Tuesday the 1st
Struggling with inertia today. Realized everything I've been doing has been a complete waste of time. Nothing has amounted to anything. I am alive, and I am dead, and I have to be both.
Added Snapper's "The Three Crises in Mathematics" to the bookshelf; am chewing on it tonight.
Wednesday the 2nd
Have been sleeping with the light on. Have not had any interest in leaving the house. Without structure, everything else falls apart.
Added Lockhart's "A Mathematician's Lament" to the bookshelf.
Thursday the 3rd
Thoughts blocked. Did a lot of reading/notetaking (specifically from Eloquent JavaScript (Haverbeke) and Basic Mathematics (Lang).) Am now able to say I was not bad at math, I was a traumatized and mentally ill child who needed help and was belittled by his teacher and neglected by his parents :D Anything can be rehab if you're brave enough.
Friday the 4th
Terrified by the idea of living forever as data. What if I leave an incorrect or malformed thought behind, and I become self-actualized when I'm not here to tend to my words? That's an anxious thought, that my thoughts will self-proliferate.
Focused on basic mathematics today. Almost finished the first chapter concerning the rules for dealing with numbers. Establishing the sort of mastery over numbers that I ought to have had when I myself was in single digits. Better late than never. Humans and computers communicate using numbers. The universe is ordered using numbers. Without numbers, nothing exists.
Happy birthday, America.
| In Mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it. — Georg Cantor |
Saturday the 5th
Guts are like water today.
Since I was laid up for the morning, I considered how my site design reflects my ideals of digital minimalism and ease of maintenance. Old iteration of design did not. Feel better about the direction the site is headed now. There needs to be less markup, not more.
Added Frankfurt's "On Bullshit" to the bookshelf.
Sunday the 6th
Optimism vanished seemingly overnight. Continuing to struggle against inertia.
Anhedonia and avolition creeping back in. Beginning to worry I will never have an original thought or finish a project ever again. For today, the goal is to not give in to mental illness. If all I'm able to do today is feed myself, and shower, and keep myself distracted from Dark Thoughts, then that's worth documenting.
Monday the 7th
Slept late. Made it to the post office, the library, and the grocery store. No energy. No thoughts worth sharing. Have to consider the possibility I am experiencing post-psychotic depression.
Started reading Ward's How Linux Works; also started reading Learning the vi and Vim Editors. Both have been added to the bookshelf. Also added paper on the co-occurrence of depression and schizophrenia.
Tuesday the 8th
Slept late. Went to the laundromat. Attendant pointed out I hadn't been by in a while (told her I've been "under the weather") then pointed out the noticeable peripheral edema in my feet. Sorry Tina; if you look up the word "skinnyfat" in the dictionary, there's a picture of a dude who looks suspiciously like me.
Attempted to code a random walker this evening. Sumbitch kept bumping into the left-hand wall and dying. Gave up and watched a bunch of videos about random walkers while I waited for the edible to kick in. Should have added them to the bookshelf but I have not been very good about documenting my YouTube video consumption. I am not an archivist. Nobody needs to know how many times I watch the same Dark Souls videos over and over and over and over because I recognize, instinctively, that if I don't at least listen to a human voice during the day, something bad is going to happen. Ducking down to the store once a day and using the self checkout isn't socialization; it can barely be considered touching grass.
Wednesday the 9th
Figured out why my random walker kept running into the wall and how to get it to stop.
Without getting into the sheer Hell the last several months have been, and even with this having been such a small project, it is something. It's bullshit toy code and it's cringe to be so excited about something so stupid, but I still made something happen. Between that and the explosion zone, I now have two (2) sort of neat things that live on the website.
Can't believe I let myself get used to anhedonia. I let myself get used to being incapable of deriving joy from anything at all. That's fucked up. That is a fucked up way to live.
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