Ziggy's Monologues

I have completely forgot about my camera yesterday, so there will be no photos
of Benjamin eating legendary Olivier salad, also not photos of Katya singing and
me making a fool of myself with an electric guitar.

But... I did find my camera a couple of days ago and took it with me for a
wonderful cold and gray walk through a district of Berlin that is particularly
hipstery and vibrant (yes, the smell of weed is everywhere... and it's a good
smell).

I will not bore you with the whole photo real but there's one photo that kind of
fits today (2021... need to remember... not to write 2020 for the next 12
months...).



Also, I just needed an image to work on my monologue engine's image support.
(Yes, this glorious website is generated by software I wrote myself during this
winter holiday).

Wow, fourth of January already. It was the New Year celebration just a second
ago. We were eating salads and a cake and drinking coffee and tea and proseco
and singing songs and talking bullshit. And then it was midnight in Berlin and I
was brushing my teeth while everyone else were trying to burn the town down
(again). And now it's the fourth of January already. And soon it will be the 21st.

But meanwhile we are here (and we are there if we are reading this much later).

So, the previous year was special in a lot of ways. One of them was me
discovering a new musical artist (and his band) during one random event of an
insomnia. Two things happened one summer night in 2020: 1. I couldn't sleep, so
I've opened YouTube and clicked on a random music video, which was a concert by
Billy Strings. 2. I've realized that insomnia can provide an unexpected gift, so
you should never think of insomnia as a bad thing.

Yeah, I was listening to a lot of live Billy Strings shows afterwards,
discovering the bluegrass genre, playing more guitar myself and singing songs
about drugs, prison and... summertime.

I didn't have insomnia as often last year as before. Even though I was secretly
looking forward to more surprises from YouTube's algorithm, sleep deprived brain
and open-mindedness. I guess all that diet, vitamin supplements (D3 and B-100 in
particular) and consistent meditation practice -- they all did something to me.
Tonight I have seen one of the weirdest dreams of my life and I wasn't even
super tired or high yesterday.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is: go listen to Billy Strings. And if
you cannot sleep for some reason, just get up and try to enjoy non-sleeping
(don't try to be productive, try to be happy). That's all the advice I have for
the future me today.

Fourth of Jan already??? Really??? I'm gonna be old and dead soon.

Sometimes when I'm walking outside (in 3d and full color) and passing near a bus
stop I see someone rushing towards the bus that has been standing there for a
few moments already with opened doors. People have already finished loading into
the bus. I can feel the doors beginning to close, the driver not seeing that
there's a person outside in the cold unfriendly street doing the best she can to
make it, running (maybe for the first time in years) with bags dangling in her
arms hitting her knees and messing up with her rhythm. And then... sometimes,
not every time, that rushing someone makes it to the bus. In these moments I
forget about most of the things. In these moments a wave of satisfaction and
warmness rushes over me. I feel good about the person that's made it onto the
bus in the last moment. I feel good about the driver. I feel good about the
other passengers. I feel good about people standing outside, seeing the same
small... miracle.

It works with trams as well. It doesn't work with trains or subways.

I've stumbled upon a practical way of using average numbers in real life.

Yeah, I know what an average is, but to be honest I have never seen a lot of
sense of using it in real life. Unless you are splitting the bill into equal
parts or something. But that happens less frequently these days.

But, reading this book about information theory today, I've noticed a fun way to
use average numbers.

Let's try some examples.

Example one:

I live in a country where average salary is 5$. I know that my salary is 7$.
This automatically means that there must be at least one person that has a
salary that is less than 5$. Probably around 3$. And the higher my salary is in
comparison to the known average (that is probably reported in the news every
year either to brag or to shock the readers even if the readers are the same
people that write the news) the lower the salary of someone else in the same
country.

[It's probably obvious to some math-brained people, but it wasn't to me, so shut
up!]

Example two:

If an average life span of a human is 59 years (a number that I've just
invented) and you go to a cemetery and find a grave stone of a child that was
alive for only 5 days... there must be a person in the world who is waaaaay
older than 59 years (I'm too lazy to calculate but you get the idea).

What do it all mean to me?

I'm not trying to be philosophical about it (although I can). I'm just seeing
this cool way of getting a quick sure information about the world by knowing
just two numbers, when one of those numbers is an average and the other one is a
sample from that average. Makes me appreciate math (which I usually don't do
often). And makes me a bit scared when I think up more and more example based on
my personal data and the average numbers.

