098. Writing Some More

tldr: a way to deal with stress

So I shared my last post on all the various social medias. I was, and am, very proud of the piece, and in case you’re wondering: I think I am going to go with the piece Musty White Cars for the StorySlam. But the real reason I bring this up, is because when I tweeted the blog, I realized that I am really fucking close to reaching blog number 100. I mean, look at the title of this post. Blogpost 098. That’s like, at least two blogs away from 100. Which, granted, is perhaps not too many blogs given that I started blogging about four years ago. But I feel like I will have accomplished something? I will have accomplished something.

When I realized that we are close to blog 100, this made me wonder if I should put the zero at the beginning still. When I first started blogging, and was still in the first-digit-numbered-blogposts, adding the zero made the numbers feel less lonely. Less… I don’t know. It felt like I had somewhere to build up to. Like the concept of “tomorrow”: always coming, but never there. I hoped to change that zero to a one. And I did. I wrote dozens of blogposts, preparing to apply to be an MITAdmissions blogger,,,,, and then I wasn’t accepted. What resulted is probably one of my cringiest blogposts to date.

And frankly, I debated whether or not I should keep writing these blogposts. I really felt discouraged, and overwhelmed by MIT starting, but I kept writing. Sparsely, but I wrote nonetheless. I kept feeling like I had to beat that zero in front of the blogpost number. Four years later, and that may very well be happening any day now.

Anyways, after I realized that I am rapidly approaching blogpost 100, I asked on Twitter if I should start labelling the blogposts with or without a zero. On the one hand, it feels optimistic. Like: hey, one day, I am gonna beat this barrier I put in front of myself. But on the other hand, it feels presumptuous to put the zero in? Like what am I gonna do, write more than a thousand blogposts in my lifetime? Honestly, that doesn’t seem like the worst idea.

So anyways, I tweet this out and CJ says something to the effect of: you’d just have to blog ~once a day for three years to get beyond 1000. And then Alan says (essentially): well, it’s not impossible.

And y’know what? It’s not impossible.

I don’t really know if I can even feasibly maintain blogging once a day, and still maintain my sanity. For me, I really like writing blogs that I have thought a lot about, at least relatively, and I simply cannot spend many hours a day wracking my brain for a good idea. But what I can sign myself up for, is blogging when I think “hey I should write a blog about this”. It may mean that that blog won’t come out that day, but it’ll mean something is being written.

I am going to beat blogpost 99. And when I do, I will add a zero in front and keep going from there, until one day I beat blogpost 999.

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And y’know what? This energy may fizzle out in like a month. I’m not 100% certain whether or not I’ve Gotten this energy because I am stressed as fuck about gradschool applications. But this, at the very least, feels like a good way to work through this stress.

Here are some things I plan to blog about.

- Meeting Matt Parker, who introduced me to higher dimensions in my junior year of high school. I wrote an MIT Application essay about him.
- What does dimension even mean? (aka a slight answer to the question: what the hell do I even study?). This will be an interesting question to try and answer in a way that a high schooler may be able to understand.
- What about math do I even like? Like, not the subject, but what about the culture, and the people, and community, etc do I even like? I sketched out such a blogpost when I was working through gradapps and was feeling like I was losing part of my identity in my applications.
- What was it like going to the JMM? Who did I grab Chipotle with one day while in San Francisco? (Spoiler: It was Vincent.)
- How did I/didn’t I cultivate my experience and time at MIT? I spent a lot of time thinking and reflecting upon this question over the years.
- How I knew I was making the right friends and going the right direction with my MIT experience. Vaguely related to the previous post, but I have Plans for this one.
- and something interesting about my and other’s experience in the MIT math department…. will have to see on that one.

Okay, I am not gonna sit here and pour out every idea I have for blogposts into this list. It will only make me feel worse if I one day look back at this list and think: ah I didn’t write these, or “what the hell was I talking about in this bullet point?”. Okay wait fine, one more idea for a blogpost and then I am stopping.

- What ended up happening with my graduate school applications? (Frankly, I don’t know what happened with most of them yet!)

Talk with y’all soon.