Doing Something, Anything
Why I'm Starting a Blog in the Big 2025
[Tuesday 17th June]
1:30 p.m. I look at my phone tucked haphazardly underneath my pillow. The four alarms I set for myself have been blaring for three hours now.
“What the fuck am I doing?” Not a great start to the day so far.
I look at the battery indicator on my phone. Twenty-eight percent. I could have sworn it was fully charged last night. “Welp, that’s something I need to wait for.”
My plan for today was to get up at 10. | Heh, that’s already out the window.
Go take a shower. | Who takes a shower at 1:30?
Ride my bike. | Fuck, I can’t ride, I need to oil the chains.
Go to downtown SJ. | What if someone tries to steal my bike?
Get coffee. | What if I can’t find a bike rack?
Work on my paper. | Why the fuck are you still not done with this shit? SEVEN EIGHT FUCKING YEARS!
Go to the gym. | Fat ugly fucking piece of shit.
I can’t take it anymore.
Wait what day is it…
Oh that’s right, I have therapy today. Maybe getting out of the house would be nice…
This is just a small example of what my daily life kind of looks like; however, writing about it feels strange and alien to me. When its written out in a medium like this, it feels like it is a part of my identity; that this is who I view myself as. As someone who is lazy, depressed, not driven, and helpless. And if you looked at my life and saw every day as like this day after day after day, you may agree with this sentiment. But, this is not how I see it.
I have incredible ambition and every day I remind myself of it. I want to hike more, read more, write more, wake up earlier, eat healthier, work out more, talk to more people, etc. These are all things that I want to do, and not just because they are things that people say are generically good for me. These are all things that when I do them, I feel absolutely fantastic. And I know this. It’s irrefutable in my brain.
Even things that are hard and take time I know with absolute certainty I want to do, like finishing my degree and starting to make a living for myself. I’ve heard the story of people saying that they quit school and couldn’t be happier, but I know that I would only feel terrible from doing so. Even if I don’t end up using my degree, it would let me at least feel like I can move on with my life and get out of this rut.
So why is it so hard?
Well when you have such incredible aspirations, you tend to constantly remind yourself that you are always lesser than your ideal. When every waking moment you sit there thinking about where you want to be in life, then you think about where you are simply not. Then, not being where you want to be causes you to ask the dreaded question, “Why?”. Why am I still in this situation? Why am I not doing these things? Why am I doing this to myself?
Then it turns to, “Is there something wrong with me?”
This is a question I’ve had to contend with for my entire life. And for most of it, I’ve believed the answer was yes. After all, why else would I see so many issues with my life?
[Wednesday July 16th]
12:30 p.m. Damnit, I was trying to wake up earlier | Oh well.
1:30 p.m. That last week you went out and studied was pretty nice. Why not try that again? | What are you still doing inside?
And you had your session outside. I think it helped a lot. | That sounds dumb.
3:00 p.m.
Ah screw it. Just go man.
Recently, (and through the help of therapy) I’ve been playing with the idea that the answer is actually a hard resounding NO. In fact, I believe it is this exact mentality of believing that there is something wrong with me which has led to the issues I face today. Constantly giving myself excuses for not doing things that I’m perfectly capable of leads me to become idle and unproductive, which is something I’ve come to realize I do not enjoy.
So I’m going to do something about it. I’m doing the things I want to do, and I’m not going to question it or second guess myself. I’m going to do my best to become the best version of myself. It will take time, and I won’t be perfect in that endeavor, but the most important thing is that I keep trying, and not give up.
So what does writing this blog have to do with it? And could this have been an email?
Well, I’ve thought about doing something like this for a long time. I’ve been meaning to start regularly journaling as a form of self-reflection, as the act of writing down my thoughts has helped me legitimize what I'm thinking of and helps me be more forgiving with my internal monologue, turning off my internal censor. However, I think there are 3 ways which I think writing and posting to this may help me with my journey beyond what a personal journal could do.
