inner dialog

(me-type-A):
-What is about me that holding me back?
(me-type-Loser) :
-I am afraid to race, my attention gets stuck in things I am afraid of.

(me-type-A) :
-But when you want to succeed in the highest level you don't have the luxury to lose your attention to things you fear.
- Place your attention solidity on the things you want to accomplish.
- Telling yourself you are a loser does not fortify you with the strength to achieve your goals

(me-type-Loser):
- where do you draw strength when you want to quit?

(me-type-A) :
 - Negative thoughts eat up the will power.
 - If you're looking for inspiration check the story of Matt Long  or learn about the stories
of Dave Scott or Mark Allen

- develop a strategy based on what the race wants from you
- make adjustments when you see how your strategy reacts to real world
- ask yourself what is holding you back from the success you're after
- commit to completion; have a commitment until you achieve the great results are inside you

Sad Rainy Afternoon

Nothing very important the last few days. Classes started again, PhD continues to freak
me out, my schedule is bad and my sleep even worse. The last few days we haven't seen the sun
something that adds some extra melancholy to my already depressed self.

Rain is also bad for the bike; it is really challenging to bike around the wet streets of College Park.
I am thinking how happy I was one year back, really optimistic about my second year in PhD, really
happy and sort of proud about Elise, with a good sleeping schedule waking up at 6.15 am and sleeping around 11.30 pm. The major thing was that I was happy and I was able to be optimistic. 

Under Siege

I am before a major deadline. I'm working so many hours and is so hard for me to keep my cool. I think I can't stand anything and that has as a result to behave rudely. I feel bad because today I have done it already a couple of times.

It is so clear that my problem is me and my work, and it so wrong to attack others for my own reasons. I feel bad, because I'm able to understand that am so wrong.

Anyway, Unknown Friend... I'm terribly sorry for my behavior,
please understand me

Two days Asleep

Am wearing my iron mask, having wires for brain and thinking about my source code.
Yeah I have drunk so much coffee once again... And my code right now could go in any
direction, any direction at all.

Always, under these circumstances my memories in the cupboard are getting up and walking
around the room; just to make the empty room slightly busier and more alive. I guess what
am trying to say is that am very tired but I have to continue working no matter how it goes;

This is the nature of our work, something always is going to crack, or always something will
remain incomplete. However, I guess all I have to do is just to keep my nerve and keep on
coding. All I have to do is keep on fighting.

Lost!

It's such a long process and the outcome is not clear. Also I constantly question myself what the hell am learning from this process. For sure am not the same person that I was 2 years before but I guess when It comes to PhD this shouldn't be enough.
To explain myself; no matter what I would had been doing those two years I would had been a different person from what I was two years ago that this thing started.

By pursuing a PhD I guess I was expecting that I will learn new things regarding my area? science in general? how to
be a scientist ? I don't know why but the things I have learned so far are very different. They mostly have to do with the social aspect of my life that is getting worse and worse. I have reached to a point that I hate myself so much for what I have become that out of spite I am treating really rudely to almost everyone around. Even if that is not visible to other people yet I feel that
I'm rusting inside, I feel that hate, misery, bad feelings guide my thoughts and my actions and all this kindness and pureness that I had younger is fading extremely fast. I understand that age comes with some feelings like that, but seeing my life from distance for a while seems that it's been all downhill since I arrived here. Fear, boredom, loneliness, sadness ... why am only 28 and I feel 98. People talk to me and I always focus on the negative things and try to find what is bad and why things won't work.
I over think and when people ask me why am doing this since it's not always necessary I am answering something like " am a PhD student I've been practicing thinking all day, am trying to find why things work and don't work every day; it is like a professional basketball player who plays basket really well, a phd student tends to think more because that's what you have to do everyday" ... But this is just a rhetorical bullshit just to avoid to admit how much fucked up I am


What I have been learning so far here, I think is totally irrelevant with any notion of science. I learn how to survive in a foreign country which is useful skill but more appropriate for a soldier not for a scholar. How to fight sadness... without great results, hot to fight loneliness without any results, how to be afraid to interact with people, to forget how you interact with normal people that they are not equally scared. How to burn out myself and my motivation by working in a ridiculously ugly room with no physical light and lights that remind me the lighting of factories in Germany around 1950's. I have been learning how to write and speak english which I guess is useful a thing, how to run, how to bike.. but where is the PhD? where is the science? and even if I have learned something, that is not very easy to define, is in between the fog of all these terrible emotions that makes so hard to enjoy this process.

