I just came back from the Bay area on the overnight bus. I had a nice time. The main purpose of the trip was to surprise my friend Kellie on her birthday and go camping with our bicycles in Marin County (just north of San Francisco). I had a lot of fun but probably at the expense of getting a lot of work done this weekend. It did however allow me time to expound on my current existential crises to my friends. They were receptive to my marathon bitch sessions as always and for that I owe them. Currently I am wavering in my resolution to finish grad school. I came to this giant realization over the last month.

I am uncomfortable with status, "bettering myself", or advancing on the socio-economic ladder. The thought of going through "professional" school and winding up a upright professional makes me uncomfortable and overall I don't see it as bringing much substance into my life other than making me comfortable financially. It feels as if I am giving away too much of myself.

The question I've been asking myself is, "why would I give up this chance?"... But a chance at what really? I just don't want to end up miserable because I am taking the path towards professionalism without first considering other "lower" options. Am I selling myself short? Am I just too immature to see the forest through the trees? Why do I invest so much worth into the hierarchy of it? Am I just a sorry schlub without an iota of self-discipline? It all feels like a pointless pursuit towards self-preservation. My point being that there is seeming to be no point to living beyond avoiding death, not that my life is horrible by any means, but it is kind of pointless and what is touted as success seems to ring just as hollow.

Self administered pep-talks fall short of what I am needing right now. The best I've been doing is "its only two years".... I can't help but feeling like I don't fit the mold to go through it all. I've been thinking about teaching high school. My reasons for wanting to study climate/weather have always been rooted in humanitarian/environmental concerns but the rate at which I am becoming disillusioned about the presence of opportunities to effect change via painstaking research on climate processes has been running at full tilt. I am able to appreciate now how young and naive I have been in my idealism.

It all goes back to entropy; during any process there must be at least one interaction that is irreversible. The effect is propagated and compounded throughout time forever. Albert Einstein expressed it better when he said that the minds that created the problems of today will not be the ones who can solve them. The sentiment can be taken in many different directions but it seems applicable to the situation here. Technology and engineering will not solve anything, we are not capable of saving ourselves from whatever sensational doomsday scenario is being told by buying world music compilations, priuses and compact fluorescent bulbs. Trivial actions bring about trivial results. The past century and a half of rampant progress towards full industrialization/commercialization has left an indelible mark on the planet. Entropy (disorder) is propagated process by process over hundreds of years. We are merely living downwind of the model T, modern refrigeration and the coal boom. It is a cause/effect relationship but of impossible complexity with a response time that exceeds human scales. For these reasons science seems ineffective and while I am still far from the primitivist camp I can't help but feeling something more humanistic in approach would be more worthy of my time.

What I'm referring to I am not too sure of. The closest I can come up with is teaching high school kids about the planet. This may be grasping at straws but brainstorming sessions have been less than fruitful with alternatives.

School has been getting tougher. I had a totally demoralizing day yesterday but that's alright. Right? I just don't always feel up to snuff. My background seems is not as impressive, I lack foresight and wherewithal. I am not an engineer. I do not work nor have I ever worked for the aerospace industry. I am a gas station attendant, a factory worker. I work retail. I never, one: was ambitious enough and/or two: had enough free time or opportunities afforded to me to do internships with any geoscience firms.

It's odd really. I remember telling a friend that when I moved to Portland from L.A. that it was a jarring experience. That all of a sudden I felt that at least in the social sense, my peers were largely of middle class backgrounds seemingly everyone had expensive hobbies, traveled internationally and worked part-time . Now I'm back in L.A. I almost get doored daily by troll-like taut skinned octogenarians and college freshman drive luxury cars. Brentwood is just down the street and west L.A. is beginning to feel normal.

I am three thousand in the hole with my bank. I have no experience with velocity field divergence and I have very little faith in myself at times. I am fearing sounding like a burnout although I am not letting that prevent me from continuing to put a significant amount of work into the program. I know that if I get through this term okay, I will have proven myself to myself and hopefully some of this will go away. Currently I just feel like I don't have any business being here but I don't know what business I would have anywhere else.

whine. whine. whine.

I'm hoping to try to have a lot of time to myself to recoup this weekend. I want to ride my bike along the coast until I hit the fog bank but they are forecasting Santa Anas and it will be 85 degrees everywhere and you will be able to see the smog bank off of Santa Monica bay.