Free at last!
(please excuse the lack of paragraphs. I've tried my best to linearize my thoughts.)
So to put things in context I'll rewind to about the last fourth of the Spring quarter. Fall hadn't gone well because of the SSRIs I'd started at the beginning of Fall quarter. It really screwed up my sleep patterns and the system of anxiety that keeps me performing well at school. I knew I wasn't on top of things and blatantly blowing off work and yet it instilled absolutely no sense of alarm in me. I was quite aware that it wasn't there and knew that that also would have alarmed me if I were not on the medication. Celexa did show some promise and some interesting positive effects, most notably an uncharacteristic propensity for positive thinking. The side effects were unfortunately hardly worth dealing with, even in day to day living, let alone under the context of trying to get anything done under very unforgiving schedules. My physician insisted I continue taking it to see where it goes and because of the potential withdrawal risks. By the time I finally stopped taking it the damage was fairly well done. I bring up the Fall Quarter because I'd sought out that medication because the summer had left me very unmotivated and struggling to keep my malaise from turning into full blown depression which I'd very much like to never experience again. I'd hoped the antidepressants could help keep me focused and motivated while I navigated school and my most brutal and heart wrenching incarnation of nihilism yet. I estimate it to be at least 168% worse than it was before I took my philosophy classes. It had finally stopped getting worse after nearly two years and I'd found ways to cope or other stopgaps with some of it. But at the beginning of the Fall quarter it was clear I was still at the very beginning stages of figuring out how to live with this new perspective. There definitely was, and still is, a big hill to climb. My copy of The Idiots Guide to Zen has probably been the most helpful thing. Anyway come Winter quarter I found myself at roughly the same place as I was in Fall. I was keeping up with my studies but the demand was fairly light and I wasn't being all that productive.. The quarter started picking up towards the end and that's when I found the mold. Shortly before that happened I was nearly resigned to settle into a depression and accept that my performance at school, along with most other things, was going to drop. Finishing out the quarter while trying to figure out what to do was pretty intense but the somewhat emergency nature of the mold discovery seemed to kick me into high gear. I accomplished quite a bit after that. I made the best that I could of the free time between finals and my week off while trying to figure out where I was going to move to. I couldn't find a workable arrangement of price, proximity to school, roommates, and square footage, and it looked like being unemployed was going to be a big problem to boot even if I had the money through financial aid. I was pretty adamant about not moving back home or moving into my grandmother's house. While the location of the condo in La Jolla contributed to having infrequent visitors at best, it was my own space and it was somewhat close to my friends. I really was and still am having difficulty dealing with being estranged from my friends and familiar communities but I'll get back to that. At the time it just wasn't an acceptable option. But after having one of my introspective experiences in that special way that I do during the middle of my spring break I realized that it would be stupid to pay so much to live in any of the places I was considering to veritably run away from family. My dad had moved in with grandma because she makes strange and bizarre decisions often and she can't really take care of herself anymore. I realized that's a rough job and he could probably use a hand with it. The spring quarter proved to be demanding, arguably the most demanding I've ever had, so I wasn't able to lend much of a hand at all, but I tried to bring them both some company and love and positivity to help keep them happier and going. I wasn't in a position to do much else. I also seemed to square away some issues with my nihilism during my introspective experience. With surprising gusto I rose to the challenge of transitioning my life to my grandmas house while heading into what proved to be, by workload, my most academically challenging quarter yet. The subject matter was laughably easy and irritatingly familiar from years of learning on my own, but the projects demanded quite a bit of time and effort. The first couple weeks I was still busy dealing with my stuff and setting up the place, figuring out the commute. All my courses had projects that were expected to be done with a partner. I had a difficult time coordinating with a partner, one guy that I didn't really want to work with fell through, and another course I just didn't bother because I was trying to deal with partners with the other two anyway and it seemed the most manageable on my own. But I ended up having two courses with major projects that were intended to be done with a partner and were suggested even with partners not to be taken together, largely because they over reach on the amount of time expected outside of the class room. Both those courses should count as 5 units at the very least in my opinion. Because one of my courses started at 9:30 I tried to stay down in San Diego two nights a week so I didn't have to fight morning traffic from Escondido. My buddy Lucas was able to help me