When I'm Happy

Introduction

    There's a tendency to journal or write blogs only when I'm feeling particularly shitty. Some tragic event must happen to me for me to go "Oh yeah! I knew writing about my feelings is cathartic!" 

    This time I hope to balance things out more. This has been a great week for my friendships, my self-image, and the dissonance I felt. It's all got me feeling jiggy and warm inside!

    There should be some semblance of a memory of a state I have for me to point to and say "I felt this unfamiliar happiness then. I want to feel like that for the rest of my life." This hopes to be that.

    This previous year and a half have been very different. I learned a smidge about a lot of things: about everything from how people think to analysis of media to politics and rhetoric. I fear I'm not ready to share anything about those yet. So I'm going to talk about the few things that are improvements to my mental schemas I'd like to carry with myself into the future from here.

Affection is Great 

     I saw something a while ago that altered my perception of things like affection and love completely: A French Lesbian Romance film. If you're reading this, you probably already know what I'm talking about — it's Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

    My parents are not expressive of their "love" each other. They never were. Plus being told to be weary of your affection, sexuality, and desires from early childhood (Growing up Male) mix together to form a very damaged relationship with those ideas.

    Love and Affection were things I felt and knew when I felt but showing other people even when I liked them was something I had no experience or understand of. It affected my friendships a great deal. I didn't know how to hug someone. In fact, the idea made me physically uncomfortable and tense up. 

     It was not as if I did not want to hug someone, it was just there was a thick layer of fog between that feeling and that action. It felt like seeing a picturesque scene but all I have is a shitty Android phone camera. It felt like having a great idea for something creative but lacking the skills to execute it.

     The road to fixing all of that began with films of all things. I saw what Love looks like through an empirical dramatized lens of a movie. It made my brain and heart go "This is what turning what's in here into what's out there looks like." 

    Kissing your partner, Hugging your friends, Snuggling up together when you're all tired, and sitting close to the people you appreciate are things I'm very new to.

    Fortunately, with the people I've befriended and attracted, I think I have plenty safe space to experiment.

Friends aren't Far

    This part is somewhat connected to the previous one. I mean, all the things I've faced are all sort of "connected."

    Meeting and speaking to people you think you'd get along with is one of the greatest and underrated experiences there is.

    Since middle school, I've been good at making new friends but keeping and kindling friendships was not among any of my expertise.

 I've never been very close to any of the friends I've had. There were a lot of things about myself I was always too scared to share. For the most part, keeping to myself was a safety thing than a trust thing.

    This year was different. I met people I had never even imagined existing in a place like this. I've been having a great time with them. They are my best friends. They are here to stay. 

    They are my friends. 

    They are my friends.

    They are my friends. 

    They are my friends. 

There's too much I don't Know

     When I started just saying "Hi!" to random people and dropped that malicious sense of judgement that led to my social anxieties and troubles, I met lots of people much smarter than I am.

    I met people whom I couldn't understand even a word of. It was overwhelming.

    I've always seen myself as an "Engineer." I had no interest in media, art, literature, cooking, fashion, music, culture, politics, and what have you! 

    It was not that I had tried all of these things one after the other and come to conclusion that there were only a handful of things I found interesting and others boring. I literally didn't even know "Fashion" was a thing I could do.

    Growing up in a middle class household where infantilization promoted "Ask an Adult" and discouraged and villainized "Figure it out for Yourself" led me to add two ideas into my "decision making" that I regret:

1. What I do must make money or it is useless
2. Mother knows best because I love her

    Gruelingly, I spent the next few years slowly and successfully pulling these out of my brain. It was not overnight like the film thing (This even led to the film thing!).

    After a long time I've come to the conclusion that there's no human with just science. Art in every form is equally if not more important. I enjoy the human experience and want to learn more about it. I want to understand others. I want to create art I am proud of. 

Conclusion

    I want this stupid little blog to serve as a very primitive foundation for the kinds of things that interest me and what I want from my art.

