Write Every Day

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22 entries · Apr 2026–Jun 2026

4.7.2026 - Pilot

Ok so basically I’m gonna try to start something where I write everyday. Here is the catch: only 5 minutes. Timer is there to make me think fast and also not make this too daunting, so I can easily do it everyday. I can increase this limit after a week or two if I am going strong.

The motivation for this is that I have realized I blundered pretty bad lately. I chose to view screen addiction as an addiction. There are a LOT of bad things this led to for me: basically I was thinking about it way more than normal, which led to me having a ton of decision fatigue and staying up late and doing things I really ought not do. Long story short: BIG MISTAKE.

Now, I am here to do what science says is the answer: be additive! It makes sense rationally: focus on removal and there is nothing left, you go crazy. Focus on addition, and you have so much that the bad stuff just doesn’t have time in the spotlight at all. I think I’ve known this to be true for some time, but it never seemed to work for me. I think because my goals were too extreme, or I changed them too quickly, or really any number of reasons. All in all, I’m gonna take it at a far more reasonable pace, un-fuck my brain slowly, and try to make a healthier relationship with screentime.

Thinking I want to post this stuff on Substack, too, maybe it will be able to help others…

4.9.2026 - Oops missed a day

Another 5 minutes, here we go: first, just wanted to note I totally forgot to do this yesterday and ended up staying up late for no reason, so my evidence is clear! Write = healthy, no write = unhealthy! I shall keep writing. I have a feeling these will be a bit scatterbrained for a while, as I’m still getting into the whole writing thing like this, and I have a lot of things that I want to talk about.

First, I want to talk through my approach so far, and how I plan on keeping things working well witohut any screen time limitations. I now view these limits as potentially useful barriers for limiting screentime, but it was never gonna work for me. It was felt more like a mental shackle lately. So now, intead of this, I have removed all the blocks! And instead, I will practice something called Acceptance and Committing Therapy, or ACT for short. The basic concept is that whenever I feel an urge to scroll social media, or play games, or whatever, I will let the feeling wash over me, and very explicitly tell myself, “I feel this feeling, and I need not do anything about it. I will be ok after it fades.” Honestly super useful so far, at least there is some placebo that I feel I want to work harder and on cool stuff, but this all takes time, so I’m doing my best, one day at a time!

4.10.2026 - practicing ACT

Another day, another 5 minute writing sesh. Honestly although I know this takes time and does not work perfectly immediately, it is hard to deal with concerning results, like scrolling more or playing games with no control / blockers in place. And, of course, I cannot believe that there will be some divine enlightenment where I just become the goat. It takes effort, which means doing other interesting stuff in place of the old!

So, what stuff is interesting to me right now, and how can it fill the gaps? For me, there are a few things that are focuses (outside of schoolwork ofc). First and foremost, although it is not super interesting, it is figuring out a plan for at the minimum the next 3 months. A job, an internship, research, whatever it may be. Worst case, I graduate and go home to chill w family and grind open source. Some things looking promising right now, we shall see where they go!

The other real interesting things to me are RL and MLSys, which are related but not super related. One thing I think I need to remember to make meaningful progress is that I should not start random slop full stack projects, but instead should focus on 1-2 projects, preferrably just 1, and make something really awesome, even if it is not inspiring all the time. The power laws on this do not lie.

Also, I have been trying to practice the ACT framework more. Whenever I go on social media, (honestly have pretty bad at this so far but) I will breathe in, say “I feel the urge to scroll rn, but I will let it wash over me like a light rainfall and then it will go away and I will be better for it.” Lowkey I feel like I gotta practice this like 3x10 a day on purpose or something, it’s really easy to forget in the moment (operant conditioning ftw).

4.12.2026 - correlation upheld

Magically, I forgot to write again yesterday and magically I stayed up really late doing random bullshit. I’m seeing a pattern here…. Writing cures this mental disease. I’ve actively thinking about ACT is quite helpful, and I expect it will continue to become more powerful with practice. It’s really like the image training in Dragon Ball - I can imagine myself going onto whatever I feel the pang for, X, Youtube, etc. hype my brain up as much as I can, and just let the feeling fade away with no action. I can bascially just hit this for reps, no need to wait for real urges, really big gain for me.

