Road Trip

My first roadtrip in Japan didn't occur without a glitch. I was late in meeting the other roadsters, then we got stuck in traffic for about 4 hours. Apparently the highway that we were supposed to use was being repaired and all traffic got detoured to a tiny road amidst the rice fields.

It turns out rice fields are very uninteresting. Who knew?!

Shiga definitely needs a face lift and some entertainment. I saw nothing of interest while driving through. Music really saves lives :). If it weren't for music today, this journey would have either gotten really exciting from the crazy things I would have done or really mindfucking boring from the nothingness around us. 

Karaoke came as an easy form of entertainment while waiting in traffic.

In the end, we made it to our destination and had some real fun - volcano / mountain trekking, playing in snow in the summer, enjoying mother and father nature. It was worth the 4 hours spent in traffic the day before :).

If you have time, I recommend visiting Tateyama  and Kurobe Dam in Japan. They are magnificent features of the earth. 

Don't end up hating your life at 40 because you pursued the career path you chose as a teenager!

I've been thinking a lot lately about my life and the choices that I've made. I read a quote recently that essentially said don't end up hating your life at 40 because you pursued the career path you chose as a teenager. This got me thinking about change and all the unforeseen things that accompany it. In order to ensure that I don't end up hating my life at 40, I need to actually pursue the things that interest me now. Of course, my career path is still important to me and I will continue pursuing it fervently, but I also have other dreams that do not include academics. To get on with those dreams though, I need to set aside 'dream accomplishment' time. Otherwise, I will just drum away at my academics and wake up one day utterly disappointed in me.

Before making my journey into this land of the unknown, I was excited and a bit apprehensive. Upon getting here, those feelings remained for a long time. Recently however, I've begun to feel a sense of 'me'. I know myself more today than I did 3 years ago. I'm more willing to sacrifice and do what is important to me but I keep wishing I had more time and using lack of time as an excuse to not pursue other things of importance to me. This month I will change that though. Notice, this month ends today, so today is my day of progress!

Two weeks ago I woke up feeling quite unaccomplished. I thought about the fact that my graduate school journey was not going according to plan at all. In fact, I'm about a year behind schedule. How did that happen? I wasn't sleeping for a whole year, I'm certain. But what exactly happened? I procrastinated, researched things that turned out to be inconsistent with my professor's goals for me and ended up with a year of nothing. I learnt that this journey is not entirely about me. In a year, I've learnt how to read my professor more accurately, I've learnt the importance of saving towards conferences, and I've realised that my research in grad school is 30% about my interests and 70% about my professor's :) I guess it's a good thing I learnt those things in one year. Sometimes we take years to learn lessons that are not explicitly taught.

So now it's time to focus on things that will help me to finish my thesis and graduate next year. Lord help me if I know what those things are!