Diary of a Workaholic...

Dear Diary,

My resignation has gone unexpectedly smoothly. This week I managed to talk to both co-CEOs of my employer and had relatively agreeable discussions regarding my upcoming departure from the company. Today, I was also able to obtain my supervisor's signature for my resignation letter. I will send this signed letter to the HR department next Monday. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I will be able to have my four-month break before embarking on a new career in August.

But things were not all peaches and cream this week. My department has been engaging a third party to deliver an important piece of software. The software has been completed since December and was submitted to me for testing. Since December, I've been raising issue after issue found in this software, expecting that they would fix it. Much to my disappointment, they did not fix the software. In response, I did not allow them to move this software to the production stage. This stalemate culminated this week: another department desperately needed the output of this software, which has been turned off by the third party and can only be turned on again if I submitted approval to move it to the production stage. So I did. I felt so defeated. But it's not over yet. I'm going to rally the tech team and this other department to demand more satisfactory software.

Though today was better than yesterday, it wasn't all peaches and cream either. Let's just say that peaches and cream sometimes have a rather bitter aftertaste. This morning I was able to accomplish a lot of tasks and I also met up with an interview practice friend after lunch. The latter was quite out of ordinary for me, since it's been quite some time since I met anyone who is neither a colleague nor a family member. It trained me to control my dislike of strangers which, I suppose, will go a long way if I'm going to start dating seriously in the near future. I also feel excited since I'm going to meet my colleagues tomorrow and bond over coffee. The typically standoffish penguin finally made some time to build an emotional connection with his colleagues. But then came the bitter aftertaste. I went home and, for some reason, my father seemed to be worried about some unknown things. This worry translated into a slight argument with my mother. My mood, of course, turned sour.

Unfortunately, this is the real world. The real world comes with ups and downs. After having finished Norwegian Wood by Murakami, I felt a terrible longing for an idealized version of the world. Sure, the characters in that novel were going through hard times, but their world seems beautiful to me -- painfully beautiful or beautifully painful. This awakened my desire to be an author. I want to be able to create a world so beautiful that I become so absorbed in writing it. After all, if I'm going to escape by way of fiction, I may as well make it personal and productive by writing it myself.

To that end, while reading a few articles on Japanese literature themes, I've come across a concept called mono no aware. It refers to the melancholy that comes from the understanding that nothing is permanent. What a great concept! It describes virtually what I felt after watching animes like Your Name or I Want to Eat Your Pancreas; or after reading novels like Never Let Me Go and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki. This is such a valuable concept to complement my training to comprehend amor fati.

Without realizing it, I've written too long again. It's just that there is so much I want to talk to you about. There is no one else in the world who knows about me as much as you do. I hope one day I will find a life partner to love and trust. When that day comes, I am going to share my secret with her as well. Off to watch The Flower We Saw That Day, read the short story Mono No Aware by Ken Liu, and continued Traumnovelle by Schnitzler.

Best regards,

Bright Penguin

Things to be grateful for today: (1) Porter Robinson's album Nurture and Jean Sibelius' set of seven symphonies, (2) smooth resignation process, and (3) opportunity to stay in touch with my emotion.

Dear Diary,

If I have to summarize this week with one word, it would be: quiet. Not much was happening at work. Last Monday I talked to my colleague about my resignation and promised a smooth handover. The next day, I had a discussion with my former supervisor which strangely went much better than I expected. Now, all that remains for me is waiting for my last day. Waiting can be quite painful, however. I had to keep showing up at the office due to in-person meetings. Then, for the rest of the day, I indulged myself in melancholy from my work desk, listening to anime soundtracks and reading about personality disorders. It's funny, I read about Schizoid Personality Disorder and found that I can relate to most of the symptoms. Should I get help?

Besides that, I was also getting irritated by the pre-employment background check which has not been finished in more than 2 weeks. Last week, the third-party performing this check requested that I contact my graduate school in the US to fill out some forms. I ended up sending emails, making international phone calls to the US, and wasting a lot of my phone money on this effort. And, in the end, it did not resolve my problems. Each school department I contacted referred me to yet another department. At one point, I realized I had come full circle and gave it up. I went on to list all the phone numbers and email addresses I contacted and sent the list to the third party. Good luck with that.

