Sonic X Season 1

I just finished the first season of Sonic X.

I plan on watching the other two but I wanted to take the time to ingest the first batch of episodes.

When I first discovered Sonic was getting an animation it was in a video game magazine. I wouldn’t be able to tell you which magazine. At this time, this was how we all got our gaming news. Flip through a magazine and read through delayed news coverage. That’s right, things were not instantaneous. Apparently Sonic had an animation running over in Japan. This was exciting to me as I was heavy into Sonic Adventure, so I craved more story. Unfortunately once I sat down and watched its first airing I was not impressed, but thought, ”it’s just the first episode”. Turned out that was the best. At least from what I saw at the time. The more I watched it, the more I realized it was a show for kids much younger than me. I tuned out and decided I had better things to do than to watch the “Chris Thorndike show”. I would see it randomly from time to time and watch it passively but I always knew this show wasn’t for me. Though the space episodes intrigued me. Why are they in space? Maybe I’ll find out later.

Many years later I decided to sit down and watch. I didn’t binge the show. I actually don’t like binging content anymore. I like to give episodes breathing room. To my surprise, this series was not really episodic it’s very much serialized. If you watch it in order changes actually carry over to the next episode. This was interesting and made the stories have more substance. Isolated it was hard to care about all the issues the characters encountered. Honestly 80% of the episodes felt like filler, but in that filler the story did move forward and characters were built up. By the end you knew these characters better than when they were introduced.

I noticed through the season, they would send Sonic on a wild goose chase to take him out of the episode for a bit. Like in ”S01E11 - Fly Spy“, the president sends out a trap to capture Sonic. For this episode he searches for an emerald but Rouge tricks him and leaves him looking for the emerald in the wrong place, taking him out of the story to allow Rouge to be the main character for some time. In this plot Rouge is given time to interact with the human characters, building our appreciation for Rouge and her new companion Topaz. This is the “quiet before the storm”, the next couple of episodes are a big battle against Eggman.

One change I don’t appreciate about this show is the X-wing Tornado. It’s now a generic transformer military grade aircraft. I much preferred the old propeller plane tornado. It had much more character than this futuristic fighter jet. Also, what the fuck, these minors are flying jets and nobody bats an eye. Totally did not realize that. I also never appreciated Tails as a genius fox. I think that is too overpowering as Eggman is already an evil genius. Takes away the wit versus integrity.

Watching this more than 20 years later I can appreciate it more for what it is. I’ve, by this point, accepted that characters’ voices will change. Speaking of voice acting, I can recall the backlash to the new 4Kids voice actors. I was not in that bubble but even I noticed the reduced quality in the voice acting. Tails was very girly (many acquaintances thought he was a girl fox), Knuckles sounds too much like Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh, and Eggman had this undertone to his voice that I hated. This would eventually change for me as now I can’t imagine Eggman as any other voice. Pollock, Eggman’s voice actor, really improved the voice in the 2008 game Sonic Unleashed where Eggman’s voice got a lot raspier. If I was 5 at the time this would have been my show, but I was 13 when it finally aired in the US. I watched this and said this is not for me. Worse than that, the only episodes I saw were the syndicated reruns that seemed to only be the fillers. If the show consisted of episodes similar in scope of episode 1 and the final episode 26, this would have been a much better show.

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

There is always news about some AI saying some sketchy thing like “we need to destroy the human race” or whatever, and it gets discussed to death. Many outlets feel it’s a precursor to AGI and proof that AI will destroy us. Destroying us may be a thing, but what people don’t realize is the way AI speaks is what is in its training data. It is not having a fully coherent thought, instead it is calculating, in a black box I might add, the most statistically fitting words chained together.

Most of the training data that exists on AI is all theories on how AI will destroy us. So if you tell an LLM that it is an AI it will statistically word its sentences to speak in a way that is congruent with the writings of AI in the past. It is not doing hard calculations to come to a conclusion that humans need to be destroyed; it is merely auto-correcting sentences to fit was has been previously typed. It’s a parrot with the ability to mimic in metaphors. Sure, this is a bit of oversimplification and these generated works can expand the intended responses but it will always be restrained.

What people don’t realize is with the way LLMs are designed, we are not looking at created life. It may turn out to be a vertical slice of AI, or AGI as we move the goalpost, but as it stands we can’t be fooled into thinking we have already arrived. We are not peering into thoughts of another intelligent life. These apocalyptic predictions are not founded on the ambitions of life. Instead it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. We trained these LLMs on what we feared an AI would say, so these LLMs are saying what an AI would probably say… solely based on the training data.

