Bagalois - Bag

literally though if you feel like your life is slipping through your fingers and every day goes too fast… try doing hard things, not just taking the easy route, like reading and making art and exercising and cooking a meal from scratch and journaling, doing these things without distraction, without being absorbed on a screen… the time will stretch and you’ll be reminded that life is long and beautiful if you make it so.

i could really reach peak nerd if only i knew how to ask for help

One of these days, I need to start studying again. Like sure, high school is over and I don't have an obligation to study anymore but I want to but I can't because I wake up and get distracted and an hour and 50 episodes of a random show later, it's already 3 am.

i've had some thoughts on normal subgroups and quotient groups for a little while but i haven't quite been able to put it into words yet. i would have but ive gotten really fixated on socionics lately so that's kiiiinda where all my learning/exploring energy is going rn

wasting away to the numbers

It's a good thing I studied some math today. Otherwise today would've just been Balatro from sunrise to sundown.

I need to put these numbers away and do something real, something physical.

But the allure of it all!

The allure of getting absurdly high scores in the illegal poker hands of Balatro,

the implications of "group codes" and how they represent this concept of Modern Algebra…

I hate that I've started entertaining myself with a five-dollar Discrete Math and Modern Algebra textbook from Half-Price Books.

How far have I fallen to descend past degeneracy and into insanity?

Numbers…

Those quantitative specters haunt me when I lie down for bed now.

I have to exhaust myself doing math or playing card games until I'm too tired to do literally anything else.

…

I won't be surprised if I wake up tomorrow morning in the shape of a seven.

…

And how did I get so attached to math in the first place, all those years ago?

I was thrashing about, trying to grab hold of any small fragment of reality…

and all I caught was something that's very good at describing the way reality works.

All these years later, I'm at the edge of math,

at the base of a mountain before I reach a plateau of iterations of the fundamentals.

Magmas. Groups. Rings. Tokens. Languages.

And it all bleeds out into the rest of the world.

Letters are tokens in the language of the alphabet just as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, as well as +, -, *, /, =, are tokens of typical math.

And typically you get to say stuff like 1 + 1 = 2.

But in the world of Modern Algebra, my friend,

we reinvent the wheel to fly through the sky.

0 + 0 = 0, 0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 0 = 1, that all makes sense.

But 1 + 1 = 0, oh, my friend, welcome to addition modulo two.

If this is far too outlandish and wacky for you, turn back now.

It only gets worse from here.

The worst part is that this crap is at the heart of math.

It's so simple and abstract.

I love it.

In fact, I think I'll…

lie down right here

in all the numbers

and make myself right at home.

Like the immutable, starry heavens above,

the absurdity and outlandishness of math

comforts me

because it doesn't make sense

why

it makes sense.