But if my external life seems stagnant (for now), my internal life was quite rich. Last Saturday, while waiting for my friends for a meet-up, I read Mono No Aware by Ken Liu. That was a rainy morning and I accidentally stepped on a puddle, soaking my socks completely. Unexpectedly, the combination of soaked socks and short stories sparked my interest in fiction writing again. I wanted to describe poetically how it felt to have to sit in an air-conditioned room with wet feet. Then my friends arrived. I enjoyed the first hour of our meet-up but ended up being exhausted for the rest of the time. I noticed that, at some point, I simply nodded to anything my friends said since all my energy had been drained by this social interaction. Maintaining actual relationships is exhausting.

Then, during the week, I also managed to finish Traumovelle by Schnitzler, followed by The Three Hermits and Father Sergius by Tolstoy. I immediately started A Woman's Life by de Maupassant. I kept wanting to read the Red Sorghum by Mo Yan, but for some reason, I kept forgetting it just as often. I also finished watching Anohana which, in my view, was overrated. The premise was compelling, but I found the anime to be overly melodramatic for my taste. Then the weekend began and I traveled further on my excursion into the anime world. I watched Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises and Whisper of the Heart. The latter was an especially serendipitous choice, as it affirmed my passion to pursue fiction writing. I actually tried writing short stories about two years ago, but I gave it up for a reason I no longer remember.

Today, I started writing again. I began with something I've wanted to do for a long time: writing a fan-fiction for Makoto Shinkai's The Garden of Words. I've only written a few paragraphs -- and they were rough and uninteresting -- but I liked the quietness that the writing process brought. I already know it. I'm going to feel so fulfilled once I finish this fan fiction.

Unfortunately, I still have to live in a largely-external world. Tomorrow I'm going to the office again. It's really quite sad and disappointing.

Best regards,

Bright Penguin

Things to be grateful for: (1) a new recipe for coffee: black coffee + condensed milk, (2) time to write fan fiction, and (3) all the great fiction I've read and watched this week.

Dear Diary,

My last day working for my current employer will arrive pretty soon. It was funny how the news of my resignation spread like a fire around the office. On Thursday and Friday, several people came to my desk and asked about it. I wonder who has been spreading this news. Despite this distraction, this week has been relatively productive. I delivered an important presentation on Monday and completed the rest of my tasks before Wednesday. I spent the rest of my time studying new topics. In fact, I was able to parallelize a particularly time-intensive task in a previous script I wrote. The script was not perfect yet and, I believe, the time improvement was not optimal. I'm going to spend next week finding more ways to improve the script's performance. I have to remember one thing: never forget to bring an earphone to the office. I could have avoided people talking to me if I had just worn an earphone on Thursday and Friday.

I've also regained my interest in fiction writing. I wrote on all six days for the past seven days, skipping only one day. So far, I've adapted the first fifteen minutes of Garden of Words. It astonished me how much detail went into an anime. I was feeling overwhelmed putting down all the details into my word processing software. After I put down most of the details, I realized it did not achieve the same effect as the anime. If anything, it made my writing sound boring and tedious. So I trimmed them down. But now, my writing felt bare. How does one strive for a balanced amount of details? I have to figure this out along the way. In any case, I read that consistency is key in writing; one still has to write even if feeling uninspired. I reward myself for being consistent, even though I am not proud of my work yet.

To that end, I've also browsed a few books about fiction writing and writing in general, then added each of them to my reading list. I soon noticed that my reading list has gone to an unmanageable size. If I read one book per day, I will only finish my reading list in 3-4 years. It's sad to realize that there are so many things to learn, but not enough time to learn even a small proportion of them. It's also probably impossible to fit all those information within a small space inside a human head.

