It’s raining, and I’m trying to convince myself to go for a run anyway. This also got me thinking again about yesterday’s idea: increasing my distance by 2 km per day. On reflection, that might actually be a bad idea. If I did that, by the end of the third week, I’d be running several almost-marathons back-to-back. I mean, hitting 34, 36, 38, 40, and then 42 km over just five days? That sounds a bit crazy. I’m no professional, but I’m pretty sure I’d need some rest between those kinds of distances.
Nevertheless, I’m not giving up on the overall goal. I’ll just have to rethink how I can gradually increase the load, but I’m still intent on running a marathon distance eventually.
Finally, I’m back home. Such a great feeling.
My bus was over an hour late, but I still managed to launch a short, late stream. I also just took my daily selfie and was reading book for an hour, so this note is the last thing to get everything done for today.
I’m keeping up well, doing all this daily stuff for a pretty long time now. It actually gets so much easier the further I go.
During the bus ride, an interesting idea popped into my head. I want to run a marathon in three weeks. To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of cardio, but at the same time, I’m crazy about achieving things. That urge is especially strong when I know I’m doing something that makes me better in the long run. And who wouldn’t want a strong circulatory system, right?
Yeah, I’m not a complete newbie. I did run almost every day for half a year straight, but that was almost a year ago, and I never really ran longer than 10km in one go.
I’m thinking about progressively increasing my distance by 2km each day. That way, by the end of the third week, I’ll hit marathon distance.
Sounds pretty fun to me. Tomorrow’s the first day of the challenge. Let’s see if I can actually pull it off.
I’m so glad I’m not living with my parents anymore. This vacation was a stark reminder of how emotionally draining it was before I moved out.
I see myself as a really peaceful and kind person, but no matter what I talk about with my mom, it quite quickly seems to devolve into abusive, hateful speech. It triggers such a wide spectrum of negative emotions in me.
Every time after moments like that, I try to reflect on everything I did and said, and I feel intense regret for my reactions. That just doesn’t sound like me. I don’t normally act that way. It feels like it’s not even me.
But on the other hand, I feel like there’s nothing I could say to convert these interactions into pleasant conversations. I don’t want to overblow it or anything, but it genuinely feels like emotional abuse. I just can’t help but stay there, feeling absolutely helpless. It’s really tough in these situations, and it’s also really hard to truly hear the other person when all you can see is hatred and disrespect.
It seems like this kind of relationship forces me to act in a way that’s unacceptable by my principles, and it reinforces that kind of behavior. That actually explains why, after moving to Prague, I’ve become a much more pleasant person.
I don’t really like to speak about other people this way, especially without them knowing. I always try to be clear about how I feel. But no matter how much I’ve tried, I feel like there’s just no one on the other side to receive the message.
Maybe sometimes it’s more beneficial to just give up on certain relationships instead of constantly trying to fix them.
I’ve been trying to treat it as a skill issue on my part. I mean, it’s a pretty reasonable thing to consider, as an infinitely great communicator could probably solve any conflict. The problem is, I’m not infinitely great, and no one is. Still, I think I’m generally good enough at communicating with people and solving problems or conflicts. I’m human, and I just can’t make everything perfect. I just can’t mentally treat every ruined relationship as solely my fault. Sometimes, it makes more sense to just forget about them and move on.
I still feel really weird. I don’t know how to explain it. It doesn’t feel that bad, but it still makes me kind of uncomfortable. In some ways, it reminds me of how frustration feels. But what am I frustrated about?
I think I’m putting way too much meaning into my feelings. Like, maybe sometimes I just have to accept this weird feeling that sometimes happens and move on? No, that’s probably wrong. Not interpreting discomfort as something bad or something that always has to be fixed seems like a reasonable thing to do, but I can’t neglect what’s causing it. Yeah, sometimes it’s good to accept things as they are and focus on what matters more, but I just can’t help but explore what exactly is happening.
I would say it’s my life conditions that frustrate me. My life is unstable, and I don’t feel like the things I love doing are able to change that in the near future. I don’t really want to depend on my parents.
So, I think I’ve figured things out. I’ve implemented the new diary page and landed on a good solution for the mood level. All previous records will stay as they are, with the mood level max being 10, while all new records will have a maximum value of 5. I’m kinda afraid I might lose records or data during this refactoring, but luckily, git exists, so in any case, I’ll be able to recover any lost data.
Other than that, I feel pretty mid. Kinda calm but also empty. There’s also this strong feeling of lacking intimacy. It’s really hard to understand. I might be wrong, but I feel like I forbid myself to be emotionally weak or vulnerable, even though I really need it. It’s not like it’s hard, but rather I don’t see the point in exposing my feelings to those who won’t accept them anyway. Reading that back, it sounds a bit weirdly phrased.
Maybe the point is that I’m just really afraid to be vulnerable, and everything I’m saying is just an attempt to not show my fear? Anyway, I can clearly say I’m like in a fog regarding this question.
Do I have trust issues? I was always convinced that I’m a pretty trusting person, and even have a high level of trust for people I don’t know. But now I’m really questioning if that’s true. I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that I am the way I believe I am. This diary is a huge sign of how far I can go with trusting strangers.
But on the other hand, it just doesn’t really feel that way. It’s just like nobody really knows about the things I write here. Rationally, I understand that everyone can access everything I write here, but emotionally, I just don’t feel it. It still feels like I’m just writing my thoughts down with only me around to reflect on the written text. Don’t get me wrong, writing this diary is one of the greatest ideas I’ve come up with, but the point is that it just can’t be the evidence of my high trust level.
It’s like I can be fully open about everything I feel with any person. Yeah, it’s not easy, but now, considering all the personal improvements I’ve been making, I feel quite confident saying that. I just don’t feel like it helps me. It’s like I’m going to do that for nothing, and because of that, I just lose any motivation. But on the other hand, being vulnerable seems like the best way to find people who will appreciate you the way you are.
It seems reasonable to conclude that this feeling comes from the fact that being emotionally open requires some strength and is generally a draining experience, which also has low chances of yielding the desired outcome. But also, if I want to be able to find people I love and people I can be intimate with, I have no other choice but to be absolutely raw and authentic all the time.
I have quite a lot of thoughts right now, and quite a lot of them contradict each other. I really want to keep digging into it, but it’s really late, and I feel pretty tired right now. The amount of self-reflection I’m doing is already much greater than I could ever expect from myself. I’m really proud of it and feel like I will find all the answers to my questions. I rarely admit it, but I’m quite happy to be me.
I’ve created a new diary page design. It’s going to be one continuous page for all the records. This approach feels pretty reasonable, as it’s closer to how a physical diary is structured, and it’s also much easier to manage that way.
However, it’s not released yet, as I’m considering a few tweaks. The main one is changing the mood scale to a 5-point limit. It just feels more natural that way. But I’m also not sure what to do with the old 10-point mood scale records. Leaving them as is feels a bit confusing, yet converting them to the new 5-point scale also feels wrong.
I’m sure there’s a good solution to this problem - I just need to think about it a bit more.
Ugh, I hate the sun. I got sunburns all over my face, back, and shoulders. It’s not even summer yet, is the sun supposed to be this burning? Ain’t no way I’m using sunscreen every day. I don’t really like tanning so I guess there is no other option.
It was a nice day. I bought a bunch of new clothing today. I usually wear fairly simple outfits, without any prints. However, I decided to try out other styles, so I bought more casual-looking clothes while still trying to keep things simple.
I also got a bunch of new photos today. They’re actually impressively good, so I was happy scrolling through them by the end of the day.
Today I arrived in Budapest. I really enjoyed the trip here. It was a 6-hour bus ride, and I spent most of it listening to music and thinking about everything. For some reason, I had so many interesting thoughts and reasoning chains during this ride. I can recall how profound the experience felt, but unfortunately, I can’t remember everything that was going through my mind. I regret not immediately noting down that stream of thoughts.
However, I do remember that one of the topics was human rationality. I noticed that way too often, I try to simulate and predict others’ behavior based on the assumption that people always act rationally. It just happens automatically. But the truth is that we are usually non-deterministic. Quite often we make irrational decisions and simply ignore any common sense. Keeping that in mind could improve my day-to-day decision-making, and also help me not judge other people so harshly.
Another cool thing from today was my stream. Yeah, even though I’m far from home, I brought everything I needed and streamed from the apartment here. To be absolutely honest, I’m really proud of myself. Yeah, it all wasn’t actually that hard, but it wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d just skipped one week, especially considering that on average I only have a few viewers on my broadcasts. Nevertheless, I kept streaming even in such sub-optimal conditions and proved to myself my dedication to the things I truly value and enjoy.
Yesterday, I pushed my website redesign. It wasn’t quite as polished as I’d hoped, but I realized I could tweak it forever. So, I decided to at least get it to the same level of functionality as before and hit publish. I’m pretty satisfied with the new UI.
Today was all about designing and printing presents for my mom and sis, who I’m meeting tomorrow. I for sure should have done all of that in advance, but it is what it is. There’s still a lot I planned to do before the day ends. What a great time to speedrun everything.
I feel anxious about the future. I know that big life changes can only come after continuous small improvements. But sometimes I just feel like I might not have the time to slowly improve. I’m really afraid of falling behind.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about what the best thing is I can focus on right now. It’s a tough question to answer. There are a lot of things I want to do, things I haven’t finished, and things I potentially need to do. I guess I’ll mostly focus on programming projects, and go from there. But at the same time, I want to grow my media influence and my social connections in life. Actually, that might be even more important. At least, it’s something that fulfills me more than anything else.
So, I got an email from Pure Storage - I was rejected. It’s a bit upsetting, but I’m okay with it. There were a lot of red flags and a lack of transparency during the interview process, so in the end, it might be for the best.
Anyway, yesterday evening I was programming on stream, implementing Apple’s dot matrix display animated wallpaper in a browser. It felt so unbelievably good. After the stream ended, I had to really fight the urge to keep programming it all night and went to bed instead. So, I guess I’ll be programming for most of this today.
Yesterday kinda sucked, but it is what it is. Interestingly, lately I’ve managed not to blame or judge myself for it, and that actually helps a lot. The point isn’t to overlook my mistakes, but rather to accept them as something that just happens and to be more sympathetic towards myself. Now that I write it down, it sounds pretty obvious, but I’d just never thought about it that way. Thinking about myself like I’m another person feels really weird, but it actually helps a lot in understanding myself better. It just makes it so much harder to be biased about the situation, and that kind of objectivity is often important.
I planned to organize all the stuff on my shelf today. Since I started soldering and then 3D printing, the amount of things there has grown drastically. However, I’ve not done that. Instead, I’ve been sleeping the first half of the day and doing nothing the other half. I feel pretty guilty about it, but unfortunately, that guilt just doesn’t help. It provides a momentary push in the right direction but doesn’t help me stay there.
Either way, I feel bad - whether it’s from withdrawal or guilt. But at least with withdrawal, I know that I’m doing the right thing, right? Anyway, it’s difficult to write or even think about something meaningful in such a state. I’ll just go stream and then buy some milk, while also taking one selfie in the process to keep the habit intact.
For the last several days, I’ve been streaming my website rewrite, dedicating just an hour a day to it. As a result, I’ve managed to get a huge portion of it done. I mean, that’s an incredible result considering it was only about 3 hours in total. It’s in moments like these I realize just how powerful small, cumulative improvements can be.
I recall reading Atomic Habits for the first time and being impressed by its seemingly simple yet profound idea: massive changes don’t require massive action. It clicked so well with me back then, but over time, I often forget this principle. I guess that’s just how it is, though. so many things we do automatically, without giving ourselves a moment to fully realize their impact. And that really underscores why it all comes back to habits. Now, I’ve got a strong urge to reread the book.
Yesterday, I wrote about how little I feel I’m able to do right now. But at the end of the day, when I thought about everything I had actually done, it wasn’t that bad. Yeah, I probably could do better, and the feeling that I’m not working at my full efficiency kinda overwhelms me. But the point is, I’m doing good, and I keep going. It’s much easier to take the blame for things I haven’t done than to celebrate what I’ve achieved.
It’s really hard to do anything. Instead of actually getting to work on something, I just mentally prepare to start without ever really starting, or only doing it after a huge period of time. That expectation of a job that needs to be done, without actually doing it, is so draining. Just starting this writeup took me almost half a day.
I planned to record and edit a short video about reaching the 100th day of my daily selfie journey. Considering the day is almost over, I doubt I’ll be able to do that today. That fact is really demotivating, and the worst part is, tomorrow will most likely be exactly the same. I have to at least start something today.
