24 April 2019 marks the two year anniversary of daily journaling, I have been documenting in details every single day for the past two years, the one thing that I have feared doing for a good portion of my life have finally proved to be beneficial.

This blogpost will explain why I took this step and what are the benefits that I have seen from doing this, it might persuade you to do the same.

To make it short: faced a good amount of bad events in my life that I wasn’t happy about and I needed a mechanism to declutter my mind and take action. After trying multiple methods, daily journaling is by far the most effective method that have changed my life for the better and made me the person who I am today.

At this moment I am halfway through my fifth journal, writing a total of 883 pages throughout those two years without missing a single day at all. (Talk about consistency)

When I was a kid, I used to have a diary (which fyi I have it till this moment with all of its childish scribbles and doodles) and I used to document my days. I used to document when the school takes us on trips or when an event happened like my birthday or when I got my first Playstation 1 and 2 (magical moments aren’t they)

As I grew older, I thought that having a diary is childish since you tend to write about your day and how you felt about it, you are exposing yourself deeply on pieces of paper. 

When you were a kid, you are not going to write a lot of events and the most embarrassing thing you might write is when you have a crush on a classmate (which it might become something in the future but ends after shifting classes or changing schools)

But as you grew older, you tend to write about personal things that might change the trajectory of your life (like changing your job or marriage) since you have to take important decisions and reflect on multiple past events and actions in details to be able to take the right action.

They might be embarrassing to have and the majority will opt to not write about those things because they fear the judgement of others. There is no shame on writing things down if it means to save you a huge amount of emotional distress and drama along with taking the right action.

Journaling was more of a brain dump to me, not only I used to write what I have done in a certain day to remember past actions in the future but reflect on what I should do. When you write everything down on paper, you tend to clear up space in your mind to think about other important things and not dwell on past events that we might overthink about.

Everyone has a story in my journals, and they have a story of their own

We always remember the bad things that a certain person have done to us in the past since it affects on an emotional level, yet we tend to forget about the good moments that happened in between that we always take for granted.

Not everyone is bad, deceiving, naive, or egoistic as you might think but we might face certain events that makes us focus on the bad things rather than judging them in a fair way. When you journal on a daily basis, you tend to capture those moments whether it was fun or not, then you would look at them in a third person perspective and judge that person for what he/she has done.

I have seen a lot of people coming in my life and going out for good but every one of them does have a story documented in my journals till eternity, and I am forever grateful for what they have provided. 

We might have shared good moments that worth remembering, and we might have faced obstacles that made us change directions in life, yet that doesn’t mean we should throw away all the good things from one bad moment, neglect the good that has been bestowed on us, or the good actions that we have done that might have changed someone else’s life for the better.

Everyone that I have met has a story worth talking and documenting about, the struggles and issues that this person is currently facing or faced in the past along the events this person deals with on a day to day basis.

And there is a set of people who decided to trust and talk about personal events that might have bothered them as a venting mechanism, ranging from abuse to psychological issues. Although I am not an expert in the psychology field but I have documented a fair amount of issues that I have never thought of and tried to comfort the other person as much as possible. 

You need to remember that everyone is fighting in this life to survive, yet each person’s battle is different from yours. The point is to be more sympathetic towards others and see the good that they have provided along with understanding their point of view and perspective of life with no judgement at all.

Yet the end, my journals are not documenting about my life solely but the lives of others who are sharing my days along the way.

This section is pretty straight forward: I have documented my progress on doing things in my life ranging from personal to professional milestones.

A good example is my reading challenge of 2020 when I decided to read 52 books for the entire year or 1 book a week (since a year is made up of 52 weeks). I wrote about the struggles and the upcoming thoughts that raced in my mind (one notable note is when I said that I have lost my mind for putting this high milestone) yet at the end I have achieved it and it was easier than I have expected it.

