I've dropped out of college twice, and had considered that I would never go back (financial reasons, motivation reasons, doing "work" things with my life now). I decided with the new year that I would try to break into a new field, one which historically hasn't required a college degree but one definite helps (software development), and have found that businesses in my area look for one.

In talking with a friend in the field and one of the employers who turned me down, I went to the local community college and found that their course-work, their prices, and their availability are far more manageable than I had realized. I'm now taking steps to apply for the summer semester.

I told at least three people I wouldn't ever go back to school two weeks ago, and I had no interest in it. Here I am, moving towards it. Feels weird, but like the right step.

This week, my therapist and I talked about the nature and subtleties of my major forms of akrasia, and have begun the conversation that I hope will help me change or break them. After years of trying to deal with these problems by myself, it's oddly freeing to be beholden to someone else and also to have someone who is committed but not emotionally bound to me and my success.

My focus this week is to think of possible mantras that I could use to stay on task and begin (if not complete) tasks I know I need to do but I don't want to do. Lots of rereading of the anti-akrasia threads here.

follow them all and you can't use words wrongly.

I don't understand. I thought the purpose was to develop rules for writing definitions of words, not for using words. What have I missed? Or maybe, how would this list look were it to be written as maxims for writing?

Even SpaceChem? Note, I haven't played Deadly Rooms of Death, but SpaceChem is currently the most difficult "puzzle" game I've ever played.

I'd love to hear more about the bot. How does it work? Where is it run? Can others access it too?

I worked top-to-bottom, without change. If a new branch grew higher than my previous cuts, I focused it immediately. I know there's an optimal way, but I'm not quite clever enough to think of it.

670? Lucky. I finally bested it after 1750-ish, yesterday. Once I hit 1000, I thought, "Why am I doing this? What am I proving?" and then I started clicking again.

Oh, I see. Okay, this all makes a lot more sense now. Thanks for the clarification.

Well, "gwern" a name I'd only seen associated with our fellow poster, and from what I've read (related to his adventures with The Silk Road), it seems like he's tried to stay relatively detached from his real-life identity, so I didn't assume that this Gwern is also our gwern. Makes sense, though.