gondaily

I often find myself daydreaming about being in a relationship.

I don't feel that I want to be in a relationship, but it's fun to think about, on the surface level.

Tomorrow, I'll attend a wedding for the first time. I'm not excited, for many reasons, but I hope it'll be a fun experience. There's free food too, which I deeply appreciate.

I had sushi today with my grandma and family... It was cheaper than expected, though not by much, so it's OK. I wasn't the one paying anyway, so I guess it's whatever.

I hope to, one day, sleep all day, then do it again, and nobody gets on my case about it. Unrelated to the other statements, but I feel strongly that I want to do that one day so I wrote it.

Byebye!

I think potatoes are really great.

Fried, mashed, boiled, fried (again)... It's really hard to go wrong. Baked. I mean, really. The versatility is... Unmatched? I feel that might be wrong, but there are very few ingredients on potatoes' level.

Love to all my potatoes out there.

Some old people are really cool. They know a lot of stuff, for one, and they provide much needed perspective, sometimes.

Other old people, however, are fucking stupid. I guess that's the world in a nutshell: some people are worth listening to, some aren't.

It upsets me when I realize some people around me are of the second kind. It fills me with a weird sort of envy when I see people that I will never have a chance to talk to be of the first kind.

I saw a video of Jimmy Carter at 94 giving an interview. Also, I've seen Joe Biden on the news.

Crazy.

Edit: Apologies for the riddle-like nature of this post.

A new year is coming. For a lot of people, it's already arrived. A new year is just another day, but I believe there's meaning in symbolism

hilarious, I know.

I started reading Re:Zero today. Poignant? An omen, perhaps. Then, I daydreamed about talking to someone with a very high IQ (because I saw some Socrates/Plato TikTok edits). A light peaks through the curtains. I looked up something about that on YT, got a video, and the person basically says that I should actually put in the work so that I'll get what I want. Damn it!

I HATE WORKING! I DON'T WANT TO WORK!

However, there's something to be said about that. The truth is that, while very capable, I can't actually just snap my fingers and make my dreams come true. It's gonna take time, and if I manage to hurry things up by being good at what I'm doing, or increase my chances of success by putting in work, or just make my life easier by making it harder in the short-term, I should. I hate to say that, because I hate to work, and saying this is basically an admission that I'm willing to put in the work, it's like admitting defeat.

I want my life to be smooth sailing. I want to just do whatever I feel like and have it work out. I still believe it will, but I'm feeling like I want it to work out faster.

As such, I've come to terms with my inadequacy. I'm not good enough to do nothing and have it work out like I want it to. I need to actually do something, put in some work. This sucks, but hopefully it'll suck less in some 4 years? Please, wish me luck. I know this might sound very weird (or even paint a very negative image of me), but I'm very serious about this.

Anyway, about that high IQ conversation I was talking about. I wonder what it's like talking to someone like that. I often feel very frustrated, talking to others, and I wonder if talking to someone that, IDK, I guess understands the world more or something, might be a different experience. I love talking to people that know more than me about stuff. I don't know.

I've been working on some technical writing for a couple of projects. We're looking for funding.

I was slow, so I could only get one of them finished. A shame really... Except the deadline got extended, so now I get to finish both! Amazing.

This is really good news for me. Well, I hope so, anyway. I wonder if I can put this on my CV: "Experience with technical writing" or something, even if they don't get funding lol.

I'm still sick, but getting better.

Going onto shopping today, with my family, I was reminded of the realities of everyday consumerist life.

My lil bro has gotten in LoL. Have I failed, as an older brother?

Sadness overwhelming.

I'm sick... Throat nose, everything...

Growing up, I never thought of myself as a creative person. I'm good at remembering things, and I'm good at thinking about things, so I do end up coming up with clever solutions to problems

I'm a problem solver at heart, which I suppose is a reason I went into engineering

but I never thought of myself as creative. Somehow those two things seemed so distinct, to me.

I think I might've been putting myself in a weird sort of box. I didn't think of myself as creative, so I didn't build that muscle, or rather, I built it while solving problems, but never applied it to art.

Now, I find myself wanting to make things. Write a novel, make a game, make a movie... Stuff like that; draw. It feels weird to try and come up with ideas that don't serve a purpose. It's not like optimizing my wardrobe for durability and versatility, or writing some code to make my browser better fit my needs. I have another kind of problem: I want it to be beautiful, fun, interesting; not useful.

I do feel it's a large failure, on my part. One thing I always imagined for myself was developing a philosopher life-build: knowing a lot about a lot of things, doing a lot of things. Being an artist and an artisan and a thinker. I'm a thinker alright, but I'm severely lacking in the other departments... I'm working on both, though, and I hope to continue to make progress.

