Aaron's Notes

It’s been a minute and some stuff has happened. It’s been a little hectic, though mostly by choice and for good reason. But I haven’t given myself time to get in a good check-in, and I’m feeling really overdue. So let’s do that now. Shall we run down the basics?

Follow-ups: The big question that I left off on last time was about my placement tests for school. And I do have news on that, which I’ll cover in the Academics sections, because it is a bit beefy, and not yet entirely resolved.

Health/Fitness: It’s been a lot of good news, but I’d rather dig into it all another time. So for today, I’ll give the highlights:

• I’m down to 239lbs and counting
• My running progress is up to almost 2 miles with no stops and without slowing to a walk. Fuck yeah.
• I’ve been pretty good about my lifting routine, but I could be better.
• My diabetes is extremely well managed.
• I somehow still have somewhat high cholesterol. What’s up with that?
• I added in more calisthenics and am now up to as many as 15 burpees in a single go. Those suck, like real good.
• I’ve been making some progress on a newish goal, to do at least one good pull-up by the end of the year. I’m not sure I’ll make that goal, but I realized that if I didn’t make the goal and didn’t get started, I definitely wouldn’t. So I got started, and I think it’s going well.

Academics: I took the placement tests for both Math and English. I did the Math one first and did pretty well, but not well enough. I came in just a few points short of the score that I need to qualify for placement to the Calc I class that I want. Four points, I think. I think I missed it by four points, out of like a hundred or something, I don’t know. Placement scores kinda seem like sillynanny magical nonsense. But whatever. I get to retake the test, which I think I’ll do tomorrow. I’ll update on that next time.

In the meantime, I’ve been granted access to this online test prep program called Aleks which, when I gave it a quick search around the web, I found out that people super fucking hate it. Do you know me well enough for this to not be a surprise? I kinda like it.

Yeah, no joke. It’s giving me a really nicely structured version of my very favorite way to learn – just bashing my head against the lessons until it finally cracks through my thick skull. I think that might be exactly why people hate it and, to be fair, I think if I was using this back when I was appropriately college aged, I’d also hate it. But for me in my present era, this thing crushes!

When the summer started, I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to get up to speed on the trig stuff. Part of why I was putting off the placement test was because I knew I was behind on it. But when I read up on the test and found out it would tell me where I fell short and that I’d be able to retake, I figured it would be a good idea to do exactly that, and then I could put together my own course of things to learn and improve. But this Aleks thing is tied to the placement test, and it knew exactly where I fucked up, and it’s coached me through it all! Why do people hate this thing, it’s great!

As of now, I think I’m pretty much caught up on Trig and my Algebra skills have gotten a deeply needed polishing. I’m still feeling a bit weak on some Geometry stuff, and I’m concerned about it. I don’t know how much Geometry I should just have in my mental back pocket. I think I’ve pretty well got the core stuff, areas and volumes of boxes, circles, cylinders. Do I have sphere? Hmm… I should check. I’m also missing a little bit of the crossover with Trig, like I can’t reliably call to mind graphing ellipses, hyperbolas, stuff like that. So that might delay me taking this until later this week, because I’d like to at least see a few of those problems again before I do.

But otherwise, this Aleks thing has sorta super-charged the pace of my learning. it’s been like a couple of weeks and I am feeling very confident in my basic Algebra and Trig skills, even the rate problems that come in the form of a paragraph. I’m really hoping there’s something like this for Calc that and I’ll have access to it. Though most of what I like about it I can do myself by just keeping on top of things and using the text books.

For English, I think I’m good. The results implied that I could retake the test if I wanted, but I got into the English Comp. class that I wanted so… why? Now I just need to actually choose which class and professor. How do you choose? Should I just go for a time that sounds nice, or should I try to figure out if the professor is a good fit? How do you do that? Woof. I should have gotten started on this way earlier. I have to keep this in mind the next time I feel like putting something off that i can get started on immediately.

So once the placement is all finished, I’ll choose my classes and schedule, make sure I’ve got the tuition, books, whatever else I need paid, bought, covered, and I’ll finally be all good. That reminds me, I need to make sure I check if there are specific required supplies, like the new grade shopping lists we’d get in grade school.

Projects: This is another shorter one, because I want to spend more time on other things, but I do want to at least touch on projects. I’ve been working on building a mobile app. This is partly for practice and self education. Also partly to start putting together a professional portfolio. But also, hopefully, as part of a plan to start bringing in some income. I think I have to be realistic in that it’s unlikely this app or any other apps I might put together might make any money. Maybe some coffee cash, at most. So I’m really not trying to bank on this just solving my income needs. But I think my current attitude of just keeping at it and learning from it will have long term payoffs. This should give me some practice, not just in the app building itself, but also in publishing, monetizing, and more general work in project management and just business. I really need to get up to speed on some general business shit. Yuck. Well, let’s put “learn business” on the “projects” board as well, I suppose.

But the app and basically everything else has gone on hold while I wrap up my Math needs. It’s been Math morning, day, and night ahead of just about everything other than exercise and the most basic of other needs for the time being. As soon as the placement tests are solved, I’m going to spend some serious time on my music, check in on all of my open projects, reevaluate where I’m at on this app, and play catch-up on the rest of my actual life that I’ve been letting slip – more on that later.

Social: The main social situation in this post is that I traveled to Minnesota with my brother. It was pretty good to travel with him – he’s really good at this shit. I mean, he does travel for his job and like, all the time. But don’t let that take away from the compliment. He’s extremely good at travel. He’s also pretty good at dealing with people going through a difficult time, which he also has a lot of practice with. I’m not going to get into it beyond a quick note, which is that he has had to take care of some very difficult relatives going through some very difficult, age related ailments. Though they also have a number of non-health related, shall we say, “unforced errors” that compound all of it, which I would imaging ups the difficulty level. I think this made him particularly adept at dealing with the purpose of our trip.

That purpose was to take care of some family. The previous set of relatives are his wife’s, so they aren’t a problem for me. But we also have some ailing family of our own. One of my uncles on my mother’s side is very sick with a quite aggressive cancer. This is compounded with some complicated psychiatric and cognitive issues. Also some really bad type II diabetes. I’ve got the betus myself, but mine is well managed. His is extremely not. I must admit that I haven’t spent a lot of thought about my overall family situation for years, which is pretty not great of me. In my defense, my work situation made it difficult for me to keep up. But to counter that defense, I don’t work anymore. So… I should probably be putting in more effort.

Anyway, my uncle had moved back in with his mother, my grandma, some time ago because he really can’t quite take care of himself anymore. The thing is, my grandma is like 92 years old and can, frankly, not take care of herself anymore, either. I’m gunna do some pretty hefty yada-yadaing here, but basically he’s ended up in the hospital and he is doing extremely not well. I’m not sure where my brother got the idea, but he decided he needed to go out there to see our uncle and help our grandma, even though he could only spare a quick weekend. He asked if I wanted to join him and while I was preparing some pretty good hemming and hawing in my mind, it dawned on me that this has been one of my primary complaints about my previous professional life – that I couldn’t ever seem to make time for family. So I joined him.

I’m still unpacking things, mentally and emotionally, at least. I didn’t have much luggage to unpack although now that I think about it… did I finish? Hmm, I should check on that, I think I left an outfit in one of my bags.

The surface feelings are that it was very good to see them both, though it’s terrible to see my uncle in such an awful state. He is very thin, very weak, and his mind is struggling to stay present and often falling short. And my grandma is putting up a good front but she is obviously in distress. She’s staring down the barrel of her son’s mortality, her own, and the loss of the life and home she built starting as far back as 1963. Probably more. That is a lot, my friends.

I think this needs to be a part of my strategy for my future self. I need to be able to just pick up and go when I’ve got family or friends that need help, and right now, I really can’t just do that. I’m not working anymore, which for this summer has given me time. The saving from that job gave me the money. In about a month, I’ll be in school full time, and right now, my plan is to basically treat that like my previous job. But if I can find a rhythm, I’d like to pull that back a little and give myself the time and grace to pick up and bounce if I need to. But I’ve never been to college, so I really don’t know how that works. The money part of the equation, I mean, those savings are going to run out before I know it. I can take student loans, and I probably will. But the bigger thing is that I need to start working out my short- and medium-term income plans. School is the corner-piece of my long term strategy, so that’s why these questions are so important for me to cover.

There are other social things that I’m going to just speed-run right quick. Just a bunch of things that I need to solve for in my friend groups.

• I’ve become a regular at a Saturday evening board game get together, which frankly rips. I gotta make sure that I can keep up with that.
• I also fell off of hosting a regular “work from home with friends” at my place, and I need to decide if I’m going to restart this or find a replacement for it. I loved doing this and would love to do it again, but with the learning pressure, time has been really tight lately.
• Alternatively, I just need to have a regular social hang that I host, and I’m not sure what that’s going to look like when school starts. Maybe I’ll talk to my friends about that, because I’m going to have a couple of them over later this week to talk about another social plan, which is…
• To go to a video games Con of sorts in November. I’m actually not 100% sure I can even attend, but my plan right now is to just book the trip and if it turns out that I can’t, then I guess I’ll have to cancel and deal with it then.
• I have a guitar playing get together on hold with a newer friend that I need to hurry up and plan as well. It’s going to be next week, I just need to make sure I don’t accidentally try to book a day that I’m not actually available. Or maybe I should just do it

It’s probably how I should have handled it all along, honestly. I should really just start handling all of my future social plans like this – stop worrying about whether everything around the situation is perfectly buttoned up and just make the plans, adjust if I find out new information. Whoa, that sounds like a good way to be. I should add that to my list.

