Empty Cage

I am in such a moody, languid, listless end of days stupor lo’ these past few days it’s incredible I’m still dragging my ass out of bed. Just in an absolutely appalling state of mind. And honestly, getting like this is more a chance lottery of brain chemistry because there is quite honestly nothing wrong right now at all.

I’m always impressed with how suddenly all encompassing moods come up. One minute my life is average, the next I’m wondering how ‘get out of bed’ wasn’t one of the tasks of Hercules. I then take it out on everyone because sharing is caring when you’re being a miserable bitch.

And maybe tomorrow I’ll be back to contemplating things like ‘has university/my life/my dreams etc etc all been a horrible mistake.’ Yep.

Go Team Arbitrary Unstoppable Moodiness!

I’m trying to decide if keeping a continuing blog is worth it, I like the idea of it, and when I actually get myself to sit down and write things I would argue that I’m not the worst blogger who ever happened to the internet (I would equally fervently argue I’m not the best), but the problem is that I have zero discipline.

I’ve been contemplating this a lot this summer, many of my faults and problems, I’ve always considered myself the kind of girl with no weaknesses. But I think being able to identify them might make them easier to work on.

I’m just going to put this out in the air, because I think it explains everything. (Or, at least more things). Growing up, I was the smart kid. The smart nerdy kid, the nerdy is unrelated, but I’d like to argue that growing up a little clever ruined me for life. Growing up smart, carted me, one way, to a life of mediocrity.

For starters, as I mentioned, I have no discipline, especially when it comes to sitting down and improving myself. Natural talents have absolutely crippled my drive to improve. I find myself thinking ‘I should really read more on this topic to firm up my grasp’ and just don’t bother, because I use the ‘I’m smart; I can figure it out’ reckoning. But, you know what, me, you’re not going to grasp advanced mathematics just because you, at one point, were slightly above average intelligence. You learn this through study, work, and effort, not just because your rational thinking skills are sometimes okay.

It should be obvious how this is ruinous.

The other problem, the twin dragon, is the unholy perfectionism leading to procrastination, leading to epic failure.

Being previously considered quite smart, I developed a certain complex about always being smart. Not just that, always being the smartest. Just, feeding on approval of my brain. In some, very lucky, and very dilligent people, this is a very good thing. If you’re obsessed with being the smartest person in the room, you work night and day to be the smartest person in the room, for me, something very different and very bad happened.

I got a nasty case of perfectionism.

It’s actually quite crippling to be a perfectionist, and for me, paralyzing terror of not doing The Best has completely ruined me for the past number of years. I put things off because I cannot do them to my high expectations, and then cram through them the day before and barely pass. You’d think this would make the perfectionist work harder, but the killing blow ends up being I now have an excuse. ‘Well, of course I didn’t do all that well on that paper, I wrote it four hours before it was due’. These rationalizations will murder you. If I don’t do well on a carefully thought out and researched paper I feel like an idiot, and how would I cope with, given an even footing, not being the very smartest person ever?

The final, related, but not as tightly related way that I went from being a cocksure brainiac to an average joe were the crippling effects of boredom growing up.

My parents had always tried to keep my brain going as a kid, reading, writing, drawing, and playing with technology. But school was always very, very tedious. Even when we covered things I found interesting like Science and History, I was often irked by the snail’s pace at which we covered things and the general lack of depth my elementary schools decided to get into.

Obviously this is necessary, kids are dumb, I was a dumb kid as much as any of the others, but I often wonder if I had felt challenge I would have risen to it or crumpled under the pressure.

Addiction to boredom is as hard to master as any other and you start to lose interest in everything feeling nothing is up to the challenge of your outstanding mind — and I’m not even that smart, I shutter to think how shit would have gone down if I was genuinely clever. Boredom is the worst because it actually starts to affect your mood as well. Eventually you start to get melancholic that this whole wonderful world cannot hold your attention.

And so these three things, lack of discipline, perfectionism, and boredom, stemming mostly from a childhood of being the smartest little bugger in the room have ruined me, and at this point, I’m worried if it’s irreversable. The general apathy towards getting to be someone exciting.

I’ve been trying to consider solutions, but step one, lack of discipline always rears it’s ugly head. Maybe it’s time to get a life coach, or a personal assistant. Or, hell, someone to flog me when I’m slacking off.

