Everything Under the Sun

Q Category 1: Humanities  A. Hillsdale College Online Courses (+120 hours)      1. Politics      2. History      3. Literature      4. Philosophy and Religion      5. Natural Sciences B. Jordan Peterson Personality Course (15 hours)     10 episodes and an assessment  Category 2: Science A. Andrew Huberman Neuroscience Podcasts (+100 hours)      50+ episodes Category 3: Chess A. Gotham Chess Courses (25 hours)      1. E4 New York Style - With White  (In progress)      2. E6B6 New York Style - With Black      3. D4 Dynamite - With White Category 4: Books A. Science: 4  (80 hours) B. Psychology: 3  (60 hours) C. Politics: 1 (20 hours) 1. Lifespan - David Sinclair  (In Progress)  2. 12 More Rules for Life - Jordan Peterson  3. Hunter Gather Guide to 21st Century - Brett Weinstein  4. Why We Sleep - ...

  Fitness Goals 1.  Running     a. 10k (Around the Crown year 2)     b.  Half Marathon     c. Full Marathon 2.  Lifting        a. 185 lbs with 10% body fat          b. 275 bench @ 5 reps, 365 squat @ 5 reps, 495 deadlift @ 5 reps  3.  Eating         a. Limit dessert to 2x weekly       b. Cook meals 5x weekly      d. Resveratrol and NMN powder 7x weekly     e. Cut out chips/processed foods 5x weekly Career Goals 1. Promotion to Sr. Financial Analyst by July 2022 (Q3) 2. Reevaluate current job in June 2022 (4 year mark at Amazon) 3. Reevaluate MBA in April 2022    Personal Goals 1. Writing        a. One published essay/poem per month every month in 2022 2.  Sleep        a. Asleep by 11:00 pm 5x weekly 3.  Chess   ...

At the end of each of the last 3 years, I've sat alone, in the isolation of my temporary domicile, trying to extrapolate learnings and themes from the previous 365 days - searching for some parcel of wisdom nestled among the many weeks of complexity and dynamism that formed the year. Then, I'd write a yearly reflection, To 2018 , To 2019 , To 2020 . This year, the search was laborious, but after hours of contemplation, 2021 did not fail to provide plentiful bounty. 2021 was a year of much growth for me. In many ways, this year was the culmination of a decade of hard work and focus. As a result, I feel, for the first time in my adult life, that my domicile is no longer temporary. I feel, after many years of determination and toil, that my life is harmonizing with my vision. And I feel, despite the litany of flaws I've either yet to improve upon or yet to discover, that the current version of myself is one I can hang my hat on. As I look to 2021, much has happened this year. ...

I'm neither a scientist nor a philosopher.  I'm simply a commoner with a desire,  Knowing not how and why to ponder, The great beyond and my feeling of wonder. If I am anything, I am an explorer. Navigating a labyrinth in dark ocean water.  But with each reoccurrence of a new day, I grow fonder, Of the life I've built, that I continue to discover.  And contrary to the opinion of the popular, It takes time for the truth to uncover. My journey is where the road meets the rubber. And it turns out patience is the antonym of suffer. There are days where the Sun simply does not stutter, When nightfall arrives on time, leaving nothing asunder. And in the thousandth of a second I see lighting before thunder, I remember I am captivated by a perpetual ponder. 

In the chaos of my life I find stillness in my mind. As my diaphragm violently expels the CO2 from my lungs I find a solace so deep, so instantiated in a circuitry as old as the oak trees in my periphery, that I wonder if I will return. In the coming 9 minutes I am to be reminded of my mortality. I grasp at life itself, fighting for each step, battling for each breath. My body, powerful and durable, an unfathomably intelligent machine birthed by supernova and forged by 100 million years of survival, responds to the imaginings occupying my subconscious - a dozen men, hands reaching towards me. They want my job. They want my girl. They want my friends, my possessions, my wealth. They want my family. They want my life. Chills run down my back, meeting the serratus and oblique muscles straining to support my legs. I curse the elevation in front of me. No matter how hard I train, how viscerally I feel the enemy in my mind, no matter the years of effort, contemplation, and focus, this fuckin...