Today was the last stage of the interview. It’s just insane how unnecessarily complicated the hiring process is. Anyway, now I can breathe out and keep working on my projects.
I actually planned to start doing that right after today’s interview. And yet, it feels like I just can’t. Recently, I’ve forbidden myself YouTube and Twitch, as they consume way too much time, and I can’t seem to limit my time on them as they’re way too addictive. As a result, I feel unmotivated and am generally in a bad mood.
I’ve noticed that after restricting access to any kind of easy pleasure source, I quickly start suffering from an overwhelming feeling of loneliness. There’s a high chance that’s the actual source of my struggles with addictions. I just try to numb negative emotions and make it seem like I’m not alone by watching Twitch streams, for instance.
I guess, and really hope, that for the most part, it’s withdrawal, and after going through it, my emotional state will stabilize.
So, yesterday I got a roll of ABS filament for my printer. I tried it for printing keycaps, and oh man, it’s insanely good! I’m confused why so many people underrate this filament. Yeah, it can warp a bit, but it’s honestly not that bad, and I can’t say it’s much worse than PLA. It’s also about 20% lighter than PLA or PETG, since its density is only ~1g/cm³ compared to their ~1.25g/cm³. And the most shocking thing? The surface quality is outstanding. That’s already a remarkable set of traits, but on top of that, it’s pretty tough and has great UV resistance. Now I regret ordering those five rolls of PLA and PETG filament before testing this other popular one.
Writing this record just after the conference with an engineering manager. It was a nice little conversation. I did pretty well considering I have almost no experience with such kind of negotiations. I got answers to a lot of questions which made everything a bit clearer, so it can be considered a win.
I started writing this record about an hour ago, and the words I’ve been putting down are coming out surprisingly well. I want to finish it and publish it as a blog post, but since it’s fairly late, I’ll do that tomorrow. I’m pretty tired of wasting my time on empty pleasures that have nothing substantial behind them, and that’s what triggered me to pour out everything I think about it.
The topic is certainly nothing new - not for me, nor for the world. Nevertheless, I’ve just reached a point where everything makes so much sense, not only from a theoretical but also from an emotional standpoint. As a result, I feel I’ve been able to express myself in a peculiarly appealing way. I think this piece has the potential to make others not only realize but truly feel the problem, to connect with it on a much deeper level. And last but not least, it will be a great opportunity for reflection and reframing the problem for myself, helping me to grow.
I’m about to reach the 100th day of my daily selfie streak. I won’t pretend I didn’t expect to go this far. In fact, I absolutely did, and even more - to continue indefinitely, without any reason to stop.
The longer I live, the more I’m fascinated by the idea of pursuing things that seem out of reach. You always have to be somewhat delusional about your capabilities, so you never stop pushing the boundaries of current possibilities.
After reaching my 100th selfie, I want to create a short clip about it and post it on TikTok/Shorts/Reels. It feels like a fun experiment, and I’m also curious to test my attention-drawing skills. These platforms are usually much more competitive in this regard, as people are used to saturated, quick content. In addition to that, I really wanna play around with writing catchy scripts, practicing speech techniques, and creating simple but cool-looking editing.
I can’t recall exactly what I was taking from the shelf, but because of the mess I have there, some stuff fell onto my table in the process. Among all the things that tumbled down were my Truthear Hexa IEMs.
A long time ago, I had cleaned them using isopropanol, and as a result, the left driver started crackling at high volume levels. I was really upset about that, as I loved their sound so much. I was also kinda confused, as I was sure that IPA couldn’t cause them any harm. Obviously, I left them to dry for a few days, but unfortunately, that crackling sound never went away. I ended up ordering and switching to the more budget-friendly Truthear Gates.
Now, for some reason, I became really curious to test them out once again. And oh gosh… they worked! Not only was there no crackling sound, but after exclusively using budget IEMs for a while, these sounded absolutely astonishing.
I was extremely happy about that. I checked, and a new pair would cost me about $80. It felt almost like I’d received an unexpected gift.
As a result, I spent the whole day listening to music. I went through a huge chunk of my main playlist, after which I started looking for old songs I used to listen to. I’m seriously overflowing with this feeling of nostalgia. Amazing how such apparently small things can gift such a great amount of bright emotions.
Yesterday, I got an email from a recruiter. They told me I passed the first two rounds of the interview. There are two more scheduled for next week. On top of that, there’s also going to be an hour-long online meeting with a manager. He’s based in the US, not in the local office. It feels kinda weird because I was originally told it would be an offline meeting in Prague. We’ll see how it goes.
I’ve also created a schedule, just as I planned. It seems pretty decent:
- 05:30
Wake up, Hydrate, Light Movement / Stretching
- 05:45 - 06:45
Focused Reading / Learning
- 06:45 - 07:00
Breakfast
- 07:00 - 07:45
Journaling & Daily Planning
- 08:00 - 09:00
Gym / Exercise
- 09:30 - 09:45
Shower
- 09:45 - 12:15
Work Block 1 (2.5 hrs) - Focus on most important project/task. Strictly no distractions
- 12:15 - 12:30
Lunch Break (Step away from desk)
- 12:30 - 15:00
Work Block 2 (2.5 hrs) - Continue project or tackle secondary complex task/learning
- 15:00 - 15:30
Break / Walk / Active Rest
- 15:30 - 16:30
Work Block 3 (1 hr) - Emails, planning, organizing, less demanding tasks
- 17:00 - 19:00
Streaming while doing any stuff
- 19:00 - 19:15
Dinner
- 19:15 - 20:30
Spare Time
- 20:30 - 21:00
Wind-Down - Strictly no screens/work. Listening to music, light stretching
- 21:00
Lights Out (Aiming for 8 - 8.5 hours sleep)
Now, the next goal is to actually start following it :)
Since it’s a weekday, I decided to take it a bit easier and not overload myself. Nevertheless, this morning was pretty productive. I also cooked the 3 kilos of turkey I bought yesterday. It’s incredibly delicious!
The only thing left for today is to stream for a few hours. I’m feeling the vibe to solve some programming problems today. I’m actually sticking quite well to the habit of going live every day.
A few days ago, I wrote about creating a strict schedule. That’s actually going to be my main goal for today. I’m really curious to see how it’ll feel and to what degree it will improve my productivity and habit formation.
Also, yesterday I forgot to write about the biggest thing I did - I cut my hair! In the middle of the process, it really seemed like I’d completely messed up the haircut, but in the end, it turned out pretty solid. Yeah, it’s not perfect - cutting your own hair while only being able to judge it through a mirror is difficult, but I’m really getting kinda good at this. I guess that’s pretty reasonable, the more you do, the better you get.
I did it again. Yeah… It’s already late. I was putting off writing in this diary the whole day, and so here we are. I’m honestly kinda tired of it.
Generally, recently, I’ve been giving in to my in-the-moment urges quite often. I’m constantly consuming while producing way too little. It’s such an annoying habit.
Nevertheless, today I drew pixel-art panels for my Twitch channel. I hadn’t done pixel art in a while. The process was really awesome, and the result is on that same level. Creating stuff is an amazing feeling.
I did it once again… I was putting off writing this diary record, and now there are only twenty minutes left before midnight, which means I’ll have to speedrun this one.
Because of how late I fell asleep yesterday (technically today), I woke up around 10 AM. Waking up that late makes the day feel so short, and trying to compensate for it only makes things worse, because then you just wake up later the next day. A vicious cycle.
Most of the day, I’ve been playing around with the 3D printer. My PETG filament was delivered today, so I was testing it out. It’s surprisingly glossy, which I don’t really like. Anyway, I guess it’ll be good for rigidity-first prints. I was also looking for models that would help me manage the mess I have on my shelves. Gridfinity is a great standard, as it has a huge amount of compatible models, however, I don’t really like its static nature. It seems perfect for drawers, but not shelves. Luckily, I found a bunch of Rugged Box designs with Gridfinity slots inside. That’s actually a genius concept. Nevertheless, I don’t really like the designs I found, as there are a lot of subtle things I’d like to be different. Because of that, I’ll probably design my own. It shouldn’t be that hard, and I guess I’ll have a great time doing it.
Ok, so today was great. The main thing that happened was an interview to which I was preparing for these recent days. Obviously, I was not told the verdict immediately, but everything went fine. I also really enjoyed streaming today. Anyway, it’s late already and I would want to chill out a little bit.
Finally getting back to the gym! Last week was so tough that I skipped it for a bit. Probably a bad move, looking back, since hitting the gym actually helps me de-stress so much.
Anyway, I’m also getting back to writing in my diary early in the morning. Woke up at 6:50 today and feel absolutely awesome. I have a job interview tomorrow, so I’ll be preparing heavily for the next couple of days.
I think it’s worth trying to create a highly detailed schedule. Having every minute of my day predetermined might actually make doing my job easier, procrastination harder, and positively impact habit formation. It should also provide a clear sense of what I am using my time for.
I feel so down right now. It’s not like I have a lot to say, either, since not much has really changed. It feels like the tension just finally broke some threshold, and my mood took a deep dive to the bottom.
As I wrote yesterday, my plan was to work offline and dedicate my live broadcasts purely to entertainment. However, nothing went as I expected. I barely managed to do any work because I just didn’t feel like doing it. I was constantly looking for ways to distract myself.
My stream didn’t go well either. I decided to download League of Legends and play it on stream. I used to play it a lot, but I dropped the game completely about two years ago. Now I clearly remember why. It’s not that the game itself is bad, or that the gameplay wasn’t satisfying. There was this constant feeling deep inside me that I was wasting my time. Even though I could push that feeling away for periods, it never really stopped haunting me. And honestly, that feeling is completely justified, as I really do get nothing out of playing it except wasted time.
I know I clearly lack deep relationships right now, but it’s also clear that this isn’t something that gets fixed in a week or even a month. I also understand that I have a lot of responsibilities and countless tasks I have to prioritize. They seem never-ending.
Solving my problems one by one, finding new ways to do things better, and managing not to go crazy no longer feels like a great achievement, but more like the baseline requirement just to survive.
I was expecting my new roommate to arrive today, but it didn’t happen. That kinda threw off my plans, as I’d set aside the first half of the day for him.
Anyway, I ended up spending most of the day streaming and trying to solve some programming problems. Honestly, when I’m interacting with people on stream, I get so caught up in the communication that my brain completely stops focusing on anything else complex. I think I probably need to change how I stream, then. It would be more productive if I didn’t try to tackle important tasks while streaming, just so I don’t get distracted. I’ll still stream every day, but maybe for shorter periods, focusing solely on entertainment or occasionally combining it with less crucial tasks.
This morning I slept in quite a bit. I decided not to fight the urge to fall back asleep after waking up, and grabbed an additional two hours. I feel absolutely great.
My plan for today is to continue practicing concurrency in Go and review data structures and algorithms. I’ll also be streaming the process, like I always do. That’s pretty much how I’ll be spending the next few days, since I’m preparing for a technical interview. Honestly, I feel pretty confident in my skills already and would be okay taking it even today, but it’s never a bad idea to practice, especially since I’ve got the time for it.
Okay, so I’m getting better at killing my bad habits. There’s still a lot of room to optimize the available time during the day, but I already rarely doom-scroll Reddit or YouTube. And when I do, I’ve started to quickly recognize it and immediately correct course.
However, I still struggle with sticking to my good habits. The most obvious one is sleep. For the last week, or perhaps even two, I’ve been falling asleep later than my scheduled time. That’s something I believe is the most worthwhile thing to fix, as it potentially influences my performance and mood during all my other activities.
But it’s not just sleep. This entry is a good example of that. I used to write in my diary first thing in the morning, but now I’m doing it late in the evening.
What’s even worse, yesterday I completely forgot to take my daily selfie and only remembered in the middle of the night. I can clearly recall the realization that I’d lost the streak hitting me, right before that awful feeling of losing everything you’ve been working on for so long. Luckily, after checking the clock, it was 23:59:30. I managed to quickly get up, turn on the light, and snap an awkward, rushed picture. Just seconds before midnight, I managed to save the streak of 82 days.
It was actually a pretty stressful experience. Like, it seems to be just a minor thing, so what’s the reason to be so stressed out about it? But after thinking about the situation, I came to the realization that it’s not really about having a one-day gap in my gallery of daily photos, but rather about losing the proof of being the person I want to be.