    From a more personal side, I want to look at this blog post twenty years from now and think "Wow...drunk-cuddling with friends for the first time was life changing." 

    I could talk about a lot of things right now — like how watching Superman 2025 (a very "Hopecore" movie in my eyes) and adopting some ecosocialist rhetoric happened literally days before I could properly see the beauty and magnificence behind my fellow human's eyes — but I think some conversations are just for myself.    

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being bad at "making" things

    In the Markiplier episode of Chuckle Sandwich, near the end of the podcast, Mark goes into this monologue about his relationship with making things. I just want to cement a manual transcription of it:

 I was about the same age when I had the same thing. I was about 27. I hit my goal. I wanted to be a big YouTuber. I hit it. Then another year goes by and you're like, "Okay. Now what?" I'm not saying it's the same situation, but before I started doing any other kind of project — cause you gotta remember that for me that was still 8 years ago. There were many years after I hit my goal where I was happy that I hit my goal, and then I got progressively sadder because there was no where left to climb. And it took me a very long time to realize that it wasn't that I wanted to make movies, it wasn't that I wanted to make a choose-your-own-adventure. It's that thought back to why I actually started in the first place. And why I actually started was not to be a big YouTuber. It's because everything in my life was out of control, and every single thing that was going on in my life before I started YouTube was out of my control. I had nothing to hold onto. I got laid off my job, I had a terrible relationship, I had my appendix was removed and during that they found a tumor in my adrenal gland — like all these things were out of my control and I felt miserable that I had nothing to show for all the years I had been alive for up until that point. It was like, “If I don't find something, I will never be happy.” and that's why I started YouTube. Even after I hit my goal on YouTube and I had kind of thought about — this is still like 3 years I'm condensing a lot into a very long period of time — But even that started with baby steps like “If I want to make something and take control of my life and do something that I feel is fulfilling, what is that?” So I just did the same thing when I started YouTube. I didn't start with YouTube! I tried a bunch of things. I tried making a comic, programming a game, I tried learning new different languages, I tried y'know making art — I switched majors from engineering to art school to see if it would make a difference. I tried again and again. I started wanting to do Freddie W. stuff and Corridor — didn't work, didn't know how to do any of that and then but with what I do now it started because my brother said hey some people like to watch people play video games, and I was like alright I'll try that, don't think it'll go anywhere. It wasn't like I had this burning passion for reacting and play games — I love playing games and I like doing that stuff. But it was about hey this is something that I can do and at that point I could do nothing so I might as well start here. And then, the same kind of adventure started again when I realized I had hit that goal. Very long time horizons. Lot of time to self discovery, but it's like yeah that's what led me to here. Just constantly trying to find that thing I could hold on to.

    That was probably incoherent as fuck for a multitude of reasons, most of them being my terrible grammar, but woah. The best part of this episode was that that wasn't even the coolest thing he said. This time, I'm not going to quote it directly so I can jog my noggin a little and make some sense, but he says something along the lines of:

    I have sat in a studio dripping with sweat and crying my eyes out in a studio alone for days, but I would go home after that day and go back to the studio the next day. The fact that I had a bad day has nothing to do with my goal, but obviously I can't always ignore it. I believe that this idea needs every ounce of energy I can produce, or it won't be as good as I want it to be. It deserves every ounce of my energy because I know what it's like to have the ability to make stripped away from your being.

    I, until now, have never even thought of that as an approach. I've had months when I sat in front of a computer for 7 hours from morning to evening working on a game, but once it was done, I didn't like it? Being a “smart kid” since you were young leaves you really miserable until you learn that cool stuff takes time and effort to really learn.

    I've always said that hey I may not be the smartest person in the room, but I have confidence in my ability to digest new concepts thrown at me and then using them. In the past few months, though, I've really had that ability put to the test. All that confidence turned into anguish very quickly when I had to face the inevitable: “Hey, maybe this is too much? I'm not having fun anymore.”

