[30/03/2024] - march update!
hello again. this was supposed to come out last month but whateverat the start of the year i switched kinda to linux. i think it was a good call. i now have a dual-boot setup with windows 10 and arch linux. this came at a cost tho. since i was partitioning an already used hd i had to clean up some things to have more space for linux.
i thought for a bit on what i could delete from my pc and i found something that was taking the most of me. and i repeat: not only the most of the pc, but this was consuming most of who i am.
about gaming
i kinda wanted this to have more suspense but it is just a computer hobby like there is not too much out there for you to be "consumed" in your pci stopped to think about it. deleting my games was a decision i was already considering a while ago. so i started to pull out some numbers to check if it was a good decision.
- i have about 1500 hours in games on steam
- this is about 62 days of playing non-stop
- since i had about 6h/day of free time i had 250 days where i did nothing but to play these games
- this is almost an entire year
- most of these games i started playing around in 2019
- (at the time) its 2023, so about 4 years playing these games
- thats about 25% of the last 4 years.
- remembers that this isn't even close to what i actually spent playing. most of my games isn't on steam
- i have no idea how much of my life was put on these games. i just know it has been more than a year.
i noticed that mentality. and i started to put it in check.
are these games really, really doing something great for me? lets find out all of it's benefits.
- games can aliviate your boredom - so does many of my other hobbies. not only that, but these other hobbies could be self-sustaining. playing games is always draining from me and my resources.
- games bring you new experiences/learn new things - i just played the same games over and over. also my computer isn't the best, so most of what people call good games i cannot play
- games can bring you friends - i had none.
- games can make you rethink about your life - i didn't although im rethinking about it rn so maybe you have a point, dear strawman
- games can bring you joy - i was in an all-time-low 2 years ago. no game made me happy at that time. and today i don't think they bring as much joy as they did when i was little
- games can make you forget about the miserable life you have. while playing you will not realize that you are worthless or, even worse, a hindrance for other people. you will not remember that it would be better if you didn't exist - ah, this was tempting. but now i don't think im useless anymore so i think i'm ok without games
after considering all of this, i was ready to delete all of my games. i was feeling sooo good about myself. "oh, im finally getting my life back!!!!!! i can finally be free from gaming!!! i can abandon God-knows how much years of my life!!... i can delete what i was before this moment..."
yeah... i have not thought about that.
after you invest so much of your life in something, it is really hard to throw it away like it is nothing. because it isn't nothing. it once was part of you.
deleting these games means to delete myself.
deleting my minecraft worlds means to delete 8+ years of effort, creativity, personality and much more young me had put into these worlds.
abandoning my binding of isaac saves means to delete all of my days of effort into knowing the ins and outs of the game just to have a higher chance of a successful run.
i could go on but i think you get the point.
ok so i was reading through this to check any mistakes and like wait isn't this the plot of toy story??? idk it has been so long since i last watched it i don't remember what the movie is about
differently from what i think most of people would do, i again noticed this thought and panicked. i just started deleting everything as fast as i could before i lose the courage to do so. i really didn't want to go back to what i was.
really good way of solving a dilemma, isn't it? just do not confront it lol.
well, thankfully, no regret ever came to me to this day. i feel really okay with this change. which is really weird, considering i used to believe memories and records are a part of you. quoting myself from 3 months ago:
"not only that, but there are things i've realized before, then forgot about it, and when i've read through my "diary" i've remembered it again and had a new impact on my life. it is almost as if a part of myself died and got reborn inside of me in the future. i've persisted through the passage of time and right now i'm more myself than i could have ever been."but today i'm thinking about it differently. i think you can know things about yourself without the need of writing.
this reminds something a calculus book taught me recently:
you can find v if you know f.
im not going to explain exactly what that means but basically, if you know the output of something, you know it's input.
i may not remember all of the things i did in the last decade, but i know myself in this moment, which was affected by what i made, what i learned, what i've experienced over my life. and i could use that to assume things about myself.
