< hmmm... >

   There are things I really, really want to do when I put everything on the line, going at it tooth-and-nail.  Some of my friends say that I am at my best when I take to my fighting form, when my self-imposed desperation takes the better of me.  Like my thesis: to be honest, I was a walking act of desperation during those days.

   And here I am in yet another desperate attempt: making a technical paper that condenses my 366-page thesis into eight pages for submission to an international conference.  I've been at it for a couple of weeks now, and somehow, I'm nearing that point when my better half emerges.  Whether or not I deliver is out of the question: I'm in a position where the beginning of my career is at stake.

   Desperation... near-total obsession, I say.  Forget near-total: I'm obsessed.  Really obsessed.  I'm on my way to fulfilling not only a dream, but something I'm hell-bent on doing.  I've got a lot of proving to do to people who have thought that I'm going to amount to nothing at the end of the day, that I'll eventually be a mere flake of ash left over from a blaze of obscurity.  No way, man.  Not now.  Not ever.

   This is exactly what I felt when I submitted my thesis last week: like N*Sync's "Pop," or perhaps a lingering affliction of herpes, I wouldn't close chapters just yet on chaos I start, or find myself in the middle in.

   Yup, there's only me, a stray tumbleweed, a technical paper, and the bureaucracy that is the foreign service that stands between me, Seattle, and my dream-like obsession.  And if it doesn't work out the way I would rather like it, there is always another way.

   Invenimus viam aut faciemus.