Busy day with serious social activism and superlate superwriting and transcribing [Tue 30]

oats and pineapple, tea biscuit for breakfast, at the office, direct to UW, I get my id and gym pass, lunch at the crappy IMA cafe, to Downtown then to Queen Anne for citizen event, busride home, locked out, tired as a dog, rushed blog writing. blog writing

I write this on Thursday evening because of the sleep and writing-laziness issues that's been happening lately, more on that later if I get the energy, let's start.

Breakfast was standard for lately, oats and p'apple, tea biscuit. Went to the office during the day, then took the train from their to UDistrict from where I walked to the UW campus to get my student ID. Then went to their gym, talked to friend N for the longest time ever, and got my gym pass which was hella pricey for my expectations, but ah well, this is an investment in my future.

Had a cheese-pesto sandwich there, it was so so so goddamn mediocre, it perfectly encapsulated how I feel about Seattle food. It wasn't horribly overpriced, but the quality made me feel quite guilty about the simple act of eating.

Got to the train, down at downtown, got on a long busride to Queen Anne where I met up with local activism folks, and we did some citizenship work for 2-3 hours. Learned so much about local politics there!

Got on the bus home, surprisingly painless, I was so so very tired and on top of it was locked out because my keys were inside and there was an inspection and they locked the room. Waited a bunch, went in, dinner was something basic or other, don't remember if I even had anything.

Wrote a bunch in the evening because last day of the month, I was only one post (this one) lagging which might be a new record. Also I refused to sleep until I got serious amount of work done on the work essay. In the end it was 2500 words and counting. So very proud of it.

cheese and yogurt make me gassy what even is that

i write this technically in may with an urgent need to be productive etcetera, and this post didn't have a title until a moment ago so this is just a stream of consciousness more so than the standard blather because I really really need to be writing or at least reading out aloud that essay, the question is this: one would think that yogurt and cheese would be pretty decent for a lactose-intolerant tummy because they're low in lactose proteins or sugars but apparently not, event hey make me gassy, it's kinda embarrassing to be bloated and deflated like a balloon when away from home and sneak fart all the time when nobody's looking because ugh you feel so uncomfortable, but that's what you get for not knowing yourself well enough and not carrying lactaid, oh man I miss my 20 dollar of lactaid jar that we left at that rental car, wish I'd eventually gone and picked it up. oh I ate at the UW cafe and talk about how bad it was, just so mediocre, how do people go about their day, I heard young students at the gym talk about their families and everything and dear oh dear I felt so freaking old and aged yikes, dunno how the gymgoing is going to work but maybe it'll inspire me in some unexpected way....

I will literally not sleep tonight unless I get that work essay written

It's midnight. It's actually a bit after midnight in the month of May, which is fine, being an hour late to post for the month is alright. I've done worse. Even a day or two is quite good.

I need to write my work essay, draft it out, because I've been talking about it for months and haven't written it. I don't know why but I haven't felt like writing it despite having made big commitments. I'm afraid if I don't write it write now, it'll be a bigger and bigger hole to fill, until finally I'll just give up on it because it's too much of a pressure. Like I always to. Ignore a problem, let it keep festering and make it bigger and bigger and bigger, and then fear it, then not ever deal with it until the day of the surgery, and then treat the surgery as 'no big deal' even though it could all have been avoided.

So. I'm not going to sleep until I finish this. I know it compromises on my mental wellbeing tomorrow. Ah well. So be it. I'll nap during the day if I must, skip going to the office if it comes to that. But write I must, there's no other option, this is my life and I control it, and I'll spent a decent amount of time reading out aloud my essay points. I must do this.

UW gyms: more expensive than anticipated, but worth it if I make the most out of it.

The thing is (yeah let's jump right in, no context or anything because I've written on this before) that I really want to explore options. Who knows, I might really be into yoga, or into dancing, or into swimming and about ten other things. But does it make sense to commit a month worth of one's evening into such exploration when one already had a hectic schedule and so many plans (TM). I do want to learn swimming, but at what cost, and I mean that literally and figuratively, and what tradeoffs would I be willing to make?

Take a step back, I ended up paying 150 bucks for UW gym membership, it lasts me only one month because we're right midway into this quarter. I was expecting to pay like sixty bucks, so that's summat more than anticipated, but the money's not that much of a big deal. If I go to the gym a few times, or attend like six classes, as the guys at the gym said, I'll make my money's worth. And yeah if I'd known the full cost of the thing, I'd have reconsidered it, for sure, but honestly....ugh it's not terribly bad. Like obviously had I got two months it would be an incredible deal, but even now, this is like decent, seeing as the university's really good?

The swimming class costs $45 bucks more, which I'm not uncomfortable with, but I'm wondering if I want to commit to a twice-a-week schedule for the next four weeks. The commute takes longer than the length of the class which is a bit of a bummer for me, but like whatever. To learn one must invest. Mostly time in this case. And the $150 elsewhere is already sunk cost.

What if I don't like dancing as much I anticipate, or yoga, or so many other things? I guess that's fine? I wouldn't know otherwise, right, and the only other way to do it is to pay a lot more for local classes to find out. I'd be making my money back after attending seven yoga or dance sessions, which I intend to. In fact my goals are kinda kookie crazy...I want to attend more or less every day. Which is likely not going to be possible. But I don't know...what to focus on, where to look at, how to prioritize. Agghhh!

the fear is if I overstretch myself trying to make the most out of my money, and put myself in misery in doing so. But it's not that much money, and seven sessions over one month, including the weekends is not a crazy commitment. Besides, going to the university is going to be a nice change of scenery for me, maybe I'll even learn something I didn't know, and my outlook on life might change?

I should see this as an investment in exploring my interests, if I want to keep going, I can make sure I see to the end of the startup's life, if I know early on that it's not for me, then I can back out? Otherwise how else would I know? And this is a great price to experiment too.

What a great way of phrasing that, I like it!

An extraordinarily busy day of action and achievements

 Finally I'm on today, I write this on the last day of April, having played catch for the last so many days, and I'm kinda running out of gas or something, no matter we shall overcome this as well.

I went to work quite late today because there was a bunch of stuff happening. Then we had senior leadership at the office so I couldn't skidaddle out of there like I usually do. I went to UW to get my huskycard, then to their gym office to collect my membership. Talked to friend N for like 40 minutes, which messed up my plans. Got on the train at UW, came back to downtown, and then went back  uptown to Queen Anne for the protest event. Attended it for about two hours, and then took a bus back home freaking finally. Oh and by the way, the apartment people had come in the meanwhile to look at my apartment and I got locked out of my place because they locked the doors when I was away, so had to wait for a long while then. The good news is I have my Uni card on me, I spend hella lotta unexpected amount of money (okay not that much) on the gym membership, and I have dreams and aspirations. The meh news is that I'm still not on the top of my game and still trying anyhow to procrastinate and avoid doing what must be done. Am I going to be getting all this done at the cost of my sleep, because that's the worst way to invest in one's health. It's already at 6 hours max of sleep tonight and it'll only go down from that.

Rye and beans for the first time, sad dinner, tired and early to bed [Mon 29]

pineapple oats, tea-biscuit for breakfast, art class where I'm getting better, cooking rye and beans for lunch, a round of volunteer park, sad dinner of bread butter and cheese, I am unproductive and fall asleep like a log so very tired

Writing this extraordinarily late the following evening. Because things happened and this is where things have ended up at. I'm not going to bed without at least completing the first draft of my work essay, that's a commitment I must live by.

For breakfast I had oats with frozen pineapple and regular fixins. I'm out of chia seeds, but thinking of adding hemp and flaxseeds to by rota too.Fuck. I just spent like 30minutes just now shopping on amazon for the breakfast addons. I need four bucks worth of goods, so close yet so far. I need to get back to writing.

Right, work was too busy, far far too busy, annoyingly so. Went to art class, we drew drapery that I'm quite good at now actually. After class I cleaned up my place, did the dishes, and cooked rye and beans, as I started my kombucha and soy sauce projects. I need or what large fermentation buckets for my rice wine now, who's gonna get me one?

Went to volunteer park for a round or two, came back and had bread butter and cheese for dinner because now I'm out of fruits and veggies and so very busy and lazy to do anything about it.

In the evening I was so freaking tired that I fell asleep like a log a bit after nine, didn't even brush or write anything.

What is the month of May going to look like?

 May is going to be such a curveball I don't even know what will happen. On the one hand it's exciting, but on the other hand, I'm a bit nervous. Commitments have been made that one can't back out of, but one also wants to explore other fields. I don't know, maybe I'll be more open to wasting money if I don't enjoy doing certain things. Let's talk!

First, I have my work essay, my website and this website, not to mention my personal projects, the food research, the public activism, and always need some time for illustration etcetera. I've started going to the office a few times a week as well, so something else to consider there. That will keep me quite busy.

Then I'm hoping to be more socially active by inviting people over on Friday and the fullon weekend days, so that's going to take so much of my time.

I have my art class, and soon to start writing class for May, and am almost enrolled in swimming class. Almost, because I'm not sure.

Then, earlier today I spent a hundred and fifty buckaroos for the rest of the semester (which is just May) to attend UW gym and take all the classes offered there. Which is quite expensive for just one month (or even two months) but I do get the gym, pool, and the fields access. So to make my money's worth, I'll need to be going there quite regularly, by which I mean every day, or every other day. The commute takes 45 minutes, minimum, the classes last one hour, and lets say nothing else eats up my time. That's two hours taken from my existing schedule just like that. It's going to take energy and attention too. What can I give up? My walks, perhaps? Maybe walk to work, walk back and that's it? And then the walk to the gym obviously, but perhaps fun walk in the park is going to end up being a weekend-only thing from now on? For the next month?

So many uncertainties. We'll see how it progresses.

Summer is here, projects are a-starting

 Summer is almost here, so it's time to pick back my projects. Here's a quick update on what I've been upto.

Threw out the old batches of kombucha, recovering one to be used as tea vinegar, and started a new batch. It was the easiest and quickest batch I've probably begun. Starting a new kombucha batch used to be such a production, but this time around I spent probably two or three minutes maximum at the kombucha business while I cleaned up the kitchen and did other chores. The more optimized that workflow is, the more likely I'm to repeat, so that's fantastic.