Never too late to watch Frankenstein 1931

I watched the original Frankenstein movie for the first time. I’ve always enjoyed the few old monster movies I’ve watched but I never sought them out. The other day I watched a video from Cinamassacre. There James Rolfe lists out a bunch of Sci-fi movies. A lot of the movies on this list are movie I’ve always wanted to just sit down and watch. More than 10 years ago I remember learning about this film called Plan 9 from Outer Space. It was a low budget “B” film made by someone named Ed Wood. A delusional mind that always thought he was on to something amazing, kind of reminds me of grind culture today. If Ed Wood was alive today I can definitely imagine him promoting his low effort films on LinkedIn along with inspirational text on photos of self-proclaimed self-help authors. But this is not about bad old B-films, although I’d like to get into that. This is about an old A-film. One of the king of monsters, Frankenstein.

Thanks to this video I have a list of films to watch

Before I watched the film I kind of knew what I was getting into. I mean this monster is at the pinnacle of popular culture. I know the famous line “It’s Alive!” and I knew there was a moment where this monster showed its human side. But even then I watch this film on my iPad Pro with its dual layered OLED screen in a dark setting (not exactly sure what the screen tech is actually called). This meant that the scene where the monster comes alive was really pronounced. For those of you that don’t know OLED blacks are black. The individual pixels are completely shut off and the whites are pixels that are tuned on, and the iPads screen can get pretty bright. So the flashing lights, the sound of storms, the crackling electricity as well as the well acted anticipation from Dr. Frankenstein made an “overplayed” scene a perfect moment of sensory manipulation. I was able to imagine myself in a 1931 theatre. If I was a normie in that time, I would most definitely have sensory overload. I would not be able to rationally hold myself together. I’d think I had witness actual life created in front of me.

Then theres the scene with the little girl. I’ve heard this time and time again. This movie is about life. What makes us human. Why is it dangerous? This monster was created a short time ago so his mind is child like. He wasn’t created with bad intentions he was given bad intentions. From the moment this monster was created he seemed to have good intentions. Since he was a danger by design he was treated as a monster therefore became the monster. Now when he threw the little girl I was shocked because that was not a part I remember hearing about but it made sense. Here was another moment this monster had a good intention go wrong. He has a child like mind but an adult body. This mismatch is a creation spawned by the man made nature of him.

Something I found interesting was the brain scene. I know that scene is from early beliefs that evil brains  differ from normal brains. Or that you can calculate who a person is by how different their brain is. While there are studies about regularly exercising the brain develops more wrinkles in it. I don’t think anything expands past that. I guess you could argue about the neuron’s synapses’s unique connections, but lets be real once the original body is dead and the brain is in a jar floating in a liquid, those cells are dead tissue soaking up whatever substance it is in, then again this is Frankenstein We’re talking about. I guess what I’m saying is this can be viewed as an example of eugenics, but I believe that in this movie they used a brain from a criminal and still the monster acted as a blank slate. I kept asking myself why did they include this scene if the monster was not a criminal by nature? Was this an example of the fallacies of eugenics?

Yes even though this was likely a big production back than it was still obvious the exterior shots were shot in a studio. I think aspect like that feels comforting to me. It feels human that many modern day films fail to do. It feels like anything with CGI is essentially a cartoon with live actors. This feels like a group of people coming together to tell a story with the things around them. They are speaking to a man representing a proposed monster, not to the air where a cartoon monster will be projected after the fact.

I enjoyed this film. I thought it was going to be boring. I understand why it’s a classic. My mind has been changed, no amount of parody will take away the characteristics of this film.

Joker had a daughter apparently

Daddy’s Girl - William F. Nolan

The next story in Adventures of the Batman is called Daddy’s Girl. This was one of the few stories in this book that I distinctly remembered. This was the story that pulled me in. Where the first story made me think, maybe Batman short stories weren’t for me, this one showed me that the writers were going to express their creativity in this. Not only that but it stared Robin as the initial protagonist. I nice reminder that this franchise character roster expands many perspectives available to explore. We got to see an exploration from the perspective of birdman’s view.