I also had some time to think today. I woke up and wrote almost as soon as possible. I spent almost my entire morning writing and editing the fan fiction story. Then I ate leftover ramen from yesterday for lunch and, once lunch is over, the fun began. I went to a shopping mall with my mother and sister. I got a haircut at the exact same place I did last year in December. At that time, I went there alone since I'd just dropped my parents at the airport to visit my sister in Canada. I also did not yet have a job offer from my dream company at that time. What a difference a few months makes! I feel happier now but, for some strange reason, I feel nostalgic for the past as well. Though riddled with anxiety, that time in December was beautiful in its own way.

That's it from me today. I planned to continue reading A Woman's Life by de Maupassant but found it terribly boring. Should I pick up another book to read instead? I will decide later on. For now, I'm probably going to watch When Marnie Was There.

Best regards,

Bright (and Happy) Penguin

Things to be grateful for: (1) delicious ramen, ice cream, and baked potatoes I ate today, (2) time to write fiction, and (3) quality time with family.

Dear Diary,

This week has been enjoyable for me. I watched When Marnie Was There last week and this film set the tone for the first few days of this week. It deeply touched me. There's something about the story that resonates with me. I've always liked any narrative in which the protagonist managed to find peace and strength after moments of solitude. I ended up listening to the soundtrack of the film for a few days. It also inspired me to write my own fiction which has similar themes and moods. Maybe in the future, eh?

I also took a three-day leave spanning from yesterday to tomorrow. Even with that, I still have 20 days left on my PTO. Chances are I won't be able to take them all before my resignation, but that's fine. As more of my tasks were reassigned to my colleagues, I also had more time to myself even without taking leave. I managed to write a significant portion of Garden of Words into my fan-fiction project. Nearly two-thirds of the film has been written in my notes. Of course, the writing is still rough and coarse. There's still plenty of editing to do before I'm ready to share it with a few of my friends to get fresh feedback. I've also been spending my time deepening my technical expertise, by taking free online tutorials and reading articles.

More importantly, I've also found out about a cool knowledge management system called Zettelkasten. I started building it a few days ago. It was challenging to start this project due to the amount of information available on the internet. I had a feeling that I had to start the system perfectly even if I was starting it the first time, but decided to give it a go despite my little understanding. I've managed to learn more by doing it and I've actually started transcribing Grit by Angela Duckworth to my Zettelkasten. I re-read the book's first chapter and wrote the gist of it into a digital note card. This note card will be linked to other note cards containing other ideas, which may be from the same book or from any other book. The idea is, when I have more of these note cards, the Zettelkasten can somewhat turn into a second set of the brain, capable of connecting ideas from multiple sources. The system can serve as someone (or something, really) to bounce ideas with. By clicking on a link inside that note card, the user will be redirected to another note card containing related ideas. In short, it's like wikis for my own knowledge base. For such a complex-sounding system, fortunately, it can be implemented with free software. For now, I'm using Notion and Zotero to manage my Zettelkasten. Of course, a knowledge management system is not very useful without an expansive body of knowledge. So I've subscribed to quite a few newsletters recently, to expand the amount of reading I am exposed to. I'm now building a habit to use the first hour of every day to read.

To close our correspondence today, I'm going to tell you about my day yesterday. It was a day that I think deserves a special mention. Despite having received and signed an offer from my dream employer, I attended another interview yesterday. The thought was that I would be able to practice my interviewing skill. I spent two hours talking to the prospective managers and the HR staff. I ended up liking them and they seemed eager to work with me as well. I haven't heard about the interview results, but I feel confident I would receive an offer. I now feel guilty for taking the interview, but I guess things like this happen sometimes.

After the interview, I walked around the first and second floors of the office building and found a newly-opened branch of Subway. Upon noticing the store, happy moments from my graduate school flooded my memory. There weren't many Subway in my country yet. So I entered the store and purchased a tuna-and-egg sandwich, a dish I always had in graduate school. As I ate the sandwich, I thought about my past again. Over the past four years, lots of things have changed. I finished my graduate degree, gained professional experience in my home country, got to know a lot of people, received an offer from my dream company, and yet I also feel that my time in the US was precious. I still feel happy from reminiscing about graduate school. I miss that feeling and I hope, one day, I will be able to experience it again. If only, feelings can be bottled up, carried, and consumed wherever I need them.

