're looking for something but not knowing what it is. A person? A place? A job? The ambiguity is distressing.

Am I here because there's someone I'm supposed to meet (for their edification or mine or both)? Have I already met them but just haven't done what I'm supposed to do? Am I supposed to be here so that someone else comes here and does what they're supposed to do? Is there something I'm supposed to learn here? Something I could only do here? Or would be in the best circumstances to do here? Why does it feel like I've been drawn to this city of all places for years? Why am I here and will this feeling ever go away?

All I have to go on is a line in my patriarchal blessing (for whatever that's worth; I certainly have found comfort in it before but it's definitely filtered through man and man's interpretation). "I bless you to realize that the Lord will place you in circumstances and locations which will be for His purposes which will be an eternal blessing for you." Reading this again today left me crying (second time in one day, I'm a real wreck). I can only assume that me being here has something to do with that but it's not much to go on.

Anyway, I need to get on with my day. Can't just mope.

On ephemerality

I woke up around 6:45 today and after waiting for my 7:00 alarm, I got up and looked outside. My street was a mess and there was like 7 inches of snow on the ground, a lot more than I was expecting. The snow was wet but not too slushy or icy, unlike the last few storms. Meant I didn't go climbing this morning but do plan on skiing this afternoon/tonight.

If there's one thing that living here (which is easy to find out but I won't say it) has taught me, it's to take advantage of the snow. We have cold winters, but not necessarily snowy ones (growing up in Cleveland basically every winter was 60+ at the airport, often getting close to 100" in my area because I lived on the snowy side of the city. Here the winters generally average around 50"). When we do get snow it comes down a lot at once and often doesn't stick around for long, especially for XC skiing. So if I want to ski (and 95% of the time I do), I need to be willing to drop the things I am doing and seize the moment. If I put it off because I am too busy or too tired or too lazy then I'll miss out on one of the things which makes me happy, with no idea when snow will return.

In general, snow is the quintessential ephemeral phenomenon (that's a pretentious phrase right there). Merely touching it causes it to vanish. In fact, light itself will melt snow away, leaving only mud in its wake. I saw it today even, newly fallen snow dripping off sunny roofs as the the temperature crept above the melting point. I just hope there's still enough by this afternoon let alone tomorrow morning (when I plan on skiing again). That's why I grasp at every chance I get.

Life is ephemeral. This isn't something the average person thinks as much about, since from our mortal perspective our life is the exact opposite of transitory and fleeting. It's all we experience after all. Yet it is just a glimpse of the span which is eternity. Our one chance to experience life and that's not something to be wasted. The other way of looking at the ephemerality of life uses insight from game theory. A game with a finite number of periods can be solved backwards. An infinite game can't. Life isn't infinite, and yet we can treat it as such since we don't know what the number of periods will be and thus don't know what point we are working backwards from. In that sense, no matter how long a life is, it is always fleeting because it could disappear. Just like the snow.

 So take time to do the things you want to do because you don't know when you can again. Visit those dumb tourist attractions. Eat good food.      

PS- tagged this as a diary post since it is actually about my day even if it got philosophical. Plus, it's not really a diary post hiding masking a sad post. I want to do more of this in general, to keep a record of myself on the cloud.

A Happy Song (alt: A Song of Hope and Joy)

 Just to prove that I'm not just sadposting and still have some linguistics content, here's a project I've been working on. And by working on, I mean put together in a couple hours this evening, instead of leaving it for next week like I originally planned to. 

So once I finish "Fishing for Birds" my next project is an EP called "Scandals from the Karaoke Booth" which is a bunch of covers. I did the first one/the opener a long time ago, a cover of Sparklehorse's "Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man." Which tells you a lot about what this project is like. Most people cover just Happy Man because it's a rocking song. But while it can be played alone, thematically it works best in conjunction with Chaos of the Galaxy. I took this a step further by focusing almost entirely on Chaos of the Galaxy with just hints of Happy Man, making it a cover but very much my own interpretation of it. 

That's not the point though. The next song I've been working on is "Lagu Bahagia" by Sisir Tanah. Now, I can sing this just fine in Indonesian but that doesn't fit the spirit of the album. So I decided to do my own translation of it. This blogpost is about the theory behind that (and will probably make it to reddit at some point). 

 

A piercing question

I was asked a question yesterday which can basically be paraphrased as "Is everything you say a troll?" Conversation was moving too fast to actually answer said question but I have been thinking about it a lot since then. The answer is no, but if the question was "Is everything you say a shitpost?" then it might be yes. But it is easily possible that 85-90% of what I say isn't really a true reflection of my beliefs, but my just saying shit. I'd also so that my level of shitposting is directly proportional with the size of my audience. Catch me one-on-one and I'm a lot more likely to be sincere, honest or forthright (though not entirely of course). Which is probably why I shitpost less on my blog, seeing as I have an audience of none.*

Another, more important dimension of this question is why. Why am I like this? Well, I'm contrarian by nature and so like taking the opposite views as everyone else.** It also factors into my love for a healthy (or toxic) debate. Sophistry is fun. So it's just something I enjoy. However, there's a lot more to it. I think that a decent sized part of it is that I use it as a defense mechanism. Defense against what? Good question.

Part of it is that I'm an extremely private person (he says on a public blog) and by always taking absurd positions, it's harder for others to know my true beliefs, my true feelings, my true opinions. So it acts as a smokescreen of doubt on everyone else. Hopefully so they don't pry but at the very least so they don't know without caring enough to ask. And maybe it's to protect my feelings from people who disagree. After all, they don't know if they are disagreeing with me personally or some absurd position I've taken for the lols. 

And maybe part of it is to hide my true feelings from myself. Is constantly joking about leaving a joke or am I treating it like a joke so that I don't quit my program? No one knows, not even me.

So yeah, I'm a proud shitposter. I'm a long time troll. And that's all fine in moderation.

*It's hilarious how hard it is to find this blog (minus looking at my facebook profile of course...though I just fixed a link I didn't realize was broken. oops, we'll see if I regret this). I can google my name + blogspot and it's easier to find a reference to the time I introduced a band at a random concert in Jakarta than it is to find this blog. I really am yelling into the void. For some SEO I might regret Jacob Bills blog blogspot conlangs Kikxo blogging (I've never done SEO before). 

**Some of my greatest hits include basically all of Šyþed Pyklez (especially "The Donkey Wants to Run" and "Eat Shamu"), the time I argued in a political science class at BYU that all laws about clothing are government oppression (including anti-nudity laws), writing to city council as a kid (for cub scouts?) to complain about us being a nuclear free zone, the time I wrote to a congressman (for scouts) to advocate for not banning/legalizing horse meat, and being Vatican City at MUN and giving a speech about how if this resolution was passed God would set the world on fire. There's a lot more of course and I have mellowed out since high school (apparently) though I still argue for sweatshops when around my leftier friends and against marriage as a government institution with rightier ones.

An update to: Melancholic Bitch (9/2017)

Still making the same joke about this being a band and not a self-description (though it is). Anyway, this post is now wrong. I can get NKKBS Bagian Pertama on bandcamp. Also they've changed their name to Majelis Lidah Berduri, which preserves the MLB theme but is a bit less offensive.