Another thing is that there are times when ACT just goes out the window because I’m too tired to even think of it, but not tired enough to click on an app. Thus, I propose a potentially radicalized change: moving my extension cord (along with all chargers) out to a corner in the living room. Additionally, just leaving my bag out there, and not pretending that I will be productive by trying to work at my standing desk when I can basically fall backwards onto my comfy bed. The thing with all of this is that I can’t just say it, I have to actually DO it. I’ve had this happen quite a few times in the past, actually, where I tell myself I will do something (ex. wake up at 6 am, start running regularly, cut to 195, the list could go on and on). I have to actually EXECUTE and put together a real plan of action where I am incentivized to follow it, whatever the means may be.

That is where I must get creative, because how can I incentivize myself to do this annoying thing of moving my chargers and leaving my computer outside my room? Existential ideals can’t really apply here, because even though there would be a higher likelihood of working more, potentially getting deeper into MLSys or getting school done quicker, these are not something the brain will go to when trying to rationalize this huge chunk of dopamine I’m leaving behind. I’m thinking right now that I could start a book or something, read something interesting and start firing dopamine while doing this instead. This will still be hard at first, and may fail, but for now it is something I want to like and do more, so we shall see where I get with it.

This has been far longer than 5 minutes, I’ll be back tomorrow!

4.15.2026 - correlation upheld pt 2

Surprise surprise, I miss writings (even if for a decent reason) and I find out the harsh truth that rigorous upkeep of my practice, my discipline is necessary to push past my limits and accomplish incredible things. I worked with an awesome team the last couple days and I can see what it takes to move mountains. It showed me how much of a slacking bitch I have been at school. Nowhere in my mind have I been able to work as long as I did there. Because the honest truth is that I AM smart and capable, I really just don’t apply myself as rigorously as I could. I absolutely have the capacity to learn thunderkittens, to read papers, to get all my work done in a timely manner, but I have not. It is uncomfortable to think about, but I am confident that I can improve this standing with some changes. For real this time, when I go home I move my extension cord and all chargers to the living room. No more tech @ home, practice ACT more and more. I will do a couple reps rn after finishing writing this to build it up. See ya tomorrow.

4.16.2026 - conquest

I privated these writings because they are kinda personal and getting more soapbox-y and less useful. I realized that I have been making bad choices because of lack of agency, one of which was staying up late on my phone, and this lead me to have even less wherewithal, leading to more bad choices… A bad loop to be caught in. So, I slept way the hell in today, and I’m feeling much much better. I ran 2 miles and did a pull day, and gonna try to focus on proprioception of weak muscles in my right scapula more frequently.

ACT has been coming into play but not too much (at least for today lol), and I think this is a good sign in a way. More sleep == less stress + more focus, who would have guessed? Anyways, life is good, I have an onsite in SF sometime soon and another interview, getting to final rounds… It’s exciting stuff, but everything is enterprise AI. Not super sure if this is my big dream but frankly it’s where the money is rn. I’ll meet cool people and learn a lot wherever I go, so that’s something at least. The alternative is the unpaid robotics research I could do, which frankly looks more appealing than any of the jobs in many ways. Decisions, decisions…

It’s 7:31 pm, one more minute of writing, and then I lock in on the final project for distributed systems… I’ll miss this class, the projects were pretty cool and the teacher was fun. Idk if it’s even the content that’s so interesting, or if I’m tricking myself thinking that systems eng is for me.

4.17.2026 - correlation shot in the back of the head

Fuuuuuuck I stayed up til 7 am this is the latest I’ve ever gone why don’t I get tired fuckkkkk.

Yeah basically I wrote and still ended up being a retard. I even distinctly remember around 1:30 watching a video in the bathroom, and thinking, “this video will be here tomorrow, I should go to sleep” and then still thinking “yeah I’ll just finish this one video what’s the harm?” fuuuuuuck there’s a lot of harm actually. I woke up around 12:30 and got out of the house (honestly not bad, I’ve done worse).

I did not do my sets of 5 ACT, I am going to do that rn, then working on 491 proj part B, the end of it. Tomorrow is 3rd degree test, I want to be prepared with lots of sleep!

Ok yeah I want to add to this 5 mins of writing - 5 sets of thinking vividly about one of the vices, for at least 10-15 seconds, then letting it wash away, and telling myself that this is not only possible but also not that hard.

My writings lately have gotten more reactive to the situation, it is looking at the screen as the enemy. And truly my screentime on my phone has skyrocketed. But I Have No Enemies.

4.17.2026 - the unity of theory and action

Got my 3rd Dan Black Belt today! Super exciting stuff, it was a really good event. Some great closure to that chapter, love those guys. Master Cheong gave a little speech and talked about our motto, “The unity of theory and action.” I am nothing with purely theory. Study, videos, etc. mean NOTHING if I never try to apply myself. Share myself with others. These things feed into each other. I cannot Grow if I do not Give.