My other 'large jar' is now being used to expand out the viet ferment with rice lees and fermented soy stuff. It's a gallon sized jar that I'm risking because I liked my experimental batch and the direction that it was taking.

Speaking of the experimental batch, it's not going quick enough for me, so I restarted my temperature controller and heating pad, and put the small experimental batch of soy saucish in there. Set the heat to stay at 42C and will check every week or so. Hope I am not losing too much money in power costs over it.

What else? Milk kefir and yogurt I'll start back when I've got a new batch of milk. I've been meaning to go grocery shop for the last two weeks but something or other comes up always.

Meant to start water kefir but turns out I'm out of sugar, sigh.

Soy ferments will begin soon, the temperature range outside is getting towards the right area.

Oh hydroponic herbs will be a thing soon, that's for sure. Just need to recycle the last batch's water to my existing plants.

What else? Chhyang and other alcoholic brews will begin soon, but I need those big fermentation buckets that are food grade, so still some work to be put there. Ugh, I wonder where I can get those.

Barley grains and beans, a review of new old food

Finally I cooked some pot barley grains. After soaking them for about two days, and cleaning them four or five times in cold water, I boiled them for an hour and ate with beans. Reviews, response, etcetera follows.

It reminded me, made me realize, that the porridge they gave us at school instead of (or in addition to?) eggs in the morning was probably barley porridge with sugar that had been pressure cooked. Because it took me forever to figure out what the grain was and I hadn't been able to, all this time. I think it's barley. And man, I don't mind barley at all. I wish rye saw how well-liked barley is, and tried to be more like it, because what a brilliant thing that would be.

Yeah, yesterday (and today) I had barley grains with beans, and it was pretty goddamn nice. I don't know how it compared with white rice, but in general it's quite an edible grain, processed not too much, so very high in fibers and good vitamins and minerals, easy to eat, and without too much carbs. I think it's going to go in the list of my more-liked grains. I'll be eating a lot more of this grain, for sure.

Which is a bit funny because of all the grains I bought recently, it came out to be the most expensive per-pound because i got the 'nice' brand with small packaging instead of buying bulk. Eventually I went to bulk for the grain I figured I'd be least likely to. So silly and strange.

But lovely, what a journey it's been.

Consolidate all my writings into a unified output measurement?

Here's a theory, alright, go with me where you can. What if the reason I'm not writing so well with the work writing is because I already write about 2k words in there, about 1k-1.5k words in here, and several hundred to thousand words elsewhere, spare? Oh and the website too. What if my brain or fingers have only a certain about of 'word output' and I'm totally exhausting my daily supply by the time I even think about writing for the work thing.

I know it's ridiculous, and that's what it probably is. No question. But. Think about this for a moment. I'm writing 2k a day at work, for 30-40 minutes for a set of writing that gets me nowhere. Like it's purely therapeutic, more of a random stream of consciousness than even what I have here. And this too is therapeutic obviously. Initially the idea was to just get the habit of writing daily going. I've already sort of started that in all these years I think. And multiple times I've asked myself what it would take to stop writing just for the sake of it, for starting a habit, and start writing with a purpose? Maybe my problem with work writing is that so much of time and energy is consumed by this nonsense bullshit writing that purposeful creation gets no attention or time.

Same for writing here. What if instead of writing these pieces which honestly are just pagefillers or self-therapy at best, were abandoned in favor of more professional projects, more serious essays. Obviously I couldn't publish them here, but I could surely publish them somewhere else, and perhaps I could post links to the work on this blog to remind myself that I'm still writing significantly? Because this is not recordkeeping, this is not habit-building, this is not even...therapeutic anymore. I'm writing just because. Which is fine, but maybe I want to move to the next step of self help and productivity?

Enrolled into the writing class, somehow

On Monday while I was in the art class the North Seattle people called me and basically begged me or whatever to take the writing class I'd semi-registered for. I was like sure, whatever, and paid for it. Only later did I realize the class was targeted at people who already had a piece of fiction to go, who were trying to get it published. The course was expected to teach those people who to organize, edit, compile and present to the outside world. But ah well. I might cancel the course honestly, seeing as how much money I've spent in other stuff (more on that in a bit), but who knows, maybe not. It's unclear to me how tiring and time-consuming the month ahead is going to be for me, so I'll wait for a while before making the final decision.

Pineapple oats for breakfast, carmelo's hongos quesadilla for dinner [Sun 28]

oats and pineapple breakfast, tea-biscuit, heavy writing, volunteer park walk, tj's fried rice and eggs for lunch, carmelo's for dinner with PS and AR, I really try hard to write the work essay, but don't

Writing this the evening of tuesday because Monday evening I was so freaking tired I just passed out and slept for like ten hours.

Had oats and pineapple for breakfast as I'm out of other fixins etcetera. Also tea-biscuit. Went for a nice long walk with radio on to Volunteer park. Wrote a bunch after coming back, cleaned up my apartment. Lunch was trader joe's fried rice and eggs.

For dinner I went to Carmelo's and had the mushroom quesadilla, so freaking good. Hung out with AR after so many weeks, and PS too.

Tried extra super duper hard to write the work essay I've been blabbing about for the last month or two, didn't write it. I'm not sleeping without at least starting a draft. That's it. the buck stops here.

Visible progress in the art class after so long!

I have to write like thirteen posts before this month fucking ends in an hour, and I'm already an hour past my regular bedtime on a very long busy and tiring day (more on that in a later post). So this will be quick and easy.

I went to my art class yesterday and we drew drapery. As in, the folds, the angles, shadows and brightness, all of that. And guess what, I've observably improved as an observational sketch artist over the last quarter or two. It's easy to tell that because I looked up what I did last quarter, and then saw what I made this quarter. The differences are day and night, so easy to tell apart. There's no question, I'm getting better at general sketching, though the technicalities of how and where I'm getting better might be up for debate.

I need to continue my daily sketches. They've been going on-and-off, and it's quite hard to schedule them into my routine, but must remember that there's no way around it. To make progress, to grow, to learn, one must give time, one must invest, one must make mistakes, struggle and eventually success will come. There is no shortcut to success, that is for sure. Don't suffer for suffering's sake.

Tacos Carmelos review

9 out of 10 stars to the Carmelos Mexican place on the 12th. So affordable, still, and the quality runs circles around Chipotle. Their options are wide, their ambiance is decent, their cooking is excellent, their prices are reasonable, their recipe is brilliant. I ordered mushroom quesadillas and I couldn't have been any happier, literally, that's how good they were. So freaking good!

The only point of regret is how it took me so long to find this place so close to me. Instead I've been going to Rancho Bravo tacos all this time. They're dirty and grimy, they're expensive, their food's not that great, and there's nothing one would look forward to at the place. While that may be technically closer to my place of abode, it's not by much, and I'd rather walk a few minutes to bask in the brilliant discovery of the obvious eatery than ugh, whatever every other place is trying to do.

This will be my go-to place for cheap-eats when I'm away from my place, for sure!

An insanely ambitious dinner hosting plan

 This is the plan: invite nine people (including myself) for dinner next Saturday, and make six to seven dishes for them. I've never hosted this many people, and most certainly never cooked so many items for such a large crowd, but let's think this out aloud in these pages, see how far we can get.

Since my rice cooker can't feed an army, we'd need two or three different types of carbs. I'm thinking rice of buckwheat and quinoa, and thenthuk soup, plus some sort of rye-based soup. I'd quickly run out of the (turns out quite expensive) packet of barley that I recently had delivered, but it would prove the viability of barley as a edible and 'hostable' grain. Maybe dump some rye in there too, just for the heck of it. And then something else I have 'invented'. I alluded to it in a previous post or so, but the idea is to basically make kodo-fapar pancake (fermented) and then put it in the airfryer until it's sharp as a tortilla chip. That would be the chip, and golbheda-dhaniya-timmur ko achar would be the dip. Need to find out non-spicy dips for people that don't do spicy. And then need popcorns obviously, with my patented achaar so it's sharp and zingy.

As I could it, I realize I've already reached five items, but we're just starting.

I'd cook alu-tama because it's easy and little to no effort needs to go there. Thinking of doing karela ko jhol too because I've been trying to make that work for so long, never getting it right. Then maybe rajma ko tarkari as well. And then perhaps a dal? Perhaps moong, because I haven't done it in a while.

The craziest part of the story is, I'm thinking of doing a 'pre-run' on Friday with a different, much smaller group, so I can get the amounts and the general idea right for Saturday. At that point it's just fantasy, an insane person's plan, wild wild theorycrafting, but a man can dream. A man can fantasize, visualize, and maybe even manifest into reality!

Lazy day, big dish washing, UW gym fantasies, pancakes and protein dinner [Sat 27]

lazy morning, rye for lunch is done, big dishwashing,walk to the park in awesome weather, fantasizing about UW gym, evening write, pancakes eggs onions and cheese for dinner

I write this on the day after, not caught up really, but ready to make a serious dent at my todo list.

Morning was lazy, I looked at the internet, caught up on youtube talked to family and friends, and just relaxed. Got ready to leave for my walk on more than one occasion, only to come back and start writing or get distracted with something else. Had the last few bits of leftover rye, then spent like 45 minutes cleaning the kitchen. I'm getting better at it, and if I time it am quite quick too!

Went to walk Volunteer park for the standard time frame, the weather was incredible. Back home I should have been reading and writing, but I started fantasizing about using the UW gym features and their swimming pool etcetera, man I really really hope I get to do all of that.

Evening was pancakes, eggs and onions, I accidentally invented a 'newish' food item that could be considered Nepali. Cheese too. Pretty decent. Went to bed far too late because I spent so long trying to avoid writing.

