Helluva grind today March 18th 2025. Woke up early around 7am, got ready, and had a quick breakfast. Eggs and bacon and oatmeal with plenty of fruit. Yum. Rushed off to Psyc 125 to take the final. Took a few micronaps to keep my focus up after the first 40 questions, then powered through the rest and double checked my answers. Caught a couple questions and finished the thing around 9:15. And then -- I was free. I walked back to my dorm and talked to Sasha and Shruti as they got up and I made some coffee. Half caff, so a single in a double volume. Wasn't sure I needed the extra pep from a proper double.
Okay, fine. I was sort of free. I still had another writing assignment for CMPM 80K which I procrastinated on for the early afternoon. But I had the chatbots on my side to help me analyze some of the required reading and I just wrote from the helpful outline. Something something persistence of tactile mechanical work something something. I like to type.
The rest of the day slides into fog from there, but not altogether messy. I did lots of photo editing (specifically for colors). Me and Sasha went down to Porter Dining for dinner since they were serving fish tacos. Some of the Hitchcock Lounge people were seated already snd I tbink Micah waved us down when we popped out of the serving area and into the tables. So we sat and ate and of course I took photos first. (As I would later find this would be a bit of a challenge; manual focus on a 55mm f/1.2 at f/2.8 on a GF2 with a close up filter was tricky.) I felt a little twinge of desperation but mostly hope and presence. Micah seated the right, Mohammad right across. Mohammad had red painted nails. It suited him, and I told him I liked the color. Tess painted them for him yesterday, on her birthday. Thinking about Micah now, as I lie on my side in bed, I easily see the soft skin and plump lips and sweet voice again. But at the table all I could think of was how ordinary he was, how transient he was in a group not my own, how his spark of humor in "brainrot" memes was the spark I used to have in the immediate year before COVID. In this correction and realignment, my present thoughts now dragged back to the past and back to present again, I now assert I see bits and pieces of my previous self in Sasha and a few of the Hitchcock Lounge people, from moralistic naivety to whipsharp riffing. I truly did speak on impulse, years ago, and I was proud of that. But that's not me anymore. I've read too much, lived the banality too much, eaten dogma alive since 2020. My introspective abilities outstrip individuals decades older than me. I am searching for peers. I am searching for myself. There are clues here, that I must be keen to notice and collect and connect.