[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 justs 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, its 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.