Niall’s virtual diary archives – October 2004

Friday 1st October 2004: 2.43pm. One week into lectures, so far it's all very easy stuff. Met some more interesting people though the beginning of the society events has yet to really kick off. I have no free time - each day has conspired to rob me of most of my energy so by night time there's no point in pushing on with the project - indeed after dinner you get about two hours to do various things you needed to get done - this week having been washing, installing my new DVD writer, debate etc. Hopefully I'll get more of a window during the coming weekend.

Regarding last entry's post, thanks for the emails - yes, I am too analytic - OTOH, I foresaw all the problems beforehand during my last relationship and it was my then belief that love can conquer all which led me down that rather bad path. Next time round, I must listen far more to my head & rationality and just not let myself get involved in the first place. Speaking of which, after the last entry I had foreseen the likelihood that a deep one to one chat between us was likely to occur at some near point and so had prepared for just that which happened yesterday morning. I won't go into any further detail for various reasons, but both sides recognise the substantial unsuitability of each to the other. This means really that no good could come from it other than great sex, which I suppose could still occur if I'd drunk that amount of alcohol which removes my self-control (which isn't actually all that much).

What's interesting is that such exchanges create bifurcation points in each party ie; I found myself yesterday marvelling at how an incidence of deep structural coupling will cause emergence of new forms of order. It's weird and slightly disturbing when you undergo what you knew you exactly would beforehand which indeed justified the intense chat and made you take that decision in the first place. I remember when she had put out the red carpet as it were for that conversation and I had to make the decision whether (a) I had read the signs correctly and (b) whether now was the correct time. Experiencing what you knew would happen almost carries with it a sense of deja vue but yet the excitement arises from the knowledge that what will come afterwards is innovation - a new direction, or perhaps a potential for a new direction. Or, that third way I mentioned last post. Growth is good, adopting improved forms of behaviour and understanding especially good. Or else my sex drive is deluding myself that all this is so, sleep was somewhat disturbed last night . I'm hoping though that this is merely myself readapting myself to a new world perception - as indeed happens every night, even if not quite so extensively.

I will admit though that the series of mental blocks that I had created after the emotion during the last post had settled down are no longer working so well, but I am confident that by Monday I will have some new ones. This is the trouble with light blocks - they are so dependent on the set of structural relationships you map onto the outside world and in the case of blocking some of the relationships regarding a certain person, when you substantially change that set of relationships the old blocks don't fit anymore. Anyway, enough of all this - got to write an email to my Economics professor and go to a lecture. Be happy!

Saturday 30th October 2004: 12:01am. Been having some fun with the young lady previously mentioned, whereby I mean fun in the sardonic sense. She rather hurt my feelings actually by throwing my generosity back in my face among other things, and those other things threw me in preparation for all out war mode which lost me more sleep during the last week and a half. However my sister assures me that I am reading the situation too literally, and that she merely acted irrationally and is probably regretting it now, and isn't in fact planning to carry out what the other things might entail. So no need for war Niall!

However that left me today feeling more than a little lost for purpose. I lost most of today clearing space on the computer as various downloads forced me to and it's surprising how just that can eat up your day while still leaving you too much time to think. By keeping busy you stop yourself from thinking, and I know that when I do think I invariably start asking myself why I am here and what the hell I'm doing. And that then gets me depressed slightly.

It's not that here is bad. When I have a goal in mind it's just fine, but when I lose that goal I get unsettled. I'm assuming it's because I've got used to having a goal and that the loneliness simply isn't important when I have code to write. But after a week of lectures and with coursework to do, you get at most a few hours in which is never enough to really make progress. Which then breaks the positive "I've accomplished something today" feedback loop. Which then reminds you that you haven't accomplished anything meaningful at all really in this whole past two months.

I guess when I was in war preparation mode, I at least was distracted from this - it's perhaps why I distracted myself with it - but it keeps coming back. It concerns me actually as I have come to define myself by my work having learned never to let myself define myself with (unreliable) people or relationships with them again as that was the source of the typing error which caused my insane patch. The trouble with defining oneself by ones work is that one really needs to feel one is making substantial progress on that work or risk feeling somewhat disillusioned - which is what I'm feeling.

I'd also probably feel much better if all these hours I sink into my course actually meant anything to me. They're all very easy to the point of boredom and it annoys me that in one module of philosophy and all of economics they're teaching lies which I must learn and regurgitate despite knowing it's rubbish. While there are some very bright people here, if I get onto any topic of conversation which is particularly heavy then I get shakes of heads and incomprehension - they simply can't see things the way I see them, and thus we can't do any more than skirt round the edges. This includes my lecturers and tutors eg; I suggested in a tutorial that the proposition 'God can do anything because God is omnipotent' is actually recursive rather than circular logic because "anything" requires defining the universe and the universe can only be defined as a set which includes itself recursively. I was met with a stunned silence while the tutor sputtered something about that being something he hadn't thought of before and it was ignored. This happens regularly to me with varying quantities of anger being generated in those around me depending on how much I disturbed their worldview

Anyway it's bedtime now, so good night and be happy!