A routine adds productivity more than it hinders creativity, it's not even close

For the last two or so weeks, I've been on strict meal times. More or less. But I hadn't really considered that to be a 'routine' per se, just general outline to shape my mealtimes and decide what to do. This weekend has made me realize that my days are now structured around when to eat, and drink tea. You would think this would terrify me, seeing as I have historically been afraid of being trapped by my own strict rules and expectations. But actually a routine has turned out to make me even more productive because it gives certainty in certain parts of the day. Because if I don't know when I'm gonna eat, or when I'll feel hungry, I'll often be disrupted in something unrelated, start cooking and eating, and then distracted to somewhere else, taking forever to come back to the original plan. But with a routine mealplan, I know when my meals are, so I plan my schedule around them. The meal times also act as dividers between different activities and events, and thus let me clearly 'reset' my mindset but not in a disruptive way.

Structure appears to not hinder productivity as much as it empowers one to be more daring and audacious by making sure some things in life are constant, are consistently there every single day. It gives one the confidence to be out and about for hours with no fear of hunger or other unexpected change in one's mood because it provides certainty around how one will likely be feeling around that time. It's not a chore and it's not hard because if you've internalized it to be a 'substrate' of existence, something that's unmovable and unchangeable, not optional at all, you learn to work with it, and not against it as an act of rebellion.

Honestly, how have I not been doing this all this time?

No way to avoid writing essays for work now (Hurray?!)

I have avoided, I have run, I have procrastinated and I have ignored. For months and months I planned and planned and planned and did nothing. Until I got my manager to hold me accountable, and now he's asking where the essay I told him I was writing is. And where is it really? Nowhere, because I have nothing to show, because nothing got done, because I'm a big fat liar and did not write anything. What a phony, phooey I am. So now there's no way to avoid this. I must write those essays, numbering in 30 that I have planned out for weeks now. There's one specific one that's been outlined and thought through and discussed, that I have to get working on because that's the one I promised to write.

The plan, as always, is simple. Read out your ideas aloud to the computer, get a different computer to clean up the transcript, and then edit it. Then pass the edited essay to the ai to make counter arguments and see if it offers recommendations, evaluate those recos, and consider making changes to the essay depending on that. Do this for a few rounds, until one has the final essay. As you will have noticed, there's zero talk of 'let the computer draft it lol Ill edit it' because that hell is going to be over soon and I don't want to ever ever be in that headspace.

Speaking of writing etcetera, I finally generated enough fun images, and even drew few, to put them in the homepage of my website. It's incredible and I'm so very proud of it, because I can see what it looks like and yeah it's a lot less 'exciting' than the blog template I used originally, but hey this is not a cooking website, nor is it a  celebrities website. It's a simple technical and leadership blog, and for that methinks I'm doing pretty well!

List of ways I might be able to expand my Seattle community

 Some other places I can go to make friends, meet people, create and expand my community.

1. Invite new contacts over for lunch or dinner, and become new friends with them, eventually getting all of their friends here and expanding my group. I have like two or three contacts of such kind.
   
   
2. Going to savedbysara walkalongs, and make friends there, get into the community and host parties for those people.
   
   
3. Host parties etcetera for my existing organizing groups at my place, and gain some value there.
   
   
4. Dramas and plays at central seattle college and UW, get to know the performers and directors and organizers, and get into that group to expand my circle. They're quite affordable!
   
   
5. This is a reach but make friends with people from my gym classes at UW. They'll appreciate being invited to an adult person's apartment or party, hopefully!?
   
   
6. How about just going to the park, relaxing, talking to people around me, making friends with them, having them come over to my place, and expand my circle that way? Feels like a newyorker kinda thing to do though...
   
   
7. People from my local slack groups would be great resources to meet and coordinate fun activities with.
   

Some faults with ai generated essays and how to fix them

This is not yet another comment session as we've seen on multiple multiple occasions in the past but an observation post, on what the failure modes for ai-generated essays are.

First, it keeps repeating the same word over and over, even when it gets annoying. Specially when nobody else uses the word. Words like 'crucial', 'delve', and so forth. Dude, who the heck are you and why the hell are you being so annoying, I feel like telling it because literally nobody likes it. Can you like just chill and not write anymore, because you're annoying me like hell and your writing is terrible.

Second it generates long strings of basically nonsensical phrases and sentences which sound big and important, but could be easily edited away with zero loss of meaning or style. It's mostly style over substance, nah all shit style and no substance. It's true the ai is good in some cases with editing, but it's a pity it can't edit itself. Sad that it can't say, hey so I've run out of shit to make, your essay's gonna be bad if you force me to write more. And that's why all the internet is going to be soon flooded with ai-generated shit nobody wants to read because it's just so goddawful, even when it's following somebody else's style. I could see one day improving, but without an 'angle', without a 'voice' it's just in a weird valley, an uncanny one.

Third, it repeats material without realizing it, and even prodding and prompting it won't make it realize that it's all the same effing material. It's almost like, dramatic pause, it doesn't understand the content of the material, and is just rehashing somebody's stolen content that the system has absolutely no intention of giving credit to.

Fourth, the examples it gives are more often than not terrible, often outright fabricated lies, and really weird and not very useful. It's hard to exactly see what point is being made with the examples, but it knows how to connect the concepts, so it does that without providing the connective link. The reader has to connect those ideas, like spirit reading.

And so on and so forth.

At least my homepage is done with editing, if I do it for a couple of more days, should be done by the end of the week. The 'steal this idea' part is going to be hell to edit, but the goal is to just remove certain phrases and words wholesale at some point than 'delve' deep. Keeping some of the bullshit around might actually be good?

The last batch of cooked rye, pancake and cheese and eggs for dinner [Fri 26]

skipped breakfast, the last of rye for lunch, all grains properly organized, yogurt snacks, walk to the volunteer park, pancakes with cheese eggs and veggies for dinner, laziness in writing, weekend fuzzies

Super duper duper busy at work after such a long time, that I skipped breakfast. Had the last batch of rye-bhat for lunch. Was too busy to go to the office. Instead, I organized all the grains at my place, and sent the photos to everyone because if nothing else, they look hella nice. Had lunch of the last batch of the rye rice, and had yogurt and tea for khaja.

In the evening walked to volunteer park, did some illustrations etc. Didn't do much honestly since it was the beginning of the weekend and I felt so very lazy. Definitely didn't write in here, which is why there's such a rush right now the next evening.

Went to bed at a pretty decent time I think.

A list of ten or so fun activities I want to take at UW activities center etc

1. Zumba dancing
   
   
2. Belly dancing
   
   
3. hiphop dancing
   
   
4. swimming classes
   
   
5. yoga classes, multiple types
   
   
6. latenight kayaking
   
   
7. tennis classes
   
   
8. attending theater etc
   
   
9. golf class!
   
   
10.  3d printing things, how do I get into that?
    
    
11. borrowing hiking equipment
    
    
12. rock climbing!
    

New Ghanian restaurant in town, worth trying perhaps?

 Just found out about the existence of Gold Coast Ghal Kitchen, a Ghanian restaurant in close proximity to me. The menu looks decent, the ambiance looks good, the food looks amazing and the pricing isn't awful for Seattle. I'm thinking I might go, and it won't be a big loss under any circumstances because no matter what, it won't be as bad as the shitty shitty place I ended up at with PN couple of months ago. That was the worst west african food I've ever eaten, and I need to reset my palate, thought about going for dinner earlier today but ahem I wasted all of that time drooling over google photos from the place so didn't actually get the opportunity to go, so that's gonna happen tomorrow hopefully..

I need a team, aka comments from a book I've not read

 Oh shit. I just wrote about what I meant to write on this post in the previous post, and there's not much material anymore. I will ramble about anyway because this topic is awesome, I'm just discovering it, and it is one of my major weaknesses. I've been talking to friend N about how he needs to be better at it, if I can get myself to improve myself, this would be a big coup upon myself, that is for sure.

The book Who Not How, I haven't read much. I'm only ten or fifteen percent into the book. But I got the general gist of it already. You need a team. For every task in your life. You're not going to be an expert in everything there is, but you can be an expert in your chosen field, and ask support and guidance from friends, family, acquaintances, even random people, and they'll be more than happy to support you. That's how you reach success, by creating an executive team for your success, and providing them a vision to succeed upon.

So now I'm thinking I need a team for everything. New job search? A team of four execs, one to shape my journey, another to test me with interview questions, another to help me with interviews, another to make me feel better if I don't perform well. Research tasks? Exec team of eight, including four research librarians, three professors, and one writer. Random project? Three volunteers, four coordinators, etc etc etc.

I really need to read up on that book beyond the first few pages and see what opportunities I can create for myself, hah!

Helpful libraries, multiple wowwe

 As readers of this blog might know, I'm super duper into reading up everything I can on the history and culture of South Asian food, particularly that in Nepal. I went to the Seattle public library to research on the issue and talk to the research Librarian. She sent me an incredible treasure trove of material, and recommended I talk to somebody from another Library. Just to make sure I was using all the resources available to me, I also asked UW librarian in the research section to see what they'd have to see. I didn't even ask for an email response, and they made an email feedback with a long and detailed response! So I'm going to reach out to the original university recommended by the SPL librarian, and come back to this.

This is amazing. It really is. The librarians do all the work, your task is to basically sit down and make other people do the work. Which is I think what CEO's do, and this I think is probably what 'team work' is. I need to get better at this, so much better. Because I'm quite bad at many different things, and if I can just delegate the hard, painful sht to other people, and keep the fun and exciting parts for myself, this would be an incredible opportunity. It really is great!

I'm now wondering what other projects of mine could benefit by me just delegating tasks to other folks. Oooh boy, how I might thrive with this, I'm excited!

Mistaken stoup appointment, fries for dinner at Dave's [Thu 25]

 tea biscuit and oats in the morning, walk to the office, rye for lunch, at stoup brewery (twice!) for intense local organizing conversations, an order of fries for dinner at Dave's hot chicken

Writing this late at night on Saturday because oh well, this is how weekends go, there's no point complaining about it anymore.

Had tea and biscuits for breakfast, then walked to the office listening to california-related songs. Productive day at work, generally speaking. Came back had rye-bhat for lunch, wrote a lot, edited stuff for my blog, and did decent amount of illustration. 

Left for Stoup Brewery at 6, discovered that actually the event I meant to go to was at 7, wrote a bunch, went back at 7 again, and spent 2 hours having intense conversations with a local organizer. Fun times, we agree on everything, all we need to do is actually organize now. On the way back got an order of Dave's Hot Chicken fries. They come with honey which was a massive plus, but otherwise they're just meh. I liked the restaurant that occupied the location before. It was extremely unpopular, but I liked their fries.

