Literally my Personal Journal from 2016-Present

[fraudulence-paradox]

06/02/2023

Well. The mopey-ness will continue until the morale improves.

J--- is back in town from LA to see his sister’s new baby, and to attend his college friend’s wedding, so we hung out today. It was honestly really nice. We met at the gym, oddly, but he’s like… fucking jacked now. I’m kind of jealous if I’m honest. We stayed there for 3 fucking hours, which was pretty intense. I’m going to be sore tomorrow. Then, we both went to our houses, showered and regrouped at his place. We had dinner with his parents, which was very nice since I haven’t seen them in almost a year. His mom got a Fullbright grant to go study Irish folklore last year, so they’ve been off in Ireland while she did whatever it is folklorists do there. She mentioned that she met with the “world’s leading expert on banshees” which sounds pretty dope. I wish I did something like that instead of incrementally advancing cyber security AI. So it goes.

            After dinner we walked around “our old haunts” as J--- put it. We walked past the house I grew up in and chatted about our sex lives. I don’t know why it is that guys, when they’re alone together, just start talking about fucking, but we always seem to. He seemed to think that he’s just now entering his sexual prime, but I’m convinced my glory days are over. I used to be able to just bang it out, cum, wait a second, and go back in for seconds. These days I’m pretty much one-and-done. It helped that back then I was dating the only girl I’ve ever been with who could have multiple orgasms from penetration alone. Assuming she wasn’t faking, I’m still not sure. I chose to believe it was real though. But that was not a great intro to female anatomy. I have never since been with someone with that ability. Or maybe I’ve declined in my abilities. It’s hard to say. Well, one time I made A-----l cum twice from oral, maybe my finest moment. Shit, I should try that again, that was hot. Anyway.

            After we had that whole discussion we wandered over to Robinson, our old high school. There was a lacrosse game ending just as we showed up, so we got a real smorgasbord of what the jocks and mean-girls look like these days. They haven’t changed that much, other than Bieber-hair has fallen out of style. I digress.

            We walked home, and drove to the VRE. When we were in high school the parking deck there was the center of activity for young degenerates. I must have smoked a pound of weed there over the years, and used at least a full palette of spray paint cans on those walls. I’m happy to report that in this regard, the kids are alright. The place reeked of weed, and the walls were graffitied with some of the most idiotic tags I’ve ever seen. I counted at least 3 depictions of penises, the words “hard core”, “street”, and fascinatingly, “vagina”. Great work, kids. Keep it up.

            Afterwards, we went to the Clifton pub, had a beer, and went back to his place. We played some guitar together like we always used to, and talked about girls, life, and stupid shit. I told him the biggest secret I have—I had a threesome with a girl and another guy. I told him the identities of these people, but to respect the dead (hint) I won’t reveal either here. I’m not really sure why I hadn’t told him this before. I guess it had never come up. But something in me wanted to protect the other guy’s memory in people’s minds. He wasn’t out as bi before he died, and it certainly wasn’t my place to tell his old friends, who would not have understood. But I knew J--- wouldn’t think less of him for knowing, and it was kind of a funny story how it happened, so I told him.

            After some more guitar playing and chatting, I had to come home at around 12:30 at night on a work-day. And now, here I am. I prefaced this by saying I was feeling down, but the story above isn’t sad at all. But what makes me sad is what all of this represents. J---, my best friend since I was 10 who moved to Richmond for college, and to LA afterword, in my mind he represents my spent youth. It kept coming up in our conversation that we are aging. We aren’t the dumb goofy teens we used to be, obviously, and it makes me sad. Every time I see him, when I’m visiting him it’s like I’m visiting my own teenage years, which to some extent I think was kind of when I peaked. At least in terms of my own happiness. I haven’t been quite as content since about 2013-2015. That’s a full decade ago, which absolutely pains me to even put down in digital ink, but it’s true.

            Back then, I was full of potential. I thought maybe I’d go to film school. Maybe J--- and my band would make it big and we could be musicians. Maybe my stupid doodles would get some traction online, and I could become a professional tattoo artist or something like that. I was full of hope and curiosity. I did interesting things almost every day, just as a byproduct of hanging out with weird people who were into similarly weird things. But now… well. Now I’m just a fucking government shill writing code and researching AI, which many these days have called the antithesis of art.

            So on the drive home, I was thinking about all of this. Leaving J---’s house, my old neighborhood, the last place I can remember feeling truly happy, to come back to this bleak, grey life. I can’t remember the last time I cried. Maybe when N-- died. Maybe when I saw those texts on M----’s phone that she was planning on dumping me. I’m not sure[1]. But I came very close driving home. It just feels like leaving all the things that used to make me happy.

            Next weekend, I will propose to A-----l. In a few months, we will move to Tennessee together; she got into a clinical psychology Ph.D. program there, and my advisor said it was fine to finish out mine virtually. Another era of my life is coming to a close. Soon I will be engaged, in another state, and looking for professor jobs. This is all good news, but thinking about it for too long makes me terrified. I’m sure A-----l and I will be very happy living together again, soon to be married. I’m positive she’s the right person now (please ignore my doubts and nay-saying from previous journal entries), and we will lead a happy life together, but I fear the happiest times of my life are over. From here on out it’s more mediocrity. I will never do anything important. I will never inspire anyone. I will never change anything about the world. Soon, I’ll be another one of the adults who uselessly clings to their youth, lamenting the passage of time. And then I will die. On my death bed, what little life that flashes before my eyes will be consumed with my activities as a teenager. And that’s the way it is for everyone. Or so I assume.

[1] (06/02/23) Actually, I remember now. It was at the ending of the film Don’t Look Up. Not as consequential as those other things, but what can you do.

[fraudulence-paradox]

12/13/2022

Updates, updates. Come get your updates. Not much has really changed. I’m still working for IBM for the next week or so when the extension to my internship ends. We finished and submitted the paper to IEEE S&P, which is a tier-1 conference, so in all likelihood it will be rejected. I stand by that it’s a shit paper anyway. I digress. I started a new job as well, working at B-- from the lab’s startup. The pay is really good, and the work isn’t too bad. It’s still graph analytics, but some new stuff. Right now, the focus is on malware attribution: given artifacts from an attack, who did it? It’s fine. We’re also writing a grant request now to do some reinforcement learning, which could be fun if we win it, but I guess we’ll see. Oh, that old paper of mine, “Graggle” finally got published. The conference is in Japan, but my passport was expired so I’m not gonna make it, which is fine. The plane tickets were really expensive, so A-----l couldn’t come with, and I really didn’t want to be in a foreign land all alone.

Today I did a poster presentation at a school function. It went fine. I think I got a little more excited about it than I needed to be given it was such a small-time thing. I mean, everyone there was from GW, and they accepted my poster before they even saw it, so it wasn’t really a struggle to get in. But eh. It was fun. I met some new people. I drove H---u, who also did a poster and attended the “conference”, home after, which was sort of a nice bonding experience. The language barrier is still there, and I think the difference in cultures makes it a little harder to bond; I don’t always understand him, and I don’t think he always understands me, but we’re friendly.

None of those updates are really anything big. I’m not really writing to update today. I just kind of felt sad and useless. It’s one of those nights where there isn’t much to do, and I’ve just been bouncing, halfheartedly, between hobbies. I drew a picture. I played some piano. I messed around with some audio editing, watched a movie, read like two pages of a book before getting bored. And now, I’m writing. I just want to do something that results in something concrete I guess. I don’t know. I was reading over the last entry in here, and I’m feeling the same way again. I feel like I used to be really excited to do my hobbies, but these days it’s like a chore. Practice piano or you’ll forget, practice drawing or you’ll never be able to do it again. And look, it’s not like I don’t take breaks from those things and come back later; I can always still do those things. It just feels like I’m stagnating. I have so little interest in doing the things that used to make me happy, and feel like I had a purpose. These days, I just wake up, do work, go to the gym sometimes, and then when it’s night time, I’ll get drunk and go to bed. It’s bleak.

To try to combat this, I’ve started doing my old hobbies again, but I think you can see where that left me. So I just don’t know. I have no novelty in my life anymore. I look forward to very little, and when I’m doing the things I look forward to, I feel uncomfortable in the new environment. The Japan thing is a perfect example. Before I realized my passport couldn’t get renewed in time (it takes 10 weeks to process at best. Are you shitting me?) I was excited to go overseas. But the more I thought about it, the more anxious it made me, the more I found problems with the whole plan. It’s a 24 hour plane ride, to a conference I’d be at for 3 days max. It's a 14 hour time difference. I’d miss Christmas at Grandma’s house. It was a hassle thinking about it. And now that I know I can’t go, I’m a little bit relieved. But now what? What should I do with all this freetime? I have essentially infinite money now too from working 3 jobs, but what do I do with it? I just throw it into stocks and stuff and watch the number change. I feel so worthless.

