on independence

ahh i finally added a dark mode to my writing editor so now when i write in the late hours of night i'm not flashbanged by my css-absent page. im genuinely never fixing my sleep schedule holy shit (according to my circadian reset plan i was supposed to sleep at 2:30 am today with a target wake time of 10:00 am in order to eventually reach an 11:00 pm - 7:00 am natural wake up circadian cycle LOL). anyway something i've realized about myself since coming to college is that i struggle quite a bit being alone / doing things by myself. this is something that i told a lot of my close friends before and after coming to college, that one of my biggest insecurities was doing things alone and always needing a companion to do something with. and this reduces down to really trivial things too like doing laundry, going to the library, etc. having a roommate in college also sort of exacerbated this problem of mine. to me it seemed pretty contradictory to be living with someone and then doing things without them. but i've realized that that entire thought process is severely holding me back. i'm starting to basically live like the people i am around, "copying" them in a way, relying on them which is terrible. because i was thinking that if i was in isolation and thus had complete independent jurisdiction on what i would do, then i would be doing a lot more than i currently am. i would be able to act on impulse and not wait for somebody to have to follow. i could basically just live more truthfully and do what i want because there is nobody i have to appease. but gosh coming to college there are very few things that i can do on my own and i am disliking that reliance a lot. if i want to do something spontaneous on my own which i know for a fact no one will want to join me, then i should just fucking do it. there is a bit of nuance to this though. actually, no there isn't. what i was going to type was i wouldn't want to eat on my own because i've always had a really negative stigma and overall sad disposition to that sort of thing, but then i was like "hm if i want to eat some good ass food then why cant i just go get that good ass food by myself?" this reliance on others that i've had for so long is really dragging me down, and i'm starting to feel those effects firsthand. now that i'm in college, what the fuck can i not do by myself? this place is ginormous, and if i am just a trivial speck in a much bigger ecosystem then my actions have no consequence whatsoever. i can do whatever i want! i want to just learn how to do a lot more things by myself. i want to spend time by myself. just myself doing things that only i want to do. i've never done something like this before, and it would probably be super uncomfortable, but ugh the longer i am here and the more i form a reliance on other people the more i feel trapped by an imaginary cage that i literally hold the keys too. and i feel like this metaphor can be extended to like EVERYTHING else here like as i wrote in my first ever article "i have a good amount of agency here" and so it would just be a huge injustice to me not to use that on my own internal desires. for instance, as i also figure out my life direction for my work i'm like searching up "quant pathways" and trying to find out how to grind for shit i don't care about, but i want to make up my own archetypes. these other molds of like grinding for big-tech and other paths are just so unappealing, and it is an internal contradiction for me to try and rely on others for their "judgement" or "behavior" towards these things. what i really want for myself is to have the mathematical capabilities of a scholar, someone who is grossly intimate with the material they learn and understands it on such a deep level, but at the same time i dont want to slave away and do that as an occupation. instead, i want to at the same time be able to post fun and viral content, documenting my life and talking about whatever the fuck i want to talk about on the internet, while at the same time pursuing a startup to try and revolutionize the world. it's sort of a combination of seemingly clashing and unrelated things, but that's what i love and that's what i want to do rather than relying on others. why must i fit into these pre-existing sheep molds which other people are far better than me at? again, canonical freshman event, when seeing everyone around you doing the same things and trying to fit in these pre-determined molds it seems like you are not doing something right when not following. but if i actually will be a visionary or at least contribute something unique to the world, then i won't be doing what everyone else is doing! OH MY GOD this is literally like the philosophy i pushed in my amazingly bullshit SAT video, that you can't be better than 99% if you do what the 99% are doing. and how could i forget my own advice! that's another thing i'm noticing since coming here, a lot of my old ideologies or core beliefs have been muddled and almost lost because (again) of this assimilation i'm doing. gahh i hate it! i really want to be dead set on what i want to do and so then i can just unapologetically commit all my energy to it without having to dwell on what else i should be doing or relying on the perception of others. i get excited by seeing and making content, i get excited by larp networking with other people in the startup space, but i also get excited by learning math and cs at such a deep and technical level, romanticizing as some real scientist and scholar amidst the scientific revolution sitting in an old bostonian lecture hall. i like the sort of unexpectedness, that usually striver startup people are sort of dull or naive and against traditional education, but i want to go against that. i want to embrace this duality (wow this duality narrative made a comeback from college apps!), why can't i go deep into both? nothing is stopping me from living the way i want to live! it's just a weird discomfort of mine where if i'm going to go down this sort of weird path and fit this weird archetype, it'll have to be alone. and that is something that i will have to sit with, embrace, and then simply do. i want to post youtube videos and cool edits, i want to build startups and random ass side projects that i find interesting, and i want to immerse myself in theory. i love these things, and perhaps i am one of very few who loves this combination of items. i must learn to live alone! with this "good amount of agency" i must reap it fully. independence is quite the tough cookie and one that is definitely foreign to me, but oh boy it makes me salivate thinking about the outcome of my life if i just indulge in its discomfort. alright time for bed hopefully i can wake up at a decent time today and NOT fail my midterm. despite all my discussion above, i will unfortunately not become intimately involved with the content of my climate change class. it is just too surface level, and also hard to romanticize in my head drawing on a chalkboard in an empty hall discovering something novel in my disorganized thoughts because i have no thoughts about this class. ok bye.