2024-05-19 | 04:15:59 PM
Hi there! It’s my first time writing today. I would say that writing using my laptop is a really pleasant experience, despite it being stressful, at some point, since my laptop’s broken screen reminds me of just how much I’m still really incompetent at managing my finances. Truth be told, if all my salary went to a savings account, never to see the light of day until they reach the amount of PHP 40,000, I would’ve already gotten to fix my laptop’s broken screen.
Anyway, I’ve had the pleasure to read Outlive again today. There was a line in there that I still couldn’t reference in my vault because unfortunately, Readwise doesn’t have automatic syncing capabilities built in for Apple Books anymore. Using Apple Books before and highlighting there made me fall in love with Readwise because I like using Apple books a lot, and my highlights were automatically synced once they’re manifested. Now, it requires a manual sync, which is a minor inconvenience, but not too big of an inconvenience for me to quit using the app, lol. For all I know, I could instead switch to the Readwise Reader and read there instead. My reading progress would still be synced across devices, and I could still read anywhere. Honestly, I could do that now and upload my .epub file of Peter Attia’s book into Readwise, but that’s just not something I’m interested in doing at the moment since I’m already in Chapter 9 of the book — or so I think.
Reading Outlive has given me a lot of moments when I would deliberately pause, think, and reflect. It’s the equivalent of momentarily closing the book when reading a paperback material, and then staring far away into the distance to reflect. Reading the book has made me think about a lot of things regarding my lifestyle, both previous and current. I come from a family with a history of cardiovascular disease, metabolic diseases (such as diabetes, for example), and neurological disorders. Just recently there have been many cardiac events happening in my mother’s side — from a heart attack to stroke. I’m not sure of the specifics as I’m not that heavily invested in the stories of the individual members of my mother’s family (partly due to me being away from them anyway without anything important to think about other than my personal and academic life), but I’m sure those events are really important for me to meditate on. I’m getting increasingly interested about my health at the moment, and I would really love to get checked for the biomarkers (I’m not sure if that’s the term I should be using) that would indicate the possibility of a cardiac event and other health concerns.
Apolipoprotein B (ApoB) is something that’s frequently brought up in Outlive, and I really want to see if my ApoB level is high. Apparently, it’s a major cause of concern if it’s high because it wraps around (if I remember it correctly) Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol as they travel through our vascular system. An increased amount of LDL cholesterol, apparently, isn’t enough to determine whether a person is of significant risk of a cardiac event. Rather, we should focus on the mechanism by which cholesterol is being transferred in our system. One of the things I learned too is that LDL cholesterol easily gets lodged into our endolitheum, a barrer that stretches throughout our blood vessels, and that’s a clear indication of one’s propensity to have Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD). Once I get my lab tests for my blood and whatnot during my upcoming chckup, which I hope would be soon, I would ask as much questions as I possibly could regarding these things. 1
I used to be a heavy smoker too, smoking at least three (3) cigarettes a day. Maybe more during stressful times, such as my university finals and during times that work gets a little bit too much to handle without bashing my head against a wall. I’m not proud of it, and I’ve never been proud of it — except when I was in highschool and used to have a part of myself that felt as if I was someone special because I did relatively well in school despite smoking. The thing with it (smoking) too is that it’s extremely addictive. I know for myself that picking up just one cigarette with the intention of not smoking any more than it is a huge lie I (and probably a lot of smokers as well) tell ourselves — or anyone, for that matter. Once I smoke a cigarette, I would end up buying more, until I would get a pack at the nearest store and mindlessly smoke it, as if I weren’t aware of the ill effects it has on the human health.