I also have a bunch of non-social things that I need to wrap up before school starts, like an HVAC maintenance check, a hair cut, a registration re-up on my car… or maybe it’s just an emissions check?… I don’t know, a bunch of things like that. None of it is hard or really much of a time commitment, but given my current hard focus on pulling together the last of my school needs, I’ve felt OK letting them all fall by the wayside for a while. But I’m going to need to catch up on them all as soon as I wrap up the current push.

Next Time: We’ll see about that math placement retake – wish me luck.

It’s hot and I’ve been “busy”. You know, not really busy. All of my in this era is my own, so it’s hard to say in earnest that I’m busy. I am making a point of packing my hours pretty tightly, though. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s hard not to feel guilty about not working, even though when I check in with others or even seriously evaluate things for myself, it sure does seem like I’ve earned it. But also, I think a little guilt or something of that nature is likely good for me as I try to pursue, you now, all of this.

Follow-ups: The big one is on the school progress, which there isn’t much of, so I think we’ll skip this week’s Academic section and just sum things up here.

In the next week(ish), I’ll be taking those placement tests. I finally sat down and read up on what the tests are and how they go. I decided that, especially given that the first day of school is fast approaching, I should just take the tests already. Two key factors on top of timing, one is that it turns out I can retake the tests, which is great news. The other is that there are options for different types of tests, including that I can take them at the actual school, which is just like 20 minutes away in heavy traffic, or remotely. I’m opting to take the available remote options for both Math and English for my first go ’round, and hopefully I don’t need a second for either. If I do, then I don’t know. Might be good to go in person.

The Math test seems to be on demand, so I’m planning to take it tomorrow or Friday, assuming I feel pretty good about my ongoing Precalc review. The English test needs scheduling, so I’ve lined mine up for Tuesday. That’ll give me the rest of this week and Monday to get ready. I feel pretty good about my writing in general, but I have a few critical weak points that I’ll admit give me the jitters.

Once that’s done, well… I guess we’ll see where things are. I really don’t want to start below Calc I, that’s the real thing making me nervous. English wise, I’m warming to redoing that. Especially if it either includes or is specifically for Science/Tech programs. I haven’t checked if there is one, but I’ll do that once the tests are in. The idea of getting practice writing academically actually seems kinda smart. I’d still love to skip it, but we’ll see. Maybe I work on testing out of that one. Though it might be more worth my while to try and CLEP out of some electives. But I’m really putting that cart before the horse, so let’s move on.

Health/Fitness: I’ve managed to keep my weight in the lower end of the 240s, which is a win on its own. I think I might have tipped, briefly, down into the high 230s, but I’m not going to count it. What I am, however, going to count is that I’m back to finishing a full mile without having to stop or slow to a walk. A full mile! In fact, I’ve done it three times this week, and it’s only Wednesday. That’s each day, in case you weren’t paying attention.

I’ve also been getting in a lot more regular cross training, mostly strength exercises. But the calisthenics have been working their way in, most notably those dang burpees. Hokie smokies, them things are a rough time. I’m not even hittin’ that hard, just like, 10 every other day. I’ll have to start pushing it more, though. That’s what happened with my running, which is a thought I guess I didn’t finish. I should probably rewrite this section to tidy the thought up, but it’s too hot. Anyway, during that balls-hot previous week, where it got up over 100 F for a couple days in a row, I got out there and made it happen..

I tend to end my slightly-under 4 mile walk with a jog, not every walk, but at least a few times a week. I tend to start about a mile out from getting home, and usually have to slow to a walk a few times. I’ve been starting much further back for a little while and yesterday, I gave tried to keep track of things as I did. My fitness tracker clocks the full route at about 3.9 miles. I started my run when I was about 2.2 miles in and didn’t slow to a run until a little over 3.35 miles. I know these things aren’t perfectly accurate, but it’s been pretty consistent and for my purposes, I think it’s close enough.

That first extended run was pretty rough, but today’s actually felt kinda good. And that really rocked.

Oh, and my shoulders are feeling a lot better, too! When was the last time I brought that up, last year, maybe? Well, the shoulders have continued to be a problem. Still are. But they are much better. I can almost get back into correct form when trying to do barbell squats. And that’s pretty dope, too.

Next Time: I guess I’ll talk about how things went. Here’s to hoping. Maybe I’ll check in on that app and various other pursuits. Politics, if I’m not too annoyed. Which I am, so maybe not. Anyway, that’s good for today. Keep it easy, y’all.

I’ve been contemplating a strategic crash-out, but I just don’t have the time.

Follow-ups: In the last check-in, I mentioned that I’d submitted my previous course work to my community college for actual credit evaluation. I have since received the feedback – they aren’t going to take any of them. I find myself a little saltier about that then I thought I would be, I suppose because I’d always assumed they’d take at least something. Even just one. But I made at least one classic mistake, I’d taken the online courses knowing they’d be accepted by one state school (the Global campus) and assumed they’d be taken by all of them. It turns out, this school doesn’t take any of them. I could always just shift back to the original plan of sailing through an online, self-paced IT degree. But no, I’m feeling more committed to and prepared for this treacherous Engineering path than ever.

I’m also going to make a quick musical note. Not a musical note, Gmaj, but a note on my music rebuild and such. Much of it remains sidelined for the more critical Summer academic push, but I need to really put some more time into the setup. I need to figure out what the actual progressions of our cover songs, and also figure out the strumming patterns. And I’m struggling with them. Also, I’ve promised a few “easy, power-trio songs” to get us practicing as a band, and I haven’t really done anything towards that. But as we took another swing at our potential set-list and it seems like everyone agrees that we should do a Green Day song. That’s perfect. Some of their most popular songs are extremely easy to play and adopt. I think this might be a chance to do both, a sort of “two birds” situation.

Health/Fitness: I slightly jacked up my foot. I was pretty sure this was a sodium-intake fuck-up. I was sure that I’d overdone it on salt and that my foot must be swollen, because it hurt in a similar way. But that didn’t really add up, because I didn’t really go all that hard on salt, and my foot wasn’t actually swollen. It fit just fine in my shoes, actually kinda loose in my boots. After a shower, I noticed that I actually had bruises on my foot, especially around the ankle, and while doing a little idle daydreaming, I mentally reviewed the previous week to take stock of everything. I think this has revealed the actual issue. I did a bunch of single-leg body-weight exercises last week, including some slightly improvised isolated calf raises. The last time I did any calf raises, it was double-leg, and quite a while ago. So basically, I just overdid an exercise the regular way. I guess that’s good. Anyway, I babied it on Monday but got back to it yesterday.

Actually, I have a few positives to note, the first being that I’ve done a couple of longer jogs. I’m still not doing a full mile without having to slow down to a walk. That is one of my goals for the year, to get back to being able to do that and, to increase on last year’s similar goal, to be able to do so fairly consistently. I really only pulled it off concretely once last year, though there were a few other times that may have counted. So I’ve bumped up my practice from about a mile with walking breaks to a little over a mile and a half with walking breaks. And I’ve done it a few times. So that whips.

Another little bump up is that I have more close friends that are also in this early-40s health fix. I’ve had a few shared commiseration sessions with a variety of them, each of us at different stages across this shape-up timeline. There were some common, shared themes, notably the goddamn fiber. 32-40 grams a day, on this American diet? Geezums. It’s just so much!

As it stands now, my weight is ping-ponging around the lower 240s. Given my desire to breach back below 240 and steadily hold somewhere in the 230s, this is quite frustrating. I mean, it’s great that I’m back in the lower-half of 240, after finding myself all the way back up around 250 and then struggling to out of the upper-half for so long. So I should count that win. But I feel like I’m in another plateau, which is rough. Given the shared goals of rebuilding my strength with the loss of fat, there is a chance this is a good sign. In fact, it matches well with parts of last year’s progress, and with the expectations typically given in body-recomp programs. And there’s a bigger indication of this year’s progress, and it’s the way my clothes fit. My shirts don’t feel strained, off kilter, and awkward. But most of all, my jeans feel loose. My jeans never feel loose. It’s a feeling that shouts louder than any number on any scale.

So the big boons – I have gains, both measurable and less tangible feedback. As already noted, I am overall down on my weight and I can keep my jogs at pace for longer. I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned, but I can also lift more. My busted mobility has recovered enough to reincorporate some of the more difficult full-body exercises and calisthenics, like the dreaded Burpee. And then there are are the deeper gains. My clothes fit better and I’m starting to feel less awkward, more like myself. I can feel the strength coming back to my arms, core, and legs, while the shape and volume of my shoulders are noticeably filling out again. I’m still so far from my goals, but victories like these are enough to grab hold of. Now I just gotta keep that grip and drag myself up to the next step.

Academics: So in light of the revelation that none of my credit work will count, it would seem I need to arrange some placement tests. I guess this could also be avoided if I could find my SAT scores, but then again, I don’t remember those being particularly good… also, that was like 20 years ago, why would anyone want those? I’m not even that person anymore.

The other option, which may not even be a real option, is that the school does take other alternative credits. CLEP was an option I had been looking at anyway, so I’m back to looking at modernstates.org. This is a slightly different online course program, which helps you study up to take CLEP tests. Should I explain a CLEP test? You’re on the internet, you can just look it up. But it’s basically a much more universally accepted college credit system in the US. Almost everyone takes this, including all of the schools that I’m looking at. It’s a way of “testing out” of credit courses in a way that schools can evaluate and grant the credits for.

