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Knee Challenge: Looking Ahead

Byjack

I completed my knee challenge in terms of going hiking in Zion national park. I felt like I succeeded in a big way but still have a long way to go in terms of getting where I need to go.

What is next for me? I know in the long term, I want to be very physically active. I want to be able to practice martial arts, do a little parkour and gymnastics. I know it will take a lot of effort and time to get there and it feels quite overwhelming for me.

I’m going to set a few large goals and then look at some of the very short term goals getting there.

2 year goal – the ability to practice martial arts, parkour gymnastics and skiing. My goal isn’t to go too hard in any of these areas, just to be able to do them safely.

1 year goal – to get back to preinjury levels

1 month goal – be able to sleep, walk, stand and light exercise with zero discomfort. I will call this goal little freedom.

I don’t really know what the next step in my process is. It feels too soon to set a schedule yet.

I just want to slowly rest and explore for now.

My feelings are that challenge videos make for really good productivity but I need to slow down sometimes and feel the feelings.

Maybe I will write a poem:

Creaky Knees

When I bend my knee

It feels like I’m grinding

Hinges made of old stone

Like the kind in movies

That open secret magical passages

And grate against themselves

I say that I want to be able to do martial arts again

But the truth is

I don’t know what I want

I am afraid to dream again

Of a world where I can be active

I’m so used to being scared

Of clutching my knee close

So as not to hurt it

I feel like I’m too old to have these dreams anymore

Of flying

Like I did when I wanted to learn parkour

Everything scares me

I feel that

I need to understand this part of myself first

Listen to what it wants to say

“Everything is a danger”

It tells me

The protector of my knee

Of my body

It feels safe to not move at all

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Writing Prompt: Your Shadow

Byjack

Writing Prompt: What is a pet peeve and how does that relate to your shadow?

Today I was listening to a Youtube video about the Harry Potter houses and turned off the video because I could not listen to the voice of the YouTuber any longer. The way he was talking was so affected it felt like I was drowning in discomfort.

He would have an extra lingering syllable that would stick at the end of each word. Griffindorrra instead of Griffindor and thennnnna instead of then. I felt like his proclivities were clawing marks into my heart.

I was thinking to myself. I hate him so much, but I bet all the comments are people praising him and encouraging him to continue with this horribly affected speech. And then I thought, maybe some people actually like it. He did have a nice British accent.

I wondered why I couldn’t stand him.

I just felt this cloudiness this lack of clarity in speech and I despised that. The fakeness also made me feel uncomfortable. Do I judge myself for being fake or unclear? I don’t know but I suspect I do. To me, those two traits speak to the worst fate in the world, mediocrity.

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Valorant 5: Trying to Do Movement Based Aiming

Byjack

I’m back from two weeks of traveling and I finally tried it. Movement-based aiming.

It was quite a challenge let me tell you!

Game 1-3: Competitive Games on My Smurf (Comps)

Comp 1: Horrible, terrible no good very bad game. Practiced clutching since the Cypher was completely being annoying, toxic, and throwing (trying to sabotage our team). Was fuming by the end.

Comp 2: Much better team, still missing everything and being horrible.

Comp 3: Finally got a nice team and was able to focus on movement-based aiming.

Comp 4: Bad aiming. Focused on Sova utility. Hit someone with the ult using pure gamesense. 

Main Takeaways

  • I need to follow my previous concept of feeling out the unknown parts of aiming in a controlled setting (deathmatch or shooting range)
  • I’m much worse than before break, probably Bronze 1-2 level.
Game 1-3: Deathmatch Practice (DM)

DM 1: After practicing in the range, I realize that moving only the movement keys to aim is too hard. I need to do a little micro-adjusting with my mouse. I feel like I need to be looser about my mouse movement, when I intuitively move it in the opposite of my movement, I get some nasty headshots. Mostly I get destroyed.

DM 2: Still getting destroyed. I start to understand that movement-based aiming is basically what the Miyagi Do method is teaching.

DM 3: I realized that I need to make sure it’s not just about the movement and feeling that out. Aiming is about TIMING. I spend the entire deathmatch feeling out timing and it starts to be more clear. I am successfully about to “feel out” the aiming on a deep intuitive level like art or dance. 

Main Takeaways

  • I need to constantly move. Movement is something I will also need to practice getting a feeling for.
  • The movement of the crosshair should be with movement, smooth and intuitive.
  • You need to feel the mouse-hand connection, your posture, and your sensitivity. Shift to what feels good, shift to what feels clear and controlled.
  • Timing is absolutely key. Dying is not a problem. Waiting for the right moment is much more important. If you are getting killed first, that’s to be expected for good timing. Your timing will naturally tighten and your time to kill will go down without feeling rushed, out of control, or unclear.