Black holes are invisible to the naked eye. They can only be detected by their event horizon or their proximal distortion of reality. In that way they are the perfect analogy to chronic illness. Much of chronic illness is internal reality, invisible to the world, only partially realizable by external indicators. For as long as I can remember, I've battled the gravitational pull of my disease - desperately trying not to fall too close and slip into the abyss.  Irritable bowel syndrome, characterized by twin siblings, Crohns and Ulcerative Colitis, is a massive, powerful, black hole of unknown depth and intensity. Like a blackhole, it is phagocytic. It sucks my lifestyle in. It sucks my relationships in. It sucks my family and friends in. It sucks my emotions in. It sucks my body in. It grows larger every day, and it has inevitable consequences. It is a tiring and inescapable continuum. But it is not a futile one. The struggle and strife of a two decade long battle is unquantifiable....

The ebb and flow of the waves, steadily whispers my name, Stay. Stay. Stay. Remain for the rest of your days, away from the modern craze.  Oh to hop on a plane and find myself far from disarray. It's a reverie I must say, but it was once an actual day in May.  I'd like nothing more than to retreat back to my seat in Hanalei. For that week I was a bum on the beach with not a worry to be seen, And not to be found by anyone who knew me, what a treat. The heat and scenery treated me like a king, like I was born and raised in the ring, Of volcanoes in the Pacific where many find themselves peaceful and serene. And in Kauai I found the same thing, I'll be back soon, at a date TBD, To that island that was once but a dream.  

When I was a child I can remember wishing I was older. It would seem, through the litany of anecdotal evidence, that this is an innate aspect of youth and naivety - yearning for and pedestaling the days when you can drive, then when you can drink, then when you have your own place. And then, such is life, it all happens. And like the cliché goes, you long for the days when you were young - when responsibility was absent, when the hours were simpler, and even perhaps when you knew less. Ignorance really was bliss, and it marked the days of youth. The profundity of this pendulum mindscape is of great interest to me. Frankly it's odd and worth thinking about. It would seem it serves no purpose biologically. Our dopamine systems are predicated on forward progress, yet, for most of us, at some point, we desire the past, which would appear to be the antithesis of progression. I've understood at least part of this in the last few years. We don't always want what we can't yet h...

In this moment, I believe I am weak.  I'm unfit to claim fitness in this fitment I call my physique.  And on this night, I cannot sleep.  For in my dreams, Mal appears on repeat, with a dagger that cuts deep.  Her message relayed without speech, "your progeny is unfit for my seed". God, it's as if no time has passed since that week.  And oh the events that would proceed, could make a bold man meek. But whatever it is about this you may think, you're mistaken indeed. This is a ballad on the balance of self-esteem, not a soliloquy about poor pitiful me. An antidote obtainable with feats, like summiting a peak, without the oxygen to breathe. Frankly, I'm commenting on the activity of viability and its accompanying mystique. And like life is brief, and such is the simile, so to will I be, explicit in my speech, Ironically, and luckily for me, there were thirteen givers of sanguis. So I mustn't behave solipsistically but channel this vulnerability, once met wit...

By a myriad of muses, I find myself touched by music.  The sound of the movement, of her vocal chords is beauty.  Oh the amalgamation of vibration, I'll never get used to it. I don't know why I'm affected as I am, but damn. It's as though I'm Adam in the Creation of Man. Instead of God, it's a B Minor reaching out to my hand. With every note struck, I'm held captive to this madness. I'm flattened, and find this pattern impossible to fathom. Like a ripple in the fabric, creation had happened. To the producer, never stop what you do. You bring from the heavens a jewel. You can turn a wise man into a fool. A simple exercise into a school.  My ears are to music what my soul is to fuel.

The years have faces. With eyes, now shut, seen many moons faded. We are the product of people and places. And somehow, somewhere, a tree was created. I wonder what that tree was made of. Who might have rested under her, where it was shaded? And where might the wind have blown the seeds of her making? History is often nameless, Timeless and dateless, Amidst the movement of the ages. But I feel that history in my veins and,  I feel the stories that have taken place in,  A dozen towns and cities that remained. And in another dozen that are degraded. The faces of the generations, posthumously waiting,   In patience, breath abated, While yet another tree is originating. To sprout another lineage, beautifully latent. This is the cycle of life, fugacious and nascent. And we are the fruit of the tree, temporal and sacred.

