This blog post is more important for the writing of it than the sharing of information. I say this because I have been very good, almost too good, at keeping in touch with my friends and family lately, and this blog post is about my life and what has been happening in it.
Thus, if you happen to be a frequent reader who is more interested in my engineering endeavours, or my D&D creativity, please skip to the end of the post, and stay tuned for future updates. Normally, I would apologize for the verbosity and introspective nature of this blog post, but I don't really think I have to.
Since the last post, a lot, and yet only a little, has happened. Life has been neutral at best. If one could scale my impression of the last month between 1 and 10, the latter being the best, I would rate the average to be 5.5.
Why you serious? You may ask, well, I have been going through some introspection and working on my life and making some changes, and that can be tough. Long story short, I am single again and have spent considerable time inside my own head, which is both good and bad. Now, before you get too down, I want you to know that this post has a happy ending, but I want to work through the negatives before I get to the positives, it's how I work, and it's how you're going to read it.
First off, the choice was mutual, although I will admit I did not take it well. Without boring you of the details, the timing was not right and neither of us were ready for the seriousness our emotions might have suggested. We both decided that this was the best way for us both to take care of ourselves and what needed to be done. I made a promise to myself, and to her, that I would do the right thing if/when that time came and that I would not make things difficult.
I broke that promise, and I have been fighting my shame.
Basically, my mind and heart work like this:
[Mind] "I am in control of everything, all the time, no matter what."
[Heart] "Can I be excited or sad about [random topic]?"
[Mind] "Yes, but only a little."
That is how I work, all the time. While I may appear to wear my emotions out in the wind for all the world to see, it is all actually carefully controlled and processed. By the time you see it, it's been filtered, weighed, considered, and delivered. I understand how you might either doubt this, or find it difficult to understand. But that's how it is.
Except...when I find a companion who shatters that shell. This has happened to me a few times now, and so I recognize it. Part of me wants to find that someone, that person who I feel most comfortable with, who breaks through that shell and is able to glimpse that part of myself I rarely even let myself see. When this happens, my emotions, reactions, thoughts, everything, is unfiltered and delivered as it happens. Which, is a little difficult for me or the other to bear, and I have grown to understand that about myself.
Anyway, so we broke up, mutually, and then I accidentally was a little too...open about my feelings. Truth be told, I work extremely hard to keep myself focused and disciplined, but sometimes I become too close and too comfortable with someone and my heart, which has gotten used to being so open and unfiltered with that someone, now thinks it runs the place. What's even worse is that I cannot even defend myself and say I was being true to myself and my emotions, and that's the other bad thing; I was not only too open and emotional, not giving the appropriate time and space needed to heal, but I was speaking with my heart which was saying things which weren't true entirely to myself.
My heart was only thinking about how sad I was and how happy I was before. It ignored my brain which was saying this is the right thing to do, and ignoring my brain which was telling me that we needed to give each other space to work things out.
But, I have moved past this, I have apologized and am working toward being friends again, like we used to be. I am providing this analysis, explanation, and apology for two reasons: I hope she and some previous ex-girlfriends see this so they may better understand and forgive/accept this about me, and secondly, I realize that I do and have done something similar to my friends, albeit to a much smaller extent.
But, things have moved forward, as standard conventions of time would dictate. My only lingering thought on the above, other than the hope that I learn from this, is that I hope to bridge understanding so that we may again be good friends someday. And while most of me is completely content with working on myself and my life and leaving her alone so she may do the same, there is a part which adds to the normal amount of missing a friend which hopes that we can again spend some time together before I move back to Ontario. Part of me worried about writing that just now, as I am not intending to add pressure to the situation, but I realize everything I say can and will do just so and so I might as well be honest. Still, it's only been a month, these things take time.
So, what else have I been up to? Well, the first big thing has been my focus on graduate school. I have been looking for sometime, and have narrowed down quite a number of things. The first thing I did was I set out to do nothing but think about what I wanted to do with my life and career. While I had done this a long time ago, the past two years at York have really distracted me, and one of my reasons for coming out here was to be alone in my mind and cut through all the distractions.
In the end, the answer was simple, as it always is. I want to design spacecraft and spacecraft systems to work and work better in the space and extra-terrestrial environments. I have always wanted to put things in space, and now I really want to help be part of the innovation and the space industry, and help make exploring easier and better. I have to narrow down exactly where I want to specialize, but that's what grad school is for. I want to spend the next two years becoming an expert on spacecraft design and by the end of graduate school, be a Master (pardon the pun) in a certain area. I haven't determined exactly what area yet, but I think it leans toward electronic/software design as that is the area with which I have the most experience.
Where does one go to look into this type of career? You, or a version of me from the past, may ask. Well, there are several places to look. First, there is the international option, namely, the US, and/or a lot of places in Europe, and even China/Japan. The latter especially because they are devoting a lot of money toward their space programs right now. But, that is not the path for me. I have given it a lot of thought, and I have determined two things: I don't want to live in the United States (too many negative reasons), and I haven't found the right program in Europe, which is my preferred choice if I were to study abroad.
While I have seen some programs which look quite interesting in Europe, Canada has always been a great contributor to this industry and we have some of the best programs I have seen. Plus, financially, it would be difficult. Not that this makes much of a difference, because I am idealistic enough to not settle and I usually weigh the academic credentials more carefully than the financial.
So, same question: Where does one look? So far, I have some options in Ontario, one in Quebec, and one, surprisingly enough, in Calgary. I have more research to do, and more to say on that matter, but this post is getting longer than I wanted. Suffice it to say, on the matter of grad school, I have been spending a lot of time finding out what I want to do, and when I'm not looking at the schools themselves, or the professors/research being done at them or reading up on the subject of spacecraft design, I am only working on one other project. I will get back to you at a later date with more thoughts and my decision. I plan on having all of the paperwork, research, and applications finished by November, which is incredibly early as most of the applications do not have to be in until January, March, or June for some of the schools.
So there you have it. It's not a lot, in terms of an update, but I have spent most of my time working on directing my future and while it's a lot of work, it's not something one can talk about too much without boring the reader.
Also, it's amazing to know what you want to do and to spend your time doing it. I have been just flying through books from the local libraries on this subject and it makes me feel very happy to know that I've found something to which I so eagerly want to pursue. Most people spend their entire lives looking, and I've been fortunate enough to have always known; I just needed the reminder.
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