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Finally, I shall know who I am


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Day 0

What I'm thankful for today:

  • I'm so glad my brother saw on Discord that I was playing Everquest and decided to call me to tell me to stop playing. It might have been weeks or months before I stopped myself if he didn't do that.

Actions taken:

  • Joined r/StopGaming and gamequitters communities
  • Uninstalled all of my games from my computers and phone
  • Watched "What Triggers Should You Watch Out For?"

Goals I want to pursue from here on out:

  • First and foremost, as this will ripple into the success of the other goals: get back into falling asleep and waking up naturally (no more melatonin, no more alarms)
  • Re-start and commit to a fitness program (likely r/bodyfitness' routine again)
  • Re-start the vocal lessons course from Chris Liepe that I already bought
  • Get back on the Udacity nanodegree for Flying Car and Autonomous Flight engineer (submitted the first project way ahead of schedule, but I'm at risk of missing the scheduled date for the second project)
  • Get back to being active in the WorkOnClimate slack group - book club finished 2 weeks ago, and I haven't talked to anyone new since then
  • Find another social activity aside from WorkOnClimate, especially something that is more hobby oriented - already been playing tennis and want to get involved in rock climbing so maybe those are contenders

Next steps (do these things tomorrow at the very least)

  • Schedule recurring time on my calendar for all of the above activities so I know exactly when I'm going to be doing them
  • Identify potential gaming triggers that I need to eliminate (ex: remove gaming Youtube channels)
  • Watch up to 3 videos from the Game Quitters Youtube channel and make an action plan of how to incorporate the lesson from them
  • Comment on at least 1 other person's journal/post - I've always been a lurker in communities before but I want to be an active participant now
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Day 1

What I'm thankful for today:

  • I love that there is a tennis court within ~10m driving distance that has a ball machine I can rent with pretty good availability
  • I love even more that it's finally warm outside again. This experiment with Denver in the winter to take advantage of snowboarding season has been hell for me - I hate having to always be wearing so many layers, gloves, beanie, and how cold it is even inside. I'll be leaving here this weekend anyway, but at least it'll be warm here until I leave (although it's been throwing me through a loop that it is warm outside yet still cold in here - I practically have to rush straight from my bed to outside otherwise I'll get locked into thinking it's too cold and I need to stay in bed longer)

 

Progress on next steps from yesterday:

  • Schedule recurring time on my calendar for all of the above activities so I know exactly when I'm going to be doing them
    • Mostly done - I got singing (T/Th 8-9am), robotics (M-F 9-10am), and workout (M/W/F 8-9am) on the calendar. For WorkOnClimate, I know there are groups working on things there so I need to spend time looking more into that. For the additional social activity, still need to figure out what that'll be
  • Identify potential gaming triggers that I need to eliminate (ex: remove gaming Youtube channels)
    • I removed the gaming youtube channels, changed my news feed interests in my phone to block video games, and deleted the video gaming discords I was in. I can't think of any other major triggers (salute)
  • Watch up to 3 videos from the Game Quitters Youtube channel and make an action plan of how to incorporate the lesson from them
    • Watched "7 things to expect after you quit gaming" and actively took notes + tied in how that lesson specifically related to me
  • Comment on at least 1 other person's journal/post - I've always been a lurker in communities before but I want to be an active participant now
    • Done, and read through a few other's journals. It felt kinda forced, like I was just looking through journals and intros *specifically* to find something to comment on, which in my head seems like a bad thing (forced social feels like bad social to me, I guess would be the way to explain why?) but maybe that's just another wall I need to learn to break down.

Link to notes taken for the "7 things to expect after you quit gaming", for those interested

Notes about today

Luckily, no real urge or interest in gaming today. I did catch myself mindlessly thinking over things I wanted to do with my Everquest character last night as I was getting to sleep, but actively stopped that line of thinking and tried thinking about the new hobbies I wanted to pursue instead.

