12:45 AM
My sleep schedule is pretty messed up. I can't hang out with any of my friends because I sleep in the morning, and I'm awake all night. At least I'm getting around 7 hours of sleep a day, it's just that I sleep from 1 PM to 8 PM, and I'm awake all throughout the night. From looking up information related to this, it doesn't matter that I'm getting the same 7-8 hours of sleep, the timing is different and sleeping like this may still affect my long term health negatively, so this is something I have to fix.
I've been awake since 9 PM and have only been productive that entire time, oh, except for probably an hour or more of social media that I didn't limit my time on. I try to make at least 1 vegan activism post on X and Threads per day, and it may only take a minute or two to do this, but sometimes I can be on social media for several hours if I get distracted and read and reply to other posts during that time.
I completed all of my brain training for the day, which honestly did not take that long, and did some physical exercises as well. I was able to do 9 pull-ups today, which is close to my personal best of 12, and an improvement from a month ago of around 7. I'm still not practicing doing pull-ups and chin-ups every day, maybe just once a week, but I have improved still. I was also able to wall sit for over 2 minutes today, I think 2 minutes and 9 seconds. I'm going to do a plank now as I type this, and see how long I can go for.
Doing a wall-sit is really tough and challenging. There's also a lot of boredom in just sitting still for two minutes. I'm still doing a plank right now, I don't know how many seconds has passed by, but it's also kind of annoying to do a plank. Ugh. It is sort of painful to do a plank. I'm done. One minute and 11 seconds.
There was this insightful post I read that only we are critical to ourselves, while we are kind to everyone else. If someone says "I failed doing 12 pull-ups today, I was only able to do 9", we might say to them, "that's pretty good still, that's better than most people who can't even do one, and at least you tried", but if we were the ones who could do 12 pull-ups before but can only do 9 now, we might say to ourselves "that's because you were inconsistent in your training, you slacked off, you gained weight, you lost strength, and now you need to train every day again if you want to surpass it." Who's reflection is right?
Of course we are much more critical of ourselves in other areas, being able to do 12 pull-ups or not is pretty benign. Like if we were talking about more important areas such as the state of our own appearance or relationships or income or health, and was disappointed in any of these, we can be so critical that we discourage and harm ourselves.
If a friend came up to us though, and outlined their state in these areas, and how disappointed they were at themselves, we would reply more kindly to them, and might even say that it's not their fault and that things are okay. I think it's good to have a reasonable blend of these two for ourselves, it's great to be kind, but it also helps to be a bit honest and critical.
Something I've been doing that hasn't been helping my life out at all in any way, is entertainment. I basically spent all day yesterday reading manga. Yeah it was entertaining, I really enjoyed this activity otherwise I wouldn't have done it, but how was this activity helped me or anyone?
The problem with this activity as well is that my attention and dopamine are numbed and dulled. I have difficulty doing "boring" tasks that don't involve enticing visuals and a captivating story. I have a lot of random work that I procrastinate on because I deem them too boring to do, to the point it physically pains me to do some of these activities. I think too much entertainment has destroyed my ability to concentrate and work on "boring" tasks.
I think it's great for me to practice handwriting for example, since my handwriting isn't that great, but I find it difficult to write more than a paragraph without succumbing to wanting to do anything else. Meanwhile, 200 years ago, typewriters weren't around, and everyone only had to write using a quill pen, which is very annoying to write with. Oh, and back then literacy rates were very low, probably only 5-10% of the population could read and write. It is kind of interesting that there were still geniuses at the time, able to create works such as Principia Mathematica, and people back then were able to understand these works and their significance.
It's also interesting how it's mainly one person who gets all the credit. Meta has 75,000 employees, some of the most elite people and brightest minds in our society, each one of these employees is a tour de force, yet only only one person is credited, just Mark Zuckerberg. It's the same with Microsoft. Bill Gates hasn't been associated with Microsoft for like 30 years, yet he is still the face of Microsoft, at least to me and probably the majority of the public, and Microsoft has over 220,000 tour de force employees, none of them get any credit.
I'm not sure about most people, but I definitely want to be remembered for some contribution or significant achievement. It's nearly impossible to accomplish this, as most people are forgotten, most people have no contribution, no significant achievement. Even if someone achieves something great, "great" can be relative, and it doesn't mean at all that they will be remembered. I realize that I am very insignificant having practically done nothing with my life. Despite having done some "above average" things (millions of visitors to my websites, millions of YouTube views, tens of millions Twitter views, etc), I am still just a nobody.
Does exercising get any easier? I find it tiring to do any exercises. I did 200 push-ups the other day, but I find it hard to even do 10 push-ups right now. I just did 10 push-ups, and it was tiring, I also started to sweat a little. Does exercising ever get any easier? I don't think it does. I think 10 push-ups will always be as difficult as doing 10 push-ups, even if I can do 40+ of them in a row, doing 10 is still 10, still the same difficulty, just that I am able to do ever more than just 10.
Anyway, finally, on Friday Wahl replied to all my messages from several months ago, probably nearly 9 months ago. I was asleep when she was replying to me, and I didn't even find out she messaged me until just yesterday. I wish I had decent results to show her, but I haven't made any fitness related progress in several months. I updated her on my weight and body fat % back in March I think, I was 155 pounds and 15% body fat back then, and I wish I could have made some progress. Instead, I'm now 168 pounds and 17.5% body fat, going in the wrong direction. It really hurts to have these numbers. Anyway, I'll probably respond to her in a few days. I think I can get back down to 165 in the meantime.
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I agree with what you said about how we are more critical of ourselves than other people. I am a perfectionist so I am often more hard on myself than other people, I often judge myself by higher standards, which I am working on remembering not to do.
And I also agree with what you said about Mark Zucherburg getting all of the credit while there are thousands of employees working for Meta. It is sadly that way with a lot of big companies. But I don't think anybody is a nobody. The way I see it, each person is an entire universe that includes them, their dreams, the people they care about, the people who's lives they have made a difference in whether they know it or not, and more. Doing something that people will remember or that will make a huge difference isn't the only thing that makes somebody, somebody. You never know how many people's lives you have made a difference in. Maybe you were kind to that old lady at the gas station and it made her feel better that day because she had been going through something, maybe you smiled at that stranger and it made them feel a bit better about themselves because nobody had smiled at them in a long time. You may have made a huge impact on a lot of people already without even knowing it. Because maybe that person you smiled at was then able to be kind to someone else and it is like dominoes. :)
It is valid to want to be remembered for a significant achievement, you should definitely chase your dreams always and if that is your dream I really hope you do achieve it. But also don't forget in the process that you are not a nobody if you haven't achieved that yet.
@rachelrae2003 I agree with your comment, we definitely do make a difference to everyone we encounter in our lives, such as you to me right now, even if it doesn't seem like it's making any difference. Thank you so much for your comment. I am definitely still after my dreams, and will continue to chase them until they have been achieved. I hope to record everything on these public journal entries.
@JustMegawatt I wish you all the best in achieving your dreams!
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