Considering things less important than usual...

So I don't have anything deep to say (surprise, surprise) and so I'll give a general update.

School is good albeit stressful--mostly due to personal expectations for a certain amount of academic success which isn't necessarily being met/validated on a normal day-to-day basis. I mean, I can suppose that I'm doing pretty well and considering the kind of material that I'm working with, I think I'm doing pretty good. I guess my main issue is the consistency of speculation towards performance in that I generally have to just sit around and hope that I'm doing well instead of actually having a quantifiable measure of actual performance.

That being said, I have a short paper to write (which will consist of 40% of my grade) for my philosophy seminar on Animal Considerability. Honestly, I wish I hadn't taken the class... but my main source of stress comes from my total lack of understanding towards cognitive ethology and a general lack of caring towards the idea of whether animals can think. I don't think animals have desires and while I grant that they have feelings and rudimentary/crude reasoning skills, I don't think that we need attribute moral status to them in so much as we only take cares to ensure they never suffer more pain and suffering than is acceptable for any living creature. But then again, that's how I feel about all people I don't really know. I simply wish that all people be granted at a minimum enough moral consideration that they not be egregiously harmed.

Is it so much to ask that I not be forced to believe that animals are so morally considerable that they be granted the right to property and representation in congress? I exaggerate of course because out of all the gargantuan readings we've had for that class, none of them make any sense and I don't understand the point of any of them.

Perhaps you can see the underlying causes of my stress?

I thought this wasn't going to be a deep post...?

Anyways, everything else is going fine. Social life is fine and considering it's infinitely better than the past two years of college, I can't complain. The radio show is going swimmingly. Writing for Broadside has been much, much better than it was last year but still not nearly as wonderful as it was Freshman year when I was able to write more to my style and about more things I cared about.

Note to self: Broadside retrospective in an upcoming blog post?

I'm participating (for the most part) in National Novel Writing Month. Even though, I'm really only doing it in my head and not physically because I still am lacking any extrinsic motivation and pressure for actually doing it. I write my best under pressure and I am not feeling any when it comes to these novels. I guess I could drop out of school and declare to the world that I will make a living writing novels and the only way I can eat is by the fruits (lol) of my imagination. Seems like that would deliver adequate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for finishing one or more of the five projects I've started.

Latest project: Novel! By: Author (by Dylan Hares)

It's the epic story of writing an epic story. The journey of one writer in his quest for his magnum opus. I got the idea from Paul Laudiero (who came up with the title) and from Milan Kundera's Immortality whose first chapter seems much like Kundera is narrating his epiphany on immortality and identity and the human condition. It will be literally brilliant if I can find the voice and pacing and stick to it. Maybe I'll write some more tonight after I study for my Personality exam.

But yeah... I suppose that's it for now.

I mean... considering things less important than usual, that is.