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I need to sleep early I wake up not feeling completely rested. That takes some of my energy away, which impacts on my production and my work ethic. It's easy said than done, after decades of going to bed late, but I cannot justify it anymore. Whatever I can't get done by 10 PM will be left to the next morning, and I must be in bed 11 PM at most. Today I did French, took notes, read and write some good stuff for thesis. Not so much for the pet project again. It's been some time I don't write poetry, also. Gonna see if I put out something until the end of the week. GF looks like she's handling herself well enough for now. The biggest problem is that she didn't have a plan B and she's about to graduate, so she'll be left with no option other than going for a day job she doesn't like until she can try to apply for that master's course again. No biggie, maybe, but I won't be the one to judge her since I'm terrible to be put to work on stuff I dislike. I know how she feels. Thank you, @katsudo19 for your kindness. I'll be sure to forward it to her. Onward.

Any time, fella!

Do not ruminate over your talk. Do not dwell on the bad feelings. Acknowledge them and try to move on. Focus on something else. Maybe read something you like a lot, listen to some music, go for a walk, watch a favourite movie... or create. I feel my best creations were the fruit of my darkest moments. Channelling the emotions towards something outside of you might help to take the burden away and look at it from a different perspective. Stay strong.

Heartbroken My GF didn't get admitted into the master's degree course she applied to, and she's devastated about it. To make matters worse, she got the bad news on her birthday. It breaks my heart because I know how hard she studied and how many sacrifices she made. I'm trying to comfort her, and she's already talking about trying again, which is great. Still, she's very sad and I can't help but feel for her. I'll see if I can help her refocus and make new plans as soon as possible, to move on instead of dwelling at it. Today I did French, read, took notes, write a little bit of the thesis, but didn't work on my pet project. Oh, well, it's not a priority, I'll have to let it aside, probably often. Nevertheless, it was still a productive day all things considered. Onward.

Yes, you are. Yes, she does. Here you are, overthinking again. You have no way to know exactly how you sound unless you ask her, and you are not going to ask it right now. But have this clue: if she's still around and if she seems to be enjoying, we can be at least a little confident that she's enjoying your company. We can never be totally sure about what is going on over other people's head, but their actions give us clues and by adding those clues up we can build confidence probabilities. Yes, I am that analytical. No, I'm not as boring as I sound. Think about it: you have exactly zero Tifannies as girlfriend right now. If absolutely everything goes wrong, you still will have zero Tifannies as a girlfriend. Does it mean you should be absolutely reckless and throw yourself over her like a pseudo-confident macho "alfa" dude? Obviously not, unless your plan is to keep having zero Tiffanies as a girlfriend. It only means that, her being single, heterosexual and interested, you may take deliberate action to try and change your instance form zero Tiffanies as GF to one Tiffani as GF, but that being about human behaviour also means the outcome is uncertain and not 100% under your control. Be cool, manage your expectations, read her carefully, look for microexpressions, non-verbal cues and body language. Try to make her laugh, make her comfortable around you, make her talk about stuff she likes, and pay attention to what she says. But see if she's making the same effort. Do not get caught in a one way, platonic relationship. If it turns out she's not into it, just keep her as a friend and move one. Do not make your life about her alone. If all goes well, it will be about her to some healthy extent, but, in any case, your life is mainly about you.

First of all: your positive attitude towards your mistakes is amazing and will get you far. Mistakes make for opportunities to learn, not for being miserable and ditching everything. Your relapse isn't what defines you. The genuine effort you have been making and the success you achieved for so long is. A few days hiccup isn't going to be a serious setback. But: delete all games. Remove all sources of possible temptation. Deposit it with friends or family if you have the goal of getting back to them when you feel you are recovered but have this relapse as your warning that this will take some time. Second: you don't need to escalate all the way from 8 to 80. Lunch together isn't a date. Taking a beer/coffee/juice/walk after work isn't a date. Provide opportunities for her to get used to you, to know you better, and have those opportunities to get to know her, too. Be flirty if you think she likes it, or just be friendly to her just like she is with you. The key thing is that you both have to spend some time together so that there's an opportunity for something between you to grow. There's no ideal time for that. I would actually say the sooner the better. But manage your expectations. Lunch is just lunch, a walk is just a walk. Hear her, talk to her. Get to know and look for the clues with naturality. Good luck!

When you remove the stone in your path There was a stone in my path. Going around wasn't an option, neither was turning around. I had to keep going. Either remove the rock or climb it or dig below it. Maybe blow it up. It didn't matter. What mattered was that I had to keep going. So I did. I quit gaming because it was a rock in my path. Then YouTube became a rock in my path, one that I'm likely to see many times over. But I'm still going. Every time I have stumbled over it those last days I kept going. Today I read, took notes, wrote both my thesis and my pet project and did French. I did e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g I set myself to. I feel I won the day. I really did. I feel that If I can keep some consistency, say, for 2 weeks, I'm probably ready to add another goal. Maybe exercise. Let's wait and see. It has been a long time since I last checked how long ago I did quit games. Today it counts 57 days. Time flies. But, at the same time, it doesn't feel that long ago. If I get bored I still get strong cravings. I still have a hard time setting up a routine. My working ethic is still wrecked. Despite all of that, I clearly feel I'm improving. First of all, just for not being playing, just for being trying to do the work I have to do, just for having clear goals, I'm better off than before. Way better. Onward, confident about it.

