2024-12-30 Journal Entry

Today is going to be one of those posts where I really just say essentially nothing of real importance here.

As much as I’ve been on a real kick about taking risks and working on my hobbies and so on, I haven’t actually done all that much of that so far. The edifying thing for me is that I’m looking into poking around with algorithmic trading strategies, and I haven’t even gone so far as to set up a simple script and now I’m like well it’s time to call it quits. That sucks ass, frankly. What’s there to lose? Not much.

There’s of course the fear of failure, and somewhat importantly for that one the fear of losing money. While I have gotten better about reasoning about money thus far, I’m still a bit nervous about making my resources last for a while. But even in the algo trading example, one can always back test or run strategies on fake money, so that’s not a real thing. But then that just seems like a “waste of time.” But time is in fact the one thing I really can be wasting right now. And perhaps even the bigger waste of time is the time spent worrying about wasting time. That seems like an efficient usage of time when it’s really just a bigger waste of time. Both sides likely fall into this trap somewhere: impulsive people waste time by not running in a straight line, and anxious people waste time by not actually using their time at all. I’d probably posit that the impulsive people have the better end of that deal, but that’s coming from someone who falls clearly into the anxious camp, and the grass is always greener.

One thing is weird is just how little we feel our bodies. When I get high, I can feel my torso in much higher fidelity than I normally can. There’s something odd about really feeling into the side of your waist, into your back, and so on. I’ve also been working out more lately, which has a similar result: you may not know all the muscles in your body but you will when they’re all sore.

Anyways, I don’t really have much more to say right now. I wish I did have more to say. How silly it feels to be in the world like this and have nothing to say about it. Who needs ghosts and monster and faeries to exist when a world such as this is just outside your window. But that feels somewhat intellectual to say. The honest-to-god truth is that a lot of times I feel like the world is not beautiful but instead is overbearing. On an intellectual level I can attribute that anxiety to a recognition that the world is inherently open and uncaring, that so many belief systems are simply attempts at railing against that grand uncaring-ness, but perhaps at the end of the day they’re all just paperings-over.

I can sometimes convince myself that compassion is the answer, but sometimes it also feels like even compassion is limited, an enforced way of looking at the world. One can be correct and sad, wrong but happy, or correct and neither happy nor sad. I’m not convinced that that’s really true – the “wrong but happy” option is likely “wrong but happy-on-the-surface-but-in-a-rather-fleeting-and-surface-level-type-of-way,” and the real, honest-to-god, Actually Happy happiness is what that last neither-happy-nor-unhappy option probbaly is.

I am once again sitting here mulling over writing. How hard it must be to write books about people who defy the odds when you yourself haven’t defied any thing either.

The story I love most, I think, is Grendel – someone who doesn’t try to be good or to try and fix the whole world, but rather someone who tries to be wholly themselves. And whether or not that’s a good thing, I don’t really even know, but it certainly makes for an admirable character. It’s Crazy Wisdom in action for Grendel, as he tosses himself into the deepest darkest depths of anger and hostility only to be slain, to shriek and tear at the castle walls far from his own understanding. To grow not into what he wanted but into what he had to be.