Today was a pretty difficult day at work - I just felt so drained and unable to focus. Plus, I had to conduct an interview, which in and of itself isn't too bad but then it just takes so much time for me to get my feedback condensed and written up. I often feel like I lose pretty much my entire day whenever I have to conduct interviews because I have such a hard time getting my head back to thinking about engineering again. I was feeling drained even before the interview though, so that wasn't the only issue. I think it was mostly due to how my sleep schedule had gotten wrecked over the weekend - I'd binged on Everquest both Friday and Saturday, staying up until 4am both nights (Saturday I let myself sleep in until 3pm, but Sunday I forced myself to get up by 10am), so sleeping from 2am to 9am last night didn't provide me the best of rest. Hopefully tonight will be better.

I also had a 1:1 with one of my coworkers, and it was a conversation that just really made my heart sink. She was raised in Hong Kong and moved here to the states for college + her career, and lives in one of the areas where Asian hate crimes have been running rampant. She's scared to go outside, and is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with just how much racism really exists in this country, even in the "progressive" areas that are supposed to be leading the charge on combatting it, and she's been thinking about moving back home partially because of it. She's also thinking that she wants to pivot her career more in the direction of mental health services instead of just the finance-related workplace we're currently at, and that makes me happy to hear that she's been really thinking critically about what she cares about and is willing to consider making that what she works on instead of getting drowned in the sea of corporate ladders and "solving hard problems" that is all too common in tech. I'm also so grateful that she was willing to open up and talk to me about her fears wrt racism in this country, and it really makes me want to be a better ally. In the wake of the George Floyd protests last summer, I pushed myself to do a lot of reading and learning, worked with other coworkers to push our company to do more (which resulted in restructuring our hiring practices, a large donation, dedicating a day every quarter to volunteering in the community, and a book club where a large portion of the company participated in really useful dialogues around how to be anti-racist), but justified not actually protesting because of the pandemic; I'm ashamed to think that in the wake of these Asian hate crimes, the only thing I've done this time is donate but I haven't been putting in the work to learn, to find out how to contribute (and then actually do it), to spur conversation in my company and with the few friends I do actively talk to. I need to do more.

On a lighter note, which feels really difficult to transition to because I feel like transitioning after writing all of the above out is like I'm already compartmentalizing those issues away and moving on but I'm not - I'm just being comprehensive in this journal post while also being chronological which means that the most important things might actually be in the middle rather than at the end - so on a lighter note, after work I got out to the tennis courts with my roommate to hit against the ball machine. That damn machine is so inconsistent some days. I went over the weekend, and it was perfect, but today.. Dumb thing kept shooting balls too high, then too low, then too far to the right, then too far to the left. It was still good practice overall but I just wish I remembered what the settings I had been last time. I'm getting *much* better at actually keeping the ball in the lines of the court, which is really encouraging. Sometimes my grip slips in mid swing, and I haven't been able to really put my fully body energy into every stroke like my roommate does, still plenty of room to grow.

Lastly, it's been kinda annoying working to stay anonymous - had to create a new discord account because I wanted the username of that to match what it is here/reddit, but friends and family are connected to my existing one so changing it would mean they'd know about this username, and creating a new discord account means I'll be trying out using Shift for easily switching between the two accounts without having to sign in and out. Also got paranoid with sharing that notion link because it's attached to my main account, but, as far as I can tell, making a page public on notion doesn't link back to the creator. I mean, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if my name and this account were linked publicly, but also I like being able to have a separate place where I can share my thoughts and having a name attached that doesn't correlate with my real name - so that its never something I'm worried gets stumbled upon by like a future employer or a random family member or just some person who is mad at me looking for dirt and to reduce the possibility of doxing generally. I trust the internet for the most part, but there's several incidents that make it hard to completely trust the internet (and also especially having to be mindful that what goes onto the internet can stay there "forever", outside of your control).