All those little challenges and semi-important habits are really just a way to prove to myself that I’m the kind of guy I want to be. To prove to myself that I’m constantly growing and absolutely not okay with falling behind. Basically, it’s part of my identity, the image I hold of myself, my marker on the map towards becoming a better version of myself.
I’m afraid of getting lost. Life is often foggy, and it’s hard to have a clear picture of where you’re heading. I’ve already experienced this, and I know that no matter how lost I am, I’ll always look for the path and eventually find it. Nevertheless, it’s just much easier not to get off that path in the first place, so I don’t have to look for it later.
Today, I spent the morning cleaning my flat. It feels so much more comfortable to be in here now. Having an almost completely clear desk is incredibly satisfying and refreshing.
However, I still haven’t finished cleaning. There’s still a ton of miscellaneous stuff lying in a mess on my shelves. I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t written anything in my diary today, so I decided to quickly fix that.
Yeah, and almost immediately after that, I got an email invite to a job interview, a call from Mom, and the printing I started earlier finally finished. So, this paragraph is being written several hours later. It looks like I’ll have a technical interview in the next few days. I haven’t been programming for a while, so it’s a great time to refresh my skills.
I’m procrastinating really hard right now, barely managing to do basic everyday routines. I also haven’t streamed today, just like yesterday. I planned to stream Flake v2 assembly yesterday, but was so tired after the trip that I decided to put it off until tomorrow. However, today I have absolutely no excuses for why I didn’t go live. I just haven’t felt like streaming today.
Nevertheless, I tweaked OBS configuration and requested access to live streams on YouTube, so tomorrow I’ll try to broadcast on both platforms at the same time.
Yeah, also yesterday I didn’t go to bed as I wrote I would in my diary, and instead, was hanging out until 2 AM. It’s kinda funny how the realization of the amount of undone things easily acts as a good excuse to skip my schedule for the day, and yet, I keep doing anything but completing those tasks. Anyway, today is going to be different. So after posting this entry and selfie, I’ll ignore all the distracting urges and fall asleep. I’m already past the time, but if I can manage to get to sleep earlier than I did yesterday, that’s good enough already.
So I got home today around 3 AM, and fell asleep around 4 AM. It’s late evening now and I don’t feel sleepy at all. Looks like I’ll need to put in a bit of effort to get back to my usual sleep routine.
Still, I absolutely don’t mind, as yesterday was absolutely awesome. We went to so many places and talked about so many things. The walk was so long, my legs were really aching by the end of the day. We also took a bunch of funny selfies. Luckily, all that ‘one selfie a day’ practice over the last few months paid off :)
Anyway, it’s already late. Gonna clean up a little and head to bed.
I’m on my way to Vienna right now. I’m going to visit my old friend Artem, as it’s his birthday today. He mentioned he doesn’t really want anything specific for a gift and wouldn’t mind if I didn’t bring one, or if it was just something small.
My original plan was to gift him a keychain with a small MX key switch - it’s cute and doubles as a great little fidget toy. However, yesterday I got another, maybe better, idea: I could 3D print a pocket chess set for him! “What a great idea,” I thought, and got to work around midday.
Fast forward to midnight, and all I had to show for my efforts were several warped, layer-shifted, and broken pieces of plastic. I’d never tried multicolour printing before, and it turns out there are a lot of caveats. Or perhaps it’s just really easy to mess things up on a machine not specifically designed for it.
Nevertheless, I had absolutely no desire to give up, even though I knew I needed to wake up at 5:30 AM. By half past one this morning, I finally managed to get a working board printed. It’s not perfect - it definitely has some visual defects - but it works, and that felt like the most important thing. At least, that’s what I told myself when I realized I only had about four hours left to get some sleep.
Anyway, I managed to sleep a little bit on the bus, so I feel pretty okay now. I’m watching the scenery go by out the window as we ride through Austria, enjoying the landscapes. They’re quite pretty. I haven’t seen Artem in a while and can’t wait to hang out with him today.
Feels like I don’t have much to say right now. Honestly, I’d rather be sleeping for another couple of hours, but whatever.
Anyway, I got Flake v2 keyboard PCBs yesterday, and the plan is to solder them today. I’m thrilled about it! If everything goes well, I’ll rewrite the documentation and build guide, and then I’ll post the new version. It would also be cool to solder another one during a live stream - I think I might be able to do that this Sunday.
Yeah, that’s all cool and exciting, but I still can’t actually sell them because I haven’t tackled the self-employment paperwork yet (._.). At this point, it feels kind of ridiculous. I just need to start, and I know it’ll get much easier after that. It always works that way. Really need to break this habit of putting things off until the last minute.
Just a quick record since I forgot to write this morning, and it’s already late.
Good news though: I finally figured out how to make production-quality keycaps on my printer! Managed to get it relatively quick and with minimal faults. I’m actually typing on them right now, and they feel absolutely amazing.
On another note, I also almost finished the new design for my website. Can’t wait to start building it. Currently it’s built with Astro, but I’m debating whether to keep it purely static. It would be so much better if I could upload content (like diary entries and photos) directly through the site from my phone. The tricky part is that most of the site’s content is inherently static, so turning it into an SPA seems like an unnecessary complication. Still figuring out the best approach.
Oh, and it was rainy today. I was really missing that fresh smell that comes after the rain.
Yay, it’s an early morning diary record! The last one was like a week ago. Time to fix that. To be honest, it was hard to wake up, especially considering I only slept for six hours. Still, I’m feeling great and can’t wait to start working.
The plan for today is to continue redesigning my website and figure out how to efficiently make 3D-printed keycaps. Yeah, yesterday I discovered I can print keycaps for keyboards! After playing around with slicer settings and printing orientation, they’re turning out to be really good quality. I’d often heard that FDM printers weren’t suitable for such small and detailed prints, but it seems they’re actually good enough. Self-made keycaps also happen to be much cheaper than store-bought ones and grant an incredible level of customization.
I guess that’s a solid plan for today, but if there’s time left, I’ll look into the process of declaring self-employment. As far as I understand, there’s an option to do everything online, so maybe I could even get that done today too.
I’ve started redesigning my website and got back to streaming the work I do. I won’t lie, it still feels like I could be doing much more, but it’s progress, and that’s what matters. I generally tend to have a negative attitude, and that causes more harm than good. Recognizing my progress is crucial for improving.
Yesterday, I ordered AOC Q27B3CF2 monitor for $230 and brought it home today. It’s big - 27 inches, to be exact - with 1440p resolution. I’ve wanted a good monitor for a long time. I spend a huge amount of time on my PC, so improving the experience seems reasonable (that’s the same reason I got into the ergonomic keyboard hobby, btw). Such a huge usable area should drastically increase comfort during programming, as it can fit much more code on screen at once, and thus make the job more enjoyable. Technically, it’s an investment in my working environment meant to increase my efficiency, yet I feel kinda conflicted about the decision. Buying anything that expensive without a stable income just makes me feel bad and doubt if it was even rational.
Recently, I’ve really been thinking about this. The main problem isn’t that I spend money, but that I don’t earn it. Isn’t it? Like, I don’t throw money around, and I think through any purchase thoroughly. Spending less won’t create a positive monthly income, and not having one is the main problem. It’s much better to focus my time on trying to earn money rather than just trying to save it. Yeah, I think that’s a good way to put it.
3D printing is such a cool thing. The more I play with it, the more unique ways I find to practically use it. I’d even say it’s too great. I’m literally doing almost nothing but looking through online models, designing my own, and printing them.
It’s kind of funny, but this hyperfocus means there are much more important things I’m not doing. Perhaps the most important is tackling my unemployment. I still haven’t applied for self-employment, nor have I been programming or searching for open vacancies.
To be honest, I’ve been pretty messy lately. I can’t really pin down why. Yeah, as I mentioned before, it’s kind of a tough period for me, and I often feel really isolated. However, that’s not an excuse. I’m seriously addicted to any kind of short-term pleasure and keep choosing cheap dopamine over meaningful work. It’s really upsetting.
The great thing is I can recognize this. Now, I just need to start working on it. I’ve noticed that setting a specific start time never works for me; I always postpone it and never actually begin what I planned. That’s why I’m going to try and start everything I’ve been putting off immediately, including fixing my sleep schedule. I need to constantly ask myself if what I’m doing at any given moment really matters in the long term.
Fell asleep at 3 AM last night - that’s a record! I was completely absorbed in making the CAD model for that cable winder. It’s seriously addictive. Even though it was a really enjoyable process, it’s absolutely no excuse for staying up that late. Still, I let myself stay awake longer than usual. For the last few days, I’ve been trying not to force myself to do anything, just allowing myself to follow whatever feels right. It seems to be helping, actually. I feel much more refreshed and ready to tackle the important things.
I’ve spent pretty much the whole day playing with the 3D printer. Printed a bunch of fun stuff, figured out most of the slicer settings, and even started designing a custom cable winder. I got a bit carried away, though - it’s already 23:30! Gotta post this before midnight, so I’ll keep it brief. Oh, and completely unrelated, but I also ate almost 2kg of bananas today, which was absolutely amazing.
Yesterday felt okay, like I’m slowly starting to solve problems one by one. My diary has definitely been helping me a lot with that. However, I still feel like my journaling process could be better. For instance, I often want to write things down during the day, not wait until the next morning. Having each day in a separate file also feels suboptimal. And while the mood scale is a cool idea in theory, my mood often jumps around so much during the day that a single rating feels inaccurate and hard to compare meaningfully across days.
These thoughts are feeding into a bigger plan: I want to redesign my website, taking these journaling limitations and a lot more into account. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting this whole thing to go that far. But before I can really dive into the website project, I need to migrate my main setup from Linux to macOS.
I’m doing this reluctantly. I much prefer Linux, especially NixOS which adds incredible reliability and reproducibility to the mix, offering limitless possibilities. But running Linux on closed hardware like a MacBook introduces too many trade-offs at this point. In recent days alone, I’ve run into trouble with essential software like OBS Studio, Orca Slicer, and FreeCAD. Beyond specific apps, there are persistent quirks like broken display scaling, the absence of hardware video decoding/encoding, and no DisplayPort support to connect an external monitor properly.
Ideally, I’d buy a laptop with a much more open approach (like a Framework Laptop), but I’m too broke for that right now. Besides, that would probably come with its own trade-offs, like shorter battery life or a worse color accuracy. Apple Silicon MacBooks are great machines; my only real problem with them is the closed nature of the company and the lock-in ecosystem. But I guess, for me, there just isn’t a better practical option right now.
Yesterday was awful. I felt like I was on the verge of a breakdown. That feeling came on kind of spontaneously and was pretty intense. There are just way too many problems. Loneliness is the biggest one. I had an urge to cry out, but I quickly realized that there aren’t any people around me I would want to do that turn to. I really can’t understand it. It feels like the problem is me, but is it really? Is it okay that I don’t have friends I would want to be with during such a difficult time?
It’s hard for me to like people, but I don’t hate them either. I’m really a peaceful and kind person, and I almost never stay angry or hold a grudge against anyone. I’m just not interested. The thing is, I really want to be, but I’m just not. Why is it that way? Am I doing something wrong? Those are the questions that always follow me.
I wish I could try therapy, but I can’t afford it. Luckily, I live in a time when progress is faster than ever. It was hard keeping all these feelings inside, so I decided to chat with an LLM, specifically Gemini 2.5 Pro. It always feels kind of weird, but it works well enough. I even saw a paper suggesting that people sometimes prefer answers from AI over human therapists, as AI text can apparently seem more empathetic. It helped me feel a bit better and see things a bit clearer, but it’s still tough.
The 3D printer arrived yesterday. Assembly was pretty easy, and just about an hour after bringing it home, I already had the first model printing - the Benchy, since it was already on the USB drive included in the package. I’m actually really impressed by how good the print quality is already. I’m curious how much better it’s gonna get after some detailed calibration.
To be honest, yesterday wasn’t exactly a great day, or at least the first half felt that way. But things turned around in the evening when I went live on Twitch. I didn’t really feel like streaming then, but since I’ve committed to doing it every workday, I pushed myself to do it anyway. And honestly, I’m glad I did. I spent the time playing chess and chatting with other players - it ended up being a really cozy stream that I actually enjoyed.
I’ve noticed I often get this feeling that I understand almost nothing about the things I’m involved in. It seems like no matter how much I learn, I just end up with even more questions. It’s really frustrating because it feels like I’m not making any real progress. Recently, though, my perspective has shifted a little. There’s always gonna be more unknowns than knowns, right? The point isn’t to know everything, but to keep moving forward and keep trying to understand, even when you feel like you don’t know enough.