Fantasies about awesome classes and training for basically free

I rediscovered an insanely good resource that I completely blanked out on about last year. I'm quite excited about it, and spent like half a day fantasizing about it instead of writing, cleaning or doing groceries. And really, it was worth it because it's that good.

So UW offers an INCREDIBLE choice of physical exercise and training courses, for what is basically 'free'. I happen to be a student, technically speaking, of the University at the moment, but haven't taken any of those courses yet, those that are offered free. Why? No good reason, can't think of any, must have forgotten.

The idea is this: I'll be filling my weekday evenings with fun, exciting and physically challenging classes for the next month or so. Yoga twice a week? Yes please, gimme a heap of that. Dance classes? Why not, more of that, thank you very much! TWICE-WEEKLY swimming lessons for super cheap? Yes, I'd like that a lot, awesome. Etcetera etcetera. For basically little to no money in the big picture, I'll be able to buy myself a month worth of physical workouts and other activities. If that leads to me meeting interesting people, making friends, or even learning interesting skills or discovering something new about myself, all the better. If not, so what, I was trying to avoid writing all that time anyway, and plus it's hella cheap so I'm basically losing money by not taking those courses.

This is such an exciting opportunity, I really don't want to be disappointed later by discovering actually I'm not eligible to take those courses etc.

And since commute might be a problem since roundtrip to the campus and back is like an hour, the idea is to start dictating essays every day, every round, so that hour is not completely wasted. I know it's a bit silly, but hey, if this works, this will be an incredible month!

Strategizing, dreaming 'n schemin' and manifesting: how I plan to reach a ridiculous professional goal

The goal is to basically (almost) triple my total compensation. It is not as ridiculous as it might first seem, since my current one is quite muted. So how might I achieve this outrageous goal, what am I doing to accomplish it, and how will I organize the process?

As I've written before, I have a specific company and a specific product in mind. I want to lead them. That's the goal. It's clear to me it's more aspirational than anything, as that company is in aggressive job cuts right now. Doesn't matter. This is just a North Star guiding me into a better future, into hard work and investing into myself. Re-inventing myself professionally so I might get ahead, because vague generalities and potential of a better career etcetera don't excite me. What does excite me is imagining vivid scenarios, at work, during the interviews, the questions I'll answer, the product research that'll go in, and the conflict with management that I fantasize about after starting the job.

So what am I doing to get there?

First, the website. It's crappy, I know, but eventually in a week or two or three, I'll release version 2.0, and that's going to make me happy. There's not much more to do, except fix a bunch of existing essays, and keep writing new ones. It'll be fine. That website will act as my first 'portfolio', an introduction to me for the rest of the internet.

Second, linkedin. My sister will make me a linkedin, she has said, I'll let her do it. We will post some of the material from my personal website in there, and the goal is to create an anchor online to attract recruiters.

Third, intense visualization and practicing of interviews mentally. I have probably not aspired for anything else this strongly as I have this job, this process. Every day for five to ten minutes, I think of potential questions they will ask, and the answers they will be given. Imagine the process, the job after, how I'll perform, what hard things will come my way, how I'll deal with them, and how I'll accomplish my goals. I imagine the hardest questions that'll come, and try to give the best possible answers.

Fourth. Reading. Building up my knowledge base and confidence my reading industry and job-specific books, making sure  I understand the headspace my interviewers and managers will be in, and get in that position from the start.

Fifth. Manifesting. Hoping it works out, getting ready for it, but also in the back of my mind, just being ready for it, as in pretending it's already happened and I just need to sign the documents, that it's not a big deal. The thing is already in the bag, there is no concern to worry about. If it doesn't work out, it's the silly engineers who interviewed me that got it wrong. Etc.

Sixth. Teamwork. I'm in the process of doing this, but the goal is to get family and friends and all others who are close to me to help me reach that position, and make sure they're all rewarded for it. If Michael Jordan needed a strong support system and a 'team' behind me, so do I, it's going to be much bigger than  (basketball world cup?) for me, so I need all the help and assistance I can get!

Local social activism may not be a good way to meet romantic partners, but it's a great way to be a part of a community

Agh, so I'm a member of a couple of local social-political organizations, one might even say I'm somewhat of an activist. In the last two months I've met organizers, non-profit people, politicians, journalists, and bureaucrats, to try to understand burning local issues, and how we might come together to solve the biggest problems.

It's amazing, let me tell you that, I'm learning so much on the technicalities of city-running, how bureaucracy deals with political mandates, how non-profits and organizers play a part in politics, and the role of mass media in policy-making. I've also understood the importance of good visual storytelling for creating impactful messages that can be easily consumed. Basically now I understand what all the training I received in the college was for.l

So I'm a member of three or so groups, and I meet the same people every couple of weeks, and we are barely friends, but it feels nice to have a community your are conjoined with for a common cause, you know. I understand the French like to go on protests etcetera as entertainment and to meet people, but that is not the case here unfortunately, as the local causes I attend to are important for all genders and classes but have an 9:1 gender ratios with men overwhelmingly in the majority. What a terrible way to meet a potential romantic partner this is. But oh, we're gonna get things done, influence the local politics, and makes lives for the future generations better. Very excited about that!

An incredible personal project for my work: another flop or the golden ticket?

This is a potential new plan for the month ahead, it's possible I've written about it before, if so fuck it, I'm writing it again. I'm thinking if I start writing every day at work, an essay or two during work and after, I'll be able to produce about 30 essays... I can edit and mold and change those essays to leverage myself into a promotion, that's what I'm thinking. Because let's see, a promotion would lead me into at least a 7% raise, and that's a lot of money. Obviously my personal investment into writing those essays is going to be a lot lower. Plus the rewards are double, as those essays will be 'imprisoned' at my work space only for short period, after which I plan to 'release' them into the general world on my website. The only interesting thing is that...it's going to be a lot of work (ahem ahem, the last time I went insane writing so many essays in such short period, that didn't go well, did it?). Maybe if not 30, even just 10 essays in a month is going to be good. All I need is to start writing, I've been telling myself that I'll be more productive at work (or FOR work, more precisely) for so long now, and don't have anything to show for it. So if I set myself a clear set of guidelines, goals, expectations and a timeline, the idea is I'll be more inspired to work on it.

I believe writing four or five essays in one weeks is not outrageous, and I can do so for two or three weeks consistently. Once my energy and fire is gone, I can take a break, or break from it forever, but keep editing on those essays, work them into a cogent argument, presentations, workshops, and squeeze every drop of value out of them. That's the goal. Thinking if I should give this initiative a name and everything, and formalize it, or just go with the flow.

Need to transcribe everything though, that's important. For technical topics I realized I'm much more of a good speaker than a decent writer.

An outlandishly busy, socially, day and the perfection of Nepali pancakes [Wed 24]

perfecting fermented Nepali pancakes, pancakes for breakfast, walk to the office, midday meeting with the housing people, so hungry, rye lunch with achar, recovery from the low sugar thing, illustrating, another online meeting, bus to Ravenna, meeting at the brewery, old acquaintances, new acquaintances, cousin hang in the evening

I write this the following evening. Good stuff, finally caught up and getting shit together-ish.

Yesterday in the morning I finally decided to make pancakes out of the flour that had been soaking for almost a week. The first two were absolutely awful, seeing as they were made in a non-stick pot. But I decided to half-ass it and ignore the pancakes for much longer than I'd be comfortable with, and they turned out perfectly! I made about a dozen of them, and they are sour, crispy, slightly sweet, and the best. They're like a Nepali version of injera. I need to explore this further. Had one of them with cheese for breakfast. It wasn't enough, but that's for a different day.

Walked to work, listening to an amazing book. Had a comprehensive plan commenting meeting, realized my work blocks the governmental website. Got quite hungry in the afternoon because the breakfast had been so light. Came home and had a pretty large lunch with achar, but took a long time to recover from sugar de-regulation. Spent an hour illustrating, and attended another online meeting with one of the social groups. Except my internet issues didn't really let me stay on for too long.

In the evening I took the train, and then a bus from U-District to Ravenna where I've gone before to the brewery for a date. Was back in that brewery after many months. Met the organizing people, met old friends, organized and strategized about future plans, and generally felt great I had some sort of community in this miserable town.

Took the bus back, made two friends-ish from the group, chilled at my place for 20 minutes, and then spent two hours at the nearby drink shop hanging with my cousin who brought me a few goodies from back home. Inspired him and encouraged him to take risks, hopefully. It was a bit rainy outside, so going to bed was nice. It was later than usual, but I was tired after doing so much, so sleep was easy to come.

More progress made on culinary research for Nepal

Great news from the culinary research front!

I wrote a couple of days ago how I reached out to the local research librarian and how they promised to get back to me in a matter of a few days. Well they gave me a long and thoughtful response, and their recommended resources are brilliant. Books on Chinese history and fermentation, books on Bhutanese cooking, researchers worth reaching out to, and other Librarians who are experts on the field who will be able to help me. This is such a treasure of resources, an embarrassment of riches. I'm so very thankful to the situation I find myself in.

I have two people to reach out to in the immediate future: a UW research librarian, and a UChicago research librarian, giving them the context on my learning and experience, and goals, and requesting them to shape the direction of my forward journey. Once I collect enough resources from them, I can then reach out to a couple of professors who have written the foundational works on many topics of my interest. I need to ask them where I might want to start my research, what might be worth looking into, and whether they see a market possibility on this field. And then, ever onwards!

I'm quite excited, my vision is getting clearer and clearer, it's becoming easier to understand what I want, and how I might get there. All of it is coming to a culmination. Exciting times are ahead!

More regret-posting on the disaster that was ai-driven content for the website

Man this is rough. I vastly, and I mean vastly underestimated the implications of bunching planning, writing, and editing several dozen essays, each step separated by many weeks. As I've complained about here before, separating planning and writing of essays meant that I'd be catching up with my original thoughts and spend so much time re-gathering my original ideas. Now that I'm at a stable pace to be able to go back and un-gpt my essays, I'm spending 20+ minutes on each essay, editing, rewriting, and re-arranging. And that's after having spent perhaps 2 hours fixing up those essays already. Deciding to take the help of gemini to 'write' my essays out of the drafts was one of the worse decisions I've made. It has come back to bite me in the hiney so many times it's not even funny.

