Bird By Bird

How did the CGAA meeting go?

Transitory addictions like nicotine patch addiction for recovering smokers is a common experience. If you are worried about forum addiction, you could use a Chrome extension like Leechblock or Undistracted to block this website at specific times. I found daily journals to be too addictive so I do weekly journals on tue or wed and reply to other threads whenever I feel like it but that is just me. Other people find the commitment of daily journals keeps them on track. Figure out what works for you. Experiment.

PREDICTIONS I predict I will continue my streak of putting computer away before 12am for the rest of this week.

Spent week cleaning shelves. Finding old toys in basement. Throwing away some, keeping others. Did Sudoku puzzles from a puzzle book until I fell asleep. Sun 15 - Was playing some Wii game when I realized I accidentally relapsed BUT WAIT A MINUTE. I gave my Wii away to relatives years ago. How can I play on a Wii that I don't even have? Then I woke up. It was just a dream. MY BRAIN TROLLED ME!!! REEEEE. Cleaned storage room. Mon 16 - I am addicted to webcomics and webtoons. Tue 17 Day 66+30 - Spent 1 hour dismantling a broken pencil sharpener because I wanted to get the mechanism out to see if I can turn it by hand to sharpened by jumbo sized-pencil that I never use. It was at this point that I knew, that I was possessed by the cleaning mood. There was so many things I wanted to do this week, but instead spent most of my time cleaning the shelves, the basement and the storage room. After finding the 1.75ft tall Transformers Unicron toy in a garbagebag in my basement - the biggest toy I own, I realized that I had done enough - maybe even too much - cleaning --- Analysis: I procrastinate on morning writing by having up-to 4-hour long breakfasts. Didn't notice until I began writing things down. My usual 2-7 evening schedule has been shuffle to the bottom of the deck because I nap instead. I want to have more than enough energy to do morning writing and do evening activities. So far it has either been one or the other Stuck in negative feedback loop: Bad sleep -> Tired Day -> Junk Food -> Bad Sleep I have exceeded last week's prediction by moving everything off the dining room table onto shelves except for one item: the bamboo plants. I await my parents to make a space to move them to. I also cleaned under and around the table, cleaned by room and the basement. My parents expressed astonishment that I had the energy to do so much cleaning (that they were supposed to do for years) but it was easy to have the energy considering that I was possessed by the cleaning mood. While useful shot term, the cleaning mood distracted me from everything else I wanted to do. I would clean instead of write or read or career brainstorming or linux tinkering. It is amazing at how much dad hates change and cleaning. He turns into a one-man korean drama at the very thought of throwing away a three legged chair or a dusty old box. Understandable if he ever did like other men and tried to fix things, but he doesn't. It's gotten colder and I have been inside since Wednesday. Unhealthy. Put away computer 4 days in a row Sat to Tue. I tended to put computer away around 5pm-7pm or before dinner. I barely read any books, apart from webcomic addiction and a few articles. This is fine because I spent most of my leisure time playing with lego, bionicles and transformers after bringing them out of the basement and cleaning them up. The one book I did read this week said it's good to take a break from consuming information and books and have self-created adventures, no matter how silly or juvenile. While the abundance of plastic from all those toys is bad for my skin - I think the break from most books and having a constant stream of information - with no time to digest, implement or synthesize new information within personal information structures or replace old information, if incorrect, with new information - does make my head feel lighter. I plan to continue barely reading anything this week too before going back to heavier reading during the 4th or 5th week of November / 1st week of December. For some reason grammarly chrome extension doesn't work with this forum's software and I don't know why. Writing morning affirmations + inner critic responses + rebuttals to inner critic have improved my general welbeing.

Consider a two or three days every week where you do nothing but write papers. Also consider extending paper writing sessions to 3 or 3 and 1/2 hours every morning for 'A' Days and then have 2 hours of physical exercise and 1 hour of meditation apps and psych exercises for the 'B' Days. You could do A, B, A, B or A, A, B, A, A, B. Also your schedule is missing all the activities you do for fun. I know that whenever I forget to schedule fun, my inner union goes on an inner strike and sabotages everything. I don't understand how the 'family' block and the 'hobbies' block are in the same section. What happens when those obligations conflict? What are the boundaries? You've also neglected to include breaks. After spending two hours reading and writing, your energy is cut in half but then you want to exercise for 2 hours. Then I assume you eat lunch, then your selfhelp apps after lunch. What would prevent you on a bad day to skip exercise and say "fuck it" and just chill on the couch then eat lunch and skip the apps and the experiments and courses and then feel bad for "a wasted day" when really its the inner union's fault for sabotaging the schedule. Would it be more or less productive to exercise first and then do reading and writing for work? What about the days when you wake up at 6am or 7am? What is your plan B? Do you sacrifice writing, exercise, apps, experiments, courses, hobbies, or family time? What about if your boss gives you a major deadline and you need to work on writing papers for 3 hours instead of 1 hour? How does the schedule change? Is there anything on the list that you are unwilling to sacrifice no matter what? Also in what order will you implement this new schedule into your lifestyle. Everything at the same time? One by one? Start with 3 and then add more every 2 weeks? I think version 1 of the schedule is fatally optimistic and that a schedule must be designed with the asumption of a cruel world. Better to maintain the easiest schedule possible than have a hard schedule that fails after a few weeks. My previous schedule failed because I miscalculated how much sleep I needed, out of all things.

