So many notebooks!

 Howdy void, how y'all doing?

If you're anything like w'all, then chances are you are selling stuff, moving house, moving job, or all three at once.

It's a good thing w'all learned to be better stoics and Buddhists during the quarantine. And learned to center our minds, clean our space and get motivated to start projects, because who knows what is going on anymore or how to react. 

Anyways, found a ton of old journals. Stuff I've been keeping for the last 10 to 15 years.

Some of y'all might be looking at this and thinking, "That seems small for maybe 15 years." Others may be thinking "Was this taken on a potato? Is that a drinking cup tipped over in the back? I get the shampoo, but the box? It's so cluttered, get your life together and just come back!"

Well, ok, that was a little much of y'all to say to me. Void, that stung a bit. This all the stuff that was, uh, worth keeping? Not shown is a small box full of receipts and bills to bank accounts no longer with us, and  possibly a whole box of notes and doodles from high school. My life is clutter, and. So. Can. You.

I have ideas about things happening. They are mathematical, economical, and political coming from a place that is so logical. Let's talk about all the shit in notebooks I thought was important!

I have the loose notes left over from the last recession, the one where I spent the summer homeless in a tent. I'm excited to find that one, since I've always want to write about that experience. The magic, the wonderment, the confusion, the magic. I felt like god that summer, and it comes out all the time in those notes.

I got the piece of printer paper with a discussion on being frustrated about not knowing what to write scribbled in red sharpie. I might have the small short story about the guy who can only wake up in the morning after taking deep breaths from his herb bowl. Maybe I have that one. Or I lost that one and the one saying that I'm sick of waking up in the morning after drinking and having to apologize to everyone. BASICALLY, it was when I came back to my parents after living in the tent, and I was depressed and drunk and just whatever. You know, unhappy.

I have notebooks talking about being diagnosed with ADHD. One of the biggest changes in the notes is being diagnosed, then Hitchhiking New Zealand 5 months later. Got the New Zealand note books. I found several books to keep me going, one of which was Optiks by Issac Newton. And I spent time trying to work through a few of the examples in the book. Math becomes a huge deal in the note books later. Before, there's just me keeping lists, keeping track of money, and basic things. By the time I left my job in science, my notebooks have programming, research, and a bunch of combinatorics and calculus I can't remember anymore. Not really self taught, just found some smart patient people that wanted to explain this to me.

I have the notebook that has my first meeting with my Russian pal. 8 years later, and still chatting, and now I know some Russian, have been there twice, and have worked on so many projects together. Women keep showing up in these, but never "I'm working on things with her, things have ups and downs but we are excited!" No, I spent the decade beating my self up because nothing ever worked. Here's something funny: I met an old crush before leaving to NZ. I spent a massive part of the first month only talking about her. I was setting goals for myself, and wouldn't shut up about this, since I was hopping to make it work. Then I calm down and meet a french girl. Still have her note about places to visit in Southern France. I failed there, too, but then I stopped obsessing briefly and start to notice who else is out there. It's temporary, because the original move down to PA was fueled by this. Of course, I didn't tell her this. And it failed. And I spent another notebook bitching about this failure and how I'm always failing and blah blah blah. I was not prepared for that in these notes. I have all the fun things I remember, like "Eulogy for a Bong" then I read it and realize that I didn't know it's 60% me whining about a girl in high school. I fucking swear to god, I'm a highly intelligent 24 year old in foreign country whining about failures with women when I'm sexy just because I was foreign. 

And then I give up! Ignore the fact that I'm sitting in a bar in Boston and this woman is making small talk with me about my job. No, because I'm not up to my standards in my head! So I give up, and just stop trying to date until I go learn Russian.

So this is going long, but like, who the hell did I want to be? I spend these journals writing about the fact I can't write, whining about beautiful women I meet not wanting to sleep with me because they usually lived in another part of the country, and then I compare it to some nostaligic memory. Then I find the notebook from the nostaglic point and it's like "I have $40! I found maybe $5 more in change! Here is list of the food I can buy! Don't have a car, riding my bike uphills both ways!" You know what a notebook is? A reality check. Because now I find myself longing for the days I worked at Lambert, but at the time I just wanted to get out. This blog has worked as a journal too. So I look forward to the day when I find myself thinking, "Yeah 2020 was hectic, but the memories!"

There is such improvement though! Again, 2012 is me doing calculus along with Issac newton, 2017 is a ton of stuff I'm not sure how to follow. Fucking combinatorics. I start to come to terms with how ADHD affected me, which includes all the obbsesing over failures with women. Maybe another day I'll post a couple and talk about why my ADHD is doing it.

And where am I at now? Lost my job, but whatever. I know computers and networks and shit, and Vermont is pretty socialist with it's programs. I can get me an education and certificate. Lost my house, butt fuck it, I lived in a tent several times. One time I used a 5 gallon bucket as a shitter. It's temporary because I have 15 years of notebooks showing improvements. Even if I go through a big personal depression, which I've done twice now, it's temporary. And I come out the other side.

15 years of watching me working on myself. But hey next time w'all will talk about the roles others have in improving us. Here's an action question for y'all - do any of you know where you end and years of friends, teachers, parents, and mentors begin?