To Sum it Up

After failing to catch someone called the Tomcat. Who I never heard of so I had to look him up. Couldn’t find anything so I guess the author made him up for only a few paragraphs. Apparently this thing hisses and is a jewel thief. Will we ever hear of him again? Probably not.

Anyways back to the story, Robin falls into this mansion with robots and this little girl named Sue-Ellen, a pale face girl with big eyes. I’m assuming she’s the same age as Robin. She’s a sheltered girl surrounded by robots with a traveling clown as a father. Robin feels uneasy as her father has traveled to DC, which Wayne had also gone to for reasons I can’t recall. This made Robin’s gut start to feel uneasy. Robin by the way is unmasked. He requests her to bring his clothes back to him so he can gain access to his watch with a built-in “television”. I forgot this was written in the mid-90s, so I assume in the author’s mind they were thinking of it as a shrunken down CRT, not an LCD. Wait! I was wrong the Sega Game Gear had an LCD… still looked like a shrunken CRT from my perspective.

Upon retrieving his mini CRT he sees the Joker in DC. Lo and behold The girl confirms her father is the Joker… So the Joker has a kid now… At that instant the Joker comes home and sees Dick Grayson. You know Batman and Robins friend. I’m not a fan of that. Dicks association with the duo should be something unexpected not a direct association, but whatever. Joker forces the girl to kill Dick to bait Batman. 

She tries to retaliate but he mantras her into listening. I thought of this as, he is the only person she has ever learned from. He tells her what is right and that is what she understands. So when he forces her to repeat her mantra, she is in effect remembering that Joker is the carrier off all facts. Unfortunately we discover that it wasn’t that psychological, but instead he was simply hypnotizing his daughter to obey.

The story shifts to Batman’s perspective just so we can experience him seeing Dick dead. He rushes over just to instantly find out Dick is in fact not dead. And the hypnotizing was all just an act. Robin wakes up, it’s his perspective. They all escape for a brief encounter with the Clown Prince of Crime. He get’s away. Sue-Ellen, who at until this point I thought was a robot, dies with a poison injected into her that only activates when she leaves. This pushes Dick to breakdown and admit his love for her, but it is too late.

My Take Away

The Joker was a father that for some reason kept the kid when he separated from her mom. He kept her locked in and kept her away from all external forces. No media just servant robots. He was so extreme that if she left she’d die instantly. This could be a story about a father’s overbearing control but this the joker we’re talking about. So it’s a little hard to separate his random ultra-violent acts from his obsession with father-hood control. Did she allow him to believe he always had hypnotic control over her? Was that her deranged thin slice of parental bonding time with him.

This story left me thinking, if these are the type of acts the Joker will enforce on his own daughter. Acts that are identical to the overbearing processes of an over-protective father.  An all or nothing sort world view. Are they not the same. Sure, the Joker had her die the moment she abandons the robotic paradise he created, but couldn’t you say the same to a parent who’s adolescent kid they cut-off due to a first time romance? They must be a homicidal clown, if the moment their daughter drifts away form their bubble she must now fend for herself.

Oops I read a Business Book

More than a year ago I had this sudden idea, what if I could find a narrative book about working in IT. This was before I had found a role in the sector, but it led me to discover The Phoenix Project. It’s a story about a midlevel manager, Bill, suddenly get a promotion pushed to him. He struggles to accept it at first but then ultimately does. He goes on to find out the company he works at is completely dysfunctional and every meeting with team just under Steve Masters, the CEO, ends in a yelling match. Thankfully the old tech hippie stereotype drops down from nowhere bearing donuts to lead Bill to see the correct way to run IT in a company. Mimicking the concepts from lean manufacturing they discover a process called Dev-ops. He doesn’t actually discover this, its more like he’s guided by this mysterious figure known as Erik, the tech hippie investor. He Teaches Bill the “3 ways”, everything runs efficiently, and Sarah is fired… thankfully.

I’m not going to write about this in the way it was probably intended. This was clearly an educational book to sell the philosophy of DevOps. It’s points make sense. We’ve definelty seen the movement away from the waterfall methodology and something, something agile. I’m not going to pretend I understand tech business methodologies. I’m going to think of this book from a narrative perspective. Why? Because i feel like it, that’s why.

