Well, I got one comment here. Someone took the time to write a long comment. I appreciate some of what this person is trying to say, but I have no clue what the heck he means by systems. It sounds like jargon. Can anyone else decipher it?

Shawn, the most dangerous thing people do at your stage of life is to make a formative but wrong decision based on a FEELING that they should make a decision NOW and not later.

There is one life pursuit out there for you that is best. There are a million that are not the best. An awful lot of these will make your life miserable and unfulfilled.

Nobody is going to tell you what your ideal life pursuit is. They will tell you instead that you should be what they want you to be. Don’t listen to them. Your life is yours right now. Hold onto it. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. It is your life.

This is what I did. I was under pressure from all sides. My parents wanted me to be a professional moneymaker. My counselors wanted me to be a well-oiled cog in the machine. The military wanted me to kill for them. I screamed “Bullshit!” and ran. I took myself back to zero and started over.

You need to find the ability to appreciate being able to lose track of time. Going back to zero requires this. This is a precious gift. Those who have trapped themselves cannot do this. There are people younger than you who will never experience losing track of time for the remainder of their lives. They are lost. They are cogs. They will never escape the machine.

They despise people like you and they want you to join them. Don’t.

Instead, go outside. Observe systems. Systems are everywhere. In nature. In society. When you finally understand a system, you become rooted and then step confidently toward understand the next system.

When you feel directionless, you are simply not examing systems deeply enough. Systems are infinite. From macro to micro. Systems are how he world works. Some are perfect. Some are nightmarish. We all have an inate ability to repair systems. That is why we are here. Life is the antithesis of entropy.

Study systems and take yourself back to zero. Discard the bullshit you have been fed all your life and understand systems. There is no hurry. It can take years.

Your life belongs to you. Remember that.

The day will come when you realize what it is you want to become. It will just come to you. As sure as night and day, as true as an arrow in flight, it will come to you. You will want to persue it. You will be driven by an insatiable desire from within.

This is the pathway to true happiness. Relax. Enjoy your life. Don’t yeild to pressure. The day will come.

One more thing. While you are waiting for the day, you must continue to study systems. Your life has a purpose. Don’t throw it away in idleness or hedonism. Study systems. Your incredible mind will put together the things you learn to build a pathway to your future that you will never tire walking down.

I need to take a couple of days to just shun everyone. I need at least a full day to myself to unwind and do absolutely nothing. I’m fatigued. I want to just disappear and be unreachable. Maybe this weekend.

I love the word “paradigm” when describing my life. There have been several times when I thought I had embraced a new paradigm, but it was just a false alarm. One paradigm that has changed my life is the “positivity paradigm.” I think I’ve found a new paradigm to follow: the “explorative paradigm.” I recently discovered that I ascribe to an “introspective paradigm,” where I think that I can find purpose in my life, and other answers, just by thinking about myself. Now, I don’t think this is enough. I want to augment my introspection with exploration.

During my searches for purpose, I’ve usually assumed that the introspective approach is the proper approach. If I want to find out what I should do with my life, then I need only look within. Much of the literature I’ve read has reinforced this approach. I’ve seen someone advise sitting down with a blank piece of paper and writing until you find something that makes you cry with meaning. I’ve gone through a book that inventories my strengths and likes, and then is supposed to help me find a career. I’ve gone through several introspective exercises that were supposed to help me create goals, but it’s never satisfied me. I’ve never found THE ONE thing that I’m supposed to do. Occasionally, I’ll be filled with fire, but it will quickly fade. I can’t find the one goal that will sustain me. My current approach suggests that all I’ve got to do is search harder within myself, and I’ll find it.

I don’t think the pure introspective approach will help me find what I love because love is something that grows. Several activities that I love started out as things I was indifferent towards. When I first watched football, I had no idea what was going on. It was something just to pass the time because I was constantly bored freshman year in college. No one in my family had any interest in football, nor did any of my close friends, so I never cared about football either. At the football games in high school, I never paid attention to the game. Yet after I started figuring out what was going on, I started enjoying the game. Now, I love football. During football season, I watch it all weekend and then I spend a bunch of time on fantasy football. My comic was also something that I grew to enjoy. I’ve always needed a creative outlet, but The Chalkboard Manifesto was never a huge priority. There were fallow periods where I wouldn’t update for a month of more. Now I have a lot more pride in my comic, and I update very regularly. Yet there were long periods of time where I was very confused about my comic. Did I love doing this, or did I not? Was this something I really wanted to do? Only through constantly working on my comic, by focusing more on the craft of writing them, did I gain a deeper appreciation of my comic.