Goals for tomorrow

  • Start the day off with that routine I just put in the calendar
  • After work, get some reading in, go through the WorkOnClimate slack and find something to get engaged with (or perhaps even propose something new to lead), and get more involved in working to combat racism - do more learning, find opportunities to volunteer, go over anti-racist principles again
  • Also watch at least 1 more Game Quitters video

Being a parent to myself

(Adding this section as a way to practice being kinder to myself, forgiving my mistakes and praising my achievements)

  • Good job on making it though the first day without any struggle - I'm so proud of you for being courageous enough to face your fear of figuring out a new identity without video games after all this time you've lived with video games as a core part of your personality
  • I'm proud of you for wanting to do more to combat racism and for continuing to think critically on it - even just a year or two ago these issues weren't nearly as pressing in your mind, you never even considered protesting, realistically you never really got past just reading the headline and thinking "why are people so shitty", but now here you are looking to go beyond just the headline and to engage more deeply with it.
    • Don't beat yourself up too much that it took you this long to get here, and that you still don't feel like you're being effective. You have so many years ahead of you to make a difference as long as you just don't give up. This isn't a competition on who is the most woke, this is about just being better than you were yesterday and continuing to do so until you die. Don't give up, don't get discouraged - these problems aren't going to go away if you just bundle up in a ball and whine about you're not helping enough, and other people aren't going to judge you nearly the way you think if your heart truly is in the right place and you've done your research to make sure you're doing the right things for the right reasons. It'll take time, and that's okay.
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Day 2

This one is probably going to be a lot shorter - yesterday's entry took like an hour+ to write, and I seem to always write these right when it's already an hour past when I meant to get to sleep. 

What I'm thankful for today:

  • Watching this (linked under this) made me reflect on how grateful I am that both my parents are still in good health. It's something so easy to forget, but they won't always be. I feel like I was much more aware of that when I was younger than I am now - I distinctly remember one day that I just burst out crying because my mind had wandered into imagining what like would be like after my dad died and it was just unbearable to think about. 

 

Progress on next steps from yesterday:

  • Start the day off with that routine I just put in the calendar
    • Woke up 2 hours after I intended, with my alarm STILL going off. I think the only thing that actually woke me up was that I got paged from work and my brain is a lot more tuned in to reacting to that than it is to my alarm music. I still did robotics (and even continued on for an hour past the allotted time; I've always had a hard time containing myself to only spending *1* hour on things that I really like doing, always seems to have to go on for at least 1.5-2h ... so I should probably update my schedule to reflect that. But that's also from not doing robotics for like 2 weeks, so we'll see whether I'm still pushing the allotted time boundary after consistently doing it for at least a week)
  • After work, get some reading in, go through the WorkOnClimate slack and find something to get engaged with (or perhaps even propose something new to lead), and get more involved in working to combat racism - do more learning, find opportunities to volunteer, go over anti-racist principles again
    • I failed miserably at every part of this 😐  I'm not even really sure when I transitioned out of work - I've picked up the horrible tendency to treat me work computer as my personal computer, so often I'm doing personal stuff things throughout the day anyway and then at some point in the day I just decide not to go back and forth between work and personal anymore. I'm going to start setting a hard boundary on work, and stop using my work laptop for personal stuff anymore.
  • Also watch at least 1 more Game Quitters video
    • Watched "How to stop mindlessly browsing the internet" (which summaries to 1. Choose new activities; 2. Engagement over entertainment; 3. Sit with urges); always helpful to keep this at the forefront because there definitely are days when I've just veg'd out on youtube or reddit for pretty much the whole day. When I "got off work" today, I definitely got side-tracked on the internet but it wasn't so much as mindlessly browsing as it was just unfocused catching up on random points of interest (ex: going through a bunch of fact checking of Biden & his policies, following up on understanding the voter suppression debate, especially with regards to a comment my dad made yesterday about illegal immigrants being registered to vote while getting their driver's license in our home state (summary: sort of true, because the dmv isn't allowed to reject an application, but just because their application went in doesn't mean that they actually get successfully registered because their application is supposed to get cross-referenced with their immigration status ... but I also somewhat believe the counterargument that just because their immigration status is *supposed* to get checked doesn't mean it always actually does. I still don't think it's an issue though, especially not to the extent that my dad raves about it), and also finally watched a single episode of Fox New's The Five just to understand what the hell my dad is watching ... sometimes he makes me so angry, but it's moreso that I'm just angry that the political propaganda machine he's been sucked into is so effective and prominent, not so much at him specifically. Figuring out whether I'm upset at a person or a decision a person makes specifically vs the systems that shaped them/that decision is something I often struggle with because I always keep in mind that it's just as probable that I had been born in their shoes and ended up the same way / making the same decision, not everything is fully within our control). 
      • Tangents aside, the point I was trying to make was that I feel like my issue is much more about just making sure that I don't *start* on an internet binge, not necessarily because I'll get trapped into mindlessly browsing but rather because a lack of structure becomes really dangerous because I'll go down all the rabbit holes and not notice the time.
      • I could tackle this by trying to schedule every second of my time, but that 1. doesn't sound sustainable and 2. feels like it'd lead me down the path of becoming too rigid with my time. Maybe if I'm just more "loose" with what the scheduled blocks are, and just call out at least what I'm definitely *not* going to do during certain periods of time, maybe that'll work.