I don’t know if I’ll ever do TKD post-grad, but I’ll definitely carry forward the ideals of the martial art, and the big one for me right now is integrity. I need to be more honest and forthcoming with myself, as well as with Kaitlyn. More open, more honest. Same with friends. Tell them how much they mean. When I say something, I will do it. Until now I’ve been quite wishy-washy on this point. I say I want to learn guitar. I want to learn robotics. I now have both a guitar and robotic arms sitting in my room 4 hours away because I never put forth the consistent, concerted effort required for even competency, much less expertise. Honestly, I got a lot of shit on my plate right now, but the next thing post grad, whatever it may be, I will FOCUS on. Singularly. One hard thing. 80% of time on that thing and I will become what I know I can become. An EXPERT. Whatever shall it be…

4.20.2026 - ineffable

Short entry

Beauty beyond words

I love Kaitlyn

I need sleep so badly

Goodnight.

4.24.2026 - get real

I gotta get real about some things.

I do not want to be a person that is unreliable. I feel like I have been that unreliable person to some extent lately, especially to Kaitlyn. Projects, promises, etc. I do not follow through to the extent that I know I am capable. This is wrong to me. It harms my sense of self, creates a rift between my expectations and reality of my own life. Not a great feeling.

Last couple days I’ve been getting more real. It’s not just falling back to “oh yeah I am addicted to screens and there isn’t anything I can do to help it bc dopamine,” but instead “lock the hell in why are you scrolling right now it’s time to work.” This is not unreasonable of a position at all I think. People do this all the time and it is not mentally or physically unhealthy. Focus on the goal, build the system that will maximize likelihood of not just participation but success, and then execute. Simple as that.

On a side note, I gotta get real about making a system to get this writing done everyday haha it has been quite some time…

4.25.2026 - getting realer

I got a great job opportunity! I also used it as an excuse to break my promises, allowing myself to “celebrate”… a bit is ok but after this it’s back to work. I have 1 exam, and then what? I graduate, maximize contact with friends, and hang out with Kaitlyn + family, go visit family out west, and I’ll still have a month to fuck around basically. Exciting times indeed…

Anyways I am the monkey who loves bananas, but taking a shit on my phone is like a banana covered in heroin and I need to go cold turkey. If I ban myself from doing it at home I ban it everywhere. It is hard but worthwhile, so I will succeed. I have time and energy to spare to do cool shit, so I will do cool shit. At least one cool shit. I’m excited to see what I can do.

So so trivial. I need to focus. I have an exam and I want to do well and understand what remains in front of me. The more I understand, the easier it will be. I trust my prof. I know that it is possible and that I can do it. I’m still super scattered right this second.

4.28.2026 - bro just i just gotta lock in bro come just a bit more locked and I'll have it bro believe me

Study grind yesterday was fruitless. Also remember the circle. The circle is the truth. There is no real struggles, they are all imagined and made up hardships. I feel tired but I know my body lies to me.

. . .

Oh man, you know it’s pretty bad when you put off 5 minutes of writing for 2 days in a row. The social media and games are all consuming. The issue to me is not just that they consume time, but they also consume energy and brain capacity. Gaming consumes real thinking and emotions, whereas social media is an onslaught at all times, blasting the brain from all fronts, removing any possible attempt at original thought from the picture. It becomes easy to be a defeatist.

I do not want to be a defeatist! I want to win, I want to learn, and grow, and all of that. And that is a challenge, it is a wading upstream. Especially when I can always turn and go downstream. I must invert the polarity.

Concretely, I have approximately 2 months to fuck off and do whatever I want. I want to take some real dedicated time to get good at one thing alone: ML systems engineering. My goal is simple and I think will help put me where I want to be: get at least ONE (1) merged contribution to vLLM or whatever project I decide to work on. I also want to write a B200 SOTA MMUL kernel in TK, but that is a separate venture. It can all happen together I think.

4.30.2026 - social media algos are evil

Dwarkesh is pretty cool. Hardware is pretty cool. Reiner Pope is awesome. Writing briefly to try and remind myself that social media algorithms are inherently addictive and this is not something that I am immune to. They get me, too. And, on top of that, they drain my battery and paralyze me. They keep me down! I need to keep doing ACT, I really haven’t given it enough thought. And also adhering to rules of separating sleep zones from work zones… Anyways I graduate in a couple days, let’s see what I can do between now and then.

