1. First impressions
I did not feel like smiling when I saw my mother.
Today, I cried in my mother’s arms, begging for forgiveness.
I moved to a big new city two weeks ago because university starts in a month, and I’ve been living alone. Every once in a while, my sister came to visit me. I didn’t do much; I only recorded a video here and there. I also went on a few walks but stopped because I found my area ugly.
When my friend asked how I felt, I replied, “I don’t know.” I only knew that I had become very apathetic towards life.
At least I started doing my hundred daily pushups, fixed my diet and repaired my sleep cycle to match the sun. I also visited my university, located in a shopping center, one hour by tram. I also rode the train twice. The first time, I rode to the city center, which took precisely ten minutes, and the second time to another smaller city, which also took precisely ten minutes.
Now, you may be wondering why I got in trouble with my mother. Well, I didn’t really leave my room and didn’t clean the rest of the apartment. Yet, there’s another reason: I have no desire to follow my parent’s vision of life. I’m also tired that everything is done for me, so much so that I literally couldn’t wait to be thrown out of the house. What do I even exist for if everything is taken care of? I’m tired of paradise.
Taking a break indeed helped, and now everything is alright again.
2. A failure no one would see
I spent the summer rewriting my blog to gain clarity on what my second business would be about. I knew I wanted to try the community and coaching business. It didn’t take a genius to identify that the e-learning industry is exploding. Furthermore, I was experienced in this realm. I have written many texts, created videos, and coached two people. I also figured that knowing how to coach people would be essential if I were to be an entrepreneur.
But I didn’t know what I could coach on. So, I dedicated two months to rewriting my texts, and I got my vision. I would create self-improving videos for ambitious, highly gifted 16 to 18-year-olds. So, I created videos dedicated to exactly that. I define ambition as wanting more out of life than a hobby, an ugly girl boss wife, and a half-fulfilling job.
I had been creating self-improvement videos for over one and a half years, with a three-month break in the summer while I focused on my blog. After I finished rewriting my blog, I executed my new vision. I created fourteen videos in three weeks. I missed seven days because I was sick and moved to this new city.
But now, after creating a total of 126 self-improvement videos, I realize that video isn’t the right format for me. I had to discipline myself to create videos every time. Even as I started getting better, I still had to force myself, and I didn’t see much fulfillment. I will no longer try to swim against the current.
I never had to force myself to program, and neither did I ever have to force myself to write. I guess programming and writing are very alike. I worked nine hundred days on my first business, which was mental math apps. I worked at the airport, on the beach, and during the lessons at school because I liked it. But unfortunately, I don’t enjoy creating videos. Even though I don’t believe in psychology, I think I am less talkative than I like to believe.
Furthermore, while alone and bored in this new apartment, I realized that I actually didn’t care about the mission. Even worse, I grew to dislike my mission because it trapped me in the past. Additionally, I consistently struggled to express my true self on camera – which is strange, considering my written word.
I have my camera, microphone, and notebook within reach, and I have nothing to do. Yet I don’t bother creating videos. The only thing I now care about is getting a hot blonde – my metaphor for anything desirable in life and in this context symbolic for love.
So, I will take a long break from videos. To secure peace of mind, I put every existing video offline. For I can write, I plan to return with audio. I can read my texts out loud until I have a perfect take and use my adventures in the woods as background footage.
But I will still have to learn how to coach and sell. Fortunately, I have solutions for that. But I don’t like to talk about things I have not done.
3. Another cute little failure
I don’t know whether I should call deleting fourteen videos the death of my second business. Maybe I should, considering 126 self-improvement videos is quite a bit of work. I’ve had many failures, both small and big. I would argue, this is a bigger one, because I had my identity attached to it.
One of my ideals is speed. Just as most books don’t teach and most ideas prove useless, so too do most projects fail. If they do, at least they should do so quickly.
I wanted to share a smaller failure.
Last week, I downloaded a dating app. Because I was so bored, I thought I’d pause my core values, for I always saw dating apps as cowardly. I dedicated two hours and perhaps went through five hundred profiles. Out of these five hundred profiles, I accepted five. Then, I ran out of profiles from my area, so I stopped online dating.
After seeing around five hundred girls, I was heavily disappointed in humanity. How can someone live almost two decades and have watching shows and shopping as their hobby? How does “social smoking” even exist, and why do half the profiles have that? How can someone be an eighteen-year-old woman and want a causal relationship? How are these people real? Why is everyone a loser?
Some people should sit down in the middle of the night and rethink their existence from the moment of their inception. Something, perhaps, went wrong somewhere.
I guess all people have their place in life. Some care about casual sex, while I care about becoming the best and most capable version of myself.
Crazy world we live in.
4. How I prepare for university
As you can see, I failed at online dating. But I cannot give up, I cannot fatigue; for my resilience knows no bounds. Uncompromising excellence is a true testament to the indomitability of my spirit.
University will start in a few weeks, and I will face a few challenges.
- While most freshmen are 18 or 19, I'm just 17 because I finished 12th grade at 16 years old to have more time to become a monumental person. That means I have a disadvantage when it comes to attraction. Simultaneously, I have monumental standards.
- One way to be more attractive is to gain status, which comes from taking the initiative. For example, status can be gained by organizing meetups. That’s a problem because how should I take the initiative if I don’t care about university?
- I can’t brag about the person I’ve become; at the same time, people should get a taste of who I am. Yet, I also don’t want to set too high expectations. There’s a good chance I’ll suck at being an engineer because that’s essentially the reason I got into business.
How do I overcome these dichotomies?
Well, I organized a meeting in the group chat.
And… By doing pushups.
At 15 years old, I was on my second year of self-improvement and wanted to stop looking like a geek. I was tired of my incapable body—I couldn’t even do five pushups.
Using the mental fortitude I built over two years of grind, I started doing 150 pushups and 50 pullups daily. Whenever I ran into an issue while programming, I would get up and do pushups or run outside to do pullups. At some point, I could easily do fifty pushups in a row. I did pushups everywhere: in school, in the airport, and in the woods.
Pushups dominated my philosophy. I used pushups to break free from my internet addiction. Until today, I prescribe pushups to anyone seeking confidence, fitness, therapy, and mindfulness. Pushups are pure. You do them, or you don’t. Pushups are the difference between a man and a child.
Because I moved, I quit the gym. Now, I will revert to my old wisdom.
I believe that pushups change your aura. People can feel who you are. The summer of 2023 was pretty extreme. I was burnt out and heartbroken so severely that I decided to push harder on discipline than I ever had. For three months straight, I let go of sweets, warm water, sleeping in, and even music. I got up at five every day and continued to work on my apps. I also had my blog, my apps, my videos and two short internships in parallel. Despite me not telling anyone anything, people could feel my energy. For example, as the 12th began, a girl suddenly kept coming to my desk. Retrospectively, I think she wanted something from me. The opposite was also true. When I got weak, no one cared about me.
5. Final words
When I cried in my mother’s arms, begging for forgiveness, she offered me to go home with her. I said no. “I must go my own way.”
I made peace with my mother before it was too late.I returned to the path of self-improvement. I still have a bit of time to rest, explore and live. Now everything should fall into places.
Therefore, it’s time to be great.