Something about this website thing rubs me the wrong way, but hey, free credits is free credits, right? So I’m blowing through their College Algebra course right now in hopes that I can take that CLEP and perform well. The thing is, schools may still not like specific CLEPs, and they also might not give you the exact credit you want. A thing my Mom reminded me of earlier this year is that schools often have different versions of the same course. In some cases, it’s basically the same class, but it’s tailored to the specific program you’re on. Which means, if there’s a Statistics I and an Intro to Stats for Medicine, they might be the same class and they might not be, and if they aren’t, the school might only give you credit for one version and not the other. And if you need the other, then dawg, you’re boned.

I have a few courses that I’d like to CLEP out of, mostly College Algebra and College Comp. But is this foolish?

I’m still not super chuffed, because my Math does still need work. I’m extremely rusty and while I’d like to jump right into Calc I, if I have to go back over an earlier class, that would probably benefit me in the end. But it’s such a jam-packed degree, I really don’t want to spend the time or money! I need to get started on the real, main stuff, like ASAP. So I guess I’m conflicted on that. Stats is similar, I’m sure I could benefit from taking a full, in person course, but also… I’d rather spend the time on something new. Though I did enjoy the materials, so it wouldn’t be the worst.

Likewise, I enjoyed English Comp, once I got the hang of it, and retaking it might be nice. It could even feel a little like a break. I’d also read that many schools and state systems make you take their specific course because part of it is standards and style, and they want you to learn theirs, not a national standard set by Chicago or Austin, so all of your writing in the school system follows those standards and styles. I don’t love that but I do get it and also, it kinda doesn’t matter if I like it, it is that way.

I should probably just check in with an advisor or something, but all of this is so new to me. Is that how you’re supposed to approach these problems?

Projects: I’ve been working on a mobile app project for a few months, and the scope has jumped up quite a bit. It started as a set of calculators for home cooks, and it was kinda cool. However, the problems that I’d aimed to solve with the app weren’t really covered by the calculators, no matter how snazzy I’d made them. So it’s developed into a kitchen workflow app, and now it’s turning into more of a recipe app. it would be a pretty unique recipe app, to be fair, and the recipe app space is still open for alternatives, which increases the chances that this app could be more than a throw-away “portfolio app”.

However, this shift has increased the time and difficulty of development. I’m definitely hitting spaces that are just outside of my experience, which has meant a combination of googling, reading docs, and hoping I can get halfway decent responses to very specific questions to AI chatbots. Let me tell ya’, the AI chatbots can be helpful in sorting thoughts, and they’re better at coding than most other things. But they sure as shit ain’t perfect. It really does expose just how not AI the AI really is – they’re all just extremely clever search engines, at best. And how exactly do they plan on making money?

Something Else: It sure feels like what’s happening in America right now is rhyming with some of our darkest days throughout history, and I’m quite worried. I think we have a chance to prove that America is an experiment worth continuing. We are faced with many of the same questions of pluralist societies, like interwar Germany. Difficult, societal problems that they failed, horrifically. Not just them, but many others, basically most, including us, regularly. And for the past few decades, we have been slow-rolling towards fascism, and more recently we’ve broken into a full sprint. Centrists, as they always do, “reluctantly”, if you believe them, side with the right wing. They regularly prove themselves incapable of rising to the occasion of setting things right, because they never wanted things to be right in the first place. They wanted to be on top and to do so in a way that clearly puts them apart from the rest of us rabble. They can’t see how in such a world, they will be just as unqualified to be considered “people” as the rest of us. Color, religion, sexuality, providence, or any other metric chosen and redefined regularly will always come to exclude more and more, because the blame game that accompanies the grievance politics that defines the Right is insatiable. And so it will be until it consumes us all.

But there is an energy in the air, lately, which I think most have noticed. It could be a chance to reclaim, redefine, and reassert the promise of America from the other direction. I’ve often thought it impossible to see in my lifetime, if ever, and I often feel guilty for not participating more. But this makes me hopeful. I think we have a chance. It started slim, but it’s expanding. As my life stabilizes, I should probably jump in a bit more, because I still believe in the promise of America. The recent successes of the DSA and other left and leftish groups keep the hope alive. So here’s to hopin’.

Also, if this somehow gets solved for the better in the next couple of years while I’m busy with school and getting myself right, I wouldn’t mind that one bit. Hey, maybe ya’ll can help with the cost of higher education while your at it, yeah? Just thought I’d ask.

Next time?: I should have answers for these school questions. I should either have some test of some sort, be it a CLEP or a Placement test, scheduled. I should figure out everything I need to have done and setup so my first day and week of actual school can go smoothly. I should make moves to solidify every part of my plan that is still too fluid. I’ll report back on that progress.

Staying up until 3 AM twice a week is just not working. I gotta figure out these weekends. But you know, I’m havin’ a good time, so…

Follow-ups: The schedule is definitely helping, even when I don’t fully adhere to it. As I stated in the last check-in, having the plan makes it so much easier to stay on task, get back on task when I fall off, and figure out where I need to aim my focus when there just isn’t time. My music practice is a great example, because I’m definitely falling short of that section of the plan, but just having and keeping the plan in mind makes it so much easier to mitigate the impact, if you don’t mind a smidge of corpo-speak. In fact, I’d say it’s proving its worth, because music has had to move aside a bit to make room for some temporary priority shifts. The thing is, even though the music priority has been lowered, it hasn’t been left behind. I’m still practicing. Without the plan, I almost never practiced. When I did, it was always the same, mostly aimless re-treds of the same junk-riffs I always go to. Now I’m better at just picking it up, because I know I have something to practice. And it’s a shorter list with a wider variety of areas to work on, many of which I’d been meaning to work on for years. So some days I just pick up a guitar and practice strumming, sometimes it’s chords and voicings, or a song or just the hard part of a specific song, and so on. I even have a day in the schedule where my practice is basically to just read and/or watch videos, which helps keep up momentum. I’ve put similar structures across all of my areas of focus, and it’s really kept me from wasting a day. It’s really helped me get back on the Math horse, particularly during those early sections of Trig where I was really starting to falter.

Fitness/Health: Let’s get a number in here, 243. It’s taken much longer than I wanted, but I’m back down to 243, and I’m pretty happy about that. At this point, if I can just make it back under 240 and stay there for a while, I’ll consider that a win for the year. Of course, the goals remain, celebrating every 10 pound increment until I hit 200, then reevaluating where I actually want to take things. For various reasons this year, I lost ground quite possibly by more than 10 pounds, and it’s been a real slog to claw back down, as evidenced by my still not quite being there. So I think the recovery and setup for that difficult Winter maintenance phase is the real goal. Not that I’m giving up on another 10 pounds beyond – I’d love to get under 230 this year. But I’ve got to manage my various stresses, so I don’t want to over promise to myself on a goal that I might not be able to make even with a hard, dedicated effort. If only I’d had this type of fortitude when I was healthy. Well, healthier.

Academics: It looks like any school credit I might have received from my military service probably won’t count at this point. I mean, it has been like 20 years. I’m not entirely sure any of those credits ever really would have counted. If I recall correctly, the bulk of them would have been in Communications. That would be nice, but would those apply to an Engineering degree? I suspect not. There may have also been some electronics credits which, honestly, shouldn’t. Well, I don’t know, I guess it’s a pretty big field, so maybe some of it would make sense. I’m thinking about stuff like circuits and stuff, and while my time did teach me some pretty awesome things about radio wave propagation, I don’t think I could really explain any of it without making hand gestures and saying “it’s like, you know” a bunch. So that’s probably not credit worthy. So I guess I’m not really bothered by that.

What I am bothered by is that I’m still not seeing any sign of the school accepting my credit from the online classes I took recently. It wouldn’t devastate me if they don’t take any of it, but it would really bum me out. I’d rather not retake those classes in particular. So I think I need to check in with the school to make sure I submitted this stuff correctly. I kinda suspect that I have not. And if I did and they aren’t taking them, then I guess I need to take those placement tests. Which I’d also rather not do.

Side social note: Mostly things have been pretty good and I think I’m making progress on the areas I’ve been working to improve. However, there have been a few missteps. I had a few times I held a door a bit too early and a few other times when I should have held a door and didn’t even offer. In each of these cases, it became obvious to me far too late. Many of those doors were metaphorical in nature, but the general idea of extending a courtesy or performing a standard politeness eluded me in frankly ridiculous ways. Sometimes I wonder if my public persona is that of a barely aware goblin.

Also, I think a woman might have been trying to have a conversation with me on my walk and I was rude. I was moving at a good pace and there were some owl-like hooting coming from the woods as I was passing a woman with a dog. The woman seemed younger than me, but mature and put together like the adult that I pretend to be. Medium-biggish dog, like a yellow lab or something? I guess I didn’t really get a look at either, but the dog seemed like a real sweetheart and the lady seemed nice enough.

Now, my experience in public is that noone except my close friends and family is ever happy to see me, and it’s my job to get the fuck out of stranger’s business before they feel like I’m harassing them. So I just assumed she was being nervous when she asked me about the noise. So I gave a response that, while on topic and nominally reassuring, was obviously implying that I wasn’t sticking around. And I kept moving ahead, as indicated. As I’m trying to be less curt and standoffish, it did occur to me that this may have been a dick move, and I later brought it up to a couple of friends. They think I was meant to slow down and chat for a while, though some of those theories really took some liberties . But I don’t know, that doesn’t seem right. Is that right? I’ve walked around on this path for years and not once has anyone ever reacted positively to my being there.

It also bothers me that I never stop to pet the dogs. I just assume, not just assumption, actually, I’ve heard people walking their dogs want to be left alone. So I leave them alone. Is that not the polite thing to do? I’ve been noticing people being more friendly with me in general over the last year or so, not just on the walk, but everywhere. I really don’t know what to make of it, or how I should respond to it. Do I somehow look more friendly? Should I? Is there a way to react that I should have learned by now, but missed because I was wallowing in my sadness for so long?

