I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m feeling tired lonely and unmotivated.
Feeling into more my feelings, I feel exhausted. Probably need to just hang for a bit.
I went to go hang for a bit and I feel a little better. However, I still feel pretty tired.
One thing that I want to point out is that I at least slept much better last night than previous nights and was able to go to sleep around 1 am instead of 2 or 4.
One of the things that I’ve been struggling with is mewing. Just like last time, I think I don’t know what to do with my jaw. I’m thinking I will focus on keeping the tongue in the top of my mouth and a good posture and not worry about closing my jaw because that feels uncomfortable (and for some reason my mouth gets really dry).
I’m trying to get back into my coaching mindset:
You are in my house – this is a big one because I feel out of control of my life at the moment
Don’t be afraid to be silent
Take risks
Be patient
Well I got an artist interview in about 6 minutes, but after that, I want to go somewhere fun and write about the artist interviews as well as compile my notes.
One of my good friends is obsessed with star signs and by proxy, I’ve gotten pretty into them as well. However, I’ve had my doubts. While it seems possible they actually tell you about what kind of person someone is (although I find it to be far less precise than systems like Myers Briggs and the Enneagram) one thing has always bothered me. Star signs make no logical sense.
How can the position of the sun and the moon determine your personality? Do all people who are born at the same time and place have the same personality? Where did they even come up with the correlations? Isn’t this based on mythology?
The first thing you should know about star signs is that everyone has multiple signs. The sign that most people focus on is the “sun” sign (basically the positioning of the sun when you are born) as it is supposed to be the dominant sign. However, there are signs for the positions of all the planets and the moon.
The three most “important” signs according to astrologers at the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant signs (in that order), and actually gave me this idea of why star signs are not completely bogus.
The Sun, for example, is dependant on the month of the year you are born, the moon the time of the month, and the Ascendant the time of day and location of your birth.
What first got me thinking was that it occurred to me that the personality attributed to each sun sign seemed to match the general climate and weather of the months the signs were connected to. For example, Capricorns are people born between December 22nd and January 20th the coldest times of the year for many places. Capricorns are incidentally known for being cold, calculating, and driven by a need to succeed. Taurus, known to be easygoing and mild are born April 20 – May 20 the most warm and mild times of the year. Leos are known for their fiery passion and confidence are born between July 23 – August 22, the hottest times of the year.
I asked before how everyone born at the same time in the same place had the same personality – perhaps they DO in some small part. Perhaps the climate and the time of day and month, the location on the planet have a profound effect on who we become and what we like because it determines the environment we are born in.
It is not inconceivable to me, for example, that babies born in winter may grow up to be harder colder, and more driven people (as a large generalization). And it’s not inconceivable that people born with the same Ascendant sign (with the same time and place of birth) might share a thing or two in common.
Even more beautiful is the thought that just as the position of the sun affects us with our seasons, perhaps the position of ALL the stars and planets affect us in some way – even if the effects are unseen and mysterious. Perhaps we are more a people of the stars than we know. I know I’d love to believe that.
I’m exhausted – fell asleep for a long time after watching and imitating for a short period of time
Knife to gun transition – keeping knife out until dangerous angles, then switch to gun or do a jump peak while switching if no room
Hold for peeks – clear where they might peek, not where they might be, continue to hold it or switch to another angle they can push you from
Set graphics to low
Don’t push smokes unless with flashes or off of someone else’s contact
Spray with good spray control – pulling down
Fall after spraying to reload
Jiggle if holding close to an angle
Warm up at the start of each round by flicking onto teammate heads
In game what I did very successfully:
Spamming through smokes – I got many headshots through the smoke
Holding peekable angles – I felt I got a lot more intentional to where I was staring
Holding off angles when watching for the flank (specifically I utilized the place Tenz hid on Pearl in the first round to get kills
Being more intentional of when the knife is out, I rarely got caught out with my knife. I figured out how much time it takes to pull out the gun, and I always timed it so that I pulled out my gun before peeking anything.
What I can improve on:
Pulling out the knife more often when I know no one is close
Spam more boxes
Utilizing jump peeking more
Making sure my peeks are still tight and clean and fast
Being much more focused on holding specific peeks when slowly scaling up
Today I felt overwhelmed. Work felt like a huge heavy complicated mess.
Making a smoothie felt like it would be hard and painful (to walk around).
I played games to avoid the feelings…for hours.
