The phrase "What goes up must come down" has been dominating the way I've been thinking about things recently. I've always been facinated about how most everything can be boiled down to certain simple aspects of mathematics or physics. In this particular case, oscillations. It might help to think of life as a giant one-dimensional pendulum. If I place external forces on the system then the pendulum starts to swing in one direction. Soon enough the pendulum will swing in the other direction with only a little less intensity. With the resistance of a daily routine and a lack of new external forces, the pendulum will return to a state of rest with time but not before the mass at the end of the string makes the rounds a number of times.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I had intended to look at an apartment around 12 (not quite under the circumstances that you'd think) and then go to work and get something from the massive pile of semi-extracurricular work done. I ended up hanging about the city with some of the roommates which was a great time. It's more strict socialization than I've done during a single day in a long time. My legs hurt and I was tired by 11pm so I got a good deal of sleep as well.

Today started pretty solidly. I woke up around 10 to a smell that may or may not have been my PC burning and quickly turned it off without really making heads or tails of the situation. I haven't turned it on since in avoidance. I made it out of the house in 40 minutes or so and picked up a bus in about five minutes (one of the shorter wait times for MUNI recently... ) so I could head to work. The bus stopped a number of blocks short of my intended destination because market was closed for a couple blocks (for no good reason, it seemed when I walked by). I finally got in to do some work and did that pretty solidly for about four hours. Then I took a small break to read some news and got stuck on this extra-tragic story about the airliner that crashed in Greece. Not only did a passenger have time to message a friend about how the passengers were freezing to death because of depressurization but fighter pilots that were sent up to check on the plane reported seeing passengers desperately attempting to fly the plane with dead pilot(s) slumped over in their seats. Even though I know all about my incredibly irrational fear of flying, I'm not usually this bothered by reports of an airplane crash. The thought of knowing that you're going to die and not being able to do anything about it is what really bothered me. At any rate, I was totally bothered by these mental images and it put me on edge. The family called shortly after that and I'm sure that me being particularly irritable made them particularly irritable which made me even more so. Irritable Nick is also no good at debugging anything so my attempt at work which was going so well got absolutely nowhere for the rest of the afternoon. In the end, I didn't get nearly enough of the work done that I wanted to and I left work feeling frusterated and particularly bothered.

I don't count any of the random things that happened as any kind of retribution from the good day I had yesterday. That's just not the way I think. My mental state does seem to have some serious swing to it though.

Regardless of my fear-of-flying incident today, I've been thinking about learning to fly. I'm incredibly interested in being in control when I'm flying and perhaps being able to make my own cross-country trips rather than having to rely on this failing airline industry that I don't trust. I've always had an understanding for the beauty of flying although it's less about the actual beauty and more about escaping gravity and aerodynamics.

And you know what that means - Flight School Blog.