Hmmge

Can you spot the Zenos quote? Took a lot out of me to reverse that scuffed sleep schedule due to illness, but I finally got there(as long as I am able to fall asleep normally tonight ). Getting into the rythm takes some time and I accept that. I wish I could just straight up jump in and be incredible from day 1 but as the great wise one says - "It is what it is". Comfort zone. My enemy, my friend. It is so, so difficult to get out of it when there is no immediate external need, I am truly playing the game of mind on hard mode. Good news is, I feel like after years and years of learning, I'm finally starting to get the upper hand. I am no longer being washed away into huge 'relapses' and huge anxiety swings, because I don't fight my emotions anymore, I don't judge them, I don't reject them as a part of me that doesn't belong, instead I accept, observe, and understand them. That way their power is greatly reduced. People usually feel like the emotions are 'them', or the thoughts are coming from 'them', or they are not aware of them at all and simply get ruled by them completely. Fascinating is how the vast majority of people actually function this way because their subconsciouss programming is pushing them into stuff like making money and getting laid. Survival instincts. This makes people survive in society and seemingly 'have a normal life', but this approach is entirely devoid of consciousness growth and leads to tremendous suffering. I've blessed myself as well as cursed myself pretty early on, by uncovering that it's all a bit of a charade. Arbitrary processes that surve no purpose, they are vestigial. And in the grand scheme of things, prevent true growth. And at the same time, I have to put in a mountain of work in order to do certain things that others take for granted. It's an interesting trade-off and I hope I'm coming onto a tipping point where the pay-off is going to be outweighing the struggle. We will see.

2023 Post-New Year's The holidays are finally over and it's time to proverbially and literally, get back to work. It starts off with a bit of delay because I caught a nice heavy stomach flu accompanied by fever but after 2 days of just trying to survive I feel healthier now. I do have a broken sleep schedule due to the illness but nothing I can't fix in a couple of days. Felt nice to hang with lots of friends again on new years and spend some time with family, but now that I'm getting healthier, I'm excited to just be home and work. Work on my career, work on the side hustle I am planning, work on my guitar skills, work on music, self development, mindfulness, and towards the end of this month perhaps even a relationship. That includes of course journaling here, I kind of just free-form it for now but once my sleep schedule is back on track I might start tracking some statistics like I used to as well. I kinda fucked around during holidays because of traveling multiple times, spending time with people often in an inefficient manner, alcohol etc, but now I am excited to just sit down, square up, and execute. I have an overall plan laid out for the next 6 months and it's going to be EPIC! Let's go!

Hmmge Alright I'm not sure what I'm doing with the title here LMAO. Initially I quit lost ark for 1 week, then at the end of it I went for 1 more, and then 1 more, and now it's been 7 weeks. I've been on strict abstinence streaks before but I am no longer using that approach so counting the days seems a bit pointless. I have other games available afterall. However, I do plan to make myself a rule-set for a dopamine detox in january, let's see and make a draft: Websites blocked/uninstalled from phone: Reddit, twitch, youtube. Exceptions: guitar/IT/math/production tutorials, music, showing something cool to friends or family. No games No phone in bed, toilet, or while eating/cooking/chores/walking/commuting Eating food with no distractions(videos and such) I feel like I'm forgetting something. This would be for 2 weeks, not sure when I'd start because new years will be a bit chaotic for me. Visiting family now and then I'll be with friends aroundd new years or a couple of days so maybe I'll pop it sometime randomly

Growing Consciousness Day 44 / 90 Just reporting here quick for consistency, wanna head to bed ASAP soooo no monologuing today!

Growing Consciousness Day 43 / 90 My body decided it wasn't going to sleep last night so today was kind of rough but a mid-day nap kind of saved it. Given the bad circumstances I did quite a lot. Leaning more and more into the resistance=do it rule, and used it to overcome anxiety from certain tasks that needed to be done. The to-do list is getting smaller! I also FINALLY looked back into orchestral production. Now I've 'started', I dipped my toes into it, and the wall is soooo much smaller when I'm going to start again. Possibly tomorrow. Ahh there are so many things I want to do, and not enough time to do them all. Right now I have more pressing issues, but that is something I will need to deal with soon as well. I thought about making an audio/video journal privately instead but then, talking aloud at 1:30am didn't seem like such a good idea in this flat, hmm.

