1. Get Money. Seems I need to start very soon. I have enough cash to get me gas for the next three weeks, then I'll have to begin begging or not going to classes.

2. Follow through with the 4-Hour Body program. I've started, and until this past weekend was cooking large daily batches of lentils. But I've been having trouble getting my workout schedule on track.

3. House renovations. Some stuff is still dragging on from last summer.

4. Get my stuff out of Bryce's room before the end of the summer, so that he can really have his own room before he graduates from High School.

5. One-week adventure with the Cousins. Still a secret from my parents, even though the resort reservation is set. One of the challenges will be to make sure Bryce can go.

6. Linear Algebra. I took my one and only course on the subject Fall of 2005, but I remember remembering enough to give advice to people up to two years ago. Now I can't. I think I gave away my copy of Lay's Linear Algebra to the library last fall, though it might really be in Ross' basement.

That's my top six, which is already seeming like too much (I have the eerie feeling #1 will dominate or not take place at all.) Here are some others I may take up, if they fit.

C, R, Perl, Ruby, Python--become great (really: solidly intermediate) at one.
Continue towards fluency in Japanese.
Start learning to draw.
IFS.
Core Transformation.
Visit friends in the DC area.
Visit friends in the Boston area.
Visit friends in NYC!

I'm taking classes this summer too, and they'll take up a great deal of my time, but I'm not sweating them at all.

I have had trouble sleeping the past few nights. At about six this morning, after many hours of restless delirium, I decided to do something else besides sneeze and entangle the blankets further. I have this unfinished letter to a friend, and I have already spent too many words trying to simultaneously find out and explain what I like about cities. It's hard because I'm really trying to sum up the closest thing I've ever had in my life to romance.

I try to be indifferent, otherwise the terrorists win.

Challenges: missed mid-day class; late to see Angela, and ended up paying for parking instead of becoming later; they took out the potatoes I was cooking too early and they were still hard; missed class in the morning; while talking to Angela and Deepika, I noticed my posture was really nervous/scared

Accomplishments: cooked dinner, however poorly

Learning: pan frying chicken breast is not hard, but "medium" in the recipe is more like "medium-low" on the burners at home

Luck: old guy was leaving parking garage level 2 just as I was pulling in; Angela and I ran into Deepika at Halo Pub

Today I got together with Angela again in Princeton. I ran late, as usual, but instead of delaying further to either hunt for or walk from free parking, I just pulled into the paid parking garage. There were no seats at Small World, so I suggested the cafe in the library. Angela started wondering if Halo Pub was still there, so I suggested we go there instead.

Just a few minutes after we sat down (and were about to get to Angela's version of "how to find out what to do with my life") a woman called from across the aisle. It turned out to be Deepika, who went to High School North with Angela, and who had been in the same Freshman class before the split. I recognized her face, though I was pretty certain I hadn't talked to her much 1998-1999.

After asking what we were up to these days (I stammered something about "Rutgers Statistics [something] [something] scared of school nervous, hahaha") Deepika invited us over to the booth where she was sitting. She had some pretty interesting stories to tell--her parents moved to Saudi Arabia when she was still in high school, and she had to fight to get them to stay long enough so she could attend Senior Prom. Much of the time was Deepika complaining about the meanness of the doctors at Penn, where she is doing her residency, and lack of dating prospects when you spend all your time in the O.R. or the I.C.U.

"Once you leave college and med school," she joked, "You miss your chance..."

Angela and I learned some things about the whereabouts of classmates from high school. Josh Andrews is stationed in Cuba, Dan Winclecter's in L.A., and Nate's in Deepika's program ("I'm going to be his boss!" she declared, "Well, next year.") And Jen--well Jen's the same; she hasn't really changed.

It was a pretty lighthearted conversation, which I was glad about. I struggled a little bit to contribute in an understandable manner, and I think I managed to confuse both of them with poor attempts at humor or relevant anecdotes. I think they were both amused about my story from four and a half years ago, about how I ended up going on a date and didn't realize it was a date!

"You should contact her! You never know," they both urged, even once they learned it was four years ago.

"Well, I think she's in D.C. now," I thought, hesitantly.

"It's almost Valentine's Day," Deepika added.

"I'm firmly against uninronic Valentine's day," I flatly declared.

"Well, I guess. Yeah, all the cool guys say that, don't they," Deepika said, thoughtfully. "But you should contact her anyway. Was she pretty?"

"Yeah, I guess so," I said, hesitantly.

"Well, if if that's only a maybe..." Deepika said.

"Okay, yeah, she was pretty," I admitted. And they laughed.

These days, I'm pretty awkward, socially. Once upon a time, in New York City, I managed to stay a step ahead of that awkwardness for the most part, but that didn't make me any less scared of people. I'm still kind of scared of people. I get embarrassed really easily, and when I feel I'm not charismatic or memorable or fun enough, a kind of quiet shame begins to eat away at my ability to enjoy company. I'd say that I left about two-thirds of all the parties I've ever attended at least tense, and often ended up horribly depressed for days.

