So I am curiously coming to grips with what I am doing with this summer and how it relates to my life. It has really made me think about how much I'd like to learn more about history and probably do some cool engineering things, but really, I'd still probably be lazy in whatever discipline I was doing. For me, it's always been the other things I do that make me the happiest, like music, photography, cooking, baking, building, exploring, inventing...
Possibly this is because I've never really felt like coming to Waterloo for math was
my choice; I kind of felt pushed into it and it wasn't entirely what I wanted to do, but it was partially what I wanted to do and it helped me avoid making a decision, so I rolled with it. On the other hand, my hobbies and interests have always, well, been my interests, I've just never thought to follow any of them professionally. I really need to do some of this.
I really want to work several jobs this summer and garden and make cider. Building a press and apples is not trivially cheap, though, so I need to make money, and going to B.C. is not cheap so I need to make money. That is why I'm working the overnight shift three days in a row starting tomorrow. It is going to kill but earn me many dollars.
I also need more people reminding me what I like to do. This girl who got back together with her ex after considering me for a short while would have been a great influence on me, I think. I know she's a good influence on me now, and I'm talking to her less and less. My friend who suggested my baking blog helps, and even the fact that Dan mentioned an interest brewing is something to keep me thinking about it regularly. One of my long-standing cooking buddies is suggesting I go to the Canadian Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, and I think that's a great idea to get me going.
I think one of the big problems with my present living situation is I'm sick of my roommate and that she doesn't make me want to do nice things. Not that she makes me want to do bad things, but she doesn't make me really happy and she doesn't inspire me to be nice to her. I also probably make me not want to do nice things for her, which certainly contributed to our decline. It's not really that she's a bitch in the least, but that I never felt like she respected me quite as much as I wanted.
At any rate, I need active, constructive people around me or I forget my own projects, and my present roommate and I are too much alike in our lazinesses that we're a negative-reinforcing loop. We're great when other people around, but on our own, we're kind of shit these days.
Also,
Ruyi's post on this page was really good.