long time not seen?

i think i have somewhat been abandoning this blog, and i feel rather guilty about that, because my recent posts for the past few months have been nothing but doodles, doodles, and more doodles. but then again, that's all i've been doing the past few months, and i really don't have much to say in words.

a few days ago i browsed through my old posts and i realized that i used to comment on just about everything. shitty classes, awesome classes, love life, lack of love life, good movies, bad movies, non-existent movies... i think at one point i even posted a long entry about how i really don't have much to say. it seems to me like i used to have something to say on just about everything, and even if i don't, being the verbose idiot that i am, i always find a way to keep the sentence going even though initially i had probably nothing longer than an incoherent sentence. not that the final entry is any more coherent than that one sentence, but at least it's an entry.

if i recall correctly, i think the main reason i started a blog was so that i could practice on my writing. back in my first year of college, i kept failing the "ENGLISH AS SECOND LANGUAGE WRITING COURSE" that i needed to pass to be able to take my required intensive writing classes. back then i kept complaining about how retarded the course was, since regardless of how well you do in class, if you don't pass the exit exam, you have to retake the class. if you pass the exit exam but did really bad in class, however, they'll let you pass the class. even until now, i still think this is the most retarded rule ever. i wonder if they ever change that rule?

it's a little past 1pm on a sunday at the moment, and i have a thermodynamics book by enrico fermi opened in front of me. i should be doing homework, i keep telling myself, but i could not bring myself to do it. this has nothing to do with laziness or even procrastination, since right now i don't feel like drawing either. this has nothing to do with what i feel about thermodynamics either, since almost everyone on earth knows how much i hate thermodynamics. this also has nothing to do with the fact that the homework is quite easy and that i might subconsciously desire harder, more challenging problems.

i think i simply have lost interest in physics.

that's right. i said it. i have publicly stated the fact that i've lost interest in the subject that i'm currently studying in graduate school, and through the wonders of internet and RSS feed, soon all of my classmates and my professors will look down on me as the guy who sits in the class but doesn't want to be in there. why is this? i don't know. i loved physics. in fact, i still do. i just no longer have any interest in studying it. compared to biology or chemistry, physics is a lot more academic in its nature. people in physics don't do physics because it will benefit mankind. people in physics do physics simply because they are curious and nosy and they want to know what they don't really NEED to know. the benefit for mankind might come along the way by pure coincidence, but it is never the initial objective. detecting and studying neutrinos to predict how the early universe came about. studying dark matter to understand the expansion of the universe. understanding the behavior of some obscure semi-conductor. etc. etc. the list goes on, but for all the items on the list, you can say one thing: "do we REALLY need to know that?"

consider me ignorant, but really, is knowing these things so essential to life that life itself becomes meaningless if we don't have these knowledge?

in the field of physics, there are a few things that help you go through all the horrible things you have to endure during research: your passion for knowledge, your curiosity, your ego. curiosity needs to be accompanied by passion, because no matter how curious you are, if you're not passionate about the knowledge, curiosity remains curiosity forever. ego, however, can survive by itself. most of the times in academia, the only thing you need to get yourself back up after a failure is the desire to be above other people. i think this is why a lot of the geniuses of the world tend to be inconsiderate, condescending jackasses. the typical phrase that you usually hear them say is something along the lines of "it should be obvious that..."

i never have this ego. i need to have this ego. i want to have this ego, but i can't. i never care enough whether i'm smart or dumb. intelligence is never something that's high up on my priority list, because while intelligence might earn me respect from other people, respect is not really something i need. besides, there are other ways to earn respect than being or looking smart. i used to have the curiosity and passion, and these were the only two things that motivated me to spend days doing homework sets back when i was in college. now i still have the curiosity, but the passion is no more.

how do you bring back a passion that you've lost? or should you just let it go and seek other passions? i think letting go is the normal way of dealing with losing a passion. this is why people break up in a relationship: one of them loses passion and is not able to bring it back. right now i want to break up with physics, but i find it hard because this relationship has gone on for four years. physics never cheated on me, but she's never been the nicest of her kind, and most of the time she gives me too much headache and problems i would rather not be dealing with.

i wonder if i should write a break-up letter or if i should talk to her on the phone.