Just a Check-In

Hey everyone, It's been a number of months since I last posted so I wanted to write a little check-in post. I don't have much to advertise about my life over the course of this past school year, except to assure my hypothetical readers that I am in sound health and that I am in no grave danger, which unintentionally sounds like something an abductee would be forced to say to a camera at gunpoint.

I have faced some challenges in recent months, as is natural through the progression of life, pertaining to my professional and personal life. I don't wish to get into the details of these difficulties at the moment because I am still working through them and I think that writing about them at this uncertain moment would burden me more than I would like. But rest assured, I have written them down and intend to discuss some if not all of them after they have been resolved to some extent. Additionally, I have achieved one major milestone which brings me much joy, that is, submitting my first technical paper to a journal for review.

As far as my participation in hobbies and recreational activities, I have been writing and drawing significantly more in recent weeks. The two games I have played the most, though I haven't played much, are Chess and Geoguessr. I have been engaging in exercise fairly regularly, though I admit to having fallen behind on my regimen in the past month. I do have a plan to recover what I missed, though, by the end of the quarter, which I intend to undertake and have made a note of to mention later. I have been sparring in kickboxing and Muay Thai with my friends, regularly in my neighborhood when I visit home on the weekends, and occasionally at university. I haven't practiced piano in forever, which disappoints me. But to be fair, I have no shortage of critical judges in my life at the moment so being disappointed in myself for not playing piano is not a preeminent concern of mine. I have also drastically increased my consumption of podcasts, which I believe has increased my fluency by a significant margin. I admit that my practice of speaking and reading Hindi, once a relentless obsession of mine, has undergone a precipitous decline in the past months, ever since I made the decision to stop being weird, though there was a fair bit of mental discipline involved in that obsession as well. (By the way, I seem to have a proclivity to becoming obsessed with things ever since I was a little child, whether it be my tendency towards idiosyncratic symmetry, speaking Hindi, running, or playing the piano.)

I am in regular communication with my roommates and with a certain selection of friends, whom I am grateful to know and be known by. Not to mention my parents, with whom I converse daily. I frequently feel blue, but am glad to have the opportunity to study such moments to understand what it is that makes me feel that way. And I am blessed to believe in love and to be so closely connected by virtue of the Internet to so many of the positive role models in my life whom I look up to and aspire to be like.

As seems to always be true for me, things could be better, things could be worse. One of the problems I don't have to worry about at the moment though is planning or prioritizing my work, since I already have plenty to do. One of the problems I do have to concern myself with, however, is following up on my plans and being more productive before time runs out. So I pray that the coming days will allow me to gain strength and seek out glory. And if you, the reader, would like, I'll pray for you too.