Not only documenting your crafts but advancing your toolset like I have upgraded from regular notebooks to leather styled notebooks and shifted my pens from ballpoint to fountain pens that I fill them up using an ink bottle (which not only easier to use but more economical and environmental)

We tend to dwell ourselves for what we have done wrong and wish if we can go back in time and fix these mistakes, neglecting all the good we have done or learn from the process.

When you document your life, not only you will remember the good things that you have done but be more forgiving to yourself for the bad things that occurred and learn from it. 

You are able to identity what are the key major actions that caused this certain event and learn to prevent them in the future or don’t do something similar. 

There are times that the blame is not on us but we carry those burdens on our shoulders for no reason, this happens due to a lack of clarity and understanding of the event itself which journaling tend to solve by giving you a source of truth of facts and events to judge and take action from.

24 April 2019 marks the two year anniversary of daily journaling, I have been documenting in details every single day for the past two years

We encounter various people on a day to day basis, on a shallow level you won’t figure out the good and the bad until you get to know the person better.

Not everyone is willing to expose certain aspects of their lives, this is due to the fact that this person fears the judgement that will impose upon expression hence he/she will create a fictional character or a fictional self for others to see. This character is structured to fit in society, we would think of it as a trusted source of knowledge or help. 

We don’t know the intentions that linger inside of this person’s mind and since we follow society’s rule of giving and taking hence we tend to help this individual similarly to when they helped us but the story doesn’t end here, it is the start.

Unlike previous blogposts that I have talked about ego, this one is different. Rather than attacking those individuals directly, this blogpost serves as a third person perspective to see what do these individuals think and see.

By putting myself in the other person’s place and seeing myself in a third person perspective, I am able to see things differently to a point that I have imposed certain egoistic actions without my knowing in the past.

Keep in mind that this is not a blogpost talking about someone in particular but a reflection from daily journaling.

Everyone is born with good wills and intentions

There is saying: ’nobody is born evil, but they might become one’ and I stand by it. Every single parent wants the best for their children and raise them on their best behavior, this reflects the family’s good manners and name to society through nice intentions and wording like you won’t think about a certain family in a bad way if they have treated you in a respectful manner

Then why do people bad things in the first place?

This is when ego interferes and make you act without thinking or consideration of the other person.

Let us say that you are friends with X and this friendship kicked off to a point that you stood next to X on his/her tough times and he/she stood next to you through your tough times. 

Time passed by and X wants to start a business, he/she called you to be partners in this business since there is this trust that is between you guys.

Things went as expected and business is booming but one of your family members is in the hospital or that you are finishing your master thesis or an unexpected event needs your full attention, you are unable to help X since this event is occupying a good portion of your time.

You tried reasoning with X about this event and it is crucial to get it done, X didn’t like this and demanded that you focus on the business or else you are out. Without taking into consideration what is going on in your life and being an understanding person that he/she was before, X resolved to use his/her ego as a source of decision rather than the mind.

You have to take the decision of either backing off from that event that is crucial for you to help X or get out of the business that you have nurtured with all of your love and focus.

If you surrendered to X then X’s ego won over you and there is a high chance that this ego will outgrow on you again in the future to a point that X will make you do things you don’t want to do but will threaten to ditch you out of the business every single time, even on the smallest mistakes.

If you ditched X then you have followed your ego and betrayed a good friend which not only marks you as a traitor, as an egoistic individual since things could have been solved in a different way, you and X could have reached to a middle ground but didn’t. Not only X will look at you in a different way but will spread news about what you did from his/her perspective which will influence other common friends opinions about you.

In your perspective it might be the right decision to ditch but in X’s perspective you cared about yourself and not about him/her.

It is audacious for X to force you to do things you don’t want to do yet our good nature and intentions will make you do it regardless hence forming a toxic friendship based on dominance and ego when it should be based on trust and cooperation.

This dilemma is somewhat the backbone of toxic events which will negatively affect everything around you like relationships, businesses, and many more.

No matter what you tried to do, there is no middle ground that would benefit both parties: one party will lose and the other one will win.