I sometimes look at posts I made online years ago, or even just read old entries in this thing, and I see the creative output of someone completely foreign to me now. I still want to make things; it’s like I’m jealous of my old self. But now when I go to start a new project that’s just for fun, I’ll sit down, look at the screen/paper/instrument/whatever, and then I’ll just get up. I’m constantly tired, and constantly feel a mild sense of boredom. I don’t even disagree with the adage that “if you’re always bored, you probably aren’t very interesting”, because it’s true! I’m really not. Not anymore.

I realize these are symptoms of depression. Anhedonia, loss of interest in things that used to make me satisfied, staying in bed as long as work permits. But what to do about it. I don’t have the solution. I don’t think anyone does. I mean I could see someone I guess, but I only have health insurance for t-minus 1 more month. Then what? And what will they tell me? I remember going to therapy in high school. The psychologist was not particularly helpful. She just asked why I was so sad all the time, I told her I don’t really know, and that was kind of that. She gave me “coping strategies”, but those were mostly to assist in communication with my mom, not so much to help me individually. I don’t know.

Seems like I just kind of get mopey every time I write in here. I’ll try to brighten things up in the next entry. I’m just not feeling it tonight, I’m afraid. Well. That’s basically it. Until next time, dear reader.

[fraudulence-paradox]

08/30/2022

            So, for the past summer, I got an internship at IBM. It was pretty nice, all things considered. A------ and I moved to NYC for about 4 months (which was a huge pain in the ass. Getting housing for 4 months with 4 weeks notice is not easy. We just got an AirBnB.) and it was great! I mean, we didn’t fight or anything, not really. I think we cohabitated really well.

            While we were there, we did all the cool tourist stuff: we went to the MoMA, the Met, Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, I mean everything. It was nice while it lasted. But now I’m back.

            The actual work was nice too. I mean, it’s not worth getting into the technical, but the high-level version is I’ll maybe, and I mean maybe get a paper out of it, but it’s really a lame one. Like, what we were working on, in hindsight, is not anything anyone gives a shit about. Whatever. It was fine. They did the whole “big tech company internship” thing. The break room had an X-Box (that as far as I know was never turned on), bean bags—that did get used a fair amount actually—and a coffee machine, which was sort of redundant, given all the free coffee machines in that building.

            It was maybe the biggest building I’ve ever worked in. I mean, I’ve been in some large buildings, but it was bizarre working for a company that owned the entire building I was in. The last place I worked, research assistantships notwithstanding, was a level above a startup, but still just rented like, half a floor of an office building. The IBM Watson research center was fucking huge. Absolutely dope. I mean, look: my teenage punkrock self is a little disappointed I was even working for a Fortune 500 company, I’m a sell-out, yada yada. But I dunno. It was cool to work there. And the coolest part, at least I think, was that they recruited me. I think they saw my paper in NDSS and reached out.

It was good to the point where I seriously considered going into industry instead of academia, but now that I’m back, I just don’t know. Like, don’t get me wrong, it was great, but I just think the whole image, the idea around being a professor some day, that’s so much better than being another cog in a corporate machine. Not to mention, now that I’m back home, and I’m still working for them as a part time co-op, I can take a step back from the whole magical recruiting instrument that interning is and see how the sausage is made. For example, I got a direct message from one of my managers about how he finished up some paperwork on a Sunday at 7PM. Like, what the hell. Not a what the hell that he expected me to respond (he didn’t, I don’t think), but what the hell, why is he still on the clock? I can get putting in some extra hours for personal projects, but I just can’t comprehend putting them in for a megacorp. I think that’s what really sealed the deal for me. I don’t want to go into that world. Sure, profs have to do that sort of thing too, but at least it’s in the pursuit of knowledge instead of profits. I don’t know. Maybe I’m still that dumbass punk teen and I just can’t abide working for a huge corporation. Who knows. But that life just isn’t for me.

In other news, A------ and I just went to visit Uncle L------e and Aunt B-- (now going by the mononym “Dale” for whatever reason—it’s not that she’s trans or something. She explained that going by a male moniker makes her feel “stronger”, which to me undermines her whole feminist badass hippie thing, but who the fuck knows). It was nice, as always, but I always leave their place with the strangest feeling. When I was a teen, and especially in my early college years, they always encouraged me to pursue the creative arts. Uncle L------e was always a bit of a “hero” of mine (as cringy as that is to put into words). He’s a professor at [University]; he’s always tinkering with some strange electronics project; he’s extremely well read in philosophy, theology, and random humor from the 40’s. Just all around, a cool guy to hang around. But I always leave their place feeling slightly off.

I don’t want to say feeling inadequate, because that’s not quite it. They don’t make me feel like I’m not good enough or anything. It’s more, I feel like I should be doing more. I guess that’s almost the same thing. For some stupid reason, I care a great deal about what they think of me. I want them to think I’m the renegade artist, renaissance man I used to be—or at least, used to aspire to be. But when I go see them, increasingly I don’t have much to say. They ask what I’m up to, and the answer is always just that I’m in school. I’m doing something so technical and uninteresting to most people that it’s hard, and almost fruitless to even try to explain. And when I try to vocalize what it is that I’m actually working on, it sounds even to me as boring as it sounds to everyone else. I mean, who wants to talk about graph algorithms’ applications in intrusion detection on multi-host systems? Inductive temporal node embeddings? No one fucking cares. I really don’t think there’s even a way to make that sound exciting without going straight into the math (and good luck making optimized matrix multiplication interesting).

Don’t get me wrong here, I think this stuff is fun to think about. It’s a hard problem, and even though I couldn’t really give a shit about whoever’s computer system being impervious to cyber-attacks, it’s still fun to think about—at least to me. But I’m spending all of my time during the day on this stuff. And look, no one’s academic work is especially interesting or exciting, but sometimes I look at what A------ is researching, or just what people in like Nature are publishing and I do get a little jealous. I mean, I’ll never write a paper as interesting as “Women’s techniques for pleasure from anal touch” (Hensel, Devon J., et al. PLOS One 17.6, 2022). How can “StreamConv: Real-time Provenance Graph Embeddings for Anomaly Detection” (Me et al., who the hell knows Symposium, 20XX) possibly compare?

I also just see UL doing these cool projects and feel a little bad I’m not doing stuff like that. I don’t know. I remember going there as a teenager, so full of possibilities, doing weird little science projects with him, talking about philosophy, translating strange Latin couplets from Matrial and Catullus with him. I don’t do any of that stuff anymore. Now I’m this boring, erudite computer guy. Who cares? Where’s the fun?

I know that they don’t really care, and they probably are proud of me for going to grad school. They empathize with the whole doing boring stuff because it’s what gets grants. I know all of this. But it still feels a little bad. They don’t make me feel bad, I just do. It’s hard to explain.

Anyway. I guess that’s all for now.

Oh, shit. How could I forget. Apparently I have HPV. Not like the warts on my dick variety, just the “maybe you gave your girlfriend cancer” variety. A------ got an abnormal pap smear a few months ago, went in for a follow-up, and they took a chunk of cervix to check for cancer. All because I couldn’t not have constant sex during college. Fucking kill me. She’ll in all likelihood be fine, but still. Jesus Christ. How could I have done that to her? Fuck, man. I mean, we waited like, 2 years before we did anything penetrative, but somehow she still got it? Like that’s gotta mean it’s one of the bad strains, right? Fuck. I mean, look. I learned through all of this that 80% of the American population gets HPV at some point. It’s not a huge deal, but still. I got a dirty dick. Oh well. But if it leads to her getting cancer or something, I just don’t know how I could ever forgive myself.

I wish I knew who gave it to me. I’m a little tempted to just shoot out a few texts to people I hooked up with in the past 5 or so years and be like, “hey, I got HPV from one of you. Get checked for cervical cancer. Also fuck you”, but that seems a tad juvenile. Oh well. At least it goes away after a few years.

PSA, by the way: most STI’s aren’t really a huge deal. When I was dating R-----a, she learned she had Chlamydia. She told me, and I went to get checked out, and the doctor basically said, “well, we’ll test for it, but I’m just gonna prescribe you a megadose of antibiotics, and if you have it, you won’t in a week. If you don’t, then you’ll have a tummy ache for a day and then be fine”. HPV as it turns out just goes away in about 2 years for most people (a bit alarming given that that doesn’t totally fit the timeline for A------ and I, but it’s possible she got it from other, non-penetrative sex stuff we were doing beforehand, and this is her 2 years with it). So yeah. I guess the moral is use a condom, even for oral? I don’t know. There is no moral. This is a very scattered entry. I guess there’s just a lot going on.

[fraudulence-paradox]

05/02/2022

            I just got back from that conference the sad sack from the last entry wrote about. It was actually nice. I feel sort of rejuvenated. Like, maybe I’m not such a fuckup. I got published in NDSS. That’s sort of a big deal… right? I think so. Whatever.

            I had an interesting day today. I unplugged from my usual routine. Normally, from the time I leave the house to just before I enter a classroom I’ll be listening to some audiobook or something, not paying the slightest bit of attention to the world. But today for some reason, I decided to unplug and try to really notice everything.