Now think of where I’d be with the introspective approach. If I sat in a room alone, and thought about what I loved, I would never have watched a game of football. If I analyzed my feelings, I would’ve decided that my confusion indicated that I wasn’t dedicated to my comic. My life wouldn’t be as rich as it is today.

Even now, I may be closing doors because of the introspective paradigm. I was recently talking to a friend about the business end of my comic, which is stagnant. I’ve never done anything like it before, and I’ve never shown any particular interest in business. Maybe I don’t like it, and I should forget about it. After all, if I had any real interest, then I would’ve done it already, right? This thought-process seems to close off a promising avenue. Shit, maybe I should just try it out, right?

This leads me to a different paradigm: the explorative paradigm. I don’t want to reject introspection, but I want to add more exploration to my life. I want it to be a priority, and I want it to be part of my strategy for finding purpose. If I just look within, I’ll never find all the things I could come to love. I have to look outwards to find everything that I will enjoy. I need an attitude that values exploration.

So I think some of the advice I’ve read before won’t work for me. Maybe when you’re 35 years old, you’ve done enough to figure out what you love and what you don’t love. You just have to think about it and find it within. (Or maybe not.) People my age, though, I don’t think they know what the fuck they want yet. (Some of them.) More importantly, I don’t think they know enough to know what they want. I think they still have a lot of exploration to do in order to figure that out. There’s not enough inside to figure out their purpose yet.

I want to add one thing to this “explorative paradigm”: Trying new things is not enough. It’s not enough to just go out and try something to see if you like it. Let’s say you’re playing Super Smash Brothers, and you’re new to the game. You’re getting absolutely schooled, and you yell, “I hate this game.” Yet after you play a bunch and get better, you start to like the game. The game grows on you. Your initial assessment was based on your inability to play the game, not the game’s objective merits. Sometimes a little mastery is required to even get to the point where you can decide whether you like something or not. Moreover, it may be the fact that you played the game so much that caused you to love it.

Love is something that grows. When I think of relationships — not just romantic ones — the love you have for a person isn’t something that is absolute and fixed at the beginning. You care for a person because of all the time you spend with them. It’s not that you meet a person, instantly decide how you feel about him or her, and then ration out your time that you will spend with that person. The same kind of thing applies to the activities that one does. I came to enjoy my comic a lot more because of all the time that I put into it. Sometimes you spend a lot of time with someone, but then you realize you don’t like that person so much. But it wouldn’t make sense to look at that person right away and decide that you hate him. There has to be a period where you suspend judgment, and you’re fine with just exploring who that person is… or what that activity is.

So it’s important to spend a lot of time out in the world exploring new things, instead of just looking within. One won’t know automatically what one likes or dislikes. No matter how long I lock myself in a dark room, I won’t find myself by staring at a blank sheet of paper. I have to try out all the new things I can and suspend judgment until I’m qualified enough. I have to be okay with the fact that I won’t automatically know what I’m going to do for a career. I have to explore and know that it’s okay to explore.

lolololololololol

(via Pharyngula)

My life is relatively rich right now. I spend a lot of time with my friends. I have multiple creative outlets: I have a comic that’s semi-popular, and I’m making a tv show with my friend. Work is fun and rewarding. But it’s not enough. (Of course! It’s never enough!)

I’ve analyzed the problem to be three things: 1) I don’t have a larger purpose, 2) I still live at my parents, and 3) I haven’t been actively working at self-improvement. Number 2 isn’t really a big problem. I don’t mind living at home, but I miss some of my independence.

When it comes to number 3, I feel as if I’ve seen some regression. I had a couple habits — writing down tasks in the morning and keeping my desk clean — that I dropped after moving to a new location. At least I’ve been able to keep up the e-mail thing and not checking it incessantly throughout the day. I recently read 25 Ways to Win with People, and that’s made me think a lot about self-improvement. It recommends a 12 week process of focusing on 2 ideas at a time. This kind of contradicts what Babauta preaches about focusing on one habit at a time. I’m still young, so maybe I’ll make it a 24 week process and see what happens. First, though, I’m going to get back into the habit of writing down in the morning what I need to do.