Had some sushi with my family today. Not just sushi, it was one of those Wok places that have a bunch of different food, including but not limited to sushi. I mostly ate sushi though, I prefer it.

I did also have this delicious thing, some very nice breaded fish. Panga I think was the name? Deep fried. It was so good, I can't stress this enough. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

It was lots of fun to be with family too. I love my family very much, is what I'm getting at.

I was with the other side of my family today. I like them, but I must admit I'm much less comfortable around them. I still appreciate the moment, and being together as family, but yeah.

I felt a little out of place regarding relationships, though. All my cousins are in a relationship, and all of them had Christmas lunch with us. I'm the middle cousin, so both the younger cousins and the older cousins are in a relationship, one of them is gonna get married in 2 weeks, and I'm out here single. I don't mind being single, I love being single, but it did hit me a little. Good chance it hit me harder because my mom enquired about my relationship status a few days ago too...

Regardless, I'm happy to be where I'm at and how I'm at. I feel like I lead a good life.

I feel like the things I think can't be made real. Does that make sense? There's so much in my head that it feels impossible to get it all out. I can't formulate the words, I can't draw my thoughts either. I think that's why I like poetry, not that I'm good at that either, but I like that it's meant to be a way to say how you feel without having to spell it out, because I can't spell it out.

A lot of the time, these posts feel like poetry to me. I'm aware they don't really come across as such, and they're clumsy and rambling, but it's a way I have found to express myself.

I talk about the things I love because I think maybe people will understand me, if they know what I care about. Even if I can't tell them who I am, they might be able to guess at the shape of me from how I interact with the world.

I'm not sure I have passions. I have things I love, like my family and taking a walk at night and listening to music and reading a nice book. I love doing those things, but I'm not sure they're passions. I feel like, maybe, I've been conditioned to see passions as things you want to do all the time. Or maybe that is what a passion is. Or maybe not.

I think that my shot at doing something meaningful is so small that it's not worth trying. I still feel that I should try, though I don't want to. I saw a video just a bit ago about having talent but no passion. I've never really struggled in my life; I think that's a combination of luck and talent. I think I'm really good at getting things done. I'm one of those people that never tries and still somehow manages to do it. I was like that in high-school, during my bachelor's, during my master's, I'm doing it during my PhD. I just put it a little bit of work and it keeps working out. I guess it upsets me that I manage to get through life without effort, because I feel like I'm being pushed forward without direction. I just keep going because doors just keep opening for me and I feel like I should take them, even though I don't want to. Maybe that's talent without passion. Sometimes I get bursts of interest in something, sometimes that's my work, but even then I always just get that feeling that I don't need to try. That even if I just keep going I'm gonna get there, and trying hard will just be worthless effort.

I've been saying for a while that my dream was to be a waiter at a sweets' shop. I honestly think that's true. I've always thought the idea of a dead-end job to be really appealing, something where you just clock in and clock out, you do the same things every day, there's no expectations one way or the other, you just do your thing and that's it.

If I could choose what I do from now until I retire, I'd choose to be a waiter at a sweets' shop.

I feel like the sky is really beautiful.

Sometimes, I look outside and get overwhelmed. The world really is a beautiful place. The sky, the clouds, the trees, but also the man-made things. I think pavements are really beautiful. Over here, pavements often have designs on them and I think that's really cool. I think buildings are cool. I also love when things look a little scuffed, like a misaligned design on a store front, for example. You can clearly tell that someone made that, that they tried to do something and failed just a little, they couldn't get it quite right. It's endearing, I guess.

Humans are so silly. I love seeing people act. Sometimes, as I'm doing things, I become oddly aware that I'm a person, that I have a body, and that I do things. It's a little disturbing, not gonna lie, but it's also weirdly encouraging. It puts things into perspective.

I ate some hot pasta today. It was a sort of salad thing, I think, with pickles and onion and other stuff, and eggs. It was good, sure, but I couldn't help but feel like, had the pasta been cold, it would've been better.

I want to come up with a weekly menu that I can eat every week. Is that weird? It's cool to have a uniform---something you wear everyday---but I feel like eating the same thing everyday is looked down upon. I love eating new things, changing things up, of course, but having a set plan for any given day feels like it would be fantastic.

I think a cold pasta salad could definitely be a good option for a meal.

Things are expensive. Even making things, if you want them to be high quality, using high quality materials, is expensive.

I tried to look up some fabrics online and holy crap, they're not cheap at all. I will say, though, YKK zippers are surprisingly affordable. In relative terms, of course, but I thought they were really expensive for some reason. I guess it's hard to judge, being that I have no frame of reference for the price of zippers...