Best regards,

Bright Penguin

Things I am grateful for: (1) New black shoes my father bought me last Saturday, (2) the opportunity to eat at Subway again, and (3) plenty of time for self-development and personal projects

Dear Diary,

I want to update you on a few things today. This week I had a tense dinner conversation with my father. We had some disagreements and, because it was my father, I did not feel that it was in my place to argue. It made me feel terrible and I thought about moving out sooner. It's painful to realize that the people who are (supposedly) close to you can inflict more emotional damage than strangers. I wouldn't care too much if I disagreed with a stranger, but I had expected my father to understand me a little better. I felt very sad afterward and re-watched When Marnie Was There. I cried a lot during the film. I think my colleagues would be surprised if they know that I cry too. I always look stoic, but I feel my emotion deeply. Of course, I don't show my emotion unless I feel secure (e.g., by myself). The next day I had dinner by myself to avoid seeing my father. I ended up enjoying the dinner better than I thought I would (though I always knew that dinner for one was something I like a lot). A side effect of eating alone was that I ate mindfully, which stopped me from over-eating. My weight decreased the next day

Fast forward to today, I went to the office -- after more than a week of working from home. I rode taxis there and back. On my way back, there was heavy rain which caused several taxi drivers to cancel on me. They didn't want to ride me home because my house is located in an area that becomes heavily congested during rain. Even without this misfortune, I didn't really want to go to the office, but there was some document I needed to pick up. As expected, the office was full of distractions. I tried to work on my own tasks to no avail. My colleagues kept coming to my desk and asking for help. I suppose that was the right time to ask -- rather than after my resignation on March 31 -- but still, I prefer to be left alone when I work. Unexpectedly, as my resignation day comes closer, I am starting to feel sad. It's true that I no longer like working here and my decision to resign was correct, but there are a few things I like about working here too. I click with some of my colleagues, there was a good restaurant downstairs which I like eating at, and various moods that I will no longer experience the moment I hand in my keycard to HR. This mood made me somewhat relish the experience of riding in a taxi for one hour back home under a heavy downpour. I am grateful for the taxi driver who did not cancel on me. I also thought about my family. We are going through a transition now whereby my sister is likely to move out to an apartment due to her distant workplace. I'm going to move out too in a few months, of course. I hope my parents will not miss me and my sister too much.

In any case, I managed to spend plenty of time on self-improvement this week. One, I almost finished my adaptation of Garden of Words. Only the epilogue remains, and I plan to write this tomorrow morning. When that is finished, I will revisit and edit it after a one-week break. Two, I finished my 10-month weight-lifting program last week without any absence! However, I feel that my progress has somewhat plateaued. I'm going to revise my workout plan this week or next week. Three, I told you about my zettelkasten; this project is also going well. Despite my lack of speed in reading and note-taking, I nearly finished transcribing half of Grit (by Angela Duckworth) into my zettelkasten. My lack of speed was a major hindrance though. I spent a lot of time reading and taking notes this week. I hope practice, indeed, makes perfect. Finally, I've also learned about RSS feeds this week. Essentially, it is a technology that tracks any new content on a website. I've been configuring a software called Feedly to track the RSS feed of several news websites. I ended up tracking too many websites and not being able to keep up with the number of articles I received. I will have to refine my selection of websites.

Yesterday, I finished watching Spy x Family. It was quite a fun show to watch but was not really to my taste. I like watching anime that are more serious. Speaking of which, I realize I've been watching anime since about six months ago -- almost completely uninterrupted by any live-action film. It seems that anime can deliver stories that would be difficult to deliver in any other medium. Anyway, I'm going to watch Chainsaw Man today. Ciao!

Best regards,

Bright Penguin

Things I am grateful for: (1) plenty of time for self-improvement, (2) my sister getting a job with a friendly work environment, and (3) the extremely spicy noodle soup I ate for lunch. So spicy!!!