Lost Ark Detox Day 42 / 90 Two weeks since the last update wew! Some days have been kinda rough, not being able to accomplish much, but some were ok. I connected a bit more with some of my friends as well as family, by visiting dad and surprisingly everything going well on that front. 4-5 years ago I had the most intense growth period of my life and though there were many factors going into it, the most major contributor was a simple rule I adopted from a community dear to my heart but now dead: Resistance = do it. Or in other words, whenever I feel resistance towards an action, I go do it purely for the sake of overcoming emotional resistance. No other reason, emotion or thinking process is necessary because simply the act of overcoming resistance and consciously taking an action despite of negative emotions telling me not to, is a powerful exercise that is capable of rewiring my brain in the exact way that I want. Not gonna write essays about why it's powerful but following this rule has gotten me tremendously far and yesterday I started using the rule again after an emotional realization. Not applying it to literally everything just yet, but it feels great to do, almost 'fun', in a way. Leads to some crazy outcomes pretty fast. Even writing this journal, I didn't really feel like doing it when I thought about it, I felt a tiny bit of resistance and thoughts like "ugh what am I going to even write about" and that was all the reason I needed baby. Resistance = do it. In a way, it hugely simplifies decision making and eliminates useless or destructive thoughts, because often negative emotions manifest in rationalizations like "why would I do this", "I don't know how to do this", "what if I'm going to fail". All of these get essentially swept away from my mind because there is one single reason that overwrites them all - resistance = do it.

Lost Ark Detox Day 29 / 90 Woke up early and stayed super productive all day, really got into the zone and chose to not go out to stay in it. Got a ton of coding done, shredded on the guitar(did like 3 hours, super satisfying), and even worked out. Feeling really good, it's one of those days when it goes easy. I wish every day I could get into it like this. Well, too bad tomorrow will be a social day instead. I'll make sure to set everything up for monday either way.

Lost Ark Detox Day 28 / 90 Visited a friend for a home office sess in the morning. Wasn't actually as productive as I hoped it would be but still good. Then kind of dozed off at home early in the evening to wake up early again. I seem to have a dip in energy after dinner with this schedule. Not quite sure what to do about it just yet, but waking up super early has been great for me either way, and I'm not oversleeping either so I'll just observe it for now. Today I might go out with friends so that will possibly shake the rythm up. @Yan It is absolutely a massive positive, and a huge success for me, to be able to wake up naturally after a proper sleep amount. The reason why I am now sleeping well is all the things during the day that I do that set me up, there is very little accidental about it. Not sure what you mean by 30,50,70. Are you interested in it as well?

Lost Ark Detox Day 27 / 90 Woke up early and crushed it. Apart from coding for many hours, I managed to get the courage to call dad and we scheduled lunch on sunday so we'll see how that will go. This was very difficult for me so I'm happy I did it. After dinner I got super tired and kind of passed out early in the evening, which made me skip what I wanted to do in the evening but that's okay because I woke up at 4am today so I just have that time now. Hype! Sorry I sometimes take multiple days to reply if I don't know what to write right away. It's the HealthyGamer coaching programme. Although it is still expensive for me, it is the most affordable option and DrK is one of my life's biggest inspirations and I strongly resonate with most of what they say and the way mental health/life is approached so I'm quite happy with it.

Lost Ark Detox Day 26 / 90 Had a BIT OF A TUMBLE for a few days, sleep going all over the place, productivity down to 0, messiness, no energy, avoided contact with people. I was avoiding my emotions, too scared to fight, but I bounced back! Last two days were very productive, got a bunch of coding done, shredded the guitar, did some psych work and chores. So I'm pretty proud of that. I'm very excited for tomorrow as I'm going to be finishing my first coding mini-project(maybe), and also I picked up the Buttersnips song from Pheriphery after years of not playing and holy fuck that is so insanely fun to play. Extremely hard and I am nowhere near the skill level to play even at slow speed but I'm getting better FAST because of previous muscle memory. Fast progress is fun. I join a work streaming session here and there and today I did in the morning as well, I felt like it helped me stay focused more so I will do that again tomorrow. Keep going forward!