And we're back!

Now, in Norway. The snow outside is everywhere. The cold is persistent, strong and... surprisingly fun. I have been getting myself more and more familiar with the cold after I moved from Thailand to Germany and discovered I can finally have proper cold showers. After that I started sleeping under a thinner blanket during the winter time, otherwise I couldn't sleep because I was too hot and too sweaty. With the window open and the heating turned off.

So, obviously cold has become a sort of a friend. And now, rediscovering the Wim Hof method that I've used in Thailand everytime I felt flue-like symptoms, I'm getting in a more intense relationship with cold. Also now the cold is not this small tiny creature in the corner but a bigger beast ready to bite your head of if you show any signs of fear.

Fun times. Also the shower is much colder here during winter time. So I'm having all kinds of fun painful experiences while trying not to go into shock.

Other than that... the amounts of coffee I can drink without effect on my sleep is now unlimited. I do need to find a thinner blanket though. The current airbnb apartment has one of those super synthetic, light but fat and non-breathable blankets. I wake up sweaty even though the window is open and it's -16 C outside. Ruining my beauty sleep!

Note to self: never rent an airbnb flat from a crazy person.

Sleeping with the bedroom door closed from the inside just in case. If we were in US I would've had a shotgun under my pillow. But... this is Norge! I mean Norway! We don't have guns under our pillows. We have a moose in the backyard, bacon cheese in a tube and quiet cold that works better than any freaking diet I have ever tried.

Anyway, the escape route is set and if we live to see the morning light rising over the neighboring mountains we will get to a new flat, where the owner is human and sensible. Only then we can start doing what we should've done already -- setting up the documents, the great electronic persona of Scandinavia and also do some work!

So, a funny thing has happened.

We came to Oslo and went into quarantine right away. It was mandatory and we were also thinking: it will do us good to spend 10 days relaxing at home, going for nature walks and investigating the selection of the nearby supermarket (Rema 1000 chain - I love when there are thousands in names, like Ziggy 3000, etc.). We were also staying in an apartment on the outskirts of Oslo, on a small mountain. There were almost no people, a lot of trees and snow and one road that was mostly used by buses and trucks. Oh, there was also a church and a tiny graveyard. What I'm trying to say that the place was only officially part of Oslo, but it wasn't Oslo city and if you didn't remind yourself that you're in Oslo you might as well be in Canada or Magadan.

During our first days we've received an sms from... well, from Oslo itself. The sms was in English and said that the coronavirus is spreading so everything will be closed except the farmacies, the grocery stores and schools (but only because they will switch to code red operations, whatever that means). We thought: cool, they sent sms even to people with non-Norwegian phone numbers and the sms are in English. The lockdown sounded more like what we were used to in Berlin, we were not phased by that.

But, the quarantine has ended and the airbnb hose went crazy and we needed to go to Oslo, like, the city center, the National Theater area, to print out some papers, buy some envelopes (we switched from doing everything digitally online to doing everything German style with paper and snail mail thanks to this one asshole whose name doesn't deserve to be called on the pages of this monologue). Anyway, we were rushing to get the printout and the envelopes -- end of Saturday and on Sunday most of the places are closed (German style, again). We were able to finish all the side-quests and decided to take a slow stroll back to the station to head home (to our new airbnb flat with the nicest owner). And then we've noticed... Nothing is closed in Oslo. Nothing. The feeling was weird and it took us a couple of blocks of walking to realize: we haven't seen a big street looking like that in more than a year! All the stores were open. People were walking without masks on. Folks were sitting in cafes and restaurants (with extra distance between the tables though). It was like... coming to a foreign country for the first time after you've spent your whole life in a post-soviet (or even soviet) country. Look at all the stores, look at all the people buying stuff, look at the choices and the lights and the names.

But what about the official SMS and the news on the web that said that we have a lockdown in Oslo?! I don't know. Was it a lie? A misscomunication? A misunderstanding on my part? (Yeah, my English is not very good, I am sorry!). Or, like my friend Benjamin said, maybe they tell this to newcomers so they would stay home while the rest of the nation enjoys their home decoration shopping and their special Swedish February buns called "semla".

It was 1995. It was 5 years before the end of the world. It was summer. Crazy appleseeds were hanging from a great chestnut tree standing between two small windows. The windows smelled of onion. The appleseeds smiled lots and lots. They were crazy every summer. Till the world changed.