5.6.2026 - reset

It has certainly been more than one day. Biggest difference is today instead of spending all day depressed on my phone I’m chilling at my cottage with my girlfriend and reading and learning and enchanted with whimsy. Screen time is way down and happiness is returning. Hell I even remembered to come back to this!

There is something special about isolation in this way. Not really isolation, but I don’t know what other word to use. I’m alone but my girlfriend who loves me is also here. It’s pretty ideal to be honest. Me, her, and nature, and a lot of food. Kinda cold out but you can’t have it all. The energy is all consuming and overflowing. It is wonderful. I feel like I’m still recovering from how shitty I was feeling back in AA, but my mindfulness and positivity has had a big increase. I feel like it is easy to write stuff like this a lot without actually meaning it, but as I sit here typing, looking at the water, it is undeniable that I feel more calm and peaceful than I did 3 days ago.

5.8.2026 - reset

I notice I keep writing about writing and my failure, it’s kinda weak so I will write about real things on my mind at a higher level.

True pragmatism is not something I am capable of or interested in. There has to be some relent I think. I am not a Murim martial master. But that does not mean I must stay a peon. I feel the instagram is still the highest dopamine signal in my brain, not reading. But I read regardless. I am making my own system. It is hard work but worth it. The reels are a scourge on my brain processors. MFU is like 3% right now. The more I hone in on a task, the more absorbed I shall become, and right now I just need to have faith in the process. I must become absorbed in the task.

My focus and creativity and proclivity to write are not here yet, but they will be in due time. I will give myself as much time as I need. I will stare at the wall while my brain processes. I will progress meaningfully.

5.11.2026 - heavens beyond heavens

Finished aot. Fuuuuuuck I forgot how it ended that shit was insane.

It really stuck with me, this idea that Eren was a “slave to freedom” because of his experience with the past, present and future all at once, how there was nothing he could do to change things.

Forgot to keep writing, I will come back to more of these ideas later

5.18.2026 - on the hill

I was up on the hill praying for a day. Feel like I could have pushed harder, but it was a good first experience. Talking to these people, a lot of the focus and energy comes from learned restraint patterns similar to ACT - just kinda like whenever some sort of urge or pain comes up, just focus on it and feel it, and then let it go away on its own, and most of the time it just disappears.

In summary of my experience, life is awesome and we are infinitely lucky to exist as we do, with the privilege of love. It is worth focusing on the things that bring us meaning and trying hard because of this.

I think also this was just a good break for me mentally, like a lot less time on the phone and screens in general, I’ve lost the existential weight of getting out of bed in the morning. I will go back home and leave devices out of my room and be much happier I think. Once again, it is not automatic, but if I can catch myself at the feeling itself prior to action, I feel pretty confident I can control myself better.

The community here is great, but quite a different demographic than me. I really do like these guys but I don’t see it becoming my everything if that makes sense. I want to do more (and will have to eventually) and overall things push my to be a better person. However, there is a lot of life experiences for me to have right now, and I gotta explore as much as I can.

5.22.2026 - actually writing every day?

What if I actually wrote everyday?

I will test something: force myself to do a morning routine, 1 week. Every day that I do it successfully, I will get to go outside / drink tea / water. The routine will be as follows:

1. wake up
2. immediately brush teeth / clean invisalign
3. before getting dressed, meditate for 10 min
4. write for 5 min
5. pt exercises (about 5 min) - I have the set written down in an app

Pretty simple to be honest, like 25 minutes total, and I can have it so that I dont go on my phone or drink water or anything nice until after I’m finished. I think this will help me stay consistent not only on this writing, but the pt stuff as well. Not only these benefits, but also more generally having this everyday will be super helpful for grounding myself and not losing track of things, like for lifting and working on the vLLM stuff.

Creativity is a challenge often, but I can feel it pester me when I let my mind idle. It just does stuff, I swear. Thus, I think it more beneficial to let my mind idle than to feed it something useless. Honestly I got a 4 hour drive tonight and I’m considering just spending most of it in silence (or I guess talking to myself). This could let some stuff work for me in ways I had not previously considered. I’ll get back with results of this next time.

5.23.2026 - morning routine woes

Quick reflection on the routine. I went on my phone immediately anyways bc i use it as an alarm and it was easy. Pokemon autobattling rn. Farming for packs. Not quite ideal. However all that remains in the routine is meditation… Not too bad!

