nostalgia for who i used to be
I was recently at my parent’s place, looking through some of my old belongings. And I guess I can’t help but yearn for some of the different intense phases I used to have. Sure, I wrote about a specific day before, but I guess I have some yearning for my late teens and early 20s…
I guess I am really am the same person, I’ve grown and changed, but my tendencies to sink myself intensely into things for a few weeks, followed by suddenly stopping, seems pretty consistent.
But somehow, I feel like I had more hope for the future. I had a naivety and stary-eyed view I have somehow lost. I think the “things I am able to do in the world” seems larger, and yet, “the things I feel need to get get done” seems even larger still.
I find it cute to see the various notebooks and sheets that I used to have. I guess I converged to using A4-B5 size notebooks pretty early, back even when I was in highscool, somehow are more cute.
And I really did care about all these things intrinsically. I didn’t really get into the chemistry olympiad for any reasons other than “i found chemistry really interesting”.
I remember doing the initial screening round and doing very well and being pretty surprised because I did not really do any study for it.
Then feeling like it was a fluke, I looked online, and saw mentions of “clayden organic chemistry” and spent ~2 weeks just intensely studying the textbook, doing exercises, getting maybe like 200-300 pages covered in those two weeks, and I enjoyed it a lot.
Though when I was actually at the international competition, I did really rather poorly. I guess I over-subscribed myself by also doing the math olympiad, but that still feels like an excuse. Perhaps I should really stop over-subscribing myself to things…
I remember coming back from the second competition back home, and spending 2 weeks just at home sleeping tonnes and doing nothing to feel better, which I guess I still do this kind of intense burst followed by sleeping a lot sometimes, though I feel more tired now
I also just remember putting so much effort and care into my notes as a student, especially the first two-ish years before Covid… i remember sharing them online on my site and being really surprised when I came back home that the students of later had found my online copy and found them useful…
I remember spending a whole ~6weeks intensely studying web dev in my home living-room, just day-after-day learning JavaScript and react and such, it was a really fun time, i made so many cute little websites and i think this was the first time i really learned how to code. I didn’t know about so many basic concepts before this.
thanks to the random YouTubers who recommended learning to code and do internships and stuff, I don’t think I would be in the same place now.
Not good…
One time to prep for an interview, I also just spend time learning Unix for 2 weeks, and I guess I learned a lot about how things are stored and how system calls work and such, also probably pretty useful knowledge.
Some time I also did help organize a food tour in Dublin with people and it was pretty fun, I quite enjoyed it. We did a bunch of fun things with the Vegan Society in university, and I felt guilty because it always felt like I wasn’t really doing that much of the work as the chairperson, but I guess we managed to have some nice events sometimes. I probably did take it too seriously at points though >.<
I guess I look back, and feel like a lot of the themes in doing things that I used to do still ring kind of true now.
I dive into something for a while, until I feel like I hit diminishing returns. I have periods where I over-exert myself, followed by crashing out. I feel like most of my time is doing nothing other than resting for the next period of intensity. I still gain and lose interest in things.
I’m not sure what really differs, other than some feeling that things might not be ok afterall. That any time not spent working towards the goal of making sure AI goes well is a side-quest and a waste of time. I’m not really sure why I write this blog, and I feel like the sidequests that used to be fun have lost some of their fun. That I have pressure to use this time well, to either improve our chances or to have fun in case things don’t pan out. I really wish we had more time before AI takeoff >.<