It was 1996. Summer got hotter. Trees were no fun anymore. Pixels were fun. Strategizing was fun. Mashing buttons was fun. Appleseeds were pleased with life of simplicity. They needed a TV, some cookies, a lot of water and a pinch of electricity. No Internet was required. No subscriptions services or avocado toasts. No motivational speaker. It was them, non-blinking, smiling, in awe every 50 minutes or so. Information traveled from balcony to ear to legs to balcony. Fast, cheap, low-tech, low-bandwidth. Pixels told good stories. Appleseeds were happy. School was a couple of months away. The end of the world was 4 years away.

It was 1997. While the world moved and shacked and got connected and re-connected and learned how to punch itself and make soap and rap... The appleseeds learned some new words, looked at images on paper and were riding the pixels every-freaking-day-no-school-no-parents-no-girlfriends-no-boyfriends-no-diets-no-taxes-no-deadlines-no-career-ladders-no-children-with-diapers... nothing could stop them. And nothing did.

2000 came. Yeah, I've skipped a few summers. They were mostly good. No such thing as a bad summer, right? 2000 came and stopped them. Yeah. Without lifting a finger, without crashing the Wall Street, without flooding the world with fire and water and self-navigating-exploding-squirrels-that-are-also-ninjas. It just came and went. And took the crazy appleseeds with it. Leaving a lot of tobacco smell, a puddle of saliva mixed with tears one-to-one and some really bad poetry.

It's 2021 today. I am not going back. I just can't.

The great youtube random video generator (AKA artificial intelligence algorithm that costs one trillion megabucks) put this into my headphones. Yeah, I wasn't even looking at the video, it was just playing music to me starting with Moby... and then this happened:


I like it. It's haunting. Makes you feel like something from not of this world will knock on your door in a few seconds. And make you choose: stay safe and die old with a whole on your under pants, or go and die young in suffering and become a verse in an old creepy song.

I did a thought experiment yesterday that had more effect than anything Tony Robbins might say.

It's about embarrassment. You know, that feeling, when you do something stupid in public or even in front of a single person. And then you go home and you keep feeling that feeling more and more until it becomes this embarrassment about embarrassment and you feel your face getting hot and your heart pounding. Basically you're trying to give yourself a heart attack because you did something stupid (and maybe not even intentionally stupid, like falling on your face accidentally because it was slippery).

That feeling has been bugging me all my life. And from what I know, other people often have it. The feeling is the worst because it also inhibits your future behavior and actions. Like, you think, well, I could try talking to this person but that one time I remember I said "hi" to this guy and he's made a face and everyone stared at us... like, everyone and then he has just turned away and I was standing there like an idiot. I better not try this again. Just don't talk to people. Ever.

And if you're like me (and since I'm writing this down for myself -- you are me!) you've also heard many times how you are the only person who remembers that kind of stuff from your past. The guy that didn't say "hello" back, the people that saw that happening -- all of them don't remember, and don't even try to remember that situation. And I always thought, yeah, that makes sense probably, but... I was still embarrassed about being embarrassed that time or another. I kept imagining people sitting in their kitchens on Saturday mornings remembering and even discussing out loud how I messed up that time, how I fell down, how I tried to make a joke and no one laughed, how I had my pants' zipper unzipped all day in front of everyone, how I was too loud and everyone hear me saying personal things about my dreams...

So yesterday... Yeah, literally at age 36.5 I've decided to try this hat on: I've tried to remember something embarrassing that someone else did. Anyone, friend, foe or stranger. Ever. I've tried really hard. And, you've guessed it, I couldn't remember a single situation. And my memory is quite good (even now). It's so good it's often uncomfortable the amount of useless facts I remember. But I couldn't recall how anyone did something embarrassing. And while I was trying to do that I sort of understood why.... At least one of the many whys. I couldn't remember it because I haven't felt embarrassed about anything I didn't do. No, really. Think about it. Like, people say it in the movies a lot: "Oh, you've made us so embarrassed..." But even then they were embarrassed. It's like there's no empathy for embarrassment. We can feel each other's joy or sadness or, of course, pain. But... we cannot feel each other's embarrassment that well or at all. Or even if we do it's so... transient that we don't remember any of it. And we were probably embarrassed ourselves in the beginning anyway.