Dear Diary,

Nothing much went on this week. I worked from home for an entire week and, thus, managed to carve out a lot of time for self-development. I finally finished setting up news feeds and had somewhat gotten into a habit of reading news regularly. I also completed my fan fiction of Garden of Words. After a few days' break, I re-read my work to prepare for the editing work to come. I also filed my tax return today, a few weeks before the deadline. I felt happy that I could now put such a boring task behind me. However, I caught a cold and sore throat a few days ago. So, right now, I'm feeling physically sick and lethargic too.

I also finished reading A Woman's Life by de Maupassant and watching Chainsaw Man this week. The first was boring and, at some point, I felt impatient to finish it. As soon as I finished it, I picked up Red Sorghum by Mo Yan, which seems far more interesting. On the other hand, Chainsaw Man was crazy good.

I watched the first nine episodes by Sunday last week. Even though there were three episodes left, I already felt a taste of post-anime depression the next day. Monday was tough as I tried resisting the temptation to watch the last three episodes. However, since there was an important task I had to do on Tuesday, I wanted to keep the last three episodes for Tuesday night. I wanted to avoid having post-anime depression during the task. After the long-awaited Tuesday night, I ended up rewatching a few episodes because I liked them so much. For some reason, the characters in Chainsaw Man really spoke to me and I felt attached to them. The way the story unfolded during the first season was memorable. If only I could erase my memory and watch Chainsaw Man for the first time again. I hope one day I can also create fiction that lingers after being consumed.

That's it from me this week. Going to watch another anime or continue reading Red Sorghum.

Best regards,

Bright Penguin

Things to be grateful for: (1) Chainsaw Man, 'nuff said; (2) Madeon's Good Faith album, especially the opening track Dream Dream Dream, and; (3) mashed potatoes, sausages, and eggs for lunch.

Dear Diary,

It's been a while since I wrote you. To be honest, the past three weeks haven't been eventful -- except for the most recent week. We'll get to that in a moment, after brief discussions of other less important updates that are still worth writing down.

I've picked up a habit that seems to save a lot of time: abandoning books and films I found uninteresting. You might have remembered that it took a lot of effort and time for me to finish A Woman's Life by Maupassant. Afterward, I felt that I wasted my time. At roughly the same time, I picked up another book to read and another anime series to watch. Unfortunately, both of them were quite boring so I dropped them. I picked up yet another anime and found it boring as well. Dropped yet again. I realized that I saved a lot of time by doing this. I am now reading Stephen King's Different Seasons and found it quite enjoyable. I could probably refine my fiction-writing style by reading authors I enjoyed and watching films I liked.

I also bought a steering wheel game controller to familiarize myself with car driving again. I know that as soon as I move out of my parents' house and start working in the new office, I will be driving a lot. It's now the time to build the reflex necessary for driving day in and day out. I actually found playing the driving simulator enjoyable now. I've been doing this for a few days in a row and it helped me relax before sleep.

This past week I did not get much sleep though. As I might have told you, today is my last day working at an office who had employed me for the last 3 years and 4 months. This is why the past five days have been quite eventful: farewell lunches, surprise gifts, unexpected rumination at mundane events, and so on. I spent so much money and ate a lot of food, but this deviation from my daily habits has led me to reconnect with a few colleagues and a past supervisor I admire. As if to compensate for the money I spent, I received a surprise gift from my current supervisor: a smartwatch that I have been eyeing for quite some time. I found it baffling that he could select a gift with such precision.

The past two days have been quite introspective as well. Yesterday I decided to spend the morning working from home. There was a meeting I had to join at ten and I participated remotely from home. When it finished, I wanted to quickly place my laptop into my backpack and drive to the office. Instead, something nagged me. I ended up taking out all my work equipment from my backpack and placing them on my desk. Then I snapped a few pictures of them. At the office, I had lunch at my favorite ramen shop and a vague feeling of grief lurked in my mind. A few hours before returning home, I felt the desire to visit a cafe I used to escape to when I found the office unbearable. I bought a bottle of tea and sat in the outdoor area. The weather conspired against me and sent a flurry of rain from the clouds. I was forced to move back inside and content myself with a partially-accurate reenactment. Today, the desire for nostalgia returned at lunchtime. I ate lunch alone in a convenience store, devouring two onigiris and one French toast gradually, weighted down by the wariness of impending grief.

