I need to not read the blogs of pensive people doing pensive things.

However, reading it has given me some newfound sense of confidence, something which has not been lacking at all recently.....ha ha hah.

I'm like this anti-Hegelian nightmare. Anytime there's an anti-thesis to an idea of mine, I take my idea to extremes. I consider myself generally moderate, politically, economically, etc. However, on more fundamental and personal levels, I'm like some kind of computer. I'm either on or off.

There are some things I hope to keep off completely. Zealous connection to any ideology is dangerous. I've gone through so many psycho zealot stages in my life it's not even funny, and I think that's part of the awkwardness of youth. The last two years have been particularly difficult in figuring that common level out to a smart compromise. I have gone from religious zealot to religious apathist. I think apathy is an acceptable middle ground, especially when for like 6 months, I was highly reactionary to anything with any kind of religious sentiment. That second semester at Regis was a nightmare with regards to irrational thinking. Both semesters were, really. I boiled things down to two simples, the first semester was the permanence of established religious order and the second was the corruption of religious order. Nothing else really mattered those two semesters, which is incredibly disappointing. What a waste of time, to go from someone of intense talents to someone embroiled in just one thing.

My discussions were founded on the basis of anger, and now, my objections can be based on evidence.

Some things are constant extremes, like my level of prudishness and my commitment to academic excellence. Those are hand-in-hand things for me. I see myself like some kind of academic Samson, where any social interaction beyond proper limits is tanamount to taking out my brains.

The Renaissance era is my major inspiration. Men like da Vinci, More, Erasmus, and women like the Medicis, and the Tudor princesses were people of incredible intellectual skill, founded in the sciences, arts, mathematics, logic, and politics. There was nothign that these people could not do intellectually, and I want to be one of those people. In a world so segmented, so specialized, there is no room for the Renaissance man to thrive.

My last semesters have been far more productive than my two semesters at Regis. I will have completed 73 hours in a little over a year, and if I add in next semester, I'm up to 102 in 5 semesters, which is an average of over 20 hours per semester. I've been able to look at ideas from all kinds of angles, to no end.

I think I'm on the edge of something magnificent, like everything I've ever done academically will finally mean something to me. As if the vibrance of my academic diversity will pay off. That sacrificing literally every other aspect of my life is going to reward me.

Karma is a fundamental error, and my optimism is not well founded. I feel these things, as if I'm going to stumble upon something great, but at the same time, we know Ray's opinions on how much things matter (In the end, nothing matters, because for the sake of sanity, I cannot acknowledge an afterlife).

If anything, I'm closer to the edge of pure insanity than I am on pure discovery. My rates of paranoia are increasing. I'm essentially trapped inside now-I fear the presence of ultraviolet radiation dimerizing my cytosines and mutating my DNA, PDA's in second-hand smoke that similarly bind to DNA and discontort it, HNE90's in fried foods that cause Alzheimers, telomere degradation, chlorines in sucralose. I haven't been outside more than 10 minutes at a time in the last 3 months. I'm starting to get more and more panic attacks. Containing them is also growing increasingly difficult. On average, I get about 10 a day, and I can feel my heart beat increasing and my sweat glands producing every drop of water that they can make, followed by rapid temperature fluctuations, and the sensation of pure terror, as if whatever is going on in that second is going to threaten my very survival.