Now, I could remember one situation. About my friend peeing in my bed at night that one time he stayed over because his parents were away. We were like 10 or 11 years old. And the only reason I can remember it is that every time I meet him now, which happens every several years, he keeps retelling me that story. I don't know why, but telling that story makes him really happy. So I guess it's not even an embarrassing story. And when I recalled it I didn't really feel embarrassed about him or me. It was just this story from my childhood. Not the worst story either.

Anyway, if you're reading this, you're not me and you have this problem with keep remembering your own embarrassing moments, try the experiment -- switch roles and see for yourself. No one remembers this stuff outside themselves. Now you are free, go an embarrass the fuck out of you!

It's the 8th of March. And what am I doing? I'm tying in my text editor to see if it still works after I ran update on it. Seems to work. Seems to not throw weird error message in my console. It's 2021, god, I've been lied to all my life. No flying cars. I'm still dicking around with cables and adapters every day when I need to charge my phone. But the phone has so many cameras. 3 - I've just counted. And I have the cheaper model.

Busses still look like busses. Some of the are electric. Most of them are not.

I'll go to a meeting and then type some more.

"One of the most valuable unicorns in the world" - actual phrase I would never expect to read in a serious media. But that's the world we live in. We have valuable unicorns. And there's obviously a competition amongst them.

In other news... AIs writing news articles after 2 seconds of the actual event happening. Journalists? Who are they?

I was thinking about text yesterday. People came up with the idea of writing stuff down and then reading that stuff consistently. Then other people figured out that you can write human-readable text and make computers translate it to computer-readable text and then run it and suddenly have virtual and physical consequences (usually in real time) based on what's been written. And now people are making computers read human text by using special text written by humans and fed into machines so that machines could write human text like the human texts they read before by using special human-readable-computer-translated text. Do you see? It's an endless loop of textual information that's now converging on itself. The snake is eating itself. And the snake is text. The thing that was invented one billion trillion years ago. One of the simples ways that people could figure out to transmit data through time and space, through brain to brain, and now it's becoming this self-sustaining thing and it's all just text (it's all data - scream Clojure people but I can't hear them).

Weird-weird world.

I'm basically testing the githubactions CI thing I've created.
This should help me build the site easier: I commit a new thought (as a wondeful text file) and then magic happens and I have one less thing to do.
Next step is to make it easier to generate new empty thoughts on my local computer, but that's something for the future me.

In other news: the weather is wonderful, the coffee is consumed outside in the garden chair, the snow is melting... I guess you can call it fast for Norway.
I've been thinking: since a lot of people got into playing chess after watching (binging) the Queen's Gambit show... maybe it will level up the humanity's capabilities for deep concentration, improve the cognitive skills and so on. And smarter future humanity will realise all their mistakes, fix them and finally create flying cars powered by thoughts. Maybe?

Billy Strings got a Grammy for him "Home" albumn.

This is a good things.

Warm days have started to pile-up in Norway. It's already hard to find snow in Oslo, but in my neighbourhood... it still looks like deep winter in other countries I know.

I have discovered a world of tiled window managers... for MacOS. Helps a lot when you have a million windows to manage and only
one big monitor. The monitor has enough space for everything... but how does one figure out the windows placement... Tiled window managers, man... That's the truth.

I just wanted to test my auto site building one more time really. Nothing to see here :)

I've been recently doing some C coding with SDL2. Just following the handmade hero videos and trying to reimplement some of the basic ideas like:
- open a window
- put pixels on window
- put pixels in a back buffer and copy that buffer to the window's buffer

That's where I am at right now. I don't have a deadline or a plan. I just enjoy the process of discovering how basic gamedev and computer graphics work without the help of a framework. I do use SDL2, cause I'm on Mac and it seems to be the best thing to use when you want a "lower" level access to graphics and such but don't want to build everything from scratch. I think at this point I enjoy learning about how games work more than playing them. To be honest I haven't played anything since one year ago when I had insomnia and one night tried to play the original Zelda and couldn't achieve any progress and gotten frustrated. I'm sure 12 yo me would've had more success but he's not around anymore. He's gone. Surfing the waves of the quantum information field of nowhere.

I wanted to post it here for a long time now. I guess that's why I haven't. I've
been falling down the rabbit whole into the world of Casey Muratori and Jonathan
Blow (and everything related).