Well, in a few months, I’ll have an overload of social interactions. So I guess we’ll figure things out then. I’ll try to be a tick more present on the path, though. I wouldn’t want to be rude.

Next Time: Gosh, I hope mostly nothing. I’d really like to spend this next week just studying, making progress on my other school preparation, working on my projects. And cleaning, I really fell behind in a couple areas of cleaning. I spent a big chunk of Saturday cleaning my kitchen. I pulled out the fridge and stove, and man, I gotta do that more often. I gets so gross back there! I need to put together a home maintenance schedule. I bet that would slide right into my plan. But I’m probably not doing that this week, I’ll probably mostly do the plan as is, best as I can, and try and get some rest. I’m so tired.

Tuesday was my birthday, which I’m going to use an excuse for the late check-in this week. It’s not true, I didn’t do anything special. What’s actually going on is I’m just kinda locked-in on a few things. Let’s have a quick check-in to explain.

Follow-ups: I haven’t been sticking perfectly to the new routine, but even so, I’d say it’s helping. Just having a basic plan for what to work on each day is extremely helpful. I’m most of the way through this week. At this point in most weeks, I start getting a sort of ambient feeling of being overwhelmed, I think because there’s always so much to do that even when I get a lot done, it can feel like I’ve done nothing. So far, I know there are things that I won’t get to this week, but I don’t feel terrible about them, because I’ve been getting stuff done all week. I’ve also been able to prioritize and then stick to those priorities a little better. So I’m pretty happy about all of that jazz.

The normal stuff: There have been changes, but nothing pressing, and I’d rather wait until next week. Maybe everything resets to normal, maybe not, I don’t know yet. I’ve had some really good exercise sessions and I’ve been getting in the nutrition, which means it’s possible I’ll actually gain weight. But it should be lean mass, which is nice on its own, but should also help me in the future. So here’s to hoping.

Next Time: We’ll see, probably follow up on all of this, right? One lack – not enough music practice. That’s not the routine’s fault, though, I’ve just been really head-down on a few other priorities and I haven’t quite worked out the kinks on that particular part of the schedule. But even there, I’ve gotten in more practice than most weeks. So that’s still a win.

Alright, let’s keep on keepin’ on, shall we?

Trigonometry seems to be my biggest math knowledge gap going into Calculus. When I started about a month ago, I knew almost none of it. I have a mix of recollections from around the time I should have learned it, though I think most of what I remember was actually picked up later from my time in the Air Force. It was part of my job at the time, and to some extent, I would sometimes use DMS to denote direction. That Degrees Minutes Seconds, or a way of expressing precise degrees in what I think is more readable than standard decimal degrees. There was another alternative degree system that I think was called Mils? Two L’s, maybe? I don’t recall. That was mostly for artillery, which I didn’t run into very often. I think I mostly used it in a tactics and strategy class. Also, that was a long time ago, and memory fades and all that. But it doesn’t matter anymore, at least not to me, so let’s move on.

I could vaguely recall some of my high school Geometry, but I didn’t have any of the triangle stuff internalized. The triangle stuff turns out to be the whole game, really. As an aside, I think the rest of my Geometry is also pretty weak, so I’ll want to spend some quality time reviewing that stuff this summer as well. I think I might have mentioned that in my Algebra review, but it’s worth saying again now. I’m certain it will continue to come up, and I should really know it.

So far, my Trig review has taken the same pattern for every single lesson. First, I start studying the thing  and it makes sense. Then I try to work it through and find that I have absolutely no idea what anything is. Then I really start to worry that my attempt at Calculus will end before it actually begins. Then I bang my head against the materials for a while and kinda start to get how to use it. Then something bonkers happens and the abstract nonsense becomes extremely obvious and I feel a little dumb for not noticing it before. Then I do some practice problems, perform quite well on them, and feel unreasonably smart for it. Rinse, repeat.

The biggest revelation thus far has come from Radians, which I’m still not sure I 100% understand. I’m going to shove in a book definition: 

“One radian is defined as the angle at the center of a circle in a plane that is subtended by an arc whose length equals the radius of the circle.”

-some wikipedia-assed jazz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radian)

I think this kinda makes sense when I picture a unit circle. Like, the radius is 1, definitionally, so the arc that matches this is also the length of 1. I think this might be how we arrive at π, because half of a circle’s circumference is a single π. Three lengths of 1 unit doesn’t quite make it around half, six lengths of 1 doesn’t quite make it around the whole circle, that’s what π is. π is the total number of radians, just over 3, that it takes to get around one half of the unit circle.

I’m still putting that together, but really, that one surface level idea, that half of a circle is a single π, completely opens up how to use Radians. 90° degrees is a quarter circle, and because we’re talking pi as a half circle, the 90° degree measure is actually just half. It’s half of half, right? So in radians, 90° degrees is pi/2. The 45°s are all multiples of pi/4. 60° degrees is a third of that top half, so three of those makes a full top half, so that’s a pi/3, and likewise, the 30° degree slice is a sixth of that top half, so it’s pi/6. So if you see 3pi/4, that’s three quarters of the top half, it’s 135° degrees. You dig?

One piece I’m having trouble with is a version of co-terminal angles. I get what one is, that’s cool. I get how you can start at one and then just add full revolutions to it to get another. It’s when the question starts with some high degree or radian and wants me to find a co-terminal in a specific range. I watched a video on it by Krista King today, and she sets it up like a multi-part problem, which I think I need to start using, because it makes perfect sense. She starts by setting up the revolutions as an algebraic problem, where:

= +  n * 2

And then an inequality where the range becomes the ends, so if it’s between the alpha and beta in:

< +  n * 2 <

This could really help me if I could just get it in my head and make it a part of my regular mathematical repertoire, so to speak. It needs to enter into my personal toolkit. I think I’m going to need to find some problems to solve with this.

Another piece that’s currently giving me a little trouble is that even though I can repeat and even logically understand that and how Cosine is my x and Sine is my y coordinate on a Cartesian plane, I keep mixing up the two when I go to do the work. 

I can also see now, quite plainly, that lacking these and a handful more basic understandings are exactly why I struggled so hard in my high school AP Calculus class. I barely grasped the notion of the Unit Circle, of a Limit, of the ways that you can take known, related functions and formulas, and combine them in novel ways to extract or derive your critical unknowns. Looking back, it’s a wonder I made it anywhere in that class. Hopefully, I’m building a stronger foundation of knowledge and practical use, so that when I hit the point of needing to just have these, I just might have a chance.

I want to back up and chat about that one that clicked with me the other day some more, because it’s fantastic. So you may have seen some version of the wheels below – the first comes from a free cheat-sheet (https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Extras/CheatSheets_Tables.aspx#TrigSheet) on Paul’s Online Notes (https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/), which is a great math resource. The second comes from the reading materials from the Modern States Precalculus course, which I think you need a login to see, but here’s the link anyway (https://learn.modernstates.org/content/enforced/6898-Precalculus-2025-Lumi/docs/reading/unit-3/Precalculus_3_1_2R.pdf?ou=6898). These are pictures of the Unit Circle, or a circle depicted on the Cartesian Coordinate Plane – the typical XY graph we were introduced to in high school math. This circle has a radius of 1, meaning that at x = 0, the circle intersects the y-axis at 1 and -1, and when y = 0, it intersects with 1 and -1 on the x-axis. In between each of these, the circle still has a radius of 1 (because it’s a circle), and the x + y still have to add up to reflect that. Look at the 45° angle. The related numbers on the wheels show you what the x and y coordinates of this angle do that, and also show the same degree measurement expressed in the radian measurement. This might be obvious to others, but I’ve needed to think about it for like, two weeks, and it’s finally become clear. A 45° angle is half of a 90° angle, which itself is half of the 180° angle, which itself is half of the whole circle, 360°. In radians, a circle is 2π. So working backwards, half of that is π, half of that is π/2, and half of that is π/4. If you want to make a half circle from 45° angles, it would take 4 of them. So a 45° angle is a quarter of a half circle, and since a half circle, in radians, is π, it actually makes perfect sense that 45° is exactly ¼ of π, which means π * ¼, or π/4. Man, that was a long walk, but I did finally get there.

This is further bolstered by the conversion formula, which uses π/180° to move from degree to radians and using the inverse to get back again – a single π is 180°, as a ratio, or 180° degrees is a single π. 

But the biggest extraction from this is when remembering that the Unit Circle has a radius of 1 unit, and that making right-triangles isn’t arbitrary, but rather a way of figuring out the coordinates on the plane of where the terminal ray intersects with the circumference of the circle. We can do this because our mathematical forebears figured out how to work out ratios of right triangles, and then figured out how to do it just off of the angles, and a right triangle built-in gives you one of three angles. Those three angles must add up to 180°, and the right angle means we can subtract 90° right away, leaving only a total of 90° between the remaining two angles! This shit is magic! Also, because of those ratios that we know, because we’ve figured out the whole Pythagorean of it all, AND because we KNOW that in the Unit Circle, the hypotenuse is and is always a length of 1, we know that a π/4 or 45° angle MUST have equal length sides, 1 = x² + y², or 1 = 2x², so ½ = x², and then you got your 2/2, after you rationalize the denominator. I’ve not yet internalized the coordinates of the 30°s and 60°s, it’s ½ and 3/2, which I think I’d do better with if I had a more visual understanding of square roots.