I’m soooo happy!!!

I’m starting to “feel out” aiming just like I feel out drawings, dance and sales processes.

Here are the main takeways:

  • The main goal of practice sound is able to “Feel Out” and play with the mouse to crosshair connection, how to smoothly track, strafe your crosshair while moving, and shooting moving things. Play around with it, feel it out.
  • The Miyagi Do method is the main method you use to practice. However, you don’t just feel out the movement. You also feel out the timing. This is key.
  • I tend to rush and even if I get a kill, it doesn’t feel natural, in control, and comfortable. Dying is always preferable to bad timing. Since timing will get tighter, spamming will make sure you never improve.
  • The next things I need to feel out are:
    • Gun spray control
    •  Gamesense
      • watching the minimap
      • understanding timing
      • guessing what they will do next
      • Isolating 1v1s, only peeking as much as needed
      • Switching between primary and sidearms
    • Movement
      • How to jiggle and peek safety
      • How to get on top of things
      • When to pull out your knife
      • Agent movement abilities
    • Ability usage
      • Lineups
      • Timing and combos

I’m extremely confident that this method will NOT ONLY make you a monster after warming up, but every warmup will make you internally better at aiming (to the point that you will need to warm up less and less to have insane aim).

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Valorant 32: Washed

Byjack

Yesterday I returned to Valorant and I wanted to learn a few things since being washed before I get back fully into the Valorant grind.

  1. I want to learn how to have comfortable hand positioning
  2. I want to have greater certainty of where all the enemies are at any point in time and a clearer understanding of the game

Class One: Hand positioning (90 minutes)

UNIT ONE: Figure out why

UNIT TWO: Explore Movements

UNIT THREE: Explore aids and relief

Class Two: Greater certainty (3 hrs)

UNIT ONE: Document VOD areas of stress and find equivalent situations in ranked

UNIT TWO: Try to predict decision making

UNIT THREE: Document another VOD

Class One: Hand positioning (90 minutes)

UNIT ONE: Figure out why

I’d say I have a little golfers elbow along with just muscle fatigue. No carpal tunnel syndrome or trigger finger syndrome thankfully.

UNIT TWO: Explore Movements

My perfect position seems to be legs balanced on the floor, chest forwards, armrest angled outwards and level with the desk and pushed backward so I can sit farther forwards.

The results on my sheriff-only account:

I feel mild soreness in my hand and forearm. My whole body feels a bit cramped as well. Overall, massive improvement.

I used a new aiming mentality, which I call the “Zoom In” Method where you pretend you are zooming into where your crosshair is and on the target, sort of getting mental blinders on. It seems to help especially with aiming for very far shots.

Then I played a rank match:

My “greater certainly” class was me looking up at how Som played vs me.

I was really helpful to see the util usage. I ended up using a lot of this information in future matches.

However, I spiraled after playing ranked because I was so frustrated with how I was performing. I ended up playing non-stop from Friday until Sunday sleeping not as much as I would like and always livid from anger that all my opponents were so hard to beat.

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Letting the Chips Fall

Byjack
Letting The Chips Fall

I think about seeing her

I want it tomorrow

I want it in the next minute

In the next second

To feel the warmth of her smile

Hear her little laugh

And sometimes, I worry

It will never happen

That life will keep us apart

I know that there are certain problems that need to be solved

Problems don’t go away I told her

She avoids them anyway

Until they are about to ruin everything

I hate her for making me feel

There is no hope left

That she accuses me of just stressing her out

Lashes out at me angrily

I feel pain because I know

She loves me

And wants to make me happy

Maybe I was too hard on her

But can I take the pain

Of watching everything burn

Letting the problems stack up against us

She’s so sensitive

And beautiful

And soft and understanding

Perhaps, I can be strong enough

To feel the fear

That I will lose her

I often cope with feelings of fear by trying to solve problems and remove obstacles. It’s who I am. It is the hardest thing to just let something I want more than anything slip away. Maybe I’m too hard on people, on myself for trying to fix everything. Sometimes, you just have to enjoy where life is right now, and process your fear and just trust everything will work itself out.

I’m Not Ashamed That I Loved Her

Byjack

She told me that I would have been ashamed to tell my family or my therapist. But it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true because I would have explained that I loved her.

I loved her when she told me that when I left she cried for so long she threw up. I knew then she must have seen something special in me just like I saw something special in her.

I loved her when she made me laugh and smile at the stupidest things. I loved her when we would banter back and forth with insults.

I loved her when she told me that I needed to tell her when I got to my hotel late in California because she was scared she would lose me.