Writing this will help me with skills that will translate to my paper so I can finish my degree. Writing on a semi-consistent basis with less emphasis on perfection can allow me to practice writing as a habit and allow words to flow easier from my fingertips. In addition, doing so may help with my writers block by making myself more comfortable with my ideas flowing from my brain to the page during the process of writing.
The act of posting on this blog will allow me to work on my “Oh, I’ll send it later” mentality. What I mean is that I find that when it comes to sending things to people, I often find myself stuck on the “send” button. Whether it is this blog, a text, an email, or even a message on a dating app, I always find myself not sending things because I always feel that I could do it better, or that someone will judge me when I send it. Then I need the approval of someone else in order to get myself to send it. Through many examples, I’ve found that this is a fallacy because by delaying or even not sending these important messages, I cause more harm to myself than if I just sent it in an imperfect state. And relying on others to send things that I am ultimately responsible for is not a healthy pattern of behavior for myself. If I can more often practice the act of hitting the “send” button and share my (imperfect) thoughts with a close group of friends in an environment with no pressure, I aim to overcome this paralysis.
Lastly, sharing my musings and adventures will allow me to connect with people I care about that I don’t get to see on a regular basis. I think a lot about my friends I haven’t seen in a while, and would want to let them know how I’m doing. However, I find when I just post selfies on Instagram, it just isn’t satisfying. I think that letting people know what you’re up to via social media is useful, but if I’m going to do that, I’d rather post more substantial content that is a better reflection of myself than a superficial image of myself that I don’t even believe in. I believe by posting things in this manner, to a closer group of people, I can share my experiences with my friends rather than just showing them.
Now, I’m going to get into some disclaimers. I don’t intend on getting strictly political on this blog. I don’t want this thing to be super serious. However, I may bring up some things from time to time that I feel strongly about that happen to be political. But if you feel strongly against what I’ve posted, feel free to leave a comment. I mean feel free to leave a comment regardless of you agreement :) . I truly believe that good faith communication and discussion is how we move forward as a society. At the same time, there is no pressure here to solve the world’s problems. We can engage in discussion and maybe we don’t agree, but we will be all be friends at the end of the day and that’s the most important thing. I’m just trying to be less ashamed of what I think is awesome.
Also, there might be some old content that I post here that is really old. However, I feel that there is a bunch of stuff that I want to talk about and share that has been sitting in my backlog for far too long. For example, I plan on posting my trip Yosemite from this March as well as my trip to Idaho from 2023. There will be some epic photos from Yosemite and some fun videos from the Idaho trip that I want to share, so be on the lookout for those.
Finally, this blog isn’t just going to be a photo dump and a journal about things I just so happened to do. I plan on making some exclusive content for this blog specifically. My first idea for a planned “series” is going to be “Public 👏 Transit 👏 Review 👏”, where I will ride on various public transit lines and give my thoughts on the service as well as photos of the destinations it takes me and my musings on the line overall. I’ve been super interested in public transit recently so its something I have a lot of thoughts about. My first post on that series will either be a Caltrain review because the new trains they introduced are freakin’ sweet, or my experience on the San Francisco Historic Streetcar because that was surprisingly exhilarating for 1920s technology. I also plan on making a public transit manifesto in the future as well because I have a LOT to say about the (sad) state of public transit in the Silicon Valley. Let me know if this is something that you would find interesting.
[Wednesday August 20th]
10:50 a.m. Progress takes time I suppose, I think I’m doing better than last week. | That counts I guess.
Man my legs are sore today.
12:00 p.m. I think today I’m gonna go work on that one section on my paper that’s giving me some trouble. | That’s a lot of work. | I know.
After that, I think I’m going to finally post that blog on the account I started 2 months ago. | Yeah. It’s about time.
Writing’s felt pretty good over the last couple of days.
7:30 p.m. Finally. It was about time.
I shouldn’t have waited so long. | But that isn’t the point, isn’t it?
So yeah. TL;DR I am making a blog.
I’ll see you guys in the next installment!
i fucking love you markus you're killing it thanks for sharing
Thanks for sharing :) loved it. And come review the New Orleans streetcar soon!