When a party loses, they will come up with excuses to fill up the void of losing to make themselves feel better in life, it is nothing more than a coping mechanism to bare an event that happened in a way they didn’t anticipate at all. This party is trying to make themselves feel better by saying that life is unfair or the system is rigged rather than accepting the painful truth that has been imposed on them.

The winning party will take pride in what it has accomplished and it will try to dominate other parties to make their egoistic accomplishments bigger and louder, till one day a new party comes along and wins over them, taking all their accomplishments and achievements to the ground.

This phenomenon happens on a daily basis from work to your love life where one person has to dominate and the other should listen/follow/do without question nor hesitation.

When the losing party loses constantly, it is pretty obvious that the winning party will start to abuse the losing party to do things they don’t want to do in the first place.

Take for example being in a marriage with someone, this person proved you wrong on something and hold into it to a point that what you do, it is wrong. 

Fast forward 2 years later and everything you do is wrong, that person drove the family towards debt and poverty along with the fact that you are forced to work in odd jobs to make this failed marriage float and not hurt the children but you cannot talk things around nor suggest better ideas because everything you do is wrong. In this position, you are not going to stay in the same place but find a solution: divorce and take the children away.

What would society label you? A traitor, a whore, a slut, Casanova, and other naming. The person who framed this image of you in society is your ex soul mate who cannot bare what you have done, because you have decided to ditch him/her for your own sake or in other terms: you won over the abusive relationship but in reality you are trying to survive in a better condition than you are currently in.

Preventing ego from taking over in the first place

The solution in my perspective is to settle the issue from the beginning and admit that both parties are losers and winners. In other words: it is showing to each party where they have won and where they have lost so that each party sees that they indeed lost in places but not in everything (this applies for winning)

When we see things in black and white, it is easy to categorize things based on color but in reality, there are million of shades in between both parties can be grey but one can be dark shaded than the other (or vise versa) but both of them are grey, not black and not white.

This breaks down those egoistic actions because you are like everyone else, it wouldn’t make sense to overtake someone and other people overtaking you.

Each person should appreciate what he/she has at the current moment, there is no shame to aim for higher positions or better offers but not on the expense of others, either give that person the recognition they deserve or don’t benefit from anyone in the first place.

If things aren’t working with the other party even if you tried reasoning or middle grounding then you can leave and find something better to do than staying with someone that will lead you to nowhere.

This is a purposed solution that fits in certain conditions but not all, trying to find a solution for every problem originated from ego is like searching for a specific fish in the ocean when you can go to a pet store and buy that fish. Use your own wisdom and judgement to lead the way for a better and healthier paths in life.

when you are trying to do the right thing but the other person doesn't agree

This blog post is based on the reflections that I have written in both of my second and third journals, the intentions of writing this very blog post are not to show that I had a good year but rather to show the lessons that I have learned throughout this journey.

This blogpost is not here to write about what are my goals for 2021 nor talk about the good stuff that I have done in 2020 but rather the things that I have learned in between, those hard lessons that really left an impact. If you are expecting some goals or plans then I am sorry, you can ask about them privately in a direct message or talk about them on a cup of coffee at Starbucks then I would have the honors to do so otherwise you can skip this blog post all together since it might/might not serve you any benefits.

I didn't write this blog post as a method of lecturing people or any of that sort, but rather as a note to myself to live and meditate on. I don't have an audience in mind plus I don't intend on having one in the first place. 

This blog post and the upcoming ones are not here to lecture you and tell you that the path I am on is the right path, but rather as a guide that you may or may not consider. As we all have different points of view and different ideas of life itself, you might see it in a different direction. Some might see these points as informative and helpful while some might think that it is a direct attack on them or conflicts with their morals and ego, it is your responsibility on how you see it since you are the judge of that.

I was and still hesitant about writing this blog post. Unlike the things I have written before from previously deleted blog posts along with the words and sentences that live in my journal, I am taking a new approach to everything: I am not going to write any of that.

