Of Sour Coffee and Stained Notebooks

For the last month or so, I've been having pockets of 'alone-time', which is basically synonymous with 'time off' from school, considering I barely hang out with people. There's this certain calm feeling I get whenever I go outside on my own, when my side of the internet has gone quiet. It's just me and my own thoughts, or me and whatever my mind is occupied with at the moment. I guess that gives me a reminder about the certain love I have for books, even if I rarely come across it due to my habit of muffling my brain with video games or frying my brain on social media. Sometimes, I really want to be with people, if only just for a moment. On a bad day, I'll probably bounce around my social media, waiting for someone to become active in a terrible cycle. But sometimes, I'm just content reading a book, or exploring wherever it is that I've decided to stroll through. I really really love books. Or just the immersion in some good media in general. I...

Some people are morning people, and some are night owls. Some wake up early. Some wake up early because they are forced to for school, and immediately crash into sleeping in 'til noon when the weekend rolls around.  I'm a big fan of people waking up to their natural sleep schedule, but I do think people can improve their sleep somewhat. Unfortunately, doesn't trying to improve your sleep kind of give you a sort of anxiety over it? Counterproductive for those who have trouble sleeping. I'm a late riser, generally, but I have  wanted  to wake up earlier since I was younger. The extra time, all to myself, as well as the sacred hours where I'm more productive than usual. It's a thing I like to chase from time to time, even though I always end up falling back into my usual routine. Bed is so comfy, but only when waking up and not when trying to sleep early.  I don't know, sleep is just one of those things where I feel very powerless when trying to tackle, so I ju...

So it turns out that my nature seems to be against the principle of consistency, yet it is the only thing that can get me to accomplish things. As I type this, there's a collection of unfinished drafts laying on my computer. There are ideas I have jotted down for drawings I want to create. There are thoughts lingering in the back of my mind that I need to study, that subject that I haven't reviewed in a while. I cannot satisfy all of these at once. Even on a productive day, it takes time to get through each of these things I want to do. A disciplined, consistent man would get a certain amount of the work done, no matter how I felt about it. Unfortunately, I am not that man. And though the voice in the back of my head, telling me that I am running out of time is frequently louder than the one telling me to take my time, I cannot succeed through bursts of motivation either. And what are these things? Some of them arise from passion, the feeling that I want to do something and tha...

There's a million things I want to do. Sometimes, that's what I feel like. I feel like I can't quite focus on sticking to one thing for too long. Once I work on a single thing for a few weeks, my interest seems to waver and I decide to work on something else. Sometimes when my mind is particularly active, I may get huge bursts of motivation for separate things in the span of a single day. Of course, my body is never able to keep up. It takes time for me to switch gears to work on a new task, let alone do everything I want to do in a day. So at times I feel like the huge backlog of things I want to accomplish in my mind is getting larger and larger. I don't know whether this sort of scatterbrain or lack of long-term focus is a fault, or whether it's my lack of follow-through. I may have to keep searching for an answer to this.

Comparison is an important topic in this day and age. The human brain can't help but compare itself to others, which can be healthy in a small community, fostering competition between peers and giving people reference points. However, social media means that we're always comparing ourselves to the rest of the world. There's always someone making more money, having more fun, and doing better than you. Not only are we exposed to the top 0.001% of the world, feeds are always curated, meaning we don't see the more humble parts of everyone's lives that make them as human as you. Some people grow up, measuring their self-worth against other people. Not even the people themselves, but idealised versions of those people that they have in their own heads. Whether it's a downward comparison to stomp on others or an upward comparison that makes yourself seem small, it's not a very fun way to live life. We can't just "stop comparing" ourselves to other peo...

I certainly don't have much to write about this. Jazz brings about imagery of being in a coffee shop, or a nice restaurant. It's quite calming to me, and I think I might prefer it to lo-fi while I work, considering a lot of lo-fi tends to bring a sort of melancholic tone to it. Jazz also brings me to the scenery of Sonic Unleashed. Somewhere outside a nice Italian cafe, looking over the harbour.  Sometimes, when I'm brought to these places in my head, I begin to think about how wondrous it is that music exists in our world. It's one of the blessings of being human to be able to experience things simply by listening to a combination of sounds. You can be sent somewhere else on this planet, maybe a world that doesn't exist, just through music. You can experience raw emotion, or feel what it's like to be sent into a waking dream. Hell, you can even witness a whole story just from a song.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a piece of music wo...

One of Nichijou's most iconic music tracks(besides the opening theme, of course), is called  Koigokoro wa Dangan mo Yawarakakusuru . It's a bit of a mouthful, and the song itself might sound a bit familiar, even if you haven't seen the anime. The English translation of the title, is "Love Stops Even Bullets", which is surprising, for a track that plays during the comedy sections(Maybe the composers were trying to give us a hint as to why Sasahara keeps surviving all those gunshots for no reason?).  But it's a fitting name if you consider the themes of the show. In between all the absurd humor and comedy, the show stops to give you brief moments of calm, and display love. Not just romantic love, but love between friends and family.  I could gush about Nichijou all day, but this was just a brief thing I wanted to point out.

