busy, busy, busy by CJ Q. '23

the only way i can convince myself to write anything for the past two weeks has been bullet points. lists in lists in lists. i wrote an entire short story for 21w.755, reading and writing short stories, entirely through setting bullet points for each section, then bullet points for the events in each section, bullet points even to the paragraph and sentence level. my secret writing tip is to just write enough bullet points and eventually you will end up with the sentences you want to write anyway.

i got into this exchange program for imperial college london. study math in the uk, for the first half of 2022. wouldn't that be exciting? except, you know, i've already spent two and a half semesters divorced from a normal mit, and i didn't want to spend one and a half more. it was a tough decision, but for some reason i feel like i already knew what answer i'd give from the very beginning. i've always wanted to study somewhere else, but this isn't it.

in a stroke of overcommitment i am now a build lead. this means i'm one of the people in charge of building the things that east campus builds every fall during residence exploration. since i don't know any actual engineering, i'm in a team with greg, a junior in mechanical engineering, who has pretty much done all the work so far. sometimes i wonder what my life would've been like if through some series of events, i ended up in mechanical engineering instead of math. i think i would've enjoyed it, but i will never know.

maybe one day i will talk about my organizational systems. spoiler alert, i merely use google calendar and a todo list. my todo list doesn't really get that much shorter during the semester, because every time i finish homework for one class, i move it down and change it to the next homework's due date. the grind never ends.

i finally finished an ascension 7 run with the defect on slay the spire, after eleven attempts over three days. now i have ascension 8, and several more levels until i reach ascension 20. each ascension level makes the game even harder, with no benefits in exchange; the intent is that you just get stronger.

am i getting stronger?

i signed up for golf as my pe class for this fourth quarter. it's 11 am on tuesdays and thursdays. i was really excited for it at first. the first day of golf class is tomorrow, but honestly, i just wish it didn't start until next week.

my psychiatrist put me on a higher dose of sertraline. instead of taking one tablet, i now take one and a half tablets. i discovered that after breaking off half a tablet, i can just put the other half back in the container, and i didn't have to take that particular half the next day.

i've already run two events for cp*, mit's month-long admitted students events. went on a walk with alan on saturday, and then hosted tea time yesterday. i forgot that there was a puzzlehunt going on last saturday afternoon, so i had to miss half of it. then fifty more people showed up to the tea time even than i thought would, and i was utterly unprepared and probably made it feel really awkward for the people who came.

over the next week i will be in at least ten more cp* events.

please don't get me started on the cp* discord.

where am i living this summer? if this was a normal summer, i'd be staying at boston university, because the summer camp i'm being a counselor for would have provided me housing. unfortunately, this is not a normal summer. i was offered a position in a group house in central, which sounds cool, it'd probably be the cheapest option, and i'd be around people.

but honestly, i don't think i have the mental capacity to be making decisions like that any time soon, so when the forms came in my inbox asking me if i was planning to stay in mit over the summer, i just said yes. yes! it was easier than having to think about it, because i don't want to think about it, don't want to expend mental energy ticking things off that aren't on my todo list or aren't for fun.

i'm excited, and i love mit. please believe me when i say that! i love (most of) the classes i'm taking. i love interacting with prefrosh, and that's why i signed up to do so many things for cp*. and i’m honest, i really am, when i say that mit is a great place and you should seriously consider committing because it’s awesome. it's just hard to show it right now when i'm so exhausted.

tomorrow, when i check in with my therapist, what am i supposed to say to him? that i'm on top of things, i'm on top things, because everything i need to do gets done, and i'm no closer to suicide than i was a month ago, and these are the only things that mattered, right?