Today has a real finality to it - I finally leave Ann Arbor. I’ve been dragging my feet for a while, I think I’m gonna miss this place. The friends, the good times, the food. It is a great town and I think I’ll be back to visit.

So long.

5.24.2026 - fresher

Slept a lot more. Actually meditated. Feeling good up in nature. Probably gonna have to get in cold water later, but sacrifices gotta be made, you know?

There is a certain peace and tranquility I feel inside me after a nice morning of meditation and light exercise (even if it was at 10:30), and I feel ready to do hard things today. I think it must be that I’ve already been productive, so the inertia of continuing the trend is lessened.

This calmness has led me to realize that I have been quite pain-adverse recently. No, extremely pain-adverse. I wrote recently (not in here) that learning is painful and uncomfortable and unnatural. It takes cognitive load, and thus is not a natural state of being. This is not like a perceived vs subconcious type of thing either, we very litteraly strain ourselves to gain as much new knowledge as possible. I have avoided this with so much of myself that I can hardly say I’ve learned anything challenging recently. Whenever the opportunity arose and I had free time to study, I would have an excuse ready to go. “I’m too tired” followed by 3 hours of senseless youtube. “I’ve been working hard, I deserve a break” after lots of manual labor. Although this feels more valid to me, a short refresh should be enough to get back to it, as the brain can be somewhat fresh, even after physical toil. I think the part that really gets me is that whether I like it or not, I have been taking the easy way out while telling myself and others and the whole world that I am someone who likes to do hard things. The cognitive dissonance stings.

I need to lean into the pain. I had sticky notes all over my walls this year telling me to do this, but they fell on deaf ears. Although it hurts, one must cultivate their pain tolerance and wholly trust that this is the correct route towards fulfillment. At the very least, I have spent enough time on the other paths to know that they lead to no such thing. This is the best bet in my opinion, so now it’s just time to boss up and do what I say I will. With integrity.

6.1.2026 - honing the swing of the sword

“I do not fear the man who has swung a thousand swords one time, but instead the man who has swung one sword a thousand times”

I blazed through a really uplifting manhwa recently, and coincidentally listened to a podcast that had me thinking a lot. Part of the human experience is to depend on others. It is not a label of condemnation to receive help. It is good to help others too, as it is a way of helping ourselves.

I need to find my own way. Why do I want to learn Thunderkittens? The easy answer is because I want to be better, I want to learn something cool that has a lot of smart people involved, but this answer is weak. This can be true of so many different things. Where I spend my time matters immensely. The people I’m around, the actions that I take, how I feel all dictate my path through life. And of course, it is not just me, but the world around me with which I coexist.

I think that AI Hardware has called to me because it has a real air of mysticism around it. There is a lot of real shit that I do not know and frankly may never understand. It is not the path of the hero, or the path of the doctor, or even the path of the businessman to be focused on this sort of thing. I must accept that fact if this is what draws me in. With all my heart, this cannot be just a “learning experience” but an attempt to win.

An attempt to do something great, and contribute and make friends and experience things that otherwise would not have been possible for me. Right now, the coolest thing in the fucking world is going to be right outside my backyard, and I’ll be damned if I can’t get in on the action. I’m not here to save the world, but I will be damned if I stop myself from accomplishing what I know is there for me to accomplish.

6.1.2026 - action before thought

If one cannot act, one is not. Only in action does the subject clash with the object, and then can be qualified as “being”.

I have been acting without purpose lately. No strength behind my sword. Who am I struggling for? Why is it that I want to push further? Is it just because I know that I am capable? I think this argument to be a losing battle. The worst outcome here is subjecting myself to much inaction and stagnation. I will suffer within and not so much without.

I do not struggle for the sake of the world. It is hard to say that the world is worth my life. I recognize my smallness in the grand scale of our existence as humans. Sacrificing my life for its betterment is a drop in the well.

I need to think about that which is crucial for my life and what I percieve to be important long term. Things that, when I look back on my life as I approach death, I can confidently say that I am fulfilled and have done a good job.

For me, that means: making sure my family is well off, happy and healthy, and being able to spend quality time with them. It also means forming deep bonds of friendship where I can share my true self with likeminded individuals. Living with intention is also important, but I don’t know if this is really some focus or more reactive to the lack thereof that I’ve felt for a while now.

Obviously, to get these things, I need to work hard. And it’s never so simple as “oh yeah let me just go work for the rest of the day.” But maybe it should be. Set a timer, forget about everything else besides the task at hand. A lot more would get done that way…