One of the chapters in the aforementioned book had an anecdote about an abolitionist, which got me to think about something tangential: purpose. There are lots of things I enjoy doing, but I don’t think anything fills me with fire as when I’m writing about politics. (I don’t feel this all the time, but certain articles just make me feel great.) I was thinking about how the abolitionist had a great evil to fight: Wouldn’t that make finding a purpose easy? Then again, nowadays we have the great crisis that is climate change. But then that got me thinking about torture and prison reform. Also, I simply can’t imagine devoting myself to one thing and one thing only. Don’t I need a creative outlet as well? Don’t I need these other projects? At least I can take the time to learn a lot more about climate change and the environment, especially what’s happening locally. I feel like I don’t really know what it means to be a citizen; I only know how to complain on the internet. (See Chalkboard Manifesto.) Perhaps it may do some good to research some old citizens who made big changes in the nation.

Now what should I do with the weblog? I want to get back into writing about politics, but I don’t want to write idiotic things. I’ll just start writing and keep a close eye on what I’m doing. Another thing I want to do is tell more stories about my life. This will help me become a better storyteller. When I was younger I thought my life was dull, so I didn’t want to talk about my life that much. That’s what other kids wrote in their weblogs (xanga was big back then), and I wanted to be different. Their weblogs were often boring. Thinking back on it, I don’t think it was the subject matter that was dull but it was the writing that was horrendous. In any case, I don’t think my life is quite so dull anymore, so I’ll be writing more about it.

And speaking of bad writing, I’m done rambling for now. Goodness, do I need more practice writing.

Sometimes it takes hours to write one sentence. I love writing comics. (No, I’m not being sarcastic. I just enjoy writing.)

I’m having trouble keeping track of time. I’m living life day-by-day, with no weekly or monthly goals. My calendar for June is empty. It’s a huge change from the days when I was living for the end of finals. My life before then was characterized by deadline after deadline. As of now, I’ve transitioned from the free feeling of after-graduation to the adrift feeling of having no ultimate direction in life.

Part of the solution is pretty obvious. I need more structure in my life and I need to set some long-term goals with dates on them.

The big looming issue is the whole “what career do you want to pursue” thing. That I’m still unsure how to answer, or how to work towards an answer, or if I even need an answer.

I’m extremely nervous about tomorrow. Work starts!

I want to write something about Iran, but I’m kind of holding my tongue because I’m not really qualified to say anything. (Not that this has ever stopped me before.) Suffice it to say, I’m closer to Larison than Sullivan on this one.

Maybe I’ll write something, but it’ll be about the broader contours of history and how this usually calls for skepticism over exuberance.

I hate naps. I always feel terrible after taking a nap. Today I took the first nap I’ve had in several weeks, and it was horrible. I woke up feeling incredibly paranoid. I don’t even know how that happens. Usually, I just feel gross and/or groggy. Sometimes angry or depressed. To be honest, it’s two hours later and I still haven’t fully recovered from that nap. Ugh.

As much as I despise Comcast (for reasons which I shall not enumerate for now), I have never had any problems with customer service when I call them. The people are always polite and helpful, and I’ve never been put on hold for a long period of time. So kudos to them for at least getting that right.

It just occurs to me that I received my diploma in an envelope when I graduated, and I never actually opened that envelope and looked at the diploma. Even I’m surprised at how little I care about graduating.

I’m finding it hard to stay motivated. There are moments where I’m having lots of fun and other moments when I feel really blah. I’m really lacking in focus. I think part of the problem is that my life has no structure right now. Without school or work, my life is completely unorganized and I have no sense of time. Another part of it is that now that I’m in a new location, all my old rituals have disappeared. I don’t eat dinner or lunch at the same time. I don’t have pool club every week. I let slide those habits I had worked to acquire.

Part of this will be solved on its own when I start my summer job. For now, though, I need to introduce more structure into my life. I’ll start with what time I wake up in the morning. I just need to start feeling some control over my life. I need to feel like the master of my time.

I read quite a few blogs and it’s impressive how conservatives, despite being out of power, still control the debates. A lot of what is being put out by conservatives now is often incredibly stupid, but the liberal blogosphere still expends a lot of energy countering these claims. Consider all the words used to counter the absurd claim that Sotomayor is a racist. The Republicans still control the terms of the debate, while the Democrats continue to play defense; the Republicans control what we talk about, while the Democrats spend most of their time reacting. It may not be obvious, but this kind of power dynamic favors the Republicans.

I still remember the time I was playing Double Dribble on NES with Chris and he beat me at the last second. I held a comfortable lead at first. At the end, he hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to beat me. This was like 4 years ago, haha.

I’m amazed at Pixar’s ability to consistently put out great movies. I saw Wall-E twice in theaters, which is something I almost never do.

