Decisions
For the past two years, the end of August has marked noteworthy events in my life. Why do I mark exactly August 31st as an important date I am not entirely sure about, but according to my blog archives, they have been days of intense excitement for me for the past two years. As someone who has taken courses on prediction and statistics, I am tempted to predict something similar this year. Considering that today the sun is dawning on August the 30th, my near future has become of fairly strong importance for me.
August 31st does mark a threshold in the USA academic year. In that sense, it is somehow explainable that this day has been now important two years in a row, especially the noteworthy events that happened in those days were related to the academic year. In 2008, I was invited to participate in one of the most prestigious Computer Science programs available in the USA, to Carnegie Mellon University, a place I had only yearned and dreamed of attending in the past. I was not being admitted, of course, but the encouragement given to me that day made my whole being, inside and outside, jump with joy. And 364 days ago, in 2009, I must've been thoroughly excited to write what I wrote. I don't recall every exact detail from that day, but a mixture of realizing the program I was enrolled in, spending time with a girl I then considered virtually ideal for me, and swimming in a great swimming pool surely pumped up my endorphin levels quite up high.
And now, at the end of August 2010, I sense a looming change. Not only do I sense it - I am drawn towards it, fascinated by its possibilities, decidedly enticed by the power and the risks of different experiences, and ever so close to breaking free. As if my spirit were being drawn by the river current of change, and were calling me to join it, but my reality still clung on to a branch on the shore, stable but yearning, aching to follow my spirit, but still afraid that the strong downstream current would bruise and hurt my reality and possibly drown me - consequences that I know my spirit simply does not suffer. But still I want to let go, to follow my spirit, to experience a more wholesome Life.
I know, I feel, perfectly well, that the world is so much more than the branch. And if the river is given to us only once, why not follow it, experience it, live it? Why stick to the branch where I will always know what my state will be? What sense is there in that? Do I still feel I have important things to do with this branch? A role to fulfill? More experiences to learn? But right now, I neither see nor feel no true reason to stay where I am at. I do not want to commute a few blocks every day when I could be traveling across the world. I do not want to program in GWT and wait for my program to compile, when I could be learning languages of the world. I do not want to take courses in specific scientifically advanced topics of which I have lost illusion, when I could instead be experiencing people, the world, and learning skills of all kinds, like arts, crafts, building, cooking, humor, social, und so weiter.
So the fork in the road is set upon me now, as a few times before already, and choices, possibilities, and illusions are mixing and mingling inside me, brewing up my actions that will become my decision. An infinity of possibilities, and one to choose. The entire spectrum of possible actions I can possibly conceive of, from working on the GeoGame to sending an email of termination to Katia to amputating my left pinky toe to burning down my house to licking my wall to becoming a transvestite to knocking on my neighbor's door to stopping writing this blog entry to committing suicide on the train tracks to baking a cake to kissing Ina to masturbating with my abacus in one hand and a banana peel in the other to sticking all the stickies in my office to my head and tongue to giving my iPhone to Martin to joining TK's church group to ripping my mattress in two to giving a mongoose to Diane to biking to the top of Mt. Washington and back again without using any brakes to joining the army to singing quietly to singing to the top of my lungs to screaming to seducing the russian girls in the other room to calling and shouting at my parents to climbing the flagpole in campus to cutting down a tree in Schenley Park to climbing on the silver bean-like sculpture in Chicago's Millennium Park to drinking my own urine to bathing myself with milk to learning karate to cutting my own throat to breaking into The Space Upstairs and dance to using my drumsticks on the leftover trash pile in the backyard to grabbing the electrical wires beside my house to jumping up and down on the solar panels on top of the CMU building near Craig St to fucking the dinosaur sculpture in front of the Carnegie Museum of Science to driving to Miami and swimming to Cuba to walking to NYC, drinking from the river, and arriving on time for the Electric Zoo festival to walking to Guatemala and putting my hand into the Pacaya's lava to hunting a shark in Belize with my bare teeth to killing a bear by biting his throat out to walking to Argentina to having my body's particles dissociate into water and vitamin pills to joining an intensive dance program to going to Austin to yoga classes to visiting Emily's parents in Arizona to joining Richard on his program to posting this blog entry on my facebook wall to writing a list of possibilities of any size in this blog to building a makeshift rocket to finding a giant fish in the sewer to fucking his brains out to turning into a jet to bombing the russians to crashing into the sun to going back to sleep to continuing writing this blog entry on my comfortable mattress. All of these in countless ways, and countless more, simplified at this point of time in my mind to one main deciding question:
Should I quit my graduate program?