I say this because visualizing the angles as geometric and not as arithmetic have really helped me here. It’s like, if you know that 45° is a quarter of the half-pie, that pi is half a pie, that π/4 is a quarter of our  base unit, then it means that four of these things fills that top half when moving in the positive directions (counter-clockwise) in standard position, so if you see a  5π/4, that means you already know where this is, because 4 quarters is 1, so this is one more quarter past that filled in top half! AAAAAHHH!!! Why didn’t I see this earlier?!?

Alright, anyway, I gotta mentally circle this thought a few more zillion times and then explode and think that I’m brilliant.

I’m gunna dig out my various text books and systematically run through the practice problems forwards and backwards until it makes me sick. I have to nail this thing.

The plan is in motion, the projects are falling in line, and for some reason my neck hurts. Why? I’ve done nothing.

Follow-ups: I did most of what was planned last week and then some, nothing got weird or crazy, and things seem good. Well, I could use some more practice. In everything, really. That was an item from last week, to get in practice in a few areas. I did that, and it was good. But I need more. Next up, I was meant to finish my enrollment to my local community college, and I did that, too. I went there in person, checked out some of the campus, though not much. I had a chat with someone there as well about my next steps. Those steps seem to be about placement, either in the form of tests for Math and English or from the school reviewing my transcripts. I’d love to not take placement tests, so I went looking for transcripts. I’m not sure if they’ll help, and I’m not sure I’ve gotten everywhere that I might have some credits, but I did what I could to get what I know about sent to my school. I’m not sure about my SAT scores. I took that test back in the early 2000s, I think, but I don’t think my scores were very good. I don’t think they were terrible, but I doubt they’d be much help at this point, and I think the only real help I might have is if the school takes my online course credits. Which they still might not. Fingers crossed.

I made almost no progress on the app. I have some project time carved out in my updated routine, but I’ve been using it the last few days to focus on working on it… the routine, that is. As of now, I’m planning on using that time tomorrow and Thursday to get in some good coding. I’d also like to make some more progress on a few of the other projects that I’ve been neglecting, because in a few months, I’m likely to need to shelve them all. Then again, that’s not for certain, and it may be that I’d rather spend the time on studies now, and having some outlets later. I don’t know, a lot to think about. But the plan to make a plan did go through, it’s mostly finished, I’ve already started implementing, and it’s already started helping. That might be the biggest win.

Fitness: No health updates this week, and I’ll try to keep the fitness quick. I’ve been more on my plan for the past few weeks, partially due to the aforementioned routine update. I’m still not quite nailing it. It’s Tuesday as I’m writing this, which isn’t enough to say how this particular week is going, but I can say that I’ve at least had a strong start. I’ve hit my walks, done a run, and did both planned strength training sessions so far. Oh, I did finally check if I could get that pull-up bar to work for me in my closet, and I can! I don’t even need to remove the door to do it! But also, I discovered that I am not yet capable of doing one single pull-up. Oh well, I guess I should have expected that. After all, it has been like 15 years since I last did, and also, I do weight just shy of 250 lbs. That’s kind of a lot, you know? To lift? So I’m going to look into what I can do to strengthen and condition the muscles involved, so I can work my way back up while continuing to slim down.

I have been a little bummed at being seemingly stuck at around 245, which is where I’m at right now. But in reviewing my logs, I had actually briefly crept back up over 250 for a short while, so I’m not actually stuck. I’m picking up that winter slack. That combination of a slightly lazy winter and the medication debacle really did a number on me, so it follows that it would be a pain in the ass to retread those waters. This does give more thoughts to something I’d mentioned as well, the idea of leaning into some more seasonal living. That still seems like a good plan, but whatever I do, I need to make sure I’m always keeping up on my basic fitness. It’s just not worth slacking off too hard or too long.

Academics: I’m back to making progress here, too. The Trig stuff is finally starting to make more sense to me. I’ve started to be able to pick out some of the angles that come up regularly. I’ve made some connections in my head, and that’s been helping a lot, too, like associating the radians with the appropriate degrees, and knowing what the sine and cosine of those common angles are. I still don’t have it locked in, and I really don’t think that flashcards are for me. I think my version of spaced repetition, at least as far as math is concerned, is to just keep doing math, and to have that practice include revisits of stuff I’ve come across before. And to that, I was planning on making another math check-in when I got further into Trig, but… I don’t know, maybe I’ll whip something up a little sooner. That last one ended up being a nice little review while writing it, so it might be a good idea to use that as a way to organize my thoughts so far, and try to restate what I think I’ve learned and check that I have it correct.

What I would really like to do is get in another class or two between now and my first day of school, but I think that might be outside of possible. My current study path is following courses with credits, so I suppose it’s possible. But as of now, the plan is still to just use these classes as primers for the actual school.

One project that I need to be more serious about because it’s directly related to my school pursuits is finances. Specifically and most immediately, to make sure I’ve got the plan to pay for my first semester all buttoned up. I got an email that, I think, is directing me to follow up on that FAFSA I filled out so I can get financial aide. I also need to finish my exploration into possible scholarships and grants. I still think I’m past due for the upcoming semester, but I need to check either way. If not, then that could be a possible boon. And I gotta get that money. If so, then it’ll be a good jump start for the next semester’s deadlines.

Music: I’ve got more progress to talk about, so now to my musical pursuits. I think I’ve worked out my practice routine. Finally. Hang on a sec, have I talked about this stupid thing my friends and I are doing? I should, ’cause this dumb shit is great. But not today. The reason I bring it up now is because I’ve decided that music is going into my regular routine. It shares ground with my need to improve my social skills & maintain my strong social connections, as well as working on my overall musical skills, especially to try and finally get good at that guitar that I’ve been noodling with for over 20 years. There are skills and areas of understanding that I’ve been putting off for years and years. The biggest gaps?

• I can’t play a song by ear
• I don’t know progressions
• I have a limited musical vocabulary (like licks, riffs, chords – the doing, not the terminology)
• I got basically no theory background
• I forget songs that I used to know and can barely retain new ones between sessions

If I’m going to be in a band, which it does seem that I am, I’m just gunna need to bone up on this shit. So I need to stop flailing about and start practicing again. Critically this time, that practice needs to be just as structured and intentional as my exercise and academic studies. Like my social life, I don’t know that this is going to be a regular check-in on the blog, but I want to point out where I am now, even if briefly, so I can see if I’ve made some progress as I go. Maybe one of these weeks I’ll make a more detailed, specific accounting of my current stance, but for now, let’s just say that I can play the thing, but I’m not very good at it. I have some pretty good mechanics, but I really need to fill in my theory and general musicianship.

Social Life: Second week in a row with this subject, but I still don’t expect it to be a regular. I have one hitch worth mentioning, which is that I keep having weekends where I’m up just way too late, and I’m finding it difficult to recover from it. It’s not the worst problem, I’ve enjoyed the weekends. Saturday is the toughest, which has regularly ended in a hang focused on board and card games, which whips. I love games of all kinds, and I especially love playing with other people that can really engage with the games, enjoy them, and take them just serious enough without going overboard. But even when the games don’t keep me up too late, I end up in conversations that do. That’s also not a complaint, the conversations are fun and touch on stuff I like to chat about, and I don’t really want to leave them. And then, whoops, it’s 2 in the morning. I don’t know, it’s not the worst problem to have, and I suspect the actual fix is to just get used to it. Or reinstate my hard, “comin’ up on bedtime, I gotta dip” policy… but that’s no fun.

I’ve had some other thoughts as I’ve been developing other new relationships and fixing up my existing ones. In previous months, I’d bemoaned my lack of relationships with women, both romantically and otherwise. Romance is still far off, but as I’ve opened up to and developed more friendships, I’m back in the headspace where a lot of that feels silly again. It’s not hard, but also, I can completely understand why it felt so hard. I can still feel that complete and utter despair that followed the destruction of my ego and confidence that put me in that funk. It’s tough stuff, y’all. And I’ve still got stuff I need to work out, though some of that is more general anxiety. I’ve got a couple of movies that I want to see that are in theaters right now, and I can handle/justify the cost and time, but then there’s the social dilemma – do I go alone? Do I invite someone? Who do I invite? And how do you invite a friend to the movies as an adult? Is it weird, or am I weird for feeling like it’s weird?

I don’t know, I guess it’s not the biggest priority, but I’ve got stuff that I’d like to get up to where I’d like to bring a friend or two, but not more. So I should probably figure this out before too long.

Next Time: I guess the big thing is to just see how the updated routine is going. I think it’s still too early to expect much more movement on my weight, but I can at least see if I’m sticking to the fitness routine. Likewise, I’d like to check in on how the studies, music practice, and everything else is going. I’d like to use the framework of a routine to start making some of my wants and pursuits a bit more automatic and expected. When I do stuff like that, things just sort of fall into place, you know? I’m not sure that can really happen in this upcoming phase of my life, but I know it won’t if I don’t try.

I’ve gotten next to nothing done today, nursing… what do I call this? I’d have to drink to be hungover, which I don’t anymore, but I’m something. I was up way too late for like, three or four days in a row, and I am just so wrecked by it. Whatever, let’s get into it.

Follow-ups: Last week, I stated that I needed to hurry up and enroll in school. I have now done that, which it turns out was super easy online. I now need to go in person to complete it, which should be pretty easy. I may do that tomorrow. I also had those medical appointments, and if I had anything worth saying from them, I’d put it in the health and fitness updates, but I don’t. Things are on track, which I should say, is good news. But it was expected. I didn’t look at much more on game development, because I decided that I need to stay focused on my current projects until they are complete or at least significantly further along. I slapped down that post on some math last week, which was cathartic, and started writing some of those book thoughts. I think that’s about all of the follow-ups? Let’s move on.

