Backdrifting
02.27.2008
This far but no further
I’m hanging off a branch
I’m teetering on the brink
Oh honey sweet
So full of sleep
I’m backsliding
This week I am not using my car at all. The goal is to make the transit between home and school more difficult, so I’ll spend more time at school and (hopefully) accomplish more while I am there. The benefits of riding my bike are already apparent. This is a habit I would like to keep.
It is hard to develop self-control exercises that directly pertain to school work. This was the best one I can think of, and I wanted to stop driving to school anyway. I really thought my motivation from working full-time would propel me through more than half of a quarter. I wanted to get good grades. I still don’t give a fuck.
I’m applying myself this week though. Perhaps I can set a homework goal and reward myself with new cymbals if I reach it. That could be good.
I’m sincerely tripping on this right now; the weather is eerily coordinated to my behavior and feeling lately. In fact, this is not a recent thing, this has happened for quite a while. Has anyone else noticed this? Perhaps it is just because I refuse to acknowledge concepts like “cause and effect” when dealing with natural correlations. One could argue my mood is dictated by that weather, which as a larger system supersedes my personal actions. I do notice how I am happy when it is sunny. However, take this following example:
This morning I woke up tired and upset that I was up late last night procrastinating on my English essay. The weather was overcast and drizzling. I skipped my first class and rode my bike to school in the rain. Now, sitting in the schools computer lab, having just finished my English essay, the sky is bright and sunny. I don’t propose that one thing caused the other, I just think that the correlation is of particular interest.
I don’t think I’m backsliding anymore.
Interesting. What does it say about me if I feel the opposite? I mean that when it’s overcast outside I feel capable and able to achieve (or at least complete) what I set my mind to. The sun on the other hand feels so tiresome and oppressive. A sort of in-your-face reality that I grow weary of. I am healthy and 21 – shouldn’t I love the sun? Maybe it’s a California thing…
I wouldn’t suppose to know why that is, but I think the contrast is interesting. I live in Western Washington, so the sparsity of sunlight probably gives me a greater appreciation. I’m 20 and relatively healthy, so that would be a mostly isolated variable.
For a objective scientific perspective on a correlation between personal feeling and weather, is it important what the correlation is, so long as one is observed? Your observations seem to further indicate to me that there is a noticed correlation, though in your circumstance it is opposite of mine. The major differing variable is geographical location.
Your comment got me thinking about personal perspective vs. group perspective on my walk home. I think an important factor to the recent pronounced weather/mood correlation that I’ve noticed could be that lately I’ve been mostly isolated from other people and only have largely superficial interactions with them. The weather, as it is a large system, should by my logic be affected by the perspective of many individuals at once. Since I have not had any strong interactions with people, there has been little reason for our realities to intertwine and have a shared decoherence with the many possibilities of a chaos system like weather.
In your observations, do you notice the correlation between your personal mood and the weather becomes less strong when interacting with many people? Have you noticed any correlation between the moods of your friends and the weather?
I love discussions of perspective :)
Hmm, that is very interesting and I certainly have never thought of it in such definite terms. My first response was “no”, no I do not really notice any correlation between the moods of those I know and the weather. Okay, that’s not quite an accurate response. If I wake up and its unbearably sunny outside, I invariably will notice someone who is ‘tickled pink’ about the ‘great weather’. I know this because I instantly become irritated with these people – as if their wanting it to be sunny has somehow out weighed my desire for real weather.
As of yet, I don’t think I have thought of it as a general outlook/ ‘personal feeling’ which then results in a shift in the weather. Although what you were saying about the group perspective – maybe the collective difference in geographical location (and resulting preference for one weather pattern over another) in some way cancels or negates itself. If x thinks sun and y thinks rain, with equal force of mind, what is the outcome?
Maybe that’s because they are circular discussions – without a conclusion they merely revolve around some central contemplation – ad infinitum.