other new years resolution suggestion: go running at least once a week. i really want to go running these days. too much sitting around does that to me. but its too cold. i will take advantage of la jolla weather when i get back. another reason for this sudden resolution suggestion is because i finished reading my psych textbook (ok, skimmed, because i was under time pressure to ship it after i'd sold it) and i read about all the physical developments aka physical deterioration that happen in middle/late adulthood. so it would do me well to heed its warnings and beginning exercising as compensation for loss of walking opportunities in my new schedule. most of my classes this coming quarter are nearby for some reason. i have like 2 a day in york. and other than my waitlisted class which is in warren and only meets like twice a week, my farthest class, i think, is in muir. or marshall? not more than 10 min away anyway. anyway. i would rather not fall apart when i'm 70.

also, reading about middle/late adulthood has made me more aware of the dynamics of being older... and has made me realize my own mortality and even though i may seem to have a lot of time left at this point, 80 years really is not very much at all. and who knows if i will even live out my spot in the family life cycle? i might very well crash and die on my way back in the middle of the night from tim's after a long new years eve of friends and fun. death is a curious thing and i think we would all do very well to think about it long and hard. i feel less prepared to die today than i did a couple years ago, the reason being that i have not given much thought to death since those days of daily meditation about death during my quiet times. but what a sweet moment it will be, if only i could have the luxury of a gradual and expected death. to be with jesus at long last. i'm going to cry when i die. from joy. but until then, i will busy myself with everything that doesnt matter in this life and maybe once in a while shift my focus to things beyond that do matter. or if God helps me, vice versa. hm i wonder if it feels like falling asleep. i wonder if you can keep yourself awake a little longer or choose to drift off a little earlier? once i had a dream that i was about to die for some reason, and i knew it. i went around telling everyone that i was going to die and saying goodbye... but i wouldnt die. i tried to, like i try to fall asleep, but i wouldnt go. and in that dream, it was a lot like falling asleep. but as much as i would like to be able to savor that one moment that comes once in a normal  lifetime (haha), dying slowly in a hospital bed seems so meaningless. but i dunno. i will not risk requesting anything from God because he might listen to me.

is there fear in death? i fear other people's deaths very much. i fear dead bodies (except in a lab environment) and i fear the loss. well, one good thing about dying young is that you won't have to see anyone die. and i fear being jerked out of my body in a way that i can't control. i almost fear not being able to die, but that really doesn't make any sense. and sometimes i fear that when i die, i'll find out that everything i believed about the afterlife was false.

oh, hey, when i die my human nature will have completely been destroyed. in that perspective, death is liberation in the most primal sense. hm interesing...

reading about all stages of a lifespan also make me realize this fourth dimension of time, and helps me to think above it. the present is such a narrow point in time. the past is so long and the future is so long. the "present" is effectively nothing, yet to us who live in it, it's virtually everything. strangely distorted. strangely narrow. my past is already beginning to seem long, but it's only been 18 years. i have no idea what having 60 more years to live means. it seems so short when seen from beyond time, but so long when seen from our own magnifying glass view. far too long for me to comprehend already.

my textbook also apparently says that women gain more other-sex friends as they progress into young adulthood, but men have less other-sex friends. how does that even make sense. after 20 hours of pondering, i have concluded that either the population of young men far outnumbers that of young women, or most of the other-sex friends of the young adult women are men who are not young adults.

ok, enough philosophical thinking sharing for one day.


mental playlist: the words i would say (sidewalk prophets)