out the first couple weeks, but he and his girlfriend unfortunately had a major falling out. After that Kirstin was nice enough to let me stay down with her on those nights but towards the end of the quarter it became clear that despite wanting to help she needed her space and couldn't provide me the stable and consistent place I needed to focus on what I had to get done. I spent a couple nights at Chad's after that and it was really nice to see him after so long. I think it had been December. I'd intended to spend a few more nights over there but ended up finishing the last few classes by skipping them and/or dealing with the commute. A condition of Chloe's for me staying over there was that I would come to their next party, as if I'd been avoiding them, and that has unfortunately precipitated into a bit of drama. In short I'd been texting Chad to see if we could rearrange tentative plans so I could go to a party that, unbeknownst to them, I'd also tentatively planned to go to before the plans with them and realized they were in conflict. I received a very rude text message out of the blue from Chloe, which is the first communication by phone I've ever had with her, and I was quite put off by it. I've been dealing with the fallout from the last two quarters and I don't have the patience for it. I sent Chad a text message saying I wasn't all that keen on hanging out with her after that and I've received no response back. That I've since received no communication from him is very disconcerting, he is a very good friend. I considered him my best friend for a while, but those moments in which I've felt a bond and connection with him have become much fewer and farther between. They have typically happened during times when we both had a decent buzz going and our conversation gained a lively rapport. I don't really feel like I have a best friend any more. There's not anyone in my life I feel particularly or meaningfully close with. And surely there are plenty more bonding experiences to be had with Chad, but I am a bit upset that he hasn't been compelled to say anything to me about the situation. It's caused me a bit of emotional distress and mired the vacation I so desperately needed. I'm still trying to get my life and house in order and go out and have a bit of fun before summer school starts and I just don't need this. So I've let him fall to the bottom of my list of priorities as far as people go. At least that's what I'd been doing, I've gotten myself all upset about it again so I'm going to move on. That was a bit of a digression anyway. Corey says, “Why she gotta be such a bitch??”
Ah so let's roll back. I did find it a bit odd that I moved from resignation to depression to meeting a challenging situation head on with such ease. Kirstin had come back into town right about that time and I met up with her as much as I could. My relationship with Kirstin has been platonic but there is a small bit of affection and intimacy in our friendship. I had not shared affection or had anyone as a trusted confidant in quite a long time. Not in any appreciable way since Barb started dating Kevin really. So I think in a time of famine a morsel was a feast. In combination with the afterglow of my enlightening introspection and a beautiful spring and already being up and hustling because of the winter quarter and the mold, I managed to tackle this quarter head on. But what now? I didn't crash and burn at the end of the quarter which is good. Remarkable in fact in that I've never worked quite so hard for so long and come out so cleanly on the other side. Maybe I have what it takes to work through those crunch times making video games after all. I've been quite unsure. But the question still remains, what now? I'm at the best point with this nihilism ever but there's a long way to go with it and its still poison for my motivation and emotions. I've got a light summer ahead of me. I'm taking philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology and those are courses of interest to me and should be lighter work than my CSE courses. So I should have some breathing room to have a life. But I don't have much money to work with until Fall. I already plan to have a couple grand of debt on my credit card by then. I'm living in Escondido and to be honest I have some challenging courses ahead. Both intellectually and workload wise. I'll be trying to find some place to live near campus by Fall. Now that the quarter is finally over I can finally stop pretending like commuting wasn't a fucking bitch. Although in retrospect, getting to campus from La Jolla was just about as annoying. I could get to campus in 25 minutes from when I left my door. Or I could get there in 53. From Escondido I knew it was going to take 50 minutes to an hour to get on campus. But then it was only 15-20 minutes back to my car and I was a short drive from my friends. In La Jolla I'd commute all the way out to the campus, then I'd have to commute back in to get my car and then drive out of fucking La Jolla to go anywhere, which I was never too keen on doing after busing back in. So overall I'd have to say that, ignoring the cost of gas, Escondido has been a more convenient commute. So that aspect of my life doesn't suck more, but I hated it before and I'm growing to hate it now. I was too busy to think about it during the quarter and it still had some novelty to it. Anyway I don't know about living here during my last year. I don't even know if it's even going to be an option if I wanted to. So trying to find a new stable home is a priority for me this summer.