            When I got off the train, I unplugged and tried to really see and hear everything going on around me. I pulled out my noise cancelling, world-muting headphones, paused Kingdom of Fear by H.S. Thompson (which, by the way, pretty nice. I’m digging his whole insane writing style. It’s like the stream of thought nonsense that I write here. At least, I hope so. I don’t refer to “pussies” (i.e., vaginas) or cocaine as often (but perhaps drinking almost as often), but I feel like I relate somewhat… anyway) and tried to engage with the world. Here’s what I saw:

            When I left the train, I was greeted with approximately 80 dB of pure aural pain. Not just like loud static sounds, mind you. It was musical—sort of. A gentleman of possibly homeless, certainly busker persuasion was passionately, and I mean really giving his all to a Whitney Houston song about 2 octaves out of any human male’s range. There was this strange, corporate-sounding piano accompaniment for maybe a karaoke bar blaring out of a speaker behind him, and his 30-halfsteps tuned down arrangement of the R&B vocals. It was bad. His upturned hat had some coins and scant dollars crumpled within, but I can’t imagine who put them there.

            I crossed the street after passing him and not a few other buskers. Buskers who’s games included: chess hustling, selling weird sequined t-shirts of ebony celebrities I’m unfamiliar with, and your run-of-the-mill pan handlers. On the opposite side, I saw a fellow completely nodding out on heroin. I’m no expert, but this guy was deep into his high. Frankly, it looked preferable to the final exam I was heading towards, but I digress. Before I could take said final, I had to take a COVID test. No fun, but at this stage, at least not too painful.

            In the early days of the pandemic, COVID tests consisted of ramming a Q-tip type device so deep into your sinuses, I’m convinced it swabbed brain cells. I never had to take that version of the test, but from what I hear it was quite unpleasant. It’s been referred to, in more contemporary times, as “the brain tickler”. Not something I’m terribly interested in. These days, COVID tests take no more effort than picking your nose… literally. You take a long cotton swab, and swish it around both of your nostrils, taking care to get it at least an inch up (which sounds a lot worse than it is). It feels like a pleasant scratching of your nostrils. I don’t mind it, really. What I do mind is I’m required to take this test every two weeks. It’s absurd. But, since I was on a plane not 3 days ago, and completely across the country in San Diego I didn’t mind. May as well be safe.

            Anyway, as I was walking to the COVID test center before my final exam, scheduled approximately 20 minutes ahead, I saw someone in a car, blasting 90’s gangster rap, openly smoking a joint. Now, I’m no narc. I’ve smoked my fair share of grass in my day, but damn. I’m surprised that people are bold enough to just spark a j in their cars. It’s crazy. In my day we were still under ganja prohibition. If you wanted to smoke some green, you needed to hide out in a parking garage, or, more often, the woods, or do it from the comfort of your home—assuming you weren’t living with your parents. But this guy was just out and about, sitting in his car, waiting for something or other, or so it seemed to me.

            After that, nothing much of note happened. I took the COVID test, took my algorithms final exam, and went home. Today was fine. Nothing of note, really. I just felt like marking everything down.

[fraudulence-paradox]

03/07/2022

            Well, I feel like I should update this thing. I’m still dating A------. I passed the preliminary exam, I got a paper published. Everything is on track, right? So… good I guess. I dunno. I’m so stuck staring at my phone, doing nothing of note. I read over my last entry here from like, almost a year ago, and honestly very little has changed. Like why even bother updating this thing.

            What is there to say. I haven’t learned very much new. I haven’t done jack shit. I dunno. My paper got accepted into this pretty high level conference which is cool. They even asked me to do an additional talk on top of the one I’m doing anyway just for being accepted, so that’s pretty cool I guess. But I just… I don’t know, man. Like. I thought I’d be more excited. I’m finally a published author and everything. Why don’t I care more. Why aren’t I more interesting.

            Sometimes people call me and ask how I’m doing, what I’m up to, the usual stuff, right? But then I don’t even know what to tell them. Like I can say, “oh yeah, this school stuff happened”, but like, when I was younger I’d say stuff like, “oh I just made this dope video”, or “I just drew this crazy intense drawing”, or something. Like, fuck. I used to do things. Now I just wake up (usually at 11, since we’re still working from home), do whatever menial nonsense that constitutes a day of research, go to the gym every other day, get drunk and watch TV. Like, what kind of life is that? What did I do when I was younger?

            I don’t even remember.

            I used to do interesting stuff. I remember back in high school I was in a few bands, I was on rifle team, I played a few sports, I was in debate team, I was in FBLA, Latin club, VJCL, all that stuff. Now that I’m like, a full-on grad student, perusing a Ph.D., I just do jack shit.

            Fuck, man.

            I used to be cool. What the hell happened.

[fraudulence-paradox]

08/15/2021

Well, at least school will be in-person again soon. In exactly 3 weeks I’ll be back to the old grind… sort of. Everyone at [School] is required to be vaccinated so I don’t have to worry too much, but regardless, I and everyone else will have to get tested monthly, and to wear masks at all times. I’m not looking forward to it. But whatever. It’s what I wanted, right? Supposedly?

There is almost no news to report, really. A------ and I have started going out to physical locations again. Like, we went on a bar crawl a few weeks ago. We’re back to going to restaurants. She can finally spend the night at my place (even though B-----n isn’t fully vaccinated, but who cares—if he gets sick, he gets sick. I may get a little flu-ish but so far no one in my age range has been hospitalized if they were vaccinated, and I’m in decent shape). So that’s nice. It was weird during the height of everything, between her and I. Not in a relationship sense, but in how we could hang out. Basically every weekend, I’d go to her place Friday, and leave Sunday after church (which good lord, I forgot how much I hate church, and they’re Catholic, so there’s an extra layer of shittiness to church, but I won’t get into that here). It was strange.

I would go to bed in their little guest room every Friday and Saturday night and wonder, is this normal? Do girlfriends’ parents normally let their daughter’s boyfriend just crash in the spare room every weekend? It was so odd. I’m not sure how to properly express it. Like, I almost felt bad that I was like an extra child of theirs, consuming their resources. They took her and I on this vacation to a lake house out in the middle of nowhere. It was really great, don’t get me wrong. I had a lot of fun, and honestly I feel like A------ and I grew as a couple as a result of cohabitating for so long, but I had this deep niggling feeling that I was doing something wrong by coming along. I don’t know. It was a fun trip though.

That was almost a year ago now. I spent a lot of time on the little dock by the water, fishing with her dad. I suck at fishing, but it was a halfway good time. A------ and I spent a lot of time indoors, either working on school stuff remotely, or watching movies late at night in the basement. During the days we didn’t have school things to be doing, we kayaked on the lake (like at least a few miles either time), fished together, and on the way home we hit a hiking trail really early in the morning. It was so nice. I can still remember the damp, cool October air biting at my skin while we walked. It was something like a 5 mile hike too, which is a lot for us, but we made it. It was a nice Autumn memory that I don’t think we would have been able to make in the midst of the pandemic if we hadn’t been able to get away to the middle of nowhere like we did.

Something unrelated I’ve been thinking about today is motivation. When I was younger, like middle-school younger, which by now is (good lord) 10 years ago, I used to draw and play music all the time. I used to think it was because I just liked to do it, but I’m beginning to realize, maybe that’s not true.

I used to have dreams of just running away and becoming a caricature artist on the boardwalk in NJ. Or to go become a busker and play guitar for tips. Neither ever panned out. The closest I came was going to the boardwalk with my cousins once, and drawing one stranger’s picture (rather poorly and unflatteringly); or maybe the handful of times J--- and I, or any of the bands we were in played at bars or coffee houses. We didn’t do these things for “fame” per se, but we always had it in the back of our minds that maybe someone would think we were good, and would want to hear us play more music. Or I thought maybe people online would suddenly start reposting my art, or at least it would get some traction or low-level internet fame. Obviously, neither of those things ever happened.

These days, I rarely draw or play music. I do it just enough to try to keep my old skills active, and not let them erode too much. They have, but I’m at least fighting it. But today, I had a rare treat—my roommates were both out of town until at least tomorrow. No one was home. I rarely have an empty house.

When I was like 16 (8 years ago?!) and my parents would leave the house, and my siblings were all gone, it was jam central, man. I’d be playing that guitar, and fucking wailing vocals, and just generally going to town. But today, with an empty house for the first time in god knows how long, I tried to do that again, and the magic was just gone. I didn’t really enjoy it. I’m not sure what happened. Maybe it’s that I’m not as good as I used to be, but I’m still decent at guitar, better than I was at the height of all of that stuff. I think what it was is that I’ve just given up.

It’s so hard to want to keep practicing a skill you know will never be appreciated, or really even enjoyed by anyone. Maybe someday, with a lot of work I could even be a great singer-songwriter or something, but I’ll never quit my day-job. In all likelihood, I’ll never be good enough to even play in those bars alone again. I’m the definition of “peaked in high school”, so what’s the point? Why try?