Last week I ordered a 3D printer. I need it to make enclosures for keyboards I plan on building to sell, though I suspect I’ll find plenty of other interesting ways to use it too. It’s supposed to arrive in a few days and I’m really excited.
I also need to sort out the paperwork to become legally self-employed. Honestly, that’s the first thing I should’ve done. I’ve been putting it off for way too long. Time to take it seriously.
I finally got a good night’s sleep, and life feels so much better! Plus, the weather today is especially nice - it’s going to be 20 degrees around noon. I’ve really missed the warmth. I’m planning to go shopping for some new clothes, especially sportswear since mine is really worn out. Maybe I’ll find something cool for everyday wear too.
I did absolutely nothing today. I don’t feel great, and I also don’t know what to write about. Honestly, I’m kinda tired of complaining about doing nothing, but there really is nothing else to say. At least I hope I can fall asleep on time tonight.
Yesterday, I tried to fall asleep on time but failed, getting only six and a half hours of sleep - which has been common for me recently. My goal is to get at least eight hours, as that’s the amount that makes me feel absolutely amazing throughout the whole day. Surprisingly, though, I woke up today feeling relatively good.
It makes me think about habit formation. I know I can easily build habits just by adjusting my environment, but for some reason, I’ve stopped using this trick. It might be one of the easiest and most efficient ways to form a habit, at least in my experience. Instead, way too often, I foolishly rely solely on my willpower. Then, after inevitably failing to resist, I blame myself for being weak. This pattern often happens almost unconsciously, but recognizing it makes it clear: that’s the bad habit. Acknowledging it is a great first step toward change. True resilience, I suspect, isn’t just about strong willpower, but about setting yourself up so you don’t constantly need to test it - essentially, not provoking yourself in the first place.
I’m doing okay. I still struggle to get everything done that I need to, but at least I’m doing more than before. My current lifestyle often leaves me feeling isolated and lonely, which gets overwhelming at times. Other than that, things aren’t too bad.
I’ve adjusted my daily goals. I’ll be reading for one hour a day instead of two, and also cutting my gym visits down to three days a week from five. I’ve noticed my efficiency dropping lately - dedicating more hours just wasn’t giving me better results. Hopefully, this adjustment will help reduce the chances of burnout too.
So, I just turned what was originally another diary entry into a full blog post: How Crazy Politics Cost Me $1,500. It just kept getting longer, and I figured it was good enough to publish properly! That’s my excuse for keeping this diary record brief today ;).
Otherwise, things are looking up. Feeling really motivated to work and actually managing to get stuff done lately. I’m also planning to hit Twitch more often. Hope this good streak continues.
I fell asleep and woke up on time. That’s one small thing that makes me feel better now. However, I still feel sleepy. Perhaps I need to sleep a bit more than 8 hours. It’s Monday, a perfect time to get back on track and stop wasting time. That’s what I plan to do today.
I got scammed and I feel so stupid. Long story short, this morning I found a girl on a dating app, and we liked each other. There was absolutely nothing suspicious, and she seemed pretty sweet. Really, the conversation felt so natural. I even got several voice messages. However, now I can see that those messages were obviously premade and could be easily integrated into any part of the chat.
We agreed to go to an art exhibition today, so we proceeded to buy tickets. You can probably already see where this was going. Yet, somehow I was completely blind to it. She sent me a link to the exhibition’s site to buy tickets. The site was clearly suspicious, but I managed to completely ignore that. It was only after I paid $50 and didn’t get the tickets that I started to question everything. That’s when I began to realize what had happened. I googled the website and found posts from people describing the exact same story that just happened to me.
I felt, and still feel, so bad about the whole situation. Luckily I didn’t lose much money, but the scheme was so obvious it makes me really upset with myself. I know I can be quite naive sometimes, but seeing people exploit that just depresses me a lot :(. Well, I guess this is just another lesson learned.
I’m running out of time. It’s the first time I’ve put things off this badly; I barely have time to write today’s diary entry before it’s technically tomorrow. I don’t want to skip a day, but I also don’t want to fall asleep that late.
I can’t seem to manage anything - I can’t keep my urges under control or stick to my plan. I feel so undisciplined, and it frustrates me so much.
Lately, I feel like I’m really stagnating, and realizing that makes me extremely uncomfortable. I want to change, but these past few days, it’s just been so hard. I keep falling for that sweet, quick hit of short-term dopamine, only to regret it later, instead of putting effort into something I’ll actually be proud of.
Why am I doing this to myself?
I’m feeling exhausted lately. My sleep schedule has been off for the past few days. When I’m lying in bed at night, I find myself dreading the morning - I just don’t want the next day to arrive. Life feels really bland right now.
Today I didn’t manage to wake up on time and slept through the whole morning. After finally waking up, I grabbed my phone and spent most of the day scrolling through Instagram. I feel so guilty now, and it’s an awful feeling.
After a few hours of this, I started to feel like the day was already ruined. Of course, that’s a destructive conclusion. Such thoughts just keep me stuck in this loop instead of using the rest of the day as I truly want. It’s never too late to change things.
I’m getting a bit lazy lately. Yesterday, before falling asleep, I thought about whether I really had to go to the gym today. My thinking was that three days a week is already enough. There was no need to go there every single workday.
Obviously, that’s wrong. I go there five days a week because it makes me feel better and grants me the momentum to keep going for the whole day. Those thoughts simply sabotage me. It’s not about in-the-moment desire, but about discipline.
Eventually, a lot of things can become boring over time, and the thought of doing them will be highly unattractive. But that’s okay. As long as I see the reason to do them, I should never stop.
I’m getting back to writing in my diary in the morning. I slept for six and a half hours, which doesn’t feel great. Sleep is important and I can’t neglect it. Writing in my diary in the evening increases the risk of going to sleep later than needed. Generally, shifting tasks to the morning makes life much easier. I’ve written about this not long ago, but it’s good to remind myself from time to time.
I’m writing this a bit late, so I’ll be quick. It was a great day. I managed to get a lot done while still relaxing properly. In the morning, right after the gym, my friend Artem suggested renting bicycles and riding around. I haven’t ridden a bicycle for a while now, so I obviously agreed. We had a lot of fun. I’d already forgotten how nice such a little thing as riding a bike could feel.
Today, I finished the PCB and did it live on Twitch. I’ve decided to keep a strict streaming schedule: every day at 4 p.m. for at least two hours. The most interesting thing is that I wasn’t sitting alone. There was one viewer who watched the progress from start to finish. I streamed for 4 hours, and somewhere after the first hour, he wrote in the chat, and we started chatting.
Damn, I really struggle to speak fluently. It’s already a kinda weird experience talking to a camera, and doing it in English makes it even harder. Clearly, I lack the regular practice needed to recall words immediately and not think about grammar. Nevertheless, I greatly enjoyed it. The person who watched and chatted with me told me how he found me: he saw me on the r/ErgoMechKeyboards subreddit, then found my website. There, he’d been reading my public diary, saw the entry where I wrote about deciding to start streaming, and that’s how he found my Twitch. To say I was impressed is to say nothing. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be interested in my diary, let alone join my stream because of it. He said a lot of kind words, and I was really pleased to hear them.
It seems so small, but it still grants wonderful emotions. I understand that this person might just lose interest in what I’m doing and forget about me in just a few days. However, I’m ok with that. I knew I wasn’t going to have many viewers - not even a small, consistent number - for a long time. I’m ready to go live and sit alone, as I basically lose nothing. I can share my work, improve my communication and English skills, have a great time, and get the chance to chat with cool people once in a while. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting it to be such a potentially self-improving hobby. Now I’ve tasted it, and it seems like something I might be ready to do full time. Yeah, I might be a bit delusional, but who knows how it will turn out.
Yesterday, I had a fascinating idea. Every day, I spend a lot of time creating something interesting on my laptop. So, I thought, why wouldn’t I stream everything I do? In fact, that’s a great question. Yeah, streaming is a high-competitive field, and it’s not easy to get into. But the point is that I don’t have to put a lot of effort into it; I just do the same things I always do, but now also stream them on Twitch. I lose nothing and get a chance to grow a community. It couldn’t be better.
I decided not to put off this idea. Right after waking up, I started configuring everything I needed to start streaming. Although it wasn’t perfect, it was good enough for the first time. Somewhere in the evening, I launched my first broadcast. There was nothing crazy. I was just designing the PCB for the keyboard. I was live for a little more than 2 hours, and it was a great experience. Even though it was harder than I originally expected, I liked the process. Also, as a huge bonus, you really can’t get distracted from the job, which drastically increased my productivity.
Getting even a small number of viewers is gonna be tough, but I see no reason not to try. I plan on streaming pretty much every day when I have free time. It’s an exciting, new experience for me, and I believe in the long run it will pay off.
Today was a good day. Since early this morning, I’ve been working on the new keyboard design. I managed to stay productive for pretty much the whole day and, as a result, got a lot done.
I also ate almost nothing today. I’d run out of chicken and apples, so I decided to eat lightly and buy groceries in the evening. All I had were two sandwiches and a few peanuts. Nevertheless, I feel absolutely great—probably even better than usual. I just got back from the supermarket. Unfortunately, there was no chicken breast, so I bought ham instead, along with several apples. It become hard to live without fruits :).
There’s still an intense feeling of loneliness. However, I somehow manage to ignore it. Can’t tell if it’s a good approach, but at least it helps me stay in the moment for periods of time. Actually, I hardly see any viable option to fix that problem - at least, not quickly. However, something tells me that’s okay. I just need to shift my expectations for the long term, and I’ll benefit much greater from that.
I’ve noticed that limiting my time before writing drastically improves both the experience and the result of it. That’s fascinating, since naturally, it seems like it should be the other way around. I have often read and heard that creating artificial deadlines tricks your brain into being more focused on the task at hand. However, I’ve never thought it has such a significant effect.
Recently, I’ve felt a desire to start drawing. I don’t know why this happens, but it just seems so fun to be able to draw. There are so many cool activities in the world. Sometimes I wish I could try everything. Actually, I believe it’s not that difficult to achieve that. All I need is to listen to myself and not be afraid of the unexplored.
I’m lonely. I have this feeling that there’s no one among the people I know who could truly make me feel better. I realize that it’s okay, and this has happened to me many times before. Even though knowing that makes it a bit easier to handle, it still feels awful.
Actually, I’m not wrong about the lack of close people in my life. Generally, I feel like I’m losing ground in both the quality and quantity of my relationships. Honestly, that’s kinda weird to me, because it turns out I am a good person - better than I ever thought. I’m always kind to people, I stay calm in conflicts, I try to be as sincere as I can, and I do not stop looking for ways to become even better. It often seems like I’m much more willing to support and improve relationships than the other person involved. I can’t tell if it’s just bad luck or if I’m doing something wrong.
Also, I’m not doing great regarding my lifestyle. For hours, I scroll Instagram and YouTube, play chess, read Reddit, and do other meaningless things. I’ve written about this before, but it’s much harder to stay on the right path when you feel down. What’s even worse, it’s both the cause and the result of me feeling so devastated.
Clearly, it’s not all negative. I keep growing in every aspect of my life. I’ve noticed how much I take for granted all the improvements I’ve made as a person, which weren’t even there not long ago. Sometimes focusing on the positive aspects is really hard. It seems like the results are disproportionate to the amount of effort I put into getting them. Perhaps I’m just way too impatient.
Yesterday Deepseek V3 0324 and Gemini 2.5 Pro were released. It’s amazing how much better LLMs are getting, seemingly week by week. I’ve been using them much more extensively in all sorts of my everyday routines, and they already provide huge benefits. It’s interesting to think about how far this progress acceleration will go. It’s really a great time to live in.
There is still this feeling that I should do more than I’m currently doing. It’s often overwhelming, but I guess it has to be this way. I like making progress in all aspects of my life, and the only way to achieve that is to keep growing. Either way, it’s mentally hard, yet doing nothing also provides absolutely no results, so I’ll deal with this slight feeling of being overwhelmed.
Don’t feel great. I’ve wasted a lot of time today. I hate that feeling. Why can’t it emerge right before I’m about to do something stupid I’ll regret later? That would be a fantastic feature.
At least I slept really good this morning. It was so good, in fact, that I have absolutely no desire to skip bedtime tonight - and because of that, I’ll keep this entry short.
