Combat fatigue

Combat fatigue is setting in on multiple fronts. My one-year venture into the non-profit sector is almost over and while it very likely will in the longer run be a very useful experience, for now the main theme has been disillusionment. On the other hand my thesis has barely progressed and that annoys me immensely; there's too much data and the algorithms need to be tweaked and at the end of the day it feels as if I have nothing too interesting to say about it anymore. But I would still need to sugarcoat that with a bunch of references to credible sounding articles...

The markets also seem to be getting tired. Greece will eventually fall because it cannot reduce the inertia it has built up. And the European Union cannot increase Greece's competitiveness because that's not what politicians do. Politicians redistribute wealth in a seemingly arbitrary fashion and devise grandiose plans despite the fact that at best they accomplish very little compared to just letting self-organization and emergent designs do the job and at worst they are very counterproductive and create perverse incentives. The bigger they are the harder they fall seems like the most appropriate adage here. But something must be done because something is better than nothing and doing nothing also then spawns the question concerning what these people are actually paid to do.

Kickboxing is one of the more productive things I spend on time these days. If nothing else, at least my physical health is more or less decent. But even this area is problematic: with increased levels of exercise the level of food intake should also rise, but for some reason that's been very difficult. I'm not saying that I eat unhealthily, I'm saying that I just don't eat enough, which is strange. I know I should eat more but I'm just not hungry. Here's an obvious business opportunity for someone: provide a service which allows the customer to specify certain boundary conditions on the food (amount of energy, protein, etc.) and produce and deliver meals which satisfy the conditions. It's too much of a hassle to figure out what to eat.

Fortunately there's a one-month vacation coming up and then it's back to the real world again. Perhaps take up weight training to complement the kickboxing, assuming that the issue with food is sorted out, and then begin advancing on other fronts again...