Now, I've already written about my Handmade Hero discovery and my SDL2 coding
attempts, which are still bringing me joy and frustration, but mostly joy. It's
all kind of related but even I cannot remember at this point what happened
first.

Just watch this:

It's a great talk, isn't it? It's also sad because it's true. I have been
thinking about this topic for awhile now, especially lately when I've noticed
that we spend more time and effort talking about whitespace and comments
formatting than we do about performance. To be honest we do get to performance,
but... It's not the first thing on our agenda (and maybe it shouldn't be). But I
have noticed that fewer and fewer programmers that I personally know spend time
writing software closer to hardware, high performing software.

But let's not point fingers. I'm a great example of being part of the problem.

So... I have a need of some custom made software. And I (following the steps of
my grandfather) build my own stuff when I need it. When I wanted a program that
would generate random workouts for me (from one of the great Pavel's programs),
I wrote it myself. When I wanted a helper program for my guitar studies, I wrote
another one. When I wanted a super simple monologuing service, I wrote my own.

But I did it all as web apps. Which could be OK if the plant was to make it
public and share with the world. But it was always just for me. So instead of
writing a program that's small, fast, doesn't require a whole web stack and a
deployment process I've went with an "easy" solution: at the end of the day I do
spend most of my time doing fullstack web apps.

And then I saw this talk. And then I saw more of John Blow's talks and listened
to Casey in some podcasts. And I got sad. And I've tried to write C and I was
scared of C. And that's when it got me.... Me? Afraid of C? I've made my first
money programming in C. I wrote my bachelor's work in C. I studied C in the
university. I was never scared of C. But now I was.... I felt vulnerable without
a garbage collector. I'm not even trying to be funny. It was what I felt.

So... That was it. That was the point that kicked me in the face. Did I lose it?
Am I really a software developer? Have I regressed after my university years?

I guess I'm trying to say: I'll be writing software for myself in C. And it will
be executables that I can run on my local machine without an internet
connection. (SDL2 will help for sure.) And I'm actually excited about that.

I want to talk about Apple. Cause why not. Everyone's doing it. There are whole sub-genres of podcasts dedicated to talking about Apple. Seriously, how valuable is that?

So I wanna jump in and complain and criticise something I haven't even tried to do: create and sell expensive products to trillions and trillions of people in all countries, rich or poor.

The last online keynote presentation thing made me think new thoughts. While ten keynotes before that cause absolutely zero thoughts in my brain. So might as well write them down.

I see an issue. And it's probably my personal issue but here it goes... Image, I don't have a computer and I want one. Just one. Cause I've heard that it's 2021 and you only need one and I don't have that much money. So I want a computer. Kind of like when people wanted a VCR they didn't want 5 VCRs, they wanted one. It was so straightforward that you didn't have to mention it to anyone: you either had one and you wanted a new one or you had zero and you wanted A one.

So I want a computer and I've heard nice things about Apple. And I vaguely remember the rebel spirit of underdog Apple of the late nineteen-ninety-X. And I go to their website, cause the stores are all in lockdown and I forgot how to use walk-in stores and how to talk to people... like ... without Zoom??? How's it even possible?

Anyway, I'm on their website-online-shop-thing and I want a computer. And....

-- Hey, Apple!
-- Whatup dood?
-- Sell me a computer. A good one.
-- OK, which one do you want?
-- I don't know. I want a good one I guess. I've just told you that, right?
-- Don't need to be so touchy. I got ya! Do you want a big screen or a small one?
-- I don't know. I wanted a computer, I didn't think about screens. I guess a big one is better, right?
-- For sure! You should get an iMac.
-- Great! Is it heavy? Cause you know, I move around a lot. Every 2 years I pack my stuff and relocate to another planet.
-- Digital Nomad ay?
-- Don't call me that! I hate that term. They always show lazy hipsters in Thailand pretending they're coding in their swimsuit. Have you tried coding on a beach... in Thailand?
-- Nah man, I don't travel much. I'm from California, USA! The best country in the nation!
-- Right. So... iMac... heavy?
-- Not exactly. But.... you can't just take it with you. I mean, you can, but you need a desk and an electrical outlet to plug it in.
-- Doesn't sound right. It's 2021, don't you have a portable computer?
-- Do I! I have MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. And like... the biggest one is 16 inches! It has a battery and you can try coding from a beach in Thailand... until it overheats and powers down in 2 seconds. That's what you wanted, right?
-- Yeah! Is it heavy though?
-- Depends on whom you ask. You know, I workout. Like, lots! So for me it's not heavy at all. Check this out, see these biceps? All natty!
-- Ok-ok. I've heard you can like ... touch screens for some reason. Can I touch those screens on MacBooks?
-- Hell no! This is like... super uncool. Only Microsoft does that. And who wants Microsoft's anything, right? You feel me?
-- Ok... Do you have a portable computer that's not heavy (I don't workout lots) and that I can touch screens with?
-- I have an iPad.... Pro! I also have an iPad Air. And just iPad.
-- Ok, what's wrong with those?
-- They are kind of not computers. You get your software from my app store. And you want something else... you need to code it yourself I guess. In machine code... while blindfolded. And you need a special keyboard-case thing for typing this long-ass blog posts you like. It's not included by the way.
-- Ok, what's the difference between all the iPads...?
...