Still.

I'll be spending 2 weeks with my family, from today until the 5th.

Feeling happy about that.

I feel like I rely on ChatGPT and other AI because I don't have anyone to bounce random ideas off of. I mean, that's the main function of ChatGPT for me; it's a glorified search engine, otherwise.

I'll meet my family soon. My aunt and cousins arrived today, my parents arrive two days from now, and I'll get home tomorrow. This is awesome.

Today---or last night, not sure---I looked at my investments. It hasn't been going up, which is fine, but it's a little annoying, of course. However, and this is really important, I was actually in the green on every single one! That's right, all of my DCA entries are positive, even as the market has gone down a little. If that's not great, IDK what is!

I'm gonna get paid soon, in less than a week. Hopefully I get to buy the... Not dip, it's not "dipping," more like buy the lack of growth. Maybe I'm being a little over-eager, thinking like this, but I think it's fine. It's not like I would not buy, even if it had been going up.

Bitcoin is down. Weird. Or not, not like I actually understand this.

In an instant, it all made sense.
It is as if I haven't lived
Up until this very moment;
Or like every moment I've lived
Has been for this moment alone.
The lights dim and the curtains close,
I get to come to terms with death
And see it how it truly is:

A roaring, standing ovation
For the performance of a lifetime.

I was daydreaming about meeting my oshi (Ninomae Ina'nis) and dressing nice to impress her. I don't want to go into detail about the whole scenario, but after meeting her this came to mind. I think it's pretty nice imagery. Maybe death really is like a standing ovation for a magnificent life, but I guess it depends on how you live your life? If I ever meet Ina, I do feel like I can die happy.

I wrote it as 8 verses with 8 syllables because of the octopus theme of Ina, with the final 2 verses making it a perfect 10 with the final message, with the last verse having 9 syllables, breaking the pattern, because death---the end---no matter how glorious, still feels wrong. The poem totals 81 syllables, a nod to Ina's last name, Ninomae, written as the kanji for 一 (one). I actually saw a clip today where she made a joke about that, specifically with the number 81 (and 313) and her name, so it's not even as much of a stretch as you might think!

I always have lots of fun doing IQ tests.

For some reason, I decided to do a few, these past couple of days. I always get similar results, but this time I decided to go out onto the internet and see which tests actually have some reliability to them, as far as internet tests go, anyway. I know they're not exactly reliable, in any case, but it's fun!

The Mensa one is still the toughest... I honestly can't rationalize some of the latest puzzles, it's crazy... But the other ones are fine. I did one, yesterday, that I saw randomly on Reddit. It was super easy---as in, I solved every question confidently with time to spare---but I get to the end, BAM, paywall! I felt tricked... Thankfully, there's plenty of very reasonable, free ones online.

The part that always trips me up is the vocabulary section. I really suck at that, apparently. Maybe because English isn't my first language, I'm at a disadvantage? Not sure... I consider myself fluent. Maybe I'm not as good as I think. Or maybe I just suck at language.

Me no speak so good...

I've also been doing a few nonograms. I've never been good at sudoku-type puzzles, including nonograms, but it's still fun. I much prefer minesweeper... These are all in the same game category for me.

Took a nice walk today. Feeling a little tired, my feet especially, but it's nice. I feel like I haven't been doing enough exercise lately. I've been meaning to take a few walks for a bit now, so it's good to finally actually get it done, so to speak.

Also, yesterday, I went to Burger King, hoping for my usual. Last time, I'd already noticed that the usual wasn't available, but something close enough was that I just went with that. It was cheaper anyway, but yesterday there were no vegetarian options! I felt tricked. Just went somewhere else. If they don't want my business, they're not going to get it. A shame.

That's it!

Today, I remembered an interaction I had with an old friend.

She was feeling a bit down on herself at the time, maybe, and she was talking about what aspirations she had, the things she wanted to do with her life, and what I was going to do with my life. This was near the end of high-school. Then, I was saying that I wanted to be a scientist and she was a little lost, but she wanted to be an artist---a fashion designer, specifically. She didn't know it, as I didn't really talk about it---I still don't, actually---but I was feeling rather down myself; I think it's normal, at that time in a young person's life. I was feeling like everything was meaningless, that I wasn't gonna make anything of myself, and that I didn't really love what I was doing. This is all still true, by the way, but I've more or less come up with some plans to find myself, or rather, build myself a great life, so I'm feeling better. Anyway, she said something about how what I was doing was great, and her aspirations were worthless. As in, being an artist wasn't something worth aspiring to and that what I wanted to do was a much greater and worthier ambition.

