The weather was less than ideal for the majority of this week, and I had to go out in some of the worst of it. Specifically, I went to the optometrist, and found out that no, my memory was correct, I had this pair of glasses the entirety of my college experience. The frames are actually older than that; I had new lenses put in at one point. But apparently my eyes are more stable now that I've stopped growing; the new prescription I'll be getting isn't actually that different. I haven't picked out new frames yet—after so long, this feels like a dramatic decision, even though it needn't be anywhere on that level. It's an interesting psychological artifact of how the last few years have gone.
Looking forwards, I'm trying to maintain a positive mindset. I started working on my grad school application and will probably be finishing that up in the next week or so (though I need to take the GRE still and that will be a little further out). I'm not abandoning the job search, of course, and pushed out a quick application on Friday. Having a fall-back fully lined up would help with the search process, however, so I'm focusing on that for the time being.
I also spent some time this week working on a self-awareness and self-improvement....course, if you will, which I'm participating in with some other people from the local rationalist meetup group. We're sort of adapting the sequence that a Less Wronger put together with perspective from our technical backgrounds; right now, we're adapting the bug-list part of the program based on Failure Modes and Effects Analysis. Consequently, there's a lot of small life problems on my mind right now and I'm looking at options for fixing them (or will be, in the near future). I don't particularly want to discuss them as much on here, however, when I could be channeling that attention into the project.
We'll see how far that goes. In the shorter-term, I'm planning to continue working on my daily studies and personal research, probably going to the public library as the weather permits. It's going to be warmer for at least a couple of days, which seems like a good time to start building up the habit.
