🧠 Ian's Public Journal

Search

SearchSearch

2024-05-04

May 04, 202416 min read

2024-05-04 | 10:47:07 AM

Hey there! Morning. Just woke up today, unable, again, to go to my class. It’s my third week of being absent in this class, so that’s going to be something really sensitive moving forward. I have missed 3 sessions in a row, and if I miss the upcoming, as in 4th, session, I will be given the Failure Due to Absence (FDA) mark.

Anyway, I didn’t wake up today with anything really specific to write about in my dailies… well, other than something that I’d long kept from the public. I usually write about things like this on my private journal, Ian's Zettelkasten V2. However, just this morning I had one of the clearest dreams I’d had in a while. Just like with other ‘clear’ dreams that I’m having, my emotional reaction was also just as vivid. I woke up with my emotions there, sitting with me, waiting to be noticed.

And so I noticed my emotions. The thing with what I felt was I knew it stemmed from something very, very long ago. See, I did a bunch of stupid shit in my whole life of 22 years. I could enumerate them here, one by one, going through each rationale behind what I did, ‘cause that’s what I’m good at — rationalizing, lol — but I really am not interested in going about them all in this dailies entry. I want to dedicate my attention to the specific fact that we all have made mistakes along the way, in our lives. And sure, I might’ve written about this already on on mistakes, but I think what I’d felt this morning gave me a different, more emotional perspective. It armed me with the proper understanding to examine what really went on before.

It hurt thinking about the things I’d done.

It only made sense that people distanced themselves from me. I was weird, in all sorts of ways. I was what other people would’ve called the black sheep (which, I think, shines a little truth to the reality of my life in the now, as I am the only creative in a family of Mathematicians). It hurt that I said many things that hurt other people, that probably scarred them for life, that probably made them re-think about a major part of themselves.

What’s crazy is just how much of what I’d done could’ve been avoided, had I only known better.

And yes, I might’ve meditated on this shit for as long as I could remember. I could even quote a podcast that I listened to, which I loved, that talked about this topic on a different, much heavier perspective: The Holocaust. Here’s a Snipd highlight from that podcast:

QUOTE:

If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve done things differently. That’s the end of it. — Dr. Edith Edgar

Isn’t that nice to hear? That all your mistakes, all the shitty things you’d done — those, in a way, are forgiven. So long as, of course, you acknowledge what you’d done wrong.

Look, I resonate a lot with this quote. However, it is important to note that forgiving myself hasn’t been that easy. It’s not really easy to live with the consequences of the things I’d done before. I can only imagine how it is for people who’d done far worse stuff than I did.

I’d dreamt about someone from my past — a person who I wouldn’t want to name in this public journal (for privacy reasons, of course). This person became a significant part of my life. Significant as in, they were part of how I had, back then, presented myself, functioned as a person, felt stuff, etc. Let’s name this person Cloud, for now.

I wasn’t particularly close with Cloud. I interacted with them, for sure, but I wasn’t, in any way, significant in their lives the same way they were in mine. If anything, I think we were the opposite of close friends. Not literally enemies or people who were hostile to each other, but just… acquaintances. Or, maybe more accurately, people who just barely knew each other. There are a lot of reasons for this. One was I was generally a weird kid back then, and another is that I really didn’t have much positive sides within me to show then to people. I wallowed in sadness, confusion, anxiety, and whatnot — rightfully so, as I grew up with a lot of trauma (which is probably a writing for another time). Well, other than those, Cloud already had a friend group of their own. After all, I was kind of a bit of a loner, because of the stuff I just stated.

In my dream this morning, they were the opposite. We were close, and it seemed as if they’d forgiven me for all the things I had been. It was like some sort of representation of a fantasy I have with people like Cloud forgiving me for all the things that weren’t my fault.

My trauma isn’t my fault, but the consequences of the trauma I carried were all things I had to deal with on my own. Which hurt like a bitch, because I know for a fact I shouldn’t be doing all these extra work (emotional, spiritual, physical, what have you), hadn’t it been for the things that were done to me in my past.

And I hated that I was that kid before. I hated that I was this, I was that, that I felt like I wasn’t good enough, that I felt as if there was nothing in me to love, that there was something to be hated in every part of myself, and whatnot.

I hate that I became all of those things just because of the trauma that I had.