Yeah, that’s short enough.
I will probably stay in Prague for a while. I still want to move to another country, but it seems like now is not a great time to do that. Comparing all the pros and cons, I concluded that there are many more trade-offs than I originally expected. I won’t lie, I’m a bit upset about that, but there are also things that make me feel better about it. I can try to fully invest myself in creating a custom keyboard shop, as I don’t have to worry that I’ll have to move and have a big setback. I’m actually pretty thrilled about this idea. I need to get all the documents for it done ASAP, and give it a try.
Also, I’ve decided to remove titles and summaries from diary entries. They are just way too overwhelming considering I’m writing an entry per day. I have an idea for a new diary page design, in the form of a calendar. The number of entries is accumulating so fast, having them in one huge scrolling feed seems increasingly unreasonable. All new entries will be written without titles, while older ones will preserve them in the markdown files, but they will not be shown on the website.
I have a lot of stuff to do, but most of the time I procrastinate instead of doing it. That’s a problem, but I’m working on it every day, so it will eventually be solved. Reminding myself how fulfilling those deep and meaningful activities are helps a lot in getting back to them. Also, I’ve noticed that forcing myself to do something always leads to less effectiveness and more frustration. The great approach is to not force yourself to do something useful, but rather forbid useless activities. That way you only deal with one problem - an urge to do something meaningless, rather than also trying to stay focused on something you have to do. Sooner or later, the brain becomes bored and suddenly, even difficult activities seem much more appealing.
I’ve noticed that lately I’ve been writing much less in this diary. I’ve been leaving out so many things I’m thinking and worrying about, sometimes just because I’m afraid of what others might think if they read it. Which is ironic, because I started a public diary to break free from that fear in the first place. I want to be raw, no matter what others say or think.
But I’m still unsure what can I share publicly, and what shouldn’t I? “Share anything that doesn’t raise safety concerns” seems like an obvious answer. Yet when I really think about it, almost any personal information can be weaponized - it’s just a matter of degree. I don’t feel unsafe, but it still seems right to stay cautious even without an immediate threat. For now, I’m okay publishing nearly everything about myself, but not details involving people I know without their agreement. Yeah, this feels like a solid middle ground.
I suddenly felt like revisiting all the music I once listened to. It’s pretty cool. I often delete tracks after playing them on repeat for way too long. Hearing them again after so long feels like coming home.
Yesterday around midday, I opened Instagram to upload my daily photo as usual. When I launched the app, I noticed a message from someone I didn’t recognize. It was a girl asking if we could get to know each other. We’ve been chatting for a while now, and she seems to be quite a kind and funny person. From time to time, I’m lucky to run into good people.
Legacy meta data
Title: "Past And Future"
Summary: "I suddenly felt like revisiting all the music I once listened to"
Finally, I’m able to be productive again. I’ve been working on the LLM tool for chatting and handling system tasks via terminal. Yesterday, I managed to accomplish a lot - and it felt truly rewarding.
I’ve kept the 4:30 a.m. wake-up time, and I’m already getting used to it. Going to bed at 8:00 p.m. still feels unusual, but the progress is undeniable. Even better, I’ve had far fewer spontaneous urges to seek distractions throughout the day. I’m pretty satisfied with how everything’s going.
Legacy meta data
Title: "Back on The Rails"
Summary: "Finally, I'm able to be productive again"
Sleeping for only five hours has been a terrible choice. Yesterday evening, I was in a sour mood, so I did everything I could to avoid going to bed. Needless to say, it wasn’t worth it. I woke up about two hours ago and still feel exhausted, though hopefully a workout will improve the situation.
Legacy meta data
Title: "It's Insufficient"
Summary: "Sleeping for only 5 hours was a bad idea"
I’m full of energy to build things and feel like I can get a lot done today. I’m kinda thrilled. That’s interesting considering I only slept seven hours instead of my usual eight. Lately, I’ve been thinking about moving abroad and whether it’s a reasonable step right now. After comparing all the options, Canada seems like the only viable choice. AFAIK, it’s not easy to get there, but in the long run, it could be a great move. Still, I need to think about it more.
Legacy meta data
Title: "Move or Not"
Summary: "Feel like I can get a lot of done today"
Today I woke up at 4:30. It’s a great feeling. By the time I go to the gym, I have two hours for reading, an hour for writing in my journal, and breakfast. I’ll return home around 9:00-:30 a.m., leaving just one daily task: taking a selfie. By 10:00 a.m., when the day barely begins, most of my routine will already be done, freeing up time for other activities. Optimizing my schedule for productivity is wildly addictive.
Where does this urge to automate everything come from? It feels innate, almost like a core part of human nature. Maybe that’s why our species evolved so rapidly. We discovered a faster way to progress, bypassing slow genetic adaptations that take millennia. Instead, we arm ourselves with time-efficient tools we create ourselves - tools we can use to build newer, better versions of themselves, accelerating progress endlessly.
Legacy meta data
Title: "Automate And Optimize"
Summary: "Today I woke up at 4:30"
It’s Monday. I feel well enough. Still not quite sure what to do. Like, in general - I need money to live. The simplest option is to find a job. However, beyond the money, I’d also want it to provide valuable experience, which is tricky to achieve. Additionally, I’m not fluent in Czech, and that drastically reduces my chances of finding such work in Prague. Hopefully, I’ll move to Ireland in six months, which will simplify things. But can I allow myself to just spend time before moving - doing what I like without earning any income? Probably.
Anyway, working a job you don’t like, one that offers nothing more than money, feels absolutely wrong. With such limited choices, it’s hard to find anything better. Work without fulfillment quickly becomes overwhelming, and the results end up being far worse, too.
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Title: "Live or Survive"
Summary: "Your job must fulfill you"
I watched the entire Matrix trilogy. It was pretty fun. Sometimes I felt kinda sad that I couldn’t share this fun with someone, but it did not stop me from enjoying the moment. Most of the rest of the time, I’ve been thinking about everything - though I don’t know how to describe it. The more I try to put it into words, the less satisfied I feel with the result. I’ve been changing so much recently, in ways I could not have seen coming. I’ve begun to notice flaws and opportunities for improvement in my way of reasoning. I feel good, but somewhat unreal, like I’m moving forward, but it’s happening by itself. I am putting effort into making it happen - but that’s not the point. It feels like I’m just wired to do this. The sensation is oddly pleasurable, a belief that no matter what, I’ll never stop growing.
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Title: "Wired That Way"
Summary: "I'm moving forward but it happens by itself"
After a long time, I’ve written a new blog post: Embrace The Range. In it, I discuss the book I just finished and the thoughts that emerged while reading it. Though concise, the post feels pretty polished, covers an interesting topic, so I’m pleased with how it turned out. I especially enjoyed the process of creating the illustration for it. What a great start to a great day!
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Title: "Always Create"
Summary: "A great start for a great day"
I feel kinda empty. Today wasn’t the best day. Pretty much the whole day, I tried to stop procrastinating. Only by evening did I make some progress and started doing a few minor tasks. It’s really hard to focus on anything useful. On the other hand, I can no longer tell what activities even count as useful for me right now. Maybe I should ease the pressure I’m putting on myself. Sometimes it seems like I know what I should do - and yet I still doubt myself and just… don’t. It’s so weird. At what point will I find the answers? Do they even exist? Maybe I just need a bit more time. But do I have that time? I have no idea, and the overwhelming sense that I’m running out of it never leaves me.
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Title: "It's weird"
Summary: "At what point I'll find the answers?"
Yesterday evening, I finished all my work and decided to play around with LLMs. I prompted Gemini to act as a “self-improvement coach” and gave it a try. To say I was impressed would be an understatement. I didn’t even realize just how quickly three hours had flown by. The insights in our dialogue were surprisingly profound. Gemini’s tone felt warm and almost genuine - a striking contrast to the AI interaction I was used to. It’s clear this technology holds immense potential. I’d always viewed AI as a tool for narrow tasks, but now I see it’s better approached as a broadly applicable multi-tool. This mindset unlocks creativity by pulling the mind out of rigid patterns, opening the way for truly unique solutions.
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Title: "Be Brought"
Summary: "Open minds come up with more unique solutions"
So far, I’m doing great. It’s still hard to stay productive for long periods of time; however, I’m managing to avoid giving in to my urges without too much effort. Yesterday, I came up with a cool addition to my diary: every day, I’ll rate my mood on a scale from 1 to 10. Over time, this data will accumulate, letting me build statistics and uncover hidden correlations or patterns. How cool is that? From now on, every entry will include a colorful mood indicator to show my mindset at the time of writing.
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Title: "Track Me"
Summary: "I'll rate my state of mind on a scale of 10 everyday"
It happened again. I put off writing in my diary all day, only to speedrun it in the evening. Honestly, I’m way too forgiving with myself. I ignored the “opt-out” rule I set on Sunday, and as a result, I lost a big chunk of today’s time. I’m really tired of this lifestyle. Tomorrow will be different, I promise.
Yesterday, I shipped another keyboard, this time to California. It’s such a joy to realize people use and enjoy something you’ve created. I’ll be brave enough to say that it’s probably one of the greatest feelings ever. It gives you a really deep sense of purpose and the motivation to keep going.
The day before yesterday, I had a fascinating idea. I combined my entire diary into one file and fed it to several LLMs. I asked them to analyze it deeply and give me some ideas, patterns, blind spots, tips, and so on. Honestly, I was shocked by the results. I wasn’t expecting to get so many insights. I tried it with Deepseek R1 and Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. Both performed impressively, but Gemini’s response felt warmer and had a certain “humanity” to it, to the point where I even felt a bit uncomfortable. It’s just so weird to observe such good understanding and support, to the degree that it seems like the person knows me better than I do, and then remembering that the write-up was generated by a big word prediction algorithm. What an insane time we’re living in.
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Title: "The Diary That Talked Back"
Summary: "I fed my diary to an AI and got way more than I bargained for"
Currently it is 21:40. I’m supposed to be asleep right now, however I’m not. I’m writing this diary while being on a call with my best friend Alice. I asked how she wanted me to write her name, Alice or Alisa, but she let me choose myself. In real time she can see everything I write and she continuously reads it out loud. It is an unusual experience to say the least. We’ve been thinking about the previous sentence for around 2 minutes. Kinda funny considering it’s only 9 words. I’m really glad to be on the call with her and feel absolutely no guilt for skipping my regular bedtime.
Quite rarely do I have an opportunity to have such deep conversations. It allows me to challenge my current worldview, which is a great way to rapidly get better. And at the same time, I just have a great time which I’m lucky to share with such a great person.
And now, I kinda struggle to write anything further. It was a mistake to leave the diary for the late evening. Feel kinda uncomfortable as Alice has to sit watching me doing this entry. It was really fun, but I guess it’s enough for today. I had a lot of other thoughts I planned to write into the diary today but I guess, I’ll leave them for tomorrow.
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Title: "She's Watching"
Summary: "Just a great evening with a great friend"
The weekend has almost ended. I did pretty much nothing. I have been playing a lot of chess, watching videos, reading Reddit, anything but useful things. It’s so frustrating. For some reason I just can’t balance it. The moment I start doing some meaningless routine, it’s so hard to switch to a more demanding task later. I have no idea how other people do that. No way I am the only one who just can’t do it. Seems like the only option is to fully opt out of all the activities that provide nothing more than just pleasure.
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Title: "Opt Out"
Summary: "Seems to be the only option"
This morning I finished reading Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. It’s a thought-provoking book that has dramatically shifted my worldview. I’ve learned a great deal about environmental issues and discovered new ways of reasoning about large-scale problems.
I’ve also just begun reading Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, which seems to be exactly what I want and need. The book’s premise about the value of broad knowledge across multiple domains already resonates with me. So far it looks promising, and nicely complements the ideas I recently had.
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Title: "Some Reading"
Summary: "Luckily, I managed to find great books to read"
Yesterday was such a funny day. In the morning I ran out of meat, so I decided to quickly fix that. I ate three peanut butter sandwiches and went to the supermarket. I visited every single one in my region and found exactly zero chicken fillets. At this point I was forced to take a ride to the center. “No way, after an hour of rambling I finally managed to buy 3kg of chicken fillets,” I thought on my way home.
