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ALL the Wrong Directions

@wrong-directions

Charlie, 32, anxious mass of organic material
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen or diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world – all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their souls.”

— C.G.Jung

Movement nudge! Just do something!

Not gonna lie. Everytime I see her face on my insta feed, I immediately get up and do something. She has me trained.

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this is one of those videos I decided to download and save so I can find it again in case this post ever disappears

“Lying still and thinking little is the cheapest medicine for all sicknesses of the soul and, if persisted with, grows more pleasant hour by hour.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 361

…Apparently, as per my experiment this evening, taking a pause in reading Online Opinions and instead dedicating an hour to doing an uncomplicated embroidery while listening a library audiobook is beneficial to one’s mood and mental stability. More news at 10.

I’ll post the story associated with this nonsense some other time. For now, enjoy.

So my freshman year academic advisor had the retiring-professor version of senioritis and didn’t care about like, anything. So he didn’t bother to tell me, no, don’t take complex analysis in your freshman year of college! So there I was, drowning.

My complex professor, Dr. G., made us show that we understood simply connected spaces and simple closed curves with such homework questions as “draw a simple closed curve in the shape of a common mammal” and “draw a simply connected space in the shape of an uncommon mammal.” And he’d also told me that he didn’t think I could draw a good cat that was a simple closed curve. And look, I love Dr. G., But more than I love him, I love proving him wrong. So I drew him this cat on graph paper during my advanced discrete math lecture even though I probably should have been paying attention. And he liked the cat, and he put it on his office door.

This was also the year I learned LaTeX. Which was really hard for me because nothing about coding comes naturally to me in the way that pure math does. But I had Dr. A.. He was my differential equations professor in my first term of college, and had become my friend and since then also my research advisor. And when I was in complex, he was teaching vector calc, and had taught complex before. He’s also a LaTeX GOD. And he helped me with a lot of complex and LaTeX that quarter. In the last week of the term, I made this, mostly just to practice LaTex. But also to amuse Dr. G. And Dr. A..

Now you gotta understand, these two men are pretty young as far as professors go, but Dr. A. is about a year older, and they’re also very good friends. I gave Dr. A. his copy of this dumb math cat, and he loved it. Put it on his office white board with a magnet. It’s been up in his office for two years now, even through an office move. Dr. G., on the other hand, may be even younger but pretends to be the stodgiest old grouch in the department. He was totally unamused by this math cat when I gave it to him. I said, “but Dr. G., aren’t you proud of me?” And he said, “For this? No.” And I was so sad!

Except, a few months later, I was in his office for some reason (probably just to mess with him, it’s great fun), and I noticed the printout I’d given him hung up above his desk. Not on his office door, where other people would see it, but at his desk, with his kids’ drawings, where he could see it. And oh. My useless little mathematician heart.

did you know that if you lie down in a dark room and turn off all your music and everything and don't go on instagram reels you can experience "quiet" and "darkness" and even imagine different sounds and sights, etc

Camellia sasanqua 'Marge Miller' / 'Marge Miller' Sasanqua Camellia at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC

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