Let's see, the grades are in. I got an A (in the course I didn't even get any credit for the last of 4 major projects), an A- in the machine learning course (which was heartbreaking to afford so little attention to, eclipsed by the other two subjects), and a B+ in the course I worked so god damn hard on and learned so little from. I guess I should be grateful it wasn't worse, but that yields a GPA for the quarter just slightly worse than what is needed overall of magna cum laude, which is what I'm working so hard to get. The C and D I got in Fall have dropped my GPA well below that mark and even if I replace that D with an A this coming Fall that C is a huge weight dragging down my GPA. If I had any time at all I'd take that course again but as it is I already have to take a course in summer '11 to finish all the requirements for my degree and 5 years is enough. I want to make some fucking money. I know I don't exactly live an ascetic lifestyle but Corey sure thinks he does. Gee it's late... or early. It takes me so long to write these things. I feel like there were one or two more things I wanted to include or get back to but no matter. I'm supposed to meet up with Kirstin for Sushi tomorrow but putting this all down took a lot out of me and I need some veg time before sleep and battling traffic to meet up with her. I'm trying to balance my time between errands, chores, spending time with friends, and the planning of spending time with friends. Except for the unexpected and fortuitous venture out to Stone brewery yesterday, not much has gone my way for my couple weeks off before summer school. I've had fun and connected with a few people and that has been great, but there are some specific things that I'd really like to do. There's time to do them during summer school too. And that's all I have to say about that.
So to put things in context I'll rewind to about the last fourth of the Spring quarter. Fall hadn't gone well because of the SSRIs I'd started at the beginning of Fall quarter. It really screwed up my sleep patterns and the system of anxiety that keeps me performing well at school. I knew I wasn't on top of things and blatantly blowing off work and yet it instilled absolutely no sense of alarm in me. I was quite aware that it wasn't there and knew that that also would have alarmed me if I were not on the medication. Celexa did show some promise and some interesting positive effects, most notably an uncharacteristic propensity for positive thinking. The side effects were unfortunately hardly worth dealing with, even in day to day living, let alone under the context of trying to get anything done under very unforgiving schedules. My physician insisted I continue taking it to see where it goes and because of the potential withdrawal risks. By the time I finally stopped taking it the damage was fairly well done. I bring up the Fall Quarter because I'd sought out that medication because the summer had left me very unmotivated and struggling to keep my malaise from turning into full blown depression which I'd very much like to never experience again. I'd hoped the antidepressants could help keep me focused and motivated while I navigated school and my most brutal and heart wrenching incarnation of nihilism yet. I estimate it to be at least 168% worse than it was before I took my philosophy classes. It had finally stopped getting worse after nearly two years and I'd found ways to cope or other stopgaps with some of it. But at the beginning of the Fall quarter it was clear I was still at the very beginning stages of figuring out how to live with this new perspective. There definitely was, and still is, a big hill to climb. My copy of The Idiots Guide to Zen has probably been the most helpful thing. Anyway come Winter quarter I found myself at roughly the same place as I was in Fall. I was keeping up with my studies but the demand was fairly light and I wasn't being all that productive.. The quarter started picking up towards the end and that's when I found the mold. Shortly before that happened I was nearly resigned to settle into a depression and accept that my performance at school, along with most other things, was going to drop. Finishing out the quarter while trying to figure out what to do was pretty intense but the somewhat emergency nature of the mold discovery seemed to kick me into high gear. I accomplished quite a bit after that. I made the best that I could of the free time between finals and my week off while trying to figure out where I was going to move to. I couldn't find a workable arrangement of price, proximity to school, roommates, and square footage, and it looked like being unemployed was going to be a big problem to boot even if I had the money through financial aid. I was pretty adamant about not moving back home or moving into my grandmother's house. While the location of the condo in La Jolla contributed to having infrequent visitors at best, it was my own space and it was