...It wasn't before long that I realized that I couldn't not reinvent the wheel if I limited myself to learning straight C. It's not like I was going to discover some sick compression algorithm or something like that; so in order to do the coolest stuff I possibly could (without getting a brain hemorrhage), I needed to give myself the ability to use to better tools: things that would allow me to create what I normally couldn't do on my own in a reasonable amount of time. Thorough knowledge of Libraries, SDKs, APIs is what I needed. But where to start first? Too many options make any decision difficult, particularly for someone as indecisive as myself. I sampled everything I could get my eyes on, but I never dedicated myself to focusing on anything in particular; my high school years passed by as I wasted my time in this fashion: never able to create anything really substantial, and never able to remember anything I learned for long.

Torn between what seemed to me to be competing ideologies behind potential courses of study, as well as limited by my own inability to cope with challenging circumstances, I became frustrated and often avoided attempting to learn anything relating to my original goals altogether. I would become interested in a subject completely new to me, study it intensely for a few weeks, and as soon as I hit a plateau of any sort I would just move to another subject. In the end, I ended up learning a little about a lot of things, barely able to pass for a hobbyist in any of the fields I had studied, in terms of functional knowledge. Although this deepened my ability to appreciate the talents of others in many different fields, I felt purposeless as an individual.

Occasionally it had occurred to me that I might have just flat-out lacked the brains to advance anywhere past an intermediate level in any given subject. I was moving on to so many different subjects not because I possessed any real interest in them or because I became bored with them easily, but because I wanted to continue feeling intelligent. I wanted to be able to read something, understand it and all its implications almost immediately, and be able to apply it right then and there. And if I ignored the fact that what I was learning wasn't very conceptually challenging, my stupid ego couldn't tell the difference between learning how to blit a sprite to a window and learning how to do a high speed single lane drift. I refused to acknowledge what an idiot I was by telling myself that I had a thirst for information. Thirsting for information isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but it sure as hell isn't justification for refusing to accept myself for who I was. I wasn't a genius in any of the subjects I had sampled. And I sure as hell wouldn't learn anything of any consequence by being impatient with my own ability to grasp complex information.

It was obvious to me at that point that I needed clearer goals. If I was going to beat my head on the wall trying to understand something, I needed a damn good reason for doing it. Come to think of it, up until now, I haven't had any goals except to make myself feel good about .......... myself. And a goal as shallow and self-serving as that is just trash. I also believed I realized that, even if I didn't have any innate talent for computer science, even if every l337 h4x0ring fucking idiot in the world wants into CPSC, even it turns out I'm no better than one of them, I'd invested too much time into it to switch from it midstream. I should suck my gut up and get back fighting.

Self-consciousness is what I perceive to be the bane of my existence. I define self-consciousness as the speculation upon the types of assumptions I believe that others would be likely to make about myself. I believe that the degree to which a person is self-conscious has great effect on how clearly he is able to think, and how naturally he is able to act. I have never, from the perspective of my present self, been conscious outside of my present form. Not surprisingly, I can only speak from my own experiences concerning self-consciousness. For me, it is a compulsion. I am driven at all times to gain and maintain the approval of critics both hypothetical and perceived. When I'm trying to learn something, or get something done it is among the worst enemies I could possibly face. It's like a quasi-”infinite loop” stuck executing in my head, dominating all my mental resources and bringing my ability to be productive to a grinding halt. Often I find myself forcing .........myself to circumnavigate the most direct ways of doing something, in order to avoid potential embarrassment or risk attracting attention to myself.

I don't believe I was always like this, though I can't remember a time when I wasn't. Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I thought of something that I'm not consciously thinking of at the moment. Wait.. oh, never mind. Anyways, I was always a beloved source of entertainment for my classmates. Earlier on, I served as the communal outlet for any spare energy the group might have accumulated during the course of the day. When we matured, I graduated to being the perceived and occasionally actual class idiot: a stepping stool for the collective adolescent male ego, as it were.

It might be reasonable to conclude that I had internalized the endearingly memorable personalities of my childhood tormentors, and was unknowingly running these 'daemons' in my subconscious (with no little priority either). Over time, as my exposure to these bullies ceased or decreased, these 'daemons' presumably consolidated into a single, more general, and efficient subconscious process that cleverly drew upon the Pavlovian conditioning I had received at the hands of my playmates to help me associate any act I might have or intend to have that could be construed as self-assertive in any way with the memory of the feeling of being beaten by an angry mob of schoolboys. Now that I'm already speculating about my fear of self-assertion, I would like to point out that it might be noticed that I may appear to be fairly reluctant to directly assert anything (that's right, that might possibly be interpreted as a lasting grudge I might have, you apparently sick dumbfucks. You might know who you are).

Needless to say, the problem became horribly apparent to me during my college experience when the constant presence of (a) roommate(s) most likely multiplied these types of generally undesirable subconscious processes four-fold. I would attempt to calculate my every response or comment to be appropriate for situation: what was considered appropriate being based on a hastily inductive appraisal of my roommate(')s(') present state of mind, and the desired result of making noises my mouth (which was usually the upkeep of a civil, non-violent relationship). Unfortunately for (the both of) us, my “appraisals” were often grossly inaccurate, the net result being a delayed, seemingly impertinent remark. Fortunately, my roommate(s) was (were) able to suffer me for the duration they did without administrating any severe (mob) beatings, though I was occasionally threatened by a wet noodle. I would like to apologize for the contrivances in this paragraph for which my self-consciousness, heightened by the recollection of the described events, will not allow the omission of.

I don't have the upstream to host my blog on my freebsd box, and I also can't spare the money to pay for website hosting. So a service like xanga provides seems to be the most convenient option (again).

While eating a bagel this morning, I realized the purpose of my life is to either make significant contributions to math and/or science, or to enjoy eating bread.