I was so desperate for a solution I spend time with AI to work through the emotions.
First, the therapy led me to the wisdom that I needed to spend some time to feel the fears I was feeling:
The fear of death – the great unknown of my injuries and with work
The fear of inadequacy – letting my carefully maintained image of myself as successful and smart and talented crumble before me
The fear of abandonment – feeling that if I let others know how bad of a place I am in, that they would know how defective I am
The fear of abandonment and being defective was so strong I felt I needed to remember a time when I felt safe and whole. And that led me back to New York, many years ago, approaching women on the street with a dating coach.
I felt free. It wasn’t until I thought about it more that I realized why. daygaming gave me a glimpse of ultimate self love. A time when you bare your soul on the street and allow people to reject you is the most freeing emotions of all time.
I will say though that daygaming also traumatized me. Majorly. After mulling it over some more I concluded the main difference was that when I was alone, I was scared. And instead of seeking support, I beat myself up and criticized myself.
I’ve been seeking the daygaming formula for freedom for so long I feel excited I figured out a part of it:
Courage is the currency of self love. Ask yourself what the courageous thing to do is and make a decision to do it. If possible involve someone in on this decision (can be yourself).
Let the energy carry the action. Instead of being spurred forward by pressure, feel the moment, let the tension of the moment stand your hair on your arm. Let the noisy energy of fear and anxiety make you feel alive, spur your action.
If the fear becomes too great, seek comfort, reassurance from someone else, someone you trust (this can be yourself)
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.
Ever since I left my house and went off to college, it has been increasingly hard to go to bed on time.
It’s killing me. I don’t recover from workouts, my mind is foggy, and my memory mists away. My moods feel erratic and neurotic. Energy during the day is a thing of the past.
And yet I cannot stop.
2 am, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am. I keep going to bed late. And sometimes later and later.
I tried so many times to go to be at a reasonable time. I try for a few days, and then I relapse. But we aren’t giving up. We are trying it one more time.
And I didn’t do it alone. My good friend Edgar gave me this kick in the butt:
So what is my gameplan this time? How am I going to succeed when I failed so many times before?
A couple of things:
I will not try to control how much sleep I get
I will not try to control my screen habits
I will not control anything but one single factor, which is my bedtime
At the same time, I will figure out what needs I am meeting by going to bed late and how to meet those needs earlier in the day
I will commit to this bedtime long enough to form a habit
I made a list of reasons why I love staying up late at night:
Completely alone
Lots of time – no rush
Sense of accomplishment (if I feel I haven’t accomplished anything yet it gives me more time to get things done)
Consume art
Nighttime magical vibes
Dread of the next day
More time to eat and digest
I realized that not sleeping is incredibly compelling to me. It is far more challenging for me to go to sleep on time than most people. So as a result, I need to keep it simple. Bedtime at 11 PM for the next 66 days, no exceptions. The challenge will end on December 12th. I am two days into this challenge already.
What does this mean?
I can eat right before bed
I can watch videos in my bed after 11
I can get back up, stretch if I cannot fall asleep, then go back to bed
I can toss and turn at 11
I can get up at 6 am if I have work that needs to be done but I don’t have the time to finish it
In the meantime, in an attempt to meet all my needs before bed:
I will silence notifications and try to find some alone time every day
I will work to identify a task that is feasible to do and will give me a strong sense of accomplishment every day
I will try to get this done early so that I will have larger open times during the day where I don’t feel rushed
I will pursue more art and magical vibes
I will try to leave gifts for myself the next day so I have positive anticipation(ex: a clean empty sink, plans for something fun)
I will try to eat at 8 pm at the latest so I have time to digest before 11
In terms of how to structure the next 66 days, I have not decided yet, but perhaps I will try to focus on each of the needs and strategies every week.
Some additional strategies/thoughts:
Turning off all the lights
Melatonin gummies
So far, finding a way to feel accomplished/ready for the next day has been a game-changer in wanting to go to sleep. Also, it is easier to go to sleep when bedtime is a hard boundary that is very strict and everything else is quite relaxed (I can still get less sleep and wake up super earlier if I feel I’m not prepared for the next day, I don’t have to go to sleep as long as I’m in bed). Nothing is tempting as a valid excuse/difficult decision anymore.
So tentatively I feel this time will be different. My hope is that after 66 days, I will no longer have to try to go to bed at 11, it will just be automatic, and I will start to cherish my sleep and life in general!