somewhat close to my friends. I really was and still am having difficulty dealing with being estranged from my friends and familiar communities but I'll get back to that. At the time it just wasn't an acceptable option. But after having one of my introspective experiences in that special way that I do during the middle of my spring break I realized that it would be stupid to pay so much to live in any of the places I was considering to veritably run away from family. My dad had moved in with grandma because she makes strange and bizarre decisions often and she can't really take care of herself anymore. I realized that's a rough job and he could probably use a hand with it. The spring quarter proved to be demanding, arguably the most demanding I've ever had, so I wasn't able to lend much of a hand at all, but I tried to bring them both some company and love and positivity to help keep them happier and going. I wasn't in a position to do much else. I also seemed to square away some issues with my nihilism during my introspective experience. With surprising gusto I rose to the challenge of transitioning my life to my grandmas house while heading into what proved to be, by workload, my most academically challenging quarter yet. The subject matter was laughably easy and irritatingly familiar from years of learning on my own, but the projects demanded quite a bit of time and effort. The first couple weeks I was still busy dealing with my stuff and setting up the place, figuring out the commute. All my courses had projects that were expected to be done with a partner. I had a difficult time coordinating with a partner, one guy that I didn't really want to work with fell through, and another course I just didn't bother because I was trying to deal with partners with the other two anyway and it seemed the most manageable on my own. But I ended up having two courses with major projects that were intended to be done with a partner and were suggested even with partners not to be taken together, largely because they over reach on the amount of time expected outside of the class room. Both those courses should count as 5 units at the very least in my opinion. Because one of my courses started at 9:30 I tried to stay down in San Diego two nights a week so I didn't have to fight morning traffic from Escondido. My buddy Lucas was able to help me out the first couple weeks, but he and his girlfriend unfortunately had a major falling out. After that Kirstin was nice enough to let me stay down with her on those nights but towards the end of the quarter it became clear that despite wanting to help she needed her space and couldn't provide me the stable and consistent place I needed to focus on what I had to get done. I spent a couple nights at Chad's after that and it was really nice to see him after so long. I think it had been December. I'd intended to spend a few more nights over there but ended up finishing the last few classes by skipping them and/or dealing with the commute. A condition of Chloe's for me staying over there was that I would come to their next party, as if I'd been avoiding them, and that has unfortunately precipitated into a bit of drama. In short I'd been texting Chad to see if we could rearrange tentative plans so I could go to a party that, unbeknownst to them, I'd also tentatively planned to go to before the plans with them and realized they were in conflict. I received a very rude text message out of the blue from Chloe, which is the first communication by phone I've ever had with her, and I was quite put off by it. I've been dealing with the fallout from the last two quarters and I don't have the patience for it. I sent Chad a text message saying I wasn't all that keen on hanging out with her after that and I've received no response back. That I've since received no communication from him is very disconcerting, he is a very good friend. I considered him my best friend for a while, but those moments in which I've felt a bond and connection with him have become much fewer and farther between. They have typically happened during times when we both had a decent buzz going and our conversation gained a lively rapport. I don't really feel like I have a best friend any more. There's not anyone in my life I feel particularly or meaningfully close with. And surely there are plenty more bonding experiences to be had with Chad, but I am a bit upset that he hasn't been compelled to say anything to me about the situation. It's caused me a bit of emotional distress and mired the vacation I so desperately needed. I'm still trying to get my life and house in order and go out and have a bit of fun before summer school starts and I just don't need this. So I've let him fall to the bottom of my list of priorities as far as people go. At least that's what I'd been doing, I've gotten myself all upset about it again so I'm going to move on. That was a bit of a digression anyway. Corey says, “Why she gotta be such a bitch??”
