In Which I Hone The Blade
Another month, another essay!
This month has felt odd for reasons that I will now try and decipher. An incredible amount of things have changed this year and the changes are never going to stop. Stross posted his ponderations about Future Shock and that is exactly why I need to write as much as I can while still trying to keep a level head. This month, things rushed at me hard and fast. I'm glad I saw September coming and got ready for it.
I haven't worked as much this month as I did on the last six and that's because I'm feeling both frightened and proud of the work I've done. No matter what happens from this point on, good or bad, I've done more work than I even did in four years of college. There's a lot less visceral sensation from it, because I haven't received a lot of grades, $$ or feedback, but my records tell me I've done great amounts.
That's why, while I'm still doing the work, I'm trying to be more gentle to myself this month. My sleeping has also hurt for a while, for reasons I'm not fully certain about, because I do more work, my sleeping patterns turn more night owl and less vampire. Sometimes I feel like I live and work in a coffin in my room, and that thought brings me even more ideas, so it's good.
While I conversed with Joanne, I had the thought that perhaps my sleeping patterns have been affected by the Pakistani floods halfway across the world, and the associated Russian wildfires. Am I feeling geopolitical events like the Fisher King of Arthurian myth? I don't personally know any of those people, but I follow South Asian news warily. I haven't done this for very long, but when I began to put together information I realised that it's a good thing that I watch them.
Think about it. Two countries, each of them part of a single colony sixty years ago, manage a nuclear cold war, and they have a physical border. While the United States and the Soviet Union managed another fifteen years ago, India and Pakistan are deeply different in a lot of important ways. It isn't a smart place to get involved, as they say, in a land war. Hell, it's dangerous all around. I do want to travel there soon.
Digging further into the subject, the cold war nearly turned hot on the same year as a suicide cult attacked the United States and NATO with four planes. Read about Operation Parakram. It will scare you when you question it. Since I've begun to watch in the past four years, a powerful politician in Pakistan got assassinated, a terrorist group often associated with Pakistani's intelligence service attacked several buildings in Mumbai, India, and the physical border is becoming more secured by the day.
This already feels odd to say, while the federal government is watching my sources.
It isn't all, though. An event happened this month that shook me, and I think it had altered my sleeping after I understood its scale and its meaning to the globe. Heavy rains in the Kashmiri province in Pakistan drenched the Indus with higher than expected monsoons. Throughout August, the floods crawled toward the ocean. It's still going on, and it's frightening to be witness to such immense scale. Pakistan's civilians had an incredibly hard life already and it won't be getting easier for a long time. Why I think this affected me is that I follow the national news.
Four or five years ago, I would have imagined it to be horrible, not incapacitating. I think because I follow South Asian news, seeing a catastrophe of that size, it shook me. Because it was a change in the Gulf Stream that I don't fully understand, that means it could likely happen here in North America, too. If you couple that with the rage from BP's oil spill, imagine the results.
I don't like being ambushed like this. I have a lot more awareness of the globe than I did, including my nation, but the world always comes up and surprises me. Perhaps unsurprisingly but certainly strangely, it's making me appreciate what my parents sacrificed to support me and my sister even more. I could never live how they live, but I should have started to work a lot more, and a lot more intensely, a long time ago.
Humanity and the globe take a pounding these days. Maybe they always did, but now, I'm aware of how bad and horrible things can become. I like to say I'm on the bipolar spectrum, because it helps me understand the emotional highs and lows I feel, but the depression sometimes becomes so strong that you can't stop it.
Nonetheless, even with that depression, I've worked more than I ever have. I've managed several months of record level writing, and I'm trying to understand what I can sacrifice to work more vigorously and raise my pace higher. I love to write, but that isn't all I want to do. I want to build a webcomic, live in as many cities as I can, and write at least a hundred books. I want to create a computer game, create a short movie, play in a band, create a television series. If I can do it, I want to do it, and in the last few months, I've learned I can do great things that I had never imagined.
Of course, that requires sacrifice. I've already sacrificed the very idea of finding a romantic partner, because I have plenty of romaunce already, and I don't want to take the chance of losing my ability to adventure and the possibilities in my future. At this point, I know for a fact I'm an adventurer, and I will stay one until the day I die. I'm just not sure what adventures I want to take, and who to trust.
At the moment, I have to work at a manic pace. I won't have a chance to reach another adventure unless I work and obtain some sort of independence. That word, that idea, is one of the weirder things around, because it always requires an intense fight. Even in the days after the death of the Soviet Union, when the West felt like I did in March 2010, independence took a pounding. In life, there is no absolute victory. There are triumphs and victories and chances and adventures, but there is never an end. There is only one end, and though it fascinates me, it's not a thing to dwell on. You have to fight, all the time, as much as you can.
The worse things get, the harder you have to work. I challenge you to do more than me. Show me your best work and whale on me with the worst punishment you can bring.