Improving Great day! Read and wrote a lot on my thesis. Did French, also. Nice stuff. Spent most of the afternoon and evening with GF, which was also great. Didn't watch YT. Twitter is already like as it never happened in my life. No cravings. Feeling great! Really tired, will keep it short, just so as to not let the habit die. Onward.

When writing is like breathing I always have been good with words as far as I can remember. I don't know if it shows in English, it's hard to judge for a foreign language. But in my native language, it shows. People tell, grades always told, and I'm proud of it. I like to put the effort and see the result not only as a good piece of text but also on the response from readers. Writing is one of the most liberating experiences I have ever known, creative writing especially. Technical writing is more empowering than freeing, at least for me, but it's also great. Going through the detox, having to face and deal with things I have been putting off, procrastinating or avoiding for the past several years, would be much more difficult for me if I couldn't write. Today I wrote a little bit of my thesis, read a little bit and did a lot of French. I also wrote other stuff, mostly pieces of different political articles. I'm also starting a long term pet project. I write short stories since I was a kid. The other day I found an old comic strip I did when I was about 7 or 8 yo, that was actually a snark and really clever criticism on economic policy the then government was putting forward, even kinda prophetic - it seems politics is a running theme for me along with writing. Now I want to start writing long stories, maybe a novel, and that's what my pet project is. I'll set up a daily task to work on it for a couple of hours after my daily routine is done. Having that as a hobby to look forward to and reward me for working on my "serious" stuff might be the thing I am missing to help me with consolidating my routine. Onward. Letter by letter.

Hey dude. It has been quite a few days since you last posted. Is everything OK?

Yes, it is huge here. Everyone has it. Which is good and bad, the bad part being mostly for political reasons. Anyway, yes, I am probably a little too hard on FB most of the time, but it also provides some good opportunities. Thanks for the visit, dude!

Killing the saudades No Twitter today. And mostly no YT. I did watch a couple of short videos, but when I felt I was about to binge, I simply closed it and got back to work. The result is that I finally finished writing an article I was struggling with all the week. Did French, and nothing else again. But I feel like resisting YT and Twitter will keep my focus mostly over what it should be. Gonna get my GF at the airport in about an hour. There's a Portuguese word I teach everyone I can. Saudade. English has no word for that feeling and even the few expressions it translates to aren't close to fully describing it. Whenever you learn what saudade is about you'll not feel the same when you are away from your beloved ones. Saudade tightens your heart like a strong hug, but it's the absence of your beloved one what's hugging you. It hurts, it's nostalgic of what you long for. It's also hope, when you know you'll see the person again, or reticent surrender when you know it's not possible. But when you finally meet with that person, we say you killed the saudade. Because it was kind of killing you inside a little bit. Onward. Killing saudades.

Unplugging Years ago, around 2012, I decided to ditch Facebook. I was getting away from a short but kinda toxic relationship and the breakup ended up involving some of my friends. I still liked the girl and the separation was taxing me. On top of that, I already didn't like FB policies and the profuse amount of superficiality, cheap drama, lies and uneducated strong opinions always made me wary of social media. So, I ditched it, even with the complaints of friends and family, which I didn't care. It was not about them, It was about me and I would not be forced to be at some place I didn't want to. I feel it was one of the best decisions I ever made. My account is still there, I don't know why but I didn't delete it, but I have only logged in something like 3 or 4 times in those 7 years, and I regretted every single one of them. I feel Twitter has a lot of marketing potential, but I have nothing to market at it. I have no money to hire a service to impulse my tweets, I have no patience to take all the drama it spills out and engage with the bs most tweets are about. I have a lot to say about a lot of topics, none of which fit two hundred something characters. It offers quick information, but often it requires a lot of dedication to filter out what's really relevant. I'm better of without it. I still can't quite build a strong routine, and leaving twitter will not solve that, honestly, because it was not the cause for it in the first place. My work ethic is appalling and I would very much like to change that, but I don't know how. Today I did French lessons, but not very much else. Youtube is, frankly, one of the prisons of my attention, and I probably should mind its usage more carefully. In fact, that's what I'm going to do next. Onward.

Habits die quickly Forgot to write yesterday. Yes, I was tired and all of that, but I don't give excuses anymore. Even though My entries have been smaller and more superficial than before, I don't want to let this habit die. In fact, I want to improve it. Thing is: while bad habits are easy to form and hard to kill, good ones are the opposite. I must watch myself. Lately, I'm having some cravings. My routine has not been ideal this last week, and I think both things are related. I still find myself procrastinating a lot about my task. French is the only one I've been consistent on the last 10 days or so. I've been writing fewer poems as well. I believe making a twitter account was a mistake and although I've been successful at limiting my time at it, it still isn't good for me. I'll probably end up deleting or disabling this account. I need to revert to the basics, refocus on my priorities, go back to the clarity I had when I was sick. Maybe the trick for success is to get the flu? Confused, but onward, I guess.