And so it goes forever and ever. Until one of you gives up. And it's probably you. And you either buy something... randomly. Or you close the website-online-shop thing from Apple and open another one. Which is much easier to do than to go around the city from one location to another.

This is my problem. The product line is so huge, complex and highly overlapping. And at the same time every product missing some valuable bit that's present in another product but that other product is almost missing some bit... For no good reason except for money-generating-capitalism-is-so-nice-yo reason.

I hope I won't need a new computer that I would have to chose and buy myself anytime soon.

I'll be watching a youtube video, right? A really good one. Like, a person clearly spent a lot of time preparing the material, synthesising the interesting bits, figuring out a way on how to simplify it and present as a 10 minute (or 20 minute if presenter is someone born in USA), making the video, editing it, etc. And then I scroll to the comment section and there will be a comment like "You are an idiot and your mom is fat!" Or something even more terrible, like "You are totally wrong, lol!", which is like the whole reason the Internet exists, right? Telling people they are wrong...

Or there will be comments for someone's insta photos or someone's drawing, someone's song or even someone's indie game. And the comments will just be violent, stupid and 100% negative (funnily enough, most of the start with "I don't want to sound like a jerk, buuut...").

And I think I know the reason. Like, the mechanical reason. No psycho-emotional-artsy-fartsy-bull-shit. Mechanically, it's takes a lot of effort to make something, like a video, and it takes even more effort to publish it, especially if it includes the author herself or even just the voice (we all know how we feel when we hear our own voice recorded secretly and suddenly played back to us). And it's waaaay easy to just click inside the comment box and start typing and then hit "send" or "Save" or whatever. Most of the times you don't even need to register or login to leave a comment. So if you wanna be mean, it's really easy to be mean. Even being accidentally mean is so easy it's sometimes unavoidable (I did it several times, cause I didn't take good care of what I was trying to say and just typed and submit and then hurt someone's feelings for no reason except my stupidity).

The answer might be: balance things out. Make commenting as difficult. One way that I can see is: if you want to comment on some video on youtube you must have published public videos, at least ten of those, real ones (just for example). The same goes for other platforms where people publish their art, work or artwork. Then you know what it's like to show your work to everyone, you know what goes into making that work and you probably are more experienced and ready to comment on some work from the same media. Also the receiving author will know that you're not just a random dood from cyberspace, bored and horrible, but you might actually know what you're talking about cause otherwise you wouldn't have the feature to comment.

As a software developer I find it's also easy to implement, so I don't see why not have a system of ... basically rank. Nobody gets to post nothing. An author can engage in conversation with other authors. And even then it might depend on the ranking system. Like: you posted 10 videos... you can like/dislike other videos, you posted 10 more, you can leave emojis, you posted a 100, now you get to write comments with like words and sentences and exclamation points.

And I know, some people fuel their ego or just get motivated by reading comments like "you're great!", but I think (and I'm just a horrible nobody) that this is not a good motivation. The motivation should come from you digging the process and having some vision or just experimenting cause you enjoy it or just getting to practice a craft. The motivation should never come from your drinking buddies cheering you on. A lot of great work/art was done behind closed doors, in bedrooms offline, inside minds and empty hallways, on a bus while commuting to work for the millionth time. Without any comments.

Monday. Darkness and despair. What have you done this weekend? Have you achieved happiness? Have you made progress on your personal development, your side hustles, your projects? Have you lived every second like it's the last one? You know... All that bullcrap that supposed to motivate you but actually makes you sad and depressed.

