Similar Posts
Workpost 74: Mondays
Today is a Monday, the start of the week. I feel tired but pretty good overall. I did not sleep much last night, but constantly going outside has done wonders for my energy levels.
Ok time to go through the questions from yesterday:
- How am I going to balance contract work with my businesses tomorrow? Well I just need to solve the first part of the harder coding problem, then I should be good for tomorrow to finish up.
- What can I do to make sure I get enough sleep for jiujitsu? I don’t need to go to jiujitsu today, but going outside helped with the exhaustion as well as taking a nap.
- What is the plan for getting customers for my businesses? I have some lead magnets planned out for art coaching, just need to find events in which to meet people.
- Should I sign up for a consultation with a Fiverr coach for javascript? Should I work first to get an understanding of full stack? I think first I get a primer on the full stack.
- Should I start looking for someone to build my coaching website? Nah, but soon.
- What can I give away at the fairs? The main this is free planning sessions to plan out dream creative project and business cards.
- What is the next step for my woodcut art style? What is the plan for the business cards? The plan is just to work on them as I can while I sign up for speaking engagements and fairs for networking.
- When am I going to create my powerpoint for my coaching website outline? ASAP, this is probably more time-sensitive than the business cards.
Valorant 18: Strafe Clearing
I’ve been killing it on the aim front. In deathmatch, I absolutely own.
I have been working on a new aiming mechanic, what I like to call the strafing clear. First, I went from silver all the way to gold simply off of working on my site clears. A few things I noted:
- Practicing in custom matches is extreemly helpful
- Way more helpful than DM flicks
- Close angles call for very small clears, big angles are for big wide swings
I’ve been trying to pair this with the counter strafing mechanic and I think I figured out something.
Simply by paying attention to which side of the head you expect your crosshair to be on, you can get a much better strafing shot when you peek/clear an angle.
When you clear, you shoot like normal, if your shot is off, you adjust in the direction you need to.
Let’s say you are clearing one angle, and an enemy pops up on your right. Your crosshair is far to the left of your target, so you quickly adjust, while strafing to the right to line up the perfect flick.
This is extremely useful because not only does this mean that your shots can be super accurate, it means you are moving a lot and making it extreemly hard to hit you (or atleast headshot you).
I think the coolest part, is when you strafe out in one direction, realize the enemy is to the other side of your crosshair so you strafe in the other direction to get the shot.
I also abuse the hit slow (how you freeze if you are hit) to get better accuracy and try to tap the enemy down if I am stopped midstrafe.
That being said, I think that there are a couple of different types of aiming mechanics in Valorant.
- Spray control – used for wall spams and smoke spams and long gun fights
- Strafing – used for clearing and gun fights out in the open
- Distance shooting – used for really far fights
- Holding – used to hold again specific peaks
Spray control
- Got no real strat. Just try to watch the bullet tracers
Strafing
- Watch the relationship between the crosshair and the head (whether left or right). Details are above
Distance Shooting
- Use a lot of movement-based aiming for really accurate shots. Tap fire.
Holding
- Prepare to duck behind cover, spray a few shots and duck back.
Matches: First impressions of this technique
Match 1
Reflections:
- Need to operate on a meditative state and trust strong intuition in order to reduce brain effort
- Warmup felt a bit unfocused, maybe want to try specific thinking strategies, especially involving exercise
- I have a bit of a headache now, but I don’t think it is because of the way I worked, I think it’s because of how tired I am, maybe need more rest + exercise, would like to try with a more exercise heavy strategy.
- Felt like MUCH longer than an hour, felt like I have been working for 3 hours.
Result Calculation:
- How much do I think this work is worth? I feel this work was worth maybe $200-$300. Rather tedious coding type work.
- How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? Maybe a 7.
- What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 30% percentile
- Gains in communication and charisma? A little since I am making the code more readable and clear.