From now on, the quickest way to write an essay is probably just thinking about something, jotting down the points, and writing it right away or transcribing it at least. Then I can go back and edit, then spend some time playing around with AI modifications to bolster my arguments. If I like what the AI gives, I can always add, but my original essay can remain untouched if I find it less than ideal. Which is not what happened: I based my foundation on ai-gen content after giving it enough material and ideas to write two essays. Once again I'm quite thankful that I made a low-stake mistake early on in my professional journey of exploration that there's enough time to recover from it without negative implications, but what a trip this has been. What. A. Trip.

Feeling good at the office, veggie and fruit snacks, acquaintances at the office and local events, tech event at Stoup, rye is aiiteee[Tue 23]

 out of apples, banana oats for breakfast, crackers and tea, lazy but walk to work anyway, great veggies and fruits snacks, I love my office and meeting coworkers, rye and veggies for lunch, writing and website editing, evening at Stoup brewery for tech thing, I have friends now?, trouble writing in the evening

Writing this early evening of Wednesday, as I get ready to attend an event Ravenna. Somehow I found myself scheduled for four different events today, the first two were kinda dud due to internet connection issues. The next one I'll rush up North, and then rush back South to my place to host somebody. Not at my place though, no energy for that, at RGB.

I was out of apples in the morning so it was bananas oats and other things, standard at this point and crackers and tea. I didn't feel like going to work on this day, because of standard laziness reasons, but convinced myself to go anyway thanks to the meditative practices I've been trying to get more regular at, and thank god I did because it was a lovely time at the office. They had nice lay of veggies and fruits and snacks and I was so full thanks to the early lunch. Met a bunch of coworkers there too, and felt so good to be a part of the community, really all this time when I was complaining about not having friends and community, I had ignored what was right in front of my eyes.

Came back home, had the rye and veggies for lunch, not great but it was growing into me and I didn't have to down it with water this time. Wrote a bunch of posts here, and for the website, the editing is going strong now.

Went to Stoup brewery for the tech event thing, had great conversations with all the dudes there, and it was almost exclusively dudes. Met a couple of 'regulars' there, quite a few actually and discovered I actually have a bit of a community in Seattle now, they're not friends exactly, not even acquaintances, I don't know, but they're pre-pre-friends, potential acquaintances etcetera. Good times, I should write a poem about it or something.

Had trouble writing in the evening and really really forced myself to, but nothing came out, and I just stared at the screen doing nothing good, wasting all that precious precious time.

New personal innovations in Nepali-style pancake making of buckwheat and millets

I have made the best batch of kodo-fapar pancakes until date, and it's such a point of pride that I want to share my recipe with the reader group, if you will allow me, thank you very much.

First I mixed the two grains, in a ratio that had more of buckwheat but the details don't matter. Then added lots of water, and a little bit of the liquid from my yogurt culture. Let the mixture sit out for a couple of days. On the third or so day, the mixture all of a sudden expanded and overflew the container, but the matter was handled, and no issues of the sort arose anymore.

During the cooking process, I mixed salt and oil right into the mixture. Then I poured it in my non-stick pot, a ladle-ful each round, and swirled the mixture around so it touched the sides. Then I covered the top for three or four minutes. Then I used a pointy ladle to flip the pancake, heat the other side pressed for a couple of seconds, and bam! We are done! It was so brown and crusty, probably from all the sugar that was produced from the complex carbs. And it tasted sour and yummy. Friend N suggested it looked a lot like injera, and I agreed, this could be the Nepali version of injera. If I cooked veggies and achaars right, this could start a whole injera-like revolution in Nepali culinary scene. That possibility excites me to no end, but I'll need to perfect the experience first, and make sure people are seeing the value in getting such a pancake.

The biggest pain in the process was waiting while the pancakes cooked, but I skipped that as I was watching youtube from my desk while cooking, so time flew by!

I take it back, Rye is not terrible if you're used to eating it, it's just a matter of expectations

I've complained in a couple of earlier posts about how tough and awful rice is to eat as a grain, and what an awful mistake I potentially made with buying rye berries. Well...I've been eating those for several days in a row at this point as a sort of rice/bhuja replacement, and they've grown on me actually. It's like a mixture of rice and puffed rice, except they don't go soggy even if they're covered in yummy sauces and oils. If they're cooked in the pressure cooker for an hour or longer, they'd be perfect, probably, but even when slightly chewy, they're easy to handle. My first experience with them was less than ideal because I wasn't sure what it was, there was uncertainty and confusion. And then it was meh originally because I was expecting rice or quinoa or sorghum, but those it ain't. It's an unhulled grain, raw as the day it was picked from the plants.

I was considering turning the grains into flour for pancakes after soaking for a few days to make the experience palatable, but I don't think it's needed at this point. It's great as it is, and I'll get to like it in the future. Only thing of concerns is that guests are not going to like it, and it will need to be tempered with other grains, lots of oil, and possibly in salads to introduce it to new people. But once people get the hang of it, it's absolutely acceptable.

No more complaints from me here, not for the moment.

Drawing mountains in the art class, too sunny and fun outside, oats and barley arrive[Mon 22]

fruits and oats for breakfast, tea and crackers, drawing the mountains in the art class, hella sunny and happy in cal anderson park, oats and barley grains arrive, cooking rye and veggies for lunch, egg and tomato sandwich for dinner, volunteer park walk, lots of website work and write here

I'm writing this on Wednesday afternoon, this should have been written way earlier, but yesterday I was far too tired to write after coming back from the meetup event, and before that...well we had the class and so many other excuses blah blah, let's get on shall we.

Breakfast was standard, fruits and berries and oats, tea and crackers. Right after work ended I went to the art class, a bit later than usual because I had to finish work writing as I was running behind. We went upstairs and I drew Mt. Rainier. It's not the best, and I still haven't figured out perspective, but I'm definitely improving, at this rate in a couple of years I'll be better than where I'm currently. It was so sunny and happy and even hot in cal anderson park, people were chillin' relaxing, I wanted to do that too, but the only thing that could be done outside was to read. I had other plans, other plans however.

Amazon's oats and barley grains had been delivered, I took them up to my place and just kept the boxes hither and tether. Also 8 small cans of tomato sauce, long story, maybe I'll write about it  at a later time. I cooked rye berries with chickpeas, bok choy and tofu for lunch. It wasn't great to eat at the time, and took me almost two hours to cook at the time, but it tasted amazing later on.

Went to Volunteer park for walk, almost didn't get 10k steps but made it somehow. On Mondays I only take one round of the park because I've got a couple of thousand steps in already.

Wrote a bunch bunch bunch of posts here, more recovery writing from over the weekend, and had the classic egg and tomato cheese sandwich for dinner.

Good emotional hygeine in the morning is absolutely necessary for a productive day

 The earlier I leave the house to go to the office, the better I feel about my day. What a strange situation I find myself in. I have discovered that since I started going to the office my productivity is through the roof. I have discovered that my productivity during office hours also impacts my personal time, because otherwise I feel too bad and don't end up doing much during my own time. So if I can offload my more self-care tasks to the work hours, I feel guilty and do actual work-work, and my personal hours are expanded to do other things.

Which is why good emotional hygiene is crucial for a productive day it turns out. What does that mean? One must freshen up, be up and up right after waking up, or at the earliest possible time. Lazing around, watching youtube or reading the news can be addictive, it can distract one from the 'pains' of everyday existence, but it puts one in a negative mood.

The morning, it turns out, really does show the path of the day, it shapes the direction of one's productive mindset, one's learning mindset, one's motivational mindset. So if I wish to grow as a person, if I wish to grow as a professional, and if I wish to grow as a researchers, I will need to get my mornings in order. They shouldn't me lazy and tiring, they definitely shouldn't be demotivating and stressful. I need them to be relaxing and chill, ideally really zen and in curious and open-to-learning mood. Flexibility emotionally is of the utmost importance, and the morning is what allows you to slide into a flexible mindset.

Seeking help of the local research librarian, and aspirations of a serious side-career in culinary research

 I went to the Seattle public library main branch yesterday, the weather was fine, there was not much to do back home so I figured why not spend some time seeking help of existing resources.

I talked to the research librarian on food and culinary matters, and asked to help me find written pieces on culinary culture and history of Tibeto-burmese groups in South Asia. Newari food, gurung food, tamang food, etcetera etcetera. What did the people of the mountain eat, why did they eat those things, where did those ingredients come from, how did they influence each other? How do these ingredients and final products show gradation in recipe and output through various regions? What is their status now? Now proud are people about their foods? What hindrances are there towards making them more popular and more 'legitimate'? What might we be able to do to document these cultural heritages, and share with the rest of the world?

I understand that most of those questions remain unanswered and unresearched. My goal is to get as far as I possibly can with existing research, and then eventually try to see if it would be worth going out to the field all by myself and write on those topics. I'll go to the kitchens, I'll learn the skills, I'll write, I'll read, I'll cut and I'll cook, and I'll publish tomes on ethnic cooking in Nepal. And I'll commercialize this, and make it popular all over. That's my calling, that's my destiny, it appears upto this point.

Blank: Why it's fine to falter and fail, and how to pick yourself up again by Giles Paley-Phillips and Jim Daly

 This book (Blank) I read in my ebook reader over almost two weeks, possibly three weeks. I haven't been able to read books lately, but this book was such a reveal that reading a couple of pages here couple of there was easily done. It's an 'inspiration' or 'self-help' book, but mostly a 'personal journeys and discoveries' of the two hosts of the "Blank" podcast. The authors basically distill the message on personal motivation and drive shared by their guests in their podcast over many years, and the spice of their own experience on those matters, tie it all up with a nice little knot of scientific facts and talking to psychologists and bam, we have an incredibly easy and inspirational read.

