Quarter of Laziness & The Paradigm of Mental Normalcy

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This blog has been quiet recently and it has been a while since the last post and I do feel like I have did nothing of significance this year thus far. In reality if I look back, I have did a lot of significant thing and has been producing a lot of outcome worthy of a few academic papers. Could it be an impostor syndrome? Who knows, I am certainly not versed well enough to make deductions on these psychological traits or whatever it’s called. All I know is rocks and geochemistry but I think it’s about time I change that.

Embarking on learning a new skill is never easy but I always tell myself it’s difficult because I have not practiced enough or is simply too unfamiliar with these new things. I need to take it one day at a time before I get good, after all everyone starts somewhere. People might see me as this petrologist who turned basin analyst and structural geology overnight but the effort I made to learn these subjects and late night readings and watching endless sandbox videos was not seen. Interestingly I also tend to forget all the efforts that I made to be good at something, maybe this is part of the imposter syndrome I mentioned earlier. Regardless, I’ll still make the effort to learn new things. This basin analyst/structural geology turned petrologist is planning to learn coding! Specifically Python language because apparently it is one of the most common language of coding other than Javascript and C. How will I fare? Let’s check back at the end of the year shall we.

Hey since this post somehow gravitates towards psychological issues, I’ll open up to the ones that I might have and it was undiagnosed. I do know for a fact that I have a mild case of OCD of which I found out after watching a video of a toddler having a tantrum (he was diagnosed with OCD) and how the mother handled him. All these time I thought I was weird at how upset at I get when things were not…. hmmm I cannot seem to find the right word to describe the things that made me upset. Let’s me describe it as I have a mind that tells me to do things that way or I have to do it otherwise it would cause me a great deal of discomfort and distress. Anyway I felt better after watching that video knowing that I am not alone because I don’t know anyone that has OCD and I’m afraid if I open up people will make fun of me about how I am obsessed about making things symmetrical (which is untrue for me). But that is slowly changing as I am opening up to a few people about this (including you!) although some people make fun of me when I told them about that, I always follow it up with an educational what it is and how it is different for every person i.e it’s a spectrum. I am happy that there has been a push about mental health awareness but somehow I hope they also raised awareness about people like me. But hey it has to start somewhere and the people who have been pushing this issue to the mainstream media deserves more than a round of applause!

It takes guts… and heart to admit there’s something wrong with you and to accept that fact. But it also makes you who you are and even though you struggle sometimes, you’re not alone and we (me and the other kids who struggles with these issues) face the same thing together but to a different degree for each and one of us. If you need help, reach out but I know that’s not as easy as it sounds but have courage (I would link these to psalms but I’ll spare you my religious beliefs).

Bet you didn’t expect me to open up about my mental health to you eh? Well surprise! Neither did I honestly but whoever stumbles across this blog or the person I gave the link to this blog, I trust you enough. I’ll try to write about something more cheerful next time but no promises! Hmm maybe I’ll write about my search for the perfect grind size distribution of my coffee beans and how it greatly correlates with my aeropress flavour but that is already a well known fact and I can simply sum it up in a sentence; I got a Wilfa Svart Aroma grinder my my cup of coffee tastes magical. Don’t worry, I’ll write up something worth reading when the time comes.

Until then,

The Sun Rises

What a rollercoaster of a year isn’t it? Although the year is coming to an end, I really think the new year isn’t going to be automatically easier. Yes, you can wish for a better year but in the end it is truly up to you to work on it and make it a better year. Simply hoping for a better year isn’t going to cut it anymore, a year after all is a period of time where earth completes one orbit around the sun and a year is made up of 365.25 days and each day contains 24 hours and every hour has 60 minutes etc etc… I hope you, dear reader get the message that I am trying to convey here; It will stay the same when the clock strikes midnight in 31st December 2020 and the new year will be exactly the same as time is just mankind’s way to make sense of things (or if you prefer to go deeper into theoretical physics, time is a consequence of gravity… or was it the other way around?). There’s nothing wrong with hoping for a better year but do follow it up with an action or at-least with a better mindset, I think that is the best we can do for ourselves.