I think I did an okay job of not getting mired in all those issues tonight. I guess something that helped me--I guess it's easier for me to admit--outside of LiveJournal!--that I'm scared, that I'm nervous. Sometimes it's easier to type out about how nervous I am than to admit it or notice it on the spot. I don't want to be nervous! I don't want to be scared! I want to be one of those people who are caring, compassionate, and considerate, but also really comfortable all the time. I tend to feel bad when I feel like I'm not living up to that, which is really most of the time. But I wonder if hiding it just makes things worse. And, really, I'm tired of hiding what I don't have to. SO freaking tired.

As we parted on Witherspoon Street, Deepika, gave me a good hug. I was a little surprised--I knew she would hug Angela, but I almost expected that she would just wave at me awkwardly and politely. But I guess I was okay enough for a hug. She reiterated her invitation for us to come visit her in Philadelphia.

"It's a party every day," she said with a nod.

I feigned interest--well, maybe if I end up actually being able to afford it sometime.

On the way to our own cars, I said to Angela, "Yeah, I guess I am kind of nervous about our 10 year reunion." Technically, if it actually does happen, each of our high schools will probably have its own get-together but since we were the first class to get split, the North reunion will probably end up being crashed by South kids and vice versa.

"Yeah," Angela said, slowly. "I was really worried about my Brown reunion. Then I went there and everyone was just going to law school. It was like, 'What are you doing? Oh? Law school? You're in law school too? Oh, and you too...'"

"Anyway, if I don't see you next week, then the week after, right?" Angela said.

"Sure," I said. Hugs.

"Goodnight!"

"Goodnight."

And I walked around the block so she wouldn't notice I'd actually parked in the garage.

Seriously, screw you.

I'll use the same categories as my daily roundup.

Challenges:

Blue Sansa Clip that Adam gave me has become unusable--freezing/hanging in menus requiring hard resets, taking immense times to refresh the music database. It helped me a lot while it worked, and I got it for free (thanks again Adam) so I'm not too upset. I ordered a new clip, which is on the way.

I loaded Durarara! audio and a few lovely Japanese readings of Sherlock Holmes stories onto the Red Sansa clip, which sadly does not have the battery life of its youth. It lasts about four hours before running out of battery. I think this will be fine once the new Sansa clip comes, since I will mostly use the Red clip for playing music in the car.

Over the holidays, between visiting cousins, drama, and studying for the interview I had a few days ago, I neglected almost every aspect of AJATT--listening, reading, and SRS. I hit the doldrums for about a week, the whole thing particularly exacerbated by the short battery life on the Red Clip (which has served as the foundation of my environment from the beginning).

However, I am piecing things together right now.

Accomplishments:

In the past few days, I have been doing really consistent reviews in my Lazy Kanji ("lazy-rtk") Anki deck, using a surprisingly effective trick. Reviewing fifty cards consistently is a lot for me--I've done hundreds before, but only when setting aside very deliberate and large chunks of time to do reviews. And since I'm reviewing fairly mature cards, it's not going to dump huge amounts of reviews on me on some future week.

Learning

So, what's been working with SRS? Here it is: I focus on having Anki open on my computer, and every once a while, when I feel lost, or would otherwise visit some random (English) webpage, I do a few reps. When I reflexively type in a webpage that I'm blocking with Stay Focused, like Facebook, G+, or any number of webcomics, I switch over and do a few reps.

I say, "A few reps" because that's what happens, but all I plan to do is one. One becomes several, and sometimes one becomes 20+.

All I'm doing is linking doing SRS repetitions to behaviors I do all the time, and even behaviors I have trouble avoiding. And, damn, it works!

(I am thinking right now: what if I could get Stay Focused to forward me to Anki Web when I tried to visit one of my restricted sites? Would that work even better?)

I also got a chance to review a lot of the AJATT (blog) material. Sometimes, I'm kind of tense about Japanese exposure--afraid that I'll never get it. But, you know what, AJATT is all about chilling the bleep out and taking small, calm, patient actions, instead of being anxious.

Patience is silently busying yourself with doing things that help.

(from here)

And another thing--hyping up how great AJATT is, how many lessons in working it's given me actually helps me stick to it! (And yeah, I do more than just stick!) I wonder if it's that way for people who hype weight loss or fitness programs too.

Luck

Around the time of Singularity Summit last fall, I stopped being aware of new music. Dang! I made sure to get two albums:

DocumentaLy by サカナクション (lots of singles I'd been jamming to already)
Prog-Roid by school food punishment (came out last August--how'd I miss that?)

Yeah, and in terms of luck, I'm glad that I occasionally get emails of old AJATT posts sent to my inbox (I think--it's whenever he edits an old post, it updates in the feed and/or sends out email.)