“I am destroying myself with the environment I have created,” says man. “You are a small thing,” says life, “and you cannot see beyond your nose. I shall shape you to cope with whatever environment you create.” - Operators and Things, Barbara O'Brain Life orchestrates multiple changes in parallel, neither good nor evil but fractal, I've read about musical seizures in the book: "The Man who mistook his wife for a hat." If this doesn't go away in a day, you may have to see a Neurologist.

nov 2 day 51+30 intended to write fiction, organized files instead nov 3 sleeping at 1am and waking up at 5am - unsustainable nov 7 detected coke leak nov 9 took bird pictures in the park --- Analysis After waking up at 8pm and going to sleep at 8am for a few days, I now sleep at 4pm and wake at 12am for a few days. This fits into a trend of not sleeping enough for one week and then sleeping more to compensate the next week. All my predictions were wrong except for chill on wed and sat because I neglected to notice the "week up, week down" trend that affects my productivity. Wherein I compare myself to the superproductive who are nowhere near my current level and push myself too hard. My predictions for this week: What was supposed to be the dining table is now being used to store food in case of a second lockdown (even when the first lockdown continued with ample food production with a healthy supply chain). I predict that I will be able to move half of that food onto the shelves of old books no one reads anymore and junk that I wil have to move into boxes or throw away. Half the table will be cleaned by end of week, saturday.

Mom woke up for a midnight snack and I told her and she freaked out. After her panic subsided, Mom and I made a plan to move the stockpiled food off the table and then to move the table and clean the carpet underneath. Then, Mom precleaned the spilled area with bleach. Redeemable?

Sat Nov 7 2020 Found decades' old coke cans under parents' table leaking into the permanent carpet, into the wood, into the basement heater. My crazy horder parents are dumber than college freshmen. Beer pouring into the carpet or an old pizza under the bed is disgusting yet endearing for a kid living on his own for the first time - not so for two middle aged adults who have claimed to me, since the day I was born, that they were competent authority figures when they were not, and have never been anything but bumbling manchild and womanchild who got by on textbook memorization to pasts tests to begin their careers in a Boomer economy that allowed them to pass as seemingly functional human beings while being unable to run a house that is anything but a half-landfill, where coke cans can be forgotten under a table and left to rot near the vent for decades until metal slowly expands until it is just big enough that coke spills through the cans and comprimises the integrity of this house. And they wonder why the air inside feels stuffy. They were too incompetent to feed the neighbors' goldfish for a week and they died. Too inept to run a house. Too inhumanly negligent to have raise me as I ought to have been raised. I wrote before about how a the battle in my soul is waged between the slow-paced Saturn and the Energetic Shiva but I neglected to notice the god with the strongest influence on my family and I. Nurgle the Plaguebearer.

Sometimes it doesn't matter if the weekend was good - when the soul wants to grieve, it grieves and the rest of the body grieves with it. It's post-halloween depression. All Saint's Day where we descend from our halloween highs and become grossly aware of out failings. It's natural, even if our work-obsessed culture would prefer us drugged and productive, than rain-faced and real. Stay clean and stay strong my friend.

Those fake highs are the worse. We make all these plans based on fantasies but in the end, reality turns out to be a let down. It's like the universe is punishing over-enthusiasm or something. No wonder the Buddhists tell everyone to have zero expectations. It sucks but reality is a thousand times harder than games and every activity demands either patience or determination until it gets good. Sometimes I like to pretend I'm an old man and I have nothing better to do than what's in front of me. Sometimes it even works. I kept trying to force myself to have high productivity all week and I kept burning out. Now, I have to force myself to take it easy on Wednesdays to have enough energy for Thursday and Friday. You probably need a break day too. The weekend or even a weekday where you slack off and let other people pick up the pace. We're all in recovery here. Recovery makes us feel like shit. We deserve a break. A healthy, positive, easy, relaxing game-free break. Give it time. In a few weeks, your dopamine levels (jacked up from gaming) will stabilize and you'll be able to enjoy things again.

