log-of-my-life

[log-of-my-life]

2019-08-09

I need to write. Even if/when I don’t want to.

I attended the concert of Rammstein, and I want to describe it, because in three years I won’t remember anything.

We decided to go there by bus which arrived just before the concert (according to the information on the tickets). We understood that the concert wouldn’t start as per that information, they always start it later. So, the risk of being late because of some issues on the border was kind of acceptable.

I could go there beforehand. Andrei couldn’t. I finally decided that I don’t want to waste even more money and time on this trip. So, I’m now going back to Minsk with him, although I could stay for more days or move to some other places.

We gave our bags to cloak-room and ordered a taxi. It was about 8 pm when we arrived -- half an hour after the time on the tickets. There were a lot of people going there calmly, like there was plenty of time yet. When we got in, we tried to get closer to stage, but quiet soon we came to the place when it was too tight. We could go further, in theory, as there were a lot of people going back and forward, but Andrei was afraid because he got problems with his teeth and he couldn’t afford getting an accidental hit to his face. I didn’t like the fact that I almost couldn’t see the stage (although it was quite good yet that I could see it at all, shorter people near me and people slightly behind us could not see it at all. And there were a lot of people behind). So, I was trying to convince Andrei to go forward, but we stayed. Until the beginning of the show. Then we noticed that people around us stay still, don’t jump, just record videos on their phones. I stayed for 3 songs and then went forward with just another guys who tried to passed us, leaving Andrei. Some guys I passed through said me that I’m a bad man and I should have thought earlier. I felt bad but went forward. Finally, I stopped in a place where I could see the stage (at least), but people were passive there too.

The coolest show was with the “Puppe” song. There was a camera on Till’s face which was streaming to the main screen, and then there was a creepy child in a lullaby. Really creepy.

There were more than 100k people, as we estimated. Tickets costed 80 euros, so they earned over 8m euros, plus some more on selling drinks. Water (0.5l) costed 2 euro!! We decided that it’s way too much.

Then we found the closest petrol station, bought water and fruits. Ate bananas and oranges. Then went back to the coach terminal, thinking that we can find some cafes there. Andrei wanted to eat, I wanted to the toilet. We went about 5 km, and finally I just felt pain in my stomach -- fortunately, I managed to find the WC just in time.

Back to the morning of the concert day, we stopped in Biahoml, Sharkaushchyna, Hlybokaje, Dokshycy (?) and Braslau, and in 4 of them I bought some shitty food in addition to the bananas and apricots that I took with me. I messed up again, although I could stay without food, I really could. Well, at least I could stop after the first portion of snacks. But I bought 4.

At the concert, while shouting “you’ve got a pussy” I understood that it’s a good moment to finish my previous, bad life. I then bought some vegan food in the cafe, but in Vilnius I ate only fruit... and some fried peanuts, yeah. But in general, it’s time to become better, really. I need to do it.

We met Lera and Siarhei in the pizzeria, talked and played cards. I failed to take some french fries, because they ran out of potatoes. Was it a sign?

Just before the bus we bought some blueberries and lettuce. I felt okay, although my brain worked badly, of course. Then we sat to our bus (which was a little bit late) and I found out that I can’t lean back because my char is broken. So, it was a tough 4-hour ride for me. Still, I slept for a couple of hours.

We arrived about 12 pm and went to the hostel, which was right near the terminal. It was 2 hours earlier than the check-in time, but we decided to go and ask if we can check-in or at least leave our baggage. I didn’t like the hostel, except for its location, but it’s written in my review at booking.com. We slept for 4+ hours, then had a walk, bought some more fruit (Andrei bought some shit), came back about 10 pm, then I did some useful things including Spanish lessons. Told Andrei about podcasts (he had just bought iPhone SE), he liked the idea.

Then we slept for about 6 hours at night, woke up 45 minutes before the train, left hostel 20 minutes before the train because I was slow, but came to the train 10 minutes before departure. In the train, I got another Spanish lesson and started writing a letter to Ana.

At home I slept for 3 more hours, started a MongoDB course, wrote a utility for creating desktop icons for apps in Ubuntu-based distros, pushed it to Github, had a talk with Anton. Told Masha about Egypt, she was thankful. Mom asked me to come, them got sad and finished the call with “well, I won’t disturb you, you’ll call when you want”... which is just what was necessary, I suppose. I need to take my life in order before contacting them again.

