I just spent the last 5 hours coding up incredibly basic navigation buttons to allow for paginating my posts (so they don't all show up on the page at once).

Five. Hours.

I'm pretty sure the decision to write my own blog software is as stupid as... well... as stupid as most of my decisions. 😂 But still... yay!

OK, so if I do end up going to grad school, then what do I expect from it? Having shit up so much of my life do I think grad school will be some sort of panacea?

Short answer: no. 🙂

If you're bored, then you can stop here... that's pretty much the point I guess: "No". 🙂

Still here? OK, good. 😀

So, really now, what am I expecting? Hahaha... well, shit, I mean, not much I guess. But I can tell you that I'm not expecting anywhere as much as I expected from my undergrad degree. So let's start there, I guess, let's get honest about the possible goals I set up for myself prior to "life 2.0", and how well that worked out.

life two point oh-shit

I thought I went into under grad with my eyes open. I was a 31 year old freshman for fuck's sake. How much more experience can you have prior to starting college, right? I thought my expectations were not just realistic, I thought they were downright fucking humble. Yet still, I somehow ended up missing every mark.

The full story is bigger than a single post, but here's the micro version: I went into undergrad with three reasonable choices for areas of specialization. For reasons beyond my control (like my university canceling courses), I was unable to specialize in any of the three, and I walked out with an EE degree that didn't have the value I wanted it to have.

I then took a job I didn't want and, although I gave it a sincere effort and did good work, it continued to get shittier and shittier.

At the same time some people in personal life, whom I erroneously thought I owed some responsbility, added noise, drama and mental/emotional pain that I wasn't quite prepared for. This made the work situation that much worse and I found myself drowning not only in failure, but in mental confusion as I struggled to figure out how I manged to fuck myself so thoroughly.

Things went south from there, that's for another time. The real takeaway here was that, even though I felt my expectations were reasonable, I still ended up being too optimistic. Way, way too optimistic. Actually, I was more than optimtistic; the honest truth is that I was up unreasonably naive.

And... well... life course-corrected, to say the least.

life 3.what?

So fast forward 11 years... Here I am thinking of going back, right? So then, what do I expect this time around?

Honestly? I really don't know. I don't.

Let's talk a little bit about what I don't expect. I don't expect to find my dream job. I don't expect this degree to suddenly give me a "career path" or fundamentally change much other than what jobs titles I can expect to apply for. I mean, let's not be stupid, switching from eletrical engineering to data science is obviously a career change so yeah, I will get that... but what I'm trying to say is that I don't expect the sort of life-shift I had foolishly thought the EE degree would get me.

At worst, going from a Bachelor's degree to a Master's will offer me a new plateau of generic jobs I probably wouldn't want. The mid-management jobs, the corporate fillers, the professional dietary fiber. This is where I'm at now, but I'd have more options. That's at worst (I think).

That's at worst. But what about "a best"?

Well, maybe not "at best", but "at pretty good" would be that I do end up with in a position where I'm able to design Aritificial Intelligence systems which, in turn, do good things. That would be an ideal. But, to be honest here, this isn't the primary impetus for getting another degree. It'll be a nice by-product for sure, but at this point in my life, I'm not so much thinking about the life long career.

No, I think I'm looking for two things here. Something simple and something grand.

The simple, humble goal here is to answer the question of "what's next?". You know? If I'm not finding joy or excitement as an EE, or at least in the EE opportunities being offered, then it's time to do something else. This is that something else.

And the something grand... ha. Well, I guess I want to a find a "what's next" that really gives me a second chance. Not just in the immediate and obvious new career opportunities. But it'll give me a second chance at starting another career, only this time I'm going in much, much, much more ignorant of the field and its opportunities. As counterintuitive as that may sound, but I think one of the problem I made when I went for the Bacheor's EE degree was that I had some strong mental plans for my future. I had options and imagined different possible outcomes, to be sure, but I had some definitive ideas of where I'd end up.

I was wrong. I was hilariously wrong. I didn't handle being wrong very well.

This time around, I'm too stupid about the world of AI to have many plans. 🙂 So, it'll be a second chance... but exactly what sort of second chance... I don't know. 🙂

The other thing I'm hoping for, and this where shit gets grand indeed, is, you know, a spark, a hint of joy, a little inspiration. Something to make me find a reason to celebrate not being independently wealthy. I think I'm going into this with much more tempered expectations, but I am still choosing to back for a Master's degree in a subject I'm genuinely interested in. I'd love to fall into wonder again.

Blindly Foward, with Eyes Wides Open

So I think that's kind of where things are. More & more, this is looking like this is what I'm doing next. I have hope, but it's definitely more muted as compared to my first go at running away.

I don't have any strong expectations from getting the MS, other than getting to try a new career, but I do have some hopes and wishes for how things will turn out. Hopefully, this time around, I'm being a little more reasonable.

As always, there's more to say. But I'm getting tired of you. We'll talk more some other time.

Life... what the fuck, right?

Woo!

We are officially live! 😀

So as of about 10 minutes ago, I have the blog software working well enough that I can perform all the basic functions needed to actually blog. I mean, to be clear, it's all very much still shit and VERY, VERY rudimentary.

But you don't care about that, all you care about is that I'm here. 😋 Well... I think I'm here. Maybe. 🙂

Over the coming days I'm sure I'll break and fix shit multiple times, but eventually I'll get it stable enough that things will stay up (hopefully).

I've got a handful of posts I've written already, so if you're reading this chronologically, then this isn't the "first" post. But this is the first one written for a live system. 🙂 🙂 🙂

Progress.

I mean, not real progress... but still... progress. 😀

There's much left to do, but I do believe I deserve a some ice cream. 🙂

So, Wordpress allowed for people to add comments to posts. Currently, my software doesn't (shit... currently my software doesn't do much of anything really).

If you're reading this blog, then I probably know you and I almost for sure care about you. 🙂 ♥ And if I care about you, then there's like a 30% chance I care about you're opinion. 😆 Hahaha... OK OK, there's like a 40% chance. But still, the point is... if you're reading my blog and want to comment, please do. Really, please do. Text me or whatever and share, I'd love to hear it.

In the future, I will get some sort of comment system because I know some of you will never text. 🙂

But yeah... eventually I'll get shit working. Until then, don't stay quiet!! ♥

Fun fact: I'm writing the blog at the same time as I'm writing the blogging software. In practice, what this means is that my early blog posts are being written long before they're being published.

What that means for me, is that it's kind of a pain in the ass figuring out what I've already written. In time I'll get this fixed as my software matures and I have better preview tools. But for now... sorry if I'm repeating myself or not quite connecting the dots. I'll get it sorted out.

I hope. 🙂

(Also... I eventually I'll have real emojis too)