goats: strip from January / 12 / 2004

It's important to keep your priorities straight.


I was up in the mountains tonight, not thinking. As some of you may or may not know, I'm going down to LA to interview for a position with Peter Voss' AI research team. I've really been working myself up into a sweat, worrying if I'll get the position, whether I should be getting the position, If I should be pursuing such opportunities, the risks of suspending everything I'm doing now, relocating, and trying to make it in a new city, etc etc.

Given some time to sit and be, on the way down the mountains, I allowed myself to think about it again, and I was struck by how reactive and volatile my reaction to these issues has been. I am, and I will continue. The world is, my friends are, and time marches on. I am excited about the opportunity to join Peter's team, and I think I would do well there. And the problems that may incur are simply new problems, not particularly different in scope from the problems I have now. Going down and not being accepted is similarly benign, to wit, nothing changes, I miss a little school, meet some interesting people. In retrospect, I'm surprised I got so worked up about it. It's interesting that when you feel stable, any change can seem big. We become so attached to our views of the future, that new information is immediately adversarial. Another bug, or maybe a feature. I suppose had I lacked his reaction, I would not have examined this situation so minutely.

We'll see what happens.

Relocating to LA will be interesting, if it happens. I know almost no one there, save my biological father's family, most of whom live in the area. My sister Andrea goes to a college near LA, and Carrie goes to USC. That's the extent of my social network. On the other hand, I'll be working full time with a pre-existing team of programmers and AI theorists. Most of whom seem like intelligent cool people. And most of my friends here were formed through carrie, school, and work. And of course, there is the internet. blessed blessed internet. Interesting that it's LA, I always figured I'd move back to cincinnati, or to Atlanta. Ah well. Course.. It would have been nice had all this happened about 9 months ago, but, I'm not complaining.