I give this book 9.5 out of ten stars. The anecdotes are just so fantastic, and feel specially authentic because they are shared with the authors in recorded format that readers can go and listen to if they so wish. The authors are not afraid to be vulnerable and bring up their own weaknesses and issues they've struggled with through their lives.

It's an easy read, the message is simple, the tips are highly practical and there's not much hoity-doity theorizing going on. This was an amazing book, and I'm glad I read it instead of listening to as an audiobook because the written impact was just so big.

Highly, highly recommend this book to anybody looking to read something on personal growth...

Lowkey sunday full of writing on this website [Sun 21]

tea and crackers, fruity oats for breakfast,  yogurt for lunch, egg-tomato-cheese sandwich for dinner, walk to the volunteer park, lots of writing and other productive things

I write this on Wednesday evening because turns out I'd completely forgotten to write this journal, and it didn't come up in my records, which is why entries were a little off. I blamed that on my poor math and moved on, not accounting for the possibility that I might have forgotten to write this journal. In any case, thankfully I had the records up on my computer, and we're back baby!

Had tea and crackers in the morning after talking to family. Bananas and apples with blueberry for oats, standard deal. Had yogurt for lunch, and egg-tomato-cheese sandwich on ezekiel bread that I've been absolutely digging for dinner.

Went to volunteer park for a long walk. Got a bunch of writing done during the day, got caught up with the lost weekend posts here, and website work has been progressing as well. Good day, didn't make all the progress I hoped to, but good stuff was done!

Oh my meal!

So much fiber in my food,
fiber here, fiber there, and there too
surely all this must be doing me some good,
I said oh no no no no no to rice and wheat grain,
not at all girl, I want a healthy heart
and a strong powerful brain.
I'm eating my meals right on time,
and teas and snack, and so many foods
I'm doing so very fine
The grains you have only heard of dear
I have cooked and pushed down my gullet
with a healthy glug of cold water.
I ain't doing it for the health, hear my word
this is all a part of the grand exploration
on how one might live by one's old vision
of an extensive, rich and healthy diet
based on different food groups and a load of innovation.

Green veggies I've started at too,
spinach and bok choy, oh lettuce and the strange greens
broccoli hey there, cucumber is just so fine
in proteins I got me means and lentils, tofu and mushrooms
to me they feel like good wine
I got my healthy breakfast cereals, and several pieces of fruit
ain't no time for scrubs, got no time to brood
food equals brain, and my brain is on fire
let's set this straight, from now on what desire
I manifest, and that I get.
all thanks to the superpower
of great food,
it's not just for filling my tummy,
it's my medicine too.

It sounds like a poem
written my a third-grader,
so be it, it gets me off my roster.

A list of 28 things

I haven't done a random list of X things in some time, I haven't done anything besides journaly, diary posts in a really long time. Not that I have that free capacity right now, but this is something different, something one does feel desiring of doing, so let's get at it, yo!

1. The desire to write book, research, and turn into a total academic while not abandoning one's worldly possessions.
   
   
2. Novel writing, can we please produce a novel, pretty pretty much, very soon, yes, thanks a lot!
   
   
3. Bubbly drinks and fartiness, is there a relationship between them or what?
   
   
4. How come the groceries from the asian store go bad so quick? Should buy from there more regularly
   
   
5. To buy kimchi one must take a treacherous journey through the most dangerous part of Seattle, ah what buggery
   
   
6. And where does one get this strange sensation, of good vibes, good luck, and for no clear reason, great vibe-ration?
   
   
7. Uh oh, the big moron's company is going down down down, eventually, all the lies and charades coming into the public view eventually
   
   
8. The need to write for Nepali newspapers getting stronger, but ah nobody to motivate or keep oneself accountable
   
   
9. Illustrations: they are important, and one does do them semi-regularly, but must. do. more. often. All.the.time!
   
   
10. An hour of writing?! An hour! That's crazy, but I used to write for two, remember, good times, that's what..works, right? Not this mess where I'm rushing the best of my ideas in less than five minutes?
    
    
11. so. Many. self-help. and businesss books. Are they any good? We'll find out!
    
    
12. The confidence to go on an advisory committee of a public library, and bug them till they do the 'right thing' which is basically your vision for them.
    
    
13. Audacity the word is fine as words go, but the concept is intriguing, titillating, engaging, something worth trying every so often, surely?
    
    
14. Writing long and more time consuming posts than you intended because you're having one hell of a time, and oh yeah you forgot you had other matters to deal
    
    
15. the days are long and hot, and on the one hand, no more lethargy from the cold, but oh no, so much lethargy from the heat
    
    
16. pets are fine, but you get sucked into a single-parent life without any of the long-term rewards and social validation, which is somewhat of a bummer, will people really have doggos instead of children in the foreseeable future?
    
    
17. compromising on some of your needs for others because your understanding of the world was different, and without the flexibility you'd get even further away from the actual goals, so strategic retreat is advisable
    
    
18. how many hobbies and interests can one juggle consistently, realistically speaking, for surely there must be a limit, no? Is ten a good number, fifteen maybe? Should I try testing this summer?
    
    
19. Why the hell do I keep going back, only to Kathmandu when besides family there's not too many people to go back to. Is it the food...or?
    
    
20. Travels, where to, might there be an opportunity for a legit travel experience to faraway lands?
    
    
21. So much uncertainty in what the future might look like at a personal level, but isn't that an upside RE: upside of uncertainty book?
    
    
22. Apparently UAE is literally drowning, and the Ph is literally pretty much on fire. this is the scenario captain planet warned us about!
    
    
23. political matters I don't even want to bring myself into, but whattf is happening in the new apple, such madness
    
    
24. the way to keep oneself at peace and chill and lacking in anxiety is to avoid all news, specially political ones, what an easy trick doctors don't want you to know!?
    
    
25. how might one turn around the work's return-to-office policy into one's personal gain, thoughts and considerations
    
    
26. haven't read fiction in so long, anything good worth reading come out recently?
    
    
27. how. the hell. is this. podcast bubble. inflating. all of a sudden? What happened exactly in recent years that the audio medium has become the tool of choice for communicators. Everybody and their toddler's got one!
    
    
28. in the future maybe everyone will have a podcast and an of and perhaps a substack, and you can choose how to interact with them online...wild times we live in surely.
    

The biggest minor error of recent times: trusting AI to write essays and the sort, and the pain of editing those fucked up large files

I've written about this before, possibly several times before, but it needs mentioning again, because I'm still suffering from the downstream results of it. I needed to write sixty essay, ish. I was sold too early by the glorious promise of an ai system that would write brilliant essays in my own voice, without fucking things up. I trusted it, and went on a rampage of writing sixty to eighty super duper long essays in the ai's voice. And then figured I could easily edit it to provide my voice later on. Oh how wrong it was.

The language ai writes essay in actually sucks. Like, if I saw it once, I would say hmmm pretty good. But if I saw it over and over again, I'd tell them to write like a goddamn human being, otherwise nobody would ever read them. And even if they were forced to write in a different 'voice', the ai system can't really adjust for 'knowledge level' of a given individual. Because it doesn't have the understanding, depth and curiosity of a regular human person, it just blabs out whatever. It's like as if you asked Newton to write all of your homework, and he did it, all in the same droning tone, without accounting for your knowledge and experience. Yeah you can go back and edit stuff around, but fundamentally it's such a different essay that not much can be done anymore. You know what I mean?

The real, actual way to write essays should have been this: I think of an outline. I dictate the general content of the essay to my google recorder app. Then send the output to some Ai system to clean the transcript and make it readable. Then give it to another ai system to organize it only lightly, do not edit it etc. Then I go in, and actually edit it by myself, and eventually publish it. Time to think originally: 10 mins. Time to dictate: 20 minutes. Time to edit: 10 minutes. Time to run the essay through ai and come up with stronger arguments: 20 minutes. In an hour, hour-thirty maximum, my essay, a real human-written essay without all the bullshit would be complete and I'd be a happy customer.

But no, now the time taken for each piece is who knows how long, and I'm stuck in this miserable purgatory of never quite knowing if I'm done or not, because that piece is never really mine despite spending the same amount of time, and providing twice the required wordcount in relevant information to this crap system.

I've put myself in a miserable situation. There are definitely places where the AI is useful, I can see that, but where I'm currently deploying it, that is not it. What. A. Bummer. Ah well, I learned all of this pretty quick.

Audacity, confidence and daring to push one beyond comfort zone

The only difference between somebody with your level of skill, intelligence, talent and hard work, and you, is the level of audacity they have, I read in a self-help book. If you can be audacious enough to ask for things you might not get, apply for projects you will likely get rejected from, make attempts that are surely bound to be shut down, and take risks that are going to be greatly rewarded, you will get much farther in life than if you decide you are comfortable with your station in life. It's about being 'audacious', and by audacity I mean the courage, confidence, and if not that, just the lack of good sense, to be able to say, you know what if this doesn't work out, it won't work out, I don't care. I'm a successful stable adult person, and this risk is something I'm willing to tolerate, and I'll just make the jump. I realize there's a small chance it will go very poorly, but it's okay, because I've done the best, and I understand the circumstances around the events, and the people who do this think I deserve it, and even if not, so what. It's never a loss to fail and learn something new about yourself or the system. So here I go, with great audacity at trying new things, wish me luck!

Writing about food, food cultures etc

I've been reading up on this restaurant Tusa that opened in Bhaktapur recently, led by a former NOMA executive chef. And there's so many other passionate chefs and cooks from all over the world who've returned to Nepal to work on their passion projects. It feels like this is the right-ish time to go there and explore my proposal to identify and delineate the 'branding' for all Nepali cuisines, make their menus, and standardize what it means to be a cuisine of a certain type. I will need a couple of months to explore and understand, but I'll get there.

And oh, one of the biggest experts in the field, turns out is somebody I was good friends with in a past life, though they may have forgotten me by now. They also happen to be an acquaintance's dad, but that too is a stretch connection. I will go to Nepal, talk to them, and start my glorious project when the time is right. Or start already, when there's an empty month. Right now, it is not. Soon though, I promise.

Busy week ahead

 Hoo boy, this is going to be a busy week ahead.