All the days of my life have seen to it that I write these words. The experiences of my time collide, and clarity emerges. In the midst of that great chaos, I took a hard look at my assertions. I dealt with my burdens and now good fortune bourgeons. A magnificent tree beckons before me, and I'm awestruck by its beauty. And the regret I once felt flees, as gratitude accompanies the certainty. Although I certainly wish that some things had happened differently, I ought to be, cognizantly, more accustomed to life's unpredictability. It's indeed the treasure of consciousness to know your own mind. To place great importance on the position you occupy in time. But it's equally meaningful to recognize the vanity of this line:  "I have the answers, the rhythm and rhyme of this life are mine" I see now, that in this life, if you are awake and alive, Each new day there is a sun rise, more than just the sun shines. The lessons of time plot a line, and form Jacob's La...

Psychologists and philosophers alike have devoted centuries' long research to the various stages of the human psyche - charting our conscious path through this life, on aggregate. Much of said research has been focused on adolescent development with far fewer attention given to the stages of adulthood. Psychologists like Freud and Jung prioritized the adult consciousness in their work, viewing it as a superposition of adolescent precondition and mature designation, albeit less concretized simply due to the mathematical consequentiality for which the influence of conscious choice complicates. Life is like a game of chess, there are only so many "openings", but after just the first 4 moves it contains almost infinite possibilities. There are patterns in the end game, when the pieces are reduced to the minimum, but it is almost impossible to study the middle game, which is the vast majority of duration. This analogy lays the groundwork for the rationalization of a deep conne...

Sometimes I wonder what it's all for. In these smoke filled rooms the truth is obscure. The wisdom of my forefathers appears like a blur.  And I question the real reasons that things occur.  Am I the only one who dreams of a future, In which liberty and strength are essential to culture? Where the seed of freedom is accessible to nurture, And the safety of my family is something I can ensure. I wish I was more positive about the direction of modernity.  I wish my children could be confident in the idea of meritocracy. Where conservatism and virtue weren't staples of the heterodoxy. But cornerstones of every street corner in the Land of the Free. I wish I could be me without the repercussions of tyranny. Freedom has never been free, we will always fight to make it reality. 

I ask myself, am I worthy?  As prospect dawns and opportunity arises, I wonder, have I taken the right journey? Do I deserve it?  When the conversation strikes and the truth emerges, Did I earn it?  Suddenly I lash out, and question the questioner; You, who know nothing of my character,  Will be judge, juror and executioner? And should the gavel deem irredeemable,  What then, for this man in the mirror? What then, am I to do with this fear? And then a calm comes over me, and answers appear. I remember the nights I clutched my gut in despair.  And I remember the decisions I made without anyone near. Deep in my heart I know my intentions are sincere. I leave the question of my worth to the wisdom of years, And let my actions speak louder than the words in your ears.

When I entered college in 2014 I was naïve. I was underdeveloped. I wasn't anywhere near the person I am today. But that is why young people are full of potential. The duty bestowed upon a young individual is to convert that potential into kinetic energy - to make something of themselves. I had interests back then, I've always been interested in cars and sports and politics. I had some knowledge and some experience. But I had little direction. I knew what I needed to do but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew what the world told me I needed to be, but I didn't know who I wanted to be.  When I met Zach I was a Sophomore in college, but when I really met him, I was a Junior. Coming off a devastating breakup, he was there as a true, genuine friend, no strings attached, no biases, no barriers. Zach is an introvert, like myself, and introverts channel their quiet focus into interests and introspection, sometimes singularly and even sometimes detrimentally. He'd spe...

Shortly after the three of us finished our first collaborative essay, 20 Questions , we had discussions about the process and the results. We agreed, everything about it was interesting, from the complexity of the questions to the varying lengths of the answers provided. We concluded that the exercise provoked a sense of intellectual stimulation in a communal medium. It was a conceptual landscape we had yearned for and rarely got the opportunity to engage with. There is something genuinely exciting about getting to compare your ponderings with friends, especially when those friendships are deep and meaningful. Through some effort and luck, we’ve contrived an ecosystem built on a triad of respect, admiration, and enjoyment. This exercise is an expression of that ecosystem through the lens of curiosity, thought, and discussion. Without further ado, here’s 21 More Questions from Alpha Beta Gamma. Table of Contents Question 1 What does the ideal state of Human-AI Interaction look like?...