I’ve been back in Taiwan for three whole weeks now, my teaching schedule has resumed normality, and so has my schedule of attending class and doing homework. It’s taken me, well, three whole weeks to catch up to all of that.
I’d started playing the violin about two years ago now, I took lessons, watched YouTube videos, and practiced about four hours per day when I first started. I think I haven’t touched my violin since July 2022, which is a shame as I enjoyed it so much when I was playing. Interests come and interests go. Some things I will always come back to- physics, music (in one form or another), tabletop gaming, to name a few.
Before graduate school started, all last summer, I played Go for about six or seven hours a day. In that time I went to Vietnam twice, and every day my then fiancee would have to drag me away from playing online to eat meals or go on walks. Eating and walking are great, but have you tried Go? You’ve got to give it a couple weeks to get under your skin. Now I don’t play as much as I did then- I do handful of puzzles each week, and haven’t played a match in a few months. I’d be scared to jump back in to ranked games now. I haven’t quit entirely like I did with the violin (that I fully intend on mastering one day).
Speaking of graduation, when I graduated high school, I spent all the money family members gave me as graduation gifts on an inflatable kayak. On her maiden voyage, my vessel capsized on some fence posts hidden just beneath the surface of the water. My legs got tangled up in the barbed wire strung up around the posts, and I spent a few hours in the emergency room getting stitched up and getting poked with a round of tetanus vaccine. I did get back in the boat a number of times that summer around the Florida coast, but if you asked me what became of that kayak, I’d have a hard time remembering. I think maybe I sold it to some chick for fifty bucks when I was living in Tuscaloosa.
That’s just how life is, or I suppose that’s how it is for me anyway. There’s a lot of factors to unpack in all of that. I have been fortunate enough to have disposable income and time to sink into hobbies that change with the seasons. I haven’t shown the patience or attention span to do much of anything longer than a year. I’ve moved a number of times, mostly to continue my academic career, but even my interest and focus on physics is something that comes and goes. Synchronizing my drive and ability to times when it is necessary, midterm exams, final exams, stretched between semesters when I can focus on research or learning new topics- it’s always a bit of a crapshoot.
I can try to put it into words, but I can think of two other ways it has already been said, and maybe more profoundly than I can do it- The first was a friend of mine back at University of Alabama, who we mostly called “The Wizard” (he chose that nickname, however). According to the Wizard: “Ladies havin’ babies, babies havin’ babies, and the world keeps spinning. The other way I’ve heard it said, and the way that inspired the title of this post, is from the Animal Collective song “Today’s Supernatural”. In the song the speaker says
“The shifting easel
It’s been dripping, now it’s stained
In the reds and the pains
And now it don’t look the same”
Later the song goes on to say you’ll find something you believe that you should do, but it won’t come easy. I’ve always taken the song to be about how it’s easy to stand there, paintbrush in hand, trying to paint the picture in your head, while the background, the conditions of life, change. You grow up with some idea of what you want to do, you become educated about some topic, you have some dream, you want some thing, but all of that is just the picture in the mind of the painter. Between the way you’ve pursued what it is you want and the unpredictable nature of life, the reality you create is something altogether messy, beautiful, and all your own.
I hope my new hobby of taking pictures everywhere I go lasts longer than playing the violin or kayaking. I don’t think it serves any greater purpose than just taking snaps of things I think look cool. I don’t want to make money with it, and I don’t think I have some “inner self” that can be expressed through art. Humans are social beings, and my sense of taste and ultimately even the things I can take pictures of are the result of the material conditions of my life- where I go, the types of people I come into contact with, etc. All I can do is try to document little scenes from my day, one day like many others in the grand evolution of human society, and I think that’s just fun. It’s easier to carry around a camera than to spend time practicing violin everyday to boot.
Stuff Cam Wrote 