 

Notes about the day

  • On the robotics front, did a Voronoi graph exercise (well, really just used the scipy Voronoi library and then did some fairly simple interactions with the outputs) and then also converted the original A* path planning exercise from being grid based to graph based which was actually a nice challenge that required going back over previous material and putting it all together. These first 2 sections of the course have been pretty programming heavy, which is the easier part of the course for me, but I presume soon enough it'll become more controls/physics/engineering heavy and that's when I'll really need to pour more time into it so I need to be wary of getting overconfident
  • It was rainy all day today, so no real outside time 😞
  • Work was fine, only one meeting and then the rest to myself. I had a good productive start of the day, but then progressively got more and more distracted. I think it's because one of the larger tasks on my plate right now is just writing up and organizing some documentation, which I really don't enjoy so I end up procrastinating it. I need to commit to and do it though, that's the only way it's gonna get done
  • No gaming urges, though I did talk to my old Amazon coworkers / gaming friend group a bit over discord today, just meme'ing and talking about the state of software engineering promotions / ladder structure. The latter I don't have much interest in, yet whenever it's talked about I get really engaged as if I am interested in it 😐  but it was fun to just joke around with them and remember that our friendships aren't entirely based around gaming. I don't think I'll ever have a super strong connection with any of them, and that's perfectly okay - not every friendship has to (or even should) be a super tight bond.
  • I've found myself playing around on guitar a lot more, it's becoming sort of the default thing I go to whenever I'm feeling stressed and just want to channel that energy into something. Might bump guitar into the rotation of things that I schedule practice on my calendar for as well.

Goals for tomorrow

Setting some "easier" goals for myself tomorrow just because I really want to nail getting my sleep schedule back in order, as I know that really helps set everything else up for success

  • Ideally: actually wake up at first alarm
  • At a minimum: just get to sleep by 11pm - getting up early starts by getting to bed early
  • Still kick ass at following the schedule I set up yesterday
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Great title of the journal by the way: it captures the spirit of one of the greatest drivers of success.

 

When you mention robotics and software engineering, Are you engaged in both the mechanical side of the business and programming? What do you mean by flying cars?

i initially thought your nick name was “WeSurftoSurvive” .  extreme sports was a huge part of me in my teens. I started with inline skates and moved on to skateboarding. Still remember how there never was any doubting as to what I should be doing. 4 to 6 hours of skateboarding per day was the norm. 

So have you tried surfing?

Edited by Amphibian220
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Wow, it's super cool that you really dive deep into the complexities of the voter suppression issue as well as other political topics. I think I know how you feel about your father and him listening to Fox News. My mother is actually the same. When I was in high school and early college, I was very into Shapiro and stuff (I don't even know why). I got my mom into the conservative talking points and that's a huge regret for me. I managed to see things very differently, and she's still listening to The Five and other "anti-propaganda" propaganda. Also as an Asian person born & residing outside of Asia, thank you dude. Been feeling a lot of worries about racism this year especially. Trying to really be understanding about why people are hateful so I can keep a level up and not hate back, but it's very emotionally tiresome. 

I don't know if you're familiar with Zizek, but he does some fun content on Ideology. Namely, that precisely when you think you have escaped ideology, you are in fact completely stuck in it. Very Hegel-esque stuff, but very cool! If you end up looking into it, let me know what you think. I mention him because it helps me to see how reactionary ideologies can so firmly think they are "objective" and fail to detect that they have just replaced old ideologies with new ones (often times worse ones). 