Next

I'd like to do a few, key upgrades on my immersion environment--have cool Japanese websites pop up at scheduled intervals.

One thing I'd like to get to, but am a little scared of: replying to a bunch of Japanese speakers on MyLanguageExchange. I've gotten 15 or so messages from potential conversation partners. I'm somewhat anxious about actually setting something up on Skype--I'm worried I couldn't have a conversation without some kind of real-world context. I also don't have a decent webcam or microphone!

But I wouldn't let that kind of stuff stop me, if I weren't worried about embarrassing myself. So--let's do it!

Last and biggest thing: acquiring more reading material. I have so much audio, and there is a lot of reading material on the web, but these days I really prefer to read stuff on my NOOK, and Instapaper essentially lets you compile your own ebooks from webpages!

But very annoyingly, a lot of great Japanese webpages (translations of classic English lit especially) are in Shift-JIS encoding instead of Unicode. And my NOOK definitely only correcly displays Japanese in UTF-8.

I have not run into a decent converter anywhere... will I have to cook one up?

After the interview, I took a crowded 6 train to Union Square walked down Third Avenue. The caffeine, and whatever other kind of assorted stimulants in the canned "energy" cocktail I'd bought on the train station had already begun to wear off. They had left a trough in my demeanor, a slouch, a suitable vessel for whatever melancholic residues might fall from the dissolved memories.

Small pieces of a complicated puzzle dotted this familiar stretch. Yes, Blue 9 is still there, I ate there with Doris, I think. There's Third North, where Eric lived during our freshman year nearly ten years ago. We attempted to watch his VHS collection of Neon Genesis Evangelion but never finished. Look, Around the Clock Diner's been replaced. I'd arrived in the park in Cooper Square with a bat I'd bought from the Modell's just a few block uptown, after reading Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Some homeless guys asked me why I was carrying a bat and I made up a story about it being a present for a nephew who was a baseball prodigy.

And so on.

He had so much, this person whose memories I have. He had so much except for the determination to move forward even in temporary wrongness, except for guts to say, "I was wrong. I'm done fighting this world. Let's make a new one, right here." Instead, he left when he didn't have to, then for three years went nowhere. He had everything to make that new world, this stranger whose stories I inherit.

The places in front of me felt so distant yesterday. A haze of chemical and confusion obscured my vision when, only a few months ago, I'd tried to reimagine these streets and avenues as my home again. Yesterday I paid my respects in the catacombs to the ghosts of strangers.

I still have these books with me, from this foggy past. How shall I write in the margins?

Adam and I started watching Fairy Tail when I was visiting back in March. The major characters in the story, as wizards, often used magic that corresponded to different elements.

Adam and I talked about the various people in the NYC group, and what magic I would use. Will would probably use stone magic that would give him extra durability and strength as he did hard-hitting martial arts and acrobatic moves. Zvi—Zvi probably used something really fearsome and difficult to understand, like time-manipulation magic. We thought of a continually frustrated, brooding fellow and laughed that he'd definitely use some kind of creepy death magic. I think we gave Divia healing magic--though she deserves some sort of arcane-as-hell healing magic than the usual touchy-feely mystical kind.

Adam decided on ice magic for himself—cool, structured, meticulous, I thought it fit him. He asked me what kind of magic I would use. I wasn't sure. Wind, maybe, I guessed. Maybe? I wasn't sure.

A few episodes later the protagonist encountered the first major wind-magic user—a villain—and I regretted my answer. The wind-user gave the male lead character some trouble, but overall I found him pretty lame and kind of hollow.

Since then I've wondered about metaphors for myself. I've always played a support role. Maybe I'm some sort of healer too? I think I'm good at it--so good that when I try out new, formal methods (like NVC) they don't always work as well as me just talking and empathizing and asking questions like I always have. (I just have to make sure not to other-optimize.) I easily set aside what I'm doing or worrying about to help people I care about. When I listen, I suddenly feel much stronger than I am normally. My anxieties about talking to people go away. This is all probably connected to the way I've tried to understand people since I was very young-- in context, as whole people with hearts and minds and worries and flaws, as characters in their own stories. Some people are lame, bigoted, ignorant, indifferent, uncaring, narrow-minded and yet even they fascinate me. Part of me wants to understand even their hate and sadness in context; all flaws, if you want to call them that, are still part of the whole.

I like looking at people as complex characters, and often I enjoy the right kind of gossip, and, yes, conjecture on what kind of magic each would use if we lived in a world like that of Fairy Tail.

I've gone through this semester attempting to make my efforts more predictably efficient, more conscientious. Working at things gradually, like water. Or growing in a sustainably and flexibly, like wood. Maybe these are my elements?

But no: in the end, I discovered that my soul is fire.

What kind of magic do you think you would use? What do you use for every day things? What actually powers you, deep inside? Do you live a life that embraces or denies this?