I usually write about the good stuff in life that I have accomplished like reading 52 books, earning a certain certification, or getting lucky in life. Although the intentions are to share the good things and make a good impression/motivation for others yet I realized that I haven't taken into consideration the people around me and how they view it. Upon reflection and realization that I saw myself as a showoff, a self-centered asshole who only cared about himself, and I was trying really hard to impress the people around me without knowing that I have been doing it in an egoistic way or sometimes trying to prove that I am better than the people around me.

Hence I'll take a different route and just move on in life, those milestones are to prove to myself that I am moving on and progressing in life but not as a mechanism of showing off. It seemed that it doesn't bring any benefits but rather problems and pain.

Yes, I still fill my fountain pens using an ink bottle that I carry around in my bag.

Yes, I still stay at night writing code and do weird stuff.

Yes, I still journal and starting a new journal in these upcoming days.

Yes, I still organize my day in a separate notebook and structure my day, week, month, and year in sprints.

Those are not going to change but you probably don't care about them anyway so why sharing them in the first place? 

Trust me to ditch social media, it is not the real world

That world that you see online is not what you think it is, everyone is trying to show you the good parts of their lives but not the bad ones. We all have problems that we face on a day-to-day basis but we don't talk about them either it is forbidden/taboo or fearing that someone might mock/envy us.

The problem is that social media gives every single human on the planet a voice, but the issue is that not every voice is worth listening to. If you ever read The Odyssey by Homer, it explains the story of Ulysses who almost got killed by sea witches known as "The Sirens"

The Sirens pretend to be beautiful women with amazing voices, try to assure sailors, who pass their island, that they just want to entertain them with beautiful melodies. What they really want, however, is to kill them. Although Ulysses gave beeswax to his sailors to soften it and put it in their ears to prevent hearing those melodies as a gift from the goddess Circe, he ordered them to tie him completely to the boat just to see what Circe meant about those melodies. As he got enchanted by their voices, he demanded multiple times from his sailors to untie him so he can swim to them but upon arriving near the island, Ulysses saw two beautiful women combing their long golden hair, calling after him but what the sailors saw were two hungry monsters with crooked claws waiting for their next target.

Ulysses came back to his sense, later on, realized that he got saved from a catastrophe. The point of this story is that not everything you see or listen to is real on social media, and every single day we see more of those "Sirens" popping up.

Keep things to yourself more often and say that you don't know

We all have stories to share and ideas to spread but not everything we talk or share with might bring us any benefits. I have learned this lesson three years later where I shared my perspective about something three years ago with someone yet to find out that I got reminded by this person about it. Ashamed about the fact that this perspective was completely wrong but back then I thought I knew what I am doing, in reality, I wasn't at all.

if you don't know something don't make a hypothesis about it from your perspective nor come up with something completely different just to show that you are right. Say that you don't know, say that you will search for an answer and get back to it but give a genuine and authentic answer, don't bullshit on people.

It might give you a boost of ego for a small while but it will come back to you if things go south with this person, like Russian roulette: there is a 1/6 chance of being hit by a bullet, that doesn't mean that you won't die from it.

It is okay to do some mistakes if you are willing to admit that you did them

We all know this famous sentence of "It is not me man!!! I didn't do it!", I see it on a day to day basis not to forget that I have used it a lot in the past. It works for a while till you cry wolf the third time and find out that nobody will believe you anymore.

The process of growth starts from accepting our mistakes not by blaming others for them. Accept the consequences and move on, it will bring more shame not accepting the mistake than the mistake itself.

We all have things that we want to do in our lives but sometimes we might get distracted like a moth to a light bulb chanting "OHHHH SHINY OBJECT!" or we might be in a very bad position that anything that looks and seems good might be a trap or not worth it.

A lot of people approach me with their million-dollar idea, a plan for settling in Amsterdam if they have 10K$ in their pockets, and how bad and underpaying their current job is. But ironically we might have encountered some opportunities that might have helped in achieving this goal or task but we were afraid to do so.

We are so afraid that we call the people who did it lucky or plain bullshitters (depending on your perspective of life, you will be the judge of that). But if we took that extra risk then it might have yielded something better later on even if the current benefit might not yield much. 