not letting records control everything i know about myself gives an incredible amount of freedom. specially today with almost inescapable surveillance systems all around the world.
all of this may sound contradictory with my last post post? writing? idk how to call these texts but here is the thing: this is about knowing yourself. not remembering who you are.
it is about rediscovery, not permanence.
let's say i've lost all of my memories about myself. i could assume i was interested in music, as i have a guitar. i could also assume i was interested in digital art, as i have a drawing tablet. and last i could assume i was into game development because of godot installed.
in a first moment, i could not assume i was into videogames as i do not have any installed on my computer. but, if i piece together that i had an interest in music, interest in digital art and an interest in game development, i could assume that something inspired me to have all of these hobbies, and since all of the interests are related to videogames, i could assume i used to play videogames, but now the games are missing from my computer.
the reason of why are they missing would still be a mystery to me, so probably i would just go back and start playing games all over again and go back to the position i was on the start of this post, until i understood why did i quit them.
if anything, having physical records are just a way of facilitating this process.
i wonder how much old records have information about the human species and how much we could discover about ourselves.
aftermath
after i deleted everything i got about 250gb of disk space free! yay! but the amount of disk space i could partition for linux was really small when compared to the full disk space i actually have (~500gb total, about 70gb for linux and 400gb for windows). deleting everything gave me 20gb for the linux partition.idk why i couldn't partition it further. from what i researched it seems that i have a block camping the end of my c: drive which doesn't allow me to give more disk space to my linux setup :(
anyways, this setup is provisory. i'm gonna try to get a new pc asap. idk what to do with this computer after i buy a new one. maybe it will be adapted just for music production.
also coming up with the topic i want to say thanks to everyone who is checking my songs! i'm glad that people are getting interested in them.
thank you for reading this!
[06/12/2023] - december update!
it's been a while since i last updated the website. honestly i could have updated before, but i got distracted with things i don't even remember anymore and forgot the existence of this site.you can check all the changes in the *new* changelog page. click the <cl> button up there to see it!
i've just finished high school now, so im expecting having a lot of free time to study and practice new things. although i'll try to get into uni, which, if i succeed, hopefully i'll still have my precious time. h o p e f u l l y . i really dont think im going to survive much longer having about 2 hours for myself every day. introversion sucks.
in the last couple of months i've started an habit of writing down some of my thoughts i find interesting in my cellphone. this is the biggest lifehack i've discovered since i first found out about adblockers. why did no one tell me this sooner? do other people do this too and just refused to tell me? maybe. but i'll assume you don't do this, and i'm going to convince you to start this habit.
so, why writing down thoughts?
the human mind is not perfect. nor is it able to keep track of everything around you. try listing from memory all the recent important news, all the things you need to do today, all the things you need to do this week, all your ideas for your projects, all the things you have learned past month, etc. you'll quickly realize that you don't remember all these things.you'll quickly realize that you can't remember all these things.
that is when the writing comes down: it can minimize drastically the amount of things you need to remember.
remember when i said i got distracted with things i don't even remember anymore? well, i'm not really lying, but i can remember most of the things i did because i wrote it down.
for example: i was messing with minetest recently, got back to practicing art, got really invested in religion, was studying about economics, was thinking about the concept of love, got some ideas for characters to draw, was trying out the godot engine, etc.
from all of this studying and thinking, if i didnt wrote it down, i would just feel down for wasting another month of my life with nothing useful, without realizing all the small, but still important things i did. not only that, but there are things i've realized before, then forgot about it, and when i've read through my "diary" i've remembered it again and had a new impact on my life. it is almost as if a part of myself died and got reborn inside of me in the future. i've persisted through the passage of time and right now i'm more myself than i could have ever been.
how to write?