As for me, I know for sure I will have a VERY uncomfortable year as I will have to learn a lot of technical skills for an exploration geologist and also as one of the operations geologist on on offshore drilling rig. It’s going to be challenging but hey, what the hell let’s bring it on. This will be a pretty mundane post simply because my thoughts are still a bit cluttered. Day after day the sun rises and day after day we make new memories, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

That last line was from The Office. I forgot how I stumbled upon that but I do remember for a fact I know someone who (sensu lato) wrote a dissertation using one of the character from The Office. We had a conversation recently on contentment and what it means to be truly content but we both agreed that contentment is a pitfall and you won’t push for more and you might miss out on greater things in your life. Hence the picture that I used today, this was taken earlier this year. Sunshine, green grass, flowers and blue skies lay just beyond the fence with the barbed wire. Well, I’ll leave that to your interpretation.

Until then,

A Moment of Clarity

These days I barely have time for myself. Work, fitness, social life. The holy trinity it is not indeed but it’s my routine indeed. Like anything, this strange trinity of mine needs balance and it is no surprise that I am not in control of any of the aspect. But that’s a good thing, I have identified where I need to give more and where I need to take more. This realization happens in a moment of clarity.

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November 11th 2016. I was in Yamagata and I felt my bed shaking and it woke me up. I thought I finally felt a ghostly disturbance but when my mind pulled together I realized it was just an earthquake. “Just an earthquake” until years later in 2020 I was browsing on youtube and decided to do a small research on emergency broadcast systems in different countries, the video loads up showing the United States and then Japan. The video showed a regular talkshow until something popped up on the screen and the presenters were given a piece of paper to read. The presenter then flawlessly repeated what was written on paper word by word in the same tone over and over again without fail. Tsunami warning was issued and the presenter’s voice changed tone into a more serious and concerned tone telling the audience to remember the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011 earthquake of which caused the Fukushima Daiichi incident) and evacuate the area immediately. Aftermath of the earthquake was just a higher than usual swell of no taller than 2m. Four years ago I thought the earthquake was nothing and continued to sleep.

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The moment of clarity came after my short drive to get my weekly grocery, Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody was playing and it reminded me the first time I moved to this sleepy town to start my new job. It has been a year since then. Looking back it was a mixed bag for me just because this is my first job ever (and it’s a very important job too!). I was anxious of what was expected of me and if I can do the job or not but at the same time I was excited to leave my home and move out myself. I was alone in this sleepy town, alone in a sense of I don’t have to go home to anyone or anything. Liberating yet lonely, Broke a few habits that came from my old days and got in the groove of my new life. Fast forward a year later (today) it seems that I have lost that groove and maybe, with the queue of Slade’s Christmas song it is an annual prompt to find my groove again.

Until then,

Reducing, reducing…… Burrows!

Part of my job is to understand the depositional environment of the potential prospect. This involves me to go into a core section taken from a close by well which sands I can correlate to the sands of the potential prospect (that’s as rough as I can explain it without going into too technical).

Okay so observation first, it looks like the section is all coarse grained materials with very nice laminaton. Two obvious things that I can observe is the red sands (ignore the core plug) and the nice burrow that little a little critter has made. Red sands indicate an oxidizing environment and if you notice, the little burrow was initially in the oxidized red sand package but surrounding the burrow the sands changes colour. Basically this is due to the nature of the organic material that the little critter leaves and instead of oxidising, it’s reducing hence the change in color.

Taking all of this into account (which is incomplete, I need to observe the lamination but I’m a damn petrologist not a sedimentologist so I’m still learning). I would interpret this as a shoreface environment, maybe upper shoreface. That’s just what I think atleast. This whole thought process is very nice and it was introduced to me from a german sedimentologist who was arguing with an australian sedimentologist on how to coach this fresh graduate.

Until then,