Health / Fitness: As stated in the follow-ups, I don’t have anything special to report on health. Stay the course. I was a little lax on fitness, but not terrible. I continue to find that having pumped up my fiber and protein intake, I am actually finding difficult to cram that much food into me. This does add some personal experience to my own growing body of knowledge on just how insidious our modern food system has become, but it’s just fuckin’ nuts how many calories I can stuff in me when it’s all typical American fair, heavy on empty carbs and the least filling fats, when compared to eating just a little more targeted at whole foods. Anyway, I need to start doing more full body, functional exercises, and make sure I’m more consistently getting in my daily walks and stuff.

Academics: Not enough academics last week. I got in some study time on Trig, and it was good. I did make some progress, especially towards grasping concepts. But it’s not enough, and I need to get into some problems and spend a lot more time in them. In fairness, this last week was fairly social, and the end of this week is going to be as well. But I still could have found more time. The same goes for my coding project. My little mobile app is working, I’ve got my dev environment and ecosystem set up, and I’ve got my next steps in the project outlined. I’m also taking my music practice more seriously, but I struggled really hard to find purchase on just what to practice last week. I have a better grasp on that today, but I need to make a plan and execute on it. I should make a list, update my task boards, and get on it. But that’s it, I didn’t spend enough time on anything last week, so this week I need to spend some real time on Trig, coding my app, and practicing that guitar.

I DID get in some really good reading, including finishing a couple of books. I also got in a fair bit of side research on some other ongoing projects, though that time would have been better spent on the main subjects. I also got in a smidge of soldering practice, which was great. However, under the guise of needing to be precise, I found the convenient excuse of “oh, I should get some tweezers” to keep me from finishing that project. Well, I guess it wasn’t a total wash of a week, it was maybe even alright. But I still need to get more done this week.

Social Life: Alright, I’m going to have a specific social section today, because it’s worth mentioning. Probably not next week, but we’ll see. I think I’ve mentioned before that I wanted to start thinking of my social problems as being skills that I’ve neglected, which I think is quite true, and that I need to start working at improving them. I’ve been doing that, and I think it’s been paying off. I complained a bit last week, which I don’t feel great about because it highlighted the wrong parts of the whole week, that I had some missteps. I disagree with Past Aaron – I think I did pretty well at that party. Not flawless, and I do still think I sorta cornered that woman a little, which invited others to do the same and prolong the situation… but not as bad as I was worried, maybe not bad at all. I’m definitely thinking about it too much, but also, it was super rad to get a bunch of laughs out of her, and some were real good ones. But timing on grabbing and keeping someone’s attention is something I can be more mindful going forward. Otherwise, I think I was engaging with everyone pretty well, and I was maybe even a little bit charming. Besides, I didn’t mention all of the other practice I got, and I got a bunch!

In fact, over the past few months, I’ve made it a point to attend as many social functions as I physically can (adjusting for my social burn out). Each time, I’ve pushed myself to avoid finding a corner for myself to wilt into, and instead tried to engage in some conversation with someone new to me or that I haven’t chatted with in a while. I still need work on these skills, but I’m getting better. I’m looking at the extremely socially intimidating situation of going back to school in my 40s and feeling pretty anxious about all of it, but things are improving. I am still worried about being the old guy and also starting to get worried that I’ll be loud and too much. But I’m less worried that I’ll stick out like a sore thumb and be immediately shunned for daring to be an old guy at a young person’s thing. The practice is helping. The only way to do it is to do it, right?

My niece is going to have a party for her graduation on Friday, and it’s like… somewhere with a name? And I think there’s going to be a band? I need to figure out what kind of an event this is so I can be a smidge more appropriately dressed. Not that I did poorly at the graduation ceremony, my polo and chinos outfit was fine. But it would have been appropriate to wear a sport coat or blazer, which is something I never get the chance to do. I could use a bit of practice there, too.

Next Time: I’ll have to report back on just what I actually get done this week. Today was a real wash, so I’ve gotta step things up. I should make a specific thing to report back on, let’s see… Okay, at the end of this week, I’ll have finished the in person portion of the school enrollment. I need to make some progress on my Precalc study and work on my app, but I’m not really sure what that should be. On the app, I should comfortably be done with my V1 stretch and get started on adding the next set of features. I need to feel more comfortable with these early sections of Trig, so let’s find time to do 20 problems on it, yeah? I need to practice guitar, so let’s say a minimum of 60 minutes, something like 3 sessions of 20 minutes (or however I get it in), and at least 5 cardio sessions and 3 strength training sessions. Finally, I need to get my baseline plan reset for the current plans, so let’s have a basic plan scratched out and setup something on my whiteboard.

Okay, there we go. And now I’m going to fuck off for the night. Until next time, y’all.

I think this is going to be the first installment in an ongoing, though inconsistent, series that digs into some of the lessons I’m picking up from my academic progress. I’m not sure if that means it’ll be an extension of the regular, weekly check-ins on this blog, though I suspect it’ll end up being something else over time. But this first one should at least be fairly related, because the math of it all is one of the top things on my mind in this project. It’s core to my main pursuits, which springs to mind another topic, on the conversations I’ve been having about those pursuits, school, advice. But that’s another topic for another day. 

Let me see if I can speed-recap the situation – I decided to go back to school years ago, and I’m closer to actually following through on that than ever before. I’m still undecided on a major, but it’s seeming like something technical, in computer stuff or engineering, might be the best fit for me. The problem is, it’s a lot of math, and math is hard. So I’ve been taking math classes to get up to speed. I recently finished a College Algebra course from one of those self-paced, online course websites, one that could lead to actual college credit, previously did the same with Statistics, and now I’m doing a self-directed Pre-calculus stint to ramp up to Calculus, which is my biggest concern. I’m sure there will be more challenging classes ahead of me, but in my current state, this feels like the real challenge, or at the least the first real challenge, into this change.

Today I’m going to do a less-technical recap of some of the things that stuck out to me from that College Algebra class. It turns out that it covered more ground than my high school course, if I recall it well enough, and that extra ground filled in a big chunk of what I was struggling with when I took AP Calculus back in high school.  First off, the course was a great refresher on the bits that I did learn but have had no reason to practice – all of the basic algebra principles, variables, order of operations, quadratics, all that stuff. This time around, I think I learned quadratics better than ever before. I still feel pretty weak on a few of the methods, like factoring by completing the square. I understand it in principle and have practiced it a little, but not nearly enough to internalize it or even know when it’s a good method to use. I think I’ll want to do that at some point, get in some real practice with it, that is. But I’m also not sure how useful it will actually be, and I am a little worried about misusing my limited time. It’s tough to get advice on the specifics, as I find people tend to forget just how much they’ve learned and focus on current problems, not the massive mental library they’ve been building for a lifetime. Maybe these are questions for professors and TAs when I’m actually in school.

Functions are a great example of my improving on previous knowledge. When I encountered them again this time around, it felt a little superfluous, like I didn’t really need to spend much time going over this again. You know, I get the “eff of ex”, that you have an input and an output, and all that jazz. But I quickly realized that I was very wrong, because going over it again gave me the chance to correct some misconceptions and lock in the correct principles, definitions, etc. Having these correct is key, because it turns out that a huge amount of the math that follows requires this, it’s like filling in the rest of a baseline of linguistic terminology, notation, and syntax that started way back in Elementary with your symbols for addition and subtraction. This became acutely apparent when I hit the sections on function composition. 

Functions, if you aren’t familiar, are just another way to talk about equations, formulas, stuff like that. Actually, equations, formulas, and stuff like that are all their own, individual concepts, which overlap in meaningful ways, and learning about functions helps to fill those in, because some of these definitions are relative to each other. A function is a very specific type of these things, a mathematical expression with an independent variable acting as the input to which the expression renders one and only one output, the dependent variable. The “f of” is the result of passing a particular input through the function as described by its formula. This doesn’t need to go both ways, though, in other words, the output doesn’t need to map to just one potential input. Those exist, but they’re special and have their own name, 1-to-1 Functions. Functions also don’t need to be mathematical, and some of the metaphors presented in courses are actually, factually, just functions – the input always maps to an output and is consistent. In function composition, you take two or more functions and combine them. This is a process with its own methods, principles, and notations, but all previous knowledge of related topics still apply. For instance, the Order of Operations still matters, and more so now that you are combining functions which may each be composed of multiple operations. When I first approached function composition in high school, I saw it as a novelty, which I think it is often still presented as in lessons. I have to imagine it’s pretty tough to actually construct “real world examples”, because almost every class I’ve come across with even a smidge of math loves to use the same useless junk that I just can’t relate to. That’s unfair, I am familiar with pizzas and movie tickets. They just never make an impact on me. It’s never a problem that I’m feverishly trying to solve. Just how many burgers can I get if I skip two bus tickets? No. Not a thing. However, this time around, I could find my own connection. Almost all of my work since high school, from the Air Force, to retail, and especially my corporate job involved quite a bit of math. Because of those experiences, I could start to actually see and feel what it meant to compose functions, because I’d been doing some version of it in the work world.

My best example I have for other working professionals is the spreadsheet. If you’ve used Excel or any of the many substitutes, there is a good chance you’ve done this. It’s also a programming concept – you have an expression that takes an input and gives and output, if the output is consistent and predictable, than it can be used as the input to another expression that then provides its own output, and if they are related in such a way, you can combine them into a single, more elegant expression. You need to maintain your order of operations or you’ll fuck up the expression and it’ll calculate something you didn’t mean to, and you can apply your simplification knowledge to clean up extraneous parts. Think about nested If statements, which I’m guilty of overusing in my own spreadsheets. The output of the if is true or false, and depending on which it is, another function could convert that response into a more useful output, possibly by adding another “If”, something like “if true, add 1, else, 0”. You can set up a bunch of these from one cell into the next or, as you get better at it, learn to combine all of the relevant functions into one formula housed inside a single cell that gives you the only output that you actually care about.