Bill is your every midwestern American. They go with their gut, they drive 5 miles over the speed limit, and is always ready to do their job. He also really admired the CEO, I feel like admiring someone who makes executive decisions within a private corporations while appealing to faceless shareholders, is so strange. But I know we’re all guilty, we admired Steve Jobs for acting like a magician on stage. Sure you might have listened to the Behind the Bastards episode of Steve Jobs and realized he was a piece of shit, but regardless people still love them some CEOs.

Back to what I was saying, I never liked Bill through out most of the entire read. He reminds me of people that I worked with in the past. People that ignore everyone around them because their “gut” is some sort of 8-ball fortune teller. Wes and Patty (Networking and Operations) seem fine, the depth of my opinions on them is the depth of characteristics. Dick Laundry is hopefully not laundering money. John is probably my favorite because everyone hates him. Steve is a god I think. Erik is a psychosis episode from Bill, If I ever got the rights to turn this into a movie that is what I would do. Last but definitely least, Sarah. Everyone has a Sarah in the office. Sarah is satan.

Even though I did not care for Bill, he grew on me. I accepted his traits and enjoyed as he fell on his face trying to decipher the coded messages from his dream state, that being Erik. Actually reading his reaction to the disaster of Project Phoenix was the best part of this book. It was a slow start of walking around the office and meeting different functions, but once things started hitting the fan I was pulled in. One of my biggest complaints is the amount of meetings. I know business minded people need a hit of dopamine they get after a meeting with a bunch of nods at the end. I know this is a bit of disaster control, but I feel like when a company goes overboard with meetings they are admitting they are loosing control of the team and are not having enough one-on-ones. But what do I know I’m not a business minded person.

I loved that everyone hated John. He reiterated his reasoning for being annoying. Everyone groans at the site of him. Bill’s fever dream even decides that John is useless. John then goes on a downfall questioning life after these auditors came in and said, “meh dis whatev, jus take care of it brah. Easi moni.” To be honest I’m not sure what cheered John up. Did he look in the mirror and realized its time to quiet quit, or did he just enter the step of acceptance. Either way something about this new Dev-Ops system makes him go I’m ok now. If I were to really think about it, it must be because now development and security can push code to the same environment so there is no more waiting or allocating time for security. I guess.

Anyways, I’m glad I finished this book. I learned to understand what Dev-Ops. It makes sense to me why this philosophy exists. I’ve heard of lean manufacturing in the past, so it was interesting to see it applied to Development. Companies taking on this change had led to program applications be thought logistical services and not so much software products. This actually confirms to me why everyone is moving to a subscription mindset. It is because code is never done. It never stops moving. Instead continuously rains. As we maintain the rain we remind ourselves, thank god we’re no longer waiting for the impact of a large waterfall.

Pixel Dailies again

Last week I watched an old video from Struthless, he said the best advice he was ever given was to draw the same thing everyday. I took that but instead of drawing the same thing, though I may do that one day, I decided to participate in pixel dailies. It’s been fun, I missed a few days but that’s ok I’m not being strict about it. I like how there is a little community around it. People post their work and other post their interpretation of the theme. The pixel concept is to limit the scope of your art. Some people have a larger pixel density allowing them to draw complex art pieces others like me constrain the frame to a much lower pixel density. I specifically keep my frame at 32x32. I’m not much of a drawing expert or even enthusiast so I never feel over whelmed. Even when my pieces are pretty bad I’m ok with sharing.



By maintaining a lower pixel density there is less space reserved for detailing, thinking spatially, and planning too many colors. It’s strictly 32x32 with only 4 colors. Now I can think creatively on the outskirts of the prompt and think less of its overall structure. Theses are the five that I did this week:


On Bluesky it’s fairly active I get likes from others participating and I have no idea who they are but they have some good pieces.

Historically speaking I’ve been more of a video guy than a drawing guy so I thought why not upload the drawing process to YouTube maybe I can extend the pixel dailies activity to YouTube? It seems like a bit of it is already there. 

I uploaded 3 shorts of the activity sped up for people who want to see the end result much quicker, after all once again I’m no trained artist I’m doing this for fun.

They did great, much better than I expected but there is a big caveat, YouTube probably pushed these to people to see if people like it. I would need to post these regularly to see if there is actually stickiness to them. Makes me a bit more aware of the algorithm. Bluesky is bringing people in who are aware of the activity so it brings a small sense of community, YouTube on the other hand is bringing onlookers with no context and I fear may misinterpret the activity and shame participates. But as I mentioned earlier it’s still too early.