So much political and local activism, so many meetup events, and much socializing planned ahead. There's like three or four events at least for the weekdays before thursday, and I'm hoping to invite one or two groups of friends in the weekend. It's nice, I love it, as I've written before, I get the sense that something great is going to happen to me, but I must take the initiative, must communicate clearly and explain my requirements. It's going to be one of those events, maybe they'll elect me as their chairman, or perhaps this will be the beginning of my political career? Need to keep my eyes and ears open for any interesting or exciting opportunities, that is for sure!

Yogurt breakfast, eastside hike, meeting unexpected friends, lots of sleep [Sat 20]

 Morning awake, yogurt for lunch, picked-up, walk with friends, encountering OTHER friends there, mutual acquaintances found too, somehow so very tired and asleep entire day, sandwich lunch, restaurant plans, up far too late without doing anything productive, fried-rice for late-night meal

I write this on the evening of Monday, this last and fifth post written after much consternation and procrastination. It's hard, so very challenging, but write we must, because that's what our lives are like.

In the morning I got up at 7 had a big bowl of yogurt and changed, ready for the tiger mountain or something hiking trip. AD and SD came picked me up at quarter past nine and we got to our trailhead in about 50 minutes. there we waited for 20 minutes for everybody to show-up, and guess what my friend from two weeks ago BB and his wife TB showed up too! So I knew four people in the group, unrelated to each other, which probably made me the most connected person in those lands. ME, of all people and places!

Met up a bunch of other people from the nepali hiking group, connected with a friend-of-a-friend, and it was all much fun. The hike was easy, more of a walk-in-the-park than an intense trek which I liked because it was the first of the season.

Came home, napped for like five hours because I was so tired, after eating the tomato-egg,cheese sandwich.

Thought of opening a popup restaurant in Seattle and stayed in bed for like four hours imagining it and planning it.

Was up far too late at night, until a bit after midnight without doing anything, definitely didn't write here at all. had fried rice for late dinner since I didn't feel much hungry earlier, but 1.30 in the morning without having eaten anything before tended to go to the hungrier side.

rye grains are just as yucky as anticipated

 I cooked rye grains for an hour or so earlier today, and uhhh they are just as crap as one had expected them to be. So very tough even after hours of cooking, not great flavor, and generally a mediocre experience in eating. Which is fine, that was the goal of the whole experiment: to identify grains I like and grains that I don't, and figure out how to make use of the ones I don't get along with. So rye with veggies and saag is just okay, and it would be a tough sell for salads either (unlike millet...). Perhaps the ebst way to deal with it would be to sprout it for a few days and pressure cook it, or roast it and pressure cook it. It's not the grain that one has issues with, it's the fact that one bought a large volume of unhulled berries that one has little experience cooking or even interacting with. While the flavor and texture might be a bit of an initial compromise, all the fibers going inside my body must be doing so crazy good, I can't even imagine. Honestly, it will all have been worth it if at the end of all of this, the doctor tells me my cholesterol is under control all of a sudden and whether I'm taking medication or something, because it's a medical miracle! Then I'll send them the link to my grains, and write a self-help diet book on how I changed my life drastically with this diverse-grain diet.

It comes down to self-help books in the end, doesn't it, everyone wants to write one!

Joe Wilkinson podcast, etc

John Wilkinson's podcast, Chatabix I listened to recently because he had a live running commentary until the moments he showed up on the off menu podcast. You'd think somebody at his level, with decades of experience and appearance in major television series and movies, they'd be more comfortable with the stage and audiences, and so forth. But no, he was still terrified, afraid like nothing else, and so very unwilling to go onstage until the very last moment. And even then he was full of uncertainty,fear that the audience may reject him, and unsure what the point of the show was, and how best he would present himself. It seems that he enjoys fear, or a sense of foreboding, and struggles to function without it. The chatabix podcast in general is quite a ride, not as much as Sam and Lucy's thing, but still quite...out there, which I guess with Joe it would be expected. But no, this is different, Joe is quite a different individual besides his persona, and lot more relatable and perhaps even more likeable, as we can understand where he is coming from. Me specially, with the anxiety and fear of disappointing people. 

I'd recommend readers listen to at least a few episodes of chatabix before giving the final judgment.

I was wrong. Tea in moderation does indeed give me energy and motivation, fine!

I've eluded to this in previous posts, the preceding one even, but it turns out tea in moderation does actually give me energy, drive away lethargy and lack of motivation, and help my life in general. In the past my relationship with tea has been unhealthy, in a way cultures with no experience of booze deal with it. Unmodulated and unconstrained. But that's not how life works, I should know better. So now I steep my teas for only a few short minutes, in not very hot water, and drink it pretty warm. And it's been glorious. I feel relaxed, energetic, and have positive outlook on life immediately after drinking it. So yes, my body is not created different, I was just not getting the dosage right, a little bit of caffeine through chai tea blends etcetera does make my life better and provide a great positive outcome for my endeavors, thank you very much!

This will go on until either the teas are done, or I'm...in no need for motivation, which. Fat chance, let's just say.

Toodles.

Meal times, planning, thinking, and the future

 As it stands, for the last several days I have been extraordinarily motivated, yet not very driven to write. Thing is, I don't give myself enough time and space to write, but more importantly, is it possible one is out of ideas to even navel-gaze, and can't write any more? Which should be great, on paper because that would mean it's time for fiction, as the possibility space for fiction is infinite. But oh well, that needs time, and you know what they say about time. That no matter how much I got, I ain't getting much.

I've been getting my meals in order, four meals a day, at least two tea-times, often three. Most meals pretty regularly scheduled. It. Feels. Fucking. Fantastic. Does it mean it's the end of my procrastination and all of my other 'issues'? Hell no! But it makes me feel good in the inside, which means it's a start to solving those problems, so I ain't complaining.

It's helped me think better, organize my life better, and I don't have to be on alert all the time about where the next meal might come from, or how I feel so very lethargic for no good reason. Because there can only be two reasons: either I am not full and need to eat, or it's time to drink a cuppa' and see after thirty minutes if I still feel same, which I often don't.

Consistently maintain this for a week or two or three, and ohhh brother, we're cooking a great stew!

Fun friendly party with so many fantastic people in roosevelt, a hiking plan made [Fri 19]

standard heavily-fruity oats for breakfast, day on the lazier side, not much workstuff done, trainride to Rooseveltt, pizza dinner second night in a row, fun with friends, graduation and birthday parties, so much socialization with new people, new acquaintances, a hiking offer, talking about ambitious career plans, Saturday plans made, midnight return and no writing

Had the standard oats and fruits and other addons for breakfast. Except this morning I measured my oats and discovered I'm eating like LOTSS of oats every morning, four times the recommended serving size actually.

I felt lazy tired and not very productive during the day. I'm starting to suspect it was due to either fat, carb or oleic regulation (or mis-regulation, as it might be) in my body, due to the terribly unhealthy pizza from domino's I had the night before. It's just a hypothesis, that eating bad food that's not good for my body messes up my brain, but one that I hadn't seriously considered before. I'll keep an eye out on that.

The day was on the lazier side, I didn't get around to doing much work, didn't get my 10k steps in either, and most definitely didn't write. In the evening went to NA and SA's place with a bottle of wine to celebrate graduation-cum-birthday. My second night of outing! And second night of pizza-eating. Met so many of their other friends, connected with a couple of them, and met other mutual friends too. It felt like 'good old times' when I used to hang out with large friend groups, except it was in my terms, and I didn't just stumble into a group that was connected by facebook group of 'who wants to hang?'

AD asked me if I wanted to join them for the hike next morning, I immediately agreed to that. Talked to them about my career plans, visualization, and thinking about an ambitious future.

Came home after half past eleven, obviously no 10k steps happened, and no writing either.

More grains, MOAR GRAINS

Here's my grain-upgrade.

I just cooked the first batch of rye berries, which happened to be unhulled rye grains. I kind of forgot about the 'unmilled/unhulled' part for a while, but no matter, I sprouted the grains for a few days, and boiled the mofo in a pot of boiling water for 1.5 hours. The grains are still chewy, but workable, should be fine with veggies and beans. Or at least not much worse than the kodo-sorghum mixture that was eaten for weeks, with great enjoyment too in the end.

That's for the existing grains. I have ordered a few more.

I ordered barley pearls because barley is one of the more common grains that I didn't have. It'll be useful to make tea out of it, make soups, and generally use it as rice replacement. I'm aware it takes AGES to cook, which is why the pressure cooker is going to be a great friend of mine in the near future.

Then there's steel-cut oats because yeah oats as rolled form are great for breakfast, but what about dinner? So steel cut oats are basically rice replacement that I can whip up in 15 minutes and eat it with veggies. The more edible version of my other grains, something to 'fill out' the harder grains and turn them more pliable, together with quinoa.

And oh, also ordered like 20lbs of rolled oats because maaan, I gotta buy 'em at this rate, seeing as I'm running through a pound of those in 3 days, and 2lbs of rolled oats is like 6 buckaroos at TJ's. This was getting unsustainable rather quickly, so the bulk grains are going to let me control my hunger, cholesterol, and my budget. I'll keep providing updates on the grain situation!

Broadening community, hiking, and expanding groups

Yesterday I went hiking with AD and SD, and I wasn't expecting to meet anybody else I knew of at the forest. But guess what?! I encountered BB and TB, whom I'd met two weeks before, and they had independently decided to show up for the hiking too! So it was a pretty massive community for me, I was probably the most well-connected person there. So much so that I, of all people, ME, I was the person who made introductions and conjoined different friend-groups and made them add each other on (lamao) facebook. 

You will remember that only a few months ago I was complaining about my limited social circles and how I don't know where to start looking for new friends and making new groups. All of a sudden, the universe gives me an answer, in a platter clearly, all I had to do was be open to the possibility of going on a hike, invite people over for lunch and dinner, and so forth. If you want to expand your social circle, the thing to do is to just hang out with more people, consistently so, and make friends with their friends, and their friends too, and so on, until your different circles start intersecting, and YOU become the point of intersection.

It's quite gratifying, let me tell you that, so very much!