I don’t have much useful to say about their latest movie “Up.” I mean, I really, really liked it. The storytelling is excellent, and even remembering the movie hits me emotionally.

The moral of the story, even though explicitly stated by the kid, is something I’m not sure kids will understand. Despite being an adventure story, the movie celebrates the mundane. By that, I mean the ordinary everyday activities of our lives. It’s a theme that resonates with me because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the mundane recently, and how important it is because that’s what most of our lives consist of.

I love throwing things away. Well, the only thing I love more is throwing things in the recycle bin.

After I came back from Baltimore, with all my stuff, I realized that my room is now packed with junk. I have a lot of old toys, among other things, that I don’t need anymore. So I’m giving things away, recycling others, and throwing away the rest.

Eventually I’ll need to sell a lot of my paperback books. That’s a goal I’ll hold off on for now. There’s a lot to conquer in this room. It’s like a long campaign, and I’ll need to fight it one battle at a time. Hopefully it will all be decluttered by the end of summer.

Years later, I’m not so sure why I found “penguins on monkey bars” so amusing.

At the end of the year, I typically go through my class notebooks to find doodles in the margins. Some of these are funny enough to convert into a comic. I rip those pages out and keep them. I recently found an old ripped-out page with a “penguins on monkey bars” sketch, and I don’t know why the hell I thought this premise was worth hanging onto. Some premises are promising enough that their rough form can turn into something good. Others begin terrible and end terrible. There is no evolution in their lives. “Penguins on monkey bars” is one of them.

I still need to cancel cable and internet, and sell my furniture. This has led to a little bit of anxiety: How am I going to live without these things?

Yet this is me, less than a year ago, Living on the floor:

I don’t know why, but there’s something deeply satisfying about not having too many things. For some reason, sleeping on the floor made me feel like a more disciplined person.

Now I not only have electricity, but cable, a chair, a table, my Wii set up, a couch, a kitchen table, and a mattress. I already feel like this is too much. It weighs me down. And now that I am more comfortable, I find myself wasting too much time on the internet and TV again.

I had way less than I do now, and I was still happy — more happy, perhaps. Thinking this through has now reduced my anxiety.

I’ve been doing a whole lot of nothing. Well, I’m slightly exaggerating, but my life does feel as if everything is in a holding pattern. I’m not trying to progress or improve myself, and I’m just waiting until I get back to California before I do anything. Part of this, I’m sure, is just me distracting myself from the necessary things that need to be done before moving. I guess another part is the idea that I shouldn’t do anything until I’ve moved and this chapter in my life is over. But I don’t really believe in chapters, so I should start preparing for my life after the move. I should do some serious reflection now, and not wait until I get to California.

I’ve been packing up my books. I’m moving, and I want to take my books with me. They’ll be shipped via the USPS, and I was worried they might not make it. So, I decided to write down the titles of all my books. If they were to be lost, then I would be able to slowly re-accumulate my lost titles.

I discovered that I have 99 books in my little room. Wow. The books that I’ve accumulated since college actually exceeds that number because I’ve already shipped batches of books home.

Which would you rather have? A humane interrogator who hears what he needs to hear, or an inhumane interrogator who hears what he wants to hear?

Are we really surprised about Obama’s non-enthusiasm about prosecuting for torture? What happened when he was a Senator running for the presidency and the telecom issue came up? They broke the law and he voted for immunity. This, depite his statements that indicated the opposite. When it comes to civil liberties, Obama’s words are about as good as Arlen Specter’s. We really can’t trust him.

This is not to say that I hate Obama. He will get us out of Iraq, even though his views on foreign policy are quite pedestrian. Despite his opposition to the Iraq war, he is still a typical liberal interventionist. He’ll do better on healthcare and the economy than Mr. McCain who wanted to freeze spending during a recession. The choice was between Obama and someone completely moronic. And during the primary, the choice was between Obama and Hillary Clinton, who could not even admit that she made a mistake voting for the Iraq War.

Mr. Obama has his good points and bad points. And one of his bad points is civil liberties. Get FUCKING used to it. When it comes to civil liberties, the president is our enemy. We can’t trust him.

By the way, these false dilemmas about what the president can and can’t do are really annoying. They are always completely arbitrary. Fight in two wars OR prosecute for torture. Fix healthcare OR cap-and-trade. Fix the economy OR fix healthcare. It’s as if we completely swallowed the Republican talking point about Obama having “too much on his plate.” Please, tell me how busy Mr. Holder is fixing the economy. Then, tell me with a straight face that he can’t pursue prosecutions for war criminals, which is required under the Geneva Conventions. These types of arguments about what Obama can and can’t do are never argued with any facts, just blind assertions. They are based on either what they in fact don’t want to happen, or on some desire to make Obama not a villain.