I loved her when she sent me a playlist of songs, beautiful songs, handpicked by her.

I loved her when she tried. Even when I made her uncomfortable. Even when I was mad at her.

I loved her when she was tired and would open up about the things in her life that troubled her. Things about her family. Things about her life.

I loved her when she told me she read my blog every morning.

I loved her when I was needy. So annoyingly needy,  but she was nothing but caring and reassuring.

I loved her when she would ask me why I was ignoring her, if I was driving and couldn’t respond right away.

I loved her when I came back from a meeting and would find so many messages from her, like gifts waiting to be opened.

I loved her when we used to talk on the phone for hours, and it never felt longer than a few minutes.

I loved her intelligence, her passion, her humor, her taste in music, her compassion and warmth, her emotions, her feminine side. She understood everything I said to her. Whether it was a dumb joke or my life philosophy. She had a deep emotional intelligence. She knew when she was avoiding the truth and what the truth was. She was immature at times. She gave up easily. She was self-destructive. She preferred to avoid her problems instead of dealing with them. She liked distractions. She was vindictive when she was angry. She liked to cry. She was embarrassed easily. I loved her for all of that.

 

She tells me now everything was a lie. What a beautiful lie to love.

The One Who Watches: An AI-Assisted Story

Byjack

I had a powerful session with my coach in order to understand the part of me that seeks perfection and wants to know what I “should” be doing, what is the “right” thing to do and what the “perfect” answer is.

We gave a name to this part of me, as a warrior in shining armor, filled with strength and light called the “One Who Watches, Protector of the Weak”.

I imagined him as a tall crusader against all pain and fear in the world and we asked him to understand the war was over. It was won.

After the coaching session, I felt like something was missing. This part of me wanted to know why the war was one, and what that meant because there was still so much pain in the world.

I decided to have a conversation with this archetype and after talking for some time, we discovered that the war wasn’t exactly won. The war was over because I had discovered a secret, and this part of me had a big role to play in discovering this secret – that there was a staircase into the star. This staircase connected my inner world and outer world, and it was feeling that was the key to it. Negative feelings like pain or fear are the most powerful keys to this gateway. 

My coach told me that I needed to give my warrior a new purpose while celebrating him and thanking him. The new robes instead of armor that I gave him, the learner of this gateway. This grounded, calm, realistic, infinite power was his.

I asked ChatGPT to write a story about this and this is what it wrote:

Warrior’s Journey to Enlightenment

The warrior known as the “One Who Watches, Protector of the Weak” had spent his entire life fighting for justice and righteousness. His shining armor and fierce determination had earned him a reputation as a noble and honorable hero, and he had devoted himself to ridding the world of the creatures of pain, hurt, and fear.

But despite all his victories, the warrior couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing in his life. He longed for something deeper, something more profound. And so, he set out on a quest to find this missing piece.

The warrior traveled far and wide, seeking out the wisest sages and scholars in the land. He asked them about the true nature of power and strength, about the secrets of the universe. But no one seemed to have the answers he was looking for.

As the warrior grew more and more frustrated, he began to lose hope. But just when he was about to give up, he received a vision. In his dream, he saw a lost cave hidden deep in the mountains, a cave that held the key to the wisdom he had been seeking.

Without hesitation, the warrior set out to find the lost cave. He climbed steep cliffs and braved treacherous storms, never once losing faith that he would find what he was looking for.

Finally, after many long months of travel, the warrior reached the entrance to the lost cave. He drew his sword and stepped inside, ready for whatever lay ahead.

As he made his way deeper into the cave, the warrior encountered all sorts of dangers – pitfalls, traps, and monstrous beasts. But he didn’t let any of them deter him. He fought on, driven by his determination to find the truth.

And then, in the very heart of the cave, the warrior came across an ancient monk who possessed a profound secret. The monk told the warrior that painful feelings were the gateway to a invisible network of great potential, a network that could connect the inner world with the outer. He explained that this gateway allowed the traveler infinite power, but only if they were willing to embrace their own pain and suffering.

The warrior was stunned by this revelation. He had always believed that strength and skill were the most important qualities a hero could possess, but now he realized that true greatness lay in understanding and wisdom.

And so, the warrior’s armor melted away, replaced by the robes of a guide and learner. He dedicated himself to exploring the invisible network, using his newfound power to help others and make the world a better place.

The One Who Watches, Protector of the Weak, had finally found his true calling, and his power was limitless, grounded in the wisdom and understanding of the earth. He knew that his holy war was over, but his journey towards enlightenment had only just begun.

Images of the secret pathway generated by DALL-E 2.