I don’t know. I wish I still could. I don’t care about “fame” or dumb shit like that, but it’s more of, what am I even doing this for? Why bother practicing if no one else cares? Just for myself? Ugh. I don’t care if I get good at it. Why does anyone do anything? Why am I going to school for something I vaguely care about. Why keep at anything. Why do anything.

I could just lay in bed all day, working from home at some bullshit half-assed job and collect money. I’ve done that in the past. Why not go back to that? Why is that so dissatisfying if the alternative is also dissatisfying? What do I even want to do with my life? It’s too late to do anything now. I’m fucking locked into this Ph.D. stuff, and I do think, at least in an abstract sense, what I want to do is teach. But it’s so hard to care sometimes.

I just wish I cared about things anymore. I don’t. I miss caring.

Why did I quit smoking weed if I wasn’t gonna care about stuff anyway? Fuck.

[fraudulence-paradox]

04/13/2021

Well. Perhaps I was overconfident in my last journal entry. I failed the exam.

It sucks. It sucks a lot. Luckily, I had the rules wrong; I’m not getting kicked out of the Ph.D. program. I get to retake it, but if I don’t pass next time, I do get kicked. Maybe. I think I can petition not to be? I don’t know. I don’t want to find out.

Turns out there was a section on the exam that I didn’t know about that has an easy question every time. Everyone in the lab was like “why didn’t you take that section?” and I wanted to say “why didn’t anyone tell me about it??” Whatever. It’s over and done with. With the two first questions, the free question from the easy section, and hopefully one or two from the linear systems section I should be fine.

I wish they would tell me my score at least. I’m literally not allowed to know anything. They can’t tell me if I bombed it, what questions I got wrong, what my cumulative score was, nothing. But alas. So we beat on, right?

I don’t know if I can blame the pandemic for this, or just my shitty habits when I lived alone, or what, but I’ve been a complete mess lately. My drinking is getting a little out of control. Like, I don’t think I can go a day without it without some serious convincing. At the moment, it’s totally psychological at least. My hands don’t shake and I don’t get like withdrawal sickness or anything, but it is pretty annoying… and expensive. But frankly, what the hell else is there to do other than get shitfaced every night? It’s not like I can go out anywhere.

Compounded with that, I’ve started to gain a fairly significant amount of weight. Which, I suppose is to be expected. I haven’t been to the gym in literally a year because of the good ole SARS-CoV-2 buggaroo. But I’ve also been eating shittier, walking less (again, thanks, virus) and just generally being a fat asshole. I wish it was different.

I’m worried because I’ve just had these awful habits for almost a year now. I don’t know how the hell to break out of them. Like, even just quitting drinking would save like a thousand calories a day—that alone would probably get me back to my old levels of slimness. God I miss the gym.

I’ve just been so… I don’t know, unmotivated. Like, every day just blurs into the last. Days drag, weeks fly by, that whole thing. I’m in such a rut. It’s a comfortable and boring rut, the most insidious kind. I barely draw, play guitar, even play videogames anymore. I just lay in bed and stare at my phone. Writing here is sort of an accomplishment for me. Anything other than just sitting around staring at the internet is, really.

Even the whole Ph.D. thing, supposedly my dream, is becoming a chore. Maybe it’ll be different when it’s back to being in-person, but trying to research from home is so hard. I just hate it. It was fun at first because I didn’t have to commute, and I was doing cool work, but now I feel like I’ve just hit the end. I don’t even know what else to study. Papers just don’t interest me like they used to. I’m just so fucking sad and depressed and empty.

I went to the store today, and I literally couldn’t tell if it was a dream or real life just because it felt the same. Everything I do is surrounded by this haze of tired empty nothing. This blah that doesn’t feel like anything. And I know that if I just stop this drinking, go to bed earlier, get more exercise, stop staring at my phone like a zombie—if I quit doing all of that shit, I’ll be more productive, and probably happier. But, I just can’t. And I don’t know why. I don’t know if this is something everyone is collectively going through right now, or if I’m just especially inept, but I can’t take it anymore, but I also can’t stop.

At least I finally got vaccinated. I got my first shot about 3 weeks ago. I got the Moderna one, so I can’t get the next shot until at least next week. But after that, and two weeks of it stewing in my blood, pretending to be the real COVID while my white blood cells and B-cells and whatever else gobble it up, I can finally go back to being a human again. I never thought I’d say this, but I really crave structure. I just don’t function well without it. I need to go into school and sit in my little lab cubicle and have all of that there so coming home feels like an event. As it is now, work and leisure just blend into one another. I stare at reddit and other shitty social media sites during work hours, I sleep in when I can, I get the minimal amount done, and then I just do that all day. I don’t really stop half-working, but I never really start actually working.

The whole ritual of the train ride in was its own form of catharsis. I have a whole journal on paper of that time. It spans most days up until school got shut down. It’s still full of my depressing musings or whatever, but I could just get all that shit out, then go in, and by the time the day ended, I was happy to be going home. Hell, I was happy to be at work too! Like, when it’s in-person, it hardly even feels like working. It’s just fun. But right now, it’s a slog.

Hopefully things turn around soon. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

[fraudulence-paradox]

02/18/2021

The best, worst thing happened today. I have to take this huge test; like enormously important: my preliminary exam. If I don’t pass, I’m kicked out of the whole program. Now, this shouldn’t be cause for alarm. The exam is easy, supposedly. We get two old exams to use as practice, and with a little fenagling, I got two additional exams from one of the guys in the lab, so that’s a total of 4, a total of 27 practice questions I get to look at. On the actual exam, I need to answer 2 questions from one section in particular (computer architecture), and an additional 3 from the other sections, not exceeding 2 per section. My plan at the moment is as follows:

The architecture section is easy. It’s what I’ve been studying for something like 6 years now. I’m calling those two questions a wash. I feel pretty good about them. Then, I plan to answer two questions from the linear systems theory section. This was without a doubt the hardest class I’ve taken so far in grad school, but I have two things on my side: 1.) I just took this course last semester, so it’s still relatively fresh and 2.) they always have the same three questions on the exam. They ask you to solve a linear system of equations (easy town, this is what we did in sophomore year of undergrad. Try harder); they ask you about the particular qualities of a system, which I absolutely blow at, because this requires taking a rather complex integral that I just don’t want to do; and they ask you to use state feedback to change a system’s transfer function, which sounds hard, but really isn’t. It’s pretty much a formula you just plug into the question and the answer is right there. Now from time to time, they have an oddball question on there, at least in the four exams I’ve been studying from they do, but the two aforementioned questions I said I knew how to do seem to always be there. If they aren’t, I’m fucked. Finally, there’s the stochastic processes (fancy prob stat) section. I feel… not great about this section, but there’s usually something I can struggle through and get halfway correct.

Now here’s the kicker: I only need to pass this exam. Which I think means either 60 or 70%. So, we have my two freebie questions from architecture for a cool 40%, and the two from the linear systems section for another 40% bringing me to an 80%, so I don’t need to worry too much about the stochastic processes section… I hope. There is always the possibility that they either won’t have the questions I studied for, or I’ll just completely fuck up my answers. As a result, let’s say I get maybe a 60% on the questions I’m sure of. Well, that may be passing, and furthermore, if I get a softball stoch question, that should, HOPEFULLY push me over the precipice to pass it.

But I’m sure, dear reader, you’re wondering why the best, worst thing occurred. What the heck am I rambling about a test for? Well, I’ll tell you. This exam was originally going to take place tomorrow. I needed to show up on campus at 8AM sharp (meaning I needed to wake up at six in the god damn morning) to check in for a “COVID test”—which, as it turns out is just a questionnaire where they ask, “is your throat sore?” and take your temperature. I remember last March, when they used to ask if you’d been to China lately too. But, alas. It’s been a while since China outnumbered our COVID case rate. I digress—and when/if you pass they authorize your student ID to unlock the door to the Science and Engineering Hall (SEH).

I’ve been rather stressed about this whole song and dance. What if the nice people at the front desk of the check-in building think I look sickly? What if I run a temperature? What if traffic is bad (because god knows I’m not getting on the fucking metro to get into school, I’ll pay the $20 parking fee, thank you very much) and I’m late to check in? What if my alarm doesn’t go off, or I sleep through it? On second thought, better set a few alarms on my phone, computer, alarm clock, microwave oven, drier, any device with a clock on it. It’s best to be safe about these things. And to top it all off, the weather right now is horrendous.

In Texas, the power is fully out. The cold is so intense that the entire state of Texas has lost power. Let me repeat that. The state of Texas has lost power. The largest singularly governed body of land in the continental united states (other than Alaska maybe?) has been in a black out, its constituents literally dying of hypothermia for days now. Not that any of this affects me, but it demonstrates the sheer insanity of the polar vortex currently ripping through the country. So in addition to the whole laundry list of things freaking me out right now, I also have to worry about the time it will take to scrape all the ice off of my car, and driving on roads with little to no friction for at least 30 minutes in potentially rush-hour traffic into the city. No fucking thank you. And on top of all of that, there’s uncertainty if any of this will even happen! Like, the chance of an icy apocalypse tomorrow is only 50%! What the hell?