But then again, like every other good-meaning material I’d consumed on the internet would say, taking responsibility is always the key to having a better relationship with the parts of yourself that you hate.

And so I woke up this morning feeling really fucking heavy. Because I think I still haven’t accepted who I really had been back then, warts and all. Cloud being in my dream, being friendly and all the things they couldn’t be during the time we interacted, gave me a lot to ponder on. Among those things I started thinking about, one stood out really well:

I wish to be seen as the person I am now, not the person I used to be.

And there’s a lot of context I could add to this, but I think the focus should be what I read from a book called The School of Life.

A quote from The School of Life:

We are judged on the behaviours that our wounds inspire, rather than on the wounds themselves.

Link to original

The quote states that we are judged for our reactions, rather than our experiences. I could get punched in the face and retaliate, but when other people know limited context, as in they didn’t know that I got punched in the face first, all they could see would be an angry, hostile person that is myself.

And of course there’s all this talk about ethics and what is good and all that (I’d written a 20-page essay for my Ethics class once since I enjoyed rationalizing the shit out of everything, lol), but the important part is that I got hurt, and I fought back, as a consequence. I didn’t fight just for the sake of hurting someone, which could be an appropriate scenario for seeing me as an ‘angry, hostile person’.

I could have heavy, debilitating trauma, but without my ability to provide the proper context as to why those bits of trauma exist, people just wouldn’t understand.

And I understand communication is probably the only way I could let other people know, and I’m sure of how important it is.

But it’s heavy enough to communicate our minor struggles, inner complications, and emotional mishaps. It’s all the more difficult to communicate something bigger than just a small frustration… like the thoughts you think about at night, the reasons you stay awake until 3 AM, the bowl of sadness, guilt, anger, resentment, and self-hate that you get served every morning for breakfast, and the same sad shit at night — like it’s a routine.

Pair this with the never-ending negative feedback loops (as in people say you’re this, people say you’re that, movies, films, literary materials, and social media say you might be this, or that) in your environment that reinforce a lot of your self-deprecating thoughts, and you’re in it for perhaps one of the worst experiences one could have in their lives.

Again, as I contextualized in an earlier paragraph, it’s hard enough to explain that you’re frustrated because x. As in, the weather is hot, the stupid PC doesn’t work, the laptop crashed, this idiot of a groupmate in my academic groupwork can’t do shit, this monitor’s color space isn’t properly calibrated, the sun is too bright, the room is too dirty, this, or that.

Given such difficulty, it’s almost impossible to go through every. single. thing. that makes living excruciating — especially the trauma-related ones — and make people understand.

Truth be told, no one is special. We all have a bunch of different stuff to deal with — minor or major — and that’s just how life works, unfortunately. We all have different sets of circumstances that allow us to have different reactions, opinions, and thoughts on different contexts. Such is the reason why the concept of “glass half-full vs. glass half-empty” exists. It’s because we view the world in different lenses. Lenses that are distinguishable through the numerous variance in experiences, attitudes, values, outlooks (and many more) that we have.

And so the best thing we could do is to deal with our own shit on our own, rather than shove the context of our trauma onto other people’s throats. And that’s the sad part. I’m sure if you’re reading this (someone who mystically found my public journal) and you have trauma, you would feel the same. Like you’re behind other people just because you carry a heavier load.

And if you reached this part, honestly I don’t know what else to type anymore but to say that it’s alright if you feel that way — that life seems kind of unfair because you’re dealing with a lot more shit than the average person — because I feel exactly like that, too.

Cloud probably wouldn’t know about this at all, unless they asked me directly about it (which is highly unlikely, unless they somehow realize this writing embedded in some person’s daily journal entries could be about them), and I’m alright with that.

And although I carry with me the desire to say, “Please see me for who I am now, rather than who I was back then,” I think this is just one of those thoughts that would better remain alone, in private, in my journal. At least for now, when there’s no need for it to be communicated outside.