Oh, also I helped Luthien to setup Xubuntu. There was a problem: BIOS refused to recognize her bootable USB, we decided that she’ll buy an optical disk tomorrow. And I made some cleaning at home.

Tomorrow I want to review my to-do lists and build a stronger routine. Start managing money (counting them first), closing the browser tabs, documenting what I need to do/write in the morning and in the evening... maybe automate some of this stuff.

[log-of-my-life]

2019-08-05 Evening

I didn’t write here, so I’ll write it again.

It’s mostly okay to be alone, EXCEPT for some rare moments of feeling low. In these moments I would really like to have a person near me... or, let’s say, THE person. The person I’d just be incredibly happy to have in my life, who could just hug me and everything would be alright. Because I know it’s just emotions, they’ll fade away (unless there’s a serious unsolved problem... although they sometimes fade away even in this case). I just need to hold on for some time.

I say about a person, but it’s just another possible realization of the abstraction I’d like to write about, which is the following: there are two ways of solving the problem: escaping and actually solving. And it seems that I need to balance between those ways. There are some problems which are just too hard, almost impossible to solve. Escaping them are usually the best option. There are also different issues which are better to be solved, because escaping them forever is just way more costly.

So, if I have such an unbelievable person to hug me, it lets me escape the problem of feeling low by giving myself something good. I also must mention that if this person feels low too, for example, or if this person is imperfect and it shows up then it would only get worse.

One more thing I’d like to write about is my relationship with parents. It turns out to have more negative influence on me then positive. It seems that they wanted to give me material goods too much, but forgot about psychological ones. Or maybe not forgot but rather didn’t know. They tried to give me some qualities they thought are important... But 1) didn’t do anything about other important ones and 2) failed to do what they wanted to do.

Well, they didn’t do an awful job, though. It was quite good as for people who didn’t ever read book on pedagogy. In the end, I’m really grateful (maybe not only to them but for everything and everybody that happened to be in my life) for what I am. But, well there are problems now. A lot.

I used to just leave the people I have difficulties in relationship with. If there’s a conflict and none of us is ready for a compromise (and I rarely am, there are a lot of new things I don’t want to compromise), we just stop communicating. That’s why I have almost no friends now. And, again, it’s quite okay, until I’m feeling low and am in need of support. It’s not okay that there are some people who I cannot just leave. Parents. They don’t understand me, they still don’t understand that I’m smart, we have a lot of conflicts, and I would absolutely avoid such friends.

Just for the history: it escalated quickly. I needed to go to them to take the bus tickets (I go to Riga tomorrow), I came quite late, near 9 pm, I took them, I was tired (I was on a bike) and also a little bit worried because of a great ethics article that changed my mind, and I said like “гэта будзе першая падзея ў маім жыцці, праз якую кошты на жытло ўзняліся на парадак”, I’m not sure about the perfection of this citation, they didn’t understand anything, I repeated twice, they still didn’t understand, mom said that I didn’t say it correctly, I felt low about the way how we can’t understand each other, I said like “each and every time I come here end up with a disappointment”, then dad said like “what a disrespect to the parents, couldn’t you just say it in Russian, and I got mad because of it, mom said I’m nervous, I left. Dad called me when I arrived home (it took about 35-40 minutes, I guess), he was calm, asked me about the lost keys, I answered quietly, no words about the conflicts itself, we’ll just pretend that it didn’t happen, again. That’s the only thing we can do with our conflicts. We can’t solve the problem, and it’s our best when it comes to escaping. They’ll repeat. Apparently.

So, what should I do? I can reduce the time with them. Slowly. I also can become calmer and more mindful in order to always be, well, calm. It’s just difficult, and I still sometimes feel some strong emotions that drive me out of balance. I suppose, I need to work on reducing the quantity of those big emotions.

Anyway, this day feels like it’s wasted, although it’s not. Let’s get to the formal part.

Done:

- eco-bags taken;

- high-speed unlimited Internet connected;

- bus tickets taken;

- ethics learned;

- meditation marathon progressed seriously;

- Spanish learned (without grammar);

- why-page for meditation written;

- blogging course progressed a bit.