On arriving I went straight to cooking. Recently I’ve tried to grind the meat instead of chopping it. It takes much less time and additionally meat doesn’t get stuck in the teeth, which is a huge benefit. So… I began grinding the meat in my blender. Somewhere in the middle of the process the least expected thing happened. My blender fired! Its handle sparkled for a moment accompanied by a zap sound. Almost immediately, smoke started coming out of it. It was absolutely cooked. Apparently, I’d been grinding for way too long :)
Although I was kinda upset, nothing bad happened. I just threw it away and proceeded with cooking. I guess it will be a lesson for me 0_o
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Title: "It's So Cooked"
Summary: "A wild hunt for chicken fillets with a plot twist"
I care too much about completely worthless stuff. Because of that, I spend most of my time worrying about things that do not matter instead of doing what I truly want. Classic me! Making the same mistake all over again. Putting other people’s goals over my own is objectively stupid, but somehow it just happens automatically. Childhood conditioning? Probably. At least I now recognize this nonsense - that’s progress, right?
The weather recently has been unusually amazing. Spring has only just begun but we’re already hitting ~15°C during the day. The sun’s out here doing overtime - rising earlier, shining like it’s getting performance bonuses, and actually radiating warmth. Didn’t realize my soul needed UV rays this badly. At this point, staying indoors feels like committing daylight robbery against myself. Time to go touch some grass.
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Title: "Absolute Crime"
Summary: "How can I not go out under such conditions?"
Today is a much better day. Interestingly enough, I have not done anything for it. I dedicated more time to programming my personal project, but it is definitely not the reason. My mood became better just by itself. That’s so weird. Like, what the actual fuck is my brain doing? Nevertheless, I’ll figure out how it all works, just gimme some time.
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Title: "Suddenly, I'm Better"
Summary: "LiKe, wHaT?"
I won’t lie - I can’t fucking describe how awful this feels. I find absolutely no fulfillment in anything I do. Even basic tasks are nightmares. My only real activity? Beating myself up for doing nothing. The guilt eats me alive all the time, yet it seems I can’t do a damn thing about it.
Lately, writing in this diary takes war-level effort. My thoughts won’t stream into text anymore. They’re a tangled mess. Converting them into anything coherent feels simply unfeasible. I literally stare at the screen for five minutes per sentence, feeling extreme strain, trying to somehow shove my emotions into words.
This state? No name for it. Can’t work. Can’t rest. Can’t even breathe right. I’m trying my best, yet I know I can do better. I’ve become more self-aware, but what’s the point? My emotions still flatline.
I have this huge urge to just cry to someone about how everything’s broken, how I’m drowning in fear and disappointment, how I keep failing every tiny expectation, and how miserable I often feel. Then I think: It’s not that bad. You’ve survived worse. But that’s the trap, isn’t it? I always manage to hit the deeper bottoms.
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Title: "New Records"
Summary: "Every time I think I've hit bottom, the floor drops again"
So… yet another day. I feel pretty good today. I haven’t been working on personal projects for a while now. I guess it’s time to change that. I have several software and hardware project ideas on my mind. I’m excited to start implementing any of them, but recently, the question of monetization has been on my mind more often. Working on my ideas and earning money from them is a dream come true. However, many of my ideas are hard to monetize, and yet, I have to find a way to pay the bills. Being dependent on money is really limiting. Nevertheless, I think I’m pretty close to solving it. I just need to keep going.
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Title: "I Have Ideas"
Summary: "But how to monetize them?"
I soldered a keyboard yesterday. I had already forgotten how much fun it is. Creating things that have not existed before is a wonderful feeling. I will send it to the US tomorrow. I hope the recipient will enjoy using it as much as I did creating it.
Also, for some reason, music is much more enjoyable lately. For a moment, it makes me feel like I am in a different world. Sometimes I like to just sit and dissolve in it for hours. It feels amazing.
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Title: "Create and Consume"
Summary: "Creating things and watching others create"
I feel lonely most of the time. I just don’t know what to do with that. Not being fluent in Czech makes the problem even harder to solve. I wonder if it will become better when I move to an English-speaking country. It’s difficult to ignore the issue either. It annoys me all the time and does not allow me to fully focus on other problems.
Feeling down is destructive. I’ve noticed that when I’m overwhelmed, I’m more likely to make decisions I regret later. It sucks.
I don’t know why but there is a hope that someone will just come and rescue me. They say that you’ll never be happy with someone if you can’t be happy by yourself. But what am I missing? Why do I always feel lonely? This is the toughest puzzle I’ve had so far.
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Title: "It Sucks"
Summary: "Always alone, even when I'm not"
Banana milkshakes are so damn good. I’ve been making them every morning for a while already and I really love them. It’s Friday already. Can’t wait to solder several keyboards tomorrow and send them to customers. One problem has occurred recently. Reading for 2 hours a day is not hard; however, finding non-fiction books you would like to read for long sessions is much harder. Perhaps I have to dedicate several days to make a big list of books that I’ll potentially like reading. Also I’ve been putting off the idea of creating a book reading platform. Feel really guilty for that. Have to make at least some prototype during this weekend.
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Title: "Happy Friday"
Summary: "Short friday report"
So, another day has passed. It was ok. My mood is a bit down but nothing serious, it could be much worse. I’m not sure if it’s true, but it seems like there is a pattern. My emotional state regularly rises and falls during some period of time (like a week or two). I’m curious if that’s just me or is it a part of human nature. Even if it’s not, I guess it’s ok - no one is perfect. I would like to keep it short for today. I’ll go take a daily selfie and go to sleep.
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Title: "Rollercoaster"
Summary: "Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad"
I’ve been writing records every day for more than 4 weeks now. Honestly, I’m impressed how long I managed to keep going. This diary was a really great idea. It indeed helps me understand my thoughts and feelings, just like I thought it would. However lately I’ve noticed that it is no longer as effective as it was at the beginning. The input-output ratio seems to decrease, so I began to think if I should continue writing diary.
Nevertheless, whatever I choose, I enjoy the process of writing and will definitely continue to write every time I have something interesting on my mind. I won’t try to write some big blog posts with ideas that will be valuable for readers. Another cool idea I have is to make videos based on those posts. That way I could try new field for me, while expanding the reach of my thoughts. We will see how it goes.
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Title: "Will I Stop My Diary?"
Summary: "Maybe it's time to move to replace it with something else"
That was kind of a tough day, although I was not crazy overloaded, I did not manage to do everything in the time. That’s a little upsetting, but not the end of the world. Will try to do better tomorrow. For now it’s already late and I still did not finish my daily reading goal nor posted the daily selfie. So, will have to do all of that right now. Like they say, better late than never.
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Title: "Not Perfect"
Summary: "But I'll always try to get closer"
Yay, it’s Monday! Perfect day to get a lot of stuff done. I’m fully charged with energy and ready to work all day long. Also can’t wait to hit the gym. Two days without it feel like an eternity. Can’t wait to begin the day.
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Title: "Ready to Work"
Summary: "A great start to a great day"
HA! Here is another diary record. Honestly, I don’t feel like I have a lot to say. It was a great day. I dealt with a lot of problems. One thing I can highlight is cleaning my NixOS configuration. Having everything in one file was no longer usable. Also, I used this as an opportunity to share my dotfiles on r/unixporn, where it was warmly received.
I like sharing what I’ve done. I like to hear what others think about things. I like to talk about my thoughts. I like to help solve problems. I like people. It’s better to do more of such things considering how much pleasure and opportunities they gift. Social interactions are a great way to significantly improve yourself in almost every possible way.
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Title: "Cleaning Up and Reaching Out"
Summary: "Refining my setup, and connecting with others"
There isn’t a single reason to be pessimistic in any situation. It’s a great time to learn to be unconditionally optimistic. And actually, it’s not even that hard. The only thing that makes it hard is telling yourself it’s hard. Just believe you can do anything, and that’s it. It’s clear that pure optimism alone can lead to big positive changes in how you act.
Recently, I came to the conclusion that increasing general intelligence is a great solution to almost any complex problem. In fact, you often can’t solve a problem because you aren’t smart enough in the first place. And when I say general intelligence, I literally mean everything. Having good reasoning skills, knowing various facts, being able to quickly understand situations, and not acting on emotions - all of this is part of intelligence. I could pretend that the way to achieve it is complex and requires a lot of effort, like I often do. But there are no secret tricks, just do what is generally known to be good for you: Read books, talk to people, think about complex topics, don’t waste your time on meaningless activities, and spend your free time actively.
I love reading books. It’s played a huge role in making me who I am today. I have a habit of reading every day for at least 30 minutes. This morning I thought, why not increase my daily goal, given how much I benefit and enjoy books? I set a new goal of 2 hours of reading per day. The idea of becoming better four times faster sounds insanely cool. Today was the first day, and even though I was a bit afraid, but in fact, it was an absolutely amazing experience. The sense of purpose adds additional pleasure to the process. It turns out everything becomes much easier the moment you stop complaining and looking for reasons why you can’t do it.
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Title: "Being Successful Is Actually Easy"
Summary: "You are the only one who stops you"
The future is dim, yet it seems to be extremely close. I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately, as it’s hard not to do so. I may be wrong, but it seems like we’re just a few steps away from a complete change in the world. Pretty much every day, we get huge news about how smart the new AI is and how far technological progress is going. It’s truly fascinating - I can’t be glad enough to live in such a fantastic time.
However, this rapid development makes me question even more where I belong in this future. My anxiety is growing fast, and trying to analyze how all these changes will impact our lives is harder than ever.
Where should I invest all my time in the long run? What should I do so I won’t be left on the sidelines of progress? I guess the optimal choice is to increase erudition and overall intelligence. At that point, I doubt there’s any reason to focus too deeply on narrow skills. Flexibility and reasoning have always been important, and they’ll probably be even more valuable in the future. Not giving up and continuing to improve as a human being rather than an expert in some field might actually be the best way to go.
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Title: "Where Is My Place?"
Summary: "We can't ignore the pace of progress"
I have no desire to do anything. I feel like there is no point in anything I do. Clearly, this is a temporary feeling that will probably go away soon. Nevertheless, it is extremely frustrating. The fact that I know that the feeling is deceptive, or that it will fade with time, doesn’t make me feel any better. Maybe that’s me who makes it worse by constantly focusing on the problems? Probably, but I wish I knew how to fix that.
Recently, I’ve noticed that I have become more anxious. The world is changing so rapidly, and time is passing so quickly. I’m afraid of falling behind and not being able to catch up later. Every time I’m about to do something useful, I just get paralyzed, leaving me with no power to move forward.
I’m deeply unhappy with how everything is going, even though I try to pretend that I’m doing well. Obviously, everything is far from bad. There is no reason for me to feel so down, yet I just can’t help myself. Every time it seems like I’m starting to understand something, that understanding is soon shattered by the realization of how much I still don’t know. It’s almost as if I can never be sure about anything. It gets way to overwhelming.
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Title: "life is overwhelmingly complex"
Summary: "I feel like there is no point in anything I do"
I don’t feel well. I’ve been making a lot of mistakes, or perhaps, I’ve become more aware of the mistakes I make, which is progress. However, I still haven’t gotten out of the habit of occasionally recalling uncomfortable and embarrassing experiences. When this happens, it hurts so much that I can’t think about anything but the pain. It paralyzes me at the most inconvenient moments. I hate it. Fixing these kinds of problems is insanely difficult. They are so obscure and complex that I often struggle just to come up with a plan of action to solve them. Yet, these are the most important problems to address as they are the basis of our emotions and dictate our behavior. Hopefully I’ll find the answers soon.
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Title: "It Hurts"
Summary: "If only I knew how to cure it"
Perfection is unachievable, yet you can always move towards it. Quite often I get stuck chasing perfection and forget that the actual goal is to get things done. Striving for the best is good, but it shouldn’t be a barrier to completing the project. By jumping ahead and trying to get the most polished result possible on the first try, you risk wasting your time on a possibly weak idea. The number one priority is to get the idea going as soon as possible. That way you’ll make sure you’ve worked through all aspects and gathered feedback that will let you know if your vision is any good. Once you see the big picture and understand the whole process, it will be much easier to refine the product.
This is nothing new or extraordinary, and yet I always forget to follow these principles. Not everything matters. In fact, most things don’t matter, and you should make sure you spend your time on those that do matter. With all the options we have in today’s oversaturated world, it’s pretty easy to lose track of what is truly worth your time and effort. However, the same environment allows anyone who is not afraid of difficulties to achieve unimaginable results.