So all day, I’ve been stewing. Worrying about all the things I’ve said. But at the same time, I just want to get this damn test over and done with. I don’t like things looming in the future, but damn it if I don’t hate things looming in the future with an unknown end date. So I literally spent something like 10 or 12 (or probably closer to 16) hours bouncing from my bed to my desk to my bed. I tried to study at my desk, but got so freaked out the thing I was studying before was happening tomorrow that I barely got any studying done. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I threw something like 10 hours of the day totally out the window just shitting around on the internet. I was a fucking mess. But at the very least, it would all be over tomorrow, granted I survived the drive in.

But no. I received an email this evening informing me that the school would have a two-hour delay. I remember when I was small, sleeping with my pajamas inside-out, flushing ice cubes down the toilet, because these rituals were supposed to result in school-annihilating snow days like the one that was just announced. I didn’t do either the night before, but it still worked out somehow. However, a two-hour delay didn’t really mean anything. The exam could still happen! This only exacerbated my stress levels. Then, as if to say, “fuck you” right into my ear drums at a decibel level comparable to a jet takeoff, I got an email from the department saying, “we saw there’s a two-hour delay. We’re still figuring out what to do. Await further instruction.”

What the hell does that mean?? I saw the email and was slightly relieved. At least there was hope the exam would be put off. But damn, man. I stewed for a while, trying to decide what to feel, mostly feeling a strange mix of anxiety, fury and relief, all at once. Unpleasant, I must say. I could feel this warm ball of tension in my throat all day, but for those brief 15 minutes of extreme uncertainty it grew to the size of a pool cue.

Finally, I got an email officially saying it would be pushed to next week. What a relief. Sort of. On the one hand, I get another week to study for the thing. Maybe I can get as confident about the stochastic processes section as I am about the linear systems section. On the other hand, this whole day just went completely down the tubes. More so than usual. I mean, I’ve wasted some days. I have seriously wasted some days. But, Christ, today it wasn’t even a pleasant waste of time. Today was just stressful wandering around. I felt like I’d seen the face of Yog-Sothoth and was slowly losing my mind.

Anyway, that’s how today was the best, worst day I’ve experienced for a while. Total ecstasy when I realized the test was pushed, preceded by total dread when it was looming in the near future. Oh well. I’d really rather just get it over and done with. In the words of Stephen King, “Yog-Sothoth rules”.

[fraudulence-paradox]

01/31/2021

So this is sort of weird but, I found this box of old letters from my exes. Only from M---- and K----y. I’m not sure why I kept M----’s, but then, I was going to throw them out, but I just couldn’t. Maybe after this I’ll be able to. It’s so fucking stupid that I cant. It makes me mad. I’m just too nostalgic for the past. For the past me, not even for the past them. I just liked who I was better 4 years ago than I do now. But anyway. To maybe help me get rid of them, I wanted to document what they said here so they wouldn’t be totally lost no matter what happened.

M----’s letters were pretty sparse. The first is from when she first moved to FL when we were dating for the winter season to go do her horse stuff. The second is from that same stint in FL (we only dated for like 1.5 years) and basically says “I miss you, sorry the letter isn’t longer, but I’m busy”. So, yeah. Probably gonna toss those now.

The ones from K----y feel different. Different because we were so young and dumb and stupid and thought we were in love. And they just get sadder and sadder as they go on. I’ll put them all here, in chronological order, with dates if applicable, or my best guess:

Letter 1:

5/9/12 (that’s all it says)

[I wrote this so I wouldn’t forget our anniversary. It doesn’t really count, but I thought I’d include it.]

Letter 2:

circa September 2012

I know I’ve already told you this a hundred times, but a hundred times more you’ll have to hear it. You are the luckiest and greatest thing to ever happen to me. You’re just so perfect and amazing and smart and gorgeous that it’s still so hard to believe that you’re even mine. I love you. I love you and I’ll never stop. I will love you forever no matter what. For real though, every time I look at you it’s like I just completely want to be burst with how much love I have for you. And because of how cute and insanely gorgeous you are, but mostly from love. You really are extremely attractive though, and I don’t know if you believe me or see it or whatever but you really are. I still haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly what it is about you that makes you look that way, but I think it’s either your eyes or your smiles. You’ve got an absolutely flawless smile. That alone can just make me happier than anything. Same with your laugh. Like when you are laughing, really honestly laughing, its just, god, the most crazy awesomest thing I’ve ever heard. I actually can’t even begin to describe how happy it makes me. I love you. I never want to go back to what everything was like before I met you. Oh and apart from all this stuff, you’re like the first person I have met so far that actually looks beyond the surface. That is the one quality in a person that I had above all the others. (wow I’m starting to get ranty and repetitive). Well anyway, my point is you are completely irreplaceable to me. I’ll never stop being completely in love with you. You are my whole existence and I know that whatever happens, I’ll be fine as long as I have you.

With love, forever and always

-K----y

Letter 3:

circa January 2013?

So I just want to talk and talk and talk and never shut up because I’m just so stressed our right now you would never believe it. I’m not trying to worry you or anything. I just need to get something out before I burst.

I just actually can’t focus on anything right now I’m just like gah! And I have a headache and want to get up and wander around or something. I want to just get the fuck out like a seriously can’t handle this right now. It’s not even boredome it’s more of just, “oh my god I cant” like oppressive emptiness. No, not emptiness, more like nothingness? I don’t know how to explain it other than I just don’t want to sit around and listen to people talk. I think I want to be alone, but Ihave no idea and got theres nothing I can do but sit here and think about it. I want to go home but I don’t and seriously it’s just freakin me the fuck out. Oh my fuck I actually cant go home that wont help but I really don’t know what to do! Maybe I actually want to talk to people but no but yes. Too much energy. Can I just cry and break something? This is just way too much stress to be having on a Friday. I’m worrying so much about god knows what and holy hell I want to stop but I cant. I need to stop. Just stop. Stop stop stop stop stop stop. That’s a funny word like top but with an s. What am I even doing serioiusly. This is just totally freaking me out ugh. Sorry, I’m really not trying to get you worried. Seriously. I just need to throw everything up out of my head.

I think I should do something when I get home like I don’t know, something other than watch TV or homework or draw or read because that will stress me out more. I don’t know what even seriously maybe you could tell me a story? Why am I even asking that… but seriously, I kinda want that. And I could watch the history channel or something but I just want to watch a history documentary. That’s actually what I want to do. And eat something like pasta or maybe a taco. I can paint my toenails maybe.. and clean my shoes. No just kidding I don’t want to do that. Tell me more about, I don’t know, everything. Please? Okay actually I’m feeling a little bit better now, but I need to keep writing until this class is over to make sure…

So I just went up to the teacher for her to check some stuff. No idea why you’d care about that but I had to say it. Einsam apparently means lonely. But it’s an annoying word because it looks like an indefinite article when it’s actually an adjective, I think? Not that I got that wrong on my work, because I did know that before, I was just saying. This is too easy but I still hate adjective endings. Whatever, it has to be done. I’d rather do this than go to government. Okay, I’m actually a lot more relaxed now. Ignore the front side of this paper; I couldn’t find any other. It’s relative clauses if you’re wondering.

Now I’m kinda hungry for a burger. Like really hungry for one… I should be finishing my work though… but no, I can do it for homework. I like having German homework. It makes me feel like I’m actually learning something. It’s the only thing in school so far that I’ll actually use later in life, and is fun. There's five minutes left. I don’t use apostrophes… is that a bad thing? [transcriber’s note: oops, I’ve been adding them back in] I think maybe it is. I don’t know if I’ll do anything about it though.

Yeah okay I feel so much better now. I don’t know if you should worry anymore. Maybe a little but I’m sorta good.

Okay, I love you! Gotta go!

Letter 4:

Circa January 2013?

I swear I could never tell you enough just exactly how much I love you, how much you mean to me. It just makes me want to hold you tight and completely melt into you so I’d never have to leave your warmth and never ending kindness and love. You’ve just made me happy and feel so much better. It’s like just seeing you can make my worries go away and I know that I can face anything the day throws at me. You have no idea how much that means to me. And god, you’ve seriously made me feel just so much better about myself. The way you seem to see my flaws as perfection (even though you argue that I have no flaws) is just… I seriously can’t tell you how that’s helped me. I love you so much. You’re like heaven rent or something, really. I don’t even get how you can see any imperfections in yourself, because honestly, you’re like exactly how a person should be. You have all the good qualities a human could ever possess. If everyone were like you, this world would be such a better place. But everyone is not like you so that makes you the rarest treasure of all. And you’re mine. You’re my treasure. Because of that, I will always keep you close and value everything about you and everything we share. Forever, until the day I die, and much longer.

