Topic: Rambling
Hello world Remember me?
I'm the sad little fuck that you failed to see
Who you should have recognized
When you had the chance
Hello motherfuckers now its time to dance
High School Dance, Mighty Mighty Bosstones
I've been thinking about some things. Yeah I know, I'm always thinking about a lot of things, but these things I've been thinking on more heavily. And when I say heavily, trust me when I say I've devoted hours and hours of thought on it, I have.
I've been thinking about where I am going, and how I am getting there. I do not often like to question my own actions, since I trust myself enough to have made the appropriate decision in the first place. But I find myself wondering.
I want to obtain a Bachelor's degree in computer science as well as a Masters, possibly even a PhD. But why? For what purpose would I go beyond the Bachelor's degree? Money? Well, it is a part of the reason, big degrees open very big doors. But is that the only thing? This is where I wonder. Part of it, I guess, comes from the fact that I love to learn, that it is one of my blazing passions. I just wonder if the quest for knowledge makes up for the want for a somewhat easier life, easier in body if not in mind. I have never felt a noble purpose or reason behind what I want. These things are for me. Is that selfish, to want something for myself? Maybe not all for myself. I would like to pay my family back for all it has given me. My parents have had a really long, hard road and deserve more than they have, though they ask for nothing more.
And this quest for a degree is one of only two things that I can rightly say that I am pursuing. The other is my physics program, and that brings me to another point. Why am I writing this thing? Why have I spent hours and hours and hours on this? Part of it was for the challenge. The genesis came during a computer science class as we were learning about dynamic-event-state modeling. I looked at this, then looked at my physics notebook. I then decided I would make a program that dynamically modeled physical situations, and more than that, an extensible framework that could be used and extended to construct infinitely many problems. A challenge and a potential boon to everyone else. As I continue to meet this challenge and bring it closer to fruition, I begin to think of the comments I had from other students who said they would pay top-dollar for this program. I begin to think that I would like to license this thing, to use it to pay for college, to ease the fact that only myself and my parents foot the tuition bill. Is that wrong, to take a boon and make money from it? Some of the figures in computers that I despise the most have done this. But then again, I'm not trying to screw someone, just trying to make an honest buck for something I spent a long time on. Is that wrong? As I think about this, maybe not. I'm not exorbitantly charging for this, nor am I demanding ridiculous means and rules for my product. Some of the names in computer science that I admire the most are known for their altruism: Linus Torvalds, Dennis Ritchie, the developers of Java. All these people created incredibly useful things and for free. But for this thing of mine? This framework promises to be intensely useful, but I cannot give it away for free. As I think of it, Linux was nothing more than a graduate thesis, C a tool that Ritchie created for a job he was being payed for, and the same goes for Java. While they are free to the end user, upfront, their creators received something. So maybe it isn't wrong to sell this thing.
Another thing I have been thinking about is family. Not the family that I belong too, that is stable and a place of comfort. No, I've been thinking about a family of my own. I want to be the man who is called fiance, then husband, then father. I think I make an excellent person for all those titles, but I wonder sometimes. I wonder when my anger gets the better of me. Some call me childish with that, and I guess there assessment from what they see is partially correct. But they all fail to see the effort and time I put in before the patience runs out. But that makes me wonder. Even though I can control it for a long, long time, sometimes it goes out of my control. But those titles, especially father, demand a patience even greater. I think I can do that, after all, is father without mother very often?
And that brings me to my final thing. I've heard much on the topic of significant others, that there is someone for everyone. But is that true? My great-uncle Andy Stahn had a wife who took his child and left him in the 1950's. He then lived alone and worked as a janitor at a school in a town in southern Minnesota until he died a few years ago. Who was that other for him? Surely not the bizarre, estranged wife who left him. Or my brother. Who is for my brother? He's 32 and has not had a girlfriend since high school. Admittedly, part of it is his own fault. And it is not as if his life is over, far from it. But these are things that scare me. I fear going through life alone like that. I know I have friends, and I cherish them greatly, and I never forget them, but a person needs more than that. I fear moving through life without having that someone I see nearly every day, a someone who shares her problems and joys with me as I share mine with her, in an honest fashion. I know there are bad times as well, but that is something I am more than prepared to accept given the greater good. But I fear that I may never find such a person. Maybe it is irrational, but it feels very real to me.
I think I'll stop these thoughts for now, they bother me too much. But I needed to speak them, to articulate them so I can put them aside.
Later,
JBJ, JPH, J