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Title: "Worse Is Better"
Summary: "Don't let perfection be an obstacle"
It’s noticeable how I improve every day, yet I still wish I were doing more. I’m really enjoying the gym lately. About two months ago, I had the idea to try working out at a gym instead of at home. I wasn’t expecting it to be such a pleasant experience, I’d even call it addictive. Currently, I only work out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but I’m thinking I should start going every day. Recently, it’s become clear that on days when I don’t visit the gym in the morning, I’m far less productive, even though there’s theoretically more time for work.
Paradoxically, doing more things grants more time and the possibility to do even more things. Sometimes I wonder if we need rest as much as everyone says we do. Most of the time, I feel absolutely no deprivation after long periods of deep work. However, the moment of contrast getting into work right after resting feels like torture. It seems like splitting time into chunks of work and rest is actually more harmful than helpful. At least for me, a better approach is to look for activities that fulfill you, don’t tire you, and allow to be productive at the same time. There’s no point in doing what you don’t like, whatsoever.
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Title: "Work-Life Balance Is a Myth"
Summary: "You don't have to choose one if you can have both"
Time flies way too fast. I’m always short on time. Obviously, the main cause is that I don’t manage it properly. Each day I waste at least 2 hours that I could spend producing something valuable. That’s a hell of a lot lost, and I can’t afford it. Being productive all the time is just a regular habit, like everything else. I have to embrace it and intensively keep forming that habit. I need to get used to constantly ask myself if what I’m doing throughout the day really matters.
The world is rapidly changing, and there is no time to hesitate. I want to always be in the front line, and to achieve that, I have to adapt quickly. There is no point in investing time in narrow skills anymore. Considering the progress that LLMs have made in recent years, all the hard skills will be automated soon enough. Now, being able to see the wider picture is much more important. In the near future, general intelligence paired with fast adaptation will probably be the most crucial factors for personal success. And even if I’m wrong, improving those skills will pay off anyway, as they are pretty valuable even in today’s world.
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Title: "Gimme All The Time"
Summary: "Hurry up or risk being left behind"
It’s 02:30 in the morning. I’ll have no time to write anything in the diary during the day, so now is the perfect time. In just about an hour, I have a bus to Katowice. My friends, Dima and Alisa, invited me to spend the day together. I never decline opportunities to hang out with friends I rarely see. They told me we are going to an aquapark, so I’m pretty excited. I’m happy to have such amazing friends.
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Title: "Today is Aquapark Day"
Summary: "I won't be able to write anything during the day, so here it goes."
I’m going to drop out of university by the end of the academic year. There are a lot of problems with my uni, but the main one is that it just doesn’t give me anything valuable. I’m curious if it is a problem particularly with CTU. Will different universities give me a better experience? I have no idea, but I see no reason not to try.
I believe universities do not have something you can’t learn yourself. We are living in such a fascinating time, when anyone can learn anything, all they need is a strong desire. However, new knowledge isn’t the reason I’m not giving up on the university idea, the environment is. It seems like a natural place to find diverse, valuable, and fulfilling relationships. Yet it didn’t happen to me at CTU, so I could be wrong.
It is not my priority, but sooner or later I would like to try other universities and see if they are better. It would probably also be fun to choose a domain unrelated to information technology, as I’m not sure if I want to spend my time going through things I already know.
Anyway, I’m convinced most of the world overrates university degrees. There is no secret knowledge or experience to them. Nevertheless, I’m very drawn to the fairytale of student life, and it feels wrong to give up on it so easily.
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Title: "Dropping Out of University"
Summary: "Sometimes you have to take a step back"
I need more. There is always more to gain, so why should I stop? This idea never stops pursuing me. It’s like an endless thirst for progress eating me up from the inside out. The guilt I feel in periods of stagnation is probably the worst feeling I’ve ever had.
I’m addicted to challenges. It just feels so wrong to choose the most explored path. My parents have criticized me for going against the grain and always choosing what I want instead of what others want from me. I’ve been told that only a fool would choose to make life harder when they can avoid it. It took me a long time to learn that the majority can often be wrong. Of all the population in the world, there is no one you can trust more than yourself.
I wish there were more ambitious people who pursue their dreams despite all the odds - the ones who make the world move. No matter how hard it is, you always need to convince yourself that you can make anything come true. Otherwise, you are simply doomed to become part of the bland majority.
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Title: "Go Change The World"
Summary: "Everyone can achieve anything, and you are no exception"
I’ll be quick. Another day has passed. My mood is not the best, but not the worst either. Feel kinda tired of this routine life, but I’m not sure how to make it brighter. I feel guilty spending my time resting, especially considering I have so much to do. My socialization level is still low, but I’m working on that.
Generally, my thoughts are clear and my emotions are stable. I’m doing a great job developing useful habits and getting rid of harmful ones. However, I feel that I could do better in that regard. I have to.
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Title: "Quick Report"
Summary: "One more day - one more record"
I need a project. Something that I can potentially grow into a startup, or at least learn something from.
Recently, I came up with an interesting idea. The plan is to build a social platform for book reading. It will allow users to easily discover what they would like to read, find out what other people are currently into, and see what authors think about other books. The platform will promote small writers and prioritize quality content. Additionally, I would like to integrate a cross-platform reader and be able to host popular books and articles right on the website, all of which will be available to read via a monthly subscription.
Seems like a potentially good concept. It could fill a nice niche, as not a lot of people are reading these days, and it has a chance to turn into a bigger project, considering the growing trend of conscious content consumption and self-improvement. Also, it is a fully digital project (unlike my previous one), which means it will be much easier for people to try it, making it easier to gain public awareness.
And last but not least, I would personally want to use such an app. I love reading, and recently have been spending a lot of time with it, but the user experience is far behind compared to other popular forms of content. Making it easier and more enjoyable to read and learn might have a hugely positive impact on humanity as a whole.
It’s Tuesday evening. I already did a diary entry today, but I can’t resist beginning another one.
Today was an unusually great day. My roommate invited me to a picnic with his university friends. Obviously, I agreed. It sounded like a great chance to meet new people and to practice my English at the same time. What’s the worst that could happen?
We came to Letná Park in the afternoon. There were already a bunch of people at the beginning, but even more were coming. All of them were from different countries, and every one of them was such a pleasure to talk to. But at some point, the unexpected happened.
New people came, and Georgia was among them. I was absolutely stunned by how pretty she was. When I first saw her eyes, I couldn’t help but stare at them.
Naturally, I wanted to get to know her better, so I was going to talk to her, when almost immediately, I was stopped. The fear inside of me began to rapidly eat me alive. I felt shackled, unable to do anything about it.
I urgently wanted to distract myself or do something, anything but what I actually wanted. I kept talking with people, trying to get rid of the crushing sense of dread that followed me. It felt so wrong, yet I felt so helpless.
After a short time, I was talking to her friend. We were discussing how peculiar human languages are, how drastically they differ, and what a great impact they have on us as a society. The topic was extremely appealing to me, so the conversation was really engaging.
Not long afterwards, Georgia joined the discussion. She didn’t talk much, but when she did, she seemed so intelligent, and it was so attractive. I still can’t tell if I was just blinded by how gorgeous she was. During the conversation, I learned that she was here for a few days and would be leaving back to Italy soon.
Towards evening, I had to leave. Everything was coming to an end, and we were packing everything up. By then, I had still hardly spoken to her at all, which made me feel extremely silly. At some point, I got so overwhelmed by the fact that fear runs my life and I do nothing about it. It became clear that I had no choice but to act.
“You know, it can be kinda unusual, but I think you are really cute.” Something like that is what I barely managed to tell her. I was expecting nothing. It just felt right to tell her how I felt. Being sincere is really important to me, and I simply couldn’t let fear get in my way.
She got embarrassed and said something like, “Thanks, you’re cute too.” There are no words that can describe how happy and baffled I was. After such a great introduction, what could possibly go wrong?
I froze instantly. No matter how hard I tried, the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. There was just silence and an awkward tension building up. Explaining how embarrassed I was is all I managed to do, after which the conversation ended quickly.
Now that I’m reflecting on it, it’s hard to describe the way I feel. I’m glad that in spite of all the odds, I overcame my anxiety, and yet I can’t stop thinking about how awkward my behavior was. I feel so guilty, as she probably expected more than what I did. I didn’t even ask her for any contact or give her mine. How can success be so close and yet so far away?
I would love to meet her again, but unfortunately, it seems like moving on is the only real option I have.
Legacy meta data
Title: "Read and Share | She Was So Pretty"
Summary: "Want to build something cool, and I might have an idea | But surely, I managed to mess everything up"
Usually, I write in my diary sometime during the evening. I love to think through everything at such moments, which obviously takes time. Because of that, I often skip bedtime, which is bad for both my health and productivity.
I also used to have reading time right before sleep. Recently, I tried to move the reading time to the morning, and it was a much better experience. There was much less tension, and, generally, I began to feel much more immersed in the process.
The goal is to do all the daily tasks as early as possible. That makes things much simpler, work more efficient, and leaves a lot of free time by the evening. Additionally, arranging tasks in the same order every day will hugely help to build the right habits.
I have to admit that I am clearly moving in the right direction and have already made quite a bit of progress. Perhaps I need to remind myself of that more often. I’m too harsh on myself, considering everything I do to make my life better. I’m extremely lucky to be the way I am.
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Title: "Morning > Evening"
Summary: "Making a better schedule and reflecting on progress"
Feel kinda empty today, maybe also sad. Don’t even know what to write about. I’m so impatient. I can feel the progress, but it is so uncomfortably slow.
Is it normal for the mood to change so quickly? What is the cause? Do other people feel the same way? Why doesn’t nobody talk about it then? Am I missing something? Why are thoughts so unstructured? Should I force myself to structure them? Why do I overthink everything I do? Why do I look for imperfections in already written text instead of keeping on writing? Is it ok to always be dissatisfied with the results? Why can’t life be simple? Is it me overcomplicating things? Why am I so afraid to say what I truly think? Why am I that way?
I don’t know. I want to be greater. I want people to like me. I want to be important. I’m afraid to die knowing that my life changed nothing and that in a several decades, information about my existence will be permanently gon. At least it seems like a good fear to have.
This diary feels wrong. Why do I write it for others and not myself? Quite often, I try to hide my emotions just so others won’t think how miserable I am. My writing tries to be so academic, even though I hate it when people behave in a sterile way. I want people to care about me, and yet I don’t give a fuck about them. I hate how many “I’s” are in my texts.
Wish I could just hug someone and forget myself.
Legacy meta data
Title: "split me twice"
Summary: "just sad me, writing down everything that comes to mind"
Today I woke up at 6:30, as I always do. Usually, immediately after that, I grab my phone from the table and lie in bed for 1-2 hours doing absolutely nothing. This morning was different. Although it was difficult to not fall back asleep, I managed to get out of bed just one minute later. I did several awkward, sleepy push-ups and went to take a shower.
Despite the fact that the routine was simple and not that difficult, the results were significant. Beginning the day with a sequence of actions gives you a lot of momentum.
Around 7:10, I was already sitting at my laptop with a cup of tea and several peanut butter sandwiches, eager to get to work. I spent all morning programming, specifically extending my website. It was such a fun and effortless experience, I didn’t even notice how the fifth hour had ended.
After 13:00 (or 1 PM), I still wasn’t tired, on the contrary, I was excited about how much I had accomplished and how much more I could do by the end of the day. But somewhere around that time, I felt a slight urge to distract myself with something. I gave in, and that was a fatal mistake.
After checking what was happening on Instagram, reading some Reddit posts, and other useless activities, I decided to go back to work.
Suddenly, something changed significantly in the way I felt. All the excitement just evaporated. Every action required a substantial amount of effort, and generally, my productivity level was at rock bottom. I spent the whole other half of the day that way, doing nothing.
It was an extremely unpleasant change. By letting distracting thoughts take over, I lost the streak and could never get back to my previous state of productivity.
Unexpectedly, I am now quite happy with the way things went. Such a strong emotional contrast caught my attention and made me aware of how an apparently insignificant decision can lead to huge payoffs. Turns out momentum plays a much bigger role than I initially thought, and it’s crucial to spot when you lose it and be able to get back on track quickly.
Legacy meta data
Title: "You Won't Catch Up"
Summary: "How even seemingly minor bad decisions can ruin everything"
You see, I love making and sharing pictures of myself, but I literally suck at taking photos.
Selfies are an oddly funny thing in themselves, but there’s more to it. Your photos are like a social portfolio - you can tell a lot about someone just by looking at their pictures. Plus, it forces you to get creative if you constrain yourself, for instance every has to be unique, done in different places or poses and so on.
