As usual, I've let three days slip by without noticing it at all. Gah, why do days have to pass so fast? There's so little time to do the things you want to (yeah, yeah, I know, you have to make time, but humour me). I saw the conclusion of Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety yesterday (unfortunately, I missed the second part). Definitely interesting, but I rarely find that I am able to be consoled by philosophy and art. Sure, it makes me feel good for a brief period, but I never seem to let it fully sink in. I might end up reading some of de Botton's other works, he definitely seems interesting in a charming, quirky way.

One of the things he mentioned that I found interesting (and amusing) was that sometimes we need death to remind us for our own mortality, which can help us sort and reoorganize our lives, figure out what our priorities are. I think I would do well to seriously contemplate this sometime soon, because I fear that my life is merely slipping away without me realizing it. I don't know, I can't even begin to imagine growing up and being an adult in this crazy world, let alone dying. I mean, I have been aware for a long time now that I am going to die. Some people don't even think about such things, and so they are sometimes shocked by the thought, but no, it has occured to me a few times in the past. But I don't think I've spent enough time critically thinking about what I want to do as a result of that. As in, what am I really doing with my life? Will I be content at death? What do I want to acheive? And so on.

Too often I have the fatalist/nihilist/pessimist/depressionist rolled-into-one attitude that makes me say something dreary like "Oh, I'm a failure, I'm not going to accomplish anything". Perhaps. But it's not right to condemn onesself to failure so early on I would think, it's not right to resign to a future based on what are really quite limited experiences. This prevents me from ever really thinking about what I want to do and who I want to be. You hear that everyone is scared about the future, but I would think I am more-so than others; at times I am literally terrified of what the future is going to hold. But should this not inspire me to have some attainable goals that I may look forward to? Some yardstick by which I can deem my life a relative success?

The program made me question my stance on money. Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy you the ability to pursue happiness, so they say. This strikes me as being the rationalist's view, balanced and pragmatic. My fields of choice (computer science and mathematics) were certainly not chosen on the basis of the money that a typical job in these fields pays, but it is interesting to ask whether one would be content with a normal salary that is enough to pay all the bills and support a family, while allowing for some minimal amount of luxury. Shouldn't that be enough? At times I think that I am very materialistic about certain things (f'rinstance, music). It saddens me, because I don't think I used to be like this - not quite as bad as I am now, at any rate. I'd like to think that I'd be happy with such an income, but there is this other side of me that says that I would not, and that I would want to spoil myself. Which one is right, I do not know.

It's interesting for me to think about these things, but the thing is some people have lived a hard life for as long as they can remember, and so to them my introspections may seem strange. Fundamentally, I suppose, the issue is whether we need to be pampered to be happy. Is it idealistic to think that there is happiness to be found without luxury, assuming you've been exposed to it for a good amount of time?

Truth be told, I don't think I will be very successful, and so I will hopefully not go below my own lowered expectations. The problem is then that I suffer from the problem of placing too much importance to what other people think and say. (I am not sure whether it just introversion?) If I am not successful, I am petrified that there will be talk of my failure, and cringe at the thought of what people will think of me. Well, to be fair, no one has a very high opinion of me now anyway, so that's a good start. But more importantly, such thoughts do not deserve much attention. The very nature of success seems to be predominantly a measure of your financial value. I don't think there's enough emphasis placed on the quality of a person as a person. In BFC, there was a lot of talk about how there is very much an atmosphere of fear prevailing in the media. I especially am scared by what I read, hear and see into thinking that these ultimately pointless standards are the ones to aim for. Yet it should not be so; we should judge people as people, not as extensions of their bank account.

Am I making excuses for myself? I've deluded myself with hopeless arguments in the past, and so I can't put it past me. I think I am guilty of oversimplification. If you oversimplify enough, you can argue that lots of people spend their leaves earning pieces of paper, and how many pieces of paper you have dictate how successful you are.

I feel like watching all the movies I've never had the time to watch properly. For starters, I feel the need to watch The Good, The Bad & The Ugly again. I think I last saw it some 6 years ago, and most of it is but a blur.

A Gentle Introduction To Symbolic Computation is just waiting to be read. As is The Plague, Zen, Crime & Punishment (again), The Brothers Karmazov (also again), and so on. I don't read half as much as used to, and I don't know why that is. It's not good, because I don't want to lose touch with the written medium. Has this infernal machine taken over my life?

I had the riff from Marquee Moon stuck in my head, but now I've gone and forgotten it.

Pardon the rambling nature of this post, I'm much too tired.