William's Words: The Three-peat

  Absurdism is the belief that the human search for meaning in the universe is pointless because the universe lacks an inherent meaning (is fundamentally “absurd”), and therefore any search for meaning is at odds with the universe. Thus, one must accept the futility and meaninglessness of one’s existence to truly begin to find a meaning in it. I’ve always been comforted by these ideas. Absurdism is brutally simplistic in nature, yet resonates with me in a way that other mid-20th century “life has no meaning” schools of thought don’t (the various flavors of existentialism and nihilism).  I frequently find myself describing my own life as “bizarre and kafkaesque”, a description I don’t believe is that large of an exaggeration. The late teenage years are an inherently liminal part of one’s life, as we now all find ourselves in the midst of college applications and the last year of grade school education (sorry to any juniors reading this, you’ve got a bit to go still). Each e...

There’s something about the name “William” that draws people to giving me nicknames. “Bill”, “Billy”, “Will”, and “Liam” are all common ones I’ve been called before. This phenomenon is most commonly done by the more outgoing people I meet, but I’ve been called different names so many times I don’t quite know how to categorize it. People assume they can make instant friends with me by trying to be “casual” and “cool” by using a nickname. I hate it. A name is possibly the most “personal” quality that a person can have. In a way, names define us like nothing else can, even if most names aren’t truly unique. A name is a descriptor, a quick definition of who someone is without explanation necessary. I’m also rather attached to my name; a name is one of few constants throughout a person’s life, and I happen to like mine a lot. I’m stuck with it, and I’m happy with it. Now, to address nicknames. Nicknames are usually reserved for the closest of friends. A friendship takes months or years ...

  I stare blankly at the screen. The screen stares blankly back. My coding project is due in four days (“space it out over the two weeks of time you have to complete it!” my professor had warned). I have not started. My mind is empty. “Maybe tomorrow” I think to myself. I closed the app. I eventually finished the project a day before it was due, but not without serious groveling before even attempting it.       When I applied to Uni, I distinctly remember one of the essay questions asking us to rank which of three assignments we would complete if we only had time to complete two (I can’t remember the semantics of each assignment, but it was something along the lines of “Study for a biology test, complete a math worksheet, read a chapter of a novel for english”). I felt confident that my answer of “I would choose to complete the assignments in the classes I felt the least knowledgeable first. In my current classes, I feel blah blah blah” would wow the admission...

       As my airplane turned toward the runway only five hundred feet below me and a mile in front of me, 10,000 feet of illuminated asphalt stared straight back at me from the surrounding black abyss. All I had to do was land my tiny plane straight down the middle, with 10 knots of wind doing their hardest to push me off to the left. Who lets their son fly across the state in the middle of the night to land an airplane? This was my dream come true.      My love of flight came from family— my grandfather was a pilot in the Air Force during the Vietnam war and his father was an aerospace engineer during World War Two, and then obtained his license in the 60s. I hold on to the records of his work, including his logbook and the scraps of a crashed Japanese Zero he had helped analyze during the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. My family has been connected to aviation long before me. When my parents found a local flight school, I was elated to have the opportunit...

  Pixels. LED displays. Hundreds of thousands of points of light cycling on and off thousands of times a minute. Flashing, blinking, emitting. Informing, but deeply separating. A life unfulfilled, experienced through a screen. My introduction to modern electronics came early enough in my life that I can’t really remember the first time I realized “Hey, I’m watching a thing that isn’t really there. Isn’t that nifty?” I guess I was good with object non-permanence as a child. But I do remember when my dad got my younger brother and I an iPad (to share) when I was 6 or 7, which we were allowed to play Minecraft on and as long as we got adult permission and supervision. I didn’t quite understand the necessity of the rigamarole required to use the iPad at the time - I was just playing a silly block game after all. Were my parents really worried about me abusing that privilege?  When I was about 9, I acquired the luxury of my own iPad. This one was shiny and new, and came with ...

 I wish I could tell you about Hawaii, the way Hawaii actually was. It was bumpy hills, rocks chiseled by years of weather, beaches sloping towards the ocean at impossible angles, and the soft whisper of leaf on leaf as the ocean breeze circumnavigated the island. On top of mountains, nothing but sea for thousands of miles in any direction you looked. At the risk of sounding like an overly enthusiastic tourist romanticizing a place he had visited for a cumulative two weeks, I wish I could go back to Hawaii every time I think about it. I’d like to tell you about the last true moment of calm I had in my life — before the world shut down. My mother, father, younger brother, and I had left the hotel room that morning in fair spirits, despite an early departure time. As we drove from our hotel across the seat of Maui’s saddle-like form towards the island’s larger volcano, Haleakala, I was mesmerized by the round, pink, and almost fuzzy balls that were soon to become mature pineapples. E...