I am more than capable of being a gigantic hypocrite. I do it a freaking lot, and on this particular sticking point people are going to have to stop taking my half baked do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do advice, because there is not one iota of me that ever, ever, ever follows my own advice.

This is mostly to take a page from the ever shitty relationships book. I am not very good at making these things work, and I’m even less good at closing them off neatly. And yet, I’m your preachy asshole friend who will tell you straight-up to get over everything quickly, and don’t look back.

I’m looking at this topic now because I’m finally feeling confident about my own recent breakup. It’s only been a few months. Only. I’m probably still a little sensitive on certain subjects (like if someone mentions a deceased pigeon on a balcony I may pitch one hell of a fit) but for the most part I’m not contemplating if a huge mistake was made. It wasn’t. Phew. Dodged a bullet. Didn’t send the King of Time and Space packing, nor was he likely to develop the next Google. (God, LPG, if you do I will never forgive myself).

The thing that bothers me about these things is that I’m a poor judge of what kind of a person I like.

And even if I don’t like a person I spend a lot of time sticking in incompatable relationships because I have trouble identifying why we’re incompatible, and then I turn it into a science experiment. Why can’t we stick it out — let me get my microscope.

The analogy falls apart when I get a personal attachment problem and suddenly iiiiiiiit’s internal conflict time. Was the problem related to how neurotic I am, how neurotic he was, or was it a joint neurotic venture? We lived together, the answer in this particular case is obvious. Oh, wait, hold it right there, microscope again time!

Close friends give me the Hamlet analogy a lot. I will spend the whole of a play contemplating, weighing, thinking, pondering… that’s all I’m going to get without cracking a thesaurus. And very little time doing, doing, doing. I would say if I was even a little more of a doer than a thinker my quality of life would improve (my marks would vastly improve).

I also strongly believe that I would be a happier person too. My Arch-nemesis/very good friend has complained for years that all of my misery can be attributed back to myself. I’ll think things into oblivion, and I won’t enjoy them even a tiny bit.

So, the new goal is to stop over thinking, and over complicating matters with my thinking. To try and be friends with, and date people who I wouldn’t normally give a chance to. To let things go when they need to be let go. And most importantly, stop being terrified of failure due to a lack of omniscience. I may be pretty close, but I certainly wouldn’t call me perfect. Why lose my brain over it?

Domain names, domain names, which one can I pick?

Being a boring person is absolutely the pits. Yeah, here I am, blogging. But what was that whole firm resolve to post more frequently? That’s what I thought.

I’m being hired to do webstuff again, which is really nice, because my brain is about to go into rigour mortis. I miss the days when summer wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to me. Also maybe hired to write things. This could get messy.

And I’m back on that new domain name kick again. Maybe archive everything here now, and start afresh. Like, okay, keep it all because I’m a squishy sentimental freak, but try a blag without so much baggage.

Because there is some truly terrible stuff here. Like writing that I shouldn’t have committed to the webs. To be fair, I started this blog, what, three or four years ago — I was still a teeanger.

And Mad Hattery needs to be finished and not glossed over.

But at least I now have tumblr. Hah. Accomplishment. Not.

I got an extension on a project I didn’t finish, a paper that was due forever ago I am allowed to hand in late, and honestly I’m just sad now because I actually have to do them rather than flagrantly ignore the deadline.

I’m sick, I don’t wanna work.

The tough draw a unicorn.

Or at least, that’s how I dealt with my AI2 challenge at the Computer Science Games last weekend. Which I would have blogged about earlier, if I hadn’t gotten what I am not calling ‘CS Games Plague’ a serious disease that involves coughing, mucus and feeling generally like shit. But, turns out that a night of social alcohol with friends (that’s right, potential employers, I was very controlled) has mostly killed it. Or maybe I’m more distracted by the hangover,

Regardless, it was a very interesting look at engineering culture, from one of those cursed to be born an artsie.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, I want to write more stern things about the SFUO, and SAFA but I feel like I’m just going to alienate more normal people when I do that.

Every single year on my birthday I take to the internet for some brief lonely reflection on the year that has passed me by. I usually do this one one of my thirty million blogs, and so, if I may, I’ll dub this Mad Hattery’s first blog of me being an old coot full of traditionality et cetera. It’s strange trying to look at a year as to how it treated you. Given my deep phobia of time in general it’s weird that I’d do something like this. But I’m digressing because I don’t want to do homework.