Ah so let's roll back. I did find it a bit odd that I moved from resignation to depression to meeting a challenging situation head on with such ease. Kirstin had come back into town right about that time and I met up with her as much as I could. My relationship with Kirstin has been platonic but there is a small bit of affection and intimacy in our friendship. I had not shared affection or had anyone as a trusted confidant in quite a long time. Not in any appreciable way since Barb started dating Kevin really. So I think in a time of famine a morsel was a feast. In combination with the afterglow of my enlightening introspection and a beautiful spring and already being up and hustling because of the winter quarter and the mold, I managed to tackle this quarter head on. But what now? I didn't crash and burn at the end of the quarter which is good. Remarkable in fact in that I've never worked quite so hard for so long and come out so cleanly on the other side. Maybe I have what it takes to work through those crunch times making video games after all. I've been quite unsure. But the question still remains, what now? I'm at the best point with this nihilism ever but there's a long way to go with it and its still poison for my motivation and emotions. I've got a light summer ahead of me. I'm taking philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology and those are courses of interest to me and should be lighter work than my CSE courses. So I should have some breathing room to have a life. But I don't have much money to work with until Fall. I already plan to have a couple grand of debt on my credit card by then. I'm living in Escondido and to be honest I have some challenging courses ahead. Both intellectually and workload wise. I'll be trying to find some place to live near campus by Fall. Now that the quarter is finally over I can finally stop pretending like commuting wasn't a fucking bitch. Although in retrospect, getting to campus from La Jolla was just about as annoying. I could get to campus in 25 minutes from when I left my door. Or I could get there in 53. From Escondido I knew it was going to take 50 minutes to an hour to get on campus. But then it was only 15-20 minutes back to my car and I was a short drive from my friends. In La Jolla I'd commute all the way out to the campus, then I'd have to commute back in to get my car and then drive out of fucking La Jolla to go anywhere, which I was never too keen on doing after busing back in. So overall I'd have to say that, ignoring the cost of gas, Escondido has been a more convenient commute. So that aspect of my life doesn't suck more, but I hated it before and I'm growing to hate it now. I was too busy to think about it during the quarter and it still had some novelty to it. Anyway I don't know about living here during my last year. I don't even know if it's even going to be an option if I wanted to. So trying to find a new stable home is a priority for me this summer.
Let's see, the grades are in. I got an A (in the course I didn't even get any credit for the last of 4 major projects), an A- in the machine learning course (which was heartbreaking to afford so little attention to, eclipsed by the other two subjects), and a B+ in the course I worked so god damn hard on and learned so little from. I guess I should be grateful it wasn't worse, but that yields a GPA for the quarter just slightly worse than what is needed overall of magna cum laude, which is what I'm working so hard to get. The C and D I got in Fall have dropped my GPA well below that mark and even if I replace that D with an A this coming Fall that C is a huge weight dragging down my GPA. If I had any time at all I'd take that course again but as it is I already have to take a course in summer '11 to finish all the requirements for my degree and 5 years is enough. I want to make some fucking money. I know I don't exactly live an ascetic lifestyle but Corey sure thinks he does. Gee it's late... or early. It takes me so long to write these things. I feel like there were one or two more things I wanted to include or get back to but no matter. I'm supposed to meet up with Kirstin for Sushi tomorrow but putting this all down took a lot out of me and I need some veg time before sleep and battling traffic to meet up with her. I'm trying to balance my time between errands, chores, spending time with friends, and the planning of spending time with friends. Except for the unexpected and fortuitous venture out to Stone brewery yesterday, not much has gone my way for my couple weeks off before summer school. I've had fun and connected with a few people and that has been great, but there are some specific things that I'd really like to do. There's time to do them during summer school too. And that's all I have to say about that.