Writing. Sometimes it's something I forget that's a privilege, like many other things in the first world. The ability to record facts and thoughts somewhere also helps your brain to help organize them. And while there's no shortage of wonders you could go on and on about writing (It did help progress civilisation, after all), I think writing is more valuable on a personal level than you'd think. There's a reason people call journaling a life changing habit.You get to reflect on your own life in a way that's more clear than in your head, which is prone to thought loops and brain fog. Eventually you'll come up with insights about yourself and your life that you otherwise may not have known about. Writing helps you articulate your own knowledge and thoughts about things. It's a bit related to the Feynman technique. It helps you identify just how much you know something, and also turns that vague notion in your head into a clear text.  I started this blog be...

 You know, it's like, an hour before midnight and I just remembered I had this to do. Instead of finishing one of my drafts, I'll reflect a bit on today. Guess I really am writing like I'm running out of time. There's...not a lot to be said for today. I was awoken by construction noises, and started the day either annoyed by the noise, or generally unmotivated. The kind of boredom you have when you don't want to do anything either. So I kind of just lazed around. I did the bare minimum of some habits I was keeping up, but generally didn't get a ton of work done like on other days. Instead I'd idle on Discord and Youtube and whatever social media there was to keep me occupy. I'm not exactly sure why. I was keeping everything up well before this point. I did catch a little apathy the night before, but I don't know why it carried over to the next morning. Maybe the construction noise messed me up? Who knows. I've never been disciplined enough to bur...

Turns out this is the twelfth day of this daily blog. Nearly two weeks of writing an entry everyday. To be honest, I'm a bit proud of myself. I've been trying to improve for a while, proving to myself that consistency actually works, and hey, I nearly have something to show for it. Something half polished, but getting there. There's still inadequacies that I feel are there in my journey. I could be doing more, not just in writing but everywhere else in my life too. I could exercise more, study more, eat healthier, read more. So many things I haven't done yet. But for just this brief moment I'll pat myself on the back, and give myself a little credit. I managed to write non-stop for 12 days. That's pretty awesome. You too. If you've been working towards something, the summit may still not be in sight yet. But to hell with that. Look at how far you've gotten from the base. It might be harder to see if you're not used to giving yourself credit. No matte...

What even is talent, anyway? I tend not to think about this a lot, since I don't believe that it's very productive to focus on things that you can't control. However, the philosophical side nibbles at this occasionally, and since it is a real world topic that affects people everyday(depending on how pessimistic or gifted they are), I guess it's worth thinking about. In the intuitive, casual sense, talent is what you have when doing something comes easy to you, up to the point where you're doing it better than other people. There's sort of a dichotomy kind of mindset when people think about the thing. Either you're pure talent or pure hard work. Such is the archetype of tales that want to push the idea of getting kids to believe in themselves, anyway.  There's an idea that purely working hard will get you past any talent barrier that's out there. I don't really think that's a healthy way to think about things. For one, there's an implicat...

Nobody likes being in a rut. Usually, they happen over time. A small slip there, another one here, and suddenly maybe you'll stay up a tad too late, and maybe that'll set off a chain reaction where you end up not as great as you could be. But they end, eventually. 

I began shadow boxing and working out more often after getting into the boxing anime "Hajime no Ippo". I finally understood what people meant when they said that shows like Dragon Ball Z inspired them to start working out(Even though it never really did for me, since the powers in DBZ were too fantastical for me).  If you've spent any time in the self-help circle, you may have heard that discipline is more reliable than motivation. Motivation comes and goes, while discipline is a constant. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't use motivation when you can.  Input leads to output, and I'm sure it remains true for motivation. We're always driven to do things because of different factors, and we can strategically use them to do what we want or need. If you want to start working out, then bask yourself in a bunch of fitness content. Queue up workout videos on Youtube, or read an article about health. If you want to learn coding, join a coding community online or ...

Okay. Okay. What is there to write about? Certainly not your five drafts laying around... Maybe not those drafts. You don't want to look at those right now. Should you look up some writing prompts? You're not feeling like any of those. Or should you just start writing? Write, write, write. Don't think about the perfect sentence just yet. Don't compare yourself to the writers you admire either. You'll get closer to them in time. Words on the page. They stop. You realise you're spending too much time thinking, or that you've blanked out. No worry, you continue on. The tea is starting to become lukewarm and you think about brewing another, but you worry it might not disrupt your concentration. You continue on.  Now there is a paragraph or two, and you start the next one. Halfway there, a part of you thinks, or should it be one tenth? How much should you be writing in one sitting anyway? That's another distraction. You push it away as you continue spewing w...