Face it, he’s wrong when it comes to civil liberties. He has been and he will be for the rest of his presidency. He has embraced the worst of Bush’s arguments for secrecy. Use Occam’s Razor, goddamnit.

Even if Obama doesn’t torture, the power is still there for the next president to use. Unless we prosecute. And we make some structural changes to the executive branch. (Independently elected AG anyone?) Even Hamilton never envisioned a presidency this strong.

As much as I hate the twitter fad, I’m thinking about signing up for it. Basically, I’d just do what I already do with facebook status updates. Er… well with what used to be facebook status updates.

What were you expecting, Shawn? A euphoric high? A lightness of being? A triumphant parade?

I stepped out of the room after my last final and the world greeted me as it usually does. The sun shone, the grass waved in the wind, and the birds chirped as if it were any other day.

I swear, this was more anticlimactic than when I beat Super Mario Galaxy. The final level wasn’t any challenge; you just ran through and collected the last purple coins.

Or it’s like a birthday. Someone asks, “How does it feel to be X years old?” I can only answer, “Gosh, I don’t feel any different.”

Oh well, time to get drunk and play Wii sports. I deserve at least that much.

I bought an ocarina — cheap but overpriced, if you know what I mean. It was a simple piece of pottery. I dropped it, and then it shattered into a million pieces. Okay, into like 6 or so big shards.

I superglued it back together, referring to it as “ocarina surgery.” To extend the metaphor, the patient is stable but not 100%. I’ll need to do some follow-up work. The ocarina works, but there is one semi-large hole and a bunch of cracks. When I play it, the notes come out all funny because there are extra holes. I’m going to try to find some putty to fill the holes and hopefully it will be good as new.

The ocarina has brought a lot of joy to my life. I didn’t really realize how big a desire I have to make music. Now, I have to make do with the maracas and recorder. The ocarina was much easier to play than the recorder. I hope I can fix it up.

I don’t know when’s the last time I felt this, or if I’ve even felt this before. Suddenly, I’ve crossed some type of threshold. I’m no longer waiting for things to end, but I’m waiting for things to begin. It’s an incredible feeling, seeing those infinite possibilities ahead of me.

For the past four years (at least), I’ve waited for the semester to end. I live my life for that, then summer starts. Yet always in the back of my head is this nagging feeling: that this will end. So I spend all semester waiting for school to end and all summer dreading the end of the summer.

But now, I don’t even care about getting out of here. I can think the thought, but it immediately slips out of my mind. It has no purchase. Go ahead, ask me: Are you glad to be done with school? Whatever. The question is incomprehensible. The future fills my mind.

I’ve thought about doing a general retrospective about my college experience, but I don’t know how useful it will be. I tend to live my life with some degree of awareness. If there are any useful lessons to cull, it appears that I would have learned them whilst I was going to college. A full-blown retrospection will only focus on the negative, and that just won’t be useful at all. My lessons have already been developed within my notebook, or are in the process of development. If I do look back at all, I must do so with the intent of focusing on my best moments. Capture those and see what I did right.

So, back to the future. I feel incredibly giddy, even though I’ve still one final to go. Ahead of me lies infinite possibilities. Ask me about the future, what do I plan to do, and I will answer: I don’t know yet, but I’m eager to explore. I have my comic; I have a summer job; and I have options to explore. I can remake my identity.

And then there’s that image that keeps coming to my mind: Infinite possibilities.

My last essay is about Cicero and Caesar, and how they both crafted their public identities. I’m going to very consciously start to do the same thing. I need to find out my favorite virtues and figure out which historical figures are my heroes.

But first, I have to finish that damn essay, haha.

The exciting thing about finishing college is that I will face infinite possibilities after I’m done. I can craft my own public image in any way I want and become the person I want to be.

Note to self: When creating public image, build in flexibility. Do not trap yourself in a corner.

Still have to finish an essay tomorrow. And take a final. But hey, it’s almost over.

The image of “13”, the day of freedom, has kept me going so far. Another rough day is ahead tomorrow, but I just got to keep concentrating on the goal.

I am going to pull off an amazing feat tomorrow: I will write two essays in one day.

Granted, I do have a limited amount of time Saturday to complete the second essay, but I want to challenge myself to complete this essay-writing marathon.

After that, it’s over for essays. I’m done writing shitty papers that will only be read by one person.