If you were 1000 years old, what would you do with all those years?

First, let me just do one thing:


Hey? Hey? You can see the rest on jluxenberg's photostream.

Topic switch.

I had a funny dream last night. I was hanging around with Luke Skywalker, and we were going to fight some big villain, like a big showdown thing, and we both knew it was a big showdown, and we were walking into the villain's lair, but the villain and his henchmen thought that we didn't know, so they disguised the whole place as an airport. We were like going down underground and it was all "okay, here's the concourse, here's the gate, we'll check your bags". At one point we stopped by some lockers and picked up our lightsabers. Uhh, you know. Eventually we got to the room where the big showdown was supposed to happen, and it was a big stadium, like a basketball arena, but we couldn't fight yet, because a girls' college basketball game was taking place. We could hear the announcer saying "she's going up for a slam dunk, and... holy shit!" as the girl herself ended up in the basket somehow. But I was bummed because I knew I wasn't going to be asleep still when the fight happened, and I wanted to beat Darth Vader. Or whomever.

The interesting thing is, though, I had a real sense that time went all wonky. I knew that I was going to wake up before the fight happened, even before I woke up. It's like at the very instant I woke up, a huge flurry of brainwave activity happened, and I only later "remembered" it as a sequential story. Maybe that's what people mean when they say time is just an illusion, or that it's as bendy as the other three dimensions, or that the afterlife is outside time, or something.

Topic shift.

I got hit with a blast of rampant existentialism on my bike on the way home. I was feeling particularly like "what's the point of existing?" (oh my god disclaimer don't get me wrong i'm not all depressed and jumping off a bridge or something oh my god) I mean, I used to say "my life exists to make things better for other people," but now I'm not so sure. I was all about "making life better" but in a pretty impersonal way, like if I could develop better routing algorithms to get food to starving people or something. All this "I want to do great things," it's all kind of just so I can feel better than thou, or at least as good as thou. Not that I don't want to do great things; just... it seems like the whole mountain climber thing, like I'd have to keep climbing higher and higher mountains and I'd never be satisfied, so why bother climbing any mountains at all?

You know "It's a Wonderful Life"? Where, if this guy never lived, his town would be Pottersville, taken over by the rich evil tycoon, and his brother would be dead, or whatever? If he never lived, things would be worse. If I never lived, well, things would be different. My spot at CMU, say, would have been taken by another kid. So my friends there would have met another person instead of me; maybe they would have gotten along better, maybe worse, whatever. Some people might be sadder because they had one less fun guy to goof around with; some people might be happier because they got one of my roles in a play or they weren't shunned by me so hard. Google Analytics might not be so pretty. Or maybe it would have; Google's not hurting for applicants, they could have just hired someone else.

Nevermind, it's the whole voting argument. "You have to vote, it really does make things better!" Similarly, "it's good that I exist, I really do make things better!" I've convinced myself of both of these at one point, and I've convinced myself unimpeachably, like "if you ever think these things are false, you're wrong", or at least "you better really rewire your head really friggin hard if you're going to try to convince me that those are false, and to do so, you'll probably be moving in a direction that you don't like, so you probably shouldn't."

Pity party pity party! Maybe it is. Maybe I should accept more sympathy, and give out more sympathy too. My party line has been, if you're feeling like this, "shape the fuck up, Charlie Brown" (inside joke with, err, one friend from high school) but maybe that's not a good way to live.

To take one more mental leap which makes perfect sense to me but might just be so many words on my blog, this line of thought leads me to something I've wondered for a while. How do you be loving to everyone but still maintain the ability to pick and choose your friends? If I read the stuff on this blog post, and I didn't know who wrote it, I would say that's fine for that person, I'm sorry he feels that way, and all the same I don't want to be this person's friend because he sounds whiny. But if one of my friends wrote it, I mean, I would feel supportive to my friend. It's not like I'd want to end our friendship. But if he/she was always like this, maybe I would. So I don't love that friend unconditionally. But if I did love everyone unconditionally, like you're supposed to, how could I make time for the people I like the most? How could I even like anyone the most?

Topic shift.

I might sign up for Twitter.