Today, I checked my Instagram profile and thought: Why don’t I post more often? The answer is written in the first sentence, in case you didn’t notice, but I came up with a solution to that problem.
Take one selfie every day.
Doesn’t that sound exciting? I’ll post all of them, and over time they will accumulate into a collection. I don’t know why, but the idea feels weirdly fascinating. Not sure if I should set an end date for this mini-experiment, though. Maybe it’s better to let it naturally become a habit and keep going as long as I can.
So I guess I’ll start right now. Perfect way to end this post.
Legacy meta data
Title: "My Selfies Suck"
Summary: "And to fix that, I'll do one selfie each day"
Yeah, that’s true - I’m too damn serious. I’ve always been (and still am) a fan of humor, but lately, being funny has been tough for me. What happened? I have no idea. Or maybe… I know.
I don’t talk to people much. Most days, I just sit in silence. Only a tiny fraction of my time is spent hanging out with others. That ain’t good. People are everything - they make life brighter, minds healthier, and jobs easier. If I was asked to pick the most important skill to succeed today, I’d choose charisma. It’s simple: we live in a world built, managed, and run by people. The only way to thrive is to get on with them.
Charisma isn’t some mystical trait - it’s just a regular skill, like anything else. And like any skill, you have to practice in order to improve. Humor is a huge part of being charismatic. It doesn’t take much effort to recall how easy and comfortable you feel with a funny person around. Obviously, that’s not everything, but it’s a solid start.
Are there other ways to become that friend everyone laughs with? Probably, but they’re not as effective as spend more time among people. One thing’s for sure - watching funny videos won’t cut it. Observing others isn’t enough - you gotta do the thing or the habit won’t emerge. Try this: recall a moment that made you laugh. What made it work? Analyze those situations, then create new ones using what you learned.
Funny enough, I’ve written this whole rant about humor without cracking a single joke. Well, here it comes. Why eggs don’t tell jokes? They’d crack up! Not even my joke, but who cares? Practice and consistency - that’s what matters.
Legacy meta data
Title: "You Are Too Serious"
Summary: "Being fun is no joking matter"
It’s Wednesday evening, the day’s almost over, and I’m pleased with how it went.
I’m gaining momentum really quickly - every day I’m doing more than before. I’m so grateful for how addictive being efficient can be. There was so little temptation to just lie down for a minute, scroll Instagram, or watch YouTube. It feels like a huge step.
Today I rewrote the website. For now it has pretty much the same functionality as the previous one, but allows me to easily extend it however I want. I plan to move almost all of my online presence to it. For instance, it’d be pretty cool to host all my Instagram photos there.
I’ve also been thinking through ideas of what cool things I could do that I could pursue as a potential career. The brightest idea? Music. I love music. Every single day, no matter what I’m doing, there’s a high chance I’m listening to it. I adore creating stuff too, and combining those two passions sounds like a wild win.
The catch? I have absolutely no idea how music theory works. But honestly, that’s the most exciting part. There’s so much to learn and discover. Writing lyrics, composing melodies, singing vocals - it all sounds challenging but at the same time extremely fun.
I can’t wait to dive headfirst into this process.
Legacy meta data
Title: "Let's Do the Show"
Summary: "The pace is good, now keep it up"
The internet is designed to make you always feel hungry. Every time I assume I can easily ignore the distractions through sheer will, I fail immediately. It’s shocking how difficult it is to resist the urges.
Kinda crazy how far the algorithms have gone. Every time I visit YouTube to watch just one video, I end up going thorough every one on the recommendation page. Those things are so well designed to please you and make you wanna keep scrolling. That genuinely terrifies me.
People are wired to do the easiest and most rewarding thing, so willpower won’t help you. It’s so obvious, I feel dumb falling for the same trick over and over. The only way to escape is to cut off the access.
Yeah, time for a dopamine detox. I’ve done it a few times already, and it’s always rewarding in the end. The key is to design your environment so there are no harmful “cues”. Surround yourself with objects and patterns that force you to do the right things.
Okay, this problem is straightforward to solve, but there’s one more - loneliness. It always hits hard, I hate this feeling. The thing is, it’s a much harder problem. It’s easy to find relationships but hard to find meaningful ones. There’s no way to know in advance if someone will make you wanna spend all your time with them.
Right now, the only approach I can think of is to get to know a hell of a lot of people and let chance play on my side. Simple solution, but it’s so hard to actually push yourself to be social with everyone. Still, The long-term benefits are so good, you can’t ignore them. Hence, I’m ready to face the awkwardness and discomfort, striving to the greater goal.
You can’t grow rapidly without failing frequently.
Legacy meta data
Title: "I'm a Monkey"
Summary: "It's crazy how easy it is to manipulate people's attention"
I can’t see what I’m going to do in three months. It feels like I’m walking in the fog.
There are so many things I love doing and would happily devote myself to. But liking something isn’t enough - there’s another critical factor: money. Just to exist already requires decent income (rent alone is brutally expensive). And who only wants to exist? Everyone wants to live fully - to grow, to feel alive, to explore new places and ideas.
The thought of working in an office for eight hours a day kills me. I crave deep work and will gladly lose myself in projects for hours, but money alone can’t motivate me for too long. Work without any purpose quickly becomes meaningless.
I need to find a way to sustain myself while being able to explore different fields and aspects of life. Turns out making money on your own is not that easy. Or is it? The thing is, I probably overestimate the difficulty, and being afraid of failing, I simply choose to do nothing.
Yet in this time of uncertainty, there is no room for waiting. The best thing I can do is to plan less and try more. Preparing has its value, but it’s so easy to accidentally trap yourself in an infinite loop. There are a lot of things you simply cannot predict without getting halfway through, and at that point obsessive planning won’t help you.
It’s ideal time to stop complaining and start acting.
Legacy meta data
Title: "How to Proceed"
Summary: "It's so easy to stuck in a planing and forget about acting"
Okay, so another day writing a diary. I’m pretty happy with how everything’s going. The progress over the past few days has is already noticeable, and becoming hyper self-aware made a huge difference.
I’ve been thinking about this diary recently, and I’ll probably have to change how I do it. First of all, after posting my diary publicly, I’ve noticed that I’ve started to overthink and filter everything I write. That’s not great, but continuing to share everything openly might eventually fix the problem over time.
There’s one important question I struggle to answer though. How much does it matter that someone is reading what you write? The problem is that I’m highly addicted to the attention. No matter what I do, if I’m the only one who knows about it, I quickly lose interest. It’s not ideal. There are always periods when you have to grind without having any quick results, and patience in those moments is the key.
Clearly, my writing is far from being valuable to others, but the only way to improve is to keep writing.
All my previous posts were shared on my Instagram stories so my friends would notice. That way, I tried to create at least some illusion of importance around what I’m doing, but it’s probably not a healthy habit. Because of that, I’ll likely stop reposting everything on social media and only share my best work. Those who care about everything I write will find new post on my website on their own anyway.
Finally, I plan to rebuild the website from the ground up. I want to make it more structured, cleaner, and easier to use. The key features I want to add are separate pages for blog and diary, plus an option to opt-in for notifications about new posts.
So far it seems like I’m moving in the right direction. Everything else is pretty simple - just do not stop grinding.
Legacy meta data
Title: "I'll Beg For Attention"
Summary: "Let's change the way I do my posts"
Now it’s 20:16, Saturday. I’m sitting at my desk typing this text on my laptop. I should have done it earlier as I have to go to sleep soon.
I lack discipline. Often, the wrong thing is so much easier to do. By the end of the day, I’ve done nothing in particular. I was learning useless information (like which LLM that could be run on my laptop is gonna be the best) and watching YouTube videos.
It’s hard to think or concentrate. There are so many bad habits I have to rid myself of. My mind is a mess and shouldn’t be this way.
My lifestyle is getting really close to that of an average person, and it feels unnervingly wrong. There’s no deep mental work, each day is just a bunch of small, easy, unrelated things that together create a comfortable existence. It’s almost like sitting in a boat, passively drifting along with the current. Why would anyone choose this?
Life is weird. Why do we even exist? How do you know if there’s a reason to do something? Obviously, humanity has questioned this long before me. Every person has to find their own meaning to live, but how?
A popular opinion is that you should live for yourself. You only get one life, so you have to enjoy it while you can. This sounds reasonable but doesn’t quite “click” for me. My life just doesn’t seem important enough to invest all my effort into. Eventually, I’ll die, and it’ll be impossible to look back on how pleasant the life was.
Curiosity might be my strongest motivator. Emotions often give meaning to our actions, even though they have no meaning by themselves.
It’s always been kinda funny to reflect on these things, but I think there’s no point in reflecting on it for too long. We are indeed driven by emotions which are nothing more than the product of coincidence, but that’s just the way world is.
Legacy meta data
Title: "Just a Regular Day"
Summary: "I'm too lazy to write a creative summary at this point"
Finally, I’m writing a diary not only when I feel down.
Yesterday was hard. I was desperate, but I’m so much better now. Publishing my writeup was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time.
A lot of people have written to me after, cheering me up and sharing their thoughts. Even though that’s probably what I wanted, it’s definitely not what I was expecting. The most surprising was the amount of unique ways people were reacting. It was so fascinating to see how different each person was, yet had no trouble finding common ground.
Although I feel much clearer now, the way my mood has changed in just one day scares me a little. Emotions are good at pointing out when something is wrong, but as it turns out, they can also lead you in the wrong directions. Nevertheless, hitting rock bottom definitely made me more aware of my state.
I was way too dramatic questioning if I’m doing everything right. There is plenty of evidence that I am moving in the right direction, so it is pointless to spend a lot of time doubting that. Things don’t always work out, and that’s okay - just don’t stop looking for better approaches.
And to sum up, I am so happy to be surrounded by friends with so many different worldviews and opinions that I can learn from. I can’t express just how grateful I am to everyone <3.
Legacy meta data
Title: "What a Great Call"
Summary: "I am so lucky to be surrounded by so many diverse people"
I feel bad, and as always, I write my diary only when I feel bad. I promised myself to write everyday. It didn’t last even a week. I promised not to use social media and other distractions. Nevertheless, the very next day I ignored that promise.
My life is bad. It seems like it isn’t, but I’m just lying to myself. How do you know if it is truly bad? You simply don’t like it.
What is wrong? I’m lonely. I’ve shelved a lot of things I promised to do: creating music, video editing, learning Zig, meeting new people, writing a post about keyboard. I got a job, and instead of being productive, I procrastinate most of the time. I’m lacking intimacy. I’m insecure. I believe I don’t deserve to be loved.
I met a girl yesterday. Sasha was cute at first, but then she became mean. Later, she explained that she was aggressive because of a girl in her group of friends. Sasha was sharing her emotions in the chat while that girl was telling the guy Sasha liked how ridiculous she was.
Although it seemed childish to me, I was kind to Sasha and tried to cheer her up. The dialogue was kind of awkward, but everything seemed to go fine.
Today she just deleted the chat. When I noticed that, I felt a huge spectrum of emotions which I struggle to describe. It was like I’m missing something. Where did I make a mistake? Ignoring the red flags? Being way too passive?
I definitely could have been warmer in the dialogue, but other than that I did nothing wrong. Why then do I feel so bad? Why do I always doubt my decisions? Why every time I try to make things better, everything just breaks apart?
How can I know what I’m doing wrong? I’m a pretty decent person on paper, but in reality I struggle connecting with people. Maybe everybody else is wrong? That could be legitimate but it changes nothing. I tried to be kind to everyone and not judge myself, but that didn’t help.
I’ve noticed a tendency: when I learn more about a person I like, I quickly become disappointed in them and thus in myself. After that, I just lose any motivation to stay in touch.
I had a tough time when I was about 14. I felt weak, miserable and abandoned, and there was no one to help me. After that, I learned that you can’t just wait for things to become better by themselves. You are the only person who is responsible for everything that happens to you, and you can’t rely on others to help you. Only you can change your life for the better.
That’s a powerful mindset which, as expected, helped me a lot. But now it feels like I’ve lost the momentum. No matter how much effort I put in, there are just no results. Every time I try to reconsider my strategies, I just can’t come up with something better.
It is so overwhelming. No matter what I try to do, it just comes to nothing. At this point I just feel helpless.
I just want to believe that this is just an unfortunate coincidence, that I just have to keep grinding and everything is going to be fine. But it’s insanely hard when hope is running out.
Legacy meta data
Title: "i am worse than you think"
Summary: "can't handle all the feelings anymore"