* Thursday, 03/02/2023
** 17:39 photos, journals and more... thoughts
DC is disorienting. I feel a bit ill here, though I'm not sure why. The change in environment? Am I moving too frequently? Doing too much? Maybe age means that I need to stick to a better rhythm.

I love the architecture of the city... it reminds me most of berlin. Sprawling, organized streets, lots of straight lines and blues and whites and clear, solid colors; modern, where everyone dresses well and presents formally. The people here shove without saying anything on the subway - are they too important for me? Why can't they use their words? Maybe they don't teach that in kindergarden here.

[My writing seems to adapt to whatever expository journal I've read last... right now, it's like I'm emulating the Prince of Persia creator's casual, get-things-done attitude, though my life feels very similar and that might be why it's resonating so well. I'm at the same position in my life that he was - wandering around after college, with a goal that has a clear path to victory, but also trying to navigate other interests and take them seriously. Screenwriting? My personal website? We'll see. I feel a bit of his straightforward snark today regardless.]

Are these longer visits in other cities good for me? I feel like I want a home - but love the fresh outlook I get every time I reach a new place. I'm not sure what I'll learn from DC yet, but it's certainly helping my photos - today I had a bit of a breakthrough with the 16mm as I learned to capture crowds and scenes in interesting positions on the metro. Composing a whole scene with everyone in the frame felt right, and DC people seem to busy to be concerned with a camera in their faces on public transportation. Everyone's got their own thing going on - just like New York - but in NY everyone's hyperindividualist, trying to 'make it', but here everyone's a cog in a bigger machine, and they dress that way too. Same Maryland sweatshirts and navy blue suits, polished black oxfords and a crumpled cotton dress shirt with the two top buttons popped. Some overcoats, some skirts, some selection from the women, but everything *feels* the same; people are trying to fit in, to do the same thing every day, to relax a bit and get through every day. I can't tell if people are happy yet - aside from the few hanging out on public transporation or at coffee shops, everybody's got a kind of sterm determination about them, but I'm not sure if this is a depressing one (like Boston) or one of no-nonsense, or a better-than-thou take.

It's concerning how fragile my body is; I eat poorly and don't work out for a day and I'm collapsing and throwing up. I have to be more regimented about how I live my life and what I'm putting in - it really impacts what I'm getting out of it. Even now I feel a bit weary. Caffeine is a bit of a crutch; I think the energy drinks really came back to bite me when I felt the caffeine withdrawals, the lack of sleep, the stress from planning a move... everything. We'll find housing through... hotels outside of the city are a cheap last resort. I am not looking forward to spending forever hunting for apartments to rent, then to own, though... I'm not sure if I can stay. (Maybe it'll be fine once I'm there - but a sublet will never feel permanent). We'll figure it out though!

Frustrating to have platform compatibility issues figuring out silly shell scripts designed to work only on MacOS. It's really hard to encourage and respect standards. Apple really doesn't. The team is great though! ++ exciting to make headway on the personal website. Hot reloading and a build system will be huge - and it'll be great to learn how to handle those things for future programming language work. I enjoy that all of my work has clear end goals and feels deterministic - there is a clear path to a solution for everything in my life, but I have to put in the time to make it happen. I enjoy not feeling required to do exploratory work to 'figure out who I am' or something like that - I know what I have to do and I'm learning to realize it.