I'm sitting here, fingers familiarly machine-room-temperature blue, eyes throbbing from the flickering that we finally managed to kill on the screen, and I'm terrified.
My brain aches.
All this information.
Pages upon pages about OCF programming, and I'm having trouble installing them and running the demos because I'm so clueless about Java.
In the next couple of weeks I have to learn WAY more about Java, OpenCard and PCSC standards (I'm not even sure where the one begins and the other ends) and every day I've made so much progress and learned so much and my brain hurts and I'm left here, an hour of productivity left and I can't push any further.
Maybe I should sleep more, I could see myself collapsing the moment I get home and sleeping until the alarm clock rang.
It would be a good life, too, thinking about it - everytime I say "research" now in answer to "what do you do?" I know a little bit more about what I'll be doing for the next year or so, and I love the idea...
And R&D team that actually does R&D and not Software Dev (where your life is run behind putting out a product) and not bullshit start-up proposals and not...
At any rate, I love the idea of being here, and that makes it all the mroe terrifying should I fail.
It's become pretty clear this year that despite my slacker attitude, I am actually scared of something. I'm terrified of failure.
And Peter is so bloody smart and I'm so far behind (alright so I just started) and I don't care if "Jean Marc" thinks I'm god's gift to GemPlus because I'm his linux guru (I taught him the grep command today and he's flying). It doesn't matter that the CTO, brilliant as he is, thinks that my mindset is perfect for research - I feel my brain leaking and I'm worried that I'm just not smart enough.
So what do I do? I order two more ounces of "smurf houses" cuz if I'm going to be stupid, I'll do it with style.
I went out for a walk at lunch today and wanted to collect my thoughts abotu stress and people and dreams and how for a second I was afraid I'd stopped dreaming but I couldn't. I was too wrecked.
I even logged out of EQ early last night and crawled into bed and just lay there.
Alright, so things will improve once I get used to bedtime before midnight.
And maybe I ought to eat breakfast or take vitamins or something.
CF? About that gym... You looked into it yet?
In any case, I've had a million furious and/or terrifying, almost profound, sometimes worrying thoughts flash through my head today but they're gone, unsynthesized and unspoken.
And my brain is lying at my feet and I am updating because I just can't read no more.
I used to be so smart, I swear I was.
That flash of inspiration where you stare at a problem over and over again and then look away suddenly and stare at a carefully chosen spot on the wall, and then look back casually as if to catch the problem by surprise and then OHMYHOLYYEAH strikes and...
Well, you know the feeling. Everybody has it. The brilliant ones just know how to produce it more often. (That's the trick with so many things, when something clicks, works oh so well, don't remember what you did but remember how to induce that feeling again... And welcome to the highway of synchronicity. Voila votre zen-wannabe lesson for today)
No really. Memorizing the contents of your history textbook never took smarts, just ask Bella from High School. Book smart doesn't just mean knowing facts by rote, it means being able to compile them. Deal with them. Use them, build them, add from them and back to them and contribute... (combine it with life-smart and BANG we're talking uberperson and that's where I wish I could be, but...)
Apparently I like the idea of research.
I'm just not clever enough to survive in it.
Inspiration doesn't have time to hit, it dies out in a flash of sulfur before it hits the end of whatever neuron connects them to my fingers.
I still have moments of clarity, epiphanies like glimpses of willowisps on a foggy day (can you see the EQ reference here? yikes), but not enough.
But dammit, I will.
If it takes cod liver oil and living my life more responsably, well, I'll give it a shot and see if it's inspiration or determination that run out first.
Don't listen to me whine. I'd rather you listen to me bitch, like in Unclebob's message board.
When I whine I'm just trying to put it together so's I can figure it out before it wreaks more damage than it's worth.
Hopefully the nervous eagerness will beat out the paralyzing terror.
And if it doesn't? Well, even if I fail there has been so much and so grand that I haven't the right or the need to collapse in heaps of despair, but...
Dammit, it would be so wonderful if this took me somewhere further along the fairytale road.