It's been over a month since my last update but I finally have some time to write again. To set the scene, it's about 2am on Saturday night here - I didn't do too much today, just went to the BfTB tourney and then chatted on Discord with 'dre. It's fine though, the past few weekends have been so hectic that I was looking forward to a weekend with few commitments.
I didn't quite feel up to writing this blog post at first but realized that it's important - especially if I do have the time. Above all else, it's important to record this memory of who I was in this moment or else I'm scared it'll be lost forever as time progresses. You could say I'm too obsessed with the past but maybe I'm just scared of forgetting who I was and where I came from. I still don't believe that we should always be trying to live in the present moment - we need to reflect on our goals and motivation as we go through life. I still owe the high-school "me" a novel that promised to write and this sense of continuity is a big part of what makes us human (in my opinion, but who else's could it be?)
Anyway, on the more practical front, life has been busy with a plethora of interviews at (mostly) startups + finishing up Sudoku research with ??. Though I didn't get as many offers as I hoped, I think I did make some interesting connections that might bear fruit later on and think I satisfied my curiosity about what's out there. I'm still waiting to hear back from DM which might be the most likely candidate for me to take (though it's not really a pure "startup" in that sense). I also realized that I really don't feel that interested in my current position/team especially in the longer term horizon (ie. next year). I think staying until the end of this year is fine (have some interesting projects to ramp up like RS) but staying next year really doesn't seem that useful from a growth point of view (though maybe from a financial point of view). Anyway, I just want to make this clear incase I do end up staying anyway and try to do some mental gymnastics to claim I really am OK with my current job.
To be fair, it's not so much that my current job is bad but rather that I'm just not learning much. Also, we only have a finite amount of time in life (and my long-term goal is to just move back to ??), so I want to spend it researching/studying topics I'm really interested in - such as more brain-inspired models for AI. This is doubly true if I have the financial cushion to do so - as I've always said to myself, there's no "prize" for just "surviving" or getting through life and having it be just OK. What really matters in the end is if you were proud of how you spent your time and felt that you were challenged by worthy goals (both mental and physical).
Continuing this train of thought, I've also been more inspired on the philosophical side of things - such as reading science/philosophy books about the nature of existence. I don't want to come off as a pretentious intellectual or something - at the end of the day, no one really knows the why existence, well, "exists". But, it's interesting to ponder sometimes. Basically, the big overarching question of "Why is there something rather than nothing?". Some cool books I've read on this topic are "Our Mathematical Universe" (Max Tegmark) and just watching a lot of Closer to Truth videos on youtube. That being said, I'm still more of the "scientist" mindset myself and would rather spend my time on ideas which are within our grasp and can be tested via the scientific method. But, big questions are fun (and fill me with existential dread) to think about once in a while.
Hmm...what else? Dating has been going well, I was a bit annoyed after getting ghosted by Z when I thought we hit it off but things with R have actually been really nice. I'm still not sure if being in a relationship is really necessary for my happiness/fulfillment but I suppose it's worth exploring. I still kind of think that my cadence for spending time with an S.O. is probably just like 1-2 times a week and perhaps more for the sense of security rather than really caring that much about interacting. But, who knows, perhaps my view on such things will change in the future...
Anyway, I suppose that's it for now, for the next month I just want to focus on relaxing and catching up with friends. Hopefully spend time on more creative pursuits like writing (and continue to play badminton which is something I've come to really enjoy again). Overall, I would say life is pretty good right now but, as always, I can't stop being worried about the bigger picture and what (if anything) it all means.
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