This month has felt odd for reasons that I will now try and decipher. An incredible amount of things have changed this year and the changes are never going to stop. Stross posted his ponderations about Future Shock and that is exactly why I need to write as much as I can while still trying to keep a level head. This month, things rushed at me hard and fast. I'm glad I saw September coming and got ready for it.
I haven't worked as much this month as I did on the last six and that's because I'm feeling both frightened and proud of the work I've done. No matter what happens from this point on, good or bad, I've done more work than I even did in four years of college. There's a lot less visceral sensation from it, because I haven't received a lot of grades, $$ or feedback, but my records tell me I've done great amounts.
That's why, while I'm still doing the work, I'm trying to be more gentle to myself this month. My sleeping has also hurt for a while, for reasons I'm not fully certain about, because I do more work, my sleeping patterns turn more night owl and less vampire. Sometimes I feel like I live and work in a coffin in my room, and that thought brings me even more ideas, so it's good.
While I conversed with Joanne, I had the thought that perhaps my sleeping patterns have been affected by the Pakistani floods halfway across the world, and the associated Russian wildfires. Am I feeling geopolitical events like the Fisher King of Arthurian myth? I don't personally know any of those people, but I follow South Asian news warily. I haven't done this for very long, but when I began to put together information I realised that it's a good thing that I watch them.
Think about it. Two countries, each of them part of a single colony sixty years ago, manage a nuclear cold war, and they have a physical border. While the United States and the Soviet Union managed another fifteen years ago, India and Pakistan are deeply different in a lot of important ways. It isn't a smart place to get involved, as they say, in a land war. Hell, it's dangerous all around. I do want to travel there soon.
Digging further into the subject, the cold war nearly turned hot on the same year as a suicide cult attacked the United States and NATO with four planes. Read about Operation Parakram. It will scare you when you question it. Since I've begun to watch in the past four years, a powerful politician in Pakistan got assassinated, a terrorist group often associated with Pakistani's intelligence service attacked several buildings in Mumbai, India, and the physical border is becoming more secured by the day.
This already feels odd to say, while the federal government is watching my sources.
It isn't all, though. An event happened this month that shook me, and I think it had altered my sleeping after I understood its scale and its meaning to the globe. Heavy rains in the Kashmiri province in Pakistan drenched the Indus with higher than expected monsoons. Throughout August, the floods crawled toward the ocean. It's still going on, and it's frightening to be witness to such immense scale. Pakistan's civilians had an incredibly hard life already and it won't be getting easier for a long time. Why I think this affected me is that I follow the national news.
Four or five years ago, I would have imagined it to be horrible, not incapacitating. I think because I follow South Asian news, seeing a catastrophe of that size, it shook me. Because it was a change in the Gulf Stream that I don't fully understand, that means it could likely happen here in North America, too. If you couple that with the rage from BP's oil spill, imagine the results.
I don't like being ambushed like this. I have a lot more awareness of the globe than I did, including my nation, but the world always comes up and surprises me. Perhaps unsurprisingly but certainly strangely, it's making me appreciate what my parents sacrificed to support me and my sister even more. I could never live how they live, but I should have started to work a lot more, and a lot more intensely, a long time ago.
Humanity and the globe take a pounding these days. Maybe they always did, but now, I'm aware of how bad and horrible things can become. I like to say I'm on the bipolar spectrum, because it helps me understand the emotional highs and lows I feel, but the depression sometimes becomes so strong that you can't stop it.
Nonetheless, even with that depression, I've worked more than I ever have. I've managed several months of record level writing, and I'm trying to understand what I can sacrifice to work more vigorously and raise my pace higher. I love to write, but that isn't all I want to do. I want to build a webcomic, live in as many cities as I can, and write at least a hundred books. I want to create a computer game, create a short movie, play in a band, create a television series. If I can do it, I want to do it, and in the last few months, I've learned I can do great things that I had never imagined.
Of course, that requires sacrifice. I've already sacrificed the very idea of finding a romantic partner, because I have plenty of romaunce already, and I don't want to take the chance of losing my ability to adventure and the possibilities in my future. At this point, I know for a fact I'm an adventurer, and I will stay one until the day I die. I'm just not sure what adventures I want to take, and who to trust.
At the moment, I have to work at a manic pace. I won't have a chance to reach another adventure unless I work and obtain some sort of independence. That word, that idea, is one of the weirder things around, because it always requires an intense fight. Even in the days after the death of the Soviet Union, when the West felt like I did in March 2010, independence took a pounding. In life, there is no absolute victory. There are triumphs and victories and chances and adventures, but there is never an end. There is only one end, and though it fascinates me, it's not a thing to dwell on. You have to fight, all the time, as much as you can.
The worse things get, the harder you have to work. I challenge you to do more than me. Show me your best work and whale on me with the worst punishment you can bring.