Nov Week 5 Analysis: Wrote in my main story on Sun and Mon Jogged Mon, Wed, Fri Put computer away at 12 am Fri, Sat I read chapters from Conan, The Rings of Saturn, Macbeth. I re-read Wonderbook, Man and his Symbols, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. 1 and 2 are correct 3: I also chilled on mon 4: Yes. I solved a problem on thu but got stuck again on fri 5: Woke at 5pm on thu 6: Yes Predictions for Nov Week 1: I will write affirmations every morning I will put my laptop away every night at 12 am I will do deep work on mon, tue, thu and fri I will chill on wed and sat Experiment: Nightly declarations of sleep. Saying "I am going to sleep" out loud before going to bed makes it easier to fall asleep because declarations have power and are a subcategory of prayer.

Tue Oct 27 Day 45 + 30 My email provider is so shit. I want to find a new email app. Wed 28 Shiva and Saturn do battle within my soul. Shiva the dynamic, wild, fury and Saturn the stable, chill, taciturn who moves at his own pace. I feel a Shiva-ic rebellion on the inside and the outside. Thu 29 In the psychological thriller: Operators and Things, the main character is told that she is curently being controlled by a judicious old man named Burt but that she was once controlled by the wild-haired, lanky, big-eyed Hinton and that Hinton would be controlling her once again. Woke up at 6pm. The problem I avoided all week took less than 1 hour to solve. Turns out I just had to delete a missnamed file and then download the correct version. Created daily computer alarm that rings at 12 am. Fri 30 Put laptop away at 12:20 am. Remembered reading a story where the inside of a man's house was called "the outside" and all his furniture was on the outside of his reversed house and he called everything else the inside. I thought it was Restaurant at the End of the Universe but I re-read the book and that scene is missing. Maybe it was part of the radio drama. Sat 31 12 am. Felt dissociated as my body turned off the computer and put it away. Sun Nov 1 Day 50+30 Wrote affirmations. Paid attention to negative thoughts that attacked me during my affirmations, acknowledged them, and turned them into their positive opposites. Dusted shelves, moved boxes, cleaned table, vacuumed floor, changed bedsheets, cleaned room.

Being in the zone - that state of flow against a tough boss or challenge might have been my greatest pull towards games. I've also been able to get into the zone while playing piano, writing fiction and giving speeches at my Toastmasters club. I can't get into the flow as often now as I could back then when I gamed every day but I intend to ramp it up because the zone is one of the greatest experiences in life and when I am at my best. It will take dedication and experimentation but you will find your flow again. Remember to be chill because it cannot be forced. You already know what it feels like and that gives you an advantage over people who have never experienced it.

@IkarI remember my dad always used to say that we live in the best of all times because running water, refrigerators, and computers and that all other times were bad because they didn't have those things. Not only did this insult all other humans in history, it also denied the real suffering and the problems we experience today. This doesn't mean to fetishize the past but to look at what older cultures did right, analyze the trade-offs between one society and another, and figure out how we can implement the best parts of their wisdom within our own lives and institutions. I agree with your perspective of shamanic cultures and I grieve when so many people see ancient and shamanic cultures as no better than wild animals when there is a lot that we can learn from them.

A worker-abusing culture that acts anti-human, forces everyone to be happy all the time and denies healthy emotions like grief or rage because they are considered "unproductive". Those castrated emotions are repressed until they build up and explode causing even greater unproductivity than if they were expressed in an honest way. I use my journal to rage at people(anonymously) and life situations because I understand that all emotions are natural but some emotions are innapropriate to be expressed in full for some civilized social situations. You post in a unique way by using a character and his way of speaking. This protects you but it also makes it harder for people to know you. Pepe is a character who expresses a full range of emotions. Sometimes he is positive, sometimes he is negative. He is also a character who is shameless for any of the weird or gross things he does. And while society thinks shamelessness is a vice, I know shamelessness is a virtue because it is a raw form of bravery and inner peace. The enlightened are shameless. Of course there are rules on Game Quitters (and everywhere else) so never go full pepe. Never go full anything. A moderate attitude is the key. It's a mistake to act like crying wojak wearing mask of smiling wojak - to pretend that everything is happy when things are bad or even when things are just okay or neutral. I journal once a week and respond to people on other days. Others check back once a month, or post whenever they feel an urge to game. Experiment. Commit to a plan for a week. Figure out what went wrong with the plan. Change it. Commit to version 2 for next week. Find what works for you. I prefer to read more heartfelt posts from you. Once in a while, you can take off the pepe mask and talk like a real person but you don't have to.