As cheap as the food items were, I enjoyed them and felt it appropriate for the day. After all, today was my last day working at my current employer (which also happens to be tax day and my father's birthday). I worked as usual from the morning. At least, I tried to. But it was quite difficult to set aside the sense of finality in this chapter of my life. I was planning to return my laptop to the IT department after lunch, but I could not bring myself to do it. Instead, I waited for another one-and-a-half hour to finally hand it over. The laptop that has accompanied me for the last three years and four months, which has helped me perform calculations upon calculations for work, is not returning to my room. Instead, I probably will never see it again.

To close the day, my supervisor arranged a farewell dinner for me. We went to a neighboring shopping mall (from which I often bought food home for my parents on Friday evenings). I arrived at the mall sooner than the rest and sneaked in a few minutes patronizing a local Starbucks. Sipping a matcha latte in a crowded cafe, I was yet again trying to reenact my habit without success since I couldn't get my regular seat. Then dinner time came. I had a pleasant dinner with my tech teammates and felt that I bonded with them more deeply during that one hour than when I was working with them. It's funny how a sense of finality can soften my disposition. Having finished this dinner, we separated and I took a moment to walk around each floor of the mall. I walked as slowly as my emotion wanted me to, as briskly as my mind told me to. I took one last look at every restaurant I've patronized, saying goodbye silently in my heart. When I finally arrived home one hour later, the WhatsApp group of the tech team was filled with outpouring farewell messages for me. When I left the office for the shopping mall earlier today, a few people took pictures with me and some of those pictures resurfaced on the WhatsApp group. With a heavy heart, I sent one last message to the group and removed myself from it.

Best regards,

Bright Penguin

Things to be grateful for: (1) Pleasant last day working here, (2) Seven Lions' Stop Thinking -- this song accompanied me through the ups and downs of the past month or so, and (3) Hacker's Diet -- I always found dieting boring, but it seems that the data-driven approach of the book can make dieting exciting for me.

Dear Diary,

Between my last day at my last employer and today, which spanned roughly thirteen days, I learned a lot about myself. I'm not as effective as I thought I would be in using all this free time. I spent most of my early days playing Populous The Beginning all day long: replaying a few levels, attacking the NPC enemies using various strategies, and experimenting with different combinations of land-, sea-, and air-based troops in battles. As fascinating as it was, I grew bored with it after a while. This boredom was soon replaced with lethargy, which I have yet to get rid of. Just now, I committed myself to manage my time more systematically using the Kanban board and Pomodoro technique. You might ask, why do I bother about effectiveness after resigning? After all, shouldn't I be resting now? Sure, I definitely spend some of my time to rest. However, using all of them for resting seems to be a waste of a valuable and irrecoverable resource: time. Besides, I have set goals to accomplish during the next three months I'm expected to be between jobs.

Let's start with the fun part. Last week, I went to a salon with my mother. She wanted to dye her hair and, having nothing to do, I decided to get scalp, shoulder, back, and hand massages — all in one day! It made me realize how tense my muscles were because of the weightlifting I do every week. In the same week, my alma mater created an event in my town. They sent an admissions officer all the way from the US just for this event, and they invited me as an alumnus. Newly admitted students with their parents came to the event and asked me a lot of probing questions about the university. The venue, which was located in a restaurant inside a luxury hotel, was great. Overall, I think I did relatively well in striking a balance between honesty and salesmanship for my alma mater. Needless to say, my salesmanship comes from a genuine love for my alma mater, which has shaped the course of my career and my life. After the event, I walked to a nearby shopping mall and ate at a noodle shop. Not only did I get to taste the wonderful bowl of noodles, I also got to sample a flavor of freedom of dining by myself and going to a faraway place without my parents or sister. As soon as my new job starts in August, I will probably have to adapt to this flavor.