Mondays are the worst. They are reminders. To some of us not all. You work because you get paid. Even if you love your job. It's still a job. There's no escape. It's a trap and it's closed a long time ago, before your parents have even decided to have sex for the first time. So it's not your fault. But you get to live this horrible mess until you die and then... There's nothing, but you should definitely pick up a religion so that it doesn't feel like a complete senseless joke.

Mondays, man. Can it get any worse? Well, ol' chump, I'm so glad you've asked. I, me, myself have singlehandedly found a way to make Mondays even worse. Like... Mondays on steroids. You wanna know how I did it don't you? You wanna follow me into the abyss? Fine!

So... I've started doing this intermittent fasting thing a long time ago (before it got trendy, like it's the new vegetarianism, goddammit!). And now I got to my latest experiment with it: 36 hours of no food starting.... Sunday night. Yeah, no food all Monday. And food is one of those things that's kind like cocaine for the rich rock starts that snorted themselves out of this world by the time they got to celebrate their 28th birthdays. Maybe they did things right. Anyway, food that helps me not be sad (dopamine mostly, but who's counting) is not available to me in the darkest hours of a workweek. Am I a genius or what?

Half of today's Monday is gone already. I'm not thinking about food though. I'm thinking about Clojurescript, CSS and escape routes from the trap. And I know there's no escape but I cannot help not thinking about it. Especially when I'm not eating and it's cold and raining.

I totally recommend it!

... on the other hand, the food tastes so good after 36 hours of none of it. And I'm choosing only the best, tastiest things in the fridge, cause if I have a limit (and we all do have a limit, we just forget that we do) I'm making sure I get the most goodness and pleasureness.

It's not all doom and gloom though. During those 36 hours I mean. At least if you have something intellectual to occupy yourself with: coding, reading, thinking, gaming, etc. My focus is way deeper and easier to achieve during the prolonged fasting period. And everything becomes much more interesting. Just make sure you're not reading a novel written by a decadent French chef called "The Last Food Orgasm" while you're fasting. Cyberpunk works great - there's not a single tasty thing that was ever present in a cyberpunk story. Math books are great! Programming is nice cause you just get into the code editor and start thinking about each letter of code with great intensity. Cause... what else are you going to do?

Anyway... it's easier to write about it now, on Tuesday, which is not Monday. I've already had my home-made sugar-free berry jello. And I'm gonna have a fat-coffee with vanilla whey protein. And then I'm gonna think of a nice dish with meat and veggies and tons of fat. It's raining outside and I can eat till it's like 6-7 PM. Seize the plate, Luke!

This is one of those posts when I'm feeling all smart and stuff cause I have discovered this magic thing called water.

But I do want to write this down. For the sake of writing it down.

I've been thinking about success lately. My success. Humble, not-generating-any-headlines success. And also failures. Cause you cannot have one without the other. And I've noticed a theme. I have been successful, in a big life-changing way, twice: 1. I've became a software developer (a coder, a programmer, a question-mark-shaped-button-pusher, an engineer, although that last point is still being argued questioned and laughed at by the real engineers); 2. My fitness level at 37 is not... terrible, especially for being a professional benchwarmer (I literally get paid for sitting on my ass... productively). I have also failed so many times, that my ego won't let me give any examples here publicly (also, it's boring to write and read about things-that-could-have-happened-but-did-not). But one of those: I wanted to be a writer. As in, writing fiction, stories for people to read and enjoy. I've spent 5 years doing that (writing daily in the mornings and sometimes evenings, making everything else second priority to my writing, etc.). I wrote one good short story and got published and got me _some_ very-very-very-very narrow recognition at a retreat for young writers (I wasn't 37 back then, more like.... 31).