September 2022 to the end of December 2022 were the longest three months I've had in years. It was the beginning of the final year of secondary school, where we'd begin the final rush to prepare for college exams. Pretty much every day was packed with afterschool practice paper sessions(And some of them during school too).  Add that to the fact that Hong Kong's summer holiday was essentially moved to that year's March, meaning there was barely any time off during August, and full-day classes had recently resumed, and by the time October rolled around I felt as if I had been going to school for years. I've had conversations with a few friends, some from other schools and some I knew purely online, and I was surprised to hear that time had actually been passing pretty fast for them. Maybe that Einstein guy was onto something. Not to mention that different time spans feel disconnected, too. A week full of short days could feel like two, or a month of long days ends up ...

A running quip among authors is that don't enjoy writing, they enjoy having written. I can relate to this, although rarely, but it applies to me more in other things. Like learning.  I enjoy the idea of learning. I like to picture my brain "leveling up" as a read a book or pick up a new skill. I like thinking about the hundreds of quotes that important people have said, telling me that learning is good. I am less stoked with picking up my biology textbook to reread things that I have forgotten and need to remember for an upcoming test, or doing the purely technical drills in a skill where I'd rather mess around and make something that I like. And this has some sort of biological basis, too. Apparently learning activates the same part in your brain as the one that processes pain. Not to mention school may or may not have been the best pathway into setting up your attitude towards learning. Fortunately, I like having learned, too. One of my favorite examples is learning...

We humans are bad at being rational in a lot of things. A lot of what drives us is based off emotion one way or another, so I have to ask. Is that sense of urgency telling you that you're running out of time really helping you?  Of course. Urgency helps you get things done, and a dose of eustress is healthy. So if you are running off the perfect amount of stress, I'll be out of your way. I do hope you can wonder, though, whether or not the stress you're having is good or not. Maybe it's a bit obvious to you based on whether or not it feels good or not. For some, maybe you're either just stressed or you're not. Maybe you're stressed most of the time. I have a few things where I have (nearly) all the time in the world to take care of something. Others, I have a deadline for, but these are all reasonable deadlines, and following a regular schedule I could get these done well before the deadline. ...So, what's with this feeling slowly creeping up on me? It...

Markers are kind of cool. I never thought of them as much beyond being whiteboard pens or something to scribble on say, a DVD or something. I realised they were pretty cool when I bought a bunch of Staedler color markers and tried them out on my sketchbook.  Turns out they're pretty fun to draw with. They're in between the surgical precision of colored pencils and the messiness of paint. As someone who does digital art more than traditional, this did feel like it was easier to get used to. That said, I haven't done traditional in a while. Maybe it's time to bust out a sketchbook.

There's a lot to be said about consistency. Something about how many steps make a mile and all that. It's sound advice. If you work at something everyday for a year, you're probably going to get somewhere. You might improve at a skill better if you use an efficient training method, but that groundwork of actually doing the thing needs to be there first. I started this blog because I stopped worrying about not knowing how exactly to get into online writing. After all, there's nothing to lose by just starting. Better to have some mileage and be able to change course if I need to, than to never start at all. Some patience is required with this approach, of course.On days where you show up and just do the bare minimum, you wonder if you're even progressing.You might be pressured to get a bit more done in that case. On most days, that's the mental trick that gets you into making a decent amount of progress in the first place.  But there are days when you must allow y...

Taking neither side of something either means you get to watch people duke it out from the sidelines, or get beaten up on two fronts. Unfortunately, I am on neither side of controversial topics such as red vs blue, cats or dogs, and pineapple on pizza. Hell, I drink both coffee and tea. Maybe I'll write something about coffee later. I like tea. I use it as a ritual to get myself ready for focused work. The kettle time is preparation time, and once the tea is done it's all systems go. The tea remains untouched for the first five minutes, or a portion of my tongue will feel like sandpaper for the rest of the day. Sometimes, my tea ritual backfires on me as the tea ends up getting cold before the cup is finished. I find myself having to urinate more frequently, which means I'm not exactly writing like I'm running out of time. Or maybe I am. Green tea or black tea, I'm not really picky with which kind it is unless it leaves my teeth all puckered up. It's not really ...

 You know, I only recently began using the notes app on my phone, and I feel kind of stupid. Like the clock or the Galaxy Shop app, it was one of those apps that my brain would just gloss over. It took up none of the space in my mind, and I forgot it even existed at all. The idea came to me when I saw Struthless's micro-journalling video, where Cam replaced social media with micro-journalling for a year. While I haven't been able to replicate that, it did help me start my journalling habit by giving me a way to write journal entries when I can't just pull out a notebook. Also, I figured I could also being jotting down other things, like my creative thoughts, and things I needed to keep track of, and my life ended up becoming a little easier. I feel like this being a blindspot goes to show how perfectionism can affect you even if you don't really deem yourself perfect. Somehow, using the notes app on my phone to journal, or write, or whatever didn't feel like the ...