Match 2
Reflections:
- A lot less tension, with additional movement and breathing
- Still trying to get my mind to cut through problems like a knife through butter, not sure how
- Also felt like I was working for hours
Result Calculation:
- How much do I think this work is worth? I feel this work was worth maybe $150-$200. Lots of grooming, project management, some architecture, some coding.
- How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? About a 7. Maybe 8. Grueling but not that difficult.
- What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 40% percentile. Not that innovative but definitely clever and requires some knowledge and experience.
- Gains in communication and charisma? Definitely helped make my flow much more clear. Will help with communication in the future.
Why I Loathe Feminists
Today I was arguing with a friend about the popular streamer Pokimane, and I was getting really really angry. I wanted to know why.
I realized recently that the reason why I hate her is because she represents everything I detest and loathe about women, feminism, and society.
While I’ve always been sympathetic to women and women’s struggles growing up – I was always close to my sister (who is a year and a half older and very close) and has always felt closer to women as a whole growing up (I did a lot of art and often had mostly friends that were girls), when I grew older things changed. I still can appreciate the struggles that women face in terms of objectification by society and trying to find a place within male-dominated positions in society (such as the C-suite, IT, and sales) but my view on feminism has shifted from strong positive feelings to mixed feelings and sometimes outright hatred.
The way I see it, feminism is the reason for the following experiences I’ve had in my life:
- Seeing all myself and other male colleagues who were above average intelligence struggle to find employment after college while all the women I knew had offers through the wazoo (even when they were average). What is even more interesting about this is that I work in a STEM field (I suspect recruiters try to hire an even number of men and women, but since women are so rare, they are in higher demand).
- Learning that the “wage” gap between men and women was about 1 cent to the dollar when correcting for the same years of experience (women naturally have less when they have kids) even though they most common statistic cited is 18 cents to the dollar.
- Getting constantly ignored and rejected in the dating scene without a hint of empathy from women (who seemed to have no idea the privilege that they had in this respect).
- Literally felt afraid to ask women out because of experiences that made me feel like a woman might accuse me of harassment (nothing happened, but it’s a constant fear most men share after Me Too went from exposing some serial harassers to just talking about guys women think are “creepy”).
- Seeing many women in my career perform average or below average claim that their work is not appreciated that they suspect discrimination is the reason that they are not promoted or raised.
It’s ok for women to reject men. It’s ok for women to want equality and to question why they were not promoted. It’s ok for women to point out times when they feel harassed and uncomfortable. Also, it is a valid concern that women have to choose between being a mother and being successful in their careers.
However, I hate the fact that feminists simply don’t understand or don’t care how hard it is for men. They support toxic women and toxic behavior as if women are always right. They often condone dismissing and invalidating problems that men face today. Men never talk about this because we feel like complaining is weakness and we should just “man up”.
Here are the types of things I hear women say:
“Oh, so you were afraid that it would be seen as harassment? Just don’t harass you’ll be fine.” (Are you fucking kidding me? I know many great women but are you literally suggesting every single woman has perfect morals? Why even have innocent until proven guilty? What if she misread something?)
“Are you SURE she is actually mediocre? Maybe it’s just your bias?” (Yes I fucking know, they aren’t able to get the same work done at the same quality).
“Suck it up, everyone gets rejected.” (Have you ever considered that it is waaay MORE rejections than you can imagine? How about a bit of empathy?)
“It’s men’s turn to get discriminated against.” (So we are taking turns now? Should we resume discrimination against women again in a few years for payback?)
“He’s disgusting and creepy.” (Ok some men are…but sometimes this is just used as a way for women to justify hurting the feelings of someone they cannot be bothered to empathize with).
Men surely have many advantages and privileges in society, but so do women, just in different areas. As Jordan Peterson says (yes I know he’s a bit extreme but he’s the only one speaking the truth sometimes), men are much more likely to be lonely, depressed (commit suicide), unemployed, and go to prison. Women have lower expectations to perform than men (although this can backfire into mansplaining as people assume women know less) and have a much bigger selection when it comes to dating. Also, if they are attractive, they can get away with almost anything. You name it – being boring, rude, incompetent, even immoral.