    School has also really taken its toll on me. I am not a good student. I hardly study even right before exams, and it shows on every report card. One could say I don't know how to study because I've never needed to, but that's a lie. I'm just terrible at giving tests: I get anxious, stressed out and end up with a migraine right before the exam, which isn't very helpful. It doesn't help that I resent every element of the modern education system, either. But I don't have much time anymore to complain. So what do you do when you don't know what to do?

    I guess my first advice to myself would be that you have nothing concrete you want to work towards in the next month or 6 months or even year. All your plans span over half decades and aren't even really plans, they're just abstract ideas.

    To that, I would say, well, what's the point of an objective that goes on so long? I've had many projects which I've put my heart and soul into only to ditch it the next chance I've gotten because I found something new. Why should I spend so much time and energy into something when I don't even know if I can do something with what I learn? Why should I waste my time?

    And finally, it's to THAT paragraph that Markiplier talks to: Please love what you do or find something you love to do.

    I think I've only realized it now, but it'll take time to learn to not run in the face of effort when I'm trying something new. Recently, I've been trying to learn Rust, and it has been a new fucking experience. This is easily like the third time I've tried to get into it, but the difference is that before I would come across a topic and go: “Oh I don't know what this is and don't want to read the paragraph carefully explaining it all, so I'll just go back to python.” I am happy to say that I am now on chapter 9.2 of the Rust book.

    This post is much more train of thought than previous ones (I don't know, the other ones I had like planned to write. With this one, I just sat down and thought: "I must write something"), but that's mostly because I just wanted to give myself a real opportunity to talk about stuff I am rarely comfortable talking to people about in a way that doesn't sound like I read too much. Also, I really like Chuckle Sandwich.

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new smaller plans

     Welcome back everyone! Apologies for being gone for sooo long :3

    I was working on a bunch of long ass blogs and then realized it was all for nothing, because I didn’t know enough about the topic to be able to write something worth writing. And so I started reading about all of it. That didn’t help either because the research for “The game development of darksouls” is going to take longer than a day! So I kind of needed a break before going back in again.   

    Now, though, I have an idea for the blog and how I want to do stuff in the future. Currently, I just write and do stuff or make stuff whenever I feel like it, which isn’t very productive or helpful or efficient or anything else other than “quick and easy”.

    Through my ~17 years of existence, I’ve come to learn that I enjoy learning things and using that knowledge (by making something or teaching) than anything else I’ve done. And I want this blog to be a testament to that statement. That was the idea before as well, but it didn’t have enough time in the oven for me to actually structure myself around it.

    So what’s going to change? Well, for you, dear reader-you’ll just get a monthly blog where I talk about what I’ve learned and made. And for me? I’m going to be working on ONE thing every month and write a blog post on it.

    I struggle with studying a lot. It’s not because the material isn’t interesting (although I do have many concerns about its usefulness and why this specifically was chosen) or I don’t understand but that I low-key might have ADD (ADHD without the H) and so I get distracted even when I don’t want to, by myself! When I’m working, I’ll have seemingly random thoughts about different fields and projects and rabbit holes to go down. For a normal person, you can just tune that shit out, but for me, it’s just not that simple.

    I just need to have some tangible creative output, so I don’t get depressed and also be able to meet deadlines and stuff for school. I feel like this to-be-tested solution is the beat shot I have.

    Normally, when I want to make something, I just use AI to get a tangible end product out as soon as possible and then never think about it again. But it feels wrong to me even when I’m doing it. Like I’m cheating knowledge? And it isn’t like I’m going to be tested on this or anything, either. It’s for myself, because I find the subject (for example: shader art coding or emulators) interesting.

    But what ends up happening is that with unfinished school work and tests piling up every second along with a lot of stress accumulated from my pretty shit home life, I end up feeling like I need to just have a final product and that’s all that matters.
But it doesn’t. It leaves me with superficial knowledge that is just enough to kill my joy of the subject.

It is the entire process of invention that distills into me a happiness not even the greatest high could.