With all my love,

K----y

Letter 5:

Circa October 2013

I’m sorry. For everything. Do you want me to step out of your life forever? Because if that’s what you need, I’ll do it for you. Sorry I couldn’t say this out loud. I’ll just end up crying if I do. And I don’t want you to feel guilty about this. I’m terribly sorry that I’m not perfect for you. I did my best, but I fucked up (even if you won’t say it). You deserve a less clingy and a smarter girl to be with. It’s so hard to say this because whether you like it or not, I’m still very much in love with you. I’ll still do anything for you. This is just so hard though… harder for me than for you, I know. But no matter what you want, I’m not going to be happy for a long time. I can’t get over you that fast. You still mean the world to me. I’m not going to be looking for anyone else for a couple years. At least until college or whatever. But regardless, nobody will be able to replace you, and I don’t mean getting married and stuff. Just little things. But it’s okay. It really is. Sorry to be bothering you more. I know that you just want to move on. I just wanted to say that I love you one last time.

Letter 6:

Circa November 2013

[Written on the outside of the folded note]

Please at least read this before you throw this out.

[Content of the note]

Hey I know that you’re pissed off at me for some reason and you want me to cut off all communication with you, but honestly I just want the awkwardness to go away. It truly doesn’t have to be this awkward. I’m just trying to be polite with you. Yeah, I know, I’m not one hundred percent over you, but I’m doing the best I can. I’m not trying to get with you, or break you and C---- up. I know that there’s absolutely nothing I can do about the situation, so I’m just trying to wait the pain out. I’m not waiting for you. The only reason why I hang out with your friends is because I like them. I’m really not trying to seduce you. If it hurts you too much to see me (which I seriously doubt since you’ve made it very clear how you feel about me and you’re so over it) then you need to man up and just tell me. Talking to me won’t be leading me on. I have no idea what I did to you to make you hate me so much. I’ve apologized and apologized and I seriously meant it. Yeah, I slipped up about the texting thing, but that won’t happen again. I don’t know your motives and they’re none of my business anymore, but please just be polite to me. If you’re truly upset with me, just tell me why. I’m not angry with you, I just seriously have no clue why you’re acting like I ruined your entire life. So please don’t be mad at me for giving you this. I don’t even need an answer.

I just don’t give much of a shit anymore. I know you’re never coming back and I know you’re much happier with C---- than you ever were with me. And that makes me happy. So I don’t care that you never want to see me again. Just please know that you don’t need to keep dragging this out. I just want to be friendly with you. So yeah.

I’m not trying to make you mad or annoy you, I swear it. I just felt like you needed to know. For my own sanity, as selfish as that is.

-from you know who

[fraudulence-paradox]

01/19/21

Well, let’s get this out of the way: “jeez, I haven’t updated this thing in months”, “I’m still dating A------”, “there’s still a pandemic, but now there’s a vaccine—but I won’t get it for another few months because I’m young and ‘healthy’”. What else… the president was impeached… again. Now that I’m living near D.C., it’s much easier to be a primary source for the shenanigans going on there—not that I’ve ever been to a protest or anything. The most “primary source” thing I can document here, in case those ever present “future historians” I keep writing about are reading this, is that on 01/06/21 I saw on the news that there was a big protest going on in D.C. I watched Trump’s speech as it was happening prior to the events that unfolded, then got to work (it was about 1:00 on a work day after all, I had to roll out of bed at some point to put in some hours working from home). I went downstairs for breakfast after showering and so forth, and asked my roommate who was on his lunch break if he heard about the Trump speech and the growing crowd in D.C. He said he had and asked if I’d heard that they’d gotten into the capitol.

Clearly, I hadn’t. It was pretty wild to say the least. When talking to A----- about it, she compared it to another 9/11. When talking to my more right-wing roommates about it, it was a crazy thing that happened and was treated more as a big joke. Personally, I don’t think it was quite on the scale of 9/11, but I also don’t think it’s a laughing matter. I mean, people protesting the results of an election broke into the capitol and just trounced around, meandering from room to room, with little to no police intervention. It was definitely surreal, definitely unsettling, but I dunno, in some ways so insane it was kind of silly. It was just bizarre. Again, I’m not a primary source about any of this, other than the one, very minor thing I saw.

See, we live a few hundred feet from interstate 395: the road connecting northern Virginia to D.C. So, in addition to learning to sleep through a lot of sirens and traffic noises, I can see who’s driving down the road from my bedroom window. And on that day, around 3:00, I personally saw a fucking caravan of something like 50 Virginia state police cars barreling straight toward the city. I later learned that Ralph Northam (the governor of VA) authorized the cops from my state to drive in, but damn if it wasn’t wild to witness. Other than that, and a lot of helicopter sounds, I have little to report that can’t be found on any news site.

Anyway, let’s put some other updates in here. Let’s see.. I already said the pandemic is still happening, which sucks. My mom is at least getting the vaccine because she’s a teacher. A------’s parents are getting it because they both have “prior conditions”—her mom’s are legit, but her dad’s are a little dubious; he has asthma, which I could have sworn the CDC said wasn’t a huge deal for COVID, but whatever. I’m happy they can get it. I’m just a touch jealous. A------ and I are stuck indoors for the foreseeable future, which is a little annoying, but it’s been going on for basically a year at this point, so we’re used to it. My roommates are being kind of irresponsible in my view, but so far, they’ve both been fine. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. I mean, neither of them are going out to restaurants; neither of them are “anti-maskers”.[1] Oh well.

In my personal life, it looks like the last time I updated this, I talked about a paper I submitted to PNAS. It was rejected. Then it was rejected from (in order) IEEE Access, KDE, and probably (still pending) IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. We shall see. It’ll probably be rejected though. Classes are still fully virtual, that is to say we use webcams to attend lectures which are recorded in real time from professors' houses so no one has to be in the same room. I have to take the preliminary exam next month, in almost 30 days exactly, actually, which is stressing me out pretty severely. In order to take it, I have to get a clean COVID test, then go in, in-person and take it. If that wasn’t enough to stress me out, I have to pass it too! Yeah, yeah, that’s how tests work, but damn. I’ve really only been in real grad school for half a semester. Most of the time I was taking classes virtually. I mean, I haven’t even taken a final exam since my undergrad, which, at this point, was more than a year ago. I’ve been half-assing my classes, because you really don’t need to learn to pass virtually, but now… well let’s just say the day of reckoning has come.

So, yeah. That’s about it from me. Taking a test in a month, pandemic is still raging, president may have attempted a coup, pretty slow six months.

[1] future historians, during the pandemic of 2020-21(?) there was a certain sect of brain-dead individuals who refused to wear masks. The reasons they cited are a bit unclear to me, but I’ll do my best to represent them. Something like “being forced to wear a mask violates my liberty”, “masks are unhealthy” (no clue on that one), “wearing a mask is the sign of the beast” (I dunno, something about how in the book of Revelations in the bible, there was a passage about “the mark of the beast”—that is the way the antichrist would be identified—being a mark on the forehead. Not sure how that got transferred to facemasks, but whatever). Uhh.. there’s probably other reasons, but I really don’t know them. It mostly comes down to being pissed off that they have to do something mildly inconvenient. May history look poorly upon them

[fraudulence-paradox]

06/24/20

I keep having these dreams about K----y. I don’t even understand why anymore. It’s been almost 5 years since we broke up, but I guess it’s because we were each other’s first? For a really long time after we broke up, I missed her terribly. Even through the first few relationships I had with new people. No one could compare to her. I don’t even remember why I dumped her at this point.

Sometimes, with years in between each occurrence, she’ll message me. She almost always just wants to say hi and ask how I’m doing. I do the same. I haven’t heard from her in almost two years now, and I’m not sure if I want to message her either really. Last I heard she was with a really great guy, and frankly, I’m happy for her, and I hope it lasts. She deserves love. She had so much love in her when we were together. She was clearly so sad, for reasons I never really understood, but I really wanted her to be happy, and I still do. I hope she is.

I think the dream thing has to do with all of this. It’s not so much that I’m even dreaming about K----y anymore, it’s more that I’m dreaming about who she might be now. It’s something like my mind trying to imagine how life would be if we never broke up, if by some miracle we took that 9th grade relationship and slingshotted it into a marriage. Unlikely, I know.

The other night, I had this bizarre dream that she played a major role in. It was something like, I was in a house with shifting architecture—that is, rooms with doors that continually opened to new hallways, staircases that kept appearing in odd parts of the house, the usual. Consult House of Leaves for a better explanation of all of this. From what I understand this is a pretty common occurrence in dreams—and she was there. I was trying to get to her, but I kept getting lost in the ever-shifting hallways of this house. But this shadow of her kept appearing, just out of reach, and by the time I was to the end of the hallway, wherever she had gone was no longer there.