I also posted a few as traditional posts on YouTube, and got 7 impressions. No likes which for the most part I expected.

I don’t know who runs this activity but after participating on and off I have started recognizing a few participants. There’s many of them but seeing the same profile pics posting their interpretations of a prompt really adds to the sense of a community.

In the grand scheme of things I hope that I don’t fall off the band wagon and continue this fun activity. It’s simple, fun, and an opportunity to reflect any art in a non-consequential manner. 

Follow Pixel_Dailies on Bluesky for the daily prompts.

Make Systems Not Games

 Whenever thinking about what games to create we always think about the end result then start picking it apart. Slowly discovering processes. When accumulating the systems you create and nail might build a funny more engaging experience. Well I believe this train of thought can be applied to other things like setting a goal.

Instead of saying this is my goal and breaking that up into tasks, it might be better to design the systems that work best with the individual. When a person’s goal is to be an acclaimed artist, they should start breaking down the steps to become that artist. They should scratch that. Instead what do you already do? Can you get better at it? Can you share that? What can you do to be more of an impact in that? Now can you design compatible system for that? Are there any skills on the edge that you might like to learn or sharpen?

Forget the goal. Throw it out. Build from with in. 

Let’s take it back to game design. Say you love make single screen experiences. It’s the only type of game you are comfortable making. Are you the best at it? If no then get better. What aspects could be added? Have you tried this, have you tried that? You also enjoy platformers but they are too hard to and time consuming to make. Now that you are very skilled at single screen games can you make a platformer. No? What’s the obstacle? Jumping physics how about making a jump rope game. Now a jump rope game where you dodge milkshakes being thrown at the play. Oh look at that your character can now run and jump, time to build that platformer! Wait level design, alright lets paper pencil this.

Now this is built from the ground up. No need to get over consumed with a pie in the sky approach. I think this could also be applied to goals. You have a goal to get that promotions in a department you know nothing about so you keep talking about it and socializing with the team about it. I think instead it would be better to just look around at what you got. What is here that you enjoy. Do that. Get good at it, then expand from there. I’d argue that is not giving up on a dream that is merely designing a dream from your surroundings. You are McGyvering your path. In some ways this will be your most authentic self then following a pre designed path or shoehorning your foot into the door of an opportunity others have told you so much about. I cannot tell you how often people reach their dreams just to realize it was sold to them, not what they thought, or ended up just being work. 

Either way design the system with things that around. Something curious might be discovered.

Adventures of the Batman 1995 Book

I’ve never been sure how I came across this book. I’ve had it for probably two decades now. I have never been much of a comic reader but as a child of the 90’s I had an adequate collection. I eventually sold all of them at a collector’s show that is local, Frank & Son’s if you’re local to the Southern California area. I was told they were all very common so I got a small amount for them. I was content with that as I did not have any real attachment to them. Yes I was one that fit the stereotype of “maybe my old toys are valuable now.”

This book with an assortment of short stories all in the Batman universe is a fun read. I’m not much of a reader even I can tell it’s an easy read. This book has been nostalgic for me as it was the book that would accompany me on the city bus on my way to school. That and an iPod Touch as I couldn't afford a phone with service so a second hand iPod Touch, Google phone number, and WiFi was my jam. On my blog I’ll go over each story. Why? Because it is my blog, that’s why!

The Batman Memos

The first story in the book. It’s actually a fragment way to tell a story. I believe it may even be non-linear. To be honest this was a poor start. When I first read this many years ago it put me off. Why would a collection of memos be the starting point? Either way it is what it is. As you're reading these memos from different people such as a studio director, Bruce Wayne (speaking on behalf of Batman… huge giveaway), and head of security you are piecing together a disappearance. Given that it’s just a bunch of memos the ending does fall flat. Not sure why I continued reading after this, but I’m sure glad I did.

Now as for the rest of the stories, I’ll reserve them for future posts. Till next time. Same bat time, same bat channel.

My thoughts on AI, another person opinion

 I’ve had a pull and retract response to AI, or more specifically the large language models that is generative AI. I’ve fallen for the “but this is the best it will get” argument as well as the “it will never get better”. The first time I had OpenAI generate a response it felt like a parlor trick, but I felt it could be used as an ideation device. I would type in keywords I was feeling and be given a direction. I got burnt out wresting with the machine. I stepped away from it. Then suddenly we had ChatGPT where it would be able to stick with the conversation. Before this it was clear the chatbot was constantly trying to end the conversation, probably to hide its inabilities. I later wrote a stories with GPT 4, but they were all boring and the truth is no matter how much I put into it, these words were never mine. Does not matter how much effort I put into directing with prompts. I never felt an ownership of the words being generated.