    And so, with just one thing to work on, I will have more order in my life and be able to manage studying with being a person. And I lived happily ever after. THE END. See you all at the end of the month with the first blog post that is about what I learned and made!! I’m excited.

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opinions on a level subjects

    Compared to other education systems like the IB system, the A/O levels is much more test based than skill based. For example, comparing A-level physics and IB physics (High Level) shows me the following differences between the two course syllabus: 

    A level physics has no choice for "addition" practical studies in the fields of engineering, astrophysics, etc. and it has no requirement for an internally graded "investigation and write-up of 6 to 12 pages" (whatever that means). The syllabus for IB physics is also a lot broader and in lesser detail than A level physics, which has a few things it goes into rigorous detail in. The amount of information you need to absorb and retain in A level physics is also much higher. Generally, the IB physics stuff is also more interdisciplinary.

    I'm not an IB student or anything, so that's just what I know from looking up stuff and reading PDFs.

Anyways!

    People who are just starting A level are asking me a lot about what subjects to chose and what not to go anywhere near. I'm not a business student or anything, so I can't explain what that's like just yet. I'll try and explain as generally as I can the "why" and "why not" as to what subjects you could pick. But schools have different approaches to subjects, and so do teachers! So take these as guidelines and personal opinion

 

    General Advice

     You have to understand that you're not taking these subjects because you like them or want to study them. You're taking them because you have to give an exam on them that you have to score high in. A lot of these subjects have a lot of weird ass things you have to grasp before you even understand the model of the subject that the syllabus is trying to force down your throat. It's a model that has a mix of "practical", "should know for university", and "can be tested". For this reason, I wouldn't recommend taking the subject because it does unironically ruin the fun of the subject for a lot of people, including myself. Doing past papers makes me want to kill myself, and that's what you'll be doing for a majority of the course. You don't need to understand complex stuff, just do enough past papers so that you look like you're competent, and you'll do fine, in school exams at least.

    The Cambridge syllabus and everything says it doesn't look at it like that, though. You should go "beyond the syllabus" according to them, having 2 years to cover something as detailed and intricate as Chemistry or Physics or Biology totally works out!

1. Chemistry

    Generally, chemistry is one of those "don't pick it unless you wanna kill yourself" type of subjects. I took chemistry for about a week before I decided to drop the subject at the start of my A1. I will explain this choice, I love chemistry. My teacher was really cool too. Same goes for O level chemistry. But like I said before, managing so many difficult subjects while also wanting to pursue things to find interesting in general is much harder than it looks. I dropped chemistry because I wanted to be more social and have hobbies I wanted to work on.

1. Physics

       I love physics as well, generally. A level physics makes me want to kill myself as well, but for something like a mechatronics degree, most universities want you to have taken physics. I've exclusively studied from the book. I don't use notes. I don't like my teacher. Recently, I finally started raw dogging the subject, and I'm kinda(?) enjoying it so far.

2. Biology

       Biology is one of the very few subjects the A level course does justice to a pretty good extent. The course is basically a deeper dive into the topics covered in O level. But the problem is that most schools don't let you take the subject unless you plan on going into medical. PLUS you'll struggle to understand a lot of concepts in the subject without something like chemistry.
   

3. Math

       Math remains math. I would recommend it if you like math as a subject and generally want to do something in the future that needs it. It requires a lot of brain power and thinking during tests and practicing questions relatively frequently, but that's about it.
   
   

   Humanities

       Generally, Psychology, Global Perspectives, Media Studies and Politics are more preferred subjects than Literature, Sociology, Environmental Management, Law, Art and Design, and History by students.

       The teachers of a humanities subject, for me, matters much more than a science related subject.
   

       World History, Literature and Law are really time-consuming subjects that I wouldn't recommend unless it's like "your thing".

       Sociology is not the same as Psychology. Both of them have their ratta and thinking sections but Sociology has way more ratta than the other.

       The exam criteria for Art and Design is really weird. No one in our school's history has ever gotten above a B in Arts!! But if you like the subject, that shouldn't matter to you.
   

   
   

     

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