I am not the kind of person who expects an "end of the road" in a tunnel in fact I am the kind of guy who doesn't expect an end in the first place, but I am a firm believer that one of those roads might lead to somewhere. It doesn't matter where but I would say that it is better than staying in the same place. You might not reach the end but at least the adventures are worth talking about.

So it is more about working on something to get it and not sitting on your butt expecting it to come to you on a plate of gold then I would encourage you and wish you luck on your long journey, and if you think about the law of attraction that this thing will come to you if you sat on your butt and thought about it all day long then good luck buddy.

"Most real failures are due to limitations which men set up in their own minds" - Napoleon Hill, Outwitting the devil

You don't have to buy expensive stuff to show everyone that you are rich, life is not about how many cars you have in your garage nor the furniture in your triplex apartment. You can live in a decent apartment and have a Honda Civic while being rich with seven figures and all.

Being rich is the ability to see the people you care about safe and sound, work on yourself by learning new things constantly, and stay on the morals and believes that you are raised on. It sickens my heart seeing the poor fooling themselves and others into buying things they can't afford to please people that don't care about them, because they know deep inside that they will never be those kinds of people and not in a million years.

The world doesn't owe you anything, so stop chasing things that were not meant for you. If you had everything that you truly need from the beginning then there shouldn't be a reason to go after the things that weren't meant for you, just to show and impress others that we have it.

Two years ago, I started journaling on a day to day basis. Sure, there are some days that I have missed but I sure wrote the hell out of those other days. Some were a couple of sentences while others are pages of ongoing events. Upon rereading those pages, I became more aware of myself and more conscious of my actions, I reached a position that I have done psychoanalysis on myself in full details which low key kinda interesting yet frightening.

Those pages grew to several books and as I am starting my fourth journal in the upcoming days, I realized a lot of things that I wasn't aware of myself. One of the things that I have discovered about myself is that I have what is called Hypergraphia which is a behavioral condition characterized by the intense desire to write constantly and on a day to day basis, the good thing about it is that it is the complete opposite of writer's block where I always have material to write about but it does have a bad part where it might go out of hand, and some notable people that have this condition are the likes of Vincent van Gogh, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Lewis Carroll. 

I can see myself in the third person when reading those journal entries, replaying those moments that I have lived before as if it is a simulation, and predict what to do next. In other words, I became aware of myself to a position that I am self-conscious (or some people say "being woke") of almost everything.

Identifying your strength and weak points is crucial to self-mastery, and when you are able to find out how the way your brain process ideas, you can use this to your advantage to learn almost anything in ease.

People with lies and ego leave, people with honesty and integrity stay

This will create some misunderstanding that I might be specifying a certain individual, but in reality, I am taking a more general approach to this. If you got triggered or affected by this then it might be something that you might have or have not done before with someone.

Lately, I have been canceling all my plans hanging out with others, even reaching a position of ditching those talkative yet annoying people with their useless gossip/conversations. I have obligations and work that I have to do in my life plus a real-life and career to focus on not to mention that lockdown is closing a lot of places hence there aren't that many options really. This canceling and ditching triggered certain people to a position of stopped talking with you altogether, unfollowing you/ blocking you/ ghosting you on social media to create a stand that they no longer care about you then talk behind your back as if they are the right ones.

Remember the part that I mentioned previously about social media that it gives voices to people but not all voices are right, well you know where I am heading on this.

The moral of this short paragraph is to show how ego takes over a human in unexpected ways, if they did this to you then they go "tough luck buddy! good luck finding someone like me!" mode but in reality, they did you a favor.

It is annoying to find some people in life disappear all the sudden but what really matters are the people that stay even if you don't talk/interact that much, they have already earned that friendship long ago so there is no reason for them to fight about it even if it means being with just three people, for it is better to have three people whom you trust than a thousand whom you don't.

There is still more to talk about but these are the lessons that I have learned throughout this journey, they might not be a lot but worth talking about. My journey is still at its beginning and there is so much to talk about later on.