Issues:

- not enough food for the road (it seems that I’ll eat shit or starve);

- apartment requires a big clean-up;

- I forget to use Toggl;

- I had a conflict with parents;

- the ethics article was too strong;

- I drank Sprite;

- I’m writing this after 11 pm, and I’ll need to get up early tomorrow;

- I’ll need to fix the walking/bike problem at my to do lists;

- I’ll need to reduce the amount of writing in life-logs so that it could be done really fast;

- I’m way too tired for writing a to do list for tomorrow. But I have to.

[log-of-my-life]

2019-08-05 afternoon

It’s gone a little bit wrong from the very beginning.

At the very beginning, it was cold when I woke up. And I felt low. I went to the shower, then made some gymnastics, then performed some cleaning, then I should have meditated but decided to work with “Pereposhivka” first, I mean to work deeply. It took a couple of hours, then I decided to go for my eco-bags, then there was an issue with my bike so I rode to fix it, then the guy came to set up the internet in my house (yeeeah), then it took another two hours or so to finish the second meditation day. It was about death. Then I went to have some sleep, and it was cold again when I woke up. It’s still cold.

Then I opened my to do lists for the first time. The first half of the day was not wasted, but it feels so. Anyway, I’ll try to do my best from now on.

Sleep: 23:03 - 7:22

Overall 8:19 Deep 1:29 Light 6:50

it’s cold

[log-of-my-life]

2019-08-04 evening

A great day.

I’ll need to update this tomorrow, because I’m about to shut down my computer, and some of the to do list.

Done:

- a why-page for writing to-do lists (6 minutes);

- turning off the phone notifications;

- push-ups (16);

- 1 lesson of “Learn Spring” course (1 hour);

- lesson 1 of the blogging course (1 hour);

- a programming lesson for Victor (1 hour).

Troubles:

- I need to use a phone after 9 pm. Need to fix the point about it;

- apartment needs general cleaning;

- no drinking water at home, so I needed to eat some watermelon after the evening race;

- failed to get to the bed before 10:30 pm

Food balance: 379/2540

Well, that’s okay after that shit.

Money expenses:

- Food 22.90

- Transportation 0.96

==23.86==

[log-of-my-life]

2019-08-04 afternoon

It was OK so far. I had a great sleep, exercised, meditated, (almost) cleaned an email inbox, taught Victor some programming stuff. I also started a Duolingo lesson. Now I’m on my way back to Minsk, I plan to go for some food by arrival.

By the way, I didn’t eat today, and I don’t want to. It’s not strange after last 5 days, but my mother didn’t know about it (and don’t know still), so she was nervous about it (just as usual). It was another example of lying as a bad thing. Although I didn’t lie explicitly, my silence about this shit is a lie as well. Kind of. Anyway, I’m going to get rid of it.

[log-of-my-life]

2019-08-04 Morning

I’m going to write more about the last days, but for now I just want to track my sleep of this night (which was exceptional):

23:36 - 9:13

Overall 9:37 Deep 4:07 Light 5:30

[log-of-my-life]

2019-08-02

Speed dating went well. Above expectations. 12 ladies, 4 matches, 1 candidate for the significant other slot, 1 guy from Leicester with roots from Malawi, several book suggestions.

I also ate in KYC and start feeling fat again. It’s really curious how heavy I am now.

I had a great idea at night (while nearly sleeping), which actually was the answer to the question I mentioned in the letter to Ana in May (I suppose), “what determines a person?”

I think, people are different when they have different goals. I mean, in one body. Changed goals, changed personality.

And one more, about “consciousness” aka свядомасць. Свядомы man is somebody who knows his goals. If a person doesn’t have any, then he is kind of not a person at all.

Goals. The key to start a conscious life.

Today I took my passport from the Visa Center (I have a visa for a year!) and ate a lot for a lunch. Without meat this time, but with some cheese. Leaving this shit will be a challenge for me.

And I’m in just for four days. Well, this turned to be a challenge after the first one.

Today I stole 4 modules from the Baeldung Spring course and started thinking that I probably won’t ask for money-back. It would be really unfair, I’d feel guilty. I’d better pay $300 for it. The only option for me is to actually study it rapidly and figure out that it’s really imperfect and I want my money back. We’ll see.

Tolik seems to really value me. If I stop being lazy at work (and in general), I can become a senior really soon.

