It's been about eighteen days since my last post to this site. It feels like only a couple of days have passed since though—if even that. When I started this, I promised myself I would only ever post at leisure and never pressure myself to work on anything for this site that I didn't want to work on then and there. Unlike many promises I've made to myself and others, this one has held true so far. Given the very short-period over which I have been posting on this site though I have little faith that the promise will hold true for longer than a couple years. This technically isn't my first try at blogging; I failed miserably at scientific blogging before because I couldn't effectively communicate my interest nor could I post on any sort of schedule. My goal with this blog is purely to convey whatever interests me at the time whether it be thoughts on the human condition, my passion for math and the sciences, or my crooked sense of time. I am far from an effective communicator and furthermore my writing breaks so many grammar rules that I expect one may find it dizzying. Furthermore, I am poor at implementing transitions in my speech, and so I expect my ideas and interests to appear to be sporadic and poorly strewn together. I also lack any kind of sense of when emdashes or commas are more appropriate. Regardless though, I continue to write regardless for my own sake.

I often find myself living my life at leisure; I tend to find myself treating my engagements as though I have an eternity to pursue them. Time always seems to be so abundant, which only makes it all the more terrible that it is scarce. In both of my previous posts I've already discussed much of my feelings on time and so if you, reader, encounter any confusion with where some of my thoughts come from I implore you to read those two first—ideally in chronological order given that we are discussing time here. My thoughts on time are far from new and have been harbored in my mind for many years now. More than that they are far from unoriginal. Regardless though, I suppose that doesn't matter. If being unoriginal was a sin, most would in many ways be sinners. I, however, can offer my unique perspective on my deviation from the flow of time which may—somehow—be of use to someone to presently encounters problems similar to those I faced, though be warned I offer no advice to remedy this sense of detachment.

Before I introduce my prior sense of being torn between time and my passions, I would like to present a new term I may have coined. Elf time is a sense of disconnection from time that leads one to think themselves to have time aplenty to fulfill their engagements, so named for the notion that elves are often portrayed as living incredibly long lives and so they are often detached from any sense of urgency for a task that doesn't necessitate itself to be done. Another way of thinking about this idea is that the word 'eventually' takes on a meaning of 'before death'. I believe I coined this term before I watched Frieren: Before Journey's End (Sousou no Frieren) from purely my enjoyment of fantasy and analogs between fantasy and reality, but I am unsure if this belief is truth or merely a fiction of my mind. By the way, if you, the reader, are interested in further pursuing the notion of elf time, the series aforementioned portrays my and others' thoughts on the subjects very well.

Often my mortality and my living by elf time are in conflict to another. Needless to say, my life is very short compared to that of any elf. There is this notion in fantasy that because humans lead shorter lives than that of elves that they are far more ambitious while they live in order to reach similar heights—willing to undergo far more dangerous routes to their goal because a longer, more tedious route simply isn't an option due to their far smaller lifespan. There is also this idea that what is only a habit for even the most dedicated of elves in that subject would be the relentless work of a somewhat dedicated human—essentially boiling down to the notion that humans would be more inflamed with passion. These ideas were quite troublesome for me not because they were wrong, but rather because to me they were true. Subject to the short lifespan of a human and yet with a sense of elf time I found myself believing that in my lack of drive to pursue my innermost passions that I would die having never pushed myself to pursue them. Furthermore, any attempts by myself or others to motivate me towards those passions wound up quickly failing. Often, at my lowest, I would question whether I even had passions—if my proclaimed dreams are interests weren't but hollow—my personality a empty shell barely concealing the idle loneliness and depression underneath and naught else. I would often think of myself drifting about in a vast ocean, marooned in my own vessel, slowly drowning as I was consumed by the throes of time and my own lack of motivation to pursue my passions or at the very least to fix myself.

I'm still quite young all things considered which only worsens the fact that when I look back a considerable fraction of my life has been spent unable to get out of bed or merely staring at the ceiling or the walls about me. Now, somehow, I have somewhat remedied my troubles and I find myself once again allowing myself to be enveloped in my passions once again, however, through it all I find that my sense of time remains little changed though the paradigm has now flipped—I almost feel almost as though I could pursue my desires for an eternity (mind the wordplay). Of course as a human with engagements it isn't as though I have no sense of the passage of time, but rather that though time lies on a scale infinitely bigger than I that I could somehow be with it nonetheless—coupled for many lifetimes over. Forgive me if my use of figurative language is more confusing than illustrative. I find this result interesting considering my terrible anxiety over time. As the time slips by faster and faster I find the economies of time to be undergoing some sort of demented hyperinflation—the value of a minute or an hour becoming nearly worthless. Such a perception of time is surely not helped by my often staying so far removed from the light or my insomnia, but in my experimentation I've found that it resides even when such factors are removed. It's hard to describe how I feel, so to my own detriment I often resort to abstractly graphing my feelings (such as in Desmos). This treatment is often belittling to those seeking to understand my feelings and I've sworn off such practices in lieu of opting for more terse—though to my disappointment not a bit as accurate—sentences. Interestingly enough though words are often the primary method of communication for us humans, I lack a knack for them and instead am gifted with the ability to escalate any minor conflict to a regret that I will live with forever. I have learned that I often do not know what I want though I spend so much time trying to decipher it and as such I have decided to distance myself from others around me for fear of causing them and myself future harm. In fact, I see such pains as a certainty that I can only minimize. This does not mean I do not seek out people, but rather that I tend to seek them out on whims and otherwise I willingly dedicate the rest of my time to doing what I want in solitude. When I eventually return to nothingness though, the torment of my own design will be over. It feels as though a switch has flipped in my mind, my thoughts having moved to the other side of an asymptote or a hyperbola, and when I retrace my steps it's like I've always had this sense of elf time though I know I haven't. Even now I struggle to capture my thoughts in words. Perhaps it's because my thoughts are illogical and mostly tangential to the subject I wish truly to discuss, though there are far more eloquently phrased and understandable illogical strings of thought.

Forgive me, for I have lost sight of my original goal in making this post and have dragged you, the reader, through much. To express my experience more succinctly, I spent years not really pursuing my passions and instead subjecting myself to things I didn't enjoy, but now I am enthralled again with my passions. It was never that my passions were not strong, but rather that I simply lacked the motivation to be happy when much I could feel was empty. Now I am still alone, sometimes lonely, resigned to enjoying myself how I wish to enjoy life until I can no longer enjoy it even if I'll find regrets later. Though there may be problems with living at leisure that I have yet to isolate, the real problem I was experiencing wasn't elf time, but rather living without leisure—rarely being in the pursuit of my passions or truly enjoying myself. Sorry for the odd metaphor.