I have no desire to play anymore
I was browsing Twitter some time back and saw an image of a panel from a Calvin and Hobbies comic strip someone posted. It was in reply to a tweet about AI models having solved a large number of open problems. The panel had Calvin telling his teacher "Given the pace of technology, I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside."
Surprisingly enough, my first thought after seeing that had nothing to do with technology or math. When I read that, I realized something kind of funny. Right now, I'm living alone. I'm alone in the house, and my parents are hundreds of miles away, with absolutely no way to know what I'm doing at any moment. I've done almost everything I need to do to prepare for college, which starts in two weeks. If I let myself go and spend the rest of my time here reading, watching movies, playing video games, writing, not only would no one be the wiser, it would have only a limited effect on my preparedness for college.
Yet, I have no desire to do that. I'm giving myself math and programming homework to eke out every bit of college readyness possible from myself in these last few days. Heck, I'm writing this post as a break from my lesson on derivating polar functions.
So why? Why don't I want to fool around, have a good time?
It's because I'm an adult now. I have responsibilities to uphold. I need to get a good enough job after I graduate to make it up to my parents financially for paying my college tuition, and maintain every single one of the scholarships we're heavily relying on. To do that, I have to get good, superb, beyond excellent grades in college. And if I can raise my chance of doing that by even 1%, I'll give up two weeks of fun in a heartbeat.
I know, I know this is such an obvious thing to say. Of course we have different priorities and know different things, and consequently act in different ways once we grow up. But it's just so odd to me. I guess all this time, in some vague, subconcious way, I'd been thinking of myself as something almost, but not quite, a fully participating member of society—maybe one percent, maybe half a percent, but still some percent a kid.
And that was probably true a few years ago. But now, it's not. Sometime, during some instant when I wasn't even noticing it, the last bit of kiddishness in me slipped away. And now here I am. Honestly, it makes me a little sad.
But it's something that had to happen one day. After all, how am I going to have kids of my own if I'm still a kid myself? Not just starting a family—there are plenty of things I want to accomplish which you simply have to be a gruff, mature adult to do. And it is nice to think that the level childishness in my life will go up again once I start raising my kids.
Well, that's enough wafty soliloquizing for today. I'm going to go back to my math homework now.