Enjoy the Beautiful Weather

I’ve come to the realization in the past few days that I have been completely infected by the environment of Buffalo.  It is 46 degrees out right now, and my windows are open.  I absolutely love the fact that it is cold outside and it is cold in my apartment.  A contributing factor to that could be that I spent the first two months in my new apartment sweating.  I would literally sit in my apartment in my boxers, and sweat, not doing anything, just sweating.  Needless to say, it was miserable.  But I don’t think that has much to do with it.  I was walking to class today and it was such an amazing day.  The shine was shining, the sky was clear, and it was about 50 degrees.  I wore jeans and a hoodie, and it was magnificent.  I don’t know why but for some strange reason I really enjoy the fact that it is cold out and I can wear something more than a t-shirt and not sweat just because I walked to class.

This weather is definitely helping me out during this period in my life.  My classes give me a lot of work to do and I have a lot of studying I have to do for my exams.  There is an incredible amount of pressure on me to do well; if I don’t get an A or a B in each of my classes then I don’t get credit for them.  And that is a huge waste of time and money if I fail to get credit for one of my classes.  In reality I am sure that as long as I do well on my final projects, getting a B should be no problem.  Nevertheless, I still worry about it constantly and the fact that I am procrastinating as much as have been the past two days is just building the pressure.  I have a midterm on Wednesday and I have studied a lot for it, but I still feel like there is more I should be doing to prepare myself for it.  I am going to my TA’s office hours tomorrow to go over some questions, but more likely than not most of my classmates will be there too.  I don’t know if there is more studying that I can do, I’ve already redone all of the homeworks up until this point, and in this class there’s not really any other kind of studying you can do.  I have already done the practice exam, but I am not satisfied with how well I did on it, so I need to review my work and notes, and then redo the exam.

I need to go to the gym, bad.

Just by writing that paragraph I am making myself more frustrated and stressed out.  I really need to go to the gym.  Like cooking, going to the gym is something I enjoy doing on a mental level.  It is a place where I don’t think, I just work my muscles.  All of the pent up energy that I accrue from my stress just flows out of me as I exhaust my muscles.  It’s one of the few things out of my day where I don’t do any mental work.  I do plenty of that when I pour over my homework and textbooks.  The gym is definitely not a place for textbooks.  On top of the therapeutic value of going to a gym, I get good exercise and improving my body.  Currently I am hovering around 180 lbs and I want to increase that.  At 6′3″, that’s definitely on the lower end of the spectrum of “healthy” weight.  My goal is to gain at least 10 lbs of muscle.  To me it seems like an ambitious goal, but if I keep hitting the gym hard and perhaps start taking protein supplements, it could be an attainable goal in a relatively short period of time (relative being a couple of months).  Anyway, I feel like 180 lbs is too thin for my height, so I want to gain muscle weight.  Hopefully I can maintain my workout schedule and achieve this.  I’ll know when the stress is getting me way too much when I fail to keep going to the gym.  That’s when I know I’ve hit bottom.

Sometimes I find myself really questioning where I’m going.  Where am I going to end up?  Where is the path I’ve chosen going to lead me?  Like, what is going to graduate school really getting me?  I hope it’ll make it a lot easier for me to find a good job when I finally get out of here.  But is that the real reason for me coming here?  Or am I just afraid to take the next step into the real world?  Am I unprepared for finding a job I want to do on my own and working towards getting it?  Working at my Dad’s company for the past three summers has been sort of a crutch for me, I think.  Not to say that I regret spending the summers working there, I think it’s just that I wasn’t able to get out on my own and find a job by my self.  I had to fall back on a sure thing.  When I look at it that way, I feel very disappointed in myself.  Sometimes I still feel like I’m not independent enough to really get out on my own.  And I question if coming to graduate school was a way to keep myself away from that responsibility until I’m ready to take it on.  When will I be ready to really spread my wings and fly?  I know that is a disgusting cliche, but I really can’t think of any better way to put it.  It troubles me to think this way, but sometimes I just can’t help it.  I can’t help thinking that in two years (hopefully) when I get my masters degree, I won’t be any different from how am I now.  As in, I won’t mature emotionally or psychologically.  I won’t make any new friends and who knows how long it will be before I meet someone I can date.  Never mind the fact that I am an emotionally closed-off person who has serious trust issues.  Will it be so long that I’ll settle for less than what I really want?  I hope not but I can’t stop thinking that I will.

In case you can’t tell, I am really good at neurotic thoughts and behavior, and my level of self-deprecation is just top notch.  It’s a very difficult cycle that I’ve been going through ever since high school.  Stress would start to build and I would get anxious, then it would turn my thoughts inward and I would start to continuously beat myself up for all of my failings.  Once I got to college, this process would then turn to binge drinking, which I did heavily.  That would usually last a few days to a week, a week of heavy drinking every day, even by myself if I had to.  I’m at a new stage in my life in that I’m making a real effort to not drink by myself.  Sure, I’ll have a drink or two with dinner, but other than that I don’t drink.  And in times like these when I find myself stressed and neurotic, I find that it takes real mental and physical effort to not just drown myself in a bottle of liquor.

I don’t know if writing these thoughts of mine is helping.  It certainly gives me a chance to be objective and honest with myself.  But I think I am always that way with myself, maybe even exaggerated a bit.  I don’t know if this helps with my stress, I feel a little better.  But on the same token, it brings to mind all the things make me the way I am now, and that’s not a good thing.  This doesn’t feel the same as cooking or going to the gym.  Maybe because this is more mental work and those activities are not.

Damn it, I’ve completely lost my train of thought.  Well, I don’t need to go on and on about this crap.  Until next time.