My being decides, almost unanimously: YES! It yearns for freedom, it needs possibilities, it is starved for choices and richness and diversity of experiences. Extending my program to achieve my Master's degree seems so much less important under the light of the possibilities in Life. They are thresholds that have been shown to be confounders to decision-making. Thresholds, step-functions, L1 and not L2 regularizers, force decisions to be taken at non-optimal times. They are decisions themselves, in any case - discrete consequences of continuous causes. I have known decisions my whole life, but I have not been very good at making them. But now, much more than ever, I decide to decide what fear has not allowed me until now. To do what I want to do. Period(period.)
So now I think about what will I do in the near future. Today it starts. I have talked to Diane, and she has given me her opinion on the subject. That I should not tell my advisor until I find another one. As it turns out, however, I do not want to work with another advisor. I should now talk to Geoff, who as I know it, is the departmental advisor for graduate students. I wonder what does he have to say to a student who wants to take a leave of absence. I have to talk to Katia, too, after my talk with Geoff. This is my plan of action:
Talk to Geoff. I plan to visit his office in a few hours, and ask him how do leaves of absence work. I will tell him my intention is to take one soon. It seems reasonable to begin it at a month's threshold, and that while that might mean I would stay one more month until the end of September to transition my advisor's projects out smoothly, it might also mean I could end it now on August 31st. A decision of money vs. time. How unusual.
He may react nicely and accepting, and tell me that it is OK for a graduate student to take a leave of absence. In that case, my next step is then to talk to Katia and ask her what her preference on my leave's starting date is. Would she rather keep me for one more month, or would she rather get rid of me sooner? That is up to her.
What to do about my rent? Probably stay one more month, I think. One more month in Pittsburgh should be enough to tie up any loose strings I might still have around here. Yi asked for one month's notice, so that is what I will give him. Not having a lease obligation is quite convenient in my current situation.
So what after that? I finish my obligations in Pittsburgh, I have some savings left over... and then what? Whatever? I remember a time when I was in this same situation... three years ago. Yearning for experiences and personal freedom, I wanted to ride my brother's bike with a backpack with my stuff in it from Guatemala down to Costa Rica to visit Khris Aguero, a high school guy who also likes mathematics. But I didn't. I let my sister know too early, I think - she told my aunt, and she and my uncle came to our house the night before I planned to leave, and begged me not to go, guilt-tripping me not to hurt her. "You will kill me. If you go, you will kill me". This was of course not literally true, but I knew that her will towards me is good, so I receded from the trip I so wanted, and tolerated Guatemala for a few more months. And then my trip to Singapore was interrupted by a job offer in Austin, where, I do have to say, I had some very nice experiences. Costa Rica and Singapore - those decisions would've been the closest I would have ever been to breaking free.
But I have never broken completely free. Not once. My trip to Europe might have seemed like such an occasion, but I always knew what I was going back to and when after my trip ended. Don't get me wrong - I was living my dream during my trip. I did exactly what I wanted, I followed my instinct like I wanted to, but my decisions have always been conditional upon an overarching predictable life path that I have not yet been able to escape from. I always knew there was a safe haven at the end of the short tunnel of risk I took.
So what to do after I quit my graduate program? I don't know. But that's the whole point, isn't it? Breaking completely free implies losing obligations, sure things, predictability. Losing everything that has been built upon the core, the layers of urgencies, priorities, pretenses, and appearances covering the bare essentials of an individual. Only after a complete clean-up process can I then again see, and hopefully understand, what am I really made out of, and what I am, what I TRULY am, capable of. That is my idea.
Possibilities I consider? Dance - Song - Travel - Hunger - Construction - Skills - Food service jobs - Music - Walk - Europe - Biking - Drugs - Photography - Writing - Asia - Africa - Antarctica - Oceania - Love - Laughs - Happiness - Broadness - Infinity - and more.
I have learned that people are powerful beings who don't always realize the potential good they can be to their neighbors. "Al prójimo". I trust that people can be good to others, that they like to do so, that they want to, and they more often would, were it not for the unfortunate fear present in most of them. And I believe that using one's life in its entirety to find this good in others and in oneself is so very much worth the loss of a stable life to do it.
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