Edited by ReturnToNormal
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2 hours ago, ReturnToNormal said:

Wow, it's super cool that you really dive deep into the complexities of the voter suppression issue as well as other political topics. I think I know how you feel about your father and him listening to Fox News. My mother is actually the same. When I was in high school and early college, I was very into Shapiro and stuff (I don't even know why). I got my mom into the conservative talking points and that's a huge regret for me. I managed to see things very differently, and she's still listening to The Five and other "anti-propaganda" propaganda. Also as an Asian person born & residing outside of Asia, thank you dude. Been feeling a lot of worries about racism this year especially. Trying to really be understanding about why people are hateful so I can keep a level up and not hate back, but it's very emotionally tiresome. 

I don't know if you're familiar with Zizek, but he does some fun content on Ideology. Namely, that precisely when you think you have escaped ideology, you are in fact completely stuck in it. Very Hegel-esque stuff, but very cool! If you end up looking into it, let me know what you think. I mention him because it helps me to see how reactionary ideologies can so firmly think they are "objective" and fail to detect that they have just replaced old ideologies with new ones (often times worse ones). 

Any point of view is ideology. So what is the point of trying to escape ideology? Unless you want to become an atomized, meek person, always refraining from saying what you believe.

Hegel is the person who stated that everything that exists is there because it is ultimately just? He came off as a very cynical person and supported the slavery in the German society and the use of German slaves for fighting British imperial wars. Many among Russian intelligentsia were then (and are still now) accepting Western ideas with open arms. So this Belinsky was a major supporter until he stumbled upon a contradiction: “serfdom in Russia is, so it is just then? How can that be? The millions of serfs, their fathers and children who are destined to live as slaves and suffer deprivations, that is all real. So how is it just?”

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13 hours ago, Amphibian220 said:

Any point of view is ideology. So what is the point of trying to escape ideology? Unless you want to become an atomized, meek person, always refraining from saying what you believe.

Hegel is the person who stated that everything that exists is there because it is ultimately just? He came off as a very cynical person and supported the slavery in the German society and the use of German slaves for fighting British imperial wars. Many among Russian intelligentsia were then (and are still now) accepting Western ideas with open arms. So this Belinsky was a major supporter until he stumbled upon a contradiction: “serfdom in Russia is, so it is just then? How can that be? The millions of serfs, their fathers and children who are destined to live as slaves and suffer deprivations, that is all real. So how is it just?”

I don't understand the hostility in your post. I agree with your first paragraph and I'm happy to learn new perspectives about what Hegel believed. My understanding is that Hegel thought all events occurred as a necessary timeline to reach the whole truth. I don't know if that's a moral claim and I don't think that's what he meant by the word "just". I'm not holding Hegel or Zizek or really anyone onto some pedestal. I just find it interesting to think that ideology isn't something you can escape so easily, if it is possible.  I meant this sentiment as a retort to modern critics who think they have cracked the code against ideologies, but are actually also ideological. Would have appreciated a post that wasn't written in this fashion. 

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Its cool man, i wasn’t implying that you support any particular philosopher’s thesis.

Actually, i am a person that for a long time was silent on many issues I disagreed with and that mattered for my success, and am currently learning to be more outspoken. This actually ties in with the gaming culture, as it is negatively influencing us in more than just one way. It is far more than just losing communication skills, but as a member of the GQ forum articulately stated “ having an inability to care for things in your life”.

Edited by Amphibian220
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12 hours ago, Amphibian220 said:

Its cool man, i wasn’t implying that you support any particular philosopher’s thesis.

Actually, i am a person that for a long time was silent on many issues I disagreed with and that mattered for my success, and am currently learning to be more outspoken. This actually ties in with the gaming culture, as it is negatively influencing us in more than just one way. It is far more than just losing communication skills, but as a member of the GQ forum articulately stated “ having an inability to care for things in your life”.

Yea I think I know what you mean, these days I'm often really silent about politics and social matters because I would rather carry on and make peace. But I know that that itself is also a political statement. It's confusing and I think it's overall good that we are trying to communicate even if it's not always successful. 

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