And I think I know why success happened and why failure happened. In those particular cases. It's easy... and a bit hard to admit. But, I've became a professional software engineer because I liked coding. I wasn't good at it, but I liked the process. I was getting into the mythical flow state, I was losing track of time, I enjoyed reading computer science books instead of a yet another Stevie King's novel. I didn't care if I ever become a software engineer. I just wanted to code. And when I got an opportunity to do this _and_ I got paid for it... well, that just meant that now I can write code even more! No worrying about paying bills, helping mom, buying shit I don't need to prove to myself I'm not poor anymore (oops, psychological problems overflowing, must. stop. must. focus.) I am also one of those weird mutant people that actually truly enjoy working out. As in, intensive, "I is gonna puke nowz!", working out. Not because I "want to look good nekkid" but because I really-really like the process, how I feel during the time I workout, how I feel before, after. And it's the same deal as with programming: I enjoy reading training manuals and memoirs of some coach or athlete, I read through forums on muscle-building obsessed websites, I spend more money then the most people on things like supplements, kettlebells, resistance bands, push-up handles, ab-rollers, massage and mobility doodads. I even had an olympic size barbell in my apartment. Apartment! Like, small one! (The length of an olympic barbell is 220 cm and it weights 20 kg... and if you don't understand the metric system... I mean, it's 2021... there's this things called science... anyway... enjoy your new pickup truck).

And I failed as a writer cause at some point, quite early actually, I've stopped enjoying the process and started pursuing this vision of... me being a famous author that people recognise on the street, come to book stores to meet and get a signed copy of the latest super-bestseller that only my brilliant mind could produce. And it's very hard, at least for me, to do anything good enough if I don't enjoy the process and only looking for the rewards, the outcomes of that process. It's like washing dishes... I'm not going to concentrate and make sure every plate is clean and rinsed and dried and placed in a correct sizing order on a correct plate holding place... I'm just going to rush through it and then wonder the next day why the food tastes so soapy.

I guess the morale, if there is any, is that: enjoy the process. And if you don't enjoy the process, don't bother hoping for great things to happen. Also try to bail out and try something else. Or even a crazier idea... maybe try to learn to like the process you're already doing. Maybe stop waiting for the pay day. Is it possible? I don't know. I've hated programming for many years (yep, when I was the brilliant writer no one knows about), I've found a way to enjoy it again. The outcome doesn't really matter. It's the same for everyone. There's no surprise ending. You're not in a M Night Shyamalan's flick.

I get motivated from watching other people work. Even if it's Randy banging on a keyboard and yelling at a badly rendered 3D figure. I will watch his video and immediately want to code something myself. Most of the time it's... work stuff but sometimes it's a graphical timer written in C or yet another web app for budgeting, guitar training, progress tracking...

I even get motivated by reading about other people's work. I've been recently going through "The Dream Machine" and the prologue itself made me excited about getting back to the good ol' 'puter and program something new and exciting (probably a bugfix for that pesky browser back button).

And now I'm thinking. I get motivated by seeing other people doing stuff. And since I'm definitely not special, others are motivated the same way. That means... A long-long-long-long-really-freaking-long time ago there was a mutated monkey standing upright twiddling its thumbs, cause what else are they good for. But unlike all the other mutated monkeys it's suddenly started to do something... creative. Maybe a rock was looking less like a rock and more like a.... round thing... that's really good at rolling, so if you bang it against another rock to make it even more round like... Nah, it wasn't probably the wheel or a wheel at first. It was probably something to do with sticks... That's it, the monkey was making the world's first ever shit-on-a-stick! It doesn't really matter, the point being, it was doing something creative. Not working, but creating.

And there were several mutated monkeys standing beside the creative one. They were all twiddling their thumbs of course, thinking: "What a waste of thumbs twiddling thumbs..." And maybe even yelling something loud in a primal feat of existential rage: "Stop being creative! It will all end badly!" And there was probably on more mutated monkey, probably the one in the back row, that was feeling that it too wanted to attach shit to a stick. It was itching to try it and it did. And then it did it another way, or tried to attached two shits to one stick and then two sticks to one shit...

I am pretty sure that this whole creativity bit started like that. And now we have computers that can show us videos of other computers dancing. None has any wires attached.

And here we are friends, in 2D. Everything is in 2D. Even the cashiers in the supermarkets are behind a wall of clear plastic, imitating a screen. Don't worry. It's just like a Zoom window. Don't forget to unmute yourself.

Flat faces, muted claps, thumbs up, raised hands.

Click to buy, click to share, tap to subscribe, slide to fuck.

The EPOCH keeps increasing with the same speed while we are balancing between our virtual life and our virtual work, while we're paying with pixelated numbers for pixelated art, while we're learning how to hustle, how to live purposefully, how to eat mindfully and exercise correctly... from nineteen-year-olds.

Where's your mask? Where's your QR code? Where's you ID?

Wash your hands, wash your clothes, don't touch, stay away, stay safe, stay home, stay 2D on someone's screen. Don't forget to unmute yourself.