Today I am focusing on how I feel. This post is inspired by Ady and I would have published it earlier but a lot of things got in the way and I actually haven't had a chance to sit down and just think about how I feel. I'm going to try a new format, which is just Wispr Flowing this entire post, because I have been super busy with all the life story interview stuff and I need to make sure that I go to sleep on time.

Okay, in terms of how I feel, it's kind of surreal to think that Inkhaven is finishing soon. I remember it feels like just a couple of days ago that I got here and it's kind of crazy to think that I've been here for about a month now and May is coming and I turned down Prague. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I think how I feel about that decision will depend on how I use May so it's really up to me, right, to make that the right decision. I guess I don't believe in things inherently just being the right or wrong decision a lot of the time. I think often times you have to make the decision that you made the right one. I don't know if this applies universally but it is just something to think about.

Yeah I have been thinking about how Inkhaven is basically almost over, which is insane. I've also been thinking about what I want to do for May. I have a lot of planning and thinking that I need to do there in terms of actually making sure that I do the things that I have told myself I need to do, like studying linear algebra, studying how LLMs work, etc. These are things that I said I would do at ERA in Cambridge, then I said I would do them at Inkhaven, and now I have given myself the month of May to do nothing except the things that I need to do. I have no excuse now; there is no writing deadline; there is nothing; there is just me and my goals and the need to make progress on them, and it is going to be impossible for me to make excuses.

I'm also thinking about whether or not I should take a trip to Mexico City. I think I am leaning yes. I'm going to be calling Dad to see if I can get a flight booked, but I think I will just try to make sure that I am extra productive the other weeks so that I don't have to do a trade-off here, which is like always what I tell myself, right? It's like, 'Oh I can do everything; I can do both things; I don't have to make trade-offs,' and I think this has served me well in some respects. I think there is a limit to its application, and I think there is a lot of value in just having weeks where you just fully commit to something. That is going to be the rest of May, but I think one week in Mexico City, to become immersed in Spanish again, to see all the cultural things that I studied in high school in person, and to have that experience with friends, is going to be pretty valuable.

Now I think I've strayed from the prompt of thinking about how I feel and focusing on how I feel into rambly future planning territory. I think, to some degree, it's interesting to me how nomative determinism is just so viscerally present in my life. I think it is interesting to me that I oftentimes can't seem to live in the present or that there's always a part of my brain that is like living in the future. I've written about this a bit and I think that I have always been very concerned about my future self but there are limits to that as well, right? It's like you can't always be optimizing for your future self; you; that future self at some point becomes you and it's like, where does the optimization end? I don't know if I have an answer to this. I think oftentimes people just say, 'Oh you should have more fun' and I think I've been doing this so I'm not even sure if this is a problem or if I just don't think it's a problem. I just think it's kind of interesting that my middle name is Future and that this is the kind of person that I've grown up to become. I don't actually believe in nomative determinism but that's a whole other side to focusing on how I feel.

Seems like I'm going on a lot of rambling tangents, which might be a sign of anxiety, which is very plausible. I think I'm a little bit anxious about how things are going to turn out in May; there's a lot of uncertainty there or I'm not super anxious. I think I have a clear set of goals and I will be doing a lot more planning on this and mapping out how I'm going to be spending my time. I think I am pretty excited to have a month to myself. I don't know if I can think of another instance during which I just gave myself a month. This is, wow, actually pretty formative/pivotal over the past four years. I have not done this once. As soon as I graduated high school it was like one week later I flew to Cambridge for research and then two days after finishing Cambridge I flew to SAF and Berkeley to do Inkhaven and it's like wow. I did not realize how averse I was to giving myself unstructured time until I thought about it and I almost didn't give myself May, right? I like almost went to prog for a fine and sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I did that but I think I made the right decision because I'm actually really, really excited to see what I can do with free time. For the first time I think I'd like to do more of this. I like to give myself more unstructured time but stupid constraints like, 'Oh I probably can't just go to SF and spend all my time there,' have been historically what's been the problem.

I think I will also give myself the month between August and September, between MATS and starting at Stanford. I'm excited to think about what I could do in that time. I think also I'm going to have to think really hard about what I actually want to do in terms of: do I want to apply to Roots in Progress? What I want to spend my time doing? Is writing something that I really, really care about? Is improving and writing something that I think is top priority? I'm not sure because thinking about career paths, yes I think writing is great but I think for the things that I want to do it is maybe not the most useful thing. And so Roots in Progress I'm not sure. We'll have to think long and hard about it and I think I will have to do that thinking before I feel the application because a lot of times I'm like, 'Oh I should just fill out this application for optionality' and then it's so easy to just accept the acceptance, right? It's like, but you kind of just have to stop yourself and really consider what it is that you want to do. I think I haven't really been in touch with that in a long while. Or I think there's always been a part of me that's known what I want to do but I have sort of been ignoring that person, which is not good.

Okay this is probably 500 words now but I guess closing thoughts: I have a lot of thinking to do, a lot of planning to do. I'm really excited to give myself unstructured free time for, like, basically the first time in several years. I think it's going to be really interesting. I'm also excited to go back home for a couple of weeks and I'm excited to go to Mexico City. Maybe I'm like going to figure that out right now but yeah.

One other closing thought is: I find that I am facing many of the same problems that I was facing two months ago. I think this is really frustrating, and I'm going to try to solve them. Namely, sleep-taking medication, drinking water. These are all very basic things, very subtle problems, and they would measurably improve my life by 10%, 20%, 30%. Quite frankly, I think if I fix sleep, I would be 3x more productive. And this is a ridiculous thing. So yeah, on that note, I'm going to finish this Wispr Flow. I'm going to go to sleep, and um, yay, didn't get kicked out of Inkhaven.