It's hard for everybody it's not only for me. All the students I know they are basically either depressed, either they have a long term relationship and they try to hold themselves from there either they just take a jump in the abyss of the infinite sadness. I haven't really met happy people around me. The ones they are happy are not here. Being honest I have to admit that I am sad, and because misery loves company maybe is the case that am really clustered with people that are equally sad as me, but I hardly believe that this is the case...


I feel already lost in my own thoughts. I don't even know why I started this post. Ah, yes just because I realized that summer is almost over and two years now nothing significant has happened. That someone healthy can say that it might be a good incentive to start thinking positive and fight back.. but I feel empty.. I feel empty of strength ladies and gentlemen I feel stuck in the tardis... really trapped in depression. I watch myself dance like a puppet, I can almost see the strings. Am searching for an answer, a sign, but I've been climbing up this ladder for so long. It's so hard not to think that I'm wasting my time.
I can't find a way to escape and any solution seems so far away for fucking sake. I just let myself down

One of those days

yes, it is one of those days that you wake up and for some reason you know that everything will go wrong.
I had this feeling in the morning and sadly it was confirmed pretty soon. I got a flat tire on my way to school so I had to call a friend to give me a ride. The feeling of anxiety I had in the morning after that became stronger. Then I met with my advisor in a meeting that war really bad; after the meeting I was and still doubting about many things. Then I tried to fix my flat tire by patching the broken tube however even that it wasn't possible. The patch didn't work and the tube blew out by making a noise similar to the one that guns do. Luckily nobody got heard. I had some very clear and realistic goals for the day in terms of work but no I didn't feel like doing them. The only good part of the day is the reading of a good classic systems paper; however, I had the feeling that am just procrastinating since I read this paper just for a journal club we have at school. In other words I feel that am avoiding doing any work. Furthermore, today one big networking conference started and I saw the presentation of the paper I was working on last summer but because am stupid (but also because some people are bad) am not in the author list. However, deep inside I know that I don't have no one else to blame than me. Anyway, I haven't fixed my bike, I haven't done the work I wanted to do, I got even more mad to myself by watching live the presentation of the project, I feel stressed with the project and apparently I am very miserable and am complaining a LOT right now.

I decided to go home and do some cleaning stuff just for a change. Being a "housewife" sometimes help me to feel better about myself. Especially when I feel LAME.

this day is just an epic fail

All I have to do is Dream (Part 1)

dream dream dream dream dream...All I have to do is dream. So in this effort to keep track of my life I decided to blog about my dreams and try to give a reasonable explanation.

Last night I had a wonderful dream. The story goes like this. It is a football (soccer for you americans) match between my favorite team and another Greek team. My team is Panathinaikos, the other's team name is AEK. Anyway, usually the games between them are highly anticipated because they both usually have good teams.

During my dream, my team won 8-4. I know it doesn't sound like a football's game score but that was it. The initial score was 4-0 but at some point AEK managed to come back and do the score 4-4. However, my team managed to win by 4 goals at the end. During this I had a warmth feeling. Then I don't know why I found myself talking with the coach of the team about a bike ride. I was trying to give him guides about a big 88 miles ride in the mountains. At the end told him that he shouldn't worry if he can't do it with the first try because it is tough to ride for 88 miles anyway that has some good uphills. Again I had the most pleasant, calm feeling and a sense of warmth.

I know it is quite strange dream. I think the explanation about the team is the following. My team lately in Greece is in very bad condition, the most valuable players left, the owners don't give money for new good players to come and the supporters are not only worried for the upcoming year but for the future of the team itself in general. My explanation is that the team is me. I worry about the upcoming paper and lately I have many doubts about my decision to do a PhD. The importance of those things in my life according to the dream seems to be in doubt since they appeared in the form of my team that I really like and an important game; However, it is only a soccer team and it was only a game. Another explanation might be that I see the PhD as an athletic competition something that sounds very likely if I think my swimming background. The outcome of the game and the feelings that generated of course mean that I want all this effort not to be pointless and have a good result at the end.

The discussion about the bike ride with the coach of the team is equally interesting. This guy is a 65 years old man with a really friendly face but he seems very tired from the years. Right now I can associated with two people in my life. First my advisor, he seems old enough and very tired sometimes. He just bailed out from a great ride that he was doing and this fact made me feel a little bit sad since I really like the guy. I wonder If by giving him guides in the dream I was expressing my sympathy. The other person that I can associate the coach is my father. He is about that age, he seems very tired, he has a friendly face and of course I love him. The bike ride now has more obvious meaning and probably have to do with the last years of his life. The uphill part is probably that I am afraid that they will be difficult years. For me that I am not there for him, for him that he is getting older. He is my father and I love him, I think it makes sense to worry about him.