Lost Ark Detox Days 18 / 90 Woke up late due to staying up late last night doing music, oh well. I was very unfocused and low energy all day because of that, but I did the best with what I had so I'm still happy. Had a dense meeting with my life coach as well, discussed some emotional awareness/processing stuff regarding family so I will let that swim around tomorrow and probably set up some meetups with dad on thursday. Otherwise all good, progressing slowly but surely.

Lost Ark Detox Days 17 / 90 Very productive day, lots of intentional activity including coding, re-organizing the room, consolidating music production files so I can start with that as well this week and others. What I'm going to focus on the next couple of days is to start using pomodoros to make working more focused because I'm still very much all over the place even though I'm spending the time on the right thing. On top of that, I will also start exercising, maybe start with a flexibility routine for now and then hit the gym next week. Hmmge.

Lost Ark Detox Days 11-16 / 90 Oooooweee interesting couple of days. I spent a lot of this week just sleeping to be honest. I think I broke my own records of consecutive sleep time, but if not, I definitely did for total sleep time in a week. Change of mind, change of energy, seems like the body had some resetting to do as well. However, I do use sleep as a mechanism for escape as well and I am aware that played a role for sure. What's more effective than an mmo in shutting down the conscious mind, getting rid of all anxieties and worries? Well, being literally unconscious in sleep of course! The wonders of human brain. Whoptyfuckingdoo. You can tell I'm tired/sleepy by the way I'm writing. Anyways I also saw myself seeking for some kind of escapism in games/shows/reddit/youtube, this week was tough and I had a hard time doing stuff, but in the end I drew energy from my inspirations, allowed myself to fail, and eventually bounced back on the weekend. Started brushing up on my coding skills as well as playing the guitar/piano. I'm looking forward to continuing that and getting into even more exciting stuff next week! Extended the detox to 90 days. Never felt any desire to go back to it thankfuly, the same energy is simply being directed towards other things. Like a flow of leaves I need to blow it in the direction that is most fulfilling, because that current never left and will probably never leave. I might extend the detox to other things as well eventually, but for now this is good. Writing this journal after a long talk with a friend, which was already WAY too late for me to start but he needed a listener so I was glad to be of help to someone and even if I wake up in the afternoon tomorrow, it was worth it and I'm happy I did a good job today. I'm an awesome person and I want to project my love for life out there

Lost Ark Detox Days 11 / 14 Quick update because it's late night, been out to a small shisha bar playing some paper magic with buddies, really cool sess. That plus going out to get a haircut took a lot of time, but despite of that I accomplished a lot today, most importantly getting back in touch with family in a small way, setting up a possible meetup next week. That has been a big point of anxiety for me and I'm glad I was able to not evade that emotion, but rather notice,observe, and let go of it instead. Big D(detachment) energy.

Lost Ark Detox Days 9,10 / 14 What a day! After SO LONG I genuinely felt like I had a productive day. A lot of it was chores like cleaning up, laundry, bills and after that a lot of brainstorming, planning and scheduling the next couple of weeks. What's even crazier than that is that last night I went to sleep at 23, and I woke up today morning at 8. Might not sound like something to be wrote home about, but to me that is huge. It set my whole day up for success and I felt great throughout. At one point I realized how much of the self-development work I've done through the years in the past has integrated with me fully. A lot of things that I know work for me were automatically picked up and it just kind of clicked. Things like intermittent fasting, the way I do my to-do lists, preparing a glass of water before bed, journaling here, standing&pacing, using a website blocker in a specific way etc. Got a plan for tomorrow already written out and it does include a couple of things that are anxiety-inducing for me but if it doesn't go as smooth as today that's fine, I'll do my best to prepare tonight evening as well as I did last night and just face it. Only way to do it.