April 4th, 2009 by Boon

I have been slack posting anything creative lately. Work is hectic, with a milestone fast approaching and weekend work in the “optional, but you’ll suffer if you don’t so it’s not really optional at all” category. Besides, I’ve been feeling despondant. I only use the word because it’s slightly outside common vocabulary and makes me feel moderately intelligent, in stark contrast to my efforts of the last week to comprehend some 2D game related math. A situation that is even more frustrating due to vague memories of mastering this stuff in high school. I fear that I am… dumb.

Differentiation, Integration, Functional Mathematics… Vectors… Dot Products…

I capitalise because these things have taken on life in the last few days – demonic numerics, determined to crush my spirit under the weight of a million A’s and B’s and X’s and Y’s and Deltas and F(x)’s and SquigglyLinesWithFunnyLittleLettersAboveOrBelowOrToTheSideOfThem’s.

And I’ve come to a couple of really horrible realisations.

A) My memory is so inadequate that I can’t recall the most basic fundamentals of work which I once found so easy and natural that I rarely bothered showing up to class.

And

B) My capacity to learn; to reason and comprehend the things which I don’t instinctively understand… has gone.

That’s not to say that I have the cognitive capabilities of a piece of driftwood. But it is to say that it has come as a bit of a shock to me that these things don’t come as easily as they once did.

Where once I aced an exam when my entire study methodology consisted of briefly flicking through the text book on the way to the test hall, now I find myself concentrating with so much focus and determination that I feel my glare will melt a hole through my monitor… and to no avail. No hole either, thankfully. This screen was expensive.

It’s not enough to have to deal with the wrinkles (my mother calls them ‘laugh lines’ when I begin to go into a fit of anxiety, even though I assure her I’m not fucking laughing) but now I’ve got to face the fact that at a young 30 – YES THIRTY IS YOUNG, SHUT UP – my ability to process information has noticably waned over the years.

It shouldn’t be a surprise. I also did biology in high school. But somehow, I never actually considered that I would be victim to the assault of time. That’s time as in T(n) = P + (n * Math.pi) – Math.Sqrt(n). Aha ha ha. :/

Urgh.

URGH.

Anyway, that’s enough melodrama. It’s frustrating, and it’s put me in a bit of a funk. It probably doesn’t help that lately I’ve been trying to do EVERYTHING. I’ve got my photography, my work, I’ve been trying to learn this pixel art thing (surprisingly difficult, and yet therapeutic), trying to learn to program The World’s Best Game Engine from scratch, and also recover math skills I haven’t had a need for in over a decade.

I’m sure it’ll come to me, maybe after I’ve had a couple of good nights sleep and a few days off to relax.

And if it doesn’t, farming sounds like fun.