I can relate that back and forth from practical to abstract and back again with Geometry, especially with how it integrates with Algebra. At some point, you’ll be asked to figure out the area of one of the faces of a box. You’ll be missing the length of at least one side, but you have enough information on the rest of the box – likely the area and two of the three sides you’d need to calculate it – that you can work your way backwards to the missing side. Now, I usually end up doing just that, laying out my various bits of knowledge and working through them from what I know towards the answer that I want, but if you’re particularly keen on the topic, you could combine all of this work into a single function. Whichever path you choose, the concept remains, and you’ll still have done it. It’s brilliant, really, you didn’t know it, but if you’ve been working through the math subjects in order (or gotten out to the real world to solve problems using the outputs as inputs), you’ve been composing functions all along.

So there’s one insight – Composite functions matter because as your mathematics study progresses, you’ll find a need to take related functions and combine them to create new functions.

Next up, I completely missed sequences and series in high school, which made AP Calculus nearly impossible. I simply could not comprehend entire swathes of problems presented to me because I’d never actually known these concepts, their applications, or notations. I got away with it for a little bit, because I could just mimic problems that looked similar enough. But I couldn’t comprehend the syntax or symbology, and as complexity increased, faking it simply didn’t work anymore. I was stuck, and I’d lacked the experience to find my way out of it. By the way, there are many ways to get stuck and each has their own way out. In a case like this one, the solution is to top and back up. I needed to go back to an earlier place in my learning, a place I understood well enough to continue learning and stop faking.

A sequence is a sort of succession of numbers, and while there may be more further on, at this level, there are two flavors. Because I revisited computer programming before revisiting Algebra, I now think of all of these as being something like a Recursive expression, which I do recognize is not quite right. I wouldn’t recommend you go into a test with that idea, but it works when I think about simple functions in something like the C language, where you might assign a starting number as “i = 1”, and then each time the function is called, it increments up because you’ve also assigned the task “i++”, which literally increments the starting number by one. You can change the starting number by changing what “i” is set to, like “i = 500”, and there are ways of modifying the syntax such that you can change the interval that is being incremented to 2, 3, or any number or ratio. You can even make the interval negative, and all of that is the same with arithmetic sequences. Common notation for this borrows from the logic of sets, where you put a dataset in curly brackets like {0,1,2}, or from more common function notation, like a_n = 2ⁿ, where n is the maximum number in the sequence.

The Factorial is a type of these that really helped me bridge the conceptual gap, because I’d seen them before and kinda sorta had a little bit of an idea of what they were, but I really didn’t know how to work with them other than very clunkily mashing my way through. So the notation is “n!”, same meaning for the “n” part, and this new notation of an exclamation point means the product of the positive consecutive integers from 1 to n. In other words, instead of counting up from 1 to n, you take each number in that sequence and multiply it with the previous result. 2! Is 2 * 1, which is just 2. I guess 1!, which is a little silly, doesn’t multiply, it’s just 1. Nothing to factor with it. 3! (which I think is pronounced “Three Factorial”), means 1 * 2 * 3. You can just multiply them all together, but you could also take each one at a time, or you know, in sequence. So 1 * 2 is 2, 2 * 3 is 6. What’s 4!? Just take the end result of the sequence immediately before it and multiply that by the next number in the sequence – 6 * 4, which equals 24. And now we start to notice that this can grow extremely quickly, and get an idea of just how that might look. Keeping in mind how to actually perform this is worthwhile, because you could end up with a rational that has factorials in both the numerator and the denominator, and remembering what composes this sequence means you can simplify the ration by canceling like terms. “5! / 4!” is just 5. (5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1) / (4 * 3 * 2 * 1), cancel like terms, you’re left with 5/1, and that’s 5. Done, no need to expand and slowly multiply that mess out. Extremely useful to know as those numbers get bigger.

This is a great entry for this type of math, because it hints at the underlying properties. Now we start getting notation like a_n = a₁ + d(n-1), which is the explicit formula for an arithmetic sequence. An arithmetic sequence defines a sequence, or a set of numbers that changes with uniform increments, and that formula lets you find a specific number in that sequence. Same meaning of n, so if we’re looking for the tenth number in this sequence, that’s “a₁₀”, and if you have the starting number, that’s “a”₁, if you have the increment, that’s “d”. “d” can act like the slope of a more traditional linear equation and “a₁“ as the intercept, if it helps. You multiply the increment “d” by “n-1” instead of “n” because you’ve already included the first number in the sequence as “a₁”.

An arithmetic series expands on this idea by not just finding the specific number at a defined spot in the sequence, but sums everything in the sequence from the defined start to the defined stop. Sequences and series also come in Geometric flavor, and that’s multiplication stuff. The arithmetic flavor is about a common difference between increments, whereas the geometric version works with common ratios between terms. These get used for more specific problems, like compound interest, scientific scales for loudness or earthquake intensity, stuff that has a rate that you can reliably calculate. And these ultimately lead to the biggest knowledge gap that I had, which I now know as Summation Notation. I remember hitting the notation for this in that AP Calc class and just being so lost. It was the late 90s, so if I’d have known where to look, I could have found answers on the internet. But I didn’t and, to be honest, I also wasn’t all that interested. I had the text book, I could have just checked there – would have been nice to have had that thought back then. 

You can find all types of diagrams for this type of thing online, I’m borrowing one from onelinemathlearning.com, I hope they don’t mind:

Just seeing something like this would have helped a ton when I was younger, but going through the course in order with fresh eyes now helped even more. It’s basically the same idea, but this notation more efficiently and compactly transmits the information. This one feels closer to the programming version, where the “i” at the bottom designates the starting point, the “n” up top tells us where to stop, and the junk to the right of the Sigma (the funky-ass E) is the actual function. It’s not always written exactly like this, sometimes the top and bottom are to the right in superscript and subscript, but it means the same thing. The big win was when I saw that you can throw an infinity symbol up top where that “n” indicates, which is for summing an infinite series. 

A thing I sorta remember from Calculus is how we’d need to deal with the concept of infinity, but I don’t know that I ever really understood how or why. It looks like, at least the beginning of Calculus, is split into Integrals and Derivatives. I only vaguely remember either, and I’m certain I didn’t understand either, because when I see explanations of them now and know it is not at all how I understood them back then. But understanding how you could arrive at a precise solution by approaching infinitely smaller estimates makes sense now. This was also helped by the limit notation, where you can show how the dependent variable approaches but never arrives at a particular value as the independent variable approaches infinity. Pretty slick stuff.

I’ve glossed over a few of them, like toolkit functions. Honestly, I could use more practice with those as well. I think I’ll try to keep track of my weakest areas and then when I’m in between courses, I’ll see about finding some practice for them. But I think that’s a fair enough overview of some of the meaningful lessons I’ve gotten from Algebra today.

Next time, I’ll get into what I’ve been learning in the Trig module so far. It’s been a bunch, but I’m still pretty early.

I’m wearing facial hair that is far too trendy for me, and I don’t like it. But it’s growing on me. This is going to end up being a long one, it’s a real thought dump, but it’s just a check in. I’m saying nothing of note, so don’t dwell or feel obligated.

Follow-ups: My niece’s high school graduation happened, and from my perspective, it was very nice. My brother gave the impression that he and my sister-in-law are not happy with the school, though I haven’t followed up on that. I know some of the struggles regarding it, and I’d be pretty pissed, too. It’s not my place to say anything here, and it’s barely my business anyway. I’m more interested in my place as providing some manner of support, even if it’s just lending an ear. As far as I’m concerned, my niece graduated from a prestigious high school and got into a prestigious college, so they did their job and did it well. Take the ‘W’. I’ll tell them that next time we chat. Also, I was right about the sport coat, but panicked in the moment that I’d be overdressed so didn’t. I should have stuck with the coat.

The rest of my social situations that were lined up for last week shook out pretty well. The guitar get together went great. We didn’t actually end up playing that much, and I’m sorry to say that it did turn into a bit of a remedial class for me, as I had feared, but he didn’t seem to mind. Some of it was chatting about shared musical influences, hearing him out on some of his musical philosophies, and more or less trying to get a vibe for the learning grove he’s found. Provided this wasn’t a total drag for him, and I hope it wasn’t, I suspect we’ll get together more, and next time we’ll actually play. I also think he’s going to join the drummer and I for practice this upcoming Sunday, which would be great. The bassist is out of town, so one of us guitarists can fill in. I do play a little bass, but I think he might use a pitch-shifter on his guitar, which would give me a chance to focus on my parts.

The drummer and bassist of this band are among my closest friends, and we’ve all been going through a variety of difficulties the past few years. The drummer just lost his mother after years of battling with cancer. She was an awesome lady, and it’s quite the loss. Meanwhile, the bassist is in the Philippines, and just proposed to his long time, long distance girlfriend. She said yes, so I suppose I should upgrade that to “his fiance”.

As a result of the loss, a bunch of the drummer’s close friends, to include me, gathered at his house to keep him company and help him “get cross-faded”, as one does. He was in good form, which was quite impressive. I do hope I provided the friendship and support asked of me, and I think I did. I question this because I had a great time, and I worry I was a bit selfish in so doing. I got to joke around, talk mad shit about stuff, catch up with folks I haven’t in a while, and pet some dogs. I even got to catch up with the bassist’s sister whom readers might recall I made things awkward and shitty with because I took a romantic shot at her some months ago. I think things are smoothed over now, and I got quite a few good laughs out of here, though I did walk away with some new anxieties there as well.

