I was going to blow off writing. . .blah, blah, blah. But instead, as I prepared for bed, I decided to jot a few words. Today was a rather horrid day on the headache front. I arrived home early enough last night to find a full night’s rest, but with Doolies traveling, and her flight delayed (after her original flight was cancelled), I wasn’t able to fall asleep until I knew she was home safe. She landed around midnight, and her shuttle ride home took her another hour. She called me at 1:30 am to belay my fears, which interrupted my sleep, but was necessary for my fragile mind. While she was flying, I freaked out and started imagining her plane crashing. I’m morbid at times, and I had to run downstairs and check her flight status on the computer before satisfying myself enough to try to sleep.

My head charged me for the lack of sleep by pounding all day. The weather in Seattle was perfect today, high in the 60s, sunny. After lunch, we played basketball for a bit on the local courts. This type of weather makes it difficult to miss NYC’s ridiculous winters.

I feel like I’ve been eating my own shit lately. Do you know that feeling? You keep mucking through the same crap in your head, and regurgitating it. I haven’t had an original thought in weeks. It could be I’m trying too hard. I’m sitting here, trying to find something to write about, but nothing is coming out. I’m desperately trying to hit the page mark, which will make me feel like I’ve accomplished something today, but we all know I’m fooling myself. This isn’t writing as much as consternating with no set goals and no promise of a better outcome. But here I am, typing away with nothing to say and no hope of saying anything.

New paragraph starts here. Some may see today’s entry as nothing more than a desperate ploy for word count. They may bring up the “word count whore” business and remind me that the Marathon ended many months ago. To those people, I would tell them that I agree. And yet, that doesn’t stop me from typing away and saying nothing and rather enjoying this nothing saying. What does that say about me? I’ll leave that one unanswered.

My hope is that with a good night’s sleep, I’ll wake up refreshed and ready to change the world, or at least write something that says something. The moon was bright tonight. The technically full moon is supposed to come tomorrow morning. I got into this discussion with a friend about the moon. We were trying to figure out what caused the shadow on the moon. I’m sure I learned about this in astronomy. While I won’t finish this story, speaking of astronomy reminds me of a funny story (it’s more sad than funny), and seeing as I’m searching for something to say, you know where this is going.

When I entered college, I thought about astrophysics as a career. I don’t know what pushed me in that direction, but I enjoyed books on the creation of the universe, and relativity, and stars, even though I never owned a telescope or studied the sky. It fit in with my ontological pursuits—i.e., my search for meaning in life in the metaphysical sense. I signed up for Astronomy 101 during my second semester. Like most introductory science classes, Astro 101 involved a lot of memorization and facts, such as (and this I remember from the first exam), how long would it take the sun to set when the bottom edge is on the horizon. I’m sure somewhere in the textbook, there was a discussion of the size of the sun compared to the horizon, and with some simple geometrical arithmetic, a relatively intelligent person would be able to figure out the relationship and guess at the multiple choice answer, but I’m not such a person.

Around the second week of class (this was before the first exam), I convinced myself that everything the professor was teaching I already knew thanks to my H.S. astronomy class. Looking back, Mr. Lloyd, my physics and astronomy teacher, was probably the primary reason I wanted to be an astrophysicist. This was before I started reading Scientific America, and my many books on relativity and other strange physics concepts. Mr. Lloyd was a great teacher, with wonderfully wry humor. I emulated him in my early attempts at humor (and, to be honest, some of my later attempts). Classic Mr. Lloyd: he asks a student to throw him a ball during a physics demonstration. He holds up his hand, palm ready to catch it, and the student throws the ball. He makes no effort to catch the ball—not even watching it fly past him—and the ball bounces off the blackboard. His face says it all: that wasn’t much of a throw. This might be one of those “you had to be there” moments.

Getting back to college astronomy, I approached the professor after class and asked him what I should do. I mean, here I was, a brilliant potential astrophysicist, stuck in an introductory class that was far beneath me. What did he suggest? What classes should I take? What extra studies should I do? How can I challenge myself with this terribly simple and (dare I say it) inane (for someone like me) material? We had quite a chat about my future, and I left feeling I had taken the first important step.

Most of the people in my first-year dorm floor did well at college. I didn’t learn how well until I started meeting more people outside of my dorm floor during my second semester, but if we had to calculate the floor average GPA, it would have been a staggering 3.6 or so. I told my friends about my astronomy aspirations, and they’re the ones who encouraged me to sign up for the introductory class. We had our first exam around the second month of the year. At this time in my academic career, I wasn’t much of a studier. I came from a high school where I got by not studying much and doing little to no homework. I breezed through my first semester college classes, mostly philosophy and computer science classes, and expected the same for my second semester classes, particularly astronomy. For the first exam, I read the first few chapters, but didn’t attempt to memorize. I didn’t even know what memorization was back then. Suffice to say, I did terrible on the first exam, ending up near the bottom of the curve.

What did I do? I dropped the class. Let me say that again: the astronomy prodigy dropped his introductory astronomy class. There would be no astrophysics in my future. What makes this even worse was that I didn’t tell any of my friends I dropped it. I pretended to go to class and kept up the lie the entire semester. I was afraid after I had built myself up as a potential astronomer, that dropping this class would seem—what’s that word again?—ah, yes, pathetic.

Seven years later (this is after graduate school), I’m flying back to the states after a whirlwind European tour, at France’s airport, I run into an actual astrophysicist. We spark up a conversation (he probably started it, since I’m not very social and rarely start up conversations with strangers), and as I’m talking to him, I realize this could have been me. But for Astro 101, I could have been an academic, traveling the world to different conferences, not about to make six-figures at my first real job. I don’t know if I regret my choices. I like where I am today, and Steven, a good friend, once taught me an important lesson. We were talking about our choices and I mentioned that I wish I started writing earlier, perhaps majored in writing in college and threw myself into it. He looked at me and said that I was crazy for thinking that. If I had followed that other path, I would be a completely different person and who knows what my writing might have been like. I learned important lessons from many people I met, and with a different path, I would have met different people, and I might not be the person I am today.

While it’s clear I wasn’t cut out to be an astrophysicist (at least one that does well in introductory science classes), I am happy with the choices I’ve made since then. During my senior year, I took Astro 102 to fulfill my science requirement. This time I took it with Shannon, my college roommate, and one of the people I lied to second semester. I managed to get a solid B+ in the class. By then, I learned a little more how to study. Shannon, a pre-med student, aced the class with an A. I don’t think he ever even went to class. Damn science majors.