I don't know where I might head towards but at least where I stand right now is in a better position than I was a couple of years before.

This is my thoughts of 2020 based on my journal entries

I’ve mentioned in the past that I will be taking breaks out of social media, I wouldn’t last more than 15 days but now I’ve decided to take this break for a long run.

I’ll start by writing the blog updates, then talk about the new journey that I am going to undergo, then mention why I am taking a break out of social media.

I have added a newsletter on the blog! You can find the submission form at the end of the post where I will be sending you one email every Monday of each week. 

Cancel anytime using the unsubscribe link inside of the email, there is an option to delete your email upon unsubscribing and download all the information related to you to provide more freedom over your information.

I have added a donation section at the end of the blog! You can donate from a small set of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, USDC, Dai, and Bitcoin Cash.

Donations are helpful in supporting this blog, it motivates and pushes me to write higher quality content for others to benefit along with buying equipment and software. My promise to my readers that I will never run ads at all and providing high quality content.

If you wished to support the blog, feel free to share and tag us! It will mean a lot.

To make it clear here, Transcendence has two meanings: Spiritual and Psychological. We’ll focus on the psychological part since this is the part that needs work on, whereas the spiritual part is covered. 

Transcendence is the realization that you are one small part of a greater whole, and acting accordingly. On a spiritual level, it means that you believe that God is above and beyond anything that exist in this world, no human can rival or claim to be of higher or similar level.

Transcendence on a psychological level is going towards a new level of development, it is the neglecting younger sibling of Actualization. I’ll use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to prove why it is vital.

For many years, Self-actualization dominated Maslow’s hierarchy, it is on the top of the hierarchy where below of it are esteem, love/belonging, safety, then physiological needs. Physiological needs are the bottom to prove how important it is for survival and the first step towards actualization and fulfillment. Maslow considered self-actualization the pinnacle of human development and the highest human need, it is the realization of one’s full potential. (In other words, you realize yourself when you are capable of finding out your true potential or the things that you excel at)

Self-actualization is indeed a goal worth development but self-transcendence is the next level. It is other-focused instead of self-focused and concerns higher goals than those which are self-serving.

Self-transcendence means transcending or expanding the individual self, meaning going beyond your own identity and understanding that you’re a small part of something bigger. The main reason that it is a difficult goal that requires hard work, due to the fact that you focus on others rather than yourself.

The journey starts by documenting my path in achieving this state, this is done by serving a purpose worth fighting for and ensure that others are benefitting from it.

Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self-s actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward - Viktor Frankl, Man's search for meaning

I have decided to decrease my online consumption to focus on the things that matter to me. Upon reading my reflections on my journals, I realized that social media played a huge role in my life where I have wasted a good amount doing nothing at all. 

There were days that I didn’t do a single task or learn anything useful, loafing at home doing nothing but scroll on social media after work. 

I realized that something off here and I want to address this issue. 

Here is my verdict towards social media in general:

I am not quitting all the sudden like that

The reason I can’t quit and move on is because there are benefits from social media, as in helping people in need.

I have received many messages from people asking for help on Facebook, Twitter, even Reddit. My posts and comments have shown  its effects to help others and made them pass the obstacles they were facing, I can’t stop like that.

A week ago from writing this blogpost, I got messaged by an 18 year old on Reddit who finished school and entering community college, he asked me how to start web development and what are the steps to get started. Like that, I felt this sense of appreciation and pride that my hard work paid off.

I have seen a lot of people online talk about doing a dopamine fast where they decrease their social media consumption to the absolute minimum for 30-40 days. The issue with this method that it is easy to relapse back to your old habits of scrolling through social media all day long because you give yourself permission to go back after that period.

The goal is to never get near to it as much as possible, there are other things in life that are more important than those platforms.

The constant hit of likes and notifications trigger our mind to release dopamine. We feel good for a short period, then we crave it more because we liked that good feeling that rushed into our minds, similarly to how a smoker feels towards cigarettes. The action itself can be harmful and we know about its effect yet that good feeling always want us to go back to it.