I highly suspect that MOST women, if they lived a day in a man’s life would find it is significantly harder (despite gaining a number of privileges). They would realize how so many “nice” people are so much meaner when you are a man, that no slack is given to you or your feelings (crying will only get you laughed at), and that women can be extremely cruel and manipulative to men.
This brings me back to Pokimane. I don’t know her well enough to say for sure, but she strikes me as someone who gets away with fake and toxic behavior because she is famous, attractive, and a woman. And I fucking hate it.
Recently she announced getting to Immortal in Valorant on her own and lashed out against people who said she was boosted (got a rank via help from other people).
Looking at the gameplay (below) she herself uploaded to Youtube, it’s very clear she is boosted. BY A LOT.
What I see:
- Gold level utility usage (ok placement, uses util a lot)
- Silver/Gold Aim (good crosshair placement)
- Iron/Bronze Movement (absolutely no jiggling, strafe shooting, or creative movement)
- Bronze Gamesense (horrible decision making, passable map awareness)
In other words, Pokimane is AT MOST platinum (which 2 whole ranks away from Immortal). Her skill level is honestly closer to Silver or Gold in my opinion.
However, people are still defending her, calling her critic “haters”. Some people even use misogyny to explain why people think she is boosted. This boggles my mind and makes me furious.
Why? Why not just hold her accountable? Why isn’t SHE just honest and try actually climb to Immortal?
When will people stop using feminism as an excuse to praise women who are dishonest and incompetent? When will they realize the tremendous privilege someone like Pokimane holds as a young attractive woman?
Failure & David Goggins
I’ve been thinking so long about the fear of failure and embracing pain since the fear of failure holds me back in almost every area of life.
David Goggins is famous for being someone who has made his thing embracing pain.
It’s interesting because I always wrote people like Goggins off, and I still feel like he is missing the subtle touch, the emotional and artistic, but I actually think he is onto something,
Some of the main takeaways:
- Embracing showing how messed up you are don’t care what anyone thinks
- Everyone is messed up, if they are judging you, they are just better at hiding it than you
- Use every naysayer as motivation
- When you embrace your faults, you will find the who you really are and pursue that
- Self discipline is creating self respect
This self discipline thing has always been interesting to me because I’ve heard this before. But I don’t really understand it. Isn’t discipline yelling at yourself?
The embracing failures and not hiding your failures to see what you really want to be is really telling to me as well. I always wonder what I should do, but I can wonder what I could do. And being willing to show everything wrong with me just will get me closer to clarity on who I am.
Seeking Adventure
I’ve been feeling really unhappy that I haven’t been traveling or going on adventures lately. I meditated on it a long time today to try to figure it out. The more that I thought about it, the more I realized that I feel stuck in almost every area of my life. Specifically, I don’t feel like I’m making much progress in my Valorant Challenge, and a video that I am working on I feel like I’ve hit a dead end. Today I had a dance lesson and I felt like I couldn’t grasp the techniques quick enough, and I feel so distant from the girl I love sometimes.
However, anything that came to me didn’t feel right. I thought about how I could take risks, drive somewhere, fix the feeling that I had somehow. I came to an important realization. I’m not unhappy with anything in my life. I’m at a stage where there is a degree of uncertainty I’m worried that something will go wrong, that my hopes and dreams will fall away. However, that’s not the case at all. Sometimes, all you need to do is keep going, accept and feel the feelings of uncertainty and have the courage to be curious as to see what the future will hold.
In almost every area of my life that I feel stuck, there is a promise of something really truly special. An amazing challenge on a computer game. A wonderful artistic fun video for an event I’m holding. Being able to truly express me and feel confident in my body with dance. and last but not least, a love story that will change my life. All I need to do is be brave enough to wait to see what will happen next.
Perhaps it’s not the risk or adventure that I miss when traveling. It is the feeling of taking each day, one step at a time. Always being in the moment. Allowing life to happen and unfold in front of you. Trusting my gut and intuition.