I am unsure if replacing Smash with D&D in high school would have resulted in a brighter or a darker future. We can only focus on the choices we make today and plan for the future.

This must be the 20th time I have moved my cursor above the heart button and clicked and it sent me to the very top of the page because a phantom ^ up arrow key suddenly appeared out of nowhere even though we have home button key for computer and press top of screen for iPhone. Anybody else get trolled by up arrow button?

My mother and teachers pulled a fast one on me like they do to Ivan in chapter 1 of the maiden king. I remember briefly riding the red horse when I told off my relatives and got my way, the white horse when I defended a friend from a bully, and the black horse when I was in the zone during a speech competition but those horses rarely showed up in my life again and I find myself riding the three-legged hobbledy horse with a gash in my thigh as my regular mount. I want to have the full strength of my being all the time dammit. I remember being covered in oil and dirt from factory work looking like a real cinder-biter. @Ikar Tell me what pierced you in Iron John.

Oct Week 4 Analysis wrote main novel 4 times this week (sun, tue, wed, sat) days I stayed up late and slept after 5am - I wrote in my main novel at 5am on those same days jogged 4 times this week (sun, tue, thu, sat) I put my computer away at 12am 0 times this week all of last weeks predictions came true Predictions: jog mon, wed, fri I will dust, vacuum, and change bedsheets this week I will chill on tue, wed, and sat I will deep work thu, and fri I will wake before 12pm on thu I will solve the unmet dependencies / file naming linux error this week Wed is usually my burn out day anyways so I might as well make it official. Experiment with Deep Work Schedule version 2 that has mon, tue, thu, and fri with 5 hour deep work sessions and wed, sat, and sun as casual days where on wed I still do some work but am more chill and casual.

Tue 20 Day 38 + 30 Chaired Toastmasters meeting. Saw dad watch livestream of some girl doing her makeup. Argh urgh, I hope he hasn't given her any money. I always knew he was that type but I thought the generational divine might have saved him. Wed n/a Thu Almost no progress because lack of sleep and web surfing. Fri I won. I managed to ping google on my Debian terminal. Weeks of thinking and learning linux, resolved after I changed inet6 to inet - resolved after deleting 1 number. Changing dhcp to a static ip might have had something to do with it too. Another error has appeared: one file refuses to update to its newer version. I will solve this one too. Sat Listed possible fixes for broken pipe error. Sun Read Game Quitter Journals. Realized one of us was an ex-member of the South Korean cult whose leader has been arrested for deliberately spreading Covid-19 in order to fulfill a doomsday prophecy. That member also stopped posting and I hope he is still safe and they didn't get him. Theory: I did not put computer away in time because I did not consume manly literature like Conan or Robert Bly. The Maiden King is a much harder read than Iron John because it is closer to home. Mon 26 Day 44 + 30 I stopped binge-watching anime a long time ago and now watch one episode of a chill show every day or every two days like Mushi-Shi and the only anime I look forward to is Jojo. But I have to admit that I do have an addiction to binge-reading manga. Very few manga provide higher value to me but I still read it instead of going to sleep. Giving up the computer before bed feels like letting go of my pool float or lifeline amd giving myself up to the dark ocean, of unknowable deeps. Realized for as much as I like the Dune series, I was always irked about how fragile Paul and Leto II are. I thinki my sleeping past noon is a result of Play-Rebellion. My inner play-self hates that I continue my deep learning schedule on the weekends. I might limit deep work to only 6 days a week or maybe even only 4 days a week.

There're always one or two guys in each tribe who are light sleepers with good ears who can wake fast and alert the rest of the caveman if the sabertooth is attacking. Most people are designed to sleep through anything quieter than a fire alarm because nature is noisy, especially forests and jungles. Be proud of yourself that you fulfilled your evolutionary purpose as a light sleeper.

Contemporary life is so fast, not even thieves know how to steal quietly and slowly anymore. Who needs a home security system? I want my own personal B&T to guard my house.

I heard some companies give their workers a week or two off whenever there's a test to get additional qualifications. Did your company give you this week off? Because I didn't see you talk about happenings at work for this entire week. Sometimes professional tests will put in absurd questions because of economics. They want to limit the supply of professionals in order to keep prices stable - a fear of oversaturating the market. You could be perfectly competent and well deserving of a new engineering rank but if there's enough competition, that bar will be raised to absurd degrees. I think you did past the test and you're just being cautiously pessimistic - or maybe I'm just optimistic.

So you were researching the price of drums in order to sell them, not buy new ones. I understand now.