 The more notifications we get and the more likes we receive from posts and comments gives us a sense of prove that we are doing the right thing online, we are accepted as who we are, we are approved by this online tribe, more dopamine shots to our minds. 

 This never ending cycle is what called an “Infinite Dopamine Pool” (or “Infinite Pool” for short) since we can produce infinite amount of content and social media can show us infinite amount of content.

We feel special, we feel thought of by society, we feel that we are accepted and rightfully belong to this big online tribe that social media has created for us.

Yet again, we are lonely and friendless. How’s that? I have met people who have five thousand friends on Facebook yet no true friends.

The issue is that we can be who we want online, we can create a persona way different from who we are because we fear people judging our true selves, we create a character that fits perfectly in this online tribe not to be exiled. 

The moment we try to be real with people then get rejected for being ourselves, we create walls to protect ourselves and push that persona even more as a coping mechanism from being depressed. The more we get rejected, the higher the walls will become.

Deep inside, we don’t accept who we are unless we get approval from others and since our self is not approved of, we have to either get exiled from this big tribe or change ourselves to fit in.

Not everything you see online has to be real

I have mentioned in a previous blogpost that social media gives a voice to anyone on it, yet not all voices should be heard. You can drop fake information online and someone out of nowhere will accept what you are saying with the least amount of checking. 

The problem is that there is always a group of people who will accept and agree on what you say without checking at all. To them, it is a way to get back into the tribe if they were shunned out or reach to a higher position in the tribe’s hierarchy.

Even if they acknowledge that it is not right but if a group of people are doing it then they will have this feeling of missing out on an opportunity to shine in this tribe.

Lately, all social media platforms have turned to toxic environments. People ranting about anything that comes in front of them and shaming people for almost anything to make themselves look superior, powerful, or edgy.

As I mentioned before that people will believe anything they see online then they will fight anyone who proves them wrong. People hate to be proven wrong on social media since the evidence of their actions and mistakes will be marked  online forever.

If this person you are arguing with has a good amount of followers then they will be used as a pressure point to take you down. They will create fake news about you and cyber bully you to undermine and make you look weak online.

Let us say that things are going as intended in your life like you made a successful business or you have a wonderful family, people will start hating on you. You will be called out as fake, create fake allegations that your business is a fraud, create false information that you are having affairs against your marriage, and many more.

The problem is that not everyone wishes the best for the people around them. To them, life is unfair since they never got what they wanted. They will undermine successful people in society as a ‘getting even’ method rather than working on themselves to become better in life.

There is always that one person who claims: “I love to do [subject], but I don’t like to practice it”. It is evident that you could write that person off. As everyone knows, if you want to be [doer of subject/ profession], you have to practice it.

I call these people human spam. They’re everywhere, and they exist in every profession. They don’t want to pay their dues, they want their piece right here, right now. They don’t want to listen to your ideas; they want to tell you theirs. They don’t want to go to shows, but they thrust flyers at you on the sidewalk and scream at you to come to theirs. 

You should feel pity for these people and their delusions. At a certain point, they didn’t get the memo that the world owes none of us anything.

The world becomes all about them and their work. They can’t find the time to be interested in anything other than themselves.

This gets worse when you are dealing with a troll, and those people come out of nowhere and popup in unexpected place.

A troll is a person who isn’t interested in improving your work, provoking you with hateful, aggressive, or upsetting talk. You will gain nothing by engaging with these people. Don’t feed them, and they’ll go away.

The rise of fake influencers and fake gurus

I want to be clear in this section that I am not targeting someone specific, this is my two cents on the whole situation. There are legit influencers and gurus who are helping the community achieve certain milestones but I am mentioning the bad apples from the good ones here.

All the sudden you start seeing those influencers on Instagram pop out of nowhere posting life tips, advice on how to get rich quick with drop shipping/stocks or forex day trading/selling useless courses, advice on how to quit your 9 to 5 job along with becoming your own boss, and how to become famous online.

