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2018 April ​

Summary ​

I changed a lot this month. Starting to pay a lot of attention to both my physical and mental health. I stopped completely to eat bad food and I feel incredible. Started to play tennis but will be playing it a lot more the next months. Refined a few things in my workflow and started to love simple Zen mode interfaces for writing code.

These monthly looking back pieces will be a bit different going forward. Mostly because although I enjoy occasionally writing in this Diary, I think at times it is a bit out of place. So I will be changing it up a bit for the future but will see what works best.

I am happy with the piece I wrote on happiness. I had the thoughts of writing a blog piece on it for quite some time but never had the courage to do it because it's not something you learn once and forget about. My ways of reaching and staying happy will change with time but I am happy that I genuinely know now what I want and need to focus on in life first and foremost. Proper diet. Daily exercise. Proper sleep. Building and maintaining relationships that matter. And a sense of purpose for what I want to do.

I have been feeling frustrated a lot by university. But I learned over this time that frustration is not effective stance as it solves none of the problems. And being frustrated all the time and complaining about things achieves nothing. I've read a lot over the years on the things most people consider important in life. But it is one thing to read it. And another to actually follow it. The approach that I follow now and love is pretty simple. Start small. Don't be so harsh on myself. And be mindful. Change doesn't come instantly and if you have a vision of what you want to do and make in life. Just keep at it.

One other thing this month taught me. Or rather strengthened in me. Is my resilience to failures. Some failures happen for a reason. Some just happen because life. There is no reason to make it worse for yourself and dwell on it. Investigate why you failed. And do your best to avoid getting yourself in the same situation in the future.

Also avocados and salads are amazing.

Diary ​

  • (2) Stopped listening to music for a while now. I now listen to music as a way to find new tunes and relax rather than as a way to listen to things just to dull the background noise. I use Noizio for that now and love it. So my last.fm is looking a bit empty compared to the previous months.
  • (2) Also renamed Notes to Diary as I think I found a perfect workflow that works for me in doing this kind of diary. Shared, Diary and Photos is all I want to remember from the month. Private memories and notes will still be in Day One. A Travel section would be awesome to have too.
  • (2) One of my goals in Trello board this month is: Mindful everything. Writing. Working. Coding. It's freeing coming down and using only the essential things and living with a more reductionist approach of minimizing both daily input to things that matter as well as focusing on producing work that matters too. No bullshit in-between. My Trello Focus board is starting to pay its dividends too. I now keep all my Trello boards scoped to cards that I am assigned to. Which means cards I am currently working on. This way I can tune to work only on the projects & goals that matter to me at that given time. For now, my goal is to finish my university and finally getting my Bachelor's degree.

  • (4) Richard Litt also started a public monthly diary log of things he is working on and he wrote a bit on why he made it with which I agree. This diary is also only the beginning. I am certain in future, these looking back posts will probably not even be hosted with GitBook but perhaps lie on my personal site. With better visualizations and much shorter and to the point entries as I learn more on how to effectively transcribe my thoughts on paper and what things to write about. So yeah, diaries are pretty awesome.
  • (9) I feel like I can write a book about decision fatigue and the paradox of choice. It has been a growing issue in my life for too long of a time and despite me being 'aware' of the issue, I still fall in the same trap of inability to do things because there is just 'too many things' I need to be doing and too much pressure on doing things right. Prioritizing the right things, accepting to fail at something because something else is more important. It's painful and above all frustrating. Which in turns causes me to enter a rather negative loop of self hatred and depression. Not even self hatred but hate for me not being able to change my surroundings in a meaningful way because I have no money, I can't finish my degree and a plethora of other reasons like having 0 internships or any kind of work experience. Because literally no one on Earth wants to hire me. I did however find this Wisdom of Insecurity book by no other than Alan Watts. Perhaps it will help. It's funny how even when you are 'aware' of how irrational it is to feel sad or to feel any kind of anxiety, you still feel it. And it still hurts.
  • (9) My macOS repo hit 10,000 🌟

