“This time I’m really going to read the textbook” -Me, the first week of every semester…
The semester at Utah State University just started. This is one of my last with coursework. I’m enrolled in a class titled: “Reinforcement learning”. In essence, it’s a class about machine learning (engineer speak for AI). Reinforcement learning is just a special kind of AI where the computer learns how to behave by interacting with its ‘environment’ rather than by sifting through large piles of data.
There is a textbook for this class and, like every semester before, I’ve resolved to read every page. Already I’ve made it further than any semester before, and I’m well into chapter 3. So far, it seems like this textbook might be a good cover-to-cover read.
One Thursday afternoon, I was barreling through the second chapter trying to extract the most important pieces of information before moving on to whatever I desperately had to do next. Then, like a runaway semi into a brick wall, I careened into this sentence:
“The beginning of time occurs only once, and thus we should not focus on it too much.” (Sutton and Barto, 41)
I looked up. What business does that have being here?! This is an engineering textbook, tables and figures only.
I’m not sure I’m comfortable with a sentence of that caliber and philosophical heft sitting amidst abstract proofs and equations with more Greek than numbers.
Nevertheless, it caused me to pause and consider the implications of this idea.
“The beginning of time…”
Only once, eh?
There’s a first time for everything but for everything there’s only one first time.
You only start once. YOSO?
“The beginning” – a once in a lifetime opportunity; then it’s gone.
We’re stuck with the rest of time, and that tiny point right in between the start, and the rest of ever?
“The end of the beginning”1
These days I find myself pondering “the end of beginning” a lot. Outside of the extraneous circumstances which have prompted most of this writing: I’m 25. Not old, yet, but not as young as I once was. Emily and I have been married for almost three years now, I’m working on the last college classes I’ll ever take, a “Real Job” gets realer and realer by the minute. While I haven’t lived all my twenties yet, I can tell I’m getting further and further away from the hoard of 18–to-20-year-olds that have swarmed the streets of logan for the first time. I see them walking to their very first college classes, and I can feel it. Emily and I are rapidly working our way out of newlywed status. School, the only “occupation” I’ve ever known, is about to be a thing of the past.
Inside the atypical parts of my life, the next few doctor appointments will likely take us from “For now, do this, and don’t do that” to “for the rest of your life you will need to”. While its not that simple, there’s a feeling that my ultimate fate may be decided here soon. The ground rules from here on out are about the be set. A heart attack is less and less fresh on my mind. I’m days away from ‘24-weeks-post-MI’ and weeks away from ‘six-months-post-MI’.
Are we approaching the end of the beginning of a life post heart attack?
In this landscape, I start to consider what lies ahead. There is excitement. What do I want my career, my family, my life to look like. Am I becoming the spouse I want to be for the rest of ever?
More immediately, I toy with the idea of what it would be like to be new to running again. Not completely new but new nonetheless. My head is the same; my legs are the same but my heart is not. I think we’ll need to re-learn some things about running, but with this comes a chance to drop old habits and form new ones right from the beginning. I like the idea of a chance to start again, almost fresh, but with the knowledge gained a new person, a new runner, with the benefit of the old perspective. With everything ahead, who knows what could happen?
So today, or tomorrow, or whenever you read this far, I’d like to ask you two questions.
The first is one Emily likes to ask people to get a conversation going: If you had to do it all over again, maybe you’re 18, 25, 30, or maybe 11, or even 5, with all the knowledge you have now, would you do it the same?
And then, from me, as a follow up: What end of beginning are you looking at right now, and what are you going to make the rest of ever, the important part, look like?
Give it some thought, maybe even share:
Come along, as we head of into the rest of ever.
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