I’d wanted to catch up with her all night, but I didn’t want to just cut in on an ongoing conversation and I didn’t want to get her alone and make her feel like I’d cornered her. Nearing the end of the night, she was slowly wrapping up and not entirely in on the conversation she was physically nearest, and nor was I. So I moved in for a chat. When things from the other conversation got loud, I instinctively moved us a little away, which immediately felt a little shitty of me, like I was taking advantage of the situation to pull her away. So I stopped a few steps out, as to not get too far.

Other friends inserted themselves into our conversation, which, I don’t know, it’s a party, so that’s normal. Often welcomed, really, but in this case, a bit of a bummer, because I was trying to get her thoughts and feelings. It’s hard to get those out of her in the group conversations, because she often hangs back in them, letting the rest of us make asses of ourselves, which is generous of her, but then she just gets edged out. And that’s kinda what happened here, where it became less of a conversation with her and more of a chance for the boys to perform. I don’t know what to feel about this. Sometimes it feels like I’m being chaperoned. I’m not, of course, but I don’t think we got three minutes with just the two of us, while I got long stretches of one-on-ones with just about everyone else there that night.

Though I know I’ve not always been great at it, these days, when I see my friends get into a one-on-one conversation, even if it doesn’t seem particularly private, I tend to leave them be. They have entered into a dynamic that lets them form and develop real connections, and they don’t need me showing up to perform “The Aaron Show” and change that dynamic. That I can’t seem to do that in this situation gives me the impression that I’m doing something wrong. Maybe I am, I don’t have any ownership of this woman’s time. But it always results in the intended conversation being diminished, because if I don’t make room for them, now it feels like I’m being rude and weird. Though they don’t mean to, they end up taking the room that I was trying to make for her, and I lose the conversational dynamic I was hoping for, the chance to practice my one on one skills, and the bigger chance to just hear from her, unfettered by group dynamics. I also end up performing for the changed dynamic myself, which I think might make me come off as disingenuous.. It’s certainly not any of their faults or problems, and may very well just be me reading too much into things. And then I also feel like the additions made her stay even later, after I’d already selfishly prevented her from ducking out when she’d wanted to. In the attempt to repair the overstep, I think I’ve made some progress. However, in trying to bolster the friendship part of the relationship, I think I’ve made some new mistakes and lost ground. I don’t know, I’m sure I’m overthinking it, but I feel like I’ve been a dick, and I’m not sure how to fix that.

I suppose it’s relevant, and I don’t know the last time I mentioned romance, so maybe it’s worth stating – I’ve decided to take it off the table entirely for the time being. I don’t want to come off as though that one, misguided attempt is going to shut me down entirely. It wasn’t just that, for one, it was also online dating, and a couple of conversations in the wild that I think I could have pursued, but I just had nowhere to go with it. it’s also very much not forever. I’m sure I’ll get back at things eventually. But I just don’t got it right now, and feeling like I need to get it while I’m just so out of sorts and have so little offer is not helping. I mean, look, I don’t even know who I am anymore, but I’m pretty sure I want more than a hookup, and that seems incompatible. I’m not saying I’m avoiding it, look, it would be great to have sex again. Goddamn, would it ever. But I don’t get out much, and when I do, I’m not thinking about pulling some strange, I’m thinking about the friends that I’m out with. Maybe that’s because I’m plagued by the lingering inadequacy left by years of constant rejection, but that’s a conversation for therapy. Either way, I just can’t deal with that right now. So I’ll just stay the course on my various self improvement projects and squash the rest of the wants for the time being. When it’s time again, I’ll be ready.

Health / Fitness: My walking treadmill is broken and has been for a while. I’m pretty sure it’s fixable, and I know exactly how it got this way – I didn’t maintain it. Likely complications are that I never cleaned it or lubricated any of its parts, the contact between the platform and the track in particular. So that probably really hurt the motor, which I suspect is also very dirty. Though I suppose it could just be extremely damaged. The plan was to open it up, clean it out, and repair whatever is broken. I opened it up today and… I don’t think I’m going to do that. It doesn’t, honestly, seem all that hard. But it also looks like the construction of this thing is such that it isn’t meant to be repaired. Not that this would normally stop me, but in order to get in there to repair it, I think it’s likely I’d do more damage, some of which might not be reversible. There’s a lot of plastic bits without screws going on. Also, I think the damage already done might not just be dust and hair caught in the motor, I think the extended use without proper maintenance may have degraded the operation in the motor itself, which I’m not sure cleaning would actually help. And these units are so cheap, both in price and construction, they’re clearly meant to be replaced. I hate that, but I also might need to just accept it. Replacing it may be the only real option. I don’t know, I’m going to think about that, maybe take another stab at it the next time I have nothing to do on a weekend.

Otherwise, things have just been moving along as intended. I have finally started losing weight again, but I’m not back to my end of last year weight-in yet. I should get there over the summer, and the summer is a great time for me to catch up. And then I’ll be in school, and I’m really not sure what to expect there. In the meantime, bumping up the protein and fiber in my diet seems to have been a good move. So here’s to hoping.

Academics: I’m still doing the mini-precalc module. Right now, I’m getting up to speed on Trigonometry, but I’m definitely not all the way there. I need to challenge myself with more problems, since I learn so much more quickly through my mistakes.

I have had a few revelations on it that would have definitely made my high school AP Calc experience better had I known or understood them, which I’m thinking I might write about later this week. In addition to just enjoying writing, I’m finding that the act of writing about things actually helps me better understand them. One thing worth mentioning off the top is that, in the study of Trig, by its nature, you dive really deep into just one topic. It’s all triangle, largely just the right triangle in the unit circle. So you can really focus in on it and gather insights you otherwise wouldn’t jumping from subject to subject. It’s like when you need to solve everything to do with one single process, you can’t help but get all the way up to your elbows in it. There is a huge advantage to this, because you’ll end up seeing some of the same information but from different angles, which both helps to reinforce the knowledge you’ve been gaining, but also helps to broaden connections, but making them more abstract, open to explore, and more concrete, available to apply.

On my coding project, things have been progressing slowly. This is because I’ve also switched over to Linux from Windows as the OS on my daily driver desktop PC. I’m currently dual booting the machine, but I’ve been comfortable enough on the Linux side (cautiously running a Zorin OS distro for the time being), that most days I don’t need to boot to the Windows side at all. However, I have already found a few problems that I’ve not been able to solve in Linux. I also have an Apple laptop, and that seems to solve most of those, but it’s annoying that there are still things in 2026 that not only don’t bother to make themselves available on other systems, but actually needlessly lock them out. The most popular web browsers are all available and work perfectly fine in Linux, some are even optimized for it. But there are webapps that you access through any normal browser that then make their own checks for the OS, see that it isn’t the most current Windows, and says, “nah”. Maybe there are some key parts of the architecture that make this make sense, but dawg, your webapp is just not that special, how could it possibly need to care what the OS is?

That whole annoying situation aside, things have stalled a little for setup. I’m sure I could have finished setup earlier, but I needed to do some research, and I didn’t want to lose steam on my other projects, so I didn’t dedicate all of my time there. On the steup, dev tools seem to never work out of the box, which in some way feels like its on purpose. This isn’t a Linux problem, though. Setting up dev tools is a pain in the ass on every OS. Even XCode, Apple’s native development tool, can take like a day to actually set up to work the way you want it to, especially if you want to run your app on a physical phone. It’s almost like you have to prove that you want it bad enough before you can use it.

I’m still working out a few kinks, but I’ve gotten my main setup using Android Studio on my Linux box at least working. The toughest part has been getting the Android emulator working. One more annoying thing is that I ended up trying out VS Code again, and I think I like it more. The annoying thing is that I can’t seem to solve getting the emulator working as well for VS Code. If it works at all, which it usually doesn’t, it’s slow, laggy, chunky, and prone to crashes. What a pain. Additionally, I still have to tackle connecting it to my physical devices, which I haven’t gotten working on either. However, I’ve got that covered on my other machines, so it’s a low priority. The priority is dropped even more now that I’ve started using github a little more closely to as intended. I’m pushing and pulling code now! Commits with comments! No hands, ma! Some hands, actually, I’m not comfortable going fully automatic.

Anyway, the app is working, but it’s messy, not very inviting, and missing some key features. So I’m going to fix that all up in a few phases, and see if I can’t just publish this thing between now and the start of school. So that’s the study balance right now – the math ramp-up continues, I’m sprinkling in some Chem and Physics, and trying to keep up with the coding project. I think those are going to consume my life, but also, that sounds kinda great.

Next Time: I should have some follow-up on college enrollment, which I’m writing here as added reason to hurry up and do it. I really don’t know why I’m dragging my feet. I’ve made an account, I should just start filling out the forms already. I also have a couple of medical appointments this week, though I don’t expect any revelations from them. I guess you’ll hear about it if I do. I want to take a closer look at some gamedev options, because it would be rad to make a little one this year. I think it might be a slightly bigger monster than I want to take on right now, but I’m always thinking about it. I also have a mountain of books that I’ve been wanting to talk about, and the pile keeps growing, so I should hurry up and do that. Also all of the math thoughts I’ve been having, I really need to write those down, so I can stop storing the thoughts in my head. That’s not where those belong, I need that space for the right now of it all. Oh my god, this week is already filling up so quickly, I have to stop thinking!

Alright, that’s it. I’m cutting me off for the night. Until next time, y’all.