Problims[sic] go 'way

Today's post is about the kinds of people in the world.

There are Rats, and there are Pigs.

Like so:

Yeah, there's just the two.

:D

... :(

Katze

P.S. If anyone loves Pearls before Swine half as much as I do, let me know who your favourite character is. I <3 Pig.(obviously)

We live in a Beautiful World

...yeah, we do
yeah, we do

The Coldplay video 'Don't Panic'. Also the inspiration for the title of this blog post.

I've been panicking recently. Thinking about my life, and my future, and where I'd like both to go.

There is the commonly accepted view, that I'll get a degree, do research further on, and settle as a professor. That is the science-related profession that is least loathsome, or most enjoyable, to me. I'm not quite sure which. At the moment, I do enjoy the subjects I'm taught, except when I'm to actually study them. Perhaps that is just my natural tendency to laziness and under-utilization of my brain.

There is another, that wants me to take a year off, concentrate on my writing, and try to get published. This has a lot more uncertainty in it than anything else: whether I'll achieve fulfillment in doing something I've always wanted to do; whether I'll be good enough to live on my writing alone, a rare enough return on the dream that I, like a lot of people before me have possessed.

Not writing for weeks and weeks together, not expanding my mind through wide reading, is putting me back three and a half weeks for every month of progress I make in my writing. It's simple, really. Writing is a profession like any other. No one simply sits down to be a writer. It needs practice, and learning, and reading and then some more practice, and so on. If I have to be a writer I need to work on it 24x7 for three or four years or 20 minutes a day for 20 years.

Being a good scientist will require me to give up my voracious reading and focus on my studies, and external science-related stuff, work in a lab, perhaps, with lesser free time to write as I please. Or else I'll mess up like I have so far, with my CPI, not getting a good project: no one wants a half-hearted student. I will not learn what I need to, to be successful in the future. Everything I've worked on until now will be a waste if I don't avail myself of the opportunities I've been given by putting my soul into science.

There are no shortcuts in life.

Katze.

P.S. Still panicking. This didn't help at all.

Deadhouse Gates

...Because some book titles are just too cool to believe.

Life is cruel, they say. That's why George R.R. Martin, while writing Game of Thrones, maimed an 8-year-old within the first few chapters.

Of course I hated it when that happened, because I like life to be sunny and happy and joyful and all that jazz. Not that it is, ever. But it's nice to pretend--and even believe--that it is. And that is the kind of feeling I get from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. There's a lot of sadness and bitterness in it, and a lot of death. But at the end, I kind of feel like the people in the story changed lives, their own or those of others, in some way. Mostly for the better. And, possibly, that's all one could ever want in life.

Basically I liked Coltaine. I really liked him. He had a useful way of dealing with people--ignore their whining and then enforce martial law to make sure they toe the line. Yup, something special, all right. Highlight for spoilers: And he's dead, nothing can change that, really. But his sacrifice wasn't in vain, and that's what matters in the end. 

End spoiler. Something I learnt from TV tropes and idioms, a rather useful if slightly flame-y site.

Go on: Linky, linky

Hum. Anyway, Coltaine. Here's the most romanticised version of him I've seen so far:

.

.

And here is a book cover with him on it:

Yeah. Sliight difference. As a matter of fact, that cover is more art than cover, almost. It depicts the feeling so well, you feel like crying when you see it. (*sniff* No, that is not a tear there in my eye.) Beautiful, wonderful special edition. Now, why can't more people gift me stuff like this?? People in my life, take heed.

Signing off, and wondering why life, while alright in the theoretical, is such a pain to actually live.

Katze.

P.S. Is a bit mortified, because just realised have been pronouncing it wrong myself, and have recently corrected someone else's(correct) pronunciation. Sorry. >.<