What this means is one's social circumstances can change in a turn of a time, and so can one's personal situation, probably. Like romantic situations. ALL one must do is be open to the possibility that interesting persons might be encountered, and be flexible in one's expectations from a partner, keeping one's heart and mind on alert for anything that might seem like a potential connection. When you open up to the universe, the universe opens up to you, that's something that I've been told. And now I'm ready to experience it!

The craphole butt of all jokes that is Aurora

Turns out everyone hates Aurora Ave, and the rapidride line E is the butt of a joke, a meme about how awful that strength of road and community in Seattle is. I've written about the area before: it's the bus that umm takes one North that has many mentally-ill, legally-noncompliant, rulebreaking ignoring rambunctious but not in a fun way, members of the society. They are the ones who are medicated so strongly they will not consider the impact of their actions, the harm they cause upon other people, and are willing to take great risks for minimal personal reward. And also that whole stretch is full of drug dealing, prostitution, arson, and what-have-you. Sketchiest to the max. It's good to know that it's not just you who has an issue with a route or a place, but it's a historically problematic area of the town that the city refuses to do anything about for some reason or another.

This city's leadership needs to be replaced, man, that's the conclusion from all these experiences.

Something amazing is going to happen very soon, I can feel it in my bones!

This is all so silly, so kooky, so out-there. But. It feels like something big is about to happen, something good and amazing. I've been feeling it in my bones for the last few weeks, and I can't point out to exactly what it might be, or where it might come from, but I need to keep my options open. I need to be receptive of the possibility that the Universe is going to align a bunch of random variables to work in my favor, but if I'm not in the right place at the right time as it expects me to, it will have gone to waste, and somebody else will benefit from it. I don't know where to direct my receptiveness, don't know how to guide my openness, but I know that one needs to be extraordinarily open to the possibility that something new, interesting and curious will be thrown my way right about now. It will align to my calendar and everything, after all I'm not the lotto-winning kinda' guy, and when offered an opportunity, I shouldn't be quick to dismiss or adjust it, even though it might not be the type I'm usually interested in.

This has never happened to me before, I've never  put this much trust in the universe and chance, and prepared myself for something amazing to happen. I just know that it will happen, and I need to be on high alert for the next few weeks!

I'll keep you updated!

Office, repeated sandwich for lunch, PS hang, domino's walk and pizza dinenr [Thu 18]

tea-biscuit, apple-banana-pb-blueberries-chia oats, afternoon at the office, pretty productive, tomato egg sandwich for lunch, evening hang at PS's, Domino's walk and pizza for dinner, unable to write and concentrate, oh so tired!

Had tea and biscuit for breakfast, so glad it's becoming a daily habit now, all I need is healthy snacks for high-tea, and one's weekday life is all set! Breakfast was classic apple, banana, peanut-butter powder, blueberries raisins chia seed on oats. So filling, so healthy!

Went to the office in the afternoon, forgot my ID, and had to take the meeting next to the security console. Was pretty productive at work, got stuff out. Back home made cheesey, tomatoey egg sandwich for lunch, the same as the dinner before.

Illustrated, meditated, and generally did productive stuff in the afternoon, went to PS's place in the evening. We walked over to Domino's and had the pizza, hung out with him and his roommates. Got my blender and the canvas bag from his place. Talked a bunch about our goals, futures, green card, and the political future of this country.

Was so tired in the evening after returning that I didn't write, I really really tried, but couldn't, and just fell asleep over the clothes. Eventually changed, brushed and slept forreals.

It turns out that my diet influences my mood the following day, and the pizza wasn't to good for my productivity. But that's for tomorrow's psot!

Oats as the cholesterol killer superfood

Turns out 40g of dried oats is the recommended serving size for rolled oats for breakfast. Guess how much I'm eating every morning? Yes, you guessed it right, about 155g every day, possibly even more, in the morning! Add peanut-butter powder, blueberries, banana, apple, coconuts, raisins etc and you probably get to about 400g if not a bit more. And it's all mostly fiber!

And that's not all. Turns out the type of fiber present in the oat grains actually actively dissolves the cholesterol in your blood and improves the general health level. Which means that oats are not just food, they're medicine too, they're super food. Lucky for me that I love them, and can eat five times the recommended range on an easy day.

Yeah, it's no surprise the 'large' packet of oats I ran out of so very quickly, because I was eating so much more than the suggested amount. In retrospect actually I'm surprised the batch even lasted that long!

Visualizing a stronger, more powerful position in the current job, a proposition

Right, in the previous post I talked about how I've been visualizing a new position, my personal and social lives, and the direction I want them to take. Starting today, I have been something quite radical, new, even innovative, at least for myself. Visualizing the situation where I'm in my current company and job, but with a better title and a more interesting job description. I need to work on this harder, perhaps a couple of minutes daily, just on this specific vision, because it's so reachable, I can turn my life around in a matter of weeks to months. It's just been unclear all this time what I was angling for, which led me into confusion and a lack of direction, but now I know: I want to focus on thought leadership, on providing mentorship and guidance, on exploring new technologies and quickly identifying the pitfalls and generally combining lessons from disparate fields by reading and writing like a demon, and using easily-readable and understandable pieces to explain to the rest of the company. And some technical work, yes. My current job doesn't accommodate for all of this easily. Oh but it will. All I need is to think about it every day, imagine myself in that situation, and put in the steps to take me there, from here. Three months, I tell you, mark my words, of doing this and acting it out, and I'll have become a different man!

The Dream(tm) visualization, and the path ahead

 The dream I've talked about it, I've been visualizing it for the what...month..now? It's to basically triple-ish the salary, pretend like I've already got the job and the things I'd do, ways I'd think, and the person I'll have become, and become that person, right now. Because then it's possible to 'back-project', and pretend I have to think about things now, so I can prepare for them. Anyway, these days the visualization has gone more and more detailed, and I can start thinking about things I'd do on a daily basis, crises I'd encounter and ways to deal with them, the interview, all of it.

Oh and I've been expanding the visualization as well. I've been visualizing a more successful social and personal life...inviting people over to my place twice or three times a week while balancing the rest of my interests, inviting diverse groups of friends without laziness and lack of motivation, having a more engaged and exciting romantic life, being more daring and risky with asking people out and the consequences of those actions, because it's okay to want something and actually get it etc. etc.

So much so that my 'visualization' sessions often get out of control and I have to reset the timer. Which is probably not the point of the exercise. What the exercise has shown me is that I do have 'wants' and to motivate myself to become a hard-working person, such techniques are excellent because I know what one's going for and how to get it achieved, instead of staring at the general direction of one's goal and hoping for the best.

The path ahead is exciting, uncertain, and unknown but I'm quite glad I'm taking the path less explored etc. Cliches, cliches, cliches!

Should I start a small business, arguments for and against

Yesterday on our drive to the hike, friend AD suggested I apply for one of the Seattle city-subsidized small-business plans, to start a nano brewery, or a restaurant of some sort, even a popup in the farmer's market. To get the ball rolling on my grandiose plans, he said. And I spent several hours last night when I couldn't sleep since I'd napped for five hours in the afternoon thinking, making plans, strategizing, even coming up with the menu and an operational strategy. It would be a Nepali/newari tapas-type restaurant, that would offer $5 spicy and salty snacks, with $5 chhang to go with, the idea being people would drink more the more they ate the interesting snacks. And they would sit closely in company with everybody, to encourage the community and camaraderie feeling. It could last just one month, and I might lose money on the whole affair, but it wouldn't matter, because the education I'd have gotten would have come at a relatively affordable price. I'd have made connection, talked to people, understood the ecosystem, and generally done something that's been a pie-in-the-sky kinda thing.

Then the reality hit. I'm technically not allowed to work on such matters except for investing. And then I already have other more calling goals at the moment, do I want to spend at least 2 months preparing and executing it when there's such little experience on the matter? And ohh the hard work it would take, it would squeeze me dry, am I ready to make the commitment when I have a full-time job, this blog, and other matters to deal with? Perhaps this should stay a bit more of a fantasy, or maybe I could be a sleeping partner, and inspire somebody else to run with my idea? I could help them operationalize the thing, but not be involved directly?

Good breakfast, office, krishna das concert and yummy sandwich [Wed 17]

Breakfast of heavy oats and berries and fruits, and tea and biscuit, walk to the office at noonish, the last batch of kodo stew turns out to be yummy, high on productivity and illustrating, in at the KD concert, getting in for free, decent experience, egg-cheese-tomato-sprouts on ezekiel bread sandwich for dinner.

I write this on Sunday evening because things happened and I got socializin'. It's fine, it's a part of life, and meeting people, interacting with other humans is an important aspect of human existence. The more I hang out with others, the more I'll be comfortable balancing socializing with my personal improvement ideas. So perhaps I should have a week where I'm hanging out with social groups every day of the weekend, as a practice. Even more?

In the morning I had breakfast (heavy, 150g raw oats) of oats, berries and fruits, and had tea and biscuits in the morning. New thing I'm starting, it'll be great. I've written about three tea-times etc. Went to work around noon, stayed for a couple of hours, was quite productive. Back home, had the last batch of kodo stew, and it was extra yummy somehow at the end.

Got writing, illustrating, and doing all of my chores so perfectly well, feel so proud! In the evening went to Krishna Das concert planning on buying the ticket on-site, but they gave me a free one, so I just walked in without spending a penny! 2 hours at the concert was pretty great, some over-eager dancers, in an otherwise low-energy room. Most definitely would go again, and be more excited if the crowd is known to be high-energy.

Back home at night, had egg-cheese-tomato-and sprouts for dinner, on ezekiel bread. This sandwich I'll keep having for the next few days, so something to keep in mind.

Missing out on writing due to social events etcetera

I'm writing 20 pieces today in this blog, which means I missed out three days worth of writing. Not unusual for weekends, generally, but Thursday was skipped as well, which was a bit of a bummer. On the positive side, the excuse is that I was busy socializing, hanging out with friends and acquaintances at parties and at a hike, and having a hell of a good time, so it's not like I was being lazy. My ultimate goal is to balance out socializing with my motivated writing and personal accomplishments, because they are both equally important to me. Regardless, writing was missed, but it's okay cos' I'll make up for it, and so much fun was had! Three events, in the course of one weekend! Good times, eh?