Besides having fun, I also managed to make progress on my three personal goals. First, I enrolled myself in a driving school to improve my driving skill. I've had two sessions in total: one yesterday, and one today. The sessions made me realize how much my driving skill has atrophied after a few years of not sitting in front of a steering wheel. It got to the point where I feel that I am a danger to other drivers and pedestrians. I anticipated this by buying a steering wheel game controller set and driving simulator. I have been playing this simulator for a week (with only a few absences). I hope I can regain my driving skill quickly.

Secondly, I must have told you about my personal knowledge management system, the lovely Zettelkasten I created in Notion. I am planning to make it more robust. To that end, I've read a few articles on philosophical logic, especially on the practice of deconstructing logical arguments. As I found out soon enough, deconstructing articles well is not sufficient. I need to be pretty fast at doing it too; otherwise, it will slow down my reading and decrease the number of articles I read. So I surveyed a few software to help me with this. Over the past few days, I've been experimenting with Argdown only to realize later on that it was not what I was looking for. I wasted a few days learning software I'm not going to use. Fortunately, there are a few other software that seem promising. I'm not going to fall into the same trap of learning software too deeply before comparing it to competitors.

Finally, and most importantly, I finished reading Hacker's Diet. However, I found the system to be restricting and inadequate at the same time. It is too restricting because it demanded eating the same meal pretty much every day, which is not maintainable over the long run. It is simultaneously inadequate because my goal is not only to lose fat but also to build muscle. Nevertheless, the book inspired me to be more data-driven in approaching my health goal. For the past week, I've been creating my own system for dieting. My goal is body recomposition, which, in layman's terms, means a two-fold objective of fat-burning and muscle-building. This requires tricky balancing between maintaining a calorie deficit and increasing protein intake. In short, I have to eat more protein somehow while decreasing the overall amount of food that I eat. To help me with this, I downloaded nutrition data from the US Department of Agriculture and saved it to my diet log. I now have calorie counts and protein content of over 13600 food items, which is handy to estimate my daily intake of calories and protein. The log is not completed yet since I still have to build a lookup function linking all the food that I eat each day with the calorie and protein contents of the food. To top it off, in the spirit of Hacker's Diet, I'm going to build a monitoring dashboard such that there will not be any runaway deviation from the target calorie and protein intake.

That was a long update, I suppose. I still want to write a little more, but my laptop is going to run out of power soon. So I'll have to be content with writing this much. I also want to tell you that, despite all the progress on my personal projects, my mood has taken a downturn recently. I feel empty during the day but, strangely, feel inspired and energized at night. Again, I'll blame it on loneliness and the persistent feeling that nobody truly understands me for who I am. I'll fix this one day. Now, time to read When Marnie Was There. It is such an intimate piece of fiction.

Best regards,

Bright Penguin

Things to be grateful for (1) Men I Trust's Untourable Album and When Marnie Was There novel; (2) Plenty of time for introspection and daydreaming, and (3) relatively quick progress on my diet log.

Dear Diary,

Nothing much has happened since I last wrote you. But there are a few things I want to write down, so that I have a way to remember the past few weeks.

As you know, I am still taking a break from work but will resume working in August. Over the past few weeks, I have started forming new habits and gaining new skills. One skill I have been focusing a lot on is driving. I have never felt comfortable driving a car. However, after a few weeks of taking driving course, I am gaining confidence. I still feel nervous in crowded or narrow streets, but I can see myself being able to drive in the near future. I've also started appreciating the freedom of being able to go anywhere by myself.

I've also been forming a more healthy eating habit. I've downloaded a calorie calculator app into my phone and have been using it for a few weeks. It's such a wonder! I've lost a few kilograms of weight in a week and the progress has been steady. In terms of physical activity, I also saw the importance of self-defense skills. To that end, I've downloaded a few books on Krav Maga and Jeet Kune Do. I plan to enroll myself in Krav Maga or Jeet Kune Do courses after I join my new workplace in August. I wonder, though, if I will have enough time to juggle work and learning self-defense. I hope so!