I woke up and had the strange epiphany that I wasn’t really dreaming about her. The idea of who K----y is had become this strange amalgam of what I imagined she might be like now, who she was when we were together, and all other ex-girlfriends I’ve had since. In my subconscious, she’s become this symbol of regret that I immediately understand when it’s laid out before me visually. I don’t know what this means—and I certainly don’t know how she would feel if she ever found out that my brain has built this strange caricature of her—but it seems significant that I figured this out. And in the chimerical non-lucidity of half-sleep no less. I don’t know. It seemed incredibly important that I got this all down at the time, but now, I don’t really understand why.[1]

Oh, also, my first paper was submitted to PNAS today! So that’s pretty sweet. It probably won’t actually be published, but it feels like a huge accomplishment, so may as well jot that down while I’m at it. But yeah. Weird stuff. Wish I had a stronger closer than that but… oh well.

[1] Eerie. I just noticed I wrote a near-identical stream-of-thought rambling about this on 1/25/18. Does this mean something? Other than the fact that I’m hopelessly obsessed with an ex and can’t seem to get over her? Probably not. Other than that one thing. I’m such as ass.

[fraudulence-paradox]

06/08/20

I rescued this word file from an old laptop that I still use. But this is being written on a new computer. I did get into that Ph.D. program I mentioned in that last entry, not for computer graphics, but for graph machine learning. I’m working on a paper right now that more than likely won’t be published anywhere good, and me and a lab-mate, B--, competed in an AI competition which we should know the results of by tomorrow night (we likely won’t win).

It’s weird reading entries from years ago. At this point, the journal is nearly 4 years old. In some ways, I wish I could go back to having the same worries I used to: girls, and that’s pretty much it. I’m still with A------, which I’m pretty sure smashes my old record for longest time being with the same person. I’m pretty sure we’ll get married, which is a little weird. In some ways, I worry that we’re not compatible enough. She’s very religious, I’ve been hiding the fact that I’m (still) vaping from her for 2 years now, she’s very anti-drug. But on the other hand, in all the ways that matter, we seem very compatible. I’m positive that if we don’t break up we’ll be married, and if we do, I never will be. In a horrible, cynical, self-hating way, I know if I want to be married and have kids, I won’t break up with her. If I did, what would I even tell her? Why would I? She’s been nothing but good to me, I took her virginity and everything. I’m sort of bound to her. On the other hand, if I did somehow find the balls to do it, and I’m not even sure I want to, why? What would the point be? There isn’t anyone out there better. If we broke up, I’d assuredly be alone forever. I don’t want that. No marriage is perfect, so mine might as well be with her.

I suppose, just in case this somehow ends up being in future history books, I should mention the current, insane state of the world. There is a pandemic going on right now—the Coronavirus. I’ve been stuck in my basement apartment since March. I’ve been going to school virtually since spring break (I think mid-April?) and it’s been kind of nice, honestly. I don’t have to do a 1.5 hour commute to work/school in D.C. and I can sleep in like an absolute lunatic. I’ve been pretty shitty about waking up at a reasonable time for school—now that it’s summer, research—but it hasn’t really caught up to me yet.

In other news, my lease is up at the end of next month, so me, P---, and B-----n are looking for apartments together. Hopefully that will cure this shitty, empty year. As I’m thinking about it, and looking at the dearth of entries in this journal, I think living alone has been whatever the opposite of a boon is on my creativity, productivity and happiness. This year has just gone by in the blink of an eye. The only thing of note that’s occurred is my acceptance into this Ph.D. program. Even there, I have yet to make a meaningful difference in academia. Whether I ever will is probably an entry in here for another night. Suffice it to say, even though there isn’t anything of note written in here for a full year, you haven’t missed much, dear reader.

I thought I’d have more to say, but that’s pretty much it. It’s been a year, and nothing but my employment and school status have really changed. Apologies to the undoubtedly limitless future readers who have to translate this from English, as I had to translate Pliny’s letter’s from Latin, for what a boring assignment “[fraudulence-paradox]: 06/08/20” must be. To you, dear student, keep studying vocabulary, you’ll get it eventually. To the future historians reading this before the students are forced to, “you’ll” is a “contraction”, meaning two words combined, denoted by an apostrophe, or the ‘ symbol, to create an easier to say word. This is usually frowned upon in formal writing. Most contractions ending in ‘ll mean whatever word came before, followed by “will”. For example, earlier I said, “you’ll get it eventually”. By that, I mean “you will get it eventually”. See how they work? Cool. You’ve got this, Mr. Historian. You can remember how English works. I believe in you. (You’ve means “you have”).

[fraudulence-paradox]

07/05/19 (2/2)

Why does it feel so paradoxically good to be sad? I feel like I’m more, I don’t know, profound or something when I get like this. Not to say anything I’ve written so far is particularly profound, just that it feels good to wallow in self-pity. Being alone now is weird. I don’t have anything to do other than drink and play music, or write or play video games or draw. By doing this I at least get to feel like I’m doing something sort of worth while. Jamming this note file with turgid prose feels better than staring at some pointless video game at least. Kind of. At least I get to practice my GRE words, and use univocal words like univocal.

Sometimes, rather, most times, I worry I’m becoming more boring as I get older. I think I was more interesting when I was younger. I’m near positive I peaked in high school. That may even be a theme to this whole damn thing. Children of mine who may be reading this, as I read my father’s diary that I found in the basement when I was around 14, know this: high school, as shitty as it can be, because of the hormonally charged, needlessly inflated importance of everything, at the very least is the best feeling time of your life. Maybe it’s not the best time of your life overall, it’s probably not the most important, that’s for damn sure, but it at least feels the best. Maybe it’s because a lot of my high school memories are becoming so foggy, but I seem to recall having a lot of fun back then.

Even freshman year of college I had a lot of fun that I don’t anymore. We used to run all over campus, A----w, J---s and I, and just do random, fun bullshit. We once made this whole scavenger hunt for people on this now-dead social media app “Yik Yak” to discover. The premise of the app was that only people in like a 10 mile radius could see what you posted. A lot of people used it (unsuccessfully) for drug hookups or sex, but on college campuses it was used for all sorts of weird bullshit. We ended up meeting this kid who found all of our obtuse clues and was rewarded with a gatorade bottle filled with a few coins. Yik Yak was a good app. It was like a call to adventure anytime someone asked for something that required meeting them. One time, A----w and I responded to a call for vape juice on campus. We met these two girls we never saw again, but the journey to deliver that fruit flavored nicotine juice was our odyssey for the night.

Other fun freshman year activities included lots of boring intro-level classes, two boring girlfriends (K------e and T---a who makes a brief appearance at the very beginning as I recall), and this attitude that everyone you met could be your potential new best friend. There’s a picture somewhere of ten random people, myself and A----w included, jammed into J---s’ tiny dorm room playing some video game. We hung out in his building all the time. My memories from that time are always surrounded by this halo of greenish fluorescent lighting. Warm, office-lit common rooms in J---s’ building, surrounded by the void of black outside, six stories up. We never really talked to most of those people after that first semester, but that’s how I met B-----n at least.

People say you never know you’re in the good times until they’re over, but I remember even then having this feeling that that was as good as it got. So what does that make now? Now I’m just some old, friendless, just about post-grad who sits alone in his room late at night, writing about the good old days. I hope those people are right. I hope these are about to be the best times of my life, but I’m not holding onto hope.

[fraudulence-paradox]

07/05/19 (1/2)

Well shit, more than six months have passed with out me updating this. Some quick points: - A----- and I are still dating - I’m applying (foolishly) to Ph.D. programs soon for computer graphics hopefully - I just moved from the house I lived in from June 1, 2018 - June 30, 2019 - I’m pretty close to finishing my next book, I don’t think it’s going to be very good but that’s what I said about the last one and the 10 or so people who bought it (if they read it is another question) said they liked it. Who knows. I just wanted to get some stuff down, and this seems like as good a place as any. But now that I’m actually writing, I can’t remember what I wanted to write about… I originally wanted to document some stuff about the old house, where I used to live with A----w and B-----n. A lot of fun stuff happened there, but now it all seems rather pointless. Any detail I’d put down here would just be a footnote on a footnote. J--h and I made a bunch of cumbersomely large stuffed animals out of cheap Goodwill clothing and stuffed them with newspaper. We left those in the attic to freak out the new owners. Maybe they’ll find them, probably not. In all likelyhood the maintenance people will find them while they’re preparing the place for the new people and get rid of them. The first one we built looked like a giant, yellow minion (of the film series Despicable Me. Google it if you’re unsure, reader). It was okay, but we really upped the ante with the second one. By sewing several pairs of yellow pants together with a cannibalized stuffed animal head on top, we created a very frightening looking hell-spider type creature. We also sewed gloves onto the “hands”. That one is pretty upsetting to behold. The final creature we made was essentially two pillow cases sewn together, a teddy bear head on the top, and a slit cut into the middle with a rubber glove poking out. The idea is to make it appear to be an especially depraved sex doll, but I’m not sure that was conveyed. Oh well. Other than that, not much of note really happened in that house. Nothing out of the ordinary for a dorm or any other place we lived really. The main difference between there and here (where I am now) is that I had roommates. It was kind of nice living with my friends. Especially given I have so few of those these days. A----w and B-----n spent a lot of time smoking weed and watching TV. I joined in the TV watching, but very rarely in the smoking. I think in the last year I’ve only indulged about twice. Maybe fewer than that. I’m not really sure. I don’t really know what happened, I just kind of stopped smoking one day and never started again. Maybe it had to do with school, or the fact that A----- doesn’t really like it, I’m not sure. But they would smoke up a storm every hour of every day. Walking into the place certain times, one would almost be knocked over by the oppressive, hempy clouds that billowed from the door. From time to time, we invited friend over for much of the same. That is to say, we invited folks over to smoke weed and watch TV or play video games. Pretty boring stuff. The place was real temple to Bacchus. I was reading over my last entry about my doubts about A-----. I suppose I see where I was coming from, but on the other hand, maybe I was just afraid of commitment. Who knows. Some part of me still feels like I never really got a chance to be a single asshole in my twenties, but who knows. I really think she may be the best person for me. If I found her before I could have a decade of hedonism and just self-decay, then even better. Between her and M---n I spent a lot of time just sleeping around with gross-looking hipster chicks. So I guess I’m in a better place now? It’s hard to say. I wasn’t happy then, and I’m at least a little happier now. I’m still not happy but that’s not her fault.