  • (9) It’s sad not being in control of my time and what I want I want to be doing. But I have to learn to take control of my mind and go against it doing only what it likes. Although it would be wonderful to some day reach a stage in my life where I love every single day and am doing what I want to be doing every single day. But that day is not today. And until then, less talking and more doing.
  • (10) Lesson learned. Just make the CV in Pages or some visual editor and don’t bother with LaTeX. This way I get more control over the looks of it and it’s easier to maintain. I should also finally use my CV and apply everywhere. This bachelor’s degree is killing me. Forcing students to memorize a bunch of rules & formulas to pass the exam/tests is absurd in 2018. I hope future is going to be better than this.
  • (10) Going to start using Swarm again to check into various places. It's pretty awesome so far.
  • (10) I think that Karabiner, VS Code and mac + internet is all you need to do anything you want in the world. No education needed aside from knowing how not to give up and stick with it. Everything else comes from practice. It also helps not to have constant anxiety and pressure of not doing good enough compared to your peers and friends which is all too easy in our extremely interconnected world. I hope to live by this though. Independent thinking. Independent mind. Solving problems that matter and increasing my own productivity & happiness every day.
  • (12) It's my birthday and I got to stop being sad. It's pitiful. Worst thing about depression is the time when you just accept it. You accept that it won't get better and this is going to be your life. It's then much harder to get out of this hole you dug yourself into as you are always going to be upset, no matter what happens to you. You will ignore the little good things that happen to you and amplify all the bad. The worst thing is that I actually know what I can do to be happy, it's just I can't dedicate myself fully to it. Depression sucks. And chronic depression is just horrible. And any advice that you read on depression and bad states of mind is barely helpful as any true change starts from within yourself. Exercise, some sunlight and good nutrition with sleep does go a long way though and that's what I want to focus on. No excuses.
  • (13) Should read more fiction books and improve my writing. I want a richer set of vocabulary to draw things from. I love how certain words can capture some things so much better and more compact that the writing just flows from word to word. I haven't read many fiction books yet but I am changing that slowly and adapting the ideas I take away from it in my writing and new ideas.
  • (14) One thing I miss from doing this public diary here instead of Day One is On This Day feature which is phenomenal in Day One. I don't think it would be hard to replicate it here too as I already add numbers of days I wrote my entries in and under which month. Will be a fun thing to add in the future.
  • (14) Going to work on a no complaining habit from now on. Complaining achieves nothing in the grand scheme of things and I have done my share deal of it lately.
  • (15) It feels strange being 23 years old. Feels like I have lived half of my life already which is a silly thing to think since you can do many awesome things at age of 46. One thing I do appreciate more and more with every year is time. The limited time you have and the inevitability of death. I am not afraid of any of these things but the thought is still there, I can be gone tomorrow and the world will keep on spinning.
  • (15) The feeling of being worthless. I think the reason why I hate myself so much is lack of exercise and change in my life. I look at the people I know and the very few friends I have and see them do great things in life. Pass exams and get awesome jobs that they actually get paid to do. And here I am, a worthless human who no one wants to hire for any price who can’t pass his exams. Who can’t memorize things in time and who is too insecure and self loathing to do anything positive with his life. Stuck in the endless loop with no end in sight. Suicide will only bring hurt to my family. And giving up although enticing will not solve any problems. I guess it would for myself but after I am gone there will be no one left to appreciate having everything taken from life. All the sad and few happy moments in life. And it’s not that I am chronically ill and in a lot of pain where I can’t just take it anymore and want it to end. I just feel worthless. And I see no escape in short sight. And the worst thing is that I want to feel even worse than I do now just to see how bad can it get. I find it comical how pathetic my attitude and life has become. I wish it’d be simpler but it isn’t. Anyway, here is to my 30 days of no complaining. I just want to stop feeling bad. I should also contain this self loathing in Day One. There is literally 0 reason to keep it here, I doubt it helps anyone in any way aside from make people reading this feel better that their life is actually not bad. I should focus on the few good things I have in life and ignore everything else and persevere!
  • (15) The truth is that I just have to believe in myself again. That's all. I failed quite a lot of exams and never recovered from it. I lost any kind of hope I had of passing another exam again and my growing hatred for the university only grew with time. It was harder and harder to force myself to study again because I knew I am going to fail anyway. I want to be rational from now on and see things as they are, no matter how nasty the truth is. The truth is that I messed up and I spread myself too thin. I wanted too many things and I achieved marginal results across some things. I still need to get the degree because for some reason the 'big' or any companies for that matter want that piece of paper or else you don't even pass their automated CV check. No CS Education? Goodbye. Welcome to real life. Everything that comes up in life is a challenge and it's up to me to decide how I should deal with it and if I just want to curl up, give up and ignore it. Or if I want to physically force myself to give it my best and finish something because it is important. Not because I like it or I enjoy doing it but because it matters. I want an anxiety free life and frankly until I start earning any kind of money, I will never get it. The goal of life it seems to reach a point where you genuinely enjoy every day and try to do some good in the world. At least that's my goal.
  • (16) Finally found a good workflow for sharing my code gists. Can't wait to improve it more with time.
  • (16) Another reason to leave off these rather depressive and suicidal thoughts here is because deep in my mind I hope things will improve. If not today, than next month. Or even next year. They should improve. And as the saying goes. What is darkness if not absence of light. Well this is my ‘darkness’. And it should feel good reading this when my life will eventually get better. It feels good to be honest with myself. Sometimes bad things that happen are not your fault. But this situation is my fault. And I should learn to avoid getting in this place again in the future.
  • (16) On the subject of needing more exercise in my life. I will start playing tennis every morning. It’s a fun sport and is competitive in nature which I love. Should take things slow and improve. And slowly make things.
  • (18) Regret minimization framework. Although you can’t always be sure that what you are doing now, you’re not going to regret later. It’s still a very valuable thing to be aware of. Thankfully with the failures I already had in life and the wealth of failures and successes made by other people, it is a bit easier to follow this rule.
  • (18) Speaking of failure. LA for the second time in a row was rejected by Y Combinator. Not sure why as they don't give feedback. Perhaps because LA is a non profit that is hard to monetize. Perhaps other non profits that applied are curing aging. Nevertheless it is what it is. Life goes on.
  • (19) Exercising in the morning does make a huge difference. Currently for me that is playing tennis. But if I will have no one to play with me in the mornings, I will go to the gym. Regret not doing it before. Exercise and finally a proper diet with a good life work balance is life changing. I still get distracted on my mac too often but all the above things greatly help in keeping my mindfulness up. Now to only find some source of income and life would be perfect.
  • (19) One other thing you start to appreciate with a sugar free diet (aside from fruits). Is just how much your taste buds change in the process. Eating things like ice cream feels like an actual 'oh my god' experience instead of being 'just another sweet'.
  • (22) Now that I think a bit more about it. This public Diary can actually be better done via Twitter. Minus the depressive and 'useless' parts. Those I can leave off either here or Day One or remove completely. It's a silly way to look at things anyway, just feels good to write it out and get it out of your mind. I do need to build this thing for myself though. So yeah. Twitter it is. 🐦
  • (23) Got rejected for GSOC internship. It's not unexpected though. I just can't code well enough yet.