Today, heavy rain poured during lunch which brought pleasant cool air into the dining room. After the lunch, my sister found out that the second floor of the house was flooded with rainwater. It turned out that the sewer pipe on the balcony of my sister's room was sealed. The rainwater gathered on the balcony, leaking through under the door, spreading from my sister's room all the way to the common area of the second floor. I ended up spending a few hours sweeping and mopping the second floor. Yesterday was more pleasant. I met up with friends from old workplace and we ate at a Japanese bento restaurant. After that, we hung out at Starbucks and talked for a few hours. I was glad to meet them but, for some reason, I became exhausted after meeting people for a long time. Recently, I also jumped into the bandwagon of generative AI by using ChatGPT to help me make decisions. So far, ChatGPT has been really good at recommending books, music, and films.

On the downside, my mood has been quite cyclical lately. On some days, my melancholy would return and I would have so little energy to work on my personal projects. In fact, because of this, I entirely stopped writing fiction. Ideas would still come during shower or when I sit idly on the balcony, but I typically did not have the energy to type them. As the sun sets, my mood would get better. When the night falls and when I get to be alone, I would be reenergized and feel ready to tackle my personal projects. What is it about nighttime that feels so magical and liberating?

Best regards,

Bright Penguin

Things to be grateful for (1) time to be nostalgic about my childhood by watching Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance gameplay on YouTube, (2) new pre-workout drink recipe called Yuan Yang, and (3) Age of Empires II HD Edition I just bought.

Dear Diary,

Long time no see! It has been a month since I last wrote to you. Apologies for that. But, to be honest, there were not many interesting things happening recently. That was partially why I haven't been writing to you. But let me just talk briefly about the past one month. Then I'm going to close this diary entry with my reflection for today.

I've been reading a few books over the past one month. One of them is Atomic Habits. I feel inspired by it and, in fact, I managed to build a few good habits because of it. Just in one month, I was able to: feel comfortable driving a car, write short stories consistently for a week, take notes while reading books and cataloging them in Notion, as well as weighting my food before eating and noting them down in my phone. My diet is better now, and I feel more creative and independent these days. I still struggle waking up early though. I guess, it's a constant struggle. I'm going to give my best tomorrow. Another book I read was New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I managed to get a few ideas from reading the book and yesterday I finished revising my workout plan. I can't wait to start working out again tomorrow after a two-weeks break. As a small note, a YouTube video of slow+reverb version of a song I liked was deleted about two weeks ago. Strangely, I felt sad about this.

Today, as is usual for Sunday, I went to church with my family. We went to the evening service and arrived about 15 minutes before it started. Behind me sat a lady who kept coughing during the service. I could feel her breath on the back of my neck whenever she coughed. To compound the problem, she also brought her small son who kept playing with a water bottle. At one point, he rubbed the water bottle at my back and at my upper arm. I turned my neck slightly to express my displeasure, but nothing changed.

After the service was over, my family and I went to a shopping mall to have dinner. There was a festival there which has been going on for a few weeks I suppose. Today, there was some band competition whereas about two weeks ago there was a cosplay event. After ordering my food and going to the restroom, I lingered a little bit near the festival. I observed some of the participants in the festival and, for some reason, I felt warm inside. They were hanging out with their friends over food and drinks. As much as I like independence, it seems that belonging to a community is key to happiness.

In August, I will be moving out of my parents' house. Unexpectedly, I feel sad now. I'm going to leave the room I've been living at since I was a third-grader in elementary school. It feels like a transition from which I could never return. I'm going to survey two apartments tomorrow as well as another two the day after. I feel confident that one of them is going to be a good match. One of these days, I have to take pictures of my room. In a way, I can bottle up my memories this way.

Best regards,

Bright Penguin

I am grateful for (1) being able to build a few good habits for the past one month, (2) great fictional works I've consumed recently, and (3) the people around me.