Finally put up the pictures from the gang's visit last weekend, and I'll probably post more of the photos I've taken since then. Sorry most of them are blurry, but I hate using the flash, and in most of the places we were it would have been unwelcome. Ergo, concordantly, I need to buy myself a tripod. It's taking a while to regain my sense of composition, and I'm unhappy that some of my favorite pictures are as interesting as they are because of the color accenting feature of the camera. I think I'm making progress though, and there are some I'm pretty proud of.
I saw Equus on Thursday, adding to the short list of Broadway shows I've seen. I had no idea what to expect when I sat down in the theater, only knowing that it was highly acclaimed and that Daniel Radcliffe would be naked onstage at some point. Turns out that this was a very good, and very dark, troubling play that I enjoyed thoroughly. Also Kate Mulgrew, who played Captain Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager, was in the play, and that definitely made my night.
On a darker note, while most of my classes have remained as interesting as they were, or have become even more so since the start of the semester, the persistence of constant schoolwork and the addition of midterms have forced me to ask myself, once again, why I'm doing what I'm doing and what else I could be doing. Recently I've become very attached to the idea of pursuing side projects with my free time, but even that seems like the small picture. I want to see the big picture, figure out why I enjoy what I enjoy and decide if that's something worth spending my time on. Even more than that, I have to choose the criteria by which I judge the worth of my actions.
I'm attracted to the idea that I can somehow avoid boredom by finding a profession or project that involves constant variety, like journalism or maybe intelligence, or by constantly being involved in a number of small projects. I guess I want to have adventures, to go out and be immersed in uncertainty, which is ironic because here I am trying to figure out what to do in the future.
A divergence to help me explain my point: I've recently become even more interested in the webcomic xkcd, especially with regard to its creator, Randall Munroe. It turns out that he's only 24 (he just had a birthday last Friday), graduated from college in '06 and worked briefly with NASA until he left and started working on xkcd full time. Now he supports himself primarily on merchandise from the comic. Aside from being amazingly funny, the comic has this profoundly hopeful outlook on life and stresses the importance of unorthodox approaches to thinking and living.
Check these out:
This is the start of a five part series that presents some ideas I've really come to empathize with - http://xkcd.com/264/
And this one is a pleasant reminder to myself sometimes - http://xkcd.com/167/
His newest project is called "Geohashing"(http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/Main_Page), and I think Kenny and I might take part in it on the weekends. I'm definitely looking forward to getting off campus and having some adventures.
Coming soon: Dread
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