Twenty was a good year. Way more laid back than 19 which was like being shot out of a cannon in about a hundred different ways. Things got done at twenty, decisions were made, plans were laid and I finally got a bit of a glimpse at what I wanted to be when I grew up. I may not have been gallivanting across Europe like an heiress, but I worked my ass of and am starting to love the idea of learning again after breaking out of the deathly boring classes that made up my first year.

Twenty was the growth of maturity needed to get me through the rest of my life, and despite the mountains of neuroses I still nurse I think my twentieth year was one that chilled me out immensely. I stopped hiding out in the whole “I am miserable,” and gave myself a nice forward thinking “I probably hate you, but I’m sure you’ll get over it,” attitude towards others. It’s working, and though I’ve alienated a hell of a lot of people who I used to be close to with this attitude I feel way less exposed to the elements this way. Or at least weird. I’m happier fuck ‘em.

So, wonderful internet, I bet you’re a bit confused now given that I now have two domains: EMPTY-CAGE.NET and MADHATTERY.NET as my Godaddy CP loudly states. And you must be thinking: ‘Gee Kae, you really needed two domains to ignore that badly did you?’ I will of course then scoff at you, and probably very secretly hate you forever. No, not really, but as usual there is method in my madness.

For the past, say, six or seven months I’ve been at a bit of a web crossroads. I’ve been fairly self concious about my websites, my blogging style and all that. All the little projects I throw together and then ignore, fanlistings coming to mind, and basically all the experimental little things that clog Empty Cage. I’m an ideas person and when a good one comes along I jump on top of it and have been known to find the follow through difficult.

Any ways, recently I agreed to do some contract work with my friend’s website company since we being fellow philosophers like to complain about things like real jobs when he asked if there was any of my stuff that he could see, and I realized I was a bit bashful to show him anything since it’s all pitched together in thirty minutes for shits and giggles. It’s kind of gone down hill since Europe, hee hee. And so that’s when I decided it was time to divorce these two parts of my brain.

What will the split entail? Well, MadHattery is going to be taking my blog insofar as I am not talking about updating websites or learning strange new things about Enth3. It’ll have more ‘polished’ writing than EC ever suffered. I’m using polished here in a loose sense, it is still going to be my usual tongue-in-cheek self. It’ll also look really nice and be sort of a ‘resume type thing’ Basically Hattery is taking all my eloquence.

In return EC gets all of my fun, it’ll be what it’s always been. A bunch of hack-job websites that I update sporadically but love to pieces when I do. All old blogs will stay here and I plan on keeping this place pretty frequently updated with all the strangeness that grows on my brain. I’m actually looking forward to this split.

Basically, if you’ve never read one of my updates in the “internet” category and you actually have me bookmarked for that rare yet comical interlude I’m going to urge you to change your bookmarks to MadHattery. If you’re really here to see me build a character fansite that flops a few hours later stick around, more of that to come.

So this is not goodbye or anything like that, in fact, if anything I suspect this place is going to pick up.

I have blogger’s guilt.

Hardcore ‘I should use my powers over this small span of web wisely’ sort of blogger’s guilt. And I just got a job doing web related stuff is not helping since this place is shabby, derelict and really not my own design at all. I’m sort of sitting around for inspiration to percolate and its not really hitting like I had planned. To be sure there are things I want to write not the least of which involves verbally burning the school newspaper to the ground. Oh, Fulcrum, complaints about you make me happy.

Not the least of which it is two in the bloody morning again and I am trying to be coherent. I’m just going to make gurgling sounds for twenty minutes and hope that counts for a blog post.

Actually, what I’m going to do is set up Evolution to kick my ass every few days about this thing. Durrr-hurrr.

Well, I’ve been on one hell of a website hiatus, yes, I am sorry internet.

I’ve also been ignoring my nerdy roots so I’m downloading Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost in the Shell for some good old Anime Funtimes. I also plan on reviewing them when I get a chance so I’m not paying ten bucks a months simply to look pretty.

Also, Felicity Worthington was on the troubles list because no one has joined in over two months. Damn.