Tomorrow is Losha’s birthday party. He’s 2 years old, but still, it seems that I’ll need to attend it. Maybe I’ll even stay. The food problem is the only real problem for me. I thought, maybe Alika could help me to hold on until the Riga trip. Just a couple of days to return on my way. We’ll see.

[log-of-my-life]

2019-08-01

Something interesting happened. Something that looks like a great object of research later.

My mood was okay, I was going to “Centralny” to put my cash to a credit card. Suddenly I saw McDonald’s, and in the next moment I spent over 30 roubles on food and ate all of it. I didn’t really need it. The reason I found for myself to do it was that I was going to start a new life anyway, and while it was not started yet, I could take a chance to make an experiment and see how my body reacts on this food (would it find it tasty etc.)

Unlike Doner King’s food, it WAS tasty. They are the kings of industry for a reason. I was reading Spurlok’s book while eating in McDonald’s, which was quite extraordinary. And I liked to do something just because it’s extraordinary.

It was a great example of how wrong I understand what human essentially is. It’s just crazy that a human (and not some human - me!) who is a vegan and in a good mood may do something like this - something totally irrational.

Then I came home and tried the “ashaming” technique used by me more than two and a half years ago, after my second break-up. I was trying to feel something that I don’t usually feel in my life, which is hate and blame. Hating myself-in-the-past and blaming him for all the failures in my life. It was difficult at first, but then I took a pen and a notebook and wrote a letter to myself, so that in the end I actually felt ashamed for my past, felt like I was a complete piece of shit (although understanding, in parallel, that a lot of sentences in the letter were just wrong. It didn’t really matter because it did the trick. I really felt it. Felt that I messed up everything, and I need to fix a lot of things in order to respect myself again.

The important idea behind all of this: negative emotions are important sometimes. First of all, it’s the feeling of disgust. As long as there’s something good and bad, you should find some really bad things disgusting. It can work as a shield and as a motivation.

I need to work now, because I only have 4 hours remaining, and at 7 p.m. I’ll go to the “Speed Dating” event. We’ll see how it goes.

[log-of-my-life]

2019-07-31 Evening

Today I forgot money AND scales at home, so I decided to return to home for a lunch. I need to create the “before you go” checklist and start using it.

Coming home for a lunch looks like a good practice because it allows to sleep in the middle of the day. I really can use it, being at work from 8 to 12 and from 14 to 18 (for example). Espessially if I buy a bike (oh, which is what I want to do today!) I need to go.

I’m also done with my Internet traffic, so today I’ll have an offline evening. See you tomorrow!

[log-of-my-life]

2019-07-31 Morning

I woke up early somehow

I ate some melon and watermelon because I wanted water but did not have any

Melon is not tasty, watermelon is even worse

I finished creating the global to do list, I plan to start everything on Sunday (again), the fact that the next week will be very stressful and different does not stop me, my system seems to be stable enough to survive through it.

[log-of-my-life]

2019-07-30

This is the day when I’m a piece of shit. It couldn’t go worse. So, from today I can only be better.

I’m starting this blog in order NOT to inspire anyone, NOT to gain some popularity, it’s only for myself - although I leave it open for the strangers. If you’re the one - well, I hope you can find something inspiring here still. But you’d better go live your life.

There’s also a probability that I can give a link to this blog to some people who really want to know me fully, the people I can be proud to call my friends.

Today I understood that I’m not a Superman. Today is not the first day to understand this. But I seem to have this lousy feature of forgetting, like all the people. Unfortunately.

I’m weak. Stronger than before, stronger than some other people, but still weak. I can fall into the temptation. I can fall into it even when I think I’ve already won it. I can bury everything in one bad day.

It’s easy to be strong when you’re the king surrounded by the slaves, when everything’s easy. But your real strength is shown when you have dark times.

Human beings are weak, my friend. You’re weak, whoever is reading it. And I don’t care about you, artificial intelligence, although you are weak too, just in a little different way.

Remember, you are weak. Hence, be careful. The danger is always near.

* * *

You need to have a strong understanding of what is good and bad. In every moment when you’re lost, you need to have a plan, so that you could follow this plan instead of not knowing what to do and ending up doing disagreeable things. So, the homework for today is having such a plan. Or at least something that can become the plan in nearest future.