Everybody wants to get rich quick, everyone wants to escape the rat race, everyone wants to become their own boss, and everyone wants to become famous online, what do you do? Sell courses on how to achieve this.

Just because it worked out for certain people, it doesn’t mean that it will workout for everyone. But people want to get rich without doing any effort, the ones who are making the money are the people who are doing these tricks and selling you those services by click funneling and upselling you to buy things that it will never work.

Try telling them that the only way to get rich requires hard work, loads amount of time, a realistic product or service, and those courses are a scam and they won’t work, you will be cyber bullied by their loyal fans in a matter of minutes. Try asking for the numbers, high chance either you will get fake numbers or no response at all.

The world is a vast yet beautiful place, it has a lot things you can do. Activities like going out bungie jumping or hiking, reading, writing, traveling (although the covid situation made it hard but in the future), meet interesting people, try foreign foods and drinks, and many more.

You don’t get to this online, life is not bound to a screen. I work the majority of my time in front of a screen, I return back home to check social media on my phone till bed time then the cycle repeats itself.

I realized that this life is not worth living for. I can do much more than that, I started to read and write on a daily basis. It is odd for someone who work in the technical world telling you to decrease your screen time to the absolute minimum, like I use a physical notebook as a planner to write my tasks for the day because I know if I used an app to schedule my tasks for the day, I will start doing things that I shouldn’t be doing like searching on Google “Why the toilet flushes in the opposite direction in Australia” (no jokes search for it, this is something real and debated about but you should be doing in your free time).

You can be you without changing or approval from others

I've added two new features to the blog and taking a break out of social media

This is probably the 5th if not 6th time redoing the blog but I have a legit reason this time

the previous blog was created using a Gatsby template which served its purpose but adding one thing or removing something was somewhat of a pain so I decided to take matters into my hand and redo it from scratch.

The Gatsby template relied on a git-based CMS called Forestry (tho the UI of Forestry is lit 🔥  and I really liked it) but it is time to move to a new CMS! so I chose Prismic which offered a very generous free tier (and an actual client library to mess around with 🤷‍♀️)

I went beyond the edge and used Nextjs and Tailwind, rewrote the entire thing from scratch even though I have postponed the development of the site for quite some time (exactly 3 months, it should have been finished 3 months ago but anyway)

This is a beta version of the site, there are a lot of things that needs modifications and a lot of features coming on the way but for a starting point it is not bad

you can access this admin section and post whatever you want! no restrictions no boundaries whatsoever!

Better SEO, Better analytics, Better tagging

in the previous template, it lacked SEO to a point that any blogpost pointed to nowhere. This time I have written the SEO tags according to the standards so they should appear on Facebook, Google, and Twitter as expected.

The site now uses Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics as expected, this functionality is also written from scratch whereas the previous site relied on a Gatsby plugin (and it was performing poorly)

This version of the blog is optimized for performance and speed, although it is still in beta mode the results are not so bad after all! There is more room for improvement but as a starting point, it is not that bad.

2020 was tough, I stopped blogging for quite some time to focus on the things that mattered the most. Now that I have recreated the blog and starting to have a little bit of time on my hand, I might dedicate around 30 mins to write more.

I used to write a blogpost and spam it on Facebook, even though some might be interested yet the majority aren't so I have decided to post it on the Facebook page and some subreddit groups on Reddit where it reaches the right people. I might utilize the Instagram page to add the blog posts there as well.

As for the content, I have made a promise in the past that I will deliver high-quality content and I am still on my promise.

here are the upcoming features that I have in mind for the next update:

Newsletter (serverless, secure, and always on the first day of the month but also made from scratch)

Support page (if you felt that the blog is benefiting you and you wish to support it)

Book recommendations page (separate thing and it can be included in the newsletter)

Contact page (plans is to make a Slack bot not emails which are easier for me to manage)

rewrote the whole thing from scratch, but this time it is quite different! I promise

Discover my journey

I have organized all of my journey related blog posts here

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