now, you can't just write down anything you think and pray that this is going to magically help you. you need to write with intent. be very descriptive about what are you going to write, because as i said before, you can't remember everything, including details that might seem obvious to you today, but may not be as obvious to you in 4 months.let's say that you enjoyed a meal, and you want to write down that you enjoyed the meal. if you just write "meal enjoyed", your future self will be very confused on what the fuck are you talking about. i know this from experience. what the hell does "ecstasy" means?? if you write something like "i enjoyed this meal. the texture of the food was nice. the taste was kind of dull. the smell was wonderful.", that leaves a lot more things for your future self to think about.
if you have problems writing descriptions of something, try writing questions about it and note your answers. also write down what you believe about the thing you are writing. is it good? is it useful? is writing about it important? why?
i usually get very meta about these questions. "why am i writing this?", "how am i writing this?", "how am i?", "what is i?". usually i get no satisfactory answer, but some of them lead me to challenge and rethink my world view.
something i find very useful is writing the date of the writing. i write the day and the hour that i'm writing, that way i can understand the memory with better precision. i was thinking on also marking where i am when writing the note.
do not let to write things later, you'll probably forget the piece of genius you had at the moment. also, separating notes in topic is really good. i have one for general thoughts, others for each of my projects, like my musics, my art, my stories, etc.
what to write?
not all thoughts should be treated equally. not all of them must be written down and thought about. i usually write down more philosophic thoughts, about the nature of things in my surroundings, about how i perceive them, about the impact that they provoke on me, on themselves, on other things and other people.honestly, it is hard for me to find something that is not worth writing it down. i don't want this to sound rude, but most of what other people say to me i do not write it down. sometimes people say and do things that i find completely useless, and of course i can be meta and write "why is this thing useless?", but then im not writing about the thing itself, but something around it.
for example: there is this memory that i have and it sometimes keep me up at night, from how absurd the moment was. one day, a friend of mine was trying to talk with me i did mention that i was introverted, i think. and she just spits out something along the lines of: "well, im going through a hard time y'know? the people i'm romantically interested are either already in a relationship or not interested in me, and the people who are interested in me are not my type"
i literally broke from that information.
pic related, it's my reaction to that infohazard.
what am i even supposed to do?!?? what am i even supposed to say after that?!?! i could just say "well thats life ig" but why would i do that? she probably already knows that. there is absolutely no way to add to that conversation. why did she think that vomiting out this shit would make me want to talk more?? am i just dumb? am i missing something? theres no way to tell. i'll probably never see that girl anymore, and probably never get the answer to these questions. i should've asked her on the spot but whatever.
anyways, the tldr here is that you shouldn't write about things that you do not care about, or do not see anything worthwhile in thinking about it. in no time you'll get accustomed to it and write only useful information that you'll carry over for your life. also, do not put pressure on yourself to write. do not try to write daily, weekly or something like that. thoughts are not a product, you cannot fabricate them.
where to write?
do not overcomplicate it. a paper and pen is enough, but there are some things you can do that facilitates your writing.- using your cellphone can be really good. basically infinite storage, and lots of editors for you to try out there. i use Markor, a really simple but very useful text editor. also supports markdown and, by extension, html. i dont use a lot of features because i think it's a waste of time, but a few features like bolding, lists, horizontal rules, headers and being able to press 2 buttons and inserting the current time beautifully formatted are really good for organizing my notes.
- a small notebook is also good, it gets the job done and is as portable as a cellphone. maybe even more, as you dont depend on battery and, for those who live in more dangerous places, getting robbed is not a problem, as a notebook is very cheap and criminals do not really have a big interest in robbing notebooks. i mean, if i was going to rob someone, i would take as many valuables things as they have, even if their value is not monetary but i hope thats just me
- for more complicated stuff, like organizing notes in topics, i use my pc. it has i pray no chance of getting robbed, and it can handle more heavy software. i use Joplin in my pc, i find the notebook hierarchy so good for organizing things. i can also add tags to each note, which is also really good for organizing. the thing that bothers me the most is that joplin saves your location with all of your notes by default. no idea who thought that was a good idea, but you can disable it so whatever.
im happy with this site update. i've wrote far more than i thought i could.