torpere

IIRC, this was the likely trajectory, with the idea that once I'm on track I might be able to keep going, despite it all.  So yeah, still inching along here.

It becomes so difficult to see the point in doing much of anything- not to be taken for an illogical conclusion, but an arbitrary feeling.  Motivation is a process; chemical, neurological, psychological and sociological.  A process that can go wrong for any number of cascading reasons.  It occurs to me that a more accessible way of asking what's the point would be to ask, what's in it for me?

Need to start meditating again, running again.  I need to study chemistry.  but why though.  It seems I lack confidence in any potential outcome making a substantial difference.  Dopamine should spike at the mere possibility of things going well.  I think something goes wrong with my process of motivation around there somewhere, but there could also be reasons that happens.  Reasons I've adapted by mucking up my own dopamine system.

The problem might be that life is largely crappy and ultimately pointless.  Human connection can provide some structure to that, but you people are all crazy.

6/19/2019 update

Crazy how I started doing those things I said I needed to do, and life started getting better.  Cleaned my apartment and stuff, too.

why am i doing this

Sometimes it's as if my mind works with a different sort of filing system.  I have trouble engaging with the material in such a way that I perceive the specifics to be important.  Each time I come to a similar problem, I have to figure out how to do it all over again.  Only remembering bits and pieces of what I'm supposed to be doing, even when I've finally had it all figured out already, just the other day.

I'm not so good at the jujitsu either, in large part because I can never remember any of it until I'm walking home after class.  I hate when people ask me for examples, of anything.  I don't have that kind of information on hand.  The information is all in there somewhere, but I'm terrible at finding it when I need it.  Maybe I'm just terrible with stress.  Any stress at all.  Could be a cortisol-corticotropin-pituitary thing.  Could just be from a lifetime of incessant depression.

It makes sense that I'd come around to this idea that learning is more valuable than knowing.  I can hardly remember what I've learned, anyhow.  This could be why I write, why I have been since I was a kid.  My concern that I'll forget what I'm thinking founded in that fact that I generally do.

I remember writing something about independence a while back.  My ability to function is heavily constrained and precariously dependent.  Getting myself stuck in some depressing job that's really just as precarious, constraining, and dependent would not help.  This is a problem in me, in how I interact with the world.  These things that I'm doing are about easing myself in that direction of fundamentally changing that.

If nothing else, it's important to remember why we're doing the things we do.

learning disability

I'm doing ok in chemistry, but mostly just because I've been diligent about turning in assignments.  Putting in enough work to get good grades, while I still bomb on the quizzes.  I'm not actually learning the material all that quickly.

I try not to look too lost in class, because the teacher watches, often asking where she's losing us.  If she asks me, I don't know what to say.  I don't know where to start.  She repeats an explanation, but I can't seem to parse the words quickly enough to remember any of it.  I'm still just as lost, and I honestly don't know why.

I hear the words, I understand most of the individual parts.  It's when she's putting it all together, in some step by step process that I don't organize the incoming information well, focusing on some pieces, missing others, keeping no track of the order any of it's in.  "Jab, cross, hook, kick" still loses me half the time.

I don't follow directions well.  I've always hated instruction manuals.  Now I'm trying to remember all the different rules of redox reactions and how to calculate the stoichiometry, balancing equations, and molar conversions, to milliliters, to grams.

Unlike physics, bombing in chemistry just means getting about a third of the answers wrong.  Should still average out to another C+ maybe even a B.  Not great, but what really gets me is that I still don't even know how to play a guitar.

The problem seems bigger than chemistry and physics.  In theory, I can learn how to do things.  Of course, but, have I ever learned how to do anything?

I'm actually drawing a blank here.  The only things I'm good at were largely a matter of winging it.  Some things can be achieved with enough practice, maybe learning a few basics.  Other things though, seem to require being taught some pretty complicated stuff.  I'm making progress I think, but I'm not actually sure.  I'm figuring out how to get through it.  I'm learning odd and ends, I'm getting a good amount of mental exercise, but what am I doing again?

Human beings are extremely adaptive.  We make do, we get by, we look normal.  My life has certainly been atypical though.  Trying to understand my teacher is a bit like trying to understand what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing in this world.  In this society.  It's all such a jumble of fucking nonsense to me.

transience

An old poem, and older painting, a theme I've often wrestled with.  Everything is so fleeting, and yet forever.  We can't hold onto any of it.  All the way down to who we are, countless moving parts, none of it lasting.  Life thrives when it's growing, changing.  The process of learning itself more valuable than anything we could already know.

↜∑≾∛↗↝

Finally started learning trigonometry in pre-calculus, and it's funny, I remember it pretty well.  My physics teacher pushed me way past the point of merely needing to understand basic trig.  For the first time, in pre-calc, when we're given a bunch of problems to practice, bang bang bang, I was done.  Had the right answers and everything. If that physics teacher weren't fucking with people's futures, I'd say he was actually good.

I have to keep reminding myself of why I'm doing this.  I'm not trying to succeed.  I'm not trying to prepare myself for a career.  I'm not trying to make friends.  I'm trying to exercise my mind such that maybe I'll eventually be able to start thinking about all that.  Rebuild a few neural connections.  In a sense, of course I knew that I was bad at this, but that's why I'm doing it.

I don't enjoy much of anything these days.  I'm pushing on in spite of depression, not getting past it in any biochemical sense.  I enjoy good food, so by extension, I almost enjoy cooking for myself every day.  Aside from that though, I don't have a lot to keep my going.  I've been this way so long, it goes without saying.  It really is an awful condition.