007

I woke up on Sunday with the strange smudge of a bruise on my left arm, the colour of ochre and celadon. This morning I woke up to find cat scratches on my chest, non-parallel - there's a disordinal interaction happening right there. Someone open up Jamovi and investigate whether the interaction is removable or not. Can you tell I have my statistics final coming up soon? No? Aw, you're so kind.

Anyway, I find that when I get really deep into my studying, the physical world passes over me like a thick, smoky mist. I make instant soup and slather butter on bread, pick up salmon from the supermarket, occasionally take a walk outside to see the ducks - but it's not really happening. None of it is. I am stuck in a little apartment inside of my mind filled with words and numbers and ways of conceptualizing all of the different research methodology paradigms that exist out there. If you want to know, the main ones we need to talk about are realist, phenomenological and discursive. In the middle of all this revision, though, I tend to feel these sick pangs of desire. Of wanting to be noticed, appreciated, even slightly understood. I hope I find that soon, I keep begging for what feels like the bare minimum but I understand the request is more massive than what I say out loud.

I worry a little for when exams are actually over, because what do I do then? Spam my thoughts on the Internet as usual? I thought about getting the whole dumbphone setup so I could go ahead and 'experience life' or something like that. But what does that even consist of? I'm still going to be writing my thesis, and reading books, and taking an occasional walk, probably still see my friends now and again. I'm experiencing life, life is just... well... boring. Not that there is anything wrong with boring, I would take this over last June in a heartbeat. But it's just difficult.

I am stuck in that liminal space of extreme egoism and insecurity - give me 7pm on a random night and I'm thinking of myself as a 'generational fumble' and as an Eros incarnate, then give me 11am the next day and I'm feeling like a great warped sack of foreign goo using a vacuum cleaner. I can never seem to make up my mind. I think I really feel most like myself when I can be used as a muse, when others can try and change me and I change them in return. I got a message from an ex-client recently, actually, not that kind of client - it was for tutoring. I am not an OnlyFans boy. Do not get me wrong. 

I got a message asking if I'd be willing to tutor Literature for the sister of a previous student I worked with, and really at this point I'm so overwhelmed I can't even think about grabbing a 20 minute coffee with my Dad without feeling suffocated. So it was a "No, sorry. Honours and all that..." sort of response. And ding - I get back "Do you know anyone else as good as you?". As good as me? And I remembered that I had single-handedly taken this girl's mark from 70 to 85 in a matter of weeks, just through the little tricks of working memory and retention that PSYC1101 had burnt into my retinas. Not bad, not bad. I haven't influenced anyone like that lately. Is that what I crave? Influence? Then why do I wish to isolate myself? Does my influence seem inauthentic and disposable? Am I overthinking this sort of thing?

I have to go ahead and mark these practice MCQs now. Honestly if you asked me which concepts here are the hardest, it would have to be that logistic regression stuff. I understand that it goes risk ratios -> probabilities -> probabilities get modelled into unbounded log odds on a sigmoidal curve -> logistic regression can happen -> standardised log odds are now odds ratios. But some of these interpretive questions give me a headache. Adios.