Some time ago I read this

Which linked to this

And this

It's one of those things after you see it, it's a good read, you go about your life again... but a seed is planted. A month or so ago that seed sprouted, and now it's leaves cast a shadow over everything I do.

I'm in an atheist swing lately, which wierdly enough coexists with my spirituality. I'm burning inscence for sacred blessings and purifying my home as a just another part of daily life, and yet... I'm suddenly terrified that this is it. This body of mine, flawed and aging in a 1-way trip is all I'll get. All any of us get. You die, there's nothing.

I'm not so optimistic at the odds the dragon can be "slain" in 20 years, biochemistry is complex and just 20 years ago it was proclaimed we'd have the human genome mapped in 10 years. These days we recognize we fooled ourselves with the arrogance to think 99% of it was "junk DNA" just because we didn't understand it, and are just now knuckling down to try and figure the complex web of hox genes and epigenetics. Immortality strikes me as something like Artificial Intelligence or Fusion Power, always "30 years away" or "40 years away"... they said we'd have full AIs 30, 35 years tops starting in the 70s, fusion power was 40 years away in 1960 and that prediction has remained the same: over 40 years later it's still confidently predicted we'll have Fusion Power in 40 years. They're all Sysiphean tasks one will only burn their life out on and miss out on all the fun.

I've been resigned to my fate for a long time... there's no solution, no way to escape the Void, so... might as well enjoy life to its fullest in the fleeting moment I have.

The difference is now, with medical advances, talk of organ cloning and bionic limbs... and those articles planting their seed, I can see a long shot. The problem of death has turned from a cliff into a bottomless Abyss... into a vast Chasm with the other edge barely visible. I can barely make out a solution in the distance, even though getting there seems impossible. And yet, if there is no afterlife, this is my only chance to live. A long shot, 10% odds at best. But its better than no shot.

I realize what this all is on a personal level... it's the fear I'm blowing off my homework, transplanted.

Now that I I feel the exact same dread over death that I used to over homework I was blowing off. That I should be knuckling down to work and every pleasure is tainted by the nervous sense I really should be getting to work. Work on keeping myself alive.

Enjoying life to the fullest now feels like browsing internet porn instead of doing homework.

Turning to a career and trying to become accomplished in my field feels like pouring 90 hours into an RPG character instead of doing homework.

Turning back to college and pouring myself into a biology degree feels like the homework I should be doing... except I can't afford a second degree now.

I feel like, once I stop existing, it won't really matter whether I had fun or suffering in my life. That only exists in a set of memories that will soon evaporate like dew in the dawn as the brain storing them decomposes. So will everyone else's joy, pain, and experiences. It's the same as if we never existed at all, so nothing we do matters... unless it keeps us existing (Is Nihlism the only belief system that doesnt' fall to pieces when you hammer at it?) If I can use my brain to cheat biology, extend my life, then it will be the ultimate triumph of this large-brain evolutionary gamble us monkeys have taken. And give me a few more centuries to ponder the meaning of stuff like this.

Shall I join this Dragonslayer in a life of work and toil that may never come to fruition, or cut my losses and Eat, Drink and Make Merry Have Sex in the time I have left?

In the slim odds there is an Afterlife, does either of those lifestyles prepare my Spirit to survive it?