From then on ChatGPT was solely used as a wall that I can bounce questions on, narrow down what I’m trying to ask, or give me a starting point to search something up. Now more recently I’ve used the reasoning button. This has made it much more useful as it reduces the amount of prompts needed point the GPT in the right direction. That being said I don’t think we are at a point where these are useful. The many jobs people want to replace these with will create new jobs, but these jobs will be soulless. There will be no ownership of the labor. No useful skill developed to later sell as valuable. Resumes will just say “made sure AI continued to do its job and feed any data requested.” 

Everyone will be in IT. Jobs will either be maintain the physical computer (working, great! Broken? Replace), clicking buttons within a propriety web page (this is only a human for liability reasons, so it would be phased out eventually), or I guess trade jobs will still exist but the worker will be heavily attached to an AI model owned by some bigger corporation. Sure those people will have bosses, AI bosses that appear with an avatar that is your boss. AI processes key metrics, evaluate how to respond, draft the email, then fire you via email.

Society will implement this before we ever prove this technology is good enough to act as our bosses. People are going to be affected. What’s funny but also not funny is using an AI model that is close enough to the real output of a human takes more energy than a human. So the cost does not cancel out. Sure this might be figured out in the future but that may require breakthroughs that are not part of any trajectories that exist at the moment. 

There’s no doubt about it. This tech will change things. The unfortunate aspect is everyone is looking at previous technologies and want to accelerate what came before it. They want to be the creators that started it all. They want to be the next Charles Babbage, Dennis Ritchie, or Richard Stallman. The only problem is most of the “accelerationists” do not give a shit about the craft.

This is just another, get in on the ground floor grift. These are not people that want to create technologies to further us into a future. Instead it’s a bunch of narrow minded money hungry business minded people hoping to scramble to the top of a sinking ship. They will burn the Earth to get there. Anyone who loves technology and favors a safe development is a futurist. Pushing AI in the way that we have been is not futurist, its nihilist. It’s the belief that the world will eventually burn so we must do the burining.

Algorithms are a Nightmare

I remember when content filtering algorithms first came to the scene they were the hype train. Give us your data and we’ll provide a tool that knows what you want before you get there. This was true but unexpectedly was this something we actually wanted? Do we really want to walk a set trajectory and ignore every spontaneous “not part of the path” experience. It doesn’t take into account the massive ability to be manipulated. You give the information of where you will be at to someone with bad convictions, they will act in bad faith. If a scam artist sees your mind is going through a set of common troupes they can make an educated guess on where your mind will end up at. If they can guide your mind at the right step, then your mind is essentially being controlled. 

Art is also ruined by algorithms. You want your art to be seen. Making something impactful is only a third of the battle. It’s time to be more of a sales man and less an artist. Meet the consumers at the market. That market is the algorithm, and you have no choice but to appease it. As a consumer you are overwhelmed with content. You have thousands thrown in your face all at once with only a title and thumbnail available to make a quick second decision, watch or not? Content used to be accumulated through shared experience, or fed by some higher power (but that’s arguably as bad as algorithms). I believe slow discover is the way it’s meant to be. You don’t want the content to find you at the right time, you want to find it at the right time.

Organizing notes? Recording logs?

I feel like I keep getting swept into organizing notes and prioritizing it. I know it’s not important but for some reason I’m always so eager to “finish” file clean up tasks. Maybe it’s one of the few things I have 100% control over. Does realizing this lead to anything? Not really because notes and logging are just supplementary tasks.

There are actual tasks with much higher importance that need the effort. But they don’t allow 100% control. Is there a way to push past the “I don’t have control over something” to, “I need to affect something”? This is where the arrow analogy comes in. You can’t control where the arrow goes, but you can control where you aim the arrow. Sorry I’m not sure where I got this Analogy, but I thought it was very relatable. What I’m saying is it not always about what is there I can fully manage, but instead how can I affect things.

Note taking is very important. Recording a log can be beneficial. But actually doing the work is what we strive for. It’s why we spend all those hours building a second brain. So just shut up and do the work.