The trick is to maintain a kind of naïve amazement at each instant of experience - but, as Montaigne learned, one of the best techniques for doing this is to write about everything. Simply describing an object on your table, or the view from your window opens your eyes to how marvelous such ordinary things are. To look inside yourself is to open up an even more fantastical realm.

― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live

if i could travel back in time, i want to go back to august 2008 at Tokyo's nippon budoukan, immersed in the 2008 studio ghibli concert in person. it would've been a magical experience. i watched it 3 times on my hp laptop, playing in the background while i did paper readings and finals studies. porco rosso's bygone days is my favorite here.

i realized most of my life i don't put effort into having my own opinions, or work through problems before getting the answers. i steal ideas and make them my own, i need to me wary of unearned wisdom. i wondered if original thought is possible, or am i just a machine that regurgitates what other people (that i admire) say or do. when asked what my opinion was, and not the graduate student, i couldn't produce anything useful. i felt demotivated. i spent too much time understanding and rabbit hole-ing the techniques and implementation, and no time arriving to a conclusion. my task is to find answers, but all i gathered were just information, not knowledge. perhaps it is my lack of experience in the field and industry, i have to put in more hours, run more experiments, and talk to more people. reading can only get me so far. i have to fail and take risks.