2024-05-04 | 12:41:35 PM

  • Check out Espanso for probable applications in my daily life.
    • I really like the {{timestamp}} feature where it outputs a timestamp based on a trigger. I also liked the idea of Nicole Van Der Hoeven in this video about the dev log, or learning log. Basically, a set of chronological notes as you learn something. This is something I would consider for my development journey. NVDH uses ;ts as her trigger.
    • I also really like the idea of General Replies as indicated by NVDH in this part of the video, where she has triggers for general replies. Here’s an image for clearer visualization:
    • Here she (NVDH) also talks about forms, which basically are text templates with user-custom variables. A good example for its use case could be templates in the professional world:
      • To-do list pre-requisites (such as subject codes, for example)
      • Job applications
      • Project inquiries
        • When’s the deadline?
        • What about the Big Idea?
      • Greeting messages with the variable x, or more, with the x being, for example:
        • A random quote
        • A random snippet from my Dailies lol
        • The timestamp now, as in HH:mm:dd A
    • She also talks about regex triggers, which are triggers that have variable/s (I’m not sure) to be put by the user to replace in a text. An example she gave is using it in her responses to product sponsorships. Here are a few ideas I have for the use case of regex:
      • Specific conditions, such as timestamps. “Hey there, I think x doesn’t work for me. Would you be open to meet at y. Otherwise, please ;lmk!”
      • Introductory messages. “Hello x! It’s nice to meet you. My name is Ian […]. If you’d like to know more, feel free to reach out at […] Something something values sheet, something something public journal, something something.”
    • I like how NVDH calls it CANNED RESPONSES! Totally makes sense!

2024-05-04 | 04:53:48 PM

Today I learned that this thing | is called a Literal Block Scalar.

2024-05-04 | 11:55:41 PM

Just today I learned about Espanso. I’m now using it to integrate string shortcuts in my workflow. Here’s a list of examples I can do:

I made a few general replies (h/t Nicole van der Hoeven), which you can see below.

General Replies (h/t Nicole van der Hoeven)

  • ;hi | Hi there
  • ;lmk | let me know
  • ;Ff | Feel free
  • ;uq | you have any questions
  • ;qs | Do you have any questions?
  • ;questions | Let me know if you have any questions!
  • ;alr | alright

Thank you responses

  • ;ty | thank you
  • ;tysm | thank you so much
  • ;app | I appreciate it
  • ;yw | you’re welcome
  • ;np | no problem
  • ;git | got it

My favorite’s probably ;update, which outputs a string based on the following code:

- trigger: ";update"`
  replace: |
  	  Hey {{hatchUpdate.name}}. Sending quick project updates here:
  	  Project Name: {{hatchUpdate.fruit}}
  	  Time: {{time}}
  	  Current Pass Count: {{hatchUpdate.passCount}}
  vars:
    - name: "hatchUpdate"
  	type: form
  	params:
  	  layout: "NAME: [[name]] \nPROJECT NAME: [[fruit]] \nPASS COUNT: [[passCount]]"
  	  fields:
  		name:
  		fruit:
  		passCount:
  		  type: list
  		  values: 
  			- "1"
  			- "2"
  			- "3"
  			- "4"
  			- "5"
  			- "6"
  			- "7"
  			- "8"
  			- "9"
  			- "10"
    - name: time 
  	type: date
  	params:
  	  format: "%Y-%m-%d | %I:%M:%S %p"

Here’s the simplified visualization of this code, as I’ve simplified just like the ones above:

;update |

Hey {{hatchUpdate.name}}. Sending quick project updates here:

Project Name: {{hatchUpdate.fruit}}

Time: 2024-05-05 | 12:39:17 AM

Current Pass Count:

In the real world, here’s how it would look like, assuming that the variables hatchUpdate.name, hatchUpdate.fruit, hatchUpdate.passCount, and time are all already defined as follows: Ian, Coca-Cola, 2024-05-05 | 12:39:17 AM, and 3! 👇

Hey Ian. Sending quick project updates here:

Project Name: Coca-Cola

Time: 2024-05-05 | 12:41:38 AM

Current Pass Count: 3

And this is so cool because I got to append custom information before an output string was formulated. Here’s a prompt that appears, which asks for the variables hatchUpdate.name and hatchUpdate.fruit before it outputs like the string above:

If you’re interested to find out more about the matches I’ve used, you can refer to this public GitHub repository that I made, which syncs the changes I make in the code.

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. This is why I you would frequently find notes in my journal on contextual information that usually couldn’t stand alone as a quote. In this case, this is what I call a context-dependent thought. ↩

Backlinks

Graph View