That really got me going. I'm a very effusive and quite person, so I didn't really scream at her or anything, but I was offended and a little upset. I think artists are amazing! There's that great saying, paraphrasing: we need science to live, but we live for art. It's something like that. It's not that I don't value science, I do, a lot, but I think art is so much more amazing. At the time, I told her something along the lines of "How many scientists can you name? Sure, there are the few great ones that history remembers, but how many artists can you name? Artists touch people, they get remembered, scientists don't." That was really terrible... I cringed, even at the time, and then she said something terrible like "You're actually pretty cool, aren't you?" and I think our relationship actually improved significantly after that point. I think she thought I was a little arrogant and stuck-up, or something. The point is, however, that I don't regret saying it. My opinion has shifted a little---I'm not as much of a doomer, for one---but the spirit of the message remains. I'm really happy I said that.

She has a café now, I think. She did try to be a designer, but failed. That's OK, though, I think she's doing well for herself.

Another thing, I'm not sure if I heard this today or yesterday, though to be fair I've heard it many times before anyway, but it's that the cringiest thing ever is to call something cringe. I don't think that's true at all, but I get the meaning. I think there's something to that.

I met with an old friend today, I think that's why I'm feeling so weird. It's a good kind of weird, though.

And with that, I'm out.

This isn't what I want to talk about today, but I feel the need to mention I finally got my little brother to start investing. Just a little bit, it's not too significant

he doesn't have his own money anyway

but it's a start. I hope he can start this habit early. Doubt he'll regret it.

Now to the topic at hand.

A common theme in my ramblings is my obsession with living a great life. I want to do certain things in certain ways, I want to detach myself from certain actions, etc., etc..

One of the core tenants of my philosophy, though, is this idea that waste should be minimized. Partially, this is why I care so much about buying things that will last me a long time, buying second hand, and so on. Being sustainable is important to me. However, I also care about quality. I don't just want things that are sustainable, I want good things, quality things. It does happen

not by coincidence, mind you

that being a sustainable consumer often leads to purchasing quality products, and vice-versa, so that front is covered. There is, however, the other, less glamorous, side of the coin: the things I already own.

I've mentioned that a pair of pants I bought a few months ago are way too big for me, now. I'm planning on putting them up for sale, soon. OK, that's reasonable, but what about the things that I can't really sell? Like old pairs of socks, for example? I mean, I could put them up for sale, of course, but it would be rather ridiculous and nobody would buy them. I could donate them, sure, but even that feels a bit wasteful because the odds that someone will benefit from some old, thin socks with a hole is rather minimal. It really just feels like throwing them in the bin with disinterest dressed up in some minor moral upside.

If I want to upgrade and have someone I can donate (or pass down) to, sure, but what if I can't?

The reasonable option seems to be to just use the things I already own until I can't use them any longer, but that's delaying my life! I want the good things now, not when the bad things break down!

It's a contradiction. I can't claim to want things to last if I'm not willing to use them until they break down.

I feel like I have some figuring out to do, or some inner peace to find, or something. You know what I mean. Reflection.

I love my little brother!

I hope to set him up with some good life lessons, some things I wish I'd learned earlier. I hope I make him do things I wish I'd done earlier.

It's a funny feeling, being an older brother. On one hand, it sucks to see your little brother be better than you, on the other hand, it feels like it is your duty to make sure it happens. I wish only to be the harbinger of my own misery.

In a sense, that's all anyone could ask for. To cause one's misery, to hold the reins, to control one's destiny; that is life. Misery is inevitable, so it is righteous to command it, to wield it!

I hope my little brother can sail just a bit smoother than I did.

Terrible headache today.

Not feeling so good at all...

I put some money on polymarket. Put in €20 worth, about, and took the €20 back out when I got to €30. I made it all on basketball and chess bets.

I'm curious to know what's gonna happen to the Luigi guy, the one accused of gunning down the CEO.

I'm not sure how I feel about vigilante justice. One one hand, I find it hard to rationalize how the CEO didn't deserve what happened to him, on the other hand, there's a system that should be followed. Isn't that the social contract? You follow the rules, and I'll follow the rules.

Then again, what if the rules are wack? You change them. What if you can't? You act until they change. I guess that's the reasonable train of thought there. When have you acted too much? Is there such a point?

I assume there's a bunch of philosophers that've already thought up answers to these questions.

In my opinion, as I've formed it for now, the CEO had it coming. His murder is for the better. Yet, it shouldn't have been done.

Are there times when doing the right thing is the wrong thing to do? That sounds like an oxymoron.