[fraudulence-paradox]

11/16/18

It’s been several months since I’ve updated this thing. I suppose I should say I started dating A------, the girl I wrote about in my last entry. We used to go drive out to Manassass and look at the stars. I should document our early relationship before I get into the shit it’s in right now. Christ, we’ve been dating for 6 months? Fuck it. When we started dating, we did a lot of attempted stargazing. For whatever coincidental reason the weather always didn’t allow this. We always, always ended up just sitting in one of our cars, just sitting there. Talking about philosophy or whatever. Honestly, it’s hard to remember. It’s been such a long time.

For whatever reason, at the beginning of our relationship I was sure she was “the one”. She was so easy to be around. I could be the goofy weirdo I like to think of myself as so easily in front of her. Our whole relationship I was having a great time. She seemed cool and interesting and perfect in every way; but that’s the problem. Lately, I’ve been having second thoughts. I never really had an opportunity to just be single after M---n dumped me.* I told A------ I loved her way too soon. To be clear, I thought I did. The whole summer I was certain that she would be the person I married. I’m just not sure anymore. Do I actually love her, or am I just afraid to be alone? I think it’s the latter, and that’s concerning. I find that sometimes I think I’d rather just be alone when I’m with her. I’d rather not have to report to someone.

Obviously, my reptile mind wants to make children and exist with another human. I’m 21, and as a result I have to start taking my relationships a little more seriously (I’m sure 31 year old [fraudulance-paradox] reading over this [as I tend to do as 21 year old [fraudulance-paradox]] will find that sentence laughable)**. I have to balance these two weird equations: die alone, or marry this person I’ve been dating for 6 months.

In my mind, it seems like I’ve spent a lifetime with A------. Hell the tales I could document in this thing about all of the things we’ve done could take up almost 50 pages if I wrote it with especially purple prose. The bullets are as follows:

- We start going out on “dates” we’re too afraid to call dates

- We go to a party together at a founding member of Phil. club’s dorm

- At this party I tell her I “have a crush on” her

- We start going on “dates” like hanging out at the nearby local park, and trying (despite the weather’s best efforts) to stargaze

- At some point at the local park I ask her out

- I have a distinct memory at this point of thinking “you don’t even like her that much, are you really going to ask her out? This is a bad idea. It’s not going to work…”

- She says yes

- We date for a while

- At this point we fall deeper and deeper in love

- Start talking about marriage

- Is this actually the person I want to marry? The issue here isn’t curiosity of is A----- the person I want to marry. The question is if I don’t marry her, is there anyone I actually could marry?

In almost every way she’s the perfect person to me, yet I feel like I can’t see myself with her forever. But if not with her, then who? If I can’t bring myself to marry the person I see as perfect, then who could I ever be with? It’s a real quandary. Fuck.

*Future [fraudulance-paradox] here. This is absolutely not the case. I was single for nearly a whole year between A----- and M---n. I had plenty of time to be alone, and as I recall it fucking sucked. I was happy single, sure, like all those pseudo-inspirational internet blogs say, but being in a relationship is so much better. This isn’t even that “grass is greener”-type hogwash I would have assumed I’d be writing after I was dumped. I’m still dating her, and it looks pretty seriously like we’ll be married. So I guess take all of whatever I write here with an enormous grain of salt – 06/24/20.

**I do - 01/12/21

[fraudulence-paradox]

5/15/18

“Jesus christ, it seems like the only time I update this thing is when I’m talking about a girl”

Buckle up, fuckers.

This past semester I’ve become more active in [college]’s Philosophy Club. It’s been a really good experience so far. I’ve been doing a fair amount of the media for the club by way of making fliers and so forth. The meetings mostly consist of someone presenting a philosophical topic, and the group having a Socratic discussion about it. Somehow, and I really have no idea how, I was nominated for the position of vice president, and by an even stranger turn of events, I won. As a result, I began attending more events only tangentially related to the club’s activities: outreach, advertising and so forth. The other newly elected members did as well, which is where I met A-----.

Because I’ve spent the last twelve or so weeks debating various philosophical concepts with a group that included her, I have a pretty decent understanding of where she stands on most major issues. The weird thing is, despite how polar opposite we are in terms of beliefs, it seems like we have a genuine connection. I should preface this by saying I’m being optimistic. In this situation, it can only go one of two ways. It could go turn out that our differences are too great, and we’ve just overlooked them in the midst of the fog that is early relationship fodder. She is after all, very conservative. She’s Catholic, doesn’t use drugs, and seems very innocent. On the other hand, she’s fascinating. She’s going to school to be a criminal psychologist (who isn’t, but she seems really passionate about it after a year of it), as a result she has a fascination with serial killers. She’s also this odd straight-edge punk rock chick. I’ve met people like her before who I always crushed on, but she’s the first one who showed any interest. She likes local music, arts, and seems far more cultured than I. The alternative, that I hope ends up being the case, is we can make it work, based only on how much we like each other as people.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself. We’ve been on two “dates” that we didn’t call dates, but for all intents and purposes, were dates. We’ve really only known each other for a few weeks, but she definitely has a crush on me. She’s so innocent and young though. She doesn’t know about all the shit I’ve done. She has no idea what a horrible person I am, or at least, what a horrible person I think I am. I’m worried if she gets to know me she’ll entirely lose interest, but I also don’t want to lie to her. Bojack Horseman said it best, “Do you ever get the feeling that to know you more is to love you less?” I do.

So I find myself in this predicament. I can allow something to come of this, or I can cut it off before it’s too late and we all get hurt. I’m not sure what to do. On the one hand, as one who is more or less addicted to being in a relationship, I miss the rush that comes with a girl laughing and touching your shoulder like a junkie misses the needle. On the other hand, if I do pursue this, and something bad happens, the one group of friends I actually met organically, and enjoy being around, the Philosophy Club, becomes a weird place where I have to face an ex.

I should be more optimistic, but I’ve just done this too many times in the past. Good things never last, and bad things always remain, you can just forget about them for a little while.

[fraudulence-paradox]

03/30/18

Dear god, what an upsetting string of entries into this thing. I think I must have seasonal affective disorder or something, because now that the weather is nicer I feel way less depressed than I did. It was a cold, lonely winter but with spring just around the corner I think things are looking up. I wanted to put some intentionally positive things in here, but because I can’t avoid reality, and part of this things purpose is to document the semi-major things happening in my life (or at least what I perceive as a major thing at the time) I have to put a few downer things in before we can get to the meat of whatever it is I’m going to say.

Last month I applied to be a research assistant over the summer. I couldn’t get the gig, but I guess it ended up being good that I didn’t, because I have to take summer classes again due to a fuckup in my class schedules. I was pretty upset about not getting that position, I’m not gonna lie. I’ve been working for [job] for over a year now and I’m getting pretty sick of it. I literally do nothing. I’m not exaggerating. I am literally being paid to come sit at a desk and appear busy for 2 days a week. To be fair, this is what almost everyone else here does too; they try to strategically take 2 hours of work and stretch them into 8 (or 9 if they’re particularly industrious). I’ve been going in and just doing 7 and a half hours of homework before I get to the 30 minutes of work I actually have to do, and cap it all off by leaving at 4:30. Part of me thinks this is just what working in an office actually is. Everyone is collectively pretending that they have to slave away in their cubes all day, all the while surfing the internet, reading, or doodling.

I’ve been trying to write an entire book only while at work (for the most part). I’m pretty proud of what I’ve got so far. It’s over 30k words, so it qualifies as a novella. After the next ten thousand I’ll whittle it down and self publish it. I’m mentally preparing myself for the hellish existence that will be summer school, but I’m trying to stay optimistic about it.