  • (23) YC rejections x2. GSOC rejections x1. Exams failed x20. Job rejections x1000. Should keep the streaks up. 🚀
  • (23) Going to stop writing in this ‘Diary’ for a bit. And just share things through Twitter. Hopefully I get my life together soon and won’t be as depressed and sad all the time. A life of no regrets.
  • (24) One last thing I want to note. Is that no one actually cares about failures. Everyone just looks at successes in life as that's all that ever gets shown. Failures are something personal and no one genuinely cares that I got rejected for GSOC. Or that LA was twice rejected by YC or that I have been irresponsible with my university degree. It's just noise to people. Everyone wants to see the 'good stuff'. Failure is part of life. You take risks. You learn from mistakes. You change your approach and focus on things that you think matter to you now. The beauty of life is that you don't have to prove anything to anyone. Ever. I always had this nagging thought in my head that I HAVE to earn money to prove my existence to people. To pay off the amazing things that my parents provided me in life. Paid education, food, house and free time to do what I want. I always felt guilty for having these privileges in life and I always felt that I owe it to them to be a good student. A smart adult who can not only pay off for his own life but help improve theirs. And it has been ever more depressing knowing that, I as 23 years old person can't do that for them. I can't even earn my own living, let alone pay off my education (which admittedly is not as bad as US or UK). I can't imagine what it feels like to be 40k+ in loans for an education that you hated. It's a horrible feeling. I do hope that something like Basic Income will one day be a reality. The unneeded anxiety of where and how you are going to get money to simply live in a house and get food is just that. Unneeded. It should be free.
  • (24) I don't regret writing this diary in public like that though. It taught me how to actually, genuinely, don't give a single care in the world what other people think of me. I just want live a life and do something good in the world.
  • (26) Finally wrote my thoughts on what happiness means to me.

Timing ​