Missed two entries Friday I did some French and some reading. I went to hang out with my friends, we ended up at a bar, got some beers and chatted a lot. Got home something like 3 AM, so I didn't write here. Saturday I spent the day with my GF, since she was going to travel Sunday morning to take the entry test for her master's degree. I did French but nothing else. Ended up sleeping early because I had to take GF to the airport at 4 AM, so I also didn't write here. Today I did French, read and wrote some things, but nothing relevant. I feel physically exhausted after those intense days, waking up early and sleeping really late, but I'm also relaxed. I hope I can compensate tomorrow for the lack of major work these days. Onward.

Makes me really happy to hear that! I mostly write in Portuguese, my native language. Though fluent in English, I think poetry requires some form of intimacy with the language you write on that I don't always feel with English. But whenever I write something in it I'll post here. There's a Poem by a guy named Fernando Pessoa called "Autopsicografia" (Selfpsychography) The poet is a man who feigns And feigns so thoroughly, at last He manages to feign as pain The pain he really feels, And those who read what once he wrote Feel clearly, in the pain they read, Neither of the pains he felt, Only a pain they cannot sense. And thus, around its jolting track There runs, to keep our reason busy, The circling clockwork train of ours That men agree to call a heart. I would say this captures art in its essence. It's never about anything else other than what the artist wants it to be, though the public will always interpret art the way they want to. Controlling such interpretation has a specific name: marketing, the art of convincing people to spend their money. Everything else will rarely, if ever, aim to control such interpretation. Art, thus, requires little but the intention to communicate or provoke, even if the result of such is out of the artist's control. If you sweat blood or not, if you have done it millions of times or not, if you suffer or not, it doesn't matter. We eat because we are hungry, we drink because we are thirst, we create because we are hungry and thirsty for creation, accomplishment, communication and provocation. Keep creating. It's your creation, not anyone else's.

Quick entry 2, the return Did some reading, actually some extensive reading, but no notes. Did French. Had two birthday parties to attend. My head aches. Need to sleep. Friends want to hang out tomorrow. Long time no see type of thing. Problem is, gaming is likely to be involved. I'll resist. I had good talent to give excuses to game more, I probably will find some good excuse to not game. Onward.

Quick entry Just to not skip a day. Really tired. Did some reading, but no notes and din't write. But had a great time with GF, and I'm totally fine with it. Tomorrow I'm back to my normal schedule. Onward!

Unstucking Didn't do any work on my thesis. Again. Did French, did good poetry. But the thesis should be prioritized. Yet, I see myself procrastinating all day long. It can't be like that for much more time. Bu how do I unstuck myself from this mud valley of "not feeling like it"? I need to look back to my most deep values, I need to clarify my objectives. there's something not quite right about it. I should be working quite happily, I really like the subject, I enjoy the readings, I have no problem writing... what the heck is wrong? Can't tell, for the life of me... Tomorrow I'll probably not work much, either. Valentine's day, here, I'll spend a lot of time planning my date with GF. It's gonna be fine, it's justified. But the day after tomorrow should see me back on track. Still sideways.

I feel ya, dude. Same thing over here. Sometimes the only thing to do is to realize it and hope it goes away soon, keeping in mind it happens and it should prompt us into despair or compulsion.

Sorry to hear that, but your friends are wrong. I like your drawings very much.

Stuck Didn't do reading and notes, neither did I write my thesis. Dammit. I made a twitter account with the intent of posting poetry, but it has been eating my time away. I feel I'm a bit stuck right now. I need to refocus. I want to keep writing other stuff, but I need to establish a bare minimum number of hours each day that I'll dedicate to my thesis alone. And I need to wake up earlier to make the most of the morning. At the very least I did French. Also wrote a poem I'm kinda proud of. My country doesn't celebrate Valentine day at February 14, instead it's June 12. So, This week I'll be writing exclusively about it. And I need to make something special that I'll print and give to my GF. Problem is: I'm not as inspired as I was being last week. I really need to refocus. Sideways and stuck.

Quick entry Didn't work on my thesis today, but I'm not too upset by it. Should have done French, though. Didn't. Had minor setbacks, but tomorrow there's no excuse. At the very least, the pie ended up amazing. And GF and I had a lot of fun together. Tomorrow: READING + NOTES FRENCH WRITING Onward.

Sometimes plans go out of the window, but that's Ok, keep planning Woke up not as early as I would have liked. Still managed to work quite a bit in the morning, but forgot to take French lessons. Did reading, did very useful notes. Had lots of fun with GF, although not at the festival, cause rain didn't let us go. Funny thing is that the rain poured heavily while I went to her home grab her. We decided not to go to the festival because it's open air, so we came to my place, all under the storm. After we got here, though, it didn't take long for the rain to stop. Well, I already had set up something for us to watch. Whatever. It was fun all the same. We'll go next weekend, it's a whole month of festivities. Tomorrow morning I'll help mum make a pie. Then I'll keep my reading + notes program, and do some French. Evening will be GF's. MUM READING + NOTES FRENCH GF Onward, with plans.

You'll not. You are doing an excellent job, and you know it.