Total Exhaustion

            Lately, I’ve been under a huge amount of stress. I don’t even know why, but there is just so much that keeps piling on top of me. What with a competitive sport that takes up about three hours a day, violin that takes up anywhere from one hour to two hours, preparing for Science Olympiad Nationals, helping run a major site that keeps breaking (not that I do much, but it still has quite a bit of work for me to do), school, programming about seven different languages, plus several major projects and trying to keep up with life in general…I’m beginning to see why I don’t even really have time for sleeping.

            It’s exhausting. It really is. My mind is going severely wonky from lack of sleep and all this stress and strain. Just my necessary work every day (sport, school, violin) take up so much time that I can’t do anything else until past 10 pm, and then it’s homework, which can take anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours depending on how cruel my teachers are being, and then spot-cramming for SO for at least an hour or two every night (with five or six events and Nats at the door, I have to), and then trying to fit in all my other things (fixing broken things on the site, programming, physics, etc). The end result of this? I usually don’t end up going to bed until at least 2 am, usually a bit past 3, and can now pull an all-nighter on a whim.

            Also because of all this work, I’ve been doing less and less homework for classes lately. Sure, occasionally I’ll pick up a math worksheet and do the first two problems, but then I’ll just put it down and go work on something else that’s pressing on my mind. It just doesn’t seem important when I compare it to everything else I’m trying to do. Especially Language work…I have several assignments that are pretty overdue, and because my teacher is nice and she likes me, she’s giving me a lot of extra time. Nevertheless, I’m kind of taking advantage of her kindness and just being like, “ehhhh”. As bad as I feel for doing that, I can’t help it—I’ve got so much else piled on my plate that Language just looks small, boring, and uninteresting. I’ve lost pretty much all motivation to do anything for classes. I do most of my math homework during band class. I take naps in math if I need to, although usually I spend most of math frantically preparing other things for when I’m at home.

            I’ve also found that when left to my own devices (i.e. on break or something), I tend to forget to do things that are necessary for living, such as eating, drinking, and sleeping. Once, I was home alone for about a day or so, and I completely forgot about food until my sister complained to me about being hungry. I promptly microwaved some food for her and went back downstairs, proceeding to work there till I fell asleep at my desk, which was at some point way early in the morning.

           

            But now with all of this…I am extremely exhausted. I don’t know what I can do about it but just keep plodding through the miles of work stretching before me. A lot of the time, I don’t want to do the work anymore. I’m nearly falling asleep typing this, and that may also be why a lot of the sentences are short, choppy, and badly grammared. I just want to go to sleep for a very long time, and then wake up and not have any of this…bleh…work.

World Threats

So lately, we've been hearing a lot about a possible World War III. With rising tensions between Israel and Iran and most of the world's major powers involved, this could turn very ugly very fast. North Korea is another pressing issue, with a hostile president and imminent missile launches against the US.

What do all of these have in common?

Nuclear weapons.

Now, as a scientist and physicist, I can tell you how dangerous those things are in the wrong hands. Heck, even in the right hands, they're insanely risky. On average, each bomb can wipe out  basically everything in a two-mile radius, and slowly kill everything in a hundred-mile radius. The amount of energy produced by the nuclear fission happening in one bomb is enough to power Greenland for four years. That’s no small amount. Think about what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and that was only with one bomb each, and nowhere near as advanced or destructive as those of today. Now think about the number of bombs in the world—about 23,000 in existence. If a third world war happens, all of those bombs will be detonated.

Imagine the mass death and destruction that will follow. The earth will literally be wiped of all life, save a few bacteria and some microorganisms tough enough to survive. A third world war isn’t going to just wipe out the human race, but most other species as well.

Guys, we can’t let that happen. For the sake of Earth, for the sake of the only planet able to support life, we can’t let that happen. I’m just one person, but I know that together, we can make a difference. Cliché and annoying, yes, but very true. As my History teacher keeps telling us, “You are the most powerful teenagers to ever walk the face of this earth.” So let’s use that power. Let’s use it to stop the destruction of the world.

I’m telling you guys, we need to do something about this. Speak up. Blog something. Write something. Publish it. Get the word out, protest, do something. I don’t know how many people read this blog—probably not very many, but if each of those people did something to get the word out…

Come on, people. I believe in you.

Take a listen to this: (warning: a bit of language, but nothing over the top)

And also this:

Let's not let this happen, guys. Help the world...not die.

Life (again)

            It’s been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. Plenty has happened, most of which I won’t mention, but there are a few things worthy of notice.

            Firstly, we won States (by oh such a narrow margin!) and we are headed to Nationals! I’ve picked up a few events along the way, and…I haven’t exactly studied for one of them. Oops. Another one of my events has ­got to be the most irritating event ever. Maybe it’s because I can’t build and—oh yeah—I’m being forced to build. That may be a slight issue. I don’t think I’ve had this many Science Olympiad related injuries since…well, since ever. I have six events for Nats, and three of them are builds. Isn’t that just genius?

            And then, of course, I managed to find my mental twin (hereafter referred to as James). Not my quantum twin, mind—I already have one of those—but someone who is so identical to me mentally that we might as well be the same person in two different places. (Also, it would be quite weird if we called each other twins, because, well…you can deduce for yourself. And if you can’t, you’ll figure it out soon enough.)

Our similarities begin with having the same IQ score. While usually this isn’t too momentous, both of us happen to have a truly ridiculous IQ score that literally indicates we are smarter than 99.986% of humans. Randomly finding someone else with the exact same score is highly unlikely and very unusual, especially considering age. Past that, we are interested in exactly the same things, though I am a bit more into music than him. Of course, there are many more similarities, but I won’t mention them here for sake of privacy and respect.

It’s quite startling to have someone so the same as me. He answers my questions before I ask them, I know exactly what he’s thinking most of the time given context. There have been several instances when we have literally asked and answered questions at the same time. It’s like our brains are so in sync that we both know exactly how the world is viewed through the other person’s eyes. I’ve honestly never experienced anything as completely offputting as someone who views the world the same way I do, someone who is so identical to me that they understand what the world looks like to me.

I suppose that’s all that’s worth mentioning. Till next time, then.