I say this because it’s a primary concern of mine — that maybe all the years of me smoking have already amounted to something really significant in my health, whether that be in my organs, in my veins, or anywhere it could be. If I have one really huge regret from my younger years, it would be that I didn’t focus on my health and instead decided to do something stupid with it — smoking and other generally unhealthy stuff, like not eating and sleeping properly. Smoking isn’t cool by any means, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone do it. Even just when I first picked up the habit of smoking, I already knew that — deep inside I really didn’t want to smoke at all. I just… wanted to get the feeling of being high from something, so I could distract myself from all the other problems I had in my life at the time. And I would say that recently, that has been my thinking also. Partnered with the fact that I used to hang out with people who smoked a lot, then I now have the best equation to encourage my bad habit of smoking.
At the moment, however, I really would love to quit already and not go back to it anymore. I haven’t touched a cigarette since one month ago, and I’m now on nicotine pouches which were given for free by a marketing person from Zyn, a brand that sells nicotine pouches.
2024-05-19 | 04:45:53 PM
Oh and hey, you know what? I’m actually pretty happy that I got back into the habit of reading again. It’s been a while since I dedicated time to reading and I feel really good that I’ve been doing it again. Not as some sort of “self-improvement” promise but more just as a general interest, which makes the process of reading a ton more enjoyable.
I have built up enough interest again to read for fun, not as a method to “make myself better,” and I’m feeling really nice about it. The fact that I don’t look at myself as someone who needs to improve, but rather just someone who enjoys reading — that distinction makes a lot of difference in terms of my enjoyment. Sure, there would be people who would argue that deliberately setting aside time to read a specific material would be appealing also, in that there is intention in the process and that it makes the process not solely reliant on the spontaneity of inspiration, but I think it’s really important for me to enjoy something while doing it rather than just doing it in a mindless, almost I-don’t-care-about-this-at-all manner with the intention of using it as a means to improve as an individual.
I think of myself as someone who’s infinitely curious about a lot of things, and reading is something I do to satisfy or quench my hunger for knowledge, and I think that’s a better way to look at reading itself, than just some sort of thing I do to shape myself into a version of myself that I fantasize about becoming.
2024-05-19 | 07:09:48 PM
Heya. After pausing and reflecting for a while after reading Outlive, I tried browsing my Goodreads for more books to read. I actually originally wanted to read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport but then opted to read Essential by The Minimalists instead. It’s nice, I got to share a few quotes to my girlfriend, which would be interesting points of conversation if ever she’s interested. I sent her quite a bit, but here’s a powerful one I got:
It reminds me of something I’d read from Montaigne’s essays, where he recounts a disastrous event, and someone says something along the lines of, “Thankfully, I didn’t lose anything.” This, of course, alludes to the idea that all that the speaker owns hasn’t been lost because all he has is within himself — not the material possessions he had that were lost from the disaster. The picture above is a great reminder that we don’t need material possessions to define ourselves. We assign meaning to the stuff we buy, yet we don’t need to do that because, at the end of the day, all we truly ever need is already within ourselves.
It reminds me of this one scene in Kung Fu Panda where Po, the main character, finally finds out the content of a sort of ‘secret scroll’. As it turns out, the secret scroll is just a metallic paper with a reflective quality, so all that someone sees when they look into the scroll is themselves. Of course, this is a philosophical idea that lets us think: “What do we truly need?” and it all comes back to how we define the word ‘need,’ if anything.
All that is to say we define what it is that we legitimately need in our lives, and The Minimalists are pretty sure we don’t need more stuff most of the time:
Link to original
- the average American household contains more than 300,000 possessions. (View Highlight)
And finally, since it’s relevant with what I’m writing about, here’s another quote I got from Essential: 2
Footnotes
Footnotes
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I’ll have to put in some references here, or in future dailies entries as I go through the book, or when I finally sync my Readwise, so I’m not just yapping without any credible source, especially on a topic that’s not my expertise. After all, I’m just a 22-year-old designer who tries to learn more about my health (i.e. the Science behind what’s going on in my body). ↩
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You can also find the exact highlight from the Essential note itself, in case you would be interested in seeing more highlights from the book. ↩