Somehow, these days have held life affirming discoveries.

Latest being an old connection and friend from the engineering days sending me these pictures from a time where I couldn't believe how lucky I got to study the discipline of my choice in the engineering school of my choice.

Looking at these pictures and remembering that first semester of that first year being incredibly grateful for being present in my engineering school, to study mechanics and to be finally free to authentically pursue the STEM field that makes all the bullshit of this world seem worth it.

I am at a point of my PhD journey where the dark thoughts are often more pronounced than the inspiring ones. I caught myself lately cussing at my PhD and my research and STEM and all the fucking bullshit of this world. It's the first time I come to find out what used to bring me joy, affirmation and motivation and inspiration and... and... and... had become a bitter and sour part of my life, to the point of being alienated from science altogether.

Then, Z. sends these pictures and it just takes me back to a place of gratitude and simple things.

I'm telling you, I still can't process there used to be a time where I studied/researched/worked on projects out of the cheer pleasure/motivation/gratitude the practice itself was providing. I truly was in an ouroboros state with my academic and professional aspirations. 

I stare at myself and summon back those days to my mind but I can't connect with the innocence or the simple love. It's fine. It just helps to see that this used to be my mindset at some point, nay the mindset that allowed all of this, all that I have done and went on doing after, what brought me to goddamn Wichita in the first place.

There was also something that came with these pictures, something that keeps popping up whenever old acquaintances and old friends reconnect, out of the blue.

I wasn't a 'liked' person per say. I wasn't a person with friends and group of friends and whatnot. I didn't care and didn't think twice despite all the negative talk and the violent statements of the youngsters around:

"You're such a dogmatist. You're so aggressive, you're so impolite, you're so rude, your humor is so risky, you lack social skills, you..., you..."

I didn't care, still don't. If anything, I used to dismiss these words and move forward. I didn't connect with this shit, and I wasn't about to take some idiotic stranger or an acquaintance's advice over how to be me.

Now, most of them send me some frankly sweet words, sometimes apologies, other times epiphanies or regrets. And I think to myself "damn, if I had listened to these people at those days, if I had let them in or allowed their words to be spoken into me, what a dynamite idiot I would have felt today."

So that too in a certain sense is life affirming:

When some teenager learns a fancy word like 'dogmatist', uses it however then comes back a decade later to tell me how 'they have always admired your focus and you commitments to your vision and your plans'.

When 'aggressive' becomes 'assertive', 'impolite' becomes 'honest', 'risky humor' becomes 'vulnerability and authenticity', 'social skills' become 'genuine'...

It's not so much a boost of my ego (sort of unfortunate at this point) as it is a time to reflect on those gone days and the ones of right now, where it seems the whole world is fighting me at times for the mere things I find either personal (so how the fuck dare you in the first place, mind your own fucking business) or irrelevant to me.

It's not like it's new, it's not like this shit hasn't level up made time while here and at my age. It's just that I sort of miss my absolute indifference from my early age.

Now, I fight at almost every goddamn turn. Granted, I know more and better and from the experience, I know better where and where not to fight. But now, there is this push of fighting, or making the person pay well and good enough so that the next headscarfed/woman/minority/international/STEM/Ambivert doesn't have to fucking withstand the WHOLE weight of ignorance.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just babbling through it. I haven't thought it through yet.

But as usual, with old connections reaching out, I always get confronted with the drastic change of their perspective over younger me and wonder